A WORD FROM THE ARTISTS
Katie Temple:
As a home renter, I am obsessed with the idea of home ownership as a part of my American
Dream. I often scour online real estate websites for my American Dream Home. How many
bedrooms do I need? How much money am I willing to spend? In what area do I want to live?
Finding my dream home is completely overwhelming because of the pressure of finding a
perfect, forever home. These thoughts are translated to my work by the overlapping of multiple
layers of homes in a single painting--the layering also reproduces the situation of homes
transitioning from being occupied to unoccupied to occupied again. The structural play of
dense and transparent layering presents a whirlwind of visual incident in the works. I often
have the source imagery and color scheme selected for a piece, but use my intuition to make
aesthetic and compositional decisions as I work.
The imagery used in this series of paintings are the results of filtering my ideal preferences
for my potential American Dream Home on Zillow. My filters include a specific price range and
desired location, along with specifying for a 3-bedroom, 2 bath house of at least 1100 square
feet. It intrigues me that my American Dream Home may be in these paintings, but currently
sits empty--a vessel waiting for its next owner.
Todd McCollister:
If you’re lucky, you have memories of many meals around a particular dining table, or drinks mixed at a friend’s bar cabinet. There may be warmth, joy, compassion, love, anger, and confusion in those memories. There may be celebration, mourning, community, and inspiration. Furniture can be the vessel for those memories, and a physical image that appears throughout the story of a person’s life.
The objects in our memories can be beautiful, sensual, and tactile. They should evoke the time in which they began. They might even carry their own conceptual significance and influence the story. Some of my works are gentle and subtle, while others may be a bit prickly or even disorienting. Many of my custom projects are inspired by the architecture they’ll inhabit, seeking harmony, activating spaces, and seizing on details one might overlook.
I build these furniture objects as an art practice. They are places to put your body and your stuff. They are also investigations of line, form, texture, color, balance, rhythm, and material. Engineering, mass, and geometry. Tradition, convention, and snark.
Thoughtfully designed, carefully made furniture ignites the conversations that surround it. It will appear in your memories. It will become a vessel to carry memories forward in your life.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Katie Temple:
Katie B Temple earned her B.F.A. from Bowling Green State University in 2010 and her M.F.A.
from Montana State University in 2013. Her work has been featured in various national
exhibitions including being selected for the National Council on Education for the Ceramics
Arts sponsored exhibition “NCECA National Juried Student Exhibition” in Seattle, Washington
in 2012. She has been included in the top-10 list of "Best Exhibitions of 2016 in Omaha" by
TheReader.Com for her Sense of Home solo exhibition at the Michael Phipps Gallery. In
addition, she was a nominee for Best Visual Emerging Artist for the 2017 and 2018 Omaha
Arts and Entertainment Awards. She was also a nominee for the 2018 Best Presentation in a
Non-Traditional Format for her duo-exhibition, Dwellings, at True Blue Goods. She is currently
the Studio Coordinator for the Kent Bellows Mentoring Program at the Joslyn Art Museum and
a new member of the Board of Directors for the Omaha Entertainment and Arts Awards.
Todd McCollister:
Todd McCollister builds in the zone between furniture and art, bringing important elements of each into any given object. While function is usually a baseline, he believes in pushing expectations of design, creating objects for the home or office that will spark conversations and broaden ideas. McCollister earned a BFA in Sculpture and Photography in 1997 from Texas Christian University and an MFA in Sculpture in 2000 from Stony Brook University. He then moved to New York City, first pursuing Sculpture and shifting to furniture making in 2006. In 2014 he brought what he learned back to Omaha and founded Long Grain Furniture. He is an active member of the informal Omaha art community and serves on the Governance Committee of the Young Art Patrons for Joslyn Art Museum.
