The Sears Art Museum doors open to bright colors and wood sculptures. Each painting and sculpture are more unique than the last, using different shapes, colors and textures. The art belongs to GK Reiser, a 72-year-old Utah artist.
“The title of this exhibition is ‘Stepping Stones.’ Everything I do is one step to the next. If you notice through the show, there’s a lot of different styles, mostly because you have to do this in order to get that,” Reiser said.
Reiser didn’t start as an artist. It had been his dream since high school, but he didn’t consider it a practical career.
“Art was a lifelong ambition, but early in my life it didn’t pay well,” Reiser said. “So I ended up in construction.”
He decided to take after his father and work in construction. He opened his own carpentry business in Bozeman, Montana.
James Peck, Sears Art Museum director and curator, said: “He became a master woodworker. He opened his own shop and did high-end furniture carpentry work for restaurants and condominiums.”
Reiser retired and sold his carpentry business at age 58. He decided to move to Escalante to focus on his art.
The gallery included many “steps” in Reiser’s artistry. There was furniture on display that showed his carpentry, and some of the sculptures had bases that resembled end tables. The sculptures still involve molding wood into something else but in a more artistic way. The paintings veer away from carpentry but are still painted on wood frames Reiser makes himself.
All of Reiser’s art requires wood. Instead of ordering wood and having it shipped, he decided to source his own materials.
“All my sculptures are basically found material,” he said. “I’m not part of the supply chain where you’re building out of wood that was harvested in Pennsylvania. I try to keep my carbon footprint as small as I possibly can.”
Reiser’s art is an abstraction. He does not paint landscapes and portraits. Instead, his art plays with shapes, colors and textures.
“Generally speaking, I’m pretty bored with impressionistic landscapes. I could do that if I wanted, but I’m much more interested in abstract,” Reiser said.
His art follows a style from the 1950s and ’60s called biomorphic abstraction. This type of art doesn’t include natural shapes or objects. It involves manipulating shapes and colors according to the imagination.
Art has many different styles and forms. Some people prefer landscapes and portraits, while others enjoy abstraction. Because art is personal, reactions to Reiser’s work vary.
“It’s inspiring, mysterious, colorful,” Reece Thompson, 69-year-old St. George artist, said.
Thompson recently had an article written on him and his art, which has been featured in the Sears Art Museum.
“They make me feel childish in a good way. It brings back that time when art was just expression, instead of making sure everything’s proportional,” Harlee Hollibaugh, a junior film major from Tri-Cities, Washington, and student worker at the gallery, said.
Most people attending the gallery’s opening were of an older generation. Not many college students attended. It was primarily artists, friends of artists and previous gallery visitors.
This is Reiser’s first time having his art on display in a gallery. Art wasn’t his priority until he retired, so showcasing his art wasn’t a possibility.
“He’s really just wanting the recognition,” Peck said. “About a year ago, he emailed me asking what I thought about some of his pieces. I loved them, so I went to his studio six months later and was blown away.”
Reiser said it doesn’t matter whether anyone buys them. He just wants people to like them.
“I think his personality reflects his paintings and his work. He’s very free-spirited and just doing it because he loves it and you can tell that in his work,” Hollibaugh said.
Reiser’s art will be displayed in the Sears Art Museum Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. until Nov. 8.
