Conor Fagan: Envision 2025 Finalist
For his Envision exhibition, Conor Fagan invites viewers to appreciate the “beautiful, miraculous nature of normal everyday existence” and the meaning we attach to common objects through debris often left behind or swept away.
“What I’m trying to do is recontextualize normal things in life — normal moments and objects on the landscape — onto a medium that is forgotten (and) cast aside, namely, sawdust,” he says.
Elsewhere in the show, he employs the flickering, hypnotizing light of film projection to help call on the effortless, awe-inspiring experience of staring into a campfire.
“I hope that [viewers] feel a sense of longing and collective memory and mystery in the ordinary things, like an appreciation for normality,” he says.
Relationships, community, and family and the ways they form, evolve, and drift — apart and back together — over time have been another recurring theme in Fagan’s work, whether building tenuous towers of ash from a family fireplace or meditatively adding stars to constellations on background layers of scraped oil paint over the course of years.
A teacher with more than 20 years of experience as a working artist, Fagan sees his own work as lessons to bring back to his students at Interlochen Academy of Art, located outside of Traverse City, Michigan.
“Being afforded this opportunity allows me greater knowledge of the path they will also be walking, and provides me with valuable research to help them understand the importance of rigor and the benefits of putting yourself out there,” he says.
Fagan earned his MFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and has won many awards and grants. He was one of 12 international artists to participate in the 31st annual International Symposium of Contemporary Art of Baie – Saint Paul, Quebec; a Roswell Artist-in-Residence in New Mexico; and a featured artist at 2020’s Spring Break Art Show in New York. Most recently, he has been featured and won an award at The 2025 Regional Show at the Dennos Museum and Cultural Center in Traverse City.
A self-described “hermit” who enjoys working in and hiking through the Northwoods, Fagan says he’s grateful to get to live in rural Michigan and be part of the conversation.
“I do feel gratitude that I get to live where I want and still have a voice,” he says.
Envision: The 2025 Michigan Artists Initiative, featuring works by finalists Conor Fagan, Katie Mongoven, and Sara Nickleson, is on view at Stamps Gallery in downtown Ann Arbor through August 2, 2025.
Join us on July 16 for Envision 2025 Conversations, an insightful panel discussion with the artists and a panel of regional art curators and leaders, including Grand Rapids Art Museum Director and CEO Cindy Meyers Foley, and Director of Kresge Arts in Detroit Katie Grace McGowan.