BOISE, ID.- Boise Art Museum (BAM) will feature an installation by Idaho artist Garth Claassen, March 14 – May 31, 2009, entitled Bloated Floaters, Snouted Sappers, and the Defense of Empire.

Bloated Floaters, Snouted Sappers, and the Defense of Empire is a new body of drawings which grew out of Claassen’s series The Heavy Dancers, which he began in 2003 during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq. Claassen’s Dancers were chunky, blundering titans seeking to confront an illusive enemy. These figurative works have evolved as a visual satire on the foibles of politics and the human condition. These new black and white drawings will be installed at Boise Art Museum by Claassen over the week of March 9, 2009, and will completely cover the walls of one gallery, just as they are arranged floor to ceiling in the artist’s Caldwell, Idaho, studio.

Garth H. Claassen is Assistant Professor of Art at the College of Idaho in Nampa. He has a B.A.F.A., and M.A.F.A. from the University of Natal, South Africa, and an M.A., and Ph.D. from Indiana University. He was recently awarded his second Visual Arts Fellowship from the Idaho Commission on the Arts. He was one of seven winners chosen from 53 entrants statewide.