No Below Editions presents Tongue+Groove
BIG BRIGHT KARL FIRE
https://yeabig.weebly.com/
https://edwardbreitweiser.com/
https://swimignorantfire.bandcamp.com/
Big Bright Karl Fire is the sonic melding of Yea Big, Edward Breitweiser, Michael Carlson, and Swim Ignorant Fire. Big Bright Karl Fire is synths meeting winds meeting guitars meeting percussion, calm meeting frenzy meeting strategic accidents meeting accidental beauty.
CREATIAN/HEAP
https://bummerpunkrecords.bandcamp.com/album/i-c
Philip T. Walker & JJ Creatian playing ominous electronics on an array of synths & effects. They’ve released 3 albums together, most recently “I C” in 2024.
NOLAN
Polymath, genre-bending multi-instrumentalist and artistic multi-disciplinarian whose work blurs the line between composition and experimentation. Operating at the intersection of generative systems and live improvisation, each performance fuses controlled, evolving chaos with sprawling, immersive soundscapes into singular live performances.
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Tongue+Groove
Lisa Lofgren in collaboration with Matt Erickson
Catich Gallery, St. Ambrose University
March 23–April 24
Exhibition Statement
Tongue+Groove culls through artists Lisa Lofgren’s and Matt Erickson’s archive of shared studios, shared conversations, and shared lives over the last 15 years. Collaboration will loosely be defined as there are many degrees by which the artists work together: “stealing” each other’s works for revisions or additions; grouping individually made works together; or making work side by side.
Matt states, “I found my positive. This show is a collaboration in Love, Relationship, Art, Life or as I feel it – all the same thing. Working with a past and present, hers and mine, we assembled these pieces in our shared spaces as they happened. A show or gallery, to me, is no time factor. I let art happen as it wants and that is what you see here. In the grand sense they are all in progress; so are we.”
Lisa’s interest in the readymade is heavily influenced by Matt’s studio practice. Her primary medium of printmaking (works on paper) is now playing a secondary role to the constructions in which they are incorporated. The use of wood working and joinery pays tribute to evolving home renovations in their 1854 building. The use of mortise and tenon, tongue and groove, dovetail and finger joints are a direct analogy to the body, the whole made by equal yet opposite parts, and the strength of the bond.
A closing reception will include conversation with Lisa and Matt on April 24 from 4-6 p.m. followed by a No Below Editions performance at Rozz-Tox Cafe starting at 8 p.m. ($10 door, 2108 3rd Ave, Rock Island, IL 61201).
Artists’ Biographies
Lisa Lofgren (she/her) is the founder of Together Press, a community printmaking and papermaking facility in coordination with cometogetherspace in Bloomington, Illinois. She graduated from the University of Wyoming with a BFA and an MFA from Illinois State University, where she has served as Registrar and Office Coordinator since 2018. Her work has been collected locally and internationally including private collections with family, friends, acquaintances, and institutions primarily in Wyoming, Illinois, and Minnesota.
Based in Bloomington-Normal, Matt Erickson is an uninstitutionalized artist with 40 years of purposeful study of art as life. He trusts his intuition, has a great admiration for the joker/rebel artist, and gives his art away. Matt’s motto is to put what fits, where it fits, when it fits.
Both artists are part of the No Below Editions record label collective established Fall of 2022 in support of local and regional sonic explorations with a focus on small editions of handmade objects with each release. (no-below-editions.bandcamp.