Friday, October 4 - Saturday, November 2
Tickle Me | Donovan Entrekin, Michele Leclaire, Janice McCoy, Matthew Osmon & Brian Spolans
Five artists come together for the first show of Buckham Gallery’s 41st Season in Tickle Me. What started out as a joke, combining the first letter of each last name in alphabetical order to spell E. L. M. O. S., turned around to become “Tickle Me” a very suggestive title referring to the works which spark intrigue. Donovan Entrekin, Michele Leclaire, Janice McCoy, Matthew Osmon, and Brian Spolans all ask more from their works than visual interpretation. They create images and narrative to explore the shadows which tend to avert our eyes, the unsettling whether physical or emotional, the collective unconscious, and frequently with a little humor. We invite, or respectfully request, the viewers to be tickled through experiencing this collection of large and small, 2D and 3D artworks in the mediums of drawing, mixed media, painting, printmaking, and sculpture.
Donovan Entrekin paraphrased Woody Guthrie: Anything human is anti-fascist. ‘Making aesthetic things is the most human thing I can do. It is an act of protest against a culture run by gangsters intent on robbing us of our humanity.’ Without devoting time and space to dreaming and poetry, I am nothing but an obedient beast. Just gimme some poetry and images and music.
Michele Leclaire’s paintings explore memory, the effects of time, and family relationships. Although her work starts from a personal perspective, she hopes by closely examining thoughts of family, erosion of memory, the shape a person leaves behind, and even the imagination of childhood, she is creating something universal.
Janice McCoy seeks to create dialogues between people and the natural world, using flora, fauna and man-made objects as sources of symbolism and visual metaphor to drive dramatic storylines. These narratives are entwined with her experiences, memories, fears and sense of humor.
Matthew Osmon’s work primarily explores the relationship between self-awareness and the subconscious, focusing on the adventures, voyages, challenges, and confrontations within the self. By blending these elements with the enigmatic and uncomfortable, he strives to create surprising narratives that are both meticulously planned and spontaneously developed as the compositions evolve.
The pandemics’ push to shelter in place, cemented the home as a place of safety, solitude, seclusion, and necessity. Through play and personal antagonism, Brian Spolans deconstructs the home, by exploring the complex and often contradictory meanings homes embody now.
Tickle Me opens on Friday, October 4, and will run through Saturday, November 4. Flint's Artwalk, sponsored by Community Foundation of Greater Flint, will be held on Friday, October 11 from 6 - 9 PM. 7th Annual Smallidge Lecture: Tickle Me Talk featuring Entrekin, Leclaire, McCoy, Osmon & Spolans to be held on Saturday, November 2 at 1 PM.
Tickle Me | Donovan Entrekin, Michele Leclaire, Janice McCoy, Matthew Osmon & Brian Spolans
Five artists come together for the first show of Buckham Gallery’s 41st Season in Tickle Me. What started out as a joke, combining the first letter of each last name in alphabetical order to spell E. L. M. O. S., turned around to become “Tickle Me” a very suggestive title referring to the works which spark intrigue. Donovan Entrekin, Michele Leclaire, Janice McCoy, Matthew Osmon, and Brian Spolans all ask more from their works than visual interpretation. They create images and narrative to explore the shadows which tend to avert our eyes, the unsettling whether physical or emotional, the collective unconscious, and frequently with a little humor. We invite, or respectfully request, the viewers to be tickled through experiencing this collection of large and small, 2D and 3D artworks in the mediums of drawing, mixed media, painting, printmaking, and sculpture.
Donovan Entrekin paraphrased Woody Guthrie: Anything human is anti-fascist. ‘Making aesthetic things is the most human thing I can do. It is an act of protest against a culture run by gangsters intent on robbing us of our humanity.’ Without devoting time and space to dreaming and poetry, I am nothing but an obedient beast. Just gimme some poetry and images and music.
Michele Leclaire’s paintings explore memory, the effects of time, and family relationships. Although her work starts from a personal perspective, she hopes by closely examining thoughts of family, erosion of memory, the shape a person leaves behind, and even the imagination of childhood, she is creating something universal.
Janice McCoy seeks to create dialogues between people and the natural world, using flora, fauna and man-made objects as sources of symbolism and visual metaphor to drive dramatic storylines. These narratives are entwined with her experiences, memories, fears and sense of humor.
Matthew Osmon’s work primarily explores the relationship between self-awareness and the subconscious, focusing on the adventures, voyages, challenges, and confrontations within the self. By blending these elements with the enigmatic and uncomfortable, he strives to create surprising narratives that are both meticulously planned and spontaneously developed as the compositions evolve.
The pandemics’ push to shelter in place, cemented the home as a place of safety, solitude, seclusion, and necessity. Through play and personal antagonism, Brian Spolans deconstructs the home, by exploring the complex and often contradictory meanings homes embody now.
Tickle Me opens on Friday, October 4, and will run through Saturday, November 4. Flint's Artwalk, sponsored by Community Foundation of Greater Flint, will be held on Friday, October 11 from 6 - 9 PM. 7th Annual Smallidge Lecture: Tickle Me Talk featuring Entrekin, Leclaire, McCoy, Osmon & Spolans to be held on Saturday, November 2 at 1 PM.
Donovan Entrekin Bio
Donovan Entrekin is a maker of pictures living in Flint, MI. His studio is profoundly messy and potentially hazardous. He holds an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and since 2015 has served as Director the Art School at the Flint Institute of Arts. He has won awards, been in lots of shows, been rejected from lots of shows, is represented in public and private collections, and calls his mom at least once a week.
Donovan Entrekin Artist Statement
I make paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and sculptures… not necessarily in that order. Sometimes I work from observation, but mostly I work from fear… memory, panic, and color wheels are pretty good tools.
My work is intended to be, above all, visually affective, physically present, and conceptually ineffable. If you want words, may I suggest reading a book or listening to one of those godawful podcasts the young people are so fond of.
Michele Leclaire Artist Statement
My paintings explore memory, the effects of time, and family relationships. Although my work starts from a personal perspective, I hope by closely examining thoughts of family, erosion of memory, the shape a person leaves behind, and even the imagination of childhood, that I am creating something universal.
Through the process of painting, I build up surfaces only to sand them down again. The images erode and shift as the process is repeated, building texture and history. Through the use of color and oil paint, I am able to achieve an experience with the image that the photograph was unable to capture. I create new memories to continue the conversation with the past.
Janice McCoy Bio & Artist Statement
Janice's work centers on fostering dialogues between people and the natural world, using flora, fauna and man-made objects as symbols and visual metaphors to drive dramatic storylines. These narratives are rooted in her personal experiences, memories, fears and sense of humor. She is drawn to strange and nuanced contradictions of ideas, as well as universally understood emotions like isolation, despair, hope, joy, anger and fatigue. Being alive can be strange, confusing, and hard, but also beautiful. Through her work, she aims to create objects that reflect these complexities.
In her current body of work, Janice creates mixed media works combining painting and printmaking techniques that are closely related to the tradition of still life. She is fascinated by the symbolism and cultural significance found in the arrangement of objects, particularly in memento mori and memento vivere paintings. Her everyday walks inspire her, as she often encounters discarded items on the ground. These found objects spark her curiosity—who left them behind, why, and are they even missed? She also reflects on the environmental impact of such waste and the overwhelming number of possessions people accumulate, pondering what these objects say about us and our society.
Her compositions feature carefully arranged objects based on her personal experiences and stories, set against natural backdrops, as if they were items she herself had abandoned. She also views these works as a nod to Flint's abundant green spaces and her own interest in the natural environment. To Janice, these pieces are a form of self-portraiture, with their meanings intentionally left open and ambiguous, inviting viewers to interpret them. She also enjoys the irony of taking ordinary, often overlooked objects and elevating them, challenging viewers to consider their significance and pose questions, much like she does when encountering things left behind in real life.
Janice McCoy is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Flint, MI. Her artistic practice focuses mainly on printmaking, but she enjoys exploring the intersections between print, painting, drawing, and other mediums. Janice works at the Flint Institute of Arts as the 2-D Programs Manager, where she teaches, coordinates programs and manages spaces connected to the two-dimensional disciplines and children and teen learning. Janice is the University of Michigan UMS Flint Artist in Residence for the academic year 2024-2025.
Matthew Osmon Artist Statement
My work primarily explores the relationship between self-awareness and the subconscious, focusing on the adventures, voyages, challenges, and confrontations within the self. I aim to present enigmatic, engaging, weird, uncomfortable, and challenging micro-narratives within a world rich with personal imagery from my childhood, domestic scenes from my life, spontaneous images from my subconscious, and elusive visions from my dreams. By blending these elements, I strive to create surprising narratives that are both meticulously planned and spontaneously developed as the compositions evolve.
At its core, my work examines the relationship between figures and their environments. Most recently, I have concentrated on subconscious, constructed interiors and empty brown fields of former industrial spaces. In crafting these scenes, I emphasize mystery and the in-between, filling these unexplored places with parasites, ghosts, ghouls, animals, and atmospheres mixed with people experiencing cognitive dissonance from an invented time, space, and reality. My work begins with numerous reference images, idea connections, myth and cultural exploration, poetry, memory, thumbnail drawings, digital experimentation, and a significant amount of anxiety. Through the art-making process, many accidents and unexpected connections occur that must be reckoned with. After several rounds of intuitive choice-making, a new, unplanned narrative begins to emerge.
Brian Spolans Bio & Artist Statement
Brian Spolans is an artist and instructor based in Southeast Michigan. His work has been exhibited at 500X Gallery in Dallas, Paradigm Gallery in Philadelphia, Muskegon Museum of Art, International Print Center of New York, and Published in New American Paintings, Fresh Paint and Create Magazine. He has also co-curated exhibitions at Gallery Project in Ann Arbor, and at Eastern Michigan University where he teaches printmaking.
The pandemics’ push to shelter in place, cemented the home as a place of safety, solitude, seclusion, and necessity. Through play and personal antagonism, Brian Spolans deconstructs the home, by exploring the complex and often contradictory meanings homes embody now.
Donovan Entrekin is a maker of pictures living in Flint, MI. His studio is profoundly messy and potentially hazardous. He holds an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and since 2015 has served as Director the Art School at the Flint Institute of Arts. He has won awards, been in lots of shows, been rejected from lots of shows, is represented in public and private collections, and calls his mom at least once a week.
Donovan Entrekin Artist Statement
I make paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and sculptures… not necessarily in that order. Sometimes I work from observation, but mostly I work from fear… memory, panic, and color wheels are pretty good tools.
My work is intended to be, above all, visually affective, physically present, and conceptually ineffable. If you want words, may I suggest reading a book or listening to one of those godawful podcasts the young people are so fond of.
Michele Leclaire Artist Statement
My paintings explore memory, the effects of time, and family relationships. Although my work starts from a personal perspective, I hope by closely examining thoughts of family, erosion of memory, the shape a person leaves behind, and even the imagination of childhood, that I am creating something universal.
Through the process of painting, I build up surfaces only to sand them down again. The images erode and shift as the process is repeated, building texture and history. Through the use of color and oil paint, I am able to achieve an experience with the image that the photograph was unable to capture. I create new memories to continue the conversation with the past.
Janice McCoy Bio & Artist Statement
Janice's work centers on fostering dialogues between people and the natural world, using flora, fauna and man-made objects as symbols and visual metaphors to drive dramatic storylines. These narratives are rooted in her personal experiences, memories, fears and sense of humor. She is drawn to strange and nuanced contradictions of ideas, as well as universally understood emotions like isolation, despair, hope, joy, anger and fatigue. Being alive can be strange, confusing, and hard, but also beautiful. Through her work, she aims to create objects that reflect these complexities.
In her current body of work, Janice creates mixed media works combining painting and printmaking techniques that are closely related to the tradition of still life. She is fascinated by the symbolism and cultural significance found in the arrangement of objects, particularly in memento mori and memento vivere paintings. Her everyday walks inspire her, as she often encounters discarded items on the ground. These found objects spark her curiosity—who left them behind, why, and are they even missed? She also reflects on the environmental impact of such waste and the overwhelming number of possessions people accumulate, pondering what these objects say about us and our society.
Her compositions feature carefully arranged objects based on her personal experiences and stories, set against natural backdrops, as if they were items she herself had abandoned. She also views these works as a nod to Flint's abundant green spaces and her own interest in the natural environment. To Janice, these pieces are a form of self-portraiture, with their meanings intentionally left open and ambiguous, inviting viewers to interpret them. She also enjoys the irony of taking ordinary, often overlooked objects and elevating them, challenging viewers to consider their significance and pose questions, much like she does when encountering things left behind in real life.
Janice McCoy is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Flint, MI. Her artistic practice focuses mainly on printmaking, but she enjoys exploring the intersections between print, painting, drawing, and other mediums. Janice works at the Flint Institute of Arts as the 2-D Programs Manager, where she teaches, coordinates programs and manages spaces connected to the two-dimensional disciplines and children and teen learning. Janice is the University of Michigan UMS Flint Artist in Residence for the academic year 2024-2025.
Matthew Osmon Artist Statement
My work primarily explores the relationship between self-awareness and the subconscious, focusing on the adventures, voyages, challenges, and confrontations within the self. I aim to present enigmatic, engaging, weird, uncomfortable, and challenging micro-narratives within a world rich with personal imagery from my childhood, domestic scenes from my life, spontaneous images from my subconscious, and elusive visions from my dreams. By blending these elements, I strive to create surprising narratives that are both meticulously planned and spontaneously developed as the compositions evolve.
At its core, my work examines the relationship between figures and their environments. Most recently, I have concentrated on subconscious, constructed interiors and empty brown fields of former industrial spaces. In crafting these scenes, I emphasize mystery and the in-between, filling these unexplored places with parasites, ghosts, ghouls, animals, and atmospheres mixed with people experiencing cognitive dissonance from an invented time, space, and reality. My work begins with numerous reference images, idea connections, myth and cultural exploration, poetry, memory, thumbnail drawings, digital experimentation, and a significant amount of anxiety. Through the art-making process, many accidents and unexpected connections occur that must be reckoned with. After several rounds of intuitive choice-making, a new, unplanned narrative begins to emerge.
Brian Spolans Bio & Artist Statement
Brian Spolans is an artist and instructor based in Southeast Michigan. His work has been exhibited at 500X Gallery in Dallas, Paradigm Gallery in Philadelphia, Muskegon Museum of Art, International Print Center of New York, and Published in New American Paintings, Fresh Paint and Create Magazine. He has also co-curated exhibitions at Gallery Project in Ann Arbor, and at Eastern Michigan University where he teaches printmaking.
The pandemics’ push to shelter in place, cemented the home as a place of safety, solitude, seclusion, and necessity. Through play and personal antagonism, Brian Spolans deconstructs the home, by exploring the complex and often contradictory meanings homes embody now.
