Mike did his undergraduate work in Mythology and History at Reed College in Portland Oregon in the early 80s. He always had a strong and abiding interest in art, but his early artistic training was incomplete, cobbled together from books, occasionally impassioned teachers, open studios at the museum. He had all but given up on art as a vocation until he was introduced to figurative sculpture at Hipbone Studio in Portland Oregon in the late 80s. He fell in love with the form, dedicated himself to researching and recreating a what seemed a largely lost craft, ultimately building a portfolio of solo and commissioned work sufficient to make it into the University of Washington, where he earned his MFA in Sculpture and Public Art in 2004. He briefly studied at the Florence Academy of Art in Italy, taught at The Art Academy of London and, since 2005, has taught at the Gage Art Academy of Art in Seattle he currently serves as Artistic Director, and Director of the Magrath Sculpture Atelier.
Combining both an academic bent and years in the trades, Magrath brings both a philosophical and workmanlike approach to sculpture. He is a materials researcher, a fabricator, foundryman, anatomist and student of form. He ran the shop at the Reed College Art Dept for nearly a decade, having learned about teaching alongside exceptional instructors in both conceptual and maker-based programs. As such he seeks a marriage between elegance of concept and competence in craft. Magrath does both private and public commissions as well as gallery sales. Clients include Microsoft, the University of Washington, the Archdiocese of Portland OR, as well as numerous private customers. He lives on Vashon Island WA, with his family.
Artist Statement:
I have focused most of my artistic career primarily on understanding and representing the human form because as a subject it is virtually endless in variation and complexity, continuously relevant, and accessible to virtually everyone. It's a language we all share. And so, has potential as a lingua Franca in art, at a time when virtually all other common tongues are drowned. But yet the body is also so symbolically charged; a site of continual conflict in society, religion, politics, gender, sexuality, etc, as to guarantee high emotion. It requests great delicacy of handling. The depiction of the nude in America remains a chancy operation.
And yet my interest in the body is ultimately quieter. I'm interested in how the individual expresses the iconic, and how the Icon embodies the spirit. I am exploring the spiritual nature of physical world. If the material world is the manifest body of the divine, then sculpture is a form of prayer. My primary focus lies in the reinterpretation of mythology in contemporary contexts, and I am most interested in the potential of myth to reinvigorate the humanist project. The physical body, like nature, has been too long maligned. It was once the center of creation, the distilled manifestation of a million years of ancestral desire. But has been degraded, commodified, bundled in shame. I fear that our culture cannot much longer survive the mind/body, spirit/nature duopoly that seeded our fall from the garden. If we don't find a way to reunify ourselves with creation soon we risk our chance at redemption, at least.
