Making Space with Steven Strenk

One of the beauties of being an artist is that the rules of geography don’t always apply.

For example, it may have taken a professional development grant from Ringling College of Art & Design for Steven Strenk to get to Oswald West State Park in Oregon, where he and his family could explore the old-growth forests, navigate their shadowed paths and bask on secluded beaches reserved for fellow wanderers. But it only takes some canvas, a few buckets of housepaint, a gallon or two of epoxy, and a 1960s surfboard for a man like Strenk to bring Oregon to Ringling College.

Enter a transportative multimedia exhibition and installation featuring both large-scale paintings and small-scale sculpture, opening this Friday, September 16, in the Patricia Thompson Gallery with a reception from 5pm to 8pm.

The experience begins as soon as you enter the door, flanked by forest scenes brought to life through a series of 4’x’8’ paintings, five on each side, all massive mottled tree trunks and tangling roots, puffy clouds and the Pacific Ocean peeking out from between encroaching limbs. And even at eight feet tall, the tops of the trees forever hang above and out of frame, putting the viewer eye-level in the Oregon forest, dwarfed by living gods. “These trees are 100s of years old, man,” Strenk says. “I needed to represent that forest and there was no way to do it other than to go big.”

Working on masonite, Strenk has no time for the fancy and the delicate in his arboreal homage, opting for simple housepaint from Home Depot as his medium of choice and a squeegee as his tool. Unconventional, sure. But so is Strenk. And, in some ways, a squeegee from the art store could be considered an upgrade from a repurposed fiberglass spreader or a spatula stolen from the kitchen.

The result is a bold and blocky aesthetic, dappled and almost digital, that eschews realism and exactitude for atmosphere and the bigger picture, evoking more the feeling of something remembered than something reproduced or captured. It’s a nifty trick that keeps the viewer from lingering too long in any one place and that lets the forest loom larger than any individual tree. But at the same time, closer examination of any one painting yields its rewards, from Strenk’s pencil-drawn details to the delicate layering of colors not immediately evident in those blocky sweeps of the squeegee—all those nuances your brain noticed, but your eye may have not.

This is Chapter 1: The Path of Most Resistance.

Coming out of the forest, the exhibition space opens up a bit.

Two more large-scale paintings hang from the wall at the far end of the intimate space, reminding you that you’re still in Oregon, but you’re surrounded by scenes of play—small figurines on wooden bases, all poised for action. A trio of surfers scope the water for waves; another brings the cooler. Up front, a pair of children skip stones in the Pacific Ocean while an older couple on a bench nearby keeps watch and reads a map. To the left, a little girl flies a delicate kite that gently wafts in the air-conditioned breeze.

Each is made of a two-part epoxy that gives the user about three hours of functional work time before promptly giving them the finger instead. “It hardens like a rock,” says Strenk, who responded in kind by pulling out a dremel and going to town on their faces. “And it carves like butter,” he says, not at all like a serial killer describing his victims. And so through a series of layering and carving, Strenk populates his paradisal shore with its people, each lovingly crafted.

They’re all painted grey and accented with india ink but otherwise remain neutral. “I wanted to keep them choppy and blocky,” Strenk says, “in the same style as the painting.” And it’s a similarly strong choice, as the disparate pieces readily become part of a greater whole in service to an overarching narrative, as opposed to individual highlights in competition for audience attention. It’s the key difference between an exhibition and an installation—and a needle not always easy to thread.

This is Chapter 2: Breathing Space.

Put together, they’re the first two installments of a multimedia project exploring the environs and surfer culture of the Oregon coast, an attempt by Strenk to capture that ineffable something, the moment between the waves when it's not about what was or what's coming, but simply riding the rise and fall of the ocean and learning to breathe in time.

“It’s a vibe, man. Just a calming moment,” he says. “It’s not even about the work; it’s about the environment. I wanted to make some breathing space.”

But as for the artist, he’s done taking a breather and already looking to the next project.

“I’m excited to see what Chapter 3 is going to look like,” he says. “I want to figure out what else I can do.”