Dan Torop: Frozen Period at Lynden Sculpture Garden

In June 2015, at the Lynden Sculpture Garden, Dan Torop put up the photography show Frozen Period. This culminated two years of work with Lynden, including a 2013-14 residency. A catalogue, Dan Torop: Frozen Period (48 pp., Milwaukee: Bradley Family Foundation), is available via Lynden and is distributed by Green Gallery Press.

Torop selected paintings and works on paper from the Bradley Family Foundation collection in a complementary show at Lynden which included Milton Avery, Joan Miro, and John James Audubon. Torop presented a second show of his own work, Sublunary World, at The Green Gallery, Milwaukee. The majority of the images in this show were also made at Lynden. Before leaving Wisconsin, Torop hosted “Westward: A Picnic with Dan Torop”, during which participants ate vegan pemmican by an artificial waterfall and read aloud from the journals of the explorer Meriwether Lewis while performers dressed as fairy folk rehearsed on nearby lawns. Frozen Period received substantial support from the Bradley Family Foundation. FSU supported the work via an Art Faculty Professional Development Grant and a CRC Funding Agency Travel grant. Torop printed much of the work at the Department of Art’s Facility for Arts Research, at which he is Faculty in Residence.

After leaving Milwaukee, Torop embarked on a project relating to the fur trade in North America, making a rapid investigation of territory between Michigan and Manitoba. He traveled to Thunder Bay, the Boundary Waters, Rainy Lake, Lake of the Woods, Lake Winnipeg, the Winnipeg River, the Assiniboine River, the Red River of the North, Bird Lake, and the Archives of Manitoba. He approached key areas over public roads, and when tenable made water-level traversals via small boat. Following historic routes, he looked out for visual and cultural discontinuities, such as the symbol-laden International Peace Garden affixed to the border between North Dakota and Manitoba, the specialized, honor-system reference library located in a Quetico Provincial Park basement, and The Bay department store in downtown Winnipeg whose shopping bags are affixed with the seal of the Hudson’s Bay Company. A First Year Assistant Professor Grant from FSU’s Council on Research and Creativity was a source of support for this work.