The Auction at MCAD Online Catalog - 2023 publication

The Auction at MCAD

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Edgar Arceneaux

Artist Statement:

Originally presented as a major installation entitled Library of Black Lies (2016), Arceneaux has continued creating a limited series of repurposed books (on the subjects of law, government policy, philosophy, etc.) now deemed antiquated and/or obsolete through formal and conceptual means — and encasing the books in crystalized sugar. The crystals are grown into the pages, spines, and covers of the books in a slow creeping process of calcification — as if exquisitely and mysteriously freezing the books in time. In making these sculptural objects, Arceneaux critically explores systems of truth-making, exposing our precarious relationship to disseminating knowledge and information. Drawing from specific sources, each piece is imbued with not only the history of the book’s titles and the subject matter but also the structures of power which produce and perpetuate inequities throughout the world.

Artist Bio:

Edgar Arceneaux (b. 1972, Los Angeles) works in the fields of drawing, sculpture, installation, performance, and video, often exploring connections between historical events and present-day truths. Arceneaux has had solo exhibitions at such institutions as The Kitchen, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Vera List Center at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel, Switzerland; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Museum of Contemporary Art, Linz, Austria.

His work has also been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, Bronx Museum, Performa 15 and Whitney Museum, New York; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Art in Oslo, Norway; San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, among other venues.

Arceneaux’s work resides in such collections as the Whitney Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Ludwig Museum, Cologne; Walker Art Center; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Orange County Museum of Art, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Arceneaux attended the California Institute of the Arts (MFA, 2001), Fachhochschule Aachen (2000), the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1999), and the Art Center College of Design (BFA, 1996).

Represented by: Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Project and Nathalie Obadia Gallery, Paris.

studioedgararceneaux.com

Kent’s Commentaries

2019

Book, crystalized sugar/glass, mirror, pedestal 15 x 12 ¾ x 10 ¾ in.

Estimated Value: $18,000

Kim Benson

Artist Statement:

My paintings are about complexity. Richly dense, abstract surfaces are created through an ouroboric process of sanding, stenciling, casting, and extruding, as well as the more traditional modes of application by brush. References to Renaissance paintings - whether in the image or color palette - populate the recent work, establishing a ground for exploration and excavation. The resultant density becomes paradoxically responsible for imbuing the compositions with vibrating luminosity, even as it roots their presence in the material world. Time emerges as a conceit, built through processes of repetition and erasure, suggesting both the ancient and contemporary. It is my hope that the paintings metaphorically and materially suggest both instability and uncertainty and a continual desire to discover.

Artist Bio:

Kim Benson received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and her BFA from the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, MN. Her paintings have previously appeared at TOA Presents with HAIR+NAILS in her solo exhibition LONG SWEET GONE (2022) and group exhibitions The Human Scale at Rochester Art Center (2021), NADA Chicago Invitational (2019), HAIR+NAILS at 9 Herkimer in Brooklyn (2019), and Relief—Three Fresh Approaches to Building Surface (2018). Benson’s work has also appeared at MANA Contemporary (Chicago), Museum of Wisconsin Art (West Bend, WI), Plains Art Museum (Fargo, ND), and Bockley Gallery (Minneapolis). She has attended residences at La Macina di San Cresci, Adams State University, McCanna House with the North Dakota Museum of Art, Jentel Foundation, and the Soap Factory. Benson is an adjunct professor of art at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

kimbensonart.cargo.site/

Viridian Wall

Estimated Value: $5,000

Chris Larson

Artist Statement:

In Celebration/Love/Loss, Chris Larson constructed a full-scale model of an 1800 sq.ft. 1962 Marcel Breuer house on a wooden frame clad in cardboard. Despite its ephemeral materials, Larson’s model evoked the restrained cinderblock of the original, reiterating the elegance of the split levels that Breuer designed to hug the property above the Mississippi River, located three miles from the artist’s studio in Saint Paul. The replica’s split levels were suspended on stilts on property owned by the Depot in downtown Saint Paul where on the night of June 8th, 2013, it was set on fire.

Burning the Breuer replica is not an act of mourning. Rather than a funeral pyre, it is an act of hope. The spectacular flame prevents melancholy from arising at the loss of Modernist purity, functionalism, and rationality. Ruinous beauty burns to reveal new possibility—seeing through the high point of man-made perfection to the potentialities wrought through its destruction. The burned house persists not as a blank page but as an erased page, a palimpsest, a way to begin again. Architects always find hope in ruin: to build on old foundations but to build something anew. Value is in the fire, the spectacle of ruin, and the release of potentiality. Therein lies hope.

Artist Bio:

Chris Larson is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Minnesota. Since receiving his MFA in sculpture from Yale University in 1991, Larson has received numerous awards, including a New Work Project Grant from The Harpo Foundation, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, and, most recently, a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship. Larson has had solo exhibitions at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, NY, and The View Contemporary Art Space in Switzerland. His work was included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial. In 2018, Larson’s work was included in the 11th Bienal do Mercosul in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and a solo 10-year survey exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati, OH. Recent exhibitions include Saudi Arabia (2021), Chicago (2022), and New York (2023). He is represented by ENGAGE Projects in Chicago. In 2019, he co-founded Second Shift Studio Space of St. Paul, a nonprofit residency program and gallery serving artists/makers/thinkers who are marginalized as a result of their gender identity.

chrislarsonstudio.com

Celebration/Love/Loss

Estimated Value: $8,300

2013 Inkjet archival print 30 x 40 in.

Roman Verostko, Professor Emeritus

Artist Statement:

The completed work Algorithmic Poetry complemented the artist’s 2010-11 show at the Digital Art Museum Gallery, [DAM] Berlin. The digital art pioneer, Frieder Nake, viewed this series as the “Joy of Digital”, a celebration of the charm and grace of algorithmic form.

Artist Bio:

Roman Verostko, born in 1929, maintains an experimental studio in Minneapolis where he has developed original algorithmic procedures for creating his art. A year after graduating from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh (1949), he entered monastic life at St Vincent Archabbey, where he studied philosophy & theology, was ordained a priest, and followed post-graduate studies in New York & Paris. He taught at St. Vincent College and served as Staff Editor for Art & Architecture for the first edition of the New Catholic Encyclopedia (McGraw Hill, 1967).

Artworks from his monastic period included New City Paintings and BROTHER, an 8-foot load-bearing wall cast in concrete for the newly constructed St. Vincent Monastery (1967). He created electronically synchronized audio-visual programs for spiritual retreats during this same period. He departed from monastic life in 1968, married Alice Wagstaff, and joined the humanities faculty at Minneapolis School of Art, now known as Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Aware of the awesome power of algorithmic procedure, he began experimenting with code and exhibited his first coded art program, the Magic Hand of Chance, in 1982. In 1987 he modified his software with interactive routines to drive paint brushes mounted on a pen plotter drawing arm.

Green Cloud

2011

Pen & ink plotter drawing.

Drawing presented as a Three Story Drawing Machine 25 ½ x 29 in.

Estimated Value: $4,500

Robert Whitman

Artist Bio:

Renowned New York photographer Robert Whitman captures a youthful and sexy energy that has become his trademark. His pictures reflect a man who lives openly and passionately.

Many people first pick up a camera to record their passions, whatever they may be. But sooner or later, the best of them find that photography itself is their real passion. That’s true of Robert Whitman. Along the way, he found not just a pastime but a way of life.

As a free spirit traveling the world after college, Whitman found that with his camera, he had entree to people and places he would never have encountered. He’s been on a lifelong journey of discovery ever since, with stops in Brazil, Cuba, Punta del Este, The Alps, Russia, Myanmar, and Mexico, just to name a few. Photographing people from all over, young and old, rich or poor, Whitman has the ability to reveal the common humanity that unites us all. And he’s had a lot of fun along the way. It’s been a great trip!

robertwhitman.com

Prince, Walking Giving The Finger

1977 Silver gelatin paper, Edition 5/10 30 x 40 in.

Estimated Value: $9,500

Silent Auction

Betsy Alwin

Artist Statement:

As a maker, I think about how forms convey experience, sensation, and idea. The objects represented in my work create a foundation for tactility and familiarity. Process and craft are ways to examine material as a carrier of meaning. I ask, “How can form, texture, and material create affect? How might my work convey some of the existential concerns in life?”

Rocket (A Way to Face the Sky) is a work full of contradiction. Like other works in this series, the rocket form combined with lace and porcelain material expresses the contrasting relationships between strength and vulnerability, beauty and fallibility. As the form is called into question, is it also imbued with another kind of power? What seems at odds is truly reflective of how our daily lives are filled with fleeting experiences of the poetic and complicated.

Artist Bio:

Betsy Alwin lives and works in Minnetrista, MN. She attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and holds an MFA from Illinois State University, a BFA in Sculpture, and a BA in Spanish language from Minnesota State University. Her work has been exhibited widely, including the Berkshire Botanical Gardens (Mass MoCA), National Botanic Gardens in Washington D.C., AIR Gallery, New York, The Phipps Center, Hudson, WI, Waiting Room Gallery, Edina, MN, Burnet Fine Art Advisory, Wayzata, MN, and Rubine Red Gallery in Palm Springs, CA. Public commissions include sculptures at the Onoden Elementary School in Tokyo, Japan, Franconia Sculpture Park in Shafer, MN, and Silverwood Park in St. Anthony, MN. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2022 Artist Individual Support Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Alwin recently served as co-curator with Steve Locke for the exhibition Distance: Works on Paper at Dorsky Gallery in Long Island City, NY. Upcoming exhibitions include a solo exhibition at Tractor Works in Minneapolis. Alwin is a Minneapolis collective Rosalux Gallery member and exhibits work at Rubine Red in Palm Springs, CA.

Rocket (A Way to Face the Sky)

2017 Porcelain, 3rd monotype edition 21 x 7 x 7 in.

Estimated Value: $2,500

Allison Baker

Artist Statement:

The work is a fever dream. It echoes the cognitive dissonance between the realities and tumult teetering between layers of attraction and revulsion, desire and desperation. My work achieves a surreal sensation because it exists within the liminal space of recognition and discombobulation. I appropriate real objects that are neutered of all utility, devoid of use and ability, and simply –or hostile– asserting its “unuse.” Their grotesque scales and textures are amplified by our understanding of a potential.

Artist Bio:

Allison Baker earned her MFA in Sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design, a BFA in Sculpture, and a BA in Gender Studies from Indiana University.

Her work investigates hegemonic femininity as a site of transgression and resistance with tongue planted firmly in cheek, where she deploys irony and the abject in order to make space to ponder the soul-crushing banalities of what many might terms “women’s work.”

Baker has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the CICA Museum in South Korea, Zverev Centre of Contemporary Art in Moscow, Knockdown Center in New York, Spartanburg Art Museum, Dreamsong, Spring Break LA with Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, and Franconia Sculpture Park, where her work is currently exhibited.

Untitled Landscape

2022

Coloraid paper and oil pastel on cold press

24 x 30 ⅛ in. (Framed)

Estimated Value: $1,700

Noy Balda

Artist Statement:

My work is highly influenced by music and the emotions it conveys. I use music to process thoughts and emotions and then translate them into a painting. Notes, rhythms, and energy have colors, shapes, and textures. My goal is to create ambiance while giving room for a thoughtful experience.

Artist Bio:

Noy Balda is an Ecuadorian-born painter who derives her work from music. She started painting at the age of six, and after studying a few different art forms, she started creating her own technique, which she calls abstract impressionism. She believes music can be represented in a picture, that every note is a brush stroke and has a color, and that a song can become a painting. Her multicultural background also influences her work; she often takes inspiration from the colors and textures found in her home country. With a background in interior design and a love for the concept of “home,” Noy aims to create beautiful pieces to fit collectors’ personalities and their spaces.

Needed Disruption

Estimated Value: $950

2023

Acrylic on canvas

36 x 24 x 1 ½ in.

Owen Brown

Artist Statement:

In 2020, I painted nine semi-abstract works on a panel inspired by Rilke’s Duino Elegies, one of the greatest “long form” poems of the 20th Century, with fear of longing, terror, beauty, and angels. This one is from the 2nd elegy, and the lines behind it are: “We alone fly past all things, as fugitive as the wind. And all things conspire to keep silent about is, half out of shame perhaps, half as unutterable hope.

Artist Bio:

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking. The source of my practice is the world with all its beauty and confusion – nature, so alien and alluring, the social, equally baffling but no less wonderful, and the uncomfortable friction between that and our internal interpretations. Life eludes easy understanding or conclusion: what are we seeing when we really think about it, and how did we miss it before? I was born in Chicago, trained as a classical musician, took my first art class at 23, and much of what I’ve wanted to do since then has been to paint. I hold degrees from Yale College and University of Chicago and was a degree student at California College of the Arts. I lived for over 30 years in San Francisco, where I was represented by Meridian Gallery. I now live in Minneapolis. Here I show principally with Veronique Wantz and Grand Hand. My works are in collections in this country, Europe, and Asia.

Duino Elegies, the Second

Estimated Value: $1,250

2020 Acrylic on board 24 x 24 x 1 ½ in.

Genie Castro

Artist Statement:

I enjoy the process and the play in the way I work. The monotype print I created began as a painting on a plexiglass plate. Knowing how some of the inks will create a new color and anticipating the blending of colors are exciting. I love the energy and the vibrancy of the inks. This is fuel for creating this masterful playful painting that is joyful in feel. Jazz also comes into play as it adds spirit to this work. You can see the poetic rhythm of Sunshine Sound. The dampened paper is placed over the plate and bonded with the inks as it goes through the manual press. I patiently pulled the paper from the plate. The grand size adds to the thrill of the process and the excitement of the finished piece.

Artist Bio:

Genie Castro is a community leader in the arts. She creates unity with projects she is involved in by connecting with people. Castro is the director and owner of a printmaking studio in the Casket Arts Building in Northeast Minneapolis called SuperCharged Printmakers. It is there she and other printmakers create an inviting space for artists to create freely in the medium of printmaking and have showing opportunities.

Castro has an art gallery booth at the Minnesota State Fair. With a team of artists, they sell and promote one another during the twelve days of the fair and beyond. It is this entrepreneurial drive that keeps Castro creating unique experiences for people. Castro serves her community with Mia’s art programs–Art Adventure and Art Perchance. She was the founder and curator of the annual Music and Arts Show fundraiser for Willow River Elementary in Hudson, WI, from 2014-2020. As membership director and art curator at Betty Danger’s Country Club, she discovered the tremendous value of being a Northeast Minneapolis Artists Association (NEMAA) artist member and continues that involvement today. Castro and her businesses have been part of promoting major events by being featured on Fox 9 News numerous times.

Castro’s work has hung alongside artists Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, Frank Stella, Robert Longo, and Donald Sultan and at the Chelsea Tahari Showroom in New York’s Art District. Her large-scale monotypes and screen prints are in private and corporate collections. She works as a corporate curator with Aimia and Patterson Thuente IP. Castro is excited to continue working with artists, directors, and city officials as she did at 325 Blake Road Project in Hopkins with Forecast Public Art to make a difference in communities.

Sunshine Sound

2017

Lithography ink, lithography crayon monotype on Stonehenge paper

43 x 27 in.

Estimated Value: $5,500

Elliot DeBruyn

Artist Statement:

This is a 35mm candid photograph while on a trip in Florida.

Artist Bio:

Elliot deBruyn is a documentary filmmaker and video journalist working globally with clients from commercial, nonprofit, and news organizations. Previous work includes Emmy-nominated documentaries with The New York Times, a film at Minneapolis Institute of Art directed by artist Teo Nguyen as part of his exhibit Viet Nam Peace Project, the award-winning documentary “Mahålang,” and global commercial campaigns. He currently works as a New York Times video journalist and on independent documentaries in the U.S. and across the world.

elliotdebruyn.com

Handstand

2022

Archival inkjet print

24 x 36 in.

Estimated Value: $1,450

Anne DeCoster

Artist Statement:

Having grown up in Minnesota near water and farmlands, my painting has mostly focused around the themes of space and natural movement which are found in the landscape there. Lakes and rivers and oceans have all been important to me, as they are to us all. They remind us that we are all connected. What we do, or neglect to do, affects us all everywhere eventually.

Artist Bio:

Anne DeCoster is a St. Paul native now living in Rhode Island. In the mid-1960s she studied painting with Sidney Delevante in New York. During the same period she raised four children and wrote and illustrated two children’s books that were published by Doubleday. In 1974 she continued her studies at the Instituto Allende in Mexico and in 1984 she completed her MFA at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. DeCoster has taught at Hamline University, been a visiting artist at Macalester and St. Olaf Colleges and was a resident artist at Concordia College. In 1998 DeCoster completed a major commission of six paintings for Minnesota Life in St. Paul. DeCoster spent summers at her home on the St. Croix River where the moving waters continually influenced her work.

grovelandgallery.com

annedecoster.com

The Swimmer

Estimated Value: $4,000

Rita Kirsch Dungey

Artist Statement:

Painting and creating images is both an inward and outward journey for me. My abstract and representational images are inspired by a variety of sources and processes. I start a painting with complete openness. Sometimes I have a specific plan involving conventional composition and traditional methods. At other times, my paintings develop somewhat on their own. I trust how a composition will unfold and where it will take me. Freedom to create with unlimited possibilities and the bonus element of discovery are part of my creative process.

I use a variety of materials and methods to build my images with multiple layers of paint and mixed media. I create texture and energize the forms and surfaces by building them up and taking them down–layering, incising, and sanding, and sometimes rebuilding, as images are drawn out and materialized, or peeled back or dissolved to unearth subjects. Some marks are impulsive while others are carefully planned. The process of construction and destruction, addition and subtraction, and getting the materials and subject matter to either behave or misbehave continues until there is some resolution.

I like to leave some things to nature, where seemingly unrelated components cross paths, interact, or organize. I paint, and ask questions later about the figures or scenes that have emerged. Often the end result is more, and larger than anything I could have planned before starting the journey. My process stops short of a full statement, allowing the imagination of the viewer to continue the journey and further unfold the images in a way that is relevant to them.

Artist Bio:

Rita Kirsch Dungey’s non-representational and abstract mixed media works are a combination of bold forms, colors, and textures that are intuitively and expressively combined to create lush, free, and energetic images.

Rita’s background in health-care, healing, and helping others is the foundation of her artistic practice. She experiences art as a combination of life-giving forces and honors the freedom to create. Having courage, responding to what occurs, trusting nature, and following one’s rhythms all work to breathe life in to her work and art.

ritadungey.com

Breaking Waves

2022

Painting, mixed media

12 x 12 in.

Estimated Value: $1,200

Andrew Faulkner

Artist Statement:

Born into a family of artists, designers, and architects, my paintings fuse the structural sensibilities of my architect father and the often riotous color sense of my interior designer mother. I studied painting at Trinity College with colorist George Chapman who was a student of Joseph Albers and learned the art of defining space with color and value. After 30 years of success in the graphic design field, I decided to get a real job and become a painter.

Artist Bio:

Andrew Faulkner’s work is shown at The Pamela Walsh Gallery (Palo Alto, CA), The Portland Art Gallery (Portland, ME), The Blue Print Gallery (Dallas, TX) and Ruby Living Design in Mill Valley. He has also exhibited at The Jen Tough Gallery, Benicia. His work has also sold at other Bay Area galleries such as: SLATE Contemporary, Andrea Schwartz Gallery and Chandra Cerrito / Art Advisors. His illustrations have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and Marin Magazine.

andrew-faulkner.com

Coral Ridge

2022

Oil on canvas (framed in maple wood)

12 x 12 in.

Estimated Value: $1,200

Andrew Faulkner

Artist Statement:

Born into a family of artists, designers, and architects, my paintings fuse the structural sensibilities of my architect father and the often riotous color sense of my interior designer mother. I studied painting at Trinity College with colorist George Chapman who was a student of Joseph Albers and learned the art of defining space with color and value. After 30 years of success in the graphic design field, I decided to get a real job and become a painter.

Artist Bio:

Andrew Faulkner’s work is shown at The Pamela Walsh Gallery (Palo Alto, CA), The Portland Art Gallery (Portland, ME), The Blue Print Gallery (Dallas, TX) and Ruby Living Design in Mill Valley. He has also exhibited at The Jen Tough Gallery, Benicia. His work has also sold at other Bay Area galleries such as: SLATE Contemporary, Andrea Schwartz Gallery and Chandra Cerrito / Art Advisors. His illustrations have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and Marin Magazine.

andrew-faulkner.com

Sand Bar

2022

Oil on canvas (framed in maple wood)

12 x 12 in.

Estimated Value: $1,200

Brad Geiken

Artist Statement:

Time passes by in the blink of an eye.

Artist Bio:

Brad Geiken is a painter living on a tiny farm in the wilds of Colorado. When he is not tending to the chickens or guarding the potatoes, he’s blissfully toiling away in his studio, grateful to have another day to work.

Sketch of a 100-year-old woman

Estimated Value: $350

2023

Oil on canvas

10 x 8 ¾ x ¼ in.

Kei Gratton

Artist Statement:

Waking to the light — the subtle inner stirring shines new insights into creative intentions and goals. During the 2020 pandemic lockdown, I set forth to create 48 paintings embracing my passion for astrology. The Waxing crescent moon is part of the moon’s eight cyclic phases governing emotions and encourages inward reflection.

Artist Bio:

My work has been more about shadowy symbolism, refraining from getting too specific. The layers are where the deeper symbolism lies. Beyond the layers, the viewer is invited to go deep as you access your own inner poetic wisdom — a sincere invitation to express yourself from a place of truth. To ask the hard questions. To follow your path and BE dedicated to the shadow work required to move us through the veil and into a New Earth perspective.

In my studio, I meditate before painting, I surround myself with crystals and found stones. I light sage and invite Reiki and my Spirit Guides to be present. I paint with my hands and rarely use a paintbrush. I touch each piece with all my love.

Waking to the light — Waxing crescent moon

2021

Mixed media acrylic on canvas

30 x 34 x 2 ½ in.

Estimated Value: $3,000

Kate Hartfiel

Artist Statement:

A childhood spent on the backs of a spirited Pinto pony and a gentle Arabian mare defined my youth that was filled with independence and freedom. Summers spent at camp in the Rocky Mountains riding, climbing, and camping fostered a love affair with the West that has yet to lose its passion. Family car trips across the Great Plains gave me an appreciation, if not a romanticized notion, of the “Big Sky Country” and the people who still work those lands today.

Artist Bio:

Kate Hartfiel was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and graduated from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY. She loves collaborating with clients on commissioned pieces and seeing the joy they give people when the artwork comes home to live with them.

Gotcha!

Estimated Value: $1,500

2023

Acrylic on canvas

30 x 30 in.

Clarence Holbrook Carter

Artist Statement:

It is the mysterious and magical elements in life which have always captivated me.

Artist Bio:

Clarence Holbrook Carter (b. 1904, Portsmouth, OH, 1904—2000), well-known for his large architectural paintings and symbolic landscapes, earned an early reputation as an esteemed painter of the American scene in the 1930’s and 1940’s. His drawings, watercolors and oils of rural America often depicted the stoicism and despair of the Depression era. What appears to be benign regional realism in Carter’s early work, often reveal layers of dark subtle social undertones upon further inspection. Carter attended the Cleveland School of Art, OH from 1923 – 1927. He has been included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, TX; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Cincinnati Art Museum, OH; Cleveland Museum of Art, OH; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; and the National Academy, New York, NY. He has held solo exhibitions at the Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MN; Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City; New Jersey State Museum, Trenton; Cleveland Art Center, OH; Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY; Suffolk Art Museum, Stony Brook, NY; Feragil Galleries, New York, NY; and Findlay Galleries, Chicago, IL. Carter is included in the public collections of Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Cleveland Museum of Art, OH; and Columbus Museum of Art, OH

Mining

Watercolor

19 x 17 in.

Estimated Value: $1,900

Hiroshi Hosomi

Artist Bio:

Hiroshi Hosomi is a woodblock printmaker from Japan, born in 1936. Learn more about Hosomi’s life and practice here.

https://vimeo.com/83907628

Samuel Johnson

Artist Statement:

I wasn’t initially drawn toward making unglazed utilitarian pottery, but over time, I began to see this as a way to evoke a sense of stillness and mystery in my work. My aim is to make useful pots that offer little in the way of ornamentation. Rather, I want them to be cultural touchstones, objects of contemplation as well as tools for domestic life. Within a culture that celebrates quick and insignificant revelations, these pots act as counterpoints, disruptors that are both recognizable (e.g., a vase) yet somehow favor the flawed, scared, and vulnerable over the ornate and pure. This disruption is meant to make way for an alternative narrative, a way of sensing oneself and the world with greater empathy and awareness.

When shaping a vessel, I often use a tool to scrape or beat a form that may otherwise seem rigidly structured and symmetrically balanced. This heightens the tension between conventional expectations and those presented. I use natural materials to further evoke a sense of the unexpected, such as collecting and using a local plant, such as Scouring Rush, to make fire drawings on the work or by embedding small stones in the clay, which later erupt through the stone-like surface of the pottery.

It is significant that clay and fire are both irregular and natural forces. So are we. We have a capacity for reason and mathematical precision and yet are half-wild, full of biological and spiritual mysteries which drive our impulses despite existing, often beneath consciousness. Poets refer to it as the shadow – aspects of our personality, our humanity, which are hidden from us, yet bear a significant psychological or spiritual influence all the same. The central theme of my work is related to the discovery, and eventual acceptance, of this transcendent mystery.

My work looks dark and rustic. There is evidence of both the process of shaping wet clay and its transformation through fire. I achieve this by placing pots within a wood-burning kiln, and over the course of a firing, they are marked by wood and heat, melting ash, and burning embers. The resulting patina of natural hues and irregular textures creates quiet surfaces that seem more like a shadow than scorched earth and aim to strike a balance between the wild and mysterious parts of ourselves and that part of our psyche that sets us apart from them.

Artist Bio:

Samuel Johnson was born in Minnesota on the eastern prairie of the Red River Valley in 1973. After studying painting and ceramics at the University of Minnesota at Morris, he served a three- and half-year apprenticeship in pottery under Richard Bresnahan. In 2000, he was invited as a guest of Denmark’s Design School to study Scandinavian Ceramic design in Copenhagen while also working at the International Ceramic Center in Skaelskor and as an assistant in private porcelain studios. After working for a short period in a studio in New York, he traveled to Japan as a studio guest of Koie Ryoji. In 2005, Johnson earned graduate degrees in fine art from the University of Iowa. He currently serves on the Advisory Board for Artaxis.org, an international artist organization, and is the Department Chair and Professor of Art at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University in Central Minnesota.

Jar with Scraped Lip

2014

Wood-fired stoneware

15 ½ x 14 ¼ in.

Estimated Value: $1,200

Michael Kareken

Artist Statement:

Grill is one of a series of drawings I made between 2014 and 2017 inspired by my visits to “u-pull” auto salvage yards, places where mechanics and car owners can rummage through wrecked vehicles to find used parts. The series focuses on the stripped automobiles – their forms, structures, broken sections, and fragmented pieces. For me, the forms of the vehicles evoke the human body, and the series addresses (obliquely) themes of vulnerability, mortality, and loss. The drawings are made with conte crayon on dura-lar, a polyester drafting film that reminds me of the plastic laminated into windshield safety glass and the vinyl surfaces of automobile seats and dashboards. In 2018, I published the drawings in a book entitled Parts, a signed copy of which is included along with this drawing.

Artist Bio:

Michael Kareken is a Minneapolis-based artist and professor of painting and drawing at Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He has received grants from The Bush Foundation, McKnight Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Arts Midwest, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Vogelstein Foundation. He was a recipient of The Louise Nevelson Award for Art from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and was awarded a residency fellowship from the Millay Colony for the Arts. Kareken’s work is in the collections of Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota Museum of American Art, and Minnesota Historical Society, among others. He has exhibited his work regionally and nationally, including in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Santa Fe, and is represented by Groveland Gallery in Minneapolis and Davidson Galleries in Seattle.

Auto Salvage Series / Grill

2017 Conte crayon on curalar 18 ½ x 24 in.

Estimated Value: $1,650

Michael Manzavrokas

Artist Bio:

Artist Michael Manzavrakos (American, 1951 - 2014) had talent that spanned a remarkable number of media: photography, sculpture, printmaking, and painting. His work was represented by museums, galleries, and is widely collected. Manzavrakos was also a skilled craftsman, who designed and built museum exhibitions, commercial sets, commissioned furniture, and sculptural installations.

It’s Difficult to Remember II & III

Estimated Value: $3,000

CL Martin ’05

Artist Statement:

El is trapped in a world of colorful, abstracted letterforms. She wants you to free her, but she doesn’t trust you because you keep staring at her. The subject confronts the scrutiny of the onlooker with her penetrating gaze, taking power back and transcending the fact that she’s not real by looking very much alive.

Artist Bio:

CL Martin is a queer, female, figurative artist working primarily in Minneapolis. She uses traditional media to experiment with visual situations involving enigmatic characters with their own unique identity and presence. Martin uses numerous references ranging from pop culture to historical events to invite viewers into examining their own preconceived, psychological projections of identity performance, cultural history, and gender roles. Martin has a BFA in Painting from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and in 2007, received an Artist Initiative Grant from Minnesota State Arts Board and National Endowment for The Arts. She has exhibited internationally from London to Italy, and her work resides in private collections in London, Ireland, Russia, Paris, Romania, Los Angeles, and New York.

El

2022

Charcoal, pencil, acrylic on paper

21 x 27 in.

Estimated Value: $1,100

Angie McMonigal

Artist Statement:

“It is only by selection, by elimination, and by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things.”

- Georgia O’Keeffe”

Artist Bio:

I’m a fine art and commercial-architecture photographer based in Chicago, striving to bring a detailed, thoughtful perspective to my work, whether for clients or through the workshops I lead. Having grown up surrounded by nature yet fascinated by the big city I’ve called home for more than two decades, I bring the meditative calm of my upbringing to a terrain that’s always transforming. Drawing from my education in the micro sciences (molecular biology, microbiology, virology), my focus is more frequently on bold architectural details rather than sweeping cityscapes, creating images that celebrate those unexpectedly iconic elements hiding in plain sight.

I work with art consultants, designers, architectural firms, and private collectors to provide compelling photographs for their collections. I’ve also collaborated with national and global brands, including St. Regis Hotels & Resorts and Minted/West Elm, creating distinctive images to complement their brands. My goal is to create images that draw out the organic interplay between design, structure, environment, and society.

Publication credits include Shots Magazine, Chicago Magazine, National Geographic, WSJ, Architectural Digest, among others. Exhibitions by galleries in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Barcelona, and other destinations. Including my Urban Quilt series with the Catherine Edelman Gallery’s Chicago Project.

Lincoln Park Pavilion 1638

Estimated Value: $1,350

Miles Mendenhall

Artist Bio:

Miles Mendenhall (b.1986, Burnsville, MN) cultivates the possible through an intense dedication to his studio laboratory. Working with a combination of advanced digital tools and archaic analog printmaking techniques, he plums the depths of the visual world in service of unique surfaces. Working serially and with a keen eye to approaches normally associated with painting and sculpture, he sees the individual objects themselves represent specific moments through which the totality of his vision, one which he is constantly discovering through intuition and complex gestures, becomes wondrously fixed in time and space.

Flowers (10.25)

2022

Gelatin and pigment on paper

28 x 21 in.

Estimated Value: $2,500

Jenny Monick

Artist Bio:

Jenny Monick (b. 1966, Minneapolis) lives and works in New York City. She received her BA from Barnard College, an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Select exhibition history: Reserve Ames, Los Angeles; September Gallery, Hudson, NY; Kiria Koula, San Francisco; Callicoon Fine Arts, New York; and Boston University Art Gallery, Boston. Select bibliography: The New York Times, Artforum, and The Brooklyn Rail. Monick is also a visiting instructor at various MFA programs.

Peregine

Estimated Value: $3,000

2020 Oil on linen

14 x 11 in

Bob Nugent

Artist Bio:

Bob Nugent received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1971. Since that time he has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships including a Tiffany Foundation Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, Fullbright Travel Grant and a California Arts Council Grant for his work in Brazil. In 2005, after 34 years of teaching painting and drawing, Nugent retired from Sonoma State University. The following year he was elected to Professor Emeritus in Art at Sonoma. Nugent has had over 120 solo exhibitions and has been included in over 650 group exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America.

Nugent first became interested in the Indigenous peoples and rain forest of South America in the summer of 1984 during a trip to Sao Paulo, Brazil to see an artist friend. Over more than 30 years he has made repeated sojourns to South America and in particular the Amazon Basin of Brazil. Returning to Brazil now one to two times a year, Nugent continues his research and study of the flora and fauna of the Amazon Region as well as other parts of the country. But it is the vital layer, as Nugent calls it, which interests him the most.

Obara Variation Series: #2

Estimated Value: $1,700

1984 Monotype, handmade paperworks

15 ¾ x 13 ¾ in.

Bob Nugent

Artist Bio:

Bob Nugent received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1971. Since that time he has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships including a Tiffany Foundation Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, Fullbright Travel Grant and a California Arts Council Grant for his work in Brazil. In 2005, after 34 years of teaching painting and drawing, Nugent retired from Sonoma State University. The following year he was elected to Professor Emeritus in Art at Sonoma. Nugent has had over 120 solo exhibitions and has been included in over 650 group exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America.

Nugent first became interested in the Indigenous peoples and rain forest of South America in the summer of 1984 during a trip to Sao Paulo, Brazil to see an artist friend. Over more than 30 years he has made repeated sojourns to South America and in particular the Amazon Basin of Brazil. Returning to Brazil now one to two times a year, Bob continues his research and study of the flora and fauna of the Amazon Region as well as other parts of the country. But it is the vital layer, as Nugent calls it, which interests him the most.

Obara Variation Series: #3

Estimated Value: $1,700

1984 Monotype, handmade paperworks

15 ¾ x 13 ¾ in.

Patricia Olson ’98, MFA

Artist Statement:

Writers are always advised “to write what you know,” so I claimed that for myself, “to paint what I know.” And I spend a good deal of time looking at art and observing others doing the same. This piece is part of my ongoing series Looking at Art, and these folks are at the Franconia Sculpture Park.

Artist Bio:

Patricia Olson was born in south Minneapolis and earned a B.A. in studio art at Macalester College in St. Paul, where she studied with painter Jerry Rudquist. She received an M.F.A. in Visual Studies from Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She is a founding member of WARM, the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota. Olson has shown her work in the Midwest and beyond for over 40 years and has art in the permanent collections of Minnesota Historical Society, Minnesota Museum of American Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at University of Minnesota. She is Professor Emerita at St. Catherine University in Saint Paul, where she lives and works. Olson is an artist member of Form+Content Gallery in downtown Minneapolis.

Looking at Art: Franconia Sculpture Park

Estimated Value: $850

2008 Oil on rag board 20 x 16 in.

Jesse Matthew Petersen

Artist Statement:

My collage work (sourced from fashion magazines) is a synthesis of my varied interests, such as classical painting, painterly abstraction, street art, haute couture, and the natural world. While I eliminate anything overtly recognizable as a human body, I seek to create an ambiguous sculptural figuration, alien objects defying taxonomic classification that retain the same commodification of desire common to fashion advertising.

Artist Bio:

Jesse Matthew Petersen is a multidisciplinary artist whose work encompasses painting, collage, drawing, photography, video, and sound performance. He lives and works in Minneapolis and has shown both locally and nationally.

Untitled

2023

Magazine collage on illustration board

17 x 14 in.

Estimated Value: $1,100

Bill Phelps

Artist Bio:

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Phelps has built an impressive career despite having no formal art training, lending his talents to Italian Vogue, French Marie Claire, Conde Nast Traveller UK, The New York Times Magazine, Fortune and Interview, and picking up both an IPA Lucie Award and the Grand Prize of Portraits for the World Press. Phelps is also the co-designer, builder and owner of Cafe Moto in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

billphelps.com

Estimated Value: $2,700

Jon Renzella ’06

Artist Statement:

I watched the documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams some time ago. It’s about the Chauvet cave in France, where paintings from over 30,000 years ago were discovered. It seemed to me that the works were done by very skilled hands, which means they had made many drawings before the ones in the film. It seems possible to my amateur thinking that the exterior rock walls would have been filled with dozens of drawings, and each time the weather cleaned them away, a new canvas would appear for the ancient graffiti artists to paint their messages. Anyway, that’s what I hope.

Artist Bio:

Jon Renzella is an American woodcut, comic book, and tattoo artist based in Taichung, Taiwan. Since 2010, he has run the non-profit, community art space Lei Gallery with the goal of fostering the arts and building connections between foreign and local communities in central Taiwan. He is a former artist in residence at Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at Stock20 Artist Village in Taichung, Taiwan, and is a past winner of the Da Dun Art Prize. In 2015 he finished an apprenticeship at Diao Yue Tattoo.

Paleolithic Graffiti

2021

Woodcut with watercolor on paper

20 ½ x 27 ½ in.

Estimated Value: $1,350

George Roberts

Artist Statement:

In the fall of 2009, it occurred to me that the fiftieth anniversary of my writing poems, of once upon a time receiving an invitation into the community of poetry, was approaching. The thrust and thread of my life had been irrevocably altered one evening in October 1961 when I inadvertently attended a poetry reading by Brother Antoninus (William Everson). I felt some gesture of gratitude in order. Thus, the idea for Bringing Gifts, Bringing News has its beginnings.

I was searching for a way to convey the weight and presence of that community of poets I had spent half a century with, learning about the life of poetry from each. I wrote out a list of fifty mentors, teachers, colleagues, and students, all of whom I have known, loved, and learned from.

Artist Bio:

A poet, educator, visual artist, and proprietor of Homewood Studios and Gallery in North Minneapolis, George Roberts has spent the past sixty years loving the written word and finding ways to push it out into the world. In 1990–91 Roberts discovered ways to give visual form to his poetry when a sabbatical from teaching literature and writing at North Community High School provided him with time to enroll in classes at MCAD. The courses in printmaking, paper making, letterpress printing, drawing, and artists’ book making led him to establish in 1993 his own DownStairs Press, which was initially housed in a small room at the back of his basement.

Bringing Gifts, Bringing News

2011

Fifty Poems, Five Lines Each 5 x 9 in.

Estimated Value: $125

Anika Schneider ’19, MFA

Artist Statement:

This is a one-of-a-kind print created as part of a series to represent my Chinese self through an American understanding of Chinese identity. This work reclaims and mirrors Europeans’ invention of chinoiserie, an imitation, and interpretation of Chinese motifs and techniques in art. Interweaving kitchen objects, animals, and botanical elements, Past of My Past creates a Chinese-American fable that explores identity and culture and reframes our understanding of Chineseness. The work uses dry-point etching and monotype on 100-percent cotton paper and was created using a Takach etching press in Petaluma, California.

Artist Bio:

Anika Hsiung Schneider is a narrative artist who draws on lived experiences, memory, and family history. With an Asian-Mixed, female identity, she resides in a highly racialized body that also exists in a liminal state. This connection to a liminal state of being closely connects her work to themes of loss, transitional spaces, and visualizing the intangible.

Schneider received her MFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). She currently serves as the Director of Exhibitions and Artist Programs at Minnesota Center for Book Arts and adjunct faculty at MCAD. Schneider’s work has been exhibited nationally at galleries such as Soo Visual Arts Center, Rosalux Gallery, Gallery B St. Paul, Circle Gallery, Visarts, Dumbarton Concert Gallery, and Glen Echo Park Partnership for Arts and Culture. She has also participated in residencies in Wolfsville, Nova Scotia, Solomons Island, Maryland, and Petaluma, California. She has also been awarded a Windgate University Fellowship, Gettysburg College Provost Grant, the InCahoots residency Boost Prize full grant, and an MN State Arts Board Grant.

Schneider currently lives and works in Minneapolis, where she enjoys giving a home to secondhand furniture and hiking with her dog Wolly.

Past of My Past

2022

Drypoint etching and monotype on Rives BFK

30 x 44 in.

Estimated Value: $2,000

Mark Schoening

Artist Statement:

The Soft Focus series of paintings is a study of component variation and my introduction to the concept of ambient occlusion. The concept is a study of light reflection and computational shadow bounce. The works rely on a calculated internal space of shadow or darkness to produce variation in surface texture.

Artist Bio:

With an expansive practice focusing on painting, sculpture, and digital modeling, Schoening employs multiple forms of digital fabrication and design in the production of his work. Schoening’s work has been included in exhibitions in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas, Minneapolis, and Copenhagen, including the Decordova Museum’s 2008 Annual. His work has been featured in numerous art fairs, including Pulse NY, Pulse Miami, Berlin Liste, Art Copenhagen, and the Dallas Art Fair. He has been a featured artist in New American Paintings, and his work has appeared in Beautiful Decay, Flaunt Magazine, and the Huffington Post. Schoening’s work is in the collections of the Decordova Museum and Third Point Management, among others. He is a visiting lecturer in the Department of Art at University of Minnesota and runs The Porch Gallery, a seasonal exhibition space in Minneapolis.

Soft Focus 23 - 001

Estimated Value: $2,400

2023

Latex on lasercut MDF 11 ½ x 10 x 1 in.

Dietrich Sieling

Artist Statement:

As an artist with autism, Sieling’s work reflects his dynamic and sometimes chaotic take on the world. This is a particularly fine work, depicting the artist’s train of thought about his day, eating Mock Duck at Saigon Cafe, his love of the Como Zoo, and Unisex restrooms at MCAD. Expressive and full of crossed-out areas, it is a direct imprint of a mind at work.

Artist Bio:

Dietrich Sieling lives in Minneapolis and is a full-time artist living with complex autism. His art has been featured in solo exhibitions at Bockley Gallery, whom also represents him, and Minnesota Museum of American Art in the Twin Cities; as well as Kabinett & Kammer and Governors Island in New York City; and group exhibitions including the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, ND; and Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis. His work is also in numerous private collections and has been featured in SooVAC’s series, Collect Call, an exhibition of selected works from local collectors. In addition to his solo exhibition at SooVAC, Sieling also has an upcoming exhibition at Lagoon New York in Brooklyn.

In the Women’s Lockerroom

Estimated Value: $550

2009 Graphite on paper 16 ¾ x 14 in.

Dietrich Sieling

Artist Statement:

As an artist with autism, Sieling’s work reflects his dynamic and sometimes chaotic take on the world. This is a particularly fine work, depicting the artist’s train of thought about his day, eating Mock Duck at Saigon Cafe, his love of the Como Zoo, and Unisex restrooms at MCAD. Expressive and full of crossed-out areas, it is a direct imprint of a mind at work.

Artist Bio:

Dietrich Sieling lives in Minneapolis and is a full-time artist living with complex autism. His art has been featured in solo exhibitions at Bockley Gallery, whom also represents him, and Minnesota Museum of American Art in the Twin Cities; as well as Kabinett & Kammer and Governors Island in New York City; and group exhibitions including the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, ND; and Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis. His work is also in numerous private collections and has been featured in SooVAC’s series, Collect Call, an exhibition of selected works from local collectors. In addition to his solo exhibition at SooVAC, Sieling also has an upcoming exhibition at Lagoon New York in Brooklyn.

Word Spin

Estimated Value: $550

2009 Graphite on paper

16 ¾ x 14 in.

John Snyder

Artist Statement:

Pictographic painting on paper in orange and black. A main figure, perhaps blowing a musical instrument, is surrounded by other quasi-head-like images and abstract symbols. Beautifully composed and compelling work in its visual rhythm.

Artist Bio:

Art is about having an experience of the senses and emotions. Maine artist, John Snyder, continuously strives to open up those experiences in his work. Born in 1965 and having lived and grown in different parts of the United States, John settled on an art career in his mid-twenties. Though he took art classes at the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota and Heartwood College of Art in Kennebunk, Maine, he is largely self taught. The book The Natural Draw by Kimon Nicolaides played a major role in the development of Snyder’s approach to drawing. The energy of his work reflects years of practice and a sincere dedication to the imagination

Untitled

Estimated Value: $1,600

2015

Acrylic pigment on paper drawing

29 ½ x 20 ¼ in.

Marilyn Stevens

Artist Statement:

My mixed media work uses traditional handwork techniques; combining imagery, text, handmade paper, and textiles in unconventional ways. At first glance, one sees re-appropriation and re-use of pattern paper and dress forms. But further exploration of each piece reveals a multitude of layers; a host of stories and life reflections. The stitch, used in many of my pieces is a connection to prior generations.

My work draws on memories. Growing up in Nebraska I have a fondness for wide open spaces and horses. My mother and grandmother were a significant influence in my love for clothing, textiles, and design.

Artist Bio:

Marilyn Steven’s art ambitions started later in life after feeling a creative void for authenticity and personal expression. After decades nurturing her craft, she is an accomplished artist with juried exhibitions at the Phipps in Hudson, WI, Museum of American Art in St. Paul, MN and Textile Center in Minneapolis, MN. Commission work includes Forum Communications in Fargo, ND and Gunkelman Interior Design in Minneapolis. Her work has been described as elegant, intelligent, and thought provoking.

A native of Nebraska, Stevens received her BA in Journalism from University of Nebraska at Lincoln. After graduation, she relocated to Minneapolis where she established a successful product design career in the home industry. Stevens, now retired, balances her time between art, travel, and giving back.

She works out of her studio in Diamond Bluff, WI during the summer and winters are spent in Tucson, AZ.

Summer Fields

2022

Handmade papers, canvas, hand-stitched vintage Indonesian textiles, and acrylics 24 x 24 in.

Estimated Value: $1,850

Jonathan Thunder

Artist Statement:

A vignette, a bar scene, the characters came to celebrate together, knowing it was a gamble. Inspired by recent times.

Artist Bio:

Jonathan Thunder infuses his personal lens with real-time world experiences using a wide range of mediums. He is known for his surreal paintings, digitally animated films, and installations in which he addresses the subject matter of personal experience and social commentary. Thunder is an enrolled member of the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe and makes his home and studio in Duluth, MN.

He has attended the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, NM, and studied Visual Effects and Motion Graphics in Minneapolis, MN, at the Art Institute International. His work has been featured in many states, regional, and national exhibitions, as well as in local and international publications. Thunder is the recipient of a 2020-21 Pollock – Krasner Foundation Award for his risk-taking in painting. Since his first solo exhibit in 2004, he has won several awards for his short films in national and international competitions. His work is in the permanent collections of museums and universities throughout Turtle Island.

Devil on Kazoo

2022

Acrylic pigment on paper drawing

40 x 36 in.

Estimated Value: $2,550

Suyao Tian ’17, MFA

Artist Statement:

For me, painting is a language through which I connect to the world. I was born during the one-child-only generation of China in the 80s. Growing up, I hadn’t any siblings, I couldn’t have pets, and making friends was limited by rules, which inhibited my communication and confidence. As a child, my companions were all kinds of small bugs. I caught them, put them in jars, spoke to them, and played with them. They were the only listeners in my childhood. As an adult, I still often talk to these creatures, but Instead of putting them in the jar, I put them into my artistic creations. They have become a symbolic and language of my own. My primary medium is watercolor, but I also use different pen and ink marks to define the details of eachpainting, giving layers and depth to the painting. In this way, the mark-making creates both a micro and macro world.

My creative process is to extract the fragments of memory and separate, reorganize, and integrate them. This process is my communication with them and a process of self-release and expression. These peculiar images often appear in my memory through dreams and subconscious imaginings, so I use abstraction to catch a moment, feeling, and unclear form when it appears in my mind.

My work creates a peaceful and safe space that hopefully invites the viewer’s mind to wander and explore, but is not an overtly symbolic object to suggest the direction. Instead, I use abstract shapes, biomorphic, figure-like, and unknown elements to prompt curiosity. There’s no right or wrong; there’s no direction, just wandering to inspire people to explore and find themselves again and again. I sometimes hear people say they found peace in my works, that they find encouragement and healing. I believe inspiring people to find themselves is the most important function of my work and its place within society. This introspection is critical to society because no one is capable of full peace and love for others without first understanding themselves, and it is my hope that my works provide such peace to all who see it.

Artist Bio:

Suyao Tian is an artist and gallerist of Viewpoint Gallery residing in the Twin Cities, MN. She also serves as adjunct faculty at Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Her paintings have been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions, along with curating multiple group shows. Her works have caught the eye of national and international companies, with her designs applied and sold across a range of product types, like Room & Board, BOND Dubai, Merlette NYC, and more. In 2022 she opened Viewpoint Gallery with her husband to celebrate art and artists, generate new ideas for the community, and provide opportunities for greater engagement of people within the community. While curating, painting, running the gallery and Modern Cover™, and raising her son, she continues to be a strong and active member across organizations within the art and creative communities of the Twin Cities. She currently serves on the Executive Board of Art Buddies and Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association (NEMAA), and is passionately engaged with multiple galleries and organizations across the state.

Revive 2022

Mixed media (watercolor and acrylic can oil paint)

42 x 30 in.

Estimated Value: $3,500

Chris “CAW” Williams ’07

Artist Statement:

Part of the Mutated Animal series.

Artist Bio:

Christopher A. Williams (b.1984) is a contemporary artist and community-based muralist. His inter-laden pattern development formulates around his technique which doesn’t leave him prohibited from experimenting with new approaches to painting, constantly exploring new processes in the application of artwork production. His emphasis on interweaving his visual attunement into the piece influences the fragmented, abstracted technique he uses. Williams holds a BFA in animation from Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He has been in numerous community based projects, group and solo shows and has produced several murals in the Minneapolis area over the past decade.

Top Dog

2018 Mixed media

41 x 29 x 1 in.

Estimated Value: $4,500

Peter Williams ’75

Artist Statement:

[Portrait] is a painting from Williams’ “blue period” which saw the artist adopt a largely blue palette in his works. During this same period, Williams produced a series of large-scale paintings featuring “people-eating monsters,’’ which he depicted as a social commentary on the time.

Artist Bio:

Peter Williams (b.1952, Nyack, NY; d. 2021, Wilmington, DE) made paintings that exist in the space between seductive beauty and abject horror-evoking the complex experiences of Black Americans in the contemporary age. Williams began painting as a teenager before receiving his BFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design and his MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. At seventeen, Williams presented his first solo show at Pat Merenstein Gallery in his hometown, which precipitated more exhibitions in the region. Coming of age during the Pop art movement, Williams took road trips to visit museums and galleries showcasing its reigning practitioners. Critics have connected his punk-pop style with Peter Saul and his revisionist history painting with Robert Colescott; Williams himself noted the influence of Old Masters like Goya and early modernists like Kandisky and Klee. Often humorous and disturbing, the artist’s canvases reflect Black history and his own life events. He covered subjects from police brutality and mass incarceration to the celebrities, objects, and places which inhabited his imagination. The framing devices, like frequent use of the grid, signify forms of imprisonment and lack of representation: as a Black man, wheelchair-user, and storyteller. Williams was a passionate mentor and instructor who taught for decades at the University of Delaware (MD) and Wayne State University (IN). He received the Artists’ Legacy Foundation’s 2020 Artist Award and 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship. His paintings are found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C);

[Portrait]

Estimated Value: $12,000

2021

Oil and pencil on canvas

14 x 11 in.

Karen Wirth, Professor Emerita

Artist Statement:

While my usual studio practice comprises installation, sculpture, and artist’s books, I have also been designing and making quilts. Quilting is a meditative practice that starts with solving visual puzzles in my imagination. Color, shapes, and textures layer into rhythmic patterns. I begin with a fabric that draws my eye, and I spin out the design from there. I do all piecing and quilting on standard domestic sewing machines: my grandmother’s 1933 Singer Featherweight, my mother’s 1970s Kenmore, or my Bernina 530.

With Black and White Geometric, I featured a wide variety of traditional Japanese cotton fabrics, along with contemporary quilting cotton. The patterns of the fabric were often both delicate and eye-catching. To highlight the fabric, I used simple geometric shapes for the piecing, allowing patterns to resonate without being visually overwhelming.

Artist Bio:

Karen Wirth is a Professor Emerita at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She served as the Vice President of Academic Affairs before retiring in 2020, as well as the Interim President from 2018-2019. She explores the relationships between words, objects, and space through artist’s books, sculpture, public art, and critical writing. She co-designed the sculptural staircase at Open Book in Minneapolis and four of the Minneapolis Blue Line light rail stations. Her books and installations have been exhibited nationally and internationally and are in many collections, including the Museum of Modern Art Library, Walker Art Center, the Getty Center, and Yale University. Wirth has been awarded Bush, McKnight, Jerome, and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and an American Council on Education Leadership Fellowship. Wirth holds an MFA in sculpture from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and a BFA in art education from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Black & White Geometric

2020

Handmade quilt; fabric: 100% cotton; batting: 80% cotton/20% polyester, ikat, dobby, wove pattern, printed fabrics 77 ½ x 80 in.

Estimated Value: $600

Karen Wirth, Professor Emerita

Artist Statement:

While my usual studio practice comprises installation, sculpture, and artist’s books, I have also been designing and making quilts. Quilting is a meditative practice that starts with solving visual puzzles in my imagination. Color, shapes, and textures layer into rhythmic patterns. I begin with a fabric that draws my eye, and I spin out the design from there. I do all piecing and quilting on standard domestic sewing machines: my grandmother’s 1933 Singer Featherweight, my mother’s 1970s Kenmore, or my Bernina 530. I designed Mod Tumbler around a fabric that had a definite mid-century modern feel in both colors and shapes. From there, I thought about neighborhoods built at that time: houses lined up along sidewalks with family-filled backyards. The pieced shapes on the right side are called tumbler blocks, hence the name.

Artist Bio:

Karen Wirth is an artist and educator whose work encompasses subjects including architecture, language, and science. Her work has been exhibited extensively, including the Smithsonian Institution and Walker Art Center, and is included in collections such as the Getty Center and Yale University. Her book works include offset editions (Visual Studies Workshop Press), one-of-a-kind sculptural pieces, and room-sized installations. In addition, she co-designed four Minneapolis Light Rail stations and the Gail See grand staircase at Open Book Center. She has received numerous grants, including Bush Artist and Bush Leadership fellowships, McKnight and NEA fellowships, Minnesota State Arts Board awards, two Jerome Book Arts fellowships, and the American Council on Education Fellowship. Published writing includes essays for JAB (Journal for Artists Books), Places Magazine, Bound and Lettered Magazine, catalog essays and book reviews for Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Women’s’ Studio Workshop, and College Art Association. Wirth graduated from UW-Milwaukee with a BFA in Art Education, and the UMN-Twin Cities with an MFA in Sculpture. She is a professor emeritus at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where she served as the interim president, the vice president of Academic affairs and the chair of fine arts.

Mod Tumbler

2015

Handmade Quilt; Fabric: 100% cotton; Batting: 80% cotton/20% polyester

61” x 61” in.

Estimated Value: $1,200

Kate Worum ’11

Artist Bio:

Kate Worum is an illustrator and company owner of She She, a custom wallpaper and design company based in Minneapolis. Her clients include Target, Crate & Barrel, Urban Outfitters, and The New York Times.

kateworum.com

Custom Portrait Session

Choose between a solo portrait (pet or person) or multiple people/family portrait. The portrait will be made by hand done and digital techniques. The final portrait will be available for printing at any scale.

Estimated Value: $1,000

Mieko Yamazaki ’01, PBACC

Artist Statement:

Images spring from inside of me. They float, soar, hover, flit, shine, dive and disappear…. always changing. In a way, each one of them is my mindscape at the moment. The spaciousness of Minnesota’s landscape inspired me to paint. When I came to Minnesota and encountered enormous fields spreading to the horizon and the open sky beyond, I wanted to paint. Growing up in mountainous and overpopulated Japan, I had never seen such a vast plain and immense sky before. Mixed thoughts of infinite space and freedom swept over me. Without any knowledge of painting or visual art at all, but with a strong desire to put lots of colors on white surfaces I started to paint.

Artist Bio:

Mieko Yamazaki was born and raised in Japan. Her mentor Kohei Oyama began teaching her Japanese calligraphy when she was seven years old. She has won several Japanese calligraphy competitions in Iwate prefecture (state) and competed nationally. Her work has been exhibited at the prestigious Meiji Shine in Tokyo. She was awarded the distinction of teaching level calligrapher when she was ten years old. Her calligraphy style is in a category of modern Japanese calligraphy with mixture of eastern and western artistic elements. By a request from Minneapolis Community Education, she has been teaching Japanese calligraphy classes at Homewood Studios in north Minneapolis, MN since 2015. She graduated Tamagawa University in Tokyo with music major and worked as a music teacher in Saitama prefecture close to Tokyo and as a Japanese language teacher for Japanese-as-second-language students for seventeen years both in Japan and the US. She believes that expressions of language includes its culture and history as well as one’s personal thoughts and emotions. In 2000, with sudden interest to western fine art, she became a post-baccalaureate student at Minneapolis College of Art and Design and studied abstract painting with John Slorp, the president at the time, and Aribert Munzner, professor emeritus. Since 2008 she has a studio at Homewood Studios and painting with oils.

Passionate Encounter

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Friday, May 19