Chris Francis
Artist Statement
Chris Francis explores a sublime paradox between the constructs of wonder or awe and need or distress, through found-object assemblages comprised of the discarded ordinary and everyday mundane.
Artist Bio
Chris Francis (b.1981 in Iowa, currently residing in South Dakota) is a self-described “tinker’’ who has a habit of making more with less. While earning an MFA at Lesley Art & Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he worked under the guidance of faculty artists and with artist mentors in New York, all of which further challenged, shaped, and informed his own practice. He has often collaborated with artists whom he admires, respects, and appreciates leading to such efforts as “Blood Run Artists of the Big Sioux”.
A passionate advocate of the arts and artists alike, Francis is known for spearheading the first artist visit to the SURF lab in Lead, SD in 2012, which became the widely-traveled “Into the Dark: Artists Exploring Dark Matter” exhibition, leading the Madison Area Arts Council as its director for nearly 18 years, and successfully advocating for the return of the state’s Artist Laureate program. He was the recipient of a Bush Foundation Fellowship in 2015, a South Dakota Arts Council Artist Project Grant in 2011, and a Brand-Boeshaar Scholarship from the Figge Art Museum in 2000.
Erik Ritter
Artist Statement
Alchemist Pursuit
I work with materials that have been overlooked or set aside. As someone shaped by a culture of excess and disposability, I find myself drawn to objects that sit in the in between space. They are no longer needed, yet not fully discarded.
Through assemblage, I attempt a modest transformation. The act of reconfiguring what remains becomes a reflection on how we live with the earth and with one another. What appears to be residue can hold potential. Sometimes what is left behind becomes the most revealing material.
Aesthetic Meditation
We live inside layers of form. The room contains the house. The house opens to the street. The street belongs to the city. Each structure rests within another.
My process follows a similar logic. I gather fragments and arrange them until relationships emerge. Shapes overlap. Edges press against one another. Space becomes active. The work develops as a quiet meditation on how individual parts create shared environments.
Sponge Toothbrush
Objects absorb experience. A toothbrush carries the memory of a hand, a habit, a daily gesture repeated over time. Materials register touch and use long before they enter the studio.
I am attentive to this quiet record. The objects I use already contain stories. My task is not to impose meaning but to recognize what is present and allow it to surface. As Henry Ford observed, every object tells a story. My work begins by listening.
Artist Bio
Erik Ritter is an artist and educator with more than thirty years of studio practice and teaching. He earned his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and has exhibited nationally at venues including CONTEXT Art Miami, SCOPE International Art Show in New York, the Diego Rivera Gallery in San Francisco, and SculptureWalk Sioux Falls in 2026.
His assemblage work Bird of Time was included in Succession: Artists and Their Students at the South Dakota Art Museum, an exhibition exploring the influence of mentorship across generations.
Ritter is a full time instructor in the School of Design at South Dakota State University, where his studio research and teaching practice continually inform one another.