Campus Artists

Michael Byron, associate professor of art

(Forum For Contemporary Art, 3540 Washington Blvd.)

In 1999, at the Amitin Book store in downtown St. Louis, painter Michael Byron purchased a dusty, partially filled notebook bound together by a thin leather strap that fell apart soon after purchase. Examining the loose sheets, Byron found that the previous owner had scribbled a few addresses, scrawled some tabulations and left many pages -- now grown brittle and discolored with age -- blank.

Working in a manner similar to his Minefields series (published by Andres Tornberg, 1990), Byron began responding to those pages and their history, drawing, painting and collaging new layers of imagery and information. Some photographic material also was scanned onto selected sheets, while others were run through a printer that applied text or simple design motifs.

In all, Byron completed some 250 drawings, which were then divided into four categories -- "Master Suite," "Off Spring," "Out Takes" and "Destroyed."

Of the latter, Byron explained that, though each drawing was essential to the project's final development, when making such a high number of works, some will inevitably not pass aesthetic muster. These pieces were carefully photographed and then burned -- a ruthless editing process the artist first employed in the1986 series Drawings from a Blind Man's Pencil -- with the ashes displayed alongside the best of the preserved drawings in order to "harness the creative power of failure."

"Master Suite," meanwhile, consists of 50 drawings that comprise the series' essential character and always will be exhibited together. "Off Spring" contains works that are representative of but not included in "Master Suite," while "Out Takes" includes "interesting singular" pieces that may be shown individually.

During the exhibition (Nov. 30, 2001-Feb. 9, 2002), slides from "Destroyed" were projected sequentially at approximately original size in a curtained section of the gallery.

Byron's work can be found in the collections of museums in the United States and Europe, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, both in New York, the Brooklyn Museum, Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Musˇe Departmental d'Art Anciens et Contemporain in Epinal, France.

-- Liam Otten