June 2023: Dan Pillers
Bricolage is "the remixture, reconstruction, and reuse of separate materials or artifacts to produce new meanings and insights." Dan Pillers is a storyteller, a conceptual artist and a bricoleur. He conveys emotion, social awareness, and personal memories through carefully selected artifacts encapsulated within elaborate, hand-crafted, vitrines. The way he elevates the, often mundane, object, opens the door for expanded imaginings and possibilities of thought. The “raw material” he uses are remnants of things gone by. These add a level of familiarity as well as a heightened sense of history. Through a painstaking process of deconstructing, reimagining, and assembling random objects Dan creates beautiful, yet provocative, works of art. Each piece tells its own story and when placed together they become a visual memoir and continuing segments of an ongoing dialog. By creating works that incorporated a wide range of previously used and salvaged material, artifacts and text he conveys his world view, while simultaneously limiting his "carbon footprint". His hope is that his work will prompt an open and honest dialog and lead to a deeper understanding of one another and respect for the world that we share.