D.E. May: Postcards from Islandsalem
Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, OR - To March 21
Mixed-media artist D.E. May (1952–2019) is commemorated in a large retrospective in the city synonymous with his work, Salem. His forms included collages, drawings, paintings, sculptures, templates, testbeds and mail art, among others. Independent curator Linda Tesner told Preview she knew May well and was amazed at his almost uncategorizable body of work.
“He’s really sui generis,” said Tesner. “Some people compare him to Joseph Cornell because he was a collage artist, and he legendarily loved Marcel Duchamp, but he was hardly a Dadaist. He admired Le Corbusier’s drawings, but he does not give you a toehold into art history.” The museum will host a free open house at May’s downtown Salem workshop (never “studio”; he did not think his art making was different from any trade) on Saturday, March 21, from noon to 4 pm. As Tesner shows in her catalog, The Art of D.E. May, the dimly lit space was a hoarder house of cardboard pigeonholes where May kept his paints, glue and scissors, and all the analog tools of his trade, such as set squares, wooden rulers and pencils.
A friend of blue-collar workers, the artist drank in local bars and at night walked the streets of Salem, where he would find scraps of paper and cardboard, often from the local paper mill. These he drew on, wrote on and painted on, and sometimes turned into small sculptures. Dan Earl May nicknamed the city “Islandsalem” for its insular nature and occasional river floods. He passed away in 2019 from pancreatic cancer, just as he was emerging onto the national art scene.
Tesner says May lived a modest life. For example, he didn’t get his first phone until about 2000, a landline. “For a lot of his life he didn’t have a car, he never had a computer, ever, and he only had a cellphone when he absolutely had to, because his oncologist needed to get ahold of him.” The artist spoke in riddles, such as “I look at much of what I do as preliminary and resolved simultaneously,” and his work resists usual critical inquiry.
“He has made me rethink my entire career as an artist historian.… He really had his very own style and way of working,” says Tesner.
Curator-led exhibition tours Feb 10 & March 10, 12:30pm. Panel discussion with May’s friends Feb 26, 7:30pm, Paulus Lecture Hall PDX Contemporary Art in Portland will also show May’s work Feb 4–28
