Opening Reception is Saturday, August 19th from 5-7pm.
We are hopefull that we will be able to get Dean #1 to the opening!
The exhibition will run from 8.19 - 9. 10.
Teacher, Artist, Mentor, Mad Collector, and Writer, Dean has touched hundreds of artist's lives over the decades. His passion for life, art, objects, people knows no bounds. The child's wonder of all around him has never diminished. Even as his body has become ravaged , he manages to make art. It has been a process that I have watched for a few years as he has navigated what all of us at some point face... letting go. His love of design, beauty, the odd, the handmade.are represented in these collections.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Not that I’m counting, but to date, my collections of early pinball machines, bagatelles and games is now 56 years old. I remember the first one I found and where… There used to be a regular Sunday flea market in Hadley, Mass. One day, while searching amongst the many items for sale, I found a pinball game (Bagatelle #31) that the vendor was clinging to. When I asked how much she said “I don’t know if I want to sell it.” I let her know that this piece would be in my my own personal collection, and I promised her I would keep it - not sell it. Had that idea not come to me at that moment, who knows when my pinball and games collecting would have begun.
My collections have been oddities. People generally collect things that are trendy - like old kitchenware, robots, or dolls. Instead, I was collecting early flashlights, brushes and brooms, and one-of-a-kind, weird objects. I was a mad scientist of collecting. Often things belonged to a particular collection simply because I said so.
My collecting has been integral to my art practice. It influenced or even became directly incorporated into my painting, drawing, print making and collage. Out of this evolved my alter ego; the artist Unique Fredrik, who worked with many of these found objects
One of the most difficult things artists must do is let their works go, but they ultimately have no choice. The old saying, “you can’t take it with you,” is the hard fact that runs through this exhibit. I am deeply grateful to everyone who has helped or participated. And a special thanks to Dean Brown for making this show possible.
I’m like a hardened fisherman who now believes in catch and release.
-DEAN NIMMER
Dean Nimmer has exhibited his art in over 200 solo and group exhibitions across the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Australia since he began his art career in 1970. His artworks are in the collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, DeCordova Art Museum, Smith College Art Museum, Harvard University and many others across the U.S. and abroad.
Nimmer is the author of Creating Abstract Art, Ideas and Inspiration for Passionate Art Making, and Art from Intuition. He is also Emeritus Professor and the former Chairman of the Painting and Printmaking programs at the Massachusetts College of Art .
Dean is also Emeritus Professor and the former Chairman of the Painting and
Printmaking programs at the Massachusetts College.
“As an abstract painter, I develop my artworks out of pure instinct and intuition without having a pre-planned vision of what my pictures will look like. Though I don’t necessarily set out to depict a figure, still life or landscape, all of my work derives from my direct physical and emotional experience of the world that is reinvented and filtered through my imagination.”