Gunderson art exhibit celebrates 40 years at Stetson University

DANS_Photos_400 copyProfessor of Art Dan Gunderson, will celebrate 40 years at Stetson University with his upcoming art exhibition in Stetson’s Hand Art Center, Jan. 22 through Feb. 26. The Hand Art Center is located at 139 E. Michigan Ave. on Stetson’s DeLand campus. The exhibit is open to the public, free of charge.

“Everyone, no matter what age, has a relationship with the characters that I use in my art,” Gunderson said. “I want people to feel connected to my work. Not only can they feel happy seeing their favorite childhood figures, but all of my repetition is like a mother’s heartbeat. I’m trying to balance making this experience unique, but also familiar.”

An avid toy collector, Gunderson’s studio is composed of shelves upon shelves of toys. He uses toys as pixels in his photographs shot from an aerial view to give his audience a new perspective of the faces they grew up with and with whom they developed emotional attachments. By shooting the toys from above, they become more like colorful, geometric figures; for a moment, sometimes the audience can even forget that he’s using toys.

Gunderson has a specific tactic in selecting which characters he uses in his art to best represent fun. “I enjoy using heroes. I think that toys are a reflection of training youth to become productive citizens, so the kind of figures that I’m choosing to use are upbeat and bright in color,” he said.

Gunderson labored for nine months to create the five-minute video that will premiere at his exhibition called “Radial Rhythms,” which involved great patience as he meticulously shifted his scene slightly and photographed each movement, much like the process of claymation.

“It doesn’t matter which way you look at the video,” he said. “It starts with a dot, progresses into a circular composition, then a cross, back into a circle and then a dot again. My work is like a life cycle.

“I’ve always had a thing for spheres,” Gunderson said. “If you think about it, we look at spheres every day. Our sun, our solar system, down to atomic structures—all are almost perfect circles. On every level, spheres are the makeup of ourselves. A lot of my work reflects this because the focal point is usually a circle, then it evolves and ends with a circle.” In just a few words, he described his work as a “playful, kaleidoscopic evolution.”

Gunderson will also debut sculptures that he created from toys to represent an important symbol: home. “I’m a homebody. My house is my castle,” he said. “Although everyone may have a different idea of what home is, I think we all can see the importance of having a home, and integrating toys into this idea changes that structure.”

Gunderson credits much of his zest for art to raising his children and getting to experience a second childhood through their eyes. “I was the biggest kid with my kids,” he said. “We used to go to ‘Pokémon’ and ‘Yu-Gi-Oh!’ tournaments and I would collect and trade cards with all the other kids there. I had a fabulous collection of holographic cards and everybody wanted to trade with me. I got to play with my kids in their own atmosphere and I just wanted to be a part of what they were doing.”

“As a child, I liked discovering and building,” Gunderson said. “Now I’m basically an extension of myself when I was a kid, but I’m also an extension of the lives of my children. I like to use that magic of childhood to alter reality and invent new experiences, making the unbelievable seem believable. I want people to feel like they’re playing when they see my work.”

For more information about his work, visit Gunderson’s website at http://dangundersonart.com.

For more information about the exhibit, contact Tonya Curran, director of Stetson University’s Hand Art Center, at [email protected] or call (386) 822-7271.

by Nicole Melchionda