University of Wisconsin artist London Huser’s MFA exhibition “I Should’ve Been a Cowboy” opened in the Art Lofts Gallery March 11. The Master of Fine Arts Qualifier Exhibition sees Huser explore her Southwest upbringing and culture, constructing a fantasy world made of cardboard representative of the ideal of the American Wild West, according to Huser.
The exhibition consists of a large artificial Western scape, drawing from Huser’s nostalgic animation hallmarks.
“It is like walking into my own very Western town,” Huser said. “Imagine Max Fleischer golden era of animation, early cartooning was a lot of the direct inspiration for it.”
“I Should Have Been a Cowboy”‘s name references a Toby Keith song of the same name. The show stemmed from Huser listening to the song, impacted by the lyrics of the reverie and fantasy of being a cowboy and its juxtaposition of the reality of the American West’s settlement, according to Huser.
The Exhibit celebrates and tells the stories of the American West, but also subverts towards its harsher realities and history. Huser’s work stems from her upbringing in Oklahoma, specifically growing up around the impact of Western culture. Her experience moving away from Oklahoma and still seeing the impact of the cowboy was a diasporic experience.
“I Should’ve Been a Cowboy’”s reception March 11 kindly requested Western wear from visitors. The pieces of the exhibition are all near human scale, and dressing up in Western wear plays into the fantasy that the artwork aims to create, according to Huser.
“It takes it from being just these flat artworks and it really creates almost like a performance installation,” Huser said.
That almost performance installation-like aspect collapses the empty face of the gallery, and activates the viewer as a participant in this town. The exhibit is nearly entirely cardboard, which Huser says draws from a previous experience modeling marionette cowboys out of clay.
Flatness of the material is important to the exhibition.
“Conceptually, I’m using a material that is kind of flat,” Huser said. “And it is deceiving us, like is this high art or not?”
That flat, deceiving nature plays into the idea of how pop culture views the American West as escapism. Cartooning and cardboard play together as a language to have conversations about the escapism of the American West, according to Huser.
Huser’s idea of the body of work is to create a miniature world that explore the setting, history and mythology of the cowboy.
“I’ve created a lot of different characters and a scene that tells the story of the fantasy of the American west, the fantasy of the cowboy,” Huser said.
Huser hopes to continue this body of work exploring the cowboy, and has ideas to branch out from animated short films to merchandise. The exhibition is on view in the Art Lofts Gallery from now until March 15.
