Furry ferret friends feature in Step Gallery exhibition
What: Furotype: The Arcane Spirit of Departed Thieves, a mixed-media exhibition featuring the artist’s four pet ferrets.
Where: Step Gallery, located in ASU’s Tempe Center complex, southeast corner of Mill Avenue and University Drive (gallery faces University Drive.)
Who: B.K. Skaggs, an undergraduate at the Herberger College School of Art.
When: April 15-19, 2002.
Opening Reception: 7-9 p.m., April 15.
Hours: Monday through Thursday from noon to 5 p.m. and Friday from noon to 3 p.m.
Cost: Always Free
About the Exhibition: With an exhibition of mixed media works including photography, pastel charcoal drawings and wood block prints, Brian Skaggs, a senior in the studio art program at ASU’s Herberger College School of Art, creates a tribute to his beloved pets. But no cloying pictures of kittens playing with balls of yarn turn up here. Through his work, Skaggs chronicles the lives of the ferrets he has raised over the past eight years.
Skaggs says that the experience of raising and interrelating with his ferrets, Bink, Bart, Beatrice and Billy, has revealed the light and darkness of his own being. His exhibition is dedicated to the attempt to become a better human being through relationships with non-human beings.
“It’s not about ‘belief’ that animals and man need each other,” Skaggs says. “It is the fire-hardened knowing that there is a desire to bridge the ever-widening chasm between beings, human and other.”
About the Image:
The Visitation, 2001, by B.K. Skaggs. Silver gelatin toned. 6” x 9”
gone ahead, 2000, by B.K. Skaggs. Van Dyke print. 5” x 7”.
The Step Gallery is one of three galleries on the ASU Tempe campus operated by students, staff and faculty of the School of Art in ASU’s Katherine K. Herberger College of Fine Arts. It is dedicated to solo and group shows by undergraduate students in the School of Art.
Media Contact:
Jennifer Pringle
480-965-8795
jennifer.pringle@asu.edu