Austin Peay's The New Gallery presents "Patrick Vincent: Vanishing Islands"

(Posted Jan. 10, 2019)

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – This January, Austin Peay State University’s The New Gallery, with support from the APSU Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts and the Department of Art + Design, will continue its exciting 2018-19 exhibition season with Patrick Vincent: Vanishing Islands.

The exhibit opens Monday, Jan. 14 and runs through Feb. 8. Vincent will give a public lecture on his work at 6 p.m. on Feb. 5 in the Art + Design Building’s Heydel Hall. A reception will take place from noon-1 p.m. on Feb. 6 in The New Gallery, located inside the Art + Design Building, with Vincent delivering a gallery talk at 12:30 p.m. All events are free and open to the public.

Vincent is a printmaker who engages print as both two-dimensional and three-dimensional works to magnify the immersive effect of the graphic image. His installations engage viewers and participants to negotiate surface and form through graphic media. His work uses print and print-based structures to explore myth and narrative in graphic traditions, mixing traditional and contemporary animal-human iconography to survey contemporary social and ecological issues. 

“This is the second exhibition this season that features one of our own,” Michael Dickins, director of The New Gallery, said. “Patrick joined the faculty in 2016 as an assistant professor of printmaking, and in an ongoing tradition with the department of Art + Design, newer studio faculty members are given the opportunity to exhibit the work that they have been creating since arriving at APSU.

“It is a great opportunity for students and community to view/experience the research of our faculty. Patrick is an incredible craftsman, draftsman and storyteller. This is not your typical printmaking exhibition of framed prints; Patrick is an installation artist whose prints and paperwork protrude from the walls and into the viewer’s space.”

Vincent told Laura Hutson Hunter, a Nashville-based arts writer, that Vanishing Islands is “conceptually tied to the idea of a turtle as symbol for the world falling apart. It’s kind of imagining the myth that the world sits on the top of a turtle’s back. But if you took away the interior of the turtle and left the skeletal frame of the turtle’s shell, and then left these human hands dangling down, it’s a commentary on ecological collapse and human industry changing the world.”

Vincent, a Minneapolis, Minnesota, native, received his BFA from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and his MFA from Arizona State University. He has worked for the design/letterpress workspace Studio on Fire, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and Pyracantha Press. With this foundation in books, printmaking and design, Vincent creates original works of art as well as collaborates with individuals through print media.

For more on his work, visit www.twinbeepress.com.

The New Gallery is open from 9 a.m.-4 p.m., Monday-Friday. It is closed on weekends and holidays, and it follows the University’s academic calendar. For information on this exhibition, which is free and open to the public, contact Dickins at dickinsm@apsu.edu.