Andrew Krieger
Andrew Krieger was born and raised in Detroit. He is a self-taught artist who attended the Cleveland Institute of Arts. After he dropped out of college, he returned to Detroit in 1987 to create art and work as a carpenter.
Krieger creates sculptural forms out of wood and combines them with representational painting. His works have a dynamic presence that invites the viewer to a feeling of being connected and participatory. Through their physical presence and relative subjects, Krieger invites us to experience painting in a different sense.
Since 2016, he has been teaching in the Foundations Department as adjunct faculty at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. He is also taking the time and opportunity to finish his BFA degree in ceramics.
Andrew Krieger Statement
For the second time in the last 150 years, part of my property has been cleared of trees. My house, in which my father’s great uncle built, is located on the banks of the Tittabawassee River in Edenville, Michigan. It’s situated on a high hill overlooking the river.
Soon after Michigan became a state, a gold rush occurred from the mid-1800s onward. Michigan was clear cut of trees in a wild cycle of land acquisition, intense logging, and then tax foreclosures. In fact, the whole endeavor of clear cutting the state was more profitable than the California Gold Rush. In reflection, these tax foreclosures are clues as to when areas of land were clear cut. The land, now worthless, was simply given back to the state.
The Tittabawassee River was used as a logging transportation route for the many trees that flowed on it and past the property on which my house currently resides. But on May 19, 2020, the Edenville Dam failed, and 22.5 billion gallons of water rushed past my house and property erasing 150 years of tree growth and personal history. Another eight more inches of water would have destroyed the first floor of my house and caused me great personal loss.
In retrospect the pandemic was a gift to me. It allowed my friends to help me clean up from this devastation, explore and reconnect with the area. The works in the exhibition are about making connections to my ancestors’ property and home and imagining life after this human-derived ecological disaster.
Krieger creates sculptural forms out of wood and combines them with representational painting. His works have a dynamic presence that invites the viewer to a feeling of being connected and participatory. Through their physical presence and relative subjects, Krieger invites us to experience painting in a different sense.
Since 2016, he has been teaching in the Foundations Department as adjunct faculty at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. He is also taking the time and opportunity to finish his BFA degree in ceramics.
Andrew Krieger Statement
For the second time in the last 150 years, part of my property has been cleared of trees. My house, in which my father’s great uncle built, is located on the banks of the Tittabawassee River in Edenville, Michigan. It’s situated on a high hill overlooking the river.
Soon after Michigan became a state, a gold rush occurred from the mid-1800s onward. Michigan was clear cut of trees in a wild cycle of land acquisition, intense logging, and then tax foreclosures. In fact, the whole endeavor of clear cutting the state was more profitable than the California Gold Rush. In reflection, these tax foreclosures are clues as to when areas of land were clear cut. The land, now worthless, was simply given back to the state.
The Tittabawassee River was used as a logging transportation route for the many trees that flowed on it and past the property on which my house currently resides. But on May 19, 2020, the Edenville Dam failed, and 22.5 billion gallons of water rushed past my house and property erasing 150 years of tree growth and personal history. Another eight more inches of water would have destroyed the first floor of my house and caused me great personal loss.
In retrospect the pandemic was a gift to me. It allowed my friends to help me clean up from this devastation, explore and reconnect with the area. The works in the exhibition are about making connections to my ancestors’ property and home and imagining life after this human-derived ecological disaster.
