Bright Lights Dark Corners

Press, 13 October 1982, Page 14

Bright Lights Dark Corners

Michael Reed has "to fight for the pastels" before he can start on his art work each evening. The Christchurch artist has two small children who like to join in when Dad gets out his paper and pastels. But such interruptions have not stopped Michael Reed from preparing work for his latest exhibition titled "Bright Lights Dark Corners” which opened at the Gingko Gallery, in the Arts Centre, during the weekend. Reed has been a successful exhibitor for many years — since he left the School of Fine Arts, at the University of Canterbury.

While there he made the "fairly unpopular choice" of specialising in printmaking. “I was the only one during my year of stage two and my year of stage three to do prin'tmaking. It was then looked down on as a' craft." After leaving university. Reed moved into television as a graphic artist and later into teaching. By that stage he and his wife' had a choice of going overseas or trying to establish a handprinted fabric business. The fabric business did not successfully establish itself, and Reed joined the teaching staff at the Christchurch Polytechnic where he is now a tutor in the Graphic

Design department. Reed maintainss that it is important to be proficient in a range of art techniques when you teach, and that proficiency comes through in his exhibition. The 16 pieces of work on show take in drawings, woodcuts. screenprints and a lithograph. Reed's works are full of pattern and planar illusion. "I have tried to combine different things — like a very sophisticated stencil method with a primitive stencil, such as ripped paper." "I just do the work for myself and when it accumulates I have an exhibition."