Name: Garth Claassen: HEAVY WEATHER
Start: 2025-10-03T17:30:00-06:00
End: 2025-10-03T21:30:00-06:00
Location: 212 E 33rd St, Garden City, ID, United States, Idaho 83714

ARTIST STATEMENT
I work a lot in mixed media and often make pieces that consist of multiple, regular parts. The layout is somewhat like the panels in a comic book or graphic novel, and it implies a narrative, although there is no coherent story arc. Sometimes small printouts of earlier works are collaged onto pieces along with related sketches, other images, and simple abstract shapes. I am interested in process, specifically the exploitation of chance textures that arise during the making of the work.
Much of my work explores the tension between flat shapes and modeled forms, jagged and rounded contours, strong value contrasts, and dramatic changes in scale. This sense of struggle and conflict prompted my exhibition title, Heavy Weather. The bulbous white forms were partly inspired by Alfred Jarry’s King Ubu, a comically vulgar and satirical play first performed in 1895. The flatter black shapes are partly indebted to Eugene Ionescu’s absurdist play, Rhinoceros, of 1950. The former play was probably a critique of imperialism and corruption, and the latter is considered an allegory of the rise of fascism, but I have made no attempt to illustrate the plot of either play.
The ambiguity of the imagery is not intended to confuse the beholder (although it may do that). Rather, it is an invitation to viewers to construct their own stories based on what they see in my work.
BIOGRAPHY
Garth Claassen studied art at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, earning a BAFA in 1976, with majors in ceramics, art history, and English, and then a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Arts.
In 1982 Claassen was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study art history at Indiana University in Bloomington, graduating in 1991 with a doctorate in the history of modern art. During his time at Indiana, he continued to make ceramic sculpture, and mixed-media abstract collages. In 1989 he returned to South Africa and taught there for five years. Claassen joined The College of Idaho in 1994. He taught art history, life drawing, and painting. His attitude to making art has been deeply influenced by his academic studies and teaching experience.
Claassen’s work has been included in three Idaho Triennial Exhibitions—1995, 1998, 2011, and he was awarded Idaho Commission of the Arts Fellowships for 2001, 2009, and 2023. He has exhibited at the College of Idaho, the College of Southern Idaho, the Stewart Gallery in Boise, the Boise Art Museum, the Visual Arts Collective in Garden City, MING Studios in Boise, the Art Association Gallery, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, Montana, and the Prichard Gallery, University of Idaho.