One Thing After Another | Rod Massey

Rod Massey opens One Thing After Another at Lowry Hill Gallery on Saturday, October 24, with around 70 paintings installed across the space. It's a substantial body of work, and it'll be on view through November 28.

Massey works directly from observation, starting every painting as an onsite sketch. His subjects are the kinds of things you might drive past every day without a second thought: industrial landscapes, snow-covered construction equipment and machinery, grain elevators, and flowers in artisan-made ceramic vases. He writes that the work reflects his interest in the urban and industrial environment of the Twin Cities, and that he finds dignity and quiet stoicism in subjects often overlooked or considered mundane. He's drawn to form, surface, and texture — subdued, flat light on weathered surfaces — and to the endurance and impermanence of those things. Seeing that many paintings together should give you a good sense of how those different subjects fit into the same world.

The show runs concurrently with Now Where Was I? by Carol Lee Chase, so you can catch both in one trip. It's also worth keeping in mind how the gallery works: their artists typically work toward exhibitions about two years out from their show dates, so this is a long-gestating project finally coming together.

One Thing After Another opens October 24 and runs through November 28 at Lowry Hill Gallery in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis.