October 29 - December 10, 2022
Reception: October 29, 2022 4-6PM
Artist Talk: December 10, 11 am
Michael Deyermond is an angst ridden, tragic-love, soul searching poet with a fatalism tempered by irony, wit, and a gut-wrenching sense of dark comedy. His first exhibition at Craig Krull Gallery in 2015 featured an old wooden rowboat on a giant pile of sand in the middle of the gallery. The humble vessel was painted with the words, "I still believe California can save me". The poet’s aspirations, belief in a promise, and literal survival were on the line. He followed up in subsequent exhibitions with hand-built wooden benches carved with aphorisms like, "I sat here and wondered why the very edge is always exactly where I sit". The wood he used for these benches was reclaimed from fallen windmills at ranch in Arizona, clearly a reference to Don Quixote jousting with himself. A couple years later, coming close to death from health issues in Italy, he began making obelisks and wooden trophies, perhaps symbolic of the heroic effort to continue. His self-comparison to writers like Jack London and Jack Kerouac, who lived large, drank, and died young is reflected in his word paintings," Bye Bye Jack London" and "I should have died young", both of which are included in his new exhibition, “The Trouble Cup.””