Artist Cameron Martin was heard saying, “There is a break-dancing section I do,” before his presentation at the Elvehem Museum Tuesday night. Little did the audience know that they were in for a presentation covering a wide range of entertainment and thought.

Introduced by host Paula McCarthy Panczenko as, “An artist who strips nature down to its bare essentials,” Martin was presented through Tandem Press and their Visiting Artist Series.

The Tandem Press, located at 201 S. Dickinson St., works in conjunction with University of Wisconsin art students through the School of Education. The studio works to foster research, collaboration, experimentation and innovation in conjunction with nationally recognized artists.

Martin was born in Seattle, but studied at New York University and eventually received a degree from Brown University in Providence, R.I. He is a recent winner of the Samuel T. Arnold Fellowship. His first solo exhibit debuted in New York in 1999 and was highly acclaimed by The New York Times and The New Yorker. “We’re thrilled to welcome him here tonight,” said Panczenko.

Dressed in hip, dark clothes and sporting a Beatles-esque haircut, Martin began his speech saying, “I hope to not invoke too much of the ache of isolation tonight,” to the amusement of the approximately 100 students present.

Martin’s slide show at first focused on magazine ads that used nature pictures to sell a product. “I was surrounded through my youth with images of nature surrounding me,” he said. “Yet what I experienced was advertising trying to convey a nostalgia for something that never was.”

Martin proved his claim by showing several ads he collected that showed an odd juxtaposition of colors and corporate logos with outdoor scenery. Martin kept his audience laughing as he showed an example of a landscape where the sky had obviously been colored to match the product. “Actually, there’s no sky in the world that looks like this,” he said.

Martin also showed a picture of a Marlboro ad plastered across a desert mesa. “Marlboro deserves an award for the most vulgar ads using scenic imagery.”

“I’ve had an experience of nature that was about beauty, but also awe and terror,” Martin said as he showed an athletic shoe ad that featured a forbidding landscape. “This ad seems to say if you buy our shoes you can run through hell,” he said.

Martin also spoke of his residencies in other countries and his time spent with the Whitney Project in New York City.

“You’re developing this sort of quiver. You can pull another arrow out as you need it,” Martin said to the many art students in the audience who may have been planning their own residencies.

The program concluded with Martin showing his own work, which will be available soon at Tandem Press. Primarily, his oils focus on the depiction of rocks, water and birch trees. The works “Forecast,” “Entire,” “Lost Liter,” “Ersatz” and “Tension,” among others, were named because, “A lot of them are songs by bands I like,” he said.

Martin took the time to give anecdotes and advice to the audience about several of the pictures, saying about one large one, “If you make a painting this big, I highly suggest you measure the door of your studio.” On another water painting, he said, “It might look like something you’d see on the side of a surfer’s van in the ’70s.”

Melissa Gengham, a self-described art connoisseur, said she enjoyed every aspect of the show. “I really think his paintings are hot,” she said, “Like sexually hot. It’s so weird and cool that he can paint a picture of a rock that makes you feel that way. He’s really hot too.”