Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight

Joe Overstreet's artwork invites visitors to engage with the space around them to fully appreciate multiple viewpoints created by the pieces, many of which are suspended by ropes, away from walls. The title graphic plays on themes of levity and asymmetry, while it, along with brand colors, emphasize fluid movement. The exhibition’s entrance introduces photos from 1970, from the last major exhibition of the artist’s work, to provide then-and-now glimpses and emphasize the joy evoked by the work. A canvas from the “Flight Pattern” series is dramatically installed in a sharp diagonal angled toward the entrance. Monochromatic wall colors emphasize a traditional gallery experience in the first thematic section and lighten throughout as the works themselves come off the walls. Pull quotes from the artist and his contemporaries appear on walls, allowing the artist to speak directly to visitors. Historical context is provided throughout, with design applied by type and tier of text, accompanied in two locations by videos on iPads. The artwork is the installation's showpiece, with the most dramatic and engaging of the series installed in a central location. Visitors are invited to stretch their own “Flight Pattern” and explore movement through light in Museum-developed engagement spaces that appear as a penultimate moment before five emotionally charged oversized canvases from Overstreet’s “Facing the Door of No Return” series conclude the exhibition.