CELEBRATION OF A FIELD REVELING IN THE SUMMER LIGHT
NICHOLAS DOWGWILLO
6/20/26-8/22/26
Above: Nicholas Dowgwillo -
Installation of field model with beeswx candles
The Weather Station is pleased to present Celebration of a field reveling in the summer light, a solo exhibition by Nicholas Dowgwillo. Formally trained as a printmaker, in this exhibition Detroit-based artist Nicholas Dowgwillo mines recent experiences building a home on his rural property to create new work in print and sculpture that considers the landscape itself as a matrix.
In print, matrix refers to the physical surface used to hold ink and transfer an image onto paper. More or less acting as a kind of stamp, a matrix can be carved, etched or otherwise treated by the artist in order to arrive at the desired pictorial result. Over the last several years, Dowgwillo has been building a home on his property outside the city of Detroit, intimately engaged with a landscape in order to construct something structural, functional, personal and permanent. In this way, the landscape itself has become a kind of matrix, worked with and against by the artist in order to arrive at a physical manifestation of an idea in the form of a place.
Above: Installation of watercolor monotypes with digitally-manipulated wall vinyl.
Notions of place, landscape and locality have long intrigued the artist - for years, Dowgwillo's practice has incorporated landscape as an image and an abstraction in highly-detailed works on paper, produced through a range of techniques. Embarking on a home-building project was a natural transition for the artist, who throughout his career has grown accustomed to the types of planning, craftsmanship and problem-solving that both printmaking and home construction require. During the length of this project, Dowgwillo has observed an intermingling between his studio activities (his "art" work) and his role as a contractor (his "home" work). In many ways, the home-in-progress - as well as its surrounding area - has become an extension of the studio.
Adjacent to Dowgwillo’s Detroit property are two fallow fields – one owned by the city, one owned privately – that have become sites of particular significance for the artist’s recent projects, including an artist’s book designed specifically for this exhibition. Incorporating scanning and reproduction equipment, Dowgwillo has created an “accordion” book based on imagery taken directly from these fields. In this, Dowgwillo’s work echoes the earth-encrusted Märkischer Sand books of Anselm Kiefer, as well as the fictional cartographers from Jorge Luis Borges’ On Exactitude in Science, tasked with creating maps of their imaginary empire at a 1:1 scale.
Above: Accordion book on artist-made shelf Stretch Stitched Drawing 04
With Celebration…, Dowgwillo not only alludes to the landscape through printed imagery, he also replicates the landscape itself. For this exhibition, Dowgwillo has built a scaled-down "model" field, based on these actual fields near his home. Constructed from plywood and embellished with natural materials taken from the site it is based on, this field model reimagines this landscape in miniature inside The Weather Station. During the exhibition opening, the artist will activate the work through the burning of beeswax candles - evoking the bonfires he regularly builds on this land with friends/collaborators. Additionally, the artist will burn his homemade incense - created from natural materials drawn from the site of his home-in-progress. Throughout the gallery, large collages made from scans of the artist's intimately-scaled watercolor monotypes further extends this notion of a "field," abstracting, enlarging and distorting the artist's marks to fill one's field of vision.
Above: Two views of Nicholas Dowgwillo model of a field, with soil, stones, sticks and incense made from landscape.
Nicholas Dowgwillo is a professional printmaker based in Detroit. He received a Master of Fine Arts from Arizona State University and Bachelor of Fine Art from University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Nick has held research and teaching positions at Arizona State University, Wayne State University, Buffalo State College, and University of Michigan. He has participated in artist residencies including the Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest. His work is included in public collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tama Art University Museum, and the Zuckerman Museum of Art. Active in the Detroit artist community, he founded Temple of Print (a cooperative press) in 2018 and continues to work to provide Detroit printmakers with access to equipment, knowledge, and space.