Sights Unseen: Prints by Dean Russell Thompson

This exhibition of prints by CSU student Dean Thompson can be seen in the Colorado State University Mini Gallery located in the Visual Arts building October 22-26. Dean Thompson specializes in color woodcuts with a strong emphasis on structure, line, shape, composition, and color palette. His works scream industrialization and technologies that have shaped our modern day of life. Dean says " We live our lives surrounded by the infrastructure of our society. Despite this, most of us never see it, or perhaps more properly, never really look at it." One of his works titled "Winter Park, Eastbound" shows an image of an old train riding down the tracks. Strangely, he chose to show this print of a train in the color green. This really made me think about the artist's thoughts of color choice. Why green? Perhaps the involvement of money during the industrial revolution. Other titles of his works are "Seattle", "Charlotte", and "January", which are prints showing cityscapes, other ideas of industrialization. Dean focuses on creating large scale color woodcut prints because he feels that they best capture the essence of the environments he is trying to depict. His work is incredible and I feel he should pursue this idea and concept in further works. I believe this concept has endless possibilities and he has only scratched the surface.