Dillon Bryant (b. Spearfish, SD) is a lens based artist working between lands that are now known as the upper American Mid/West and Mid/South making images that explore desire, history, and landscape. Bryant has exhibited across the United States and abroad, participating in solo and group exhibitions at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Texas Tech University, the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, Filter Space, MIXD Gallery, and the Momentary at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Bryant holds a BFA from the University of South Dakota and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Arkansas.

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Jackalopes is a tableau exploring the figure of the jackalope in relation to a larger body of work examining narratives of power and connection associated with the American West. Jackalopes are trickster symbols of Western mythology, fantastical taxidermy collages of a jackrabbit with deer horns. Ralph and Douglas Herrick are thought to have “created” the mythical jackalope in 1932. Following a hunting trip, a caught jackrabbit was tossed near deer antlers, and the chimera was born. Similar to how the Herrick brothers use physical collage and taxidermy to play with perception, truth, and history, I intervene with archives for materials to reproduce, cut, interlayer, prop up, and redact, to create ephemeral collages and tableaux stage sets fixed through the intervention of a camera. 

The folklore surrounding these animals is elastic: they are feared as apex predators capable of running at high speeds and able to turn themselves invisible, they are said to appreciate whiskey, are gifted with clairvoyance and lovely singing voices. Jackalopes are said to be incredibly rare, only mating during lightning storms but appear in droves across gas stations, casinos, bars, and other road side attractions across the United States. The exact image of a jackalope is an elusive topiary, capable of taking on forms and qualities as narrative and necessity demands. 

Western land is popularly viewed and romanticized as a space of play, separate from the complex histories of displacement and resource extraction that have engendered this perception. Jackalopes have been used to sell  an image of the high plains and deserts as exotic and strange places worthy of patronage and settlement. In a similar vein,  am interested in the tensions between the didactic and representational qualities of photographs and this tableau is a collage of photographs sourced from personal and found images stemming from Craigslist listings from across the greater Black Hills region, family albums, national park databases, and instructional hunting manuals. Deliberate arrangements of fragments, props, standees, camouflage silhouettes, and rattlesnakes in the grass complicate popular perceptions of the west as an idyllic garden.

Western land is popularly viewed and romanticized as a space of play, separate from the complex histories of displacement and resource extraction that have engendered this perception. Jackalopes sell an image of the high plains and deserts as exotic and strange places worthy of patronage (and settlement). I am interested in the tensions between the didactic and representational qualities of photographs and this tableau is a collage of photographs sourced from personal and found images stemming from Craigslist listings from across the greater Black Hills region, family albums, national park databases, and instructional hunting manuals. Deliberate arrangements of fragments, prop standees, camouflaged silhouettes, and rattlesnakes in the grass complicate the image of the west as an idyllic garden.