Art House 310 First Friday – Dennis McPhail & Jason Crile
Opening Reception | First Friday April 5th, 2024 | 6-10pm
This event is free to attend and open to the public. Show hangs through April 21st, 2024. Art House 310 is located at 310 S. Laura. Two blocks SE of Douglas & Washington in downtown Wichita.
DENNIS MCPHAIL
Dennis McPhail is an artist and tattoo artist from Wichita, Kansas.
Born in 1965, Dennis was heavily influenced by comic books, horror movies, album covers, and the hotrod car culture.
Dennis’ primary choice of mediums are ink and brush, colored pencil, and enamel paints. Dennis has been tattooing since 1998. The combination of these influences and mediums result in Dennis’ work that embodies his vision of “Kustom Kuture” art.
Driven By Blacklines – Familiar images from the Kustom Kulture
Black outlines are always a presence in my art. The influence of early 70’s comics like Batman, and “creepy” and “eerie” magazines hardened an impression on my young mind. Combine that with Hotrood magazines, cartoon magazines, and t-shirt art by Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth and Robert Williams, left an indelible impression on my young mind.
I wanted the work in this show to reflect the many images that are familiar to traditional car culture and ‘lowbrow art’. Most of these pieces were done between November 2023 and just a couple of weeks ago. This is my first solo show, and I was driven to accomplish a wide range of my styles, mediums and presentations.
See more of Dennis’ work online at https://dennismcphail.bigcartel.com/ on Facebook: facebook.com/dennis.mcphail and on Instagram: instagram.com/famousmcphail
JASON CRILE
I wanted to do something new, something I hadn’t seen before. Inspired by light painting—long-exposure photographs that manipulate light sources in dark spaces—I spent $30 on two three-packs of laser pointers, each containing one red, one green, one purple, and began experimenting.
My first experiments were literally fumbling in the dark. With no guidebook to turn to, I had to create a vocabulary for the work as I went. It also needed to create a space for the work.
The exposure lengths required a perfectly black space, completely devoid of light leaks. This led to me building “The Void”—the space I needed to create the images before you.
I started with objects I found at home, a plant, a skull, an umbrella, a typewriter. As I began to refine my technique, I moved on to bottles and glassware, and then to portraiture.
Each new subject brought with it new challenges and rewards. I discovered that by changing the camera’s orientation to the objects while illuminating them with precise angles of laser light revealed their natural topography in three dimensions.
So here I present my journey to date in this medium, from household objects to glassware and people. This project has been a source of continuous inspiration to me, and I hope it will serve to remind the viewer that there is always a new way to look at things!
See more of Jason’s work on Facebook: facebook.com/jason.crile and on Instagram: instagram.com/jasoncrile