scot kaplan
On October 7th, Mahan Gallery will be transformed into the set of The Joy of Painting, the iconic PBS television series from the 1980s and '90s. Artist Scot Kaplan will create a landscape by the late TV host Bob Ross by painting live along with an episode of the show. The Exhibition will open on Tuesday, October 3, and close on Friday, October 27.
The live performance will allow the audience to personally experience how Kaplan produced his project "Thirty Days, Thirty Minutes, Thirty Paintings" which will grace the gallery walls throughout the month of October. The genesis for the series of thirty pieces is based on Bob Ross' invitation at the start of each show to "paint along with us," and for this project Kaplan did just that. Over the span of one month, Kaplan produced one painting per day by doggedly painting along with a pre-recorded episode of The Joy of Painting. He constructed his own set identical to the on-air background, then he recorded each artistic session and edited it in a manner that further paralleled the television show format.
As part of this avant-garde, multimedia exhibit at Mahan Gallery, Kaplan's recorded "performances" will play on DVD players mounted next to several of the paintings. The works will be sold as an entire experiential package including the painting, the original Kaplan DVD (never to be reproduced), and the DVD player.
Kaplan, an art professor at Ohio State University and a trained sculptor, created this project as an experiment to try his hand at keeping pace with Ross' rapid creations. By painting along with the televised Ross, Kaplan discovered that behind the "happy little trees," free clouds and mighty mountains, were many layers of complexity. Similarly, stepping inside Ross' shoes to execute the painting techniques, and looking past the quirky, kitschy nature of the show, Kaplan was able to validate the artistic sophistication and substance of both Ross' paintings and his own.
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