Mark Clarson is an artist living and working in Portland, Oregon.  He was born in Dallas, Texas in 1973.  Mark Clarson received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his MFA at the University of Chicago. His work has been exhibited at the Body Builder and Sportsman Gallery in Chicago, Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville, and Brenda Taylor Gallery in New York as well as numerous group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the country.  Clarson is represented by Guardino Gallery and Beet Gallery in Portland, Oregon.

 

Clarson primarily works in sculpture using fabricated steel with cast bronze and cast aluminum elements to depict a series of whimsical narratives.  In the body of work Las Carpas, he centered upon his interests in nomadic-mysticism as featured in the Mexican tent circuses of the mid-nineteenth century.  In this series of work, he depicts fictional characters of the Las Carpas in mythological narratives based on historical texts from the period. His interest in the 1960's counterculture "hippie" movement is also referenced through symbols and vehicles from the era loosely infused with his mythological performers of the Las Carpas.

 

Recently Clarson has been producing a new series of work.  In these pieces, Clarson is using cast glass to represent awkward  moments of everyday life in a world not to far removed from our own.   These pieces present the human condition contrasted against improbable interactions with nature that occur in a fictional time and place.  This body of work will be exhibited in May 2010 at Beet Gallery in Portland, Oregon.