Product Design Program Assistant Professor Trygve Faste is recipient of a 2013 Oregon Arts Commission (OAC) Opportunity Grant to help support travel to and shipping costs for two solo exhibitions. The grants aim to help artists advance their careers through opportunities for the development of artistic, business, or professional skills.

Faste’s shows will be at the David Richard Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in July, and at Cheymore Gallery in Tuxedo Park, New York, beginning in August.

“Both of these shows present great opportunities and challenges,” Faste says, beginning with making 15 to 20 new pieces in roughly six months. The shows are his first solo shows in six years.

An article on the ceramic/moss techniques appears in the March/April Ceramic Review.

The galleries, both well-respected venues, will allow Faste’s work to be seen on a national level. “This will be great for sharing Oregon-based creativity to the rest of the country. It will also spur the development of my work in the studio,” he says.

While Faste teaches in the Product Design Program, he often works in painting to explore his ideas. “My background and creative practice is on the intersection of art and design, and I view these paintings as a direct exploration into the art/design crossover area, as they directly engage ideas of dimensionality, styling, and implied functionality.”

Faste adds that his work “stems out of a curiosity regarding human-created physical reality through design, architecture, and technology. The manufacturing and invention of our surroundings has resulted in a complex environment of objects ranging widely in their purpose from pragmatically functional to completely whimsical. Our creations foster all ranges of emotion from joy and desire to jealousy and fear. Consumer culture, of which both art and design are integral, necessitates innovation, creativity, style, seduction, and manipulation to propagate itself.”

Faste uses a variety of processes and tools including traditional painting technique, airbrush, laser cutter, and computer aided design (CAD).

He was invited to the David Richard Gallery and Cheymore Gallery shows in fall 2012. The OAC grant will allow him “to foster new connections with galleries, reconnect with old contacts, show my work, generate ideas for creating new work, and visit diverse art locations.”

Having his work more widely distributed will also gain Faste further recognition in and responses from new geographic regions.

“This will allow me to get feedback on my work from a wide variety of sources, including press and reviews from parts of the country that would usually not see my paintings. I have no doubt that the successful completion of these two shows will bring new ideas and fresh perspectives on the evolution of my artwork.”

His work has been exhibited most recently at David Richard Contemporary in Miami, Florida, and Santa Fe, New Mexico; Spacecraft Gallery, San Diego; and the Design Department Gallery, California State University, Long Beach, California. His recent public art projects include a kinetic ice sculpture and other water features in Las Vegas and Salt Lake City.

An article on the ceramic/moss techniques developed by Faste and fellow UO artist-educator Jessica Swanson appears in the March/April research section of Ceramic Review.

Faste, who began teaching at UO in 2010, received an MFA in painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2004 and a BA in studio art and mathematics and computer science from Whitman College in 1997. In addition to teaching at several colleges and universities before joining the UO faculty, he has worked as senior product designer at WET Design in Sun Valley, California.