First Friday: Tyler Joseph Krasowski

Celebrate Tyler Joseph Krasowski: Everything Becomes Something with the artist! Live music by Graeme Pletscher and no-host bar. Cash and card accepted.

During a recent visit, Tyler Krasowski said something that stuck with curator Brandon Reintjes: “Everything becomes something.” It was an off-hand comment about Krasowski’s obsessive drawing habit. It’s a perfect title for his first exhibition at MAM.

Krasowski is a draughtsman, first and foremost. While he has earned a reputation as a printmaker, his preferred tool is the pencil. Krasowski says “desk doodles” manifest his creative impulse. The immediacy is refreshing but it’s the range and diversity that impresses the viewer. A single slip of paper may host a tattoo-style snake, a cartoon cloud, and a fully rendered figure that recalls German Renaissance master, Albrecht Dürer. To Krasowski, the sketches are artworks unto themselves because they are unfiltered. Some become refined drawings, others large woodcut prints; the many that go no further remain as the foundation of all his creative expressions. “The energy of the original cannot be replicated,” he says, “I believe these to be the most honest ways of my expression.” Everything becomes something. This exhibition demonstrates Krasowski’s full range, from an installation of “desk doodles” to a sublime woodcut print of waves on open water.

Krasowski grew up in the Chicago area. At University of Montana, he discovered printmaking, an organic extension of his love for drawing. He quickly excelled in the medium. Shortly after graduating, Krasowski travelled with Drive-By Press, was commissioned to design for Pearl Jam’s world tour, and was hired by renowned printmaker Tony Fitzpatrick as his studio assistant. He moved back to Montana in 2017 to continue his full-time art practice in Missoula.