How to Build a Foghorn

How to Build a Foghorn, an exhibition with Mie Olise, Erik Parra, Craig Kauffman, and Bridget Beck. These artists translate the hidden language of the man-made landscape through painting, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture. We navigate our daily passage through a subconscious negotiation where expectations are met constantly and unnoticeably, but when the fog rolls in it creates an ambiguous environment without the normal cues for location or definition. The gathered works in How to Build a Foghorn do not so much warn of impending danger as reveal a different understanding of the reality all around us. Expected constructions shape-shift into novel configurations, ships, tree houses, benches, and structures, while flowers become skyscrapers who have simply forgotten that scale is a matter of perspective.

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Erik Parra’s practice draws on the visual imagery from mid-century aesthetics, classic horror films, and current affairs to pose questions about our sociopolitical narratives and the language surrounding the pictorial constructions of our own environments. Parra states the he, “often works in small series’ of original compositions that conflate my personal history and knowledge with modern historical narratives in order to view important, current social concerns through the lens of history. This serves as an entryway into a process of constructing images that draw on our conception of space and the stories we tell ourselves in order to navigate the environments we build.” Parra’s paintings and sculptural installation will serve as a new lens for the viewer to see and navigate the layered sociopolitical narratives of our built environments.  Parra draws attention to the dangers of blindly accepting a manufactured environment produced by the rhetoric of American exceptionalism and consumerism.

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