CONGRATULATIONS IACA CYCLE #17
MINI-GRANT RECIPIENT, GREG MUELLER!
Click here to learn about IACA's other Cycle #17 mini-grant recipient, Lisa Sniderman.
Website: www.greglmueller.com
Congratulations to Greg Mueller on a successful grant application!
The following are excerpts of Mueller's application:
A lifetime of making; art major, studio apprentice, MFA grad, and college professor, has brought me to this unique grant application. Two years ago, I made the difficult and challenging decision to leave academia, devoting myself to full-time studio work. Each year, I gave 100% to my sculpture students. Now I have come to a threshold where the support funding of this grant can springboard me into the 2nd phase of my art life.
Although art school naturally laid the foundation of my sculpture work, my curiosity and methodology for making and teaching were greatly influenced by my five-year studio apprenticeship with Paul Granlund, a former liberal arts college sculptor-in-residence and Guggenheim and Fulbright scholar. Redefining myself as an artist entrepreneur is a new challenge. I am applying for commissions, promoting my work, and yes, taking on the occasional welding jobs that come in my door to help pay my monthly studio rent and expenses. Despite the challenges, I remain committed to the decision and go to work each day with conviction and courage. The work samples enclosed with this application feature both personal studio work, and more recently, large-scale public art projects. This body of work will feature overlapping qualities of my commission work that integrates reclaimed materials, and help me define the mission of my studio work.
For the past several years my work has been closely connected to public art commissions. However, I have not exhibited personal sculpture for several years. While I remain committed to community engagement through unique public projects, I want to expand the parameters of my discipline by dedicating half of my studio time/portfolio toward a personal body of work. This process for creating sculpture is an instinctive daily ritual - observation, hunting, and scavenging for the raw material. My place in sculpture is to reinvent with a child-like curiosity, forms that celebrate the potential of rejected debris into objects and places of hope. Rescuing agricultural and architectural salvage is an intuitive attempt to breathe new life into the reclaim and cultivate the spirit of the material. Instinctive decisions are made slowly with some uncertainty to the outcome. My intention is to harmonize the faded and worn into the semblance of a whole. The resulting forms and spaces are a by-product of construction and the poetics of materiality. Trusting the physical act of working with the elements, allows failures and solutions to unfold; the act of work begets work.
Funding will allow me to build this studio into a thriving practice. I will strive for a studio balance by using the grant to develop 5 new works grounded in decommissioned and repurposed materials. The funding will provide the dedicated time to work.
Thank you for reaching out to artists during this time to assist us in creative pivoting, so that we might continue to provide joy, spirit, and wonder as way to comfort the afflicted.
You may be the next grant winner! Click here to apply.
There is no specific type of artist that we focus on or primarily support. Creative expression comes in a wide variety of artistic disciplines and genres. We are looking for passion and excellence in your craft. Tell us why your work is important to you and how you hope it will impact others.
Greg Mueller - Photo from the Mankato Free Press ©
Where Eagles Soar (Isaiah 40:31)
"WATER RECLAIM SCULPTURE"
2018 RECLAIMED VENTILATION TUBING, POWDER COATED STEEL 10' X 10' X 10'
"Canteen Alley Ottumwa, Iowa in
collaboration with Genus Landscape Architecture Des Moines, Iowa."
"SPIRIT VESSEL"
2014 CYPRESS, VETTER STONE,
COR TEN STEEL 10' X 10' X 10'
"Boats and ships reflect a universal symbol for transporting the soul. The Vessel is suspended in a form that draws influence from the curving hull structure of a ship's architecture. ~ Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota."
"POD STOP"
2016 DECOMMISSIONED D.O.T SIGNS,
POWDER COATED STEEL 10' X 10' X 10'
"Collection of Greenwood, Indiana, decommissioned DOT signs and steel."
"I CHOOSE JOY"
2017 RECLAIMED MILLWORK,
POWDER COATED STEEL 15' X 10' X 10'
"Southern Minnesota Children's Museum,
Mankato, Minnesota."
To see more of Mueller's wonderful work, visit his website at www.greglmueller.com
