PlySpace Resident Fellow, artist Dave Rowe, will hold an open studio at Madjax on Friday, July 13th, from 5:00 to 8:00 PM.  PlySpace studios are located on the second floor of the Madjax building.

Visitors are invited to learn more about PlySpace, check out the PlySpace studios, and explore the work Dave has created while in residence this summer.  At 6:00 PM, the artist will discuss his work and his residency experience in an informal artist talk. Light refreshments will be served.

Artist Statement: Our perception of landscape is at once both transient and permanent, and a significant component of how we identify and locate our own identities. At the core of my studio practice lays a desire to understand how our contemporary notion of “place” has defined and affected our lives. My work is grounded in an exploration of our history using the contemporary landscape as a vehicle for inquiry. The vast physical environment of the United States is a profound document of collective development. The rise and fall of industry, the transition from a manufacturing or agrarian economy to one described as information-based; wars, floods, fires; these changes have left their mark on physical and psychological landscapes. My sculptures question our relationship towards common spaces we have defined, used, and altered. The works also connect the viewer to the American Experience, and in particular, the isolation inherent within it. The works are not merely physical depictions of space, but psychological studies as well. There is a sense of longing within the work, both as a misplaced and often misrepresented nostalgia common in popular culture, but also a form of questioning as it relates to the human capacity to overcome challenges.

Dave Rowe is a sculptor, educator, and fabricator. His work exists within the intersections of landscape, history, and the transitory spaces within the American psyche. It is informed by an aesthetic developed during a youth spent in the Midwestern United States, and a visual language developed building miniatures and models as a child. He is a 2011 recipient of an Efroymson Family Fund Fellowship, and a 2015 recipient of a Nevada Arts Council Fellowship. He has participated in numerous solo and group shows nationally, as well as participating in several residency programs. His work was included in the traveling show “Crafting a Continuum”, originating at Arizona State University. He is currently an Assistant Professor in Sculptural Practices at the University of Nevada Las Vegas and holds a BFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign and an MFA from Indiana University Bloomington.