Current Exhibitions
Portrait group show, Triangle Gallery, Rockland, ME - July 2023
Second Annual Summer Show, Parsonage Gallery, Searsport, ME - July 2023
Art Meets Science, MDI Biological Lab, Bar Harbor, ME
About the Artist
Links: Artist CV | News & Press
Ian Trask is a sculptor and multimedia artist who transforms waste materials into objects and installations with new purpose and integrity. His immersive works often play with sophisticated patterns, lending unlikely materials exquisite beauty. At other times, he works on an intimate scale with puckish humor. Trask began his career in New York City, where he was a core member of the Invisible Dog Art Center and exhibited at the Spring Break Art Fair, the Figment Festival, and Brooklyn Academy of Music. Upon returning to Maine, where he studied biology at Bowdoin College, Trask has exhibited at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, University of New England, University of Maine, and Cove Street Arts. In 2018, he published his first artist book, Strange Histories: A Bizarre Collaboration, and has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Portland Press Herald, Maine Magazine, and Brooklyn Magazine.
He received his degree in biological science from Bowdoin College in 2005. Following graduation he worked several years in research labs, before eventually deciding in 2007 to leave the world of science to pursue a career in visual art. After leaving his lab job, Trask worked as a hospital groundskeeper cleaning up trash daily, an experience that proved to be formative in his artistic development. Ian saw the artistic potential in the waste he was confronted with everyday and quickly began working with discarded manufactured goods as the main platform for his pieces.
In many of Trask’s sculptures, the viewer will find a mischievous invitation. Texture and tangibility are essential to the experience of these objects, and by provoking the impulse to explore, each piece rouses in the beholder the same spirit of curiosity, experimentation and play that occasioned their creation.
