Sabbatical recap: Charles Matson Lume, Studio Art, 2024-25

As Wisconsin's Polytechnic University, UW-Stout emphasizes lifelong applied learning for its students and faculty alike, including promoting excellence in teaching and research through sabbaticals.

Sabbaticals enable recipients to engage in intensive study to become more effective teachers and scholars and to enhance their services to the university.

During his 2024-25 sabbatical, studio art Professor Charles Matson Lumeheld solo exhibitions and artist talks across the country. Through a 2025 Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Individual grant, Matson Lume collaborated with three artists: UW-Stout alums Darren Tesar ('08), Galilee Peaches('18), and Beck Slack ('21) to publish "at the fountain, at the fountain," a free artists' book that features their art and texts.

Two book launches will be held this fall:

• Saturday, Oct. 4, 2 to 5 p.m.: FOGSTAND Gallery & Studio, in St. Paul, Minnesota.
• Thursday, Nov. 6, 4 to 5:30 p.m.: North Shore Readers and Writers Festival at the Grand Marais Art Colony, Grand Marais, Minnesota.

As a visual artist, one of the mediums that Matson Lume uses is light. His investigation into light started with painting. Like Giorgio Morandi, an Italian painter and printmaker of the early- to mid-1900s, Matson Lume noticed the objects he painted could speak.

"Their 'thingliness' and sense of light liberated something ineffable and true," he said. "Over time, I realized each thing had its own image - its shadow. I didn't need to paint the thing; it had its own painting it carried around with it."

Matson Lume began to experiment with the "object/image relationship." By using translucent and semi-translucent objects, such as plastic sheeting or fabric, illuminated under the right conditions, he created shadows that became more present than the objects themselves.

"A major shift happened in 2008 when I began to place objects on the floor and had their image arise via light's reflection or refraction," said Matson Lume, who has been teaching studio art at UW-Stout since 2001. "Another fulcrum of my art is poetry. I not only read it to my students at the beginning of every class, but use it to find ways to release something unknown or distinct in my art."

'lacuna (for Gustaf Sobin)'

Matson Lume's solo exhibitions during his sabbatical included two showings of "lacuna (for Gustaf Sobin)"at the Minneapolis Institute of Art; and at the Jack Olson Gallery in the School of Art & Design, at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, where he also held an artist talk entitled "that which you fear."

The installation for "lacuna (for Gustaf Sobin)" was based on using light, poetry, beauty and mortality to engage in the common and uncommon, Matson Lume said in his artist's statement. It was dedicated to Sobin, a poet and a mentor to the artist.

"The exhibit invited viewers to reflect on the interplay of presence and absence, the ephemeral nature of light, and the poetic resonance of space," he said. With his art, he tries to give people the space to feel like themselves and to feel their senses and the world again.

He held a second artist talk, "Flowers Before Bread," at Bloedel Reserve, in Bainbridge Island, Washington, where he was artist-in-residence, as well as at Grand Marais Art Colony, in Grand Marais, Minnesota.

He is the recipient of the international 2025 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant and the 2025-26 McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship, a major regional art award.

View the Minneapolis Institute of Art's YouTube videocapturing the exhibit.

Bringing images and texts together

Working on "at the fountain, at the fountain" for nearly a year brought Matson Lume, Tesar (who also serves as program director of UW-Stout's studio art and arts administration and entrepreneurshipprograms), Peaches, and Slack together and challenged their ideas and beliefs. A group exhibition will be held at FOGSTAND in spring 2026 to celebrate their shared commitment and love of making art within community.

"While Darren and I live in St. Paul, Peaches lives in Brooklyn, New York, and Beck lives in Glasgow, Scotland. It's truly an international collaboration," Matson Lume said. "Although I have made four artist books over the last decade, I have never made one with three visual artists, let alone with three former students. I am very excited about this collaboration and believe it will provide future vitality for all."

Though their images and texts vary widely, they are held together through mutual conceptual and formal considerations.

"It is an honor to see their artistic maturation flourish. As much as I have helped to shape my former students' artistic sensibilities, I look forward to how their art and ideas will recalibrate mine. I am inspired by their insights, wit and poetic sensibilities. I love working with them," Matson Lume said.

UW-Stout's School of Art and Design, one of the largest public art schools in the Midwest, offers bachelor's degrees in animation and digital media; game design and development-art; graphic design and interactive media; illustration; industrial and product design; interior design; studio art; arts administration and entrepreneurship; fashion design and development; and video production, as well as an M.F.A. in design.

Sabbatical recap: Charles Matson Lume, Studio Art, 2024-25

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