The Artist
Myles Calvert was born in Collingwood, Ontario. He attended the University of Guelph with a focus in printmaking, before traveling to London, UK where he completed his MA in Printmaking, at Camberwell College of Art (University for the Arts, London). Major bodies of work included installations of screen printed toast and the idolization of popular British celebrity culture. During this time, he worked for the National Portrait Gallery before moving to Hastings in East Sussex, to teach printmaking at Sussex Coast College (now East Sussex College) and become the Duty Manager of the newly Jerwood Gallery (now Hastings Contemporary).
Myles' toast-based work continued with a 43,000 slice installation during the Queen’s ‘Diamond Jubilee’ with college students, drawing BBC media attention, and culminated in two solo exhibitions before making a return to the University of Guelph to teach Intermediate and Advanced Printmaking. Four formative years were spent as a Visiting Professor in Expanded Media at Alfred University (New York State College of Ceramics) and Alfred State College of Technology, teaching across print-based mediums including core foundations programs, senior advising, and graduate mentorship.
Recent residencies include Art Print Residence (Barcelona, Spain) and Proyecto’ace (Buenos Aires, Argentina), a lecture/workshop at PUCP (Pontificia Universidad Catòlica del Perú) in Lima, the Tamarind Institute (Albuquerque, NM), and the McColl Center (Charlotte, NC). Myles is currently an Associate Professor in Fine Arts at Winthrop University, South Carolina.
Statements
THE WORK
Imagery of recognizable objects, such as toasters, spoons, and ottomans, are combined with specific colour harmonies to suggest a particular emotion based on individual experience. Similar to the ideals of Romanticism, the combination of object and colour reference a unique time period and emotional memory. The experience changes for each viewer based on their life experience to date. Colour palette preferences shift between the biological sexes, with exposure to media trends and influences, and most noticeably with age. Objects may change and become fluid representations of the past yet pull forward a moment that may have otherwise been lost.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Spring 2024
My current work explores the conversations that develop between everyday objects of comfort and colour theory. Ideas navigate the spectrum from utilitarian forms through to the absurdly escalated and opulent. This notion of comfort often escalates to desire and an inherent, materialistic obsession to acquire and adorn. The chosen focal objects have been universal, recognizable and at times, mundane. I question why they must be objects at all, when the broad subject of landscape should also be challenged.
My influences are drawn from printmakers such as Richard Hamilton, Patrick Caulfield, and Josef Albers, but also contemporary painters, designers, and digital artists who exceptionally manipulate colour (Flavia da Rin, Anish Kapoor, Mario Testino).
Interests are rooted in the ideals of Romanticism — exploration of unique moments and personal emotion through the use of identifiable shape and colour variants. Unique surfaces are explored through print (screenprint, photopolymer etching, laser woodblock, lithography) — specifically, halftone structures and manipulations of those patterns / angles to achieve controllable photographic to distorted variants.
The digital glitch, present through Adobe software programs, drives forward the question of technologies place and developing role in traditional processes. In particular, focus has been on melding traditional woodcut with laser woodcut variants, exploring MDF vs, plywood and plexiglass matrices.
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