RAIR | 2002-03

Michael Ferris jr. | New York

Michael Ferris lives and works in The Bronx, New York. He produces figurative sculpture made from reclaimed wood and surfaced with a self-invented wood overlay technique. His work is inspired by Middle-Eastern inlaid backgammon tables that were present in his childhood home in Chicago, as well as his own Lebanese heritage. Michael has received awards from numerous organizations, including the New York Foundation for the Arts, the George Sugarman Foundation, the American Craft Council and the Walsh-Walentas Space Program. Some of his notable exhibitions have been presented at the Elmhurst Art Museum in Illinois, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Queens Museum, de Young Museum in San Francisco, the Illinois State Museum, ATM Gallery, Katonah Art Museum and Stefen Stux Gallery in New York. Michael’s work is in the collection of the de Young Museum, Illinois State Museum and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. His reviews have been included in the The New York Times, The New York Daily News, and The Chicago Tribune. His work is included in the recent book, The Figure, Painting, Drawing and Sculpture, published by Rizzoli International.

Michael Ferris, Jr.: Sculptor and Painter

      At the historical center of the Chicago tradition in art lie the essential themes of fantastic personal narrative, the eccentric human figure, and expressive emotion. Michael Ferris, Jr. reflects the continuation of that tradition at its core through the two different worlds he "narrates" in separate bodies of artwork. On the one hand his sculptures of large primal humanoid figures, some with the artist's inward gaze: visitors from another realm. On the other hand the artist's paintings outline a tale of personal pathos and risk, depicting the artist as his alter ego, a self-consumed, lonely, and regretful old man surrounded by his unvalued and dismembered sculptural figures as his only companions. The old man as artist has invested everything in the artistic labor of his creations, and yet remains tragically cut off from recognition and engagement in the world and life. There is also a shade of a tongue-in-cheek quality about this scenario that Ferris depicts, a dark self-humor about the kind of cliche which the artist portrays himself becoming. Resonating between the world of his sculptures and the world he portrays in his paintings is a particular story with a message, the dilemma that though we seek connection to reality and life, the impossibility of trying to fit ourselves into its framework can make reality, and artistic intention seem absurd.

Diane Thodos is an artist and art critic who lives in Evanston, IL.

Roswell Museum and Art Center

Rair exhibition •  “Michael Ferris, Jr." • June 6 - July 6, 2003