| Sandhill HealingsNovember 29, 2007- January 12, 2008Reception: November 29, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm SANDHILL HEALINGS: IMPORTANT WORKS BY EMERY BLAGDON
On a brown plateau in the Sandhills of Nebraska from the 1950’s through the early 80’s
occurred an amazing phenomenon. There, amidst the found music of cicadas and rushing
wind stood an innocuous shed. Inside this shed there was nothing innocuous. It was filled
with the visionary flash and filigree of a man named Emery Blagdon who wanted to heal the
body-weary and unhealthy people of the world with machines he had invented to channel
the powerful electromagnetic energy of the earth.
The great majority of that intense shed, densely packed with hundreds of pieces are now in
the collection of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and
currently on display in their major exhibition on environments called Sublime Spaces and
Visionary Worlds.
There were some pieces that were not acquired by the Kohler. Cavin-Morris Gallery
introduced some of these pieces several years ago. In a feature article in the New York
Times Edward Gomez said: “For all their tumbleweed wildness, Blagdon’s constructions are
often elegantly assembled. His paintings, with their bold, simple palettes and dynamic
patterns, recall early modernist geometric abstractions.” Now the remainder of these
available works will be presented in our exhibition entitled: Healing From the Sandhills:
Important Works by Emery Blagdon. Curated by Don Christenson and Dan Dryden; artists
themselves and longtime preservers and promoters of Emery Blagdon’s epic work, this
exhibition of approximately forty paintings and sculptures will provide a rare opportunity to
see the intricacy of Blagdon’s process by focusing on individual works.
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