Boom! A really big Adam Grosowsky show has just dropped at the Karin Clarke Gallery! Hello, You’re listening to Viz City, KLCC’s Arts Review Program. Today, I’m talking with popular Eugene painter Adam Grosowsky.
His show is called “Bread, Shelter, Circus,” the large colorful circus paintings led me to ask Adam about his earliest memory of being at a circus.
"Yeah, but it could be brutal! I mean my first experience at the circus was when I was a kid in southern Illinois, an old school circus came to Carbondale, and I was really little and it ...scared the crap out of me! You know, it was nasty and dirty and an elephant pooped right in front of you and scantily clad girls are whirling around your head."
But Adam remained drawn to the circus and is credited himself as the inventor of the popular sport called slackline. All of Adam’s painting are big, full of light and dark, suggestive of local stories and landscapes. I asked him to talk about a series of paintings of cityscapes:
"Well, they’re all kind of anecdotal from my eleven years in Eugene as a waiter at the Zenon, so it’s a quasi-Zenon -- and one of the themes was “Shelter” --I’ve sort of become obsessed lately with awnings and umbrellas, and people under which is really a metaphor for hiding out in your personal space when your life is …. All summer I just kept seeing umbrella scenes in town...or early in the morning...in the light… "
Adam is a lot of fun to talk to, so take advantage of a meet-the-artist opportunity during January’s First Friday at 5:30--7:30. “Bread, Shelter, Circus” will be up through January 11. However, the Gallery will be closed from Christmas to New Year, so this week is a great time to stop in to see the show. It’s a really big one--perfect for the holiday season.
As always, we have images of the artist and his paintings up on the KLCC.org slash viz city blog
Viz City is co-produced by Terry Way and Sandy Brown Jensen.
"Outside Looking In" Passersby pause to look in the window of the Karin Clarke Gallery at the new Adam Grosowsky exhibit.
Credit Sandy Brown Jensen
