Thanks to everyone who has come out to see it over the last month and a half. I really appreciated having a packed opening night. It’s good to know that I have an audience to make art for.

After the opening night, I did an interview with the pittsburgh orbit: https://pittsburghorbit.com/2022/08/18/the-blight-stuff-nathan-van-patters-bound-by-blight/

Really well written- and I’m not just saying that because of how good I came off. It was a lot of good questions that gave me a chance to say a lot of what was behind building this show.

One of my favorite things about having people come out was hearing their take on the art. Since I think of art as communication, I feel ambivalent about death of the author. It was weirdly cool, then, to hear people come up with stuff that interacted well with the art without having anything to do with what I had been thinking when I meant it. For instance, somebody pitched the pawn challenging King Fear was symbolic of how we push the most vulnerable people into the jaws of our broken systems. That makes a ton of sense with that painting and I like it- I just hadn’t thought of that.

It was also great to see people near their portraits:

I am going to start taking the show down. It’s nice to have completed this project and feel a sense of closure. It’s time to do something new! I don’t want to be “Blight Guy” for the rest of my art journey. I’ve already started to think through new themes and ideas. I’ve been thinking through options of how to find a second gallery to be in and am preparing to do some inquiries. In the meantime, it’s time to get back into that basement and start grinding again. Thanks for the support- look forward to more art soon.