MISSOULA, MT.- The Missoula Art Museum presents a retrospective view of the oeuvre of a prolific artist in Terry Karson: Human/Nature. The exhibition represents distinctive categories in Karson’s work, including tidy displays of objects referred to as “specimens,” abstraction based on color and grids, and large-scale installation work.

Karson (1950−2017) repurposed the detritus of consumer culture and this process embodied the fundamentals of his practice—labor, obsession, accumulation, collaboration, collecting, repetition, transformation, the grid, and accessibility. His aesthetic is sophisticated and refined even though the work was made from everyday refuse. The push and pull between mundane materials and the elegance of the finished objects creates compelling tension and tenuous balance in Karson’s art.

Karson’s work implicitly carries an environmental plea, complicated by humanity’s central, conflicting role as both the preserver and destroyer of species and ecosystems, purveyor of urban sprawl but also national parks. Human impact on nature was one of Karson’s main preoccupations. Likewise, Karson acknowledges the transformative function culture can have—the collective manifestations of human aesthetic and intellectual achievement, and how it shapes civilization—the long arc of humanity’s footprint on the planet.

Karson said, “I contend there is no such thing as unnatural. All of our actions, thoughts, inventions, civilizations and art are all natural.“

In the final days of a brief battle with cancer, Karson designated that the sale of his remaining work and collection would create an acquisition fund to benefit cultural institutions. The Terence Karson Memorial Acquisition Fund for Emerging Contemporary Art has been used to purchase works for the MAM Collection by artists including Jay Schmidt, Maggy Hiltner, Tyler Joseph Krasowski and Kathryn Schmidt.

Karson was born in Kansas City, MO and was “disassembled then re-formed in the psychedelic Vietnam War era” of the Kansas City Art Institute, where he earned a BFA. After earning his MFA at Montana State University-Bozeman, he served as curator at the Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings. Karson died in 2017 after a productive career as an arts administrator, professor, curator, and artist.