The Shapes That Are Gone Are Here

By Millie Hanson
Visual Arts Editor

There was an air of celebration surrounding the gallery premiere of local mixed media artist, Sabrina Hornung. On Thursday, Sept. 8, 2011, the DK Gallery at 14 Roberts St. in Fargo, N.D., featured 20 of Hornung’s works. Some could be characterized as whimsical and tongue-in-cheek. All could be perused while sipping some of Maple River Winery’s flavored vodkas.

The exhibition contains 20 different mixed media photo transparencies (six sold immediately) done over the last year. Hornung created them by taking photographs and making a collage on top of them with found objects like newspaper clippings, Victorian greeting cards and paper dolls. She then makes a transparency of the collage and paints on it with acrylic paint and/or spray paint.

The work is her reaction to growing up in North Dakota with a childhood influenced by cowboy trail songs like “Buffalo Gals,” “Home On The Range” and anecdotes from her grandparents who raised her until she was 10.

She spent her first four years in Ypsilanti,  N.D., a little town 25 miles southwest of Dickinson with a population of about 100 people. It was an old stagecoach stop, which feeds into her fascination with the Old West and cowboy culture.

With exhibition “Trails Songs & Prarie Tails,” Hornung let her imagination run wild. She doesn’t like to characterize her art.
“I had a kind of hard time going to art school. Who says that ‘this’ passes? If someone tells me to do something, why?” she said. “Maybe I don’t want to. Maybe I want to do it my own way.”

“I sold a few pieces (at the opening). I must have done something right.”

“I hate to categorize things…that’s why we make art is so people can appreciate it, love it hate it…I do art for art’s sake, sort of a Dada mentality.”
It seems like folk art, too, especially with her work’s conscious sense of place and her lack of a need for approval.

Her works use animal faces on top of human bodies. They’re dressed in the style of the bygone golden era of the cowboy balladeer.

“Not only do they help to illustrate the song themes,” she said, “but also, in a lot of the rural places that I spent time in, like Woodworth and Pettibone, are a hunter’s paradise there are more animals in any direction than people.”

Getting to the origin of the style, she stopped for a moment and considered,“What started it all was…I was painting black and white transparencies. Generally in painting your final marks are your most visible, but when you’re painting transparencies it’s like thinking backwards - your first marks make the biggest impression.”

“There was a great Midwestern show over at the Rourke (in 2010), and the theme was Birthright and Legacy. It’s kind of a big statement, I needed something that would live up to it,” she said. “I made (a piece) called ‘The Land And The People Hold Memories.’ There’s a Carl Sandberg poem called “The Prarie” and that line struck me.”

Hornung goes on to say that her grandpa would take her out to the place where he and his wife settled, regaling her with stories of living in the Woolworth-Pettibone area, and he knew the stories of everyone who had settled out there.

“It was interesting because there are remnants (of the abandoned buldings), of people who’ve come and gone,” she said. “They all have a story but if no one is there, the land holds the memory.”

Like those in the current show, her very first piece was a collage. She began with a photo of a rural power pole that had always looked like a dress form to her. She paired it with a photo of herself in traditional German-style apron dress called a dirndl (think of beer stein-toting German women shown in Octoberfest ads). She wanted to add something else to the piece, placing photos of birds, wild prarie roses and paper dolls of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

Hornung is intrigued by the romantic ideal of the singing cowboy, their pagentry, and elaborate costumes they would perform in. Another of her passions is burlesque. She founded Bad Weather Burlesque, an act that performes around town.

Yet another passion is the alternative figure drawing movement, “Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School,” whose Fargo chapter she just founded. Their first event is on Sept. 25 at DK Gallery with Hornung modelling in her cowgirl duds - the website’s tag line is, “Drink, Draw, and Be Merry.” After nine years of art modelling, she likes the thought of taking the model out of the collegiate classroom and bring it to a place where you can, “kick back, have a beer and draw your little heart out.”

For more information on Trail Songs and Prarie Tails, check out Sabrina Hornung’s blog at http://thealabasterdisaster.blogspot.com/.

For upcoming and future Dr. Sketchy events in Fargo, go to http://www.drsketchy.com/branch/fargo.

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What: Trail Songs and Prairie Tails
When: The exhibit runs from Sept. 8 through Sept. 30, 2011.
Where: DK Gallery, 14 Roberts Street, Fargo.
Cost: Free.

DK Gallery Hours: Monday: CLOSED, Tuesday - Saturday: 11AM – 7PM, Sunday: NOON - 5PM