December 4, 2020 at 8:41 a.m.
Oil paintings by Kendra Bulgrin and photography by Les Klug featured in ArtStart's winter exhibition
Oil paintings by Kendra Bulgrin and photography by Les Klug featured in ArtStart's winter exhibition
By Stephanie Kuski-
Kendra Bulgrin's delicate oil paintings and Les Klug's powerful photography offer two contrasting yet complimenting perspectives: while both galleries feature an introspective examination of each artist's personal tribulations, two very distinct moods occupy each space.
Bulgrin's intricately designed compositions subtly reveal her own longing for identity while Klug's emotionally-charged black-and-white images offer a retrospective glimpse into his turbulent life.
Les Klug - "Contemplating"
Klug was an early pioneer of digital photography who influenced the art world with his visionary techniques long before the age of Photoshop.
His impassioned images act as a thought-provoking foil to Bulgrin's space: while both galleries offer an introspective glimpse into the psyche of both artists, Klug's black-and-white imagery invites gallery goers into the inner workings of his artistic innovation.
Born in Rhinelander in 1930, Klug graduated from Rhinelander Union High School in 1948. According to Ainsly Klug, his cousin once removed, Les was interested in photography from very early on. She said he loved to take portrait shots with his Kodak Brownie and was the staff photographer for his high school yearbook.
In 1949, Klug enrolled in the engineering program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He took his first photojournalism class in the School of Agriculture, but left college after his spring semester and enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1952. After he was discharged, Klug returned to UW-Madison, but he walked away from the program right before earning his degree.
Later, Klug opened an art shop called the Madison Art Center, but it closed after only a year. Still needing to make a living, Klug worked for the university as a photographer and multimedia lab technician, where he began working closely with university art professors. These connections compelled Klug to move beyond straight prints and experiment with manipulating negatives in the darkroom to create layers of textures and emotions.
Ainsly Klug noted Les's upbringing in the Northwoods also heavily influenced his photography. She said he was drawn to the way nature accentuates organic textures and patterns, which he used as underlying backdrops to the photographs he later altered.
Indeed, an assortment of rural scenery and altered landscapes occupy Klug's gallery space. One particular photo series depicts an abandoned home in the woods with a snowman looking out the window sitting in a chair and standing in empty rooms. Klug photographed these images and others in various stages as a means of storytelling.
"I find it really kind of haunting - this snowman is the last 'person' that's going to be in there, and it melts away like the memories of us in our own home fades away," Ainsly Klug commented. "But then there's the jovialness of 'it's a snowman...' It's a weird balance that makes you smile and shiver at the same time."
In the early '70s, Klug moved to Chicago to make a career of his photography. His cousin noted the move to Chicago marked an experimental shift in his work. He rented a loft that served as both his living space and studio with three large windows, which are depicted in interesting and unexpected ways in several images on display at ArtStart.
In Chicago, Klug used a variety of props like pedestrians on the street, mannequins, cars, billboards and even manhole covers to color everyday scenes with a humorous twist.
According to his cousin, there was a playful side to Les in which he would stage out-of-place scenes like leaving a naked mannequin on the stairs to capture the candid reaction of passersby.
Klug would also experiment with reversing or sandwiching negatives, cutting out windows, adding textures and solarizing photographs. He layered negatives over each other, put images together in a series to tell a story and he experimented with rural landscapes in both organic and inorganic ways. In the decades prior to Photoshop, Ainsly Klug noted her cousin was years ahead of his time by experimenting with altered images in this way.
In his work, Klug tackles both the mundane and the contentious. One of his better-known photos on display depicts deer hanging from a post at deer camp, where he layered deer on top of deer to create a dramatic - and controversial - photo.
Even at the height of his artistic career, selling his artwork and winning monetary awards from art shows became Klug's only means of support. He lived in extremely volatile conditions characterized by financial instability; at the end of his life, he moved back to rural Wisconsin and lived alone in a cabin, where he passed away in 1988.
"I've grown up hearing stories about him, but even so, there are so many photos in the archives that you look through and there's nothing to tell about it," Klug commented. "We can guess, we can figure out where it was... But there's so much we don't know about what he was thinking, what he was experiencing."
She said going through her cousin's body of work actually prompted her to study art history, and she has since been working with other members of her family to curate a permanent display of his work.
Kendra Bulgrin - "Everything Between Us"
Upon entering Bulgrin's space, gallery goers are greeted with a light yet morose ambiance. Her paintings of nature, packed with vivid hues and textured patterns, radiate an ethereal aura studded with a mosaic of underlying fervor.
In her own artistic process, Bulgrin said she employs decoys and taxidermy as stand-ins for reality. The relationship between humans and animals in this way underscores her longing for identity and is a central motif throughout the gallery.
Bulgrin, an oil painter currently residing in Dousman, said she typically paints from real-life photographs, but in her early body of work, she staged miniature figures together in a scene before photographing and then painting them. Later on, she said she began using hunting decoys as stand-ins to depict migratory birds like snow geese.
She said she started working with snow geese decoys when she lived near a major fly-over zone in Kansas. Bulgrin said she often depicts migratory birds in her paintings as she reflects on the changes of the seasons as well as the changes we all undergo throughout our lives from childhood to adulthood. This way, nature versus nurture as well as a nuanced examination of her own identity are ongoing themes throughout her body of work.
Two years ago, Bulgrin said she had the chance to check out specimens from the Richter Museum of Natural History at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, including a taxidermied swan she kept in her studio for several months that she used to take photos with and then painted from those photos.
Several paintings on display in the gallery depict a woman holding a lifeless swan, who Bulgrin said is actually herself, which gives her space an introspective feel. She said using the decoys and taxidermied animals as proxies in this way allows her to transcend that particular moment to stand in for other instances, such as confronting her own identity.
"I've always felt like there was something missing in my life," Bulgrin explained. "I was adopted and only later found my birth family, so there's always been this kind of searching, this kind of longing that had an undercurrent with my life and with my work."
Although many of her paintings employ decoy and taxidermy as stand-ins, Bulgrin said she experienced a shift in her artwork a few months ago when she began working with the living at an artist residency at Everwood Farmstead in Glenwood City.
"I feel like I've always made very somber, morose paintings and I really had this huge shift while getting ready for that residency and my stay there," Bulgrin explained. "I had a lot of dead things I interacted with for a while. Then once COVID hit... I just kind of got sick of painting dead things. So I made that transition while at that residency from the dead and decoys to living birds."
Bulgrin's medley of delicate finches, solemn nature scenes and introspective landscapes offers a differing perspective from that of Klug's emotionally-charged photography in the adjacent gallery space.
ArtStart's latest exhibition offers something for everyone in search of an extra creative spark this winter.
The galleries are open by appointment and reservations can be made by calling ArtStart 24 hours in advance at (715) 362-4328.
COVID-19 guidelines will be enforced, and gallery goers are required to wear a mask and remain six feet apart.
Another virtual tour of the galleries provided by Nate Sheppard Media will also be available on ArtStart's website at http://artstartrhinelander.org. A virtual Artist Talk will be announced at a later date.
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