Luke Miller Buchanan This Sunday

• Todd Morman
  11/21 10:17 PM
  

  Jeez, link to his site at least: http://www.lukemillerbuchanan.com/; I mean, it’s about spreading information, right? FWIW, Luke’s stuff is some of my favorite local art - beautiful warped compositions grounded in forgotten but oddly recognizable corners of the city. Can’t wait to see his new stuff in person. He’s one of the local artists who gets better and better each time I see what he’s been doing (David Eichenberger’s another).

• Kate Maddalena
  11/23 01:11 PM
  

  Right on, Todd. The “oddly recognizable” part is the key, I think—for one thing, his stuff is tied to place, and for another (related) thing, it contains…nostalgia…sentiment… But the newness of his frame/lens prevents the slide from sentiment into sentimentality. His subjects, not surprisingly, are structures *near* where things happen, or places where things used to happen…the reminder of feeling in its absence. Formalism/expressionism succotash. Not suffering.

• T
  11/23 07:06 PM
  

  I’m saving up to get one of this guy’s works - saw his art today for the first time at Bonded Llama, and he’s REALLY good.

• Todd Morman
  11/23 07:47 PM
  

  Bonded Llama turned out to be a great little space, with lots of artist studios, a small front gallery and another one in the basement. Luke’s stuff was really good; I’d forgotten that he creates the scenes using photos he collages together for that fractured effect, and then paints over them. I like the ones where you can barely see the photographic elements best, but they come through to varying degrees in all of the pieces. He also adds sculptural elements - in the last image above, the ladder at the right is made of wire attached to the canvas. His new pieces are bigger, too, and the titles are great. He says his recent stuff includes images from the E.B. Bain Water Treatment Plant, which Greg Hatem bought a few years back and I guess is going to renovate, but in the meantime a bunch of artists have been invited to create work there - see http://www.bainproject.com/. We’ll hear a lot more about it before the show opens next May, but the E.B. Bain plant is probably worth a New Raleigh post on its own.

  (Btw, Bonded Llama is neat but kinda hard to find, tucked at the end of a service road paralleling the west side of Capital between the two exits for Wake Forest Road. The Google Maps directions are awful; Mapquest was better. As you head north on Capital from Peace or Wade, make a left across southbound traffic on Capital to reach the service road. This would be after you pass the Wake Forest Road North exit and before the Wake Forest Road South exit. You’ll see the club ‘Reds’ at one end, Bonded Llama is all the way at the other end, past a couple of antique shops. Every building along that stretch is 1505 Capital, so the addresses don’t help.)

• John Morris
  11/24 12:58 PM
  

  I was intrigued after seeing some photos of Luke’s work on here and on his web site, but seeing them in person was something else. I’m trying to recall the last time I was left in awe at looking at a piece of art, yet that’s the only way to describe it after seeing it yesterday.

  The way he combines various forms of media (photographs, negatives, objects, paint, scrap metal, other items relevant to the piece.. I could go on and on) is quite remarkable. Additionally, the subject matter of each piece tells a story and leaves you hungry for more information.  I’ve decided that the next piece of art for hanging in my house will be from him.

  I probably spent as much time staring into David Eichenberger’s works as Luke’s, but the subject matter is what really struck me.