Joe Mangrum

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joe Mangrum was born in Florissant, Missouri February 10, 1969, and attended School of the Art Institute of Chicago receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1991. After almost fifteen years of painting in oils, Mangrum found his passion in using objects in his art.

Mangrum's first installations were done in the small beach community of Laguna Beach California in 1994. He creates a dialogue of objects with found flora to discarded machine and technological parts. He attended the Florence Biennale in 2003, where received the Lorenzo de Medici award in new media artists, for his piece titled "Fragile".[1]

In 2005, in celebration for World Environment Day held in San Francisco, California, Mangrum created a 40ft tall and 16ft wide Mushroom Cloud of live wheatgrass.[2] The project was grown over a 2 week period in various locations in San Francisco and contained 300lbs of dry wheatgrass seed. The cloud towered over an artificial cityscape made from industrial parts. The title of the project was "Detonation Earth" and was installed at Red Ink Studios in San Francisco.[http://www.joemangrum.com/detonationjoemangrum.html

Mangrum has created installations for over twelve years and has a forthcoming book of installation documents to be released in 2006.