Armstrong Arts
Armstrongarts.com
About
Armstrong Arts is the website for the collage, photography, and other artwork of Dave Armstrong.
Dave can be reached at darmstrong@coloradocollege.edu.
Thanks for looking!
Biography
Dave Armstrong was born and raised in Massachusetts in the 1950s. Beginning in 1969, he attended Massachusetts College of Art, where he studied under Harris Barron during the first years of the pioneering Studio for Inter-related Media (SIM). The program emphasized time-based art-making that balanced concept and craft, leading Dave to create several surreal multi-media performance pieces and films. One collaborative commissioned piece, “Peristalsis”, was performed in Hayden Planetarium in 1972. He was a member of Barron’s ZONE visual theater company when they performed Kandinsky’s “The Yellow Sound” at the Guggenheim Museum in 1972. After graduating from MassArt in 1973, he went on to earn an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, continuing to make films and performance-works.
Dave began working at Colorado College in Colorado Springs in 1979. Around this time, he realized that he wanted greater control over the details of his work. He moved away from multi-media productions, where artistic decisions often had to be shared with performers. He turned to collage, a medium that allowed him greater selectivity, precision, and control over the moment depicted. This turned out to be very satisfying. Combining and juxtaposing elements from catalogues, magazines, and old books, he began making his surreal images. Given the source material, most pieces are post-card size or smaller. His collages often have a cinematic quality – a second in time is caught, an ambiguous action occurs, a question is asked – harkening back to the earlier performance works.
A note on the process – Dave's collages are non-digital. That is to say, he does not rely on the wonders of Photoshop or other technologies for their creation. This seems like a silly self-imposed constraint in the 21st century, but the search for just the right elements helps him to percolate the concepts he is wrestling with. He finds the parts, builds the composition, very carefully hand cuts each of the elements, and just as carefully glues them all together. Nuts, huh?
Exhibitions
Solo
2014 The Bridge Gallery, Colorado Springs, CO.
2012 The Bridge Gallery, Colorado Springs, CO.
2010 Coburn Gallery, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO.
2009 The Bridge Gallery, Colorado Springs, CO.
1999 Coburn Gallery, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO.
1997 Lamar Dodd Art Center, LaGrange College, LaGrange, GA.
1992 Coburn Gallery, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO.
1989 The Window Box Gallery, New York, NY.
1986 Coburn Gallery, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO.
1982 Armstrong Hall Gallery, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO.
Group and Juried
2020 Kreuser Gallery, Colorado Springs, CO. Gratitude.
2019 SITE:Brooklyn, Brooklyn, NY. Small and Smaller.
2019 Sangre De Christo Arts Center, Pueblo, CO. Representing the West: A New Frontier.
2018 Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH. National Collage Society 21st Annual Small Format Exhibit.
2018 The Core New Art Space, Denver, CO. Small Works.
2017 Union Street Gallery, Chicago Heights, IL. National Collage Society 33rd Annual Exhibition; Trustees' Award recipient.
2016 IDEA Space, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO. reSourced: Collage and Assemblage Source Material Explored. (Four artists).
2016 Amarillo Museum of Art, Amarillo, TX. High Plains Highways.
2015 Smokebrush Arts Center, Colorado Springs, CO. Roll Bike Arts Festival.
2014 Metropolitan State University of Denver, Denver, CO. National Collage Society 30th Annual Exhibition; Juror's Award recipient.
2003 The Plantera Gallery, Colorado Springs, CO. The Three Collagistos (Cellan,Cicotello, Armstrong).
2001 Foothills Art Center, Golden, CO. The Colorado Art Open.
2001 New Mexico Highlands University, Las Vegas, NM. Faces of Woman.
2000 Schoharie Arts Center, Schoharie, NY. National Small Works Exhibition; Honorable Mention.
2000 Salina Art Center, Salina, KS. 21st Annual Juried Art Exhibit; Jurors' Award recipient. (Seven artists).
1998 Chattahoochee Valley Art Museum, LaGrange, GA. The LaGrange International Biennial XX; Purchase Award.
Publications
Books