PSU Studio Critique: Artist Lecture 2

Living in a Corporate World

Chad Erpelding

PSU Gallery

February 5-March 12, 2014

On March 10th, Chad Erpelding lectured as part of the PSU Spring 2014 Interdisciplinary Lecture Series.

Erpelding grew up in the small farming community of Algona, Iowa. After graduating from college he hitchhiked to West Virginia, spent two- three month periods to hike the Appalachian Trail, and biked from Oregon to Maine. From these experiences, he became very familiar with maps in order to get from place to place. He discovered that maps tell stories,  many differing stories. He became fascinated by the movement of people and businesses via maps. A few inspirations for Chad were Race Maps by Eric Fischer, a map of the internet, GPS drawing of mowing a lawn, Amsterdam GPS movement in real time, and high frequency trading algorithms.

Erpelding is currently an associate professor of art and graduate program director at Boise State University. He has continued with his map fascination, as they use many systems as a visual representation of something existing, like intergovernmental organizations such as NATO, OPEC, African Union, World Trade Organization. Many of his map collages for a specific company or subject include screen printed images with layers of glue to create opacity. Erpelding did a few residencies in France and Armenia, where he felt comforted by American brands in foreign places. In Armenia, he and his students took a day to map out the city of Yerevan with locations of Coke and Pepsi paraphernalia.

In the PSU gallery show he displayed a collaboration of all the seven regions of Citigroup, pinpoints of each U.S. military base and private military bases, pinpoints of Shell and Exon in Texas, recorded the gains and losses of Dow Jones Industrial through chromatic grey reds and grey paintings, to name a few.