Collect, Constrain, Contain: Vernon Vanderwood and Miles Mendenhall at TOA Presents

 

From the outset looking at the show online, I wondered why these two artists chose to work together. The similarities between their works weren’t obvious, and I didn’t have enough context to peg them as “biocurious” works. I didn’t see any greenery, nor any suggestions of soil or bacteria. With the gallery’s sleek strips of LED lighting overhead and the horn of a freight train sounding just outside, perhaps I was distanced from what I perceive to be of the natural world, instead marinated in an industrial, tech-centric one.

Vernon Vanderwood’s work is vast. Strokes of charcoal soar and dance spaciously, and segments of pink ribbon are deliberately placed amidst the freestyle lines of charcoal. Miles Mendenhall's work is articulate and studied. The exacting attention and time required of the work prompted me to squint my eyes. Swirls of pink and purple, flakes of white where the glossy pigment had chipped, a faint image of a spider, commanding words at the center of each piece — a galaxy of visual information, overwhelming when peered at for more than a moment. And the frames from a distance emerged as almost gaudy in their form and detail. As Miles says, “The frames are unclassifiable. You can't classify these frames as this, that, or the other thing, as futurist, as baroque, they're just in this weird transmedium space.” However, even with one artist’s work seeming more expressive and the other’s more calculated, after hearing their stories the connection was drawn between their processes and work, and I saw the influence between their ways of thinking and working. 

The artists' first collaboration was a show titled MAMA at Gelo Shop, an experimental boutique for “fine arts and fine woods” run out of Mendenhall’s home in Seward. Both guided by a fascination for the natural world, the two identify as biocurious, a term Vanderwood first adopted as they found themselves working with both reclaimed and raw materials, and utilizing mediums of SCOBY and mycelium. Vanderwood's focus on natural materials opened Mendenhall's perception to the bio-curiosity already being tested in his own work with gelatin, which has similar properties to SCOBY. Solid at room temperature and dissolving in hot water, gelatin is a product of extracting protein from living tissue — often animal bone, skin, and muscle; the formulated hydrogel is what Mendenhall uses as a glue-like substance in his prints. 

With how methodical the traditionally French photographic process of carbon printing is, Mendenhall had to master the parameters of the process and now within certain steps has found room to stretch the rules. Adding color and pouring different gelatin colors to create photosensitive paintings, images are then exposed, and the result is transferred to paper. Doing one step and then waiting, then another and waiting some more, he works on the frames in the meantime. Mendenhall experiences a sense of devotion when “clocking in to do the repetitive thing,” he explains, and accesses a more meditative state while working on the frames, often losing track of time while cutting shape after shape.

 

Vernon Vanderwood, Brood, 2024. Gelatin, carbon and graphite on paper, 26 x 19". Edition 1 of 5, published by Gelo Shop. All photos by Mark Schoening, courtesy of TOA Presents, unless otherwise noted.

 

Mendenhall and Vanderwood worked together to create the trio of pieces titled Brood XIII, Brood, and Brood XIX. Making a “habit of chasing phenomena,” Vanderwood witnessed and collected wings from the two broods of cicadas that emerged in Illinois and Indiana this year. Once back in Minneapolis, Mendenhall scanned the cicada wings and printed them as digital negatives. Vanderwood then used the digital negatives as well as the actual wings during the photographic process to block light. Images of Vanderwood's previous work were also printed as negatives on scraps of previous drawings, and ultimately gelatin was used to attach the paper onto archival board. “There are moments where you see the wings serving as a negative and actual cicada bodies serving as that as well,” says the artist. Vanderwood then points to a dark smudge on the print, “During the process this one got smushed in the scanner, which is kind of echoing the deterioration that happens on the gelatin.” 

 

 

Miles Mendenhall, detail of frame for RULE LEER, 2024. Gelatin and pigment on paper, poplar, 94 x 74"

 

Inspired by sonic, fractal elements in nature, Mendenhall makes the individual pieces for the frames in one moment, then intuitively distributes and arranges them from piles of alike shapes.

“So would you call this a frame?" I ask, studying the kaleidoscopic fixtures reminiscent of both the wooden play shapes I stacked as a kid as well as crystalline structures like stalagmites and stalactites.

“I think of them as containers," Mendenhall answers. "I think of them as this kind of gateway, as world-building — they really complete the oddity of the pieces within.” Then collecting his thoughts further, “The genesis for the frames was to contain and complete a world.” 

In RULE, Mendenhall homes in on a small collection of images from his “icon archive,” the pool of photographs he’s taken of the natural world. A spider, a mushroom, and a clock can be seen frozen, in a way, in the gelatin prints. Front and center in each work, there are also pairings of bolded words. Pulling out his phone to show me groupings of words arranged in a document, he explains how he practices restricting language to four letter words paired in a grid that share shoulder letters.

 

Miles Mendenhall, LEER ERAS, 2024. Gelatin and pigment on paper, poplar, 33 x 27".

 

“It’s a way of generating phrases, and you can find ones that have conceptual ramifications.” LEER ERAS, for example, is a conversation about time and themes of rise and fall. The two abreast panels in his larger pieces are tipped towards each other as well, subtly simulating the structure of books and texts. Miles attempts to create work that challenges the level of stimulation we interact with on a daily basis. “I try to throw everything at you and with this process that I've created over the last decade, my goal is for you to take your time… Dune 2 got me to sit down for three hours in a seat and watch one thing. Although it's probably a silly, unattainable goal, I just want you to sit and look and wonder.”

Invested in the music and performance scene in Minnesota, Vanderwood's work is heavily influenced by traditional languages of music and movement, especially that of ballet. “The rules and language behind ballet were popularized in French aristocracy and courtship," they explain. "So there’s this unspoken body language that I’ve then posed as an allegory for moving through spaces outside of dance.” 

 

Vernon Vanderwood, Untitled, 2024. Charcoal, graphite, and ribbon on paper, 155 x 69 1⁄2"

 

Once finished with the expressive mark-making of charcoal on paper, Vanderwood illustrates a cryptic score with their additive process of the silk ribbons — going back into the construction of the piece and editing the language of it in a way. It seems the influence of ballet and the placement of the ribbons build Vanderwood's own parameters, as Mendenhall alluded to in his own work. Each of their two larger works were bumped up with a piece of bare poplar contributed by Gelo Shop, allowing the framework to become a stage for the work.

One of Vanderwood's recurring research questions is What is the expanded body? “I started using the term expanded body to encompass everything that this vessel is a part of…So thinking about the expanded body to architecture and the spaces I occupy to the microorganism level of what is occupying me.” Identifying as a queer and nonbinary artist, and often utilizing physical biomedia in their artistry, Vanderwood's work asks where expansiveness ends and containment begins. She asks where the body ends and begins. They ask when to follow the rules, when to bend them, and when to write new ones. ◼︎ 

 

From left: Rob Sherer of The Orange Advisory, Miles Mendenhall, and Vernon Vanderwood. Photo by Cory Eull.

 

RULE is on view at TOA Presents through Thursday, September 5. Gallery hours: Friday, August 30 from 3 – 6pm; closing reception on Thursday, September 5 from 5:30 – 8pm. 655 19th Avenue NE, Suite 104, Minneapolis

Vanderwood and Mendenhall will celebrate the close of RULE on Thursday, September 5 with an evening of improvised dance, drawing, and music, organized by Vanderwood and featuring collaborations with Solomon Falls, Vy Nguyen, Ella Kooyer and Ninchai Nok Chiclana.

To see more of Vernon Vanderwood's work, visit the artist's website or follow them on Instagram @vernofthewoods.

To see more of Miles Mendenhall's work, follow them on Instagram @star.arcs or @shop.gelo.

Banner image by Mark Schoening, courtesy of TOA Presents.

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This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.