Logan Woods

Logan Woods

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Alice might say if she were to wonder at the drawings of artist Logan Woods in “FLEX:  A Show of Strength,” the exhibit of work by emerging artists at the Peninsula School of Art.

Woods’ pieces look as if they might have been done on skin, maybe leather, as if they could be tattoos. He hopes to make his viewers curious with this artwork as he did with his creation commissioned by a Madison Arts BLINK Grant.

Woods’ temporary sculpture was installed this June on the front doors of the Madison Central Public Library. The door was made to resemble a giant electrical outlet and then decorated with original book covers that Woods had elementary children create for their favorite books.

“I wanted to emphasize the value of an institution as a source of energy for the community,” he said. “I hoped passersby would be confused and more likely to walk in.”

A statement posted near the sculpture explained the metaphor implicit in the work.

mixed media by Logan Woods

Logan Woods is only 22 but he has been making art for most of his life. He spent his childhood both in Sturgeon Bay and on Washington Island. His late grandfather was a minister at the Trinity Lutheran Church on the island, and his mother was an elementary teacher there. But he attended Sturgeon Bay High School.

“I feel at home on the island,” Woods said. “I remember doing a lot of craft projects with Papa [his grandfather], a really great man. When he was sick, we did a lot of drawing and made sculptures out of recyclables. I sucked at coloring books!”

Each of his years in high school he was featured in the Salon of Art group student exhibit at the Miller Art Museum in Sturgeon Bay.

This coming year he will finish his Bachelor of Fine Arts at UW-Madison, working in sculpture, drawing and painting.

And, he has an internship this fall with Jill Sebastian of the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. She is in charge of a substantial art project funded by the Wisconsin Arts Commission for the new student union on the UW-Madison campus.

Woods explained that the work will not be a piece of sculpture on display in a particular place, but will “provide little surprises throughout the building, giving the space more energy.” The sculptor has involved students in brainstorming sessions and will be incorporating salvaged materials from the original student union.

mixed media by Logan Woods

Presently, Woods is in his third summer as a Youth Arts Intern at the Peninsula School of Art in Fish Creek. He is in charge of making classrooms ready for each class and checking that the instructors are all set at the start of each session. He also serves as a teaching assistant, and this July created and taught a children’s art class.

The preschoolers made outlines of their bodies on tag board, cut off the arms and legs, and then re-attached them mixed with tails and wings they had fashioned, turning themselves into dinosaurs. “They had a blast!” Woods said.

Although he plans eventually to work primarily as an artist rather than a teacher, Woods has had experience as an instructor, teaching a children’s plein air painting and environmental art classes, and an After School program in Madison.

Perhaps the “teacher” in Woods led him to develop the summer emerging artist show at the Peninsula School or Art. When he was studying abroad Woods visited Berlin and found “an amazing art scene, feverish with energy.” As a result of both WWII and the fall of the Wall, East Berlin is experiencing reconstruction and has open spaces that artists use in a makeshift fashion for art.

Three summers ago when another intern at the art school said, “It would be cool if interns could have an art show,” Woods liked the idea.

“The next year I took off with it,” Woods said, “remembering my time in Berlin and artists seizing space, and I decided to try it and see what came of it.”

mixed media by Logan Woods

The result was 12 Under 30, an invitational emerging artist exhibit last summer at the Peninsula School of Art. After the success of that show, Woods coordinated “FLEX” for this summer, an exhibit which was to be juried by local artist Margaret Lockwood and UW-Green Bay professor emeritus David Damkoehler. For reasons beyond his control, Damkoehler was unable to jury the show at the last minute, and Colette Odya Smith, a pastel artist and lecturer from Milwaukee, graciously stepped in to jury the show with Lockwood.

“This year is a step toward improved professionalism,” he said. The show opened August 22 and features Woods as one of the artists.

If Woods’ drawings on “skin” seem at times ambiguous, paradoxical, and confusing, the effect is by design. Artists Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol have influenced him, as have sculptors Tom Friedman and Eva Hesse.

“Friedman takes mundane materials and makes them awe inspiring,” Woods said. “And Hesse takes synthetic materials and makes them appear organic, giving them a lifelike quality.”

While to the unartistic eye Woods’ drawings might seem random and arbitrary, the artist speaks articulately and intelligently of his conceptions, his process, and his philosophy.

“My work,” he said, “I’d like to exist with an identity that has its own freewill propensity to exist. I want it to be something, not of something, to literally bring itself to life, or something close to that.”

Hence drawings on paper appear to be artifacts, like tattoos on leather.

“I want the work to be inexplicable,” he added, “to have an age and depth, like a ‘skin,’ representing an intuitive understanding of the complexity and clarity that can be sensed in this crazy life.”

He tries to achieve “a sense of movement and energy both visceral and legible.” He wants his work to be organic, and at the same time to appear as script. Components within the drawings serve as puzzle pieces that can be grouped in new ways each time the work is observed. “But they also can be read as a collection of glyphs,” he explained, “a type of alphabet and forms that are composed of their own description, that exist as their own description, that don’t exist as what they are, but as what they desire themselves to be.”

As he looks into his future, Woods sees another trip to Berlin, more involvement in big art projects like the one he is working with this fall, graduate school, and eventually a professorship.

Logan Woods’ work has appeared in a number of shows both in Madison and Door County, and may presently be seen at Kick Café in Sturgeon Bay and at the “FLEX” exhibition through September 4. For inquiries contact the artist at [email protected].