Some detail shots of drawings and paintings by Conner Calhoun from the group show "Terrains of sound, light, and form" opening reception May 14th from 6-8pm at SVA Flatiron Gallery, 141 W 21st street
Conner Calhoun is a multidisciplinary artist based in Winston Salem NC. His work explores themes/psychologies/gestalts of grief, hopelessness, recovery, longing and desperation. With an alchemical understanding of the world, his work conjures imagery and material from the overlooked, the banal, and the detrite. Often steeped in cosmic-nihilism, Conner’s work nose-dives into the unnameable awe that unifies and connects us to the rest of the universe.
Along with his art practice Conner was previously the Director of LUMP projects in Raleigh, NC. They also previously taught drawing at UNCG. Their most recent projects include a variety of experimental music performances sometimes under the pseudonym Connie, along with other group exhibitions at Greensboro Project Space and LUMP gallery.
They are taking the next few months to work in the studio and their garden, contemplating a different source of income.
connercalhoun.net
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ig: @connercalhoun
Recording of the performance I did at LUMP a few weeks ago is up on bandcamp.
Download is free, but you can donate to Haven Watch MN, link is on the bandcamp page.
“Haven Watch was created to help individuals released from ICE detention centers who are often discharged with no phone, ID, transportation, or resources. Many are released into freezing weather after experiencing severe trauma. We provide immediate support, warmth, transportation, and connection to resources so no one is left alone at the gate.”
I performed amidst the closing event of Erin Fei’s exhibit in which she smashed porcelain pots as a means to create material for her sculptures. In the first song we incorporated the sound of her smashing porcelain amidst the corrosion of cinderblocks and the chaos of corrugated metal.
The other two songs use samplings of modular synth sounds, field recordings of empty spaces, and documentations of outer space. These sounds are layered through various kinds of cassette playing devices, creating textural space and monotonous rhythms. Also incorporated are cavernous vocals. The feeling evokes imagery of traveling through a cave on an old motorized vessel.
Performing this friday at 7:30 pm alongside the closing reception of Erin Fei and Marty Rogers art residency. 10 dollar suggested donation for the performance, all door money will be going to mutual aid in Minneapolis. Also remeber to pick up a drawing by Bill Thelen đź’«
I will be in NYC for a few weeks helping out with LUMPs booth at Spring/Break, also figuring out some potential performances.
Good Grief: More Than A Feeling brings together six artists whose work reimagines the memorial not only as a marker of loss, but as a transformative site—where grief meets reflection, and memory becomes a creative, generative force. Artists include Ben Alper, Bill Thelen, Chanelle Allesandre, Conner Calhoun and Jerstin Crosby.
My thoughts:
A shadow casting the physical form. Grief isn’t necessarily an idea, or it doesn’t really exist in us like an idea, it takes up physical space. For the past few years I’ve said that grief isn’t something you get over it’s something you get used to, I pictured it as the epicenter of a void nestled somewhere between my stomach and liver. I was thinking about that space today, and I was thinking that maybe it’s more reflective that it is vacuous. How the ambiguity of memory re-focuses with the glamor of awareness, that light is refracting a view of ourselves in some sort of loop.
Images:
He Did Not Believe the Body
2024
Acrylic on Canvas
18.25x24"
Doubling an Ingress
2025
Acrylic on Canvas
H:42" W:35”
I was listening to that Sarah Shook song, you know the one that’s about the wrong song coming on, or being as good as gone.
Acrylic on carved wood.
H- 11 ⅛” W- 18” D- 1 ⅜”
2024
