A u t um n
North
A rt
Dakota
A u c t io n
Museum
of
Art
North Dakota Museum of Art
AUTUMN
Art
Auction
F r i d a y, o c t o b e r 1 0 , 2 0 0 3 Wine and hors d’oeuvres 6:30 pm Auction begins at 8 pm
Autumn Art Auction is Underwritten by Marshall Field’s
Auction Preview September 28 until auction time in the Museum galleries Monday - Friday, 9 to 5 pm, Saturday - Sunday, 11 to 5 pm
Preview Party Patrons Altru Health System
Tuesday, October 7, 7 pm, Museum Director, Laurel Reuter, will lead an informal discussion about the art work in the Auction
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From the Museum Director
Burton Onofrio, Auctioneer
The North Dakota Museum of Art Autumn Art Auction began five
Burton Onofrio recently retired as Attending Neurosurgeon at the
years ago and was the first live auction with an accompanying
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, where he also served as
catalog in the region. Today there are several such auctions in the
Professor of Neurosurgery in the Mayo Medical School. His first
Red River Valley alone. What sets this one apart is that through
job after retirement was as Senior Consultant for Pain Disorders,
our catalogs we are creating a history of contemporary art in our
Neurosurgical Service, Massachusetts General Hospital in
region. Like the catalogs of the major auction houses, ours is
Boston. His training includes an M.D. degree from the Medical
becoming a collectable research tool.
College of Cornell University (1957); a surgical residency at the
We are also using the auction to introduce new artists to the area, such as Wyoming artist Kasey Keeler, or to reintroduce artists originally from North Dakota and are now living elsewhere, such
New York Hospital Medical Center (1958); and a fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in neurosurgery (1964), all of which resulted in a life-time career at the Mayo Clinic.
as Erin Holscher and Jen Wright Champlin. We also include
As busy as his professional career has been, he has also lived a
artists who will be exhibiting in the Museum in the future. You
wonderful life within the arts. It began when he married Judy
can expect upcoming exhibitions from Alec Soth, whose
Onofrio, a self-taught potter who has emerged as a sculptor of
photograph is on the cover, and Jennifer Onofrio, a sculptor from
national stature. Many Museum regulars will remember Judy’s
Rochester, Minnesota, now living in South Carolina.
1993 show, one of most popular shows we ever mounted.
You will find pieces in the auction by artists who recently showed
Judy was deeply involved in the Rochester Art Center and Burton
in the Museum. Megan Craig, Nedra Newby, and Nancy Friese
soon joined the Board of Directors. Most recently—another
were in the Re-Imagining New York exhibition in 2002, which
retirement job—he co-chaired the Capital Campaign Building
included all nine artists who lost their studios on the ninety-first
Committee of the Rochester Art Center. When the new building
floor of Tower One of the World Trade Center. Nedra’s drawing
opens in May 2004, the large gallery will be named in honor of
was one of the choice works in our exhibition. Kristín Jónsdóttir
Judy and Burton Onofrio—gifted by a former patient.
of Iceland, Ross Rolshoven of Grand Forks, and David Madzo of St. Paul all had shows last season.
In another corner of his life, Burton runs art auctions. For twentysix years he has been the auctioneer of the Rochester Art Center
Zoran Mojsilov made the three free-form granite benches that
annual auction and for most of those years he organized the
were dedicated a year ago in the Museum Garden. Over the past
auction as well. Both the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis
year he worked on three "domestic-size" garden chairs for
and the University of Minnesota Art Department have called
inclusion in this auction. Gradually, by drawing together artists
upon him to serve as auctioneer. For twelve years he has been
with roots in North Dakota, Minnesota, and Manitoba, we are
the announcer of the Rochester Art Center Art Festival. Burton’s
building a vital art community. We are also building a support
days, however, are spent in Judyland, the garden he created with
base that will nurture this artistic community for years to come.
his wife Judy. And finally, this is a man who loves animals:
— Laurel Reuter
witness the candid photo above.
Autumn Art Auction Committee Ann Brown, Co-chair Lisa D. Lewis, Co-chair Madelyn Camrud, SuAnne Frasier, Rita Hadland, Jon Jackson, Jeremy Klein, Alice Lee, Marsy Schroeder, Barry Stinson, Wayne Zimmerman To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee/One clover, and a bee/And revery . . . and, a stalwart museum of distinct vision. Ann Brown and Lisa Lewis are pleased to serve as this year’s cochairs for the North Dakota Museum of Art’s Autumn Art Auction.
Ann Brown and Lisa Lewis, Co-Chairs
They invite you to join in their revery, and reality, to strengthen and support the home of our prairie’s most cultural and
Rules of Auction
q Each registered guest will receive a bidding card as part of
q
contemporary aesthetic. Ann K. Brown is originally from Willow City, North
the price of a ticket. Upon receiving the bidding card, each
Dakota, the second eldest of ten children who grew up on a grain
guest will be asked to sign a statement vowing to abide by
farm, a farm still maintained by her family. After receiving a B.S.
the Rules of the Auction listed in this catalog.
in art and design from NDSU, she became the advertising
Absentee bidders will either leave their bid on an Absentee
manager for John Norby of Norby’s Department store in Grand
Bid Form with Museum personnel in person or by phone, or
Forks. Currently, Ann is a physician at Altru Hospital, her original
bid by phone the night of the auction. Absentee bidders, by
love of art and design now scientifically focused in her work as a
filling out the form, agree to abide by the Rules of the
pathologist.
Auction. q Each bidder will use his or her own bidding number during
Ann is the newly-appointed chairperson of the Museum’s Board
the auction.
of Trustees. She has previously served on the Museum’s Jazz
q
All sales are final.
Festival committee and serves now on the committee of the
q
In September 2002 the Office of the North Dakota State Tax
Museum’s Art Odyssey group. As well, she is the mother of two
Commissioner determined that the gross receipts from the
children, ages twelve and sixteen, courtesy of the Mayor of
sales made at the Auction are subject to sales tax. State sales
Grand Forks.
tax is 5% of the total sale and the Grand Forks city tax is 1.75% of the first $2,500 of the sale. Out-of-state buyers
Lisa D. Lewis is a member of the Museum’s Board of Trustees.
who have the work shipped to them will not be subject to
She chaired the first Autumn Art Auction in 1999 as well as
North Dakota sales tax.
chairing one of the Museum’s first membership drives. She is
q In the event of a dispute between bidders, the auctioneer
chairing the Museum’s Art Odyssey group, a growing group of
shall either determine the successful bidder or re-auction
members whose wonder and desire for art is cultivated and
the item in dispute.
celebrated through lively lectures, discussions, and travels.
q Purchasers may pay for items at any point following the sale of that work but must pay for all art work before the
Lisa teaches in the English Department and Honors Program at
conclusion of the evening. Absentee bidders will be charged
the University of North Dakota, as well as serving as a clinical
on the evening of the auction or an invoice will be sent on
faculty member of the School of Medicine and Health Sciences
the next business day after the event.
where she occasionally lectures on illness in literature. She
q Works of art in the auction have minimum bids placed on
utilizes the Museum extensively as a cultural text in her classes,
them by the artist. This confidential "reserve" is a price
where for many of her students, a visit to the museum is their first.
agreed upon between the artist and North Dakota Museum
Lisa has one grandson and four children to whom she formerly
of Art below which a work of art will not be sold.
paid one whole dollar for each painting she commissioned.
Lot #1
Charles Beck Fergus Falls, Minnesota Charles Beck is best know for his woodcuts. Less
Untitled
known, but equally important, are his oil-on-paper paintings,
Oil on paper
one of which appears in this auction. In all his work, Beck is
5 5/8 x 13 inches, 2002
affected by where he lives. The landscapes around Fergus
Range: $400-500
Falls, Minnesota, always his home, continually reappear in his woodcuts and paintings. Beck says, "You have to make art from what you're interested in. I'd rather make a woodcut of a plowed field with some conviction than a crucifixion with none." Color and textures are what he takes from the landscape, but the horizon is his biggest influence. He continues, "The separation between the sky and what I call
Charles Beck is the finest example of a Regional Artist in the best sense of the term. His subject is the landscape of Ottertail County where he lives. His work is owned by friends, neighbors and those who live in—or remember—
vertical space and horizontal space . . . seems to be a part of
the larger Red River Valley. His gift to other artists is the
every landscape. I seem to feel the need to show the sky in
example of his life, his integrity, the self-confidence he
the background." He believes landscapes are extremely exciting because of how they constantly change weekly, even daily. Beck enrolled at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota,
brings to his work, his willingness to support his family by other means in order to keep his work accessible to young artists, friends and neighbors. His aesthetic sense
in 1941. His professor, Cy Running, influenced Beck in those
is refined and informed by the larger world, and, at age
early years when Beck was making watercolors, but
eighty, he continues to spend long hours making art.
ultimately, Beck let go of influence and developed a style, undeniably his own, which has served him well for a halfcentury. In 1950, Beck returned to Fergus Falls with his wife Joyce, having completed military service and graduate school at the University of Iowa. Beck's work is represented by the Rourke Art Museum, Moorhead, Minnesota, and his work is also in its permanent collection. A painting from the same series as the one in the auction recently entered the North Dakota Museum of Art’s permanent collection.
—Laurel Reuter
Lot #2
Steve Nowatzki Minneapolis, Minnesota Adaptability Hand-colored etching 18 x 24 inches, 1995-2003 Range: $225-250
Steve Nowatzki was born in 1958 in Germany, the son of an American soldier stationed there. He was introduced to printmaking in Heidelberg, but returned to the States to study at the Minnesota State University Moorhead, where he received his B.F.A. in printmaking and drawing in 1986. The work in the auction, Adaptability, evolved over many years. According to the artist, I did the original etching (zinc) as a twoplate print back in 1986 or 1985, but I resurrected the key plate
printed on reusable stones. I even recycle old cotton clothes into my hand made paper.
to milk the image and I’m currently printing another edition on this paper (Indian Hand Made Paper-Bagasse) as needed. I started this second edition back in 1995 or so. The artist proof in the auction, which I hand colored, was completed in July 2003.
In my work I attempt to strip away the veneer of commercialized packaging that disguises the stresses put upon the planetary environment. The easiest way to accomplish this task would be to bluntly illustrate the damage done. Unfortunately, this easier
I use a blend of new studio practices with the original printmaking techniques to minimize the resources used in my art. I use stone lithographs, zinc etchings, monoprints and drawings—many times in concert with one another to achieve the end result of my concepts. My prints are all hand printed, by me, on archival paper. I believe in working with the least amount of environmental impact possible. My zinc plates are ground down and reused after completing the edition run; the lithographs are drawn and
route is not necessarily the most artistically gratifying. In my images, I’ve attempted to cerebrally challenge the viewer and also educate them with different view points on how they make their lifestyle choices.
Lot #3
Will Maclean Tayport, Fife, Scotland Study of old wooden fishing boats for Day of the Dead celebration Lithograph, artist proof The art of Will Maclean is a visual song of sorrow.
Image 15 x 23 inches, 1996
This man of the Scottish Highlands, born of seagoing fishermen
Range: $400-500
and now an artist of international rank, has created an unending song cycle that chronicles the pain of his own people. Rooted in language and visual metaphor, Maclean’s art seems akin to a tone poem that has been a lifetime in the making. Initially one is
Raised in a family of fishermen, Maclean went to sea at an
struck by the sheer beauty of Maclean’s constructions, prints and
early age, spending years on fishing boats and in the Merchant
paintings, by their formal elegance and calm. Often that is
Marine. His art is rooted in his knowledge of the Highlands,
enough in art. To really hear the song, however, to grasp its
the Highland people, and their history both on land and sea.
cadences, one must learn his country’s history beginning with the
In 1968 he returned to sea as a herring fisherman, happily
Bronze Age and continuing into the present with the construction
working a six-man boat with members of his own family.
of nuclear bases in the West Highlands. One needs to know what
Ultimately, he was forced to give up a life on the sea because
it has meant to be Scottish in the last centuries, and then, maybe,
he failed his eye exam for the Merchant Marine; subsequently
what it means to be human anywhere in a society of the
he became an artist. In all of Maclean's work, the sea is the
dispossessed. Those are the opening lines of the book Will
ultimate agent of human destiny. The lithograph in the auction
Maclean: Cardinal Points, written by Laurel Reuter and published
memorializes the lovely, old fishing boats, crafted from wood,
by the North Dakota Museum of Art in 2001 to chronicle his
that have been made obsolete by commercial fleets that now
1998 solo exhibition at the North Dakota Museum of Art. The
rule the seas.
exhibition later toured in Canada. Maclean’s work is in a multitude of collections, among them Will Maclean is one of the leading artists of his generation in
the British Museum, London; the Scottish National Gallery of
Scotland. He was born in Inverness, the son of the harbor master,
Modern Art, Edinburgh; the Yale Center for British Art, New
and spent his childhood between Inverness and the Isle of Skye.
Haven, Connecticut; and the North Dakota Museum of Art.
Revealing layers of earlier compositions and content allow me to fashion a more complex imagery as the painting itself becomes more abstracted. I admire the work of Pieter Brueghel and Max Beckman for their complex compositions; and the work of Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, and Elizabeth Murray for the elegance of their lines and surfaces. Barbara Thill Anderson received a B.F.A. degree from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and an M.A. in painting from Minnesota State University Moorhead. Anderson also spent a year in Haarlem, the Netherlands, studying at Stichting Atelier 63, a fine art studio school. She has been teaching in the art department at Concordia College in Moorhead since 1990 and has acted as gallery director since 1991. Anderson has received various Career Opportunity Grants from Lot #4
Barbara Thill Anderson Moorhead, Minnesota Study #1, Beatitudes Series Oil on canvas 20 x 20 inches, 2003 Range: $600-$800
Barbara Thill Anderson recounts, Three years ago I began a series of paintings titled The Beatitudes Series. The paintings are based on the contents of a box of photographs dating from my late father’s service in World War II. He was stationed in Italy and northern Africa with an army intelligence unit assigned the task of recording Allied plane crashes. These black and white photographs (over two hundred of them) show all manner of crashed aircraft, from a fully intact but upside down Spitfire to a totally unrecognizable heap of machinery. These photographs have no documentation associated with them. They serve as the basis for most of the works in the series. There is great beauty and compositional challenge in the arbitrary disarray of the elements caused by sudden impact. Some paintings are more abstract than others. The work in the auction is the first study I made for the series. Furthermore, painting has always been, for me, grounded in formal concerns such as composition and color relationships. In the last few years the surface of the artwork and its evolution to new stages has emerged as a primary aspect of how I work.
the Minnesota State Arts Board, and in 1999 was awarded a McKnight Individual Artist Fellowship from the Lake Region Arts Council.
Lot #6
Laura Heit Youngbird Breckenridge, Minnesota Assimulation Dress II Intaglio 15 x 11 inches, 2003 Range: $250–300
Erin Holscher was raised in North Dakota and received her B.F.A. cum laude from Minnesota State University Moorhead in 2000 after having studied at the University of MassachusettsBoston and the Massachusetts College of Art. She recently graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology with an M.F.A. in non-toxic printmaking. Her current work is an exploration of her physical, emotional, and spiritual search for home. She says, I am fascinated with location and dislocation, and our spiritual connectedness to place. Through drawing and printmaking, I explore the temporal nature of our human existence and the transient spaces we inhabit throughout. Motherland is a non-toxic, non-etch print that reflects the artist's connection to the Midwest. Technically the work reflects her discoveries while studying at the Rochester Institute of Technology. An intaglio-type is a contemporary, no-etch printmaking technique that utilizes ImagOn Ultra photo-polymer film, developed by Keith Howard and DuPont. The constructionintaglio-type is a technique that involves adaptively layering pieces of the ImagOn ultra film to construct an image. The addition of the pastel wash drawing is her own innovation. According to the artist, after seeing my friend and studio-mate
Laura Heit Youngbird’s art grows out of her Native American background as an Annishanabe of the Grand Portage Band. Her mother and grandmother grew up in boarding schools Today the artist works at the Circle of Nations School in Wahpeton, ND, a therapeutic American Indian residential boarding school as a cultural counselor and art instructor. Many of the artist’s images are based on old photographs of her grandmother who scratched her own face out of nearly every photograph. The faceless pictures haunted her, but also prompted her to dig deeper for an understanding of her grandmother and
Amy Williams draw and paint on drafting Mylar, I decided to try
her heritage. Through her art, Youngbird communicates things
drawing with pastel and exposing the drawings to the ImagOn
that cannot be put into words—observations, responses to
Ultra film. The process allowed me to integrate my drawing with
injustices, outrage at crimes committed in the past that continue
printmaking and to work more intuitively through the layering of
to play out a brutal legacy.
images. Lot #5 (left)
Erin Holscher Rochester, New York Motherland Intaglio-type, liquid aquatint 37 3/4 x 23 3/4 inches, 2003 Range: $225–275
Youngbird graduated from Minnesota State University Moorhead in 1997 with an M.A. in drawing and printmaking. Her work has been exhibited at the Memorial Union Gallery, North Dakota State University; the Spirit Room, Fargo, ND; the GK Gallery, Cooperstown, ND; the Ojibwe Art Expo at the Plains Art Museum in Fargo; and the Rourke Gallery in Moorhead. She is an Artistin-Residence for the North Dakota Council on the Arts. In the summer of 2003 Youngbird was awarded a Jerome Fellowship to
Lot # 7
Ross Rolshoven Grand Forks, North Dakota Fish Camp 19 1/2 x 27 3/4 inches, 2003 Range: $400-600
North Dakota artist, Ross Rolshoven, widely known for his hand-tinted photographs and assemblages, had a major exhibition at the North Dakota Museum of Art in the summer of 2002.
both paints on canvas and hand-tints his own photographs, mostly of Western subjects and landscapes.
An obsessive collector of vintage toys and memorabilia, Native American art, and artifacts, Rolshoven creates assemblages using
Rolshoven, a graduate of the University of North Dakota,
disparate objects to tell stories and evoke memories. Through the
manages a private detective and insurance claims office in Grand
accumulation of related and unrelated objects, Rolshoven builds
Forks and travels extensively, using business trips to collect the
a world that encompasses his children, his love of the West, and
objects used in his artwork. He has participated in many local,
his deep immersion in contemporary popular culture. Rolshoven
regional and national art shows. Two of his tinted photographs
is a visual storyteller and each piece has a theme that the viewer
are included in the permanent collection of the Van Vechetin-
can interpret. Rolshoven thinks of his assemblages as memory
Lineburry Museum in Taos, New Mexico. His artwork is also in
conduit pieces, and the interaction between the viewer and the
the collection of the North Dakota Museum of Art, and the East
artist creates an emotional bond.
Grand Forks Public Library, the Custer County Art Center, Montana, and the Rourke Art Gallery, Minnesota. He has won
Rolshoven, a lifelong resident of North Dakota, was born in
numerous awards for photography. Rolshoven has also worked in
Mandan and spent countless summers looking for arrowheads,
elementary schools as an artist and is a trustee for the North
playing on early military block houses, and exploring Mandan
Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame.
Indian earth lodges at local state parks. His grandfather painted landscapes of his native Germany as a way of remembering, after he immigrated to North Dakota where he became a commercial artist and continued to paint and to hand-tint his own photographs. His son, Rolshoven’s father, became a civil engineer and photographer as well. Like his ancestors, Rolshoven
Lot #8
Gretchen Bederman Mandan, North Dakota Untitled Acrylic on canvas 4 x 6 feet, 2003 Range $1,500–1,800
Gretchen Bederman’s art is dominated by horses and
Bederman grew up in Houston, Texas, and settled in North
women. According to the artist, these images symbolize and
Dakota after a 1980 visit. She completed her undergraduate work
visually animate the elements of earth and its relationship to fire,
at Minnesota State University Moorhead and received an M.F.A.
air, and water. She combines memories of actual places with a
in painting from the University of North Dakota in 1996. While
mixture of reality, myth, and dream. She uses the figure in both
in Grand Forks, she served as a docent for the North Dakota
human and animal form to tell the story of these nearly abstract
Museum of Art and worked as an Artist-in-Residence at Lake
seasonal landscapes.
Agassiz Elementary School.
Bederman has been in twenty-seven group shows and twenty
The painting in the auction is rare for Bederman in that its scale
solo exhibitions in North Dakota and Minnesota since 1992. She
is large and the horses are monumental. It signals her move into
recently completed a five-month residency at the Jamestown Arts
new artistic territory.
Center and taught figure drawing at Bismarck State College.
Lot #9
Megan Craig New Haven, Connecticut 9 pm Brooklyn Bridge Oil on panel 9 x 9 inches, 2003 Range: $300–400
Megan Craig was introduced to the audience of the
of which were lost in the Tower.
North Dakota Museum of Art in August 2002 when her small and exquisite paintings were included in the exhibition Re-Imagining
Criag was born in New York State and grew up in Brussels,
New York as one of the nine artists who lost her studio on the
Belgium, and Goshen, Connecticut. She studied painting with
ninety-first floor of the World Trade Center. Craig, who was in the
Andrew Forge, John Hull, Laura Newman and Richard Lytle at
lobby on her way up, would later describe her relationship with
Yale University, where she graduated with a B.A. in philosophy in
one of the most daunting cityscapes on earth:
1997. Her work has been included in Cartouche, a group show of emerging New York artists at CB313 Gallery; Illuminated
The view from the World Trade Center offered an ethical sightline
Interiors, at Rubilad in Williamsburg; and in Re-imagining New
onto New York City, a sightline the city needed to have. Those
York at the North Dakota Museum of Art. She has been awarded
vertical, narrow windows widened one’s perception of the city
painting residencies from The Vermont Studio Center, from LMCC
and one’s place in it, enforcing an exchange of the deafening
to paint from the ninety-first floor of the World Trade Center in
jumble of sound and light for an encompassing and nearly silent
their Studioscape program, and to paint in DUMBO through the
experience of the city as a working whole. . . . One could not
LMCC’s New Views program. She has also been an artist-in-
descend unchanged onto the packed streets of lower
residence at C-Scape Duneshack A in Provincetown. Craig is the
Manhattan—one emerged at least newly aware of the stretches of
recipient of a Dean’s Fellowship at the New School for Social
clover-shaped housing projects outlining the boroughs, of the
Research where she is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy. She has
tops of the buildings, and the extent to which their inner
taught courses in aesthetics and contemporary art at Parsons
workings perched on the rooftops in jumbles of piping and metal
School of Design and was the organizer of the philosophy
boxes. Seeing so much of the city’s insides on the outside, one
conference, “Thinking Through September 11th: New York
was struck by the extent to which Manhattan exists inside out, its
Philosophers Respond,” held at the New School in April 2002.
heart on its sleeve.
Other awards include a Pollock-Krasner grant, two Vermont Studio Center Full Fellowship Awards, the Grace LeGendre
The small painting of the Brooklyn Bridge that is in the auction is
Fellowship for Advanced Graduate Study, and a New School
an outgrowth of her earlier World Trade Center paintings—most
Teaching Fellowship.
Lot #10
Terry Jelsing Fargo, North Dakota Dwelling Graphite on paper 17 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches, 2001 Range: $500-700 Terry Jelsing, a native Noth Dakotan, creates work that is spiritually tied to the prairie landscape. Born in Rugby, North Dakota, in 1954, Jelsing’s artistic abilities presented at an early age. By the time he graduated from Rugby High School he had several public commissions to his credit. Before enrolling in the B.F.A. program at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, he completed a three-year tour of duty with the Army in Europe. He later returned to Europe to study at the Institute of European Studies in Vienna, Austria, where he was strongly influenced by the German expressionists. He completed graduate work (M.A. and M.F.A.) in art history, sculpture and painting at the University of New Mexico in 1986. According to Jelsing, "during that time he was part of the first American postmodernist movement, experimenting with time-art studies and conceptual projects." His graduate exhibition, "Circus for Matthew," received good media coverage and was published in Artspace magazine. Jelsing has worked professionally as an artist, teacher, curator and arts administrator for twenty-five years. He taught
multimedia collaboration courses at UND for two years and then became director of Beall Park Arts Center in Bozeman, Montana. Beginning in 1992, he spent seven years with the Plains Art Museum in Fargo where he guided the transformation of an historic International harvester branch house into an awardwinning arts facility. In 2000, he established Jelsing Studios in Fargo, where he works in a variety of media to create both twoand three-dimensional works of art, including large public commissions. He also teaches art and design at universities in the Fargo-Moorhead area. While maintaining strong ties to artists and arts organizations of the Northern Plains, he has served on many national committees and commissions, including the U.S. State Department’s Friends of Art and Preservation of Embassies Millennium Committee.
Gene Swenson was born in Valley City, North Dakota, but spent his childhood on the Fort Totten Reservation, living in the village of Warwick. A man of enormous curiosity and a voracious reader, he has learned to pay careful attention. He deeply loves the prairies of central North Dakota, the hills, lakes, rivers and grasslands, finding them "so unnoticed as to be unknown." Swenson maintains that "one has to walk the hills in order to see the great beauty of the North Dakota place." This attention to obscure detail has flowered in his woodworking. By the time Gene was fourteen, he was following his father around, learning the construction trade—his father owned his own construction company and taught all his sons his trade. As a young man he moved to the Seattle area where he continued to work as a carpenter. According to Swenson, a carpenter is "a man who can do anything. He has all-around skills and knows how things in general work and how they come together." Lot #11
Later he moved to nearby Whidbey Island and set up his own shop. In the 1970s hot tubs were all the rage on the West Coast
Ali LaRock Bismarck, North Dakota Read Into Oil on canvas 12 x 12 inches, 2002 Range: $275-325
and for several years Swenson made them out of Western Red Cedar. "Unfortunately, I didn’t get into making small, artful things but always responded to commercial assignments." In 1995 he returned to North Dakota. It wasn’t until 2001 that he set up a shop—and then in East Grand Forks, Minnesota. Vowing not to take on commercial work, he christened his shop a "studio" in order to discourage people in the trades from trying to hire him.
Ali LaRock is an artist living and working in Bismarck, North Dakota, having grown up in nearby New Town. She received her
Today Swenson makes finely crafted, one-off pieces such as
B.F.A. in painting from Minnesota State University Moorhead in
Cobra, the box in the auction. He seeks out exotic hardwoods,
1998. Since leaving college, she has shown widely throughout
relishing their variations in color and pattern. Western Red Cedar,
North Dakota, including solo exhibitions at the Taube Museum in
for example, runs the color gamut from black to white. Swenson
Minot, the Bismarck Art Gallery, the Cando Art Center, in the Art View Program at the Plains Museum in Fargo, and the Roland Dille Center for the Arts in Moorhead, Minnesota. LaRock works in the areas of painting, printmaking, papermaking, and mixed media. Besides creating art, LaRock teaches art to children through various artist-in-residency programs, including the North Dakota Council for the Arts, Theo Art School in Bismarck, and Dakota West Arts Council. She has also taught art in such diverse venues as the Salvation Army Summer Day Camp and the Elks Camp Grassick for Children, For LaRock, creating art is a continual learning process—about myself, those around me, and the complexity of this world. She builds duality into her work, combining humor with difficult issues and depicts the complications of adult life with child-like simplicity.
Lot #13
Nancy Friese Cranston, Rhode Island Dyptich, Skyward I and Skyward II Watercolor Each image 15 x 22 1/2 inches, 2003 Range: $3,800–4,000
Nancy Friese was born in Fargo, North Dakota. She completed her undergraduate studies in art at Cincinnati, spent a year at the University of California, Berkeley, and graduated with an M.F.A. from Yale. She has participated in national and international residency programs including residencies in Japan, France, and New York City. She was a Studioscape Artist-inResidence at the World Trade Center's World Views Residency programs in 2001. One year after the Towers went down, Friese
has a predilection redilection for local hardwoods including fruit woods such as chokecherry and crabapple as well as walnut and Russian olive. The work in the auction came from a local apple tree in East Grand Forks. A neighbor came by and said the tree had been caught in the storm and he could have it. Fussy about finishes, Swenson has experimented with many over the years. Today he prefers the finish rediscovered by America’s great woodworker, Sam Maloof. Used on Cobra, it contains mineral spirits, polyurethane, and boiled linseed oil, followed by a waxing of hard beeswax and boiled linseed oil.
curated the exhibition Re-Imagining New York, which opened at the North Dakota Museum in August 2002. In 1997 and 1999 she was an artist-in-resident with the Museum of Pont-Aven in Brittany, France. She has had four one-person shows at the Pepper Gallery in Boston. Cate McQuaid of the Boston Globe writes, Friese's work is so fluid, so dancerly, it looks like spontaneous play. In truth, the artist returns to the site she is painting a half-dozen times before she finishes each painting, adding new layers of watercolor, anchoring all the dreamy, delirious color with lanky, dark lines. Skyward I and II were done from the Red River Valley landscape. Friese has been painting in recent summers from her North Dakota farmstead, her grandparents’ homestead which she
Lot # 12 (left)
acquired in 2001. This year she will be exhibiting her paintings in The Painting Center in New York City and the International
Gene Swenson
Center for Art in Rennes, France. Since the mid-1980s her
East Grand Forks, Minnesota
paintings and prints have been exhibited in more than twenty
Cobra
solo shows and 100 national and international group shows.
Apple wood 7 1/2 x 5 x 5 1/2 inches, 2003
During the school year she teaches at the Rhode Island School of
Range: $250–400
Design, where she has just completed a long stint as Director of Graduate Studies and before that Chair of Printmaking.
Lot # 14
Paula Sethre Minneapolis, Minnesota Spied Piper Oil on canvas 30 x 30 inches, 2003 Range: $300–600
Paula Sethre has spent a lifetime immersed in both paint
Tennessee in education for the deaf, a second M.A.
and words. Her goal has gradually evolved: she wanted to pursue
from the University of Minnesota in design in 1984,
a particularly American form of abstraction. Having traveled and
and ten years later an M.F.A. from the University of
worked in France, she discovered that there was something
Massachusetts, Amherst, where she studied visual arts.
American in her vision and she had to return to the United States
Since returning to Minnesota, she has worked as a
to realize it. But first, she had to leave the figure behind, to leave
visiting artist at the Minnesota Center for Arts
all reference to subject. According to Museum Director, Laurel
Education, the University of Wisconsin at River Falls,
Reuter, the painting in the auction represents her finest
the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, St. Olaf College
achievement of that goal.
in Northfield, the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul and at various high schools. She has also exhibited widely
Born and raised in Minneapolis, Paula Sethre received a B.A. degree in sociology from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. In 1973 she took an M.A. from the University of
throughout the United States.
Lot #15
Jim Dow Belmont, Massachusetts Root Beer Float, US 12, Delano, Minnesota Color print from 8 X 10 color negative Print #1, Edition of 25 Image 16 x 20 inches on 20 x 24 paper, 2002 Range: $1,100-1,300
Jim Dow’s interest in photography began at the Rhode Island
and Argentina. Sport, he says, is as close to religion as anything
School of Design where he earned an undergraduate degree in
we’ve got. Dow was an official photographer at the Los Angeles
graphic design. Upon completion of college, he was hired as a
Olympics and has photographed, by commission, all of the
printer for Walker Evans and the Museum of Modern Art. Over a
major league baseball stadiums in the country.
two-year period, he made prints for both the Museum’s 1972 Evans retrospective and the monograph that accompanied the
He came back to Grand Forks and Minot during the summer of
show. He also began to photograph large projects including
1998 while photographing the ballparks in the Northern and
Seagram’s Bicentennial project, The County Court House, which
Prairie Leagues. Since that trip he has returned to North Dakota
sent 20 photographers across the country.
a number of times to continue to photograph throughout the
He received National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in
homage to the unique atmosphere and sensibility of the upper
region with an eye towards publishing a book that will pay 1972, 1979, and 1990 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1975. In
Great Plains. He is working on a concurrent project
1981, the North Dakota Museum of Art received a grant from
photographing the great private social clubs of New York City.
Target Stores to allow Dow to photograph environmental folk art
His work is collected by many institutions including the Art
throughout North Dakota. He spent three months in the state
Institute of Chicago, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the
completing that commission. An exhibition of the work toured
George Eastman House, and the Museum of Modern Art in New
throughout North Dakota and the photographs entered the
York City.
Museum’s permanent collection. Jim Dow, who was born in 1942, lives with his wife Jacque and A sports fan, Dow has photographed numerous places where
their two sons, the third generation to occupy the family home in
people watch games throughout the United States, Great Britain
a suburb of Boston.
Lot #16 Jay Pfeifer created Hush from the everyday materials of his
Jay Pfeifer
working life. Wayne Tollefson had been his undergraduate
Fargo, North Dakota
teacher at North Dakota State University and he said, Jay, find
Hush
materials close to you. It doesn’t matter if they are thought of as
Mixed media on Lyan board
art materials. Construct your art from your life. Today Pfeifer
37 3/4 x 47 3/4 inches, 2003
makes his living as a foreman in commercial construction. Hush
Range: $1,500–1,800
has been created from wallboard compound base, bloodwood sawdust, and polyurethane. His pigments are coffee grounds and strained concrete. Pfeifer builds up fields of texture to suggest the land, sky, and horizon, which dominate the Red River Valley of the North. Plowed fields, wind rows, and undisturbed land hearken back to his childhood home in Buffalo, North Dakota, to
graduating with a B.A. in 1995 from North Dakota State
an earlier time, before the land was worked by the first settlers,
University in Fargo. By the mid-1990s, Pfeifer’s artistic career
before roads, shelterbelts and cities consumed the vast
took off. Paintings began to sell, prices climbed, and he began to
landscape. Ultimately, Pfeifer uses non-traditional materials to
collect awards: most notably from the Plains Art Museum in
depict the visual language of art: line, texture, color, shape, and
Fargo where he received the juror's Choice Award in 1998 at the
space—brought to life through chance.
Spring Gala, and again in 1999 in the Art on the Plains exhibition. That same year he had his first solo exhibition at the
Pfeifer began his art education at Consumnes River College in
GK Gallery in Cooperstown. Most recently, Pfeifer was chosen as
Sacramento, California, earning an A.A. degree in 1984. He
one of seventeen artists with a room dedicated to his work in the
attended the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1985 and
Donaldson Hotel in Fargo, and he inaugurated the dining room
from 1988-90 he studied at the University of Utah, finally
with a solo exhibition in 2003.
Lot #17
Jennifer Onofrio Aiken, South Carolina Natural Defense Graphite, wood and straw 53 x 9 x 9 inches, 2003 Range: $1,200–1,500 Detail on right
Jennifer Onofrio, as the daughter of a working, selftaught artist, has been surrounded by art since an early age. She would come home from school and go directly to her mother’s studio “for a few hours of uninhibited creation.” On weekends she would join her parents, Judy and Burton Onofrio, as they explored their hometown Rochester and the surrounding Minnesota countryside searching for “outsider artists.” Onofrio’s memory of these experiences and her close relationship with her parents continue to play an integral role in her work. Most recently, she has been working on a series of mixed media sculptural pieces addressing issues of memory, vulnerability, and mortality. Onofrio attended the University of Wisconsin from 1984-88 where she received a B.F.A. in painting and sculpture. From 1989-91 she attended the University of California at Davis where she received an M.F.A. in sculpture, photography, and drawing. Her background in these disciplines affects both her work in the studio and in the classroom. Onofrio has shown her work throughout the Midwest, including the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the ARC gallery in Chicago. She has had solo exhibitions in Kansas City, Missouri; and Rochester and Mankato, Minnesota; in Augusta, Georgia; and in Aiken, South Carolina. Onofrio taught sculpture, installation, photography, and drawing at the University of Minnesota, Morris from 1991-95, and currently teaches photography, 3-dimensional design, and humanities at Augusta State University where she is an associate professor of art. Onofrio is scheduled to exhibit her work at the North Dakota Museum of Art in the fall of 2004.
Lot # 18
Samuel Johnson Iowa City, Iowa Jar Low-fired porcelain with borax and iron glaze 14 1/2 inches high, 2000 Range: $500–600
Samuel Johnson, who was born in Breckenridge, Minnesota, in 1973, decided early on that he wanted to be an artist. He began as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, Morris, where he received his B.A. in 1996 in studio arts with a concentration on painting. While there he took ceramics classes from Jenny Nellis and Kevin Flicker. This led him to embark upon a self-tailored study of ceramics. He spent the next three and a half years at Richard Bresnahan’s Saint John’s Pottery as a Grotto Foundation Apprentice. The pottery, home of the largest wood-burning kiln in North
Upon returning to the States, Johnson apprenticed with Jeff Shapiro in upstate New York for three months and then left for Japan to work as an artist assistant in the studio of Ryoji
America, is an internationally recognized center of ceramic
Koji in Tokoname City, Aichi Prefecture. He helped build a
ferment as scores of artists and apprentices come and go.
wood kiln,
worked on exhibitions, and used this
opportunity to travel in Japan to visit ceramic centers. He then left for Europe having been invited as a guest artist to spend a year at the Danish Design School in Copenhagen.
In 2002, Johnson moved to Iowa City where he enrolled in
This resulted in an invitation to be part of a group exhibition
the graduate studio arts program with a concentration in
at the Sak Museum in Svendborg, Denmark, along with a
ceramics. Students receive both an M.A. and an M.F.A., but
South African, another American, and two Danish artists.
must complete the M.A. before they are invited to continue in the M.F.A. program. Johnson has made that hurdle and
Always seeking new experiences, he worked for a number of
will receive his terminal degree in two years. He hopes to
potters including Ann Linnemann in Copenhagen. He threw
set up his studio and build his own wood-burning kiln
porcelain for Christian Bruun in Copenhagen, fired with Johan
somewhere in Minnesota.
Strom in rural Sweden, and worked at the International Ceramic Center in Skaelskur, Denmark. While at the center,
Of his work in the auction, Johnson says, While studying at
he spent a month as a technical assistant at an international
the Royal Porcelain Factory in Copenhagen, I became
ceramics symposium, and he was fortunate to fire with Fred
interested in the chalky quality of porcelain that’s only fired
Olsen who built an experimental wood fire kiln. In June 2000,
to around 1,100 degrees centigrade—rather than the
Johnson traveled to La Borne, France, to research kilns.
translucency that’s possible at higher temperatures.
Lot #19
Gretchen Kottke Cooperstown, North Dakota Thoughts Oil on canvas 40 x 60 inches, 2003 Range: $800-1,000
Gretchen Kottke studied French and art at
Gardener, an interest that led her to commission a public garden
Jamestown College and the University of North Dakota. After
in Cooperstown created by a team of artists led by Kathryn Lipke.
college, she left North Dakota and worked in the medical field both as a health care worker and as an administrator.
Thoughts, the painting in the auction, grew out of the artist’s
Thirty years later, she returned to Cooperstown, North
experience of the last year during which time her mother died
Dakota, and opened the GK Art Gallery. It proved to be one
and her good friend and supporter, Jim Wold of Cooperstown,
of the most rewarding challenges in her life, a gift to the
died. The sense of loss and helplessness in the face of grief is
people of North Dakota, and a major support system for
reflected in the figure without hands, about to be encompassed
artists from the three-state region. According to Museum
by the sea. Kottke writes: Thoughts created itself out of just
Director, Laurel Reuter, Gretchen’s work in Cooperstown is a
wanting to paint as though I was alone. I imagined that I was
stellar example of the difference that one person can make
adrift and found myself stranded in a sea of grass when the
in creating a lively cultural life in a rural place. Kottke closed
fishing lines were put in. I wanted to create for myself a space
the gallery in June 2003 in order to devote her time to art.
that would be absolutely empty—where I would be alone with nothing but the horizon and an empty space. I would have only
Kottke, a painter in private life, recalls, I have been making
my thoughts and understanding. . . I would only exist for myself.
art since I can remember. As a student at Cooperstown High
I wouldn’t be asked by anybody for anything. Nobody would
School, I made Christmas sets. I also had a piece accepted
need my help. My absence wouldn’t make anybody sad and
for an exhibition at North Dakota State University while still
everything would be quiet. Thus I created my own emptiness.
in high school. My work has always focused on the human spirit. Through painting I explore relationships with others
Kottke has exhibited in group exhibitions in Los Angeles, Denver,
and connections with the environment. While studying
the Puget Sound area and North Dakota. While mounting solo
French during the 1960s, I discovered Existentialism. Over
exhibitions for dozens of artists in her gallery at Cooperstown,
the years I have worked extensively in the Civil Rights
she never gave herself that privilege. Her first solo exhibition was
Movement and with the Sierra Club. These interests have
in Tumwater, Washington.
impacted my work profoundly. She is also a Master
Lot #21
Kasey Keeler Kaycee, Wyoming Summer Storm Oil on birch board Image 8 x 8 inches Range: $250–400
Lot # 20 Marley Kaul Bemidji, Minnesota Sending a Message Egg tempera on panel 14 x 12 inches, 2003 Range: $600–800
According to Kasey Keeler, Summer Storm comes from her series Five Shares, which is inspired by her family’s ranch in Sussex, Wyoming. I have spent most of my life at this place, which has been in my family for over 100 years and is one of the last large-scale, family owned ranches in the state. In Five
Marley Kaul
has
maintained a studio in Bemidji,
Minnesota, for the past thirty-five years. Working in both acrylic
Shares, I am investigating the land and my perception of it as a large but precious and ever-changing place.
and in egg tempera, his colorful paintings continue to explore his surroundings including the lush farmlands of southern
Kasey Keeler studied at Northwest College in Powell, Wyoming,
Minnesota, the pinelands and prairies of northern Minnesota and
and received her B.A. in painting, drawing and art history from
the Dakotas, and images from his travels. Kaul blends personal
Montana State University at Billings in 2002, graduating magna
symbolism with social and political issues, transforming simple
cum laude. After traveling in Europe and studying in Santa Fe, she
images into complex metaphors.
is currently living and working as a farmer and shepherd on the
His paintings are at once
autobiographical and social commentary on daily life. Marley
family ranch in Johnson County, Wyoming.
Kaul’s paintings are included in many collections including the North Dakota Museum of Art; Wiesman Art Museum,
The artist’s recent exhibitions include Art of the New West at the
Minneapolis; 3-M Collection, St. Paul; Anderson Center, Red
Dahl Art Center in Rapid city, SD, where juror Ted Waddell gave
Wing, Minnesota; the Plains Art Museum and Hotel Donaldson
her an honorable mention; ANA 31 at the Holter Museum in
Collection, Fargo, N. D.;
Helena juried by Gerald Peters; and 5 Shares, a solo exhibition
Minnesota.
and Tweed Museum, Duluth,
at St. Vincent’s Women’s Center in Billings, Montana.
Lot #22 Alec Soth: I made a road trip down the Mississippi River. I
Alec Soth
found that the river functioned exceptionally well as both guide
Minneapolis, Minnesota
and metaphor for my own photographic pursuits. This is not to suggest I’ve made a documentary on, say, riverboats. The project is more "elastic." It is hard to describe the subject matter that
Peter's houseboat, Winona, MN From the photographic series Sleeping by the Mississippi C-Print, 2002
attracts me. I just try to stay attentive to the prosaic until my heart
Image 16x20 inches
thumps and I stumble on the poetic. I’ve gathered a wide range
Range: $500-700
of images: landscapes and portraits, still lifes and interiors. Through this wide lens I hope to have captured a glimpse of the broad, clumsy, and occasionally beautiful Mississippi. The result is the series Sleeping by the Mississippi. Ted Hartwell, Curator of Photography at the Minneapolis Institute
Contemporary Photography, Chicago (October 2003), and will
of Arts, says, Alec Soth is clearly working within and expanding
show at Yossi Milo Gallery in New York in February 2004. Earlier
on the tradition of the lyrical documentary which his
exhibitions took place at the Minnesota Center for Photography,
photographs so clearly honor and advance. I know of no other
the Icebox Gallery and the Minneapolis Photographer’s Gallery,
photographer in his age group who surpasses his eloquence and
all in Minneapolis.
poignant sense of place. His mastery of the medium has always been notable, and his eye for the telling nuance, gesture and
Soth is in the collection of the Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis
inflection exceptional.
Institute of Arts, Odged Museum in New Orleans, Carleton College and the North Dakota Museum of Art. Alec Soth teaches
In January 2003 Soth exhibited the Mississippi photographs at the
photography at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He
Weitman Gallery at Washington University in Saint Louis. When
has won the Santa Fe Prize for Photography (2003), the
the accompanying book is published the North Dakota Museum
Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship (2001), the Jerome
of Art will bring that show to North Dakota. He has also showed
Fellowship (2001, the Jerome Travel and Study Grant (2001) and
the work in solo or two-person exhibitions at the Museum of
the McKnight photography fellowship (1999).
Lot #23
Tim Ray Moorhead, MN Little Spanish Town Acrylic on canvas 60 x 40 inches, 2003 Range: $900–1,000
According to Tim Ray, When I began making paper
pop tune of the title came into my head as I was finishing the
pieces in 1980, my intent was to do “studies” for larger canvas
piece—now in this auction.
works. Twenty years later I am still doing studies. Since about 1990, however, I have been making paintings derived in some
Tim Ray was born in 1940 at Indian Head, Saskatchewan, and
ways from the paper pieces. I wanted to include spontaneity and
grew up in Regina. He received degrees from the University of
improvisation. I wanted to make abstract images focusing on
Manitoba and the University of Arkansas, then taught from 1970-
color and texture with an indirect reference to the natural order
1996 at Minnesota State University Moorhead. He has mounted
of things. Almost all these efforts were discarded or recycled. At
solo exhibitions most recently at the GK Gallery, Cooperstown,
one point I laboriously translated, mark for mark, a Landsat
ND (2003); Concordia College, Moorhead, MN (2002); <Site>
satellite image of the Athabasca Tar Sands in Alberta. At the time,
Gallery, Winnipeg, MB (2001) and Nine Artists Gallery, Fargo
I thought it a great abstract painting in its own right, but the
(1998). Ray’s work has been exhibited in Toronto's Damkjar
translation ended up being very bland. Some years later, I found
Gallery, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Minneapolis Institute of
that this failed work provided a good underpainting for my
Arts, and was a part of Old Friends, New Art at the North Dakota
method of applying and then scraping off thick acrylic gels. The
Museum of Art in 1998. He received the First Award at the 2001
color ended up more like Spain than Alberta, I thought, and the
Winter Invitational exhibition at the GK Gallery.
Lot #24
Jen Wright Champlin Powell, Wyoming Purple Passion Beads, beaded skull 19 x 22 x 10 inches, 2003 Range: $600-800 Jen Wright Champlin, while living in Wyoming, counts Grand Forks, North Dakota, among her homes. This is where her grandparents live, Bill and Lee Geer, and Harold and Betty Anderson. This is where she received her B.F.A. in visual arts in 1994. While at UND, she studied ceramics, art history, and secondary education,
graduating cum laude. She left for
Syracuse University, the home of a strong ceramics faculty, and graduated with an M.F.A. in 1997. It wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t long before she landed a teaching job at Northwest College in Powell, Wyoming. Today she juggles her life as a full-time art teacher, a wife, the mother of two-year-old Brent, and her work as an artist. The beaded skull in the auction is a prelude to the mammoth
based on the beauty and uniqueness found in the pottery shards. Her first buffalo will be auctioned on September 5, 2003, at a fund raiser for the Nicolaysen Art Museum and Discovery Center in Casper, Wyoming. Then she will begin on her North Dakota buffalo.
works she will be creating for her exhibition at the North Dakota Museum of Art in August 2004 when she will move from
Champlin also works in fiber creating small, delicate works in
modestly-sized skulls to gigantic buffaloes. The beads will be
silk to be held, looked at, or hung on the wall. According to the
replaced by pottery shards. According to the artist, her husbandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
artist, I love art and what drives me is the passion for creative
grandfather legally harvested a cache of 900-year-old shards in
problem solving. Champlin is young in her career, fueled with
New Mexico in the 1960s. He gave them to Jennifer, who found
energy and intelligence, generous to her community, and
art in the aged pieces. Following her experience with the beaded
possessing a keen aesthetic sense. She is an artist to keep oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
skull, she decided to cover a fiberglass buffalo with ceramic tiles
eye on.
Lot #25
Melissa Lovingood Grand Forks, North Dakota Habitat from the Beach Stone Series, 2000 Sterling silver, 14k gold, fresh water pearls Pennant: 4 x 2 1/4 x 3/4 inches on 24 inch pearl chain Range: $400-450
According to Melissa Lovingood, The
concentration in metals from the East Carolina University in
inspiration for my work comes from marine invertebrate and their
1990, followed by an M.F.A. from San Diego State University.
underwater environment. They glide and float in their oceanic
She is currently working as a visiting professor in jewelry and
surroundings, moving with an elastic grace and undulating
metals at the University of North Dakota. She has filled
rhythm. This type of movement and color is found in the
temporary positions and taught workshops at Long Beach City
functional objects that I try to create. Lovingood’s use of pearls
College, Cal State University at Long Beach, University of Illinois,
reinforces her marine themes.
Winston-Salem’s Sawtooth Center for Visual Art, Oklahoma State University and the Appalachian Center for the Crafts in
She continues, In contrast, my jewelry has a heavily eroded
Tennessee, among others. As part of her training, she has worked
appearance contrasted by a limited color palette. The series is
as an artist’s assistant for Jamie Bennett, Kris Patzlaff, and Arline
reminiscent of worn stones or heavily textured shells. The jewelry
Fisch.
has flowing curves among ridges and valleys creating objects that are a mix of marine life and habitat. Both types of work allow me
She has shown extensively throughout the United States in juried
to explore the avenues of shape, size, color, preciousness and
and group exhibitions such as LOOT! 2000 at the American Craft
function. I consider each aspect equally important.
Museum in New York and The Knife, The Fork, The Spoon: Pieces that Serve, the 1999 SOFA exhibition in New York, which was
Lovingood received a B.F.A. in applied design with a
organized by the Yaw Gallery in Michigan.
Adam Kemp, born in 1962, grew up grew up forty miles northeast of London in the Essex countryside. His father worked in advertising and acted in amateur theater. His mother, primarily a mom to her four sons, taught biology and tennis and was a restaurateur. Both parents were passionate gardeners and their children endlessly built walls and paths and created spaces outof-doors. According to Kemp, My dad would paint with flowers. From age fourteen through nineteen, Adam sketched with watercolors because I could take them anywhere. At about sixteen, I noticed there were a lot of things that could be painted on—and I did. He graduated from Newcastle upon Tyne with a B.F.A. in 1986 but not before studying for a year in a wood restoration school in Florence, Italy, and working with a Newcastle blacksmith on and off for six months. While in college he realized he was a failed watercolor painter. I put too much paint on so I would have to give my pictures a bath in the tub. Finally the Department of Painting asked him to leave just as the Department of Sculpture invited him in. The Sculpture Department was grounded in the tradition of the British Modern School—Sir Anthony Caro, Henry Moore, and most importantly, Barbara Hepworth, whom his parents had taken him to visit when he was a child. Her studio in Cornwall looked like my bedroom so I figured there was hope. Kemp took an M.F.A. degree from the University of North Dakota where he learned to cast bronze in the new foundry. Using skills acquired as a sculptor, Kemp makes a living building things. He finds a symbiosis between his construction work and his art work. Sometimes it is a successful relationship; sometimes not. But he has the ability as an all around contractor to put the mistakes right. Kemp, committed to recycling materials and collaborating with people, maintains that more than ever, the process is the art. I have always done shows with groups of people. I run the Museum’s Children’s Camp sessions as collaborative process. In addition to paintings, Kemp’s work includes a commissioned wall mosaic at the Hotel Donaldson in Fargo (summer 2003);
Lot #26
murals at the International Center at the University of North Dakota (2002); School of Fish created by Kemp and thirty-one 6
Adam Kemp
through 12 year-old children enrolled in the 2002 Museum of Art
Grand Forks, North Dakota
Summer Arts Camp for Children; set for a play, Flood of
February
Memories by Francis Ford, based on the North Dakota Museum
Oil and acrylic on canvas
of Art Oral History project following the 1997 flood; and Café
72 x 24 inches, 2003
Kosmos, a meeting place for high school students which Kemp
Range: $600-800
took on as a personal mission after the flood. He and the high school students turned the two-floor building into a work of art.
Lot #27
Michael Madzo A Condition of Curiosity Paper, acrylic, cotton thread Image 18 x 13 inches, 2003 Range: $1,200–1,500
Michael Madzo was born in 1950 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He grew up, however, on the family ranch near Medora, North Dakota. Trained as a carpenter and furniture maker, he brings these skills to his art practice even though the most notable object in his Saint Paul studio is his sewing machine. The other
invests all his work.
notable thing about his studio is that it is one door away from that of his artist-brother, David.
The critic Judith Hoffberg writes of Michael’s work: Madzo’s technique is remarkable in that it culls any number of
According to the Los Angeles Couturier Gallery where Madzo
disparate images, most from art history, and maintains barely
has frequently shown, There is an unmistakable air of mystery to
recognizable allusions to great works of art. In Madzo’s
the collage paintings of Michael Madzo. This enigmatic
figures there is usually an enlarged head with a single eye (or
ambiance suggests the atmosphere of Marc Chagall and the
a dominate eye) and sometimes an emphasized mouth or no
visual construction of Picasso. But Madzo's work is original and
mouth at all. This is not to say the figures are silent, for they
unique in terms of both method and substance.
speak chapters to anyone willing to spend the time contemplating them.
Michael Madzo takes art history as his literal material and starting point, cutting up reproductions of classic paintings and
Madzo has frequently exhibited his work in California. Other
reassembling or "suturing" their visual elements back together in
solo exhibitions have been in New York, Minneapolis,
faintly disturbing and dreamlike configurations which he then
Scottsdale, Atlanta, Mexico City, and Paris. His work is in
paints over with a deft matching of color values and textures.
private and corporate collections in France, England, and in
These collage paintings are oddly compelling mutations that
many locations in the United States.
achieve a kind of graceful beauty by the artist's very refusal to resort to a more cosmetic, and superficial, form of assembly.
Michael and David Madzo, while continuing to live and work
Madzo exposes all his handiwork, and in so doing achieves a
in the Twin Cities, have returned to Medora to jointly build a
kind of poetry as the delicate traceries of stitches underlying his
summer home on the family homestead—one house but
constructions emphasize a wistful yearning and vulnerability that
separate studios.
Lot #28
David Krueger Hyattsville, Maryland A Wish for French Fish Oil on canvas 32 1/4 x 40 1/4 inches, 2003 Range: $1,800–2,200
David Krueger was born in Jamestown, North Dakota. He graduated with a B.A. from the University of North Dakota and a M.F.A. from the University of Maryland. He has exhibited in many major cities in the United States, and has work in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the North Dakota Museum of Art. He is a recipient of the Fine Arts Work Center Visual Fellowship, Provincetown; Individual Visual Artists Grant, Maryland State Arts Council; and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Krueger's concerns for the environment emerged in his work as hunting and fishing themes in an exhibition entitled Backwater, shown at the North Dakota Museum of Art in the spring of 1997. In 1998 he was awarded a three-month fellowship through the Lila Wallace Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Claude Monet Foundation to paint in a studio in Monet’s gardens at Giverny, France. The painting in the auction, A Wish for French Fish, combines Krueger’s love of fishing with his experience in Monet’s garden.
Lot #29
Byron Johnson Bemidji, Minnesota Covered Basket Reed with birch bark trim 18 x 13 1/2 inches, 2003 Range: $150–250
Kristín Jónsdóttir frá Munkapverá was born in Ejafjordur, Iceland, seven decades ago but has spent most of her adult life in the capital city, Reykjavik. She studied at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts (1949-52) and the Byron Johnson became a basket maker by working in the woods and through the guidance of his seventy-fiveyear-old great aunt. Back in 1991 she asked him, What do you do with those downed black ash trees? He replied, It is junk wood. We either use it for firewood or leave it in the woods. Soon he was delivering logs to her. Then she took him to the Headwaters Basket Guild meeting where Peg Solberg of Lengby, Minnesota, was demonstrating. Next thing he knew he was learning to make baskets. In 1992 Johnson made his first basket of #2 round commercial reed. He was hooked, but mostly on making baskets of black ash. The wood costs nothing and, when properly worked, takes on a beautiful sheen. So he spends many a day pounding away with a three-pound shop hammer on newly felled logs until gradually the growth rings separate. Once the growth rings are cut, they can be stored for five to six winters—the season in which a farmer makes baskets. If he needs birch bark for trim, he simply goes to the wood pile and strips away the bark. The reed, however, is the one material he purchases commercially.
Copenhagen College of Art and Crafts (1954-57). She furthered her education in France and Italy in 1959 and 1963-64. Today she is considered one of Iceland’s truly important living artists. She also holds an important place in the lexicon of international, contemporary textile artists. She is widely known for making poetic, ethereal, transcendent works of art in gentle materials. With felted wool, paper and Plexiglas, she creates works that allude to the history of her own people. Calligraphy is the dominant presence in her art—either on paper or embedded in felt. Felting of wool is an ancient method of providing warmth and shelter. It calls to mind ancient Northern European farming and shepherding traditions. Jónsdóttir fashions her felt into soft tablets and then, acting as scribe, she posts the record. It might be a registry of names of abandoned farms from different regions of Iceland—often all that remains of those who once inhabited the region. It might encompass all the emigrants to the United States and Canada between the years 1873 and 1903. Movement and loss are briefly recorded on cloth ledgers with written words that in themselves seem transient. In 2001 Jónsdóttir’s felt banners and wall pieces were included in
Johnson, born in Bemidji, runs a nearby small farm that his
A Scandinavian Sensibility: Contemporary Fiber Work by 15
father acquired in 1986. He also participates in the regional
Nordic Artists that was shown at the North Dakota Museum of
craft community. Of all the teachers he has taken workshops
Art. In March 2003 she came to the Red River Valley as part of an
from, John McGuire of New York, who also works in black
exchange between North Dakota and Iceland, giving workshops
ash, has influenced him the most. He also learned from his
in the Cavalier Public School and at Carl Ben Eielson Elementary
Indian friend, the late Frances Keahna, a White Earth Elder
School on the Grand Forks Air Force Base. Her projects, Links
from Naytahwaush, Minnesota, who is widely recognized as
Between Two Worlds, concern connections with nature, history
a master of the black-ash basket. Until she died at the age of
and people’s lives from the time immigrants arrived in North
92 in 1998, they helped each other. He delivered ash to her
Dakota from Iceland and neighboring Scandinavian countries.
and they would demonstrate together, with Johnson assigned
The Museum mounted a show of her work in conjunction with
to splitting the ash, of course.
her visit.
Lot #30
Jason Larson Bismarck, North Dakota Tree the Be Mixed media on particle board 12 x 36 inches, 2003 Range $200 – 250
Jason Larson was born in Orange County, California, in
he found himself compelled to make art. Life had been given
1970. At age eight, the family moved to Bismarck where he
back to him; suddenly living became extraordinary. A sense of
continues to reside. For three years in the early nineties, Larson
immediacy entered his life and his art. He had to paint. In nursing
studied at Bismarck State College and the Minnesota State
his wife back to health, he came into his maturity—and he found
University Moorhead, switching majors often in his search for his
his life work. Today he continues to live with his wife and three-
rightful field. Then he found art and dropped out of college to
year-old son Van in Bismarck where he works at the YMCA to
pursue black and white photography. He became skilled at
support the family and the art.
photography but longed for an art form that was more immediate. This led him to painting and drawing.
When speaking about his work he pays homage to the abstract expressionists, to artists such as Robert Motherwell, to film and
Larson’s artistic career came into focus through family trauma.
to music. Film was the first art form to affect him as a child. As
He was in his mid-twenties when his wife Deanna developed a
he says, I understood art when I first began to see films. Music
large tumor on her face. The young couple, like so many young
was intertwined: the likes of John Coltrane and Bob Dylan. I
couples, was uninsured. Immediately the local Bismarck
think my art is like a moving picture. My mixed media works are
community mounted a fund raiser for Deanna and raised half of
sections in an on-going stream. I feel it is ethereal, as film is
the needed $20,000. Family members contributed the rest. When
ethereal, as time itself is the most ethereal of all, moving, moving
the surgeon at the University of Minnesota cut into her face he
onward.
found a benign tumor. As Larson moved through the experience,
Lot #31
Kristín Jónsdóttir Reykjavik, Iceland Untitled Wool, cotton fabric, oil crayons, ink 10 1/4 x 20 3/4 inches, 2003 Range: $600–800
Lot #32
Nedra Newby Middle Village, New York City Hall from the 91st Floor of the World Trade Center Conte crayon on paper 25 1/2 x 31 1/2 inches, 1991 Range: $1,200-1,500
Nedra Newby received her education in visual arts at
struggled with one of the most daunting cityscapes on earth. Then
Georgia State University and the State University of New York
on 9/11/01 the Towers came down. A year later, on August 13,
at Albany before studying for an advanced diploma in
2002, the North Dakota Museum of Art opened an exhibition of
printmaking at the Central School of Art and Design in London
those nine painters, Re-Imagining New York. The painters, more
on a Fulbright grant. She returned from England in 1979, intent
than making paintings, were forced to confront what it is to know
on pursuing her career in New York City. When prohibitive
a city. And then, what it is to relocate that prior knowledge,
rents extinguished her hopes of settling in the newly
tempered by everything that happened after the original paintings
fashionable artists' district of Soho, she adjusted her search to
disappeared into 9/11. Only an occasional sketch made its way
the Lower East Side, locating a studio at 71 Clinton Street.
home with an artist to become the basis for new paintings.
Newby's middle-class values conflicted at once with the alien
Newby’s drawing, City Hall from the 91st Floor of the World
street culture of this rough, run-down, arson-scarred
Trade Center, was a highlight of that exhibition. With great
neighborhood. She began to draw her surroundings as a way
reluctance, she decided to allow it to come back to North
to come to terms with the ills of poverty, crime, and drug
Dakota, to be owned by a member of the Museum’s community.
addiction that impinged on her everyday experience of the cityscape. By the late 1980s, Newby had moved to the
Newby‘s work has been shown in a number of solo and group
suburban perimeters of New York City, where she continues to
exhibitions at such spaces as the Olin Gallery, Kenyon College,
work.
Gambier, OH; Washington and Jefferson College, Washington, PA; the Bridge Gallery, White Plains, NY; the Polish American
The artist’s passion to know the City, however, never waned
Museum, Port Washington, NY; the Katonah Museum of Art,
and she was pleased to be invited along with eight other
Katonah, NY; the Broom Street Gallery, New York; and the
landscape painters to share an expansive studio in the
Museum of the City of New York. Her work is included in the
northeast corner of Tower I of the World Trade Center, courtesy
collections of PepsiCo, Inc; the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the
of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Studioscape
Knight Publishing Company; and the New-York Historical
Residency Program. For three months, their easels were to
Society, among others.
stand guard at the east and north windows as the artists
Lot #33
Walter Piehl Minot, North Dakota Full Charge Sweetheart of the Rodeo Series 36 x 50 1/2 inches, 2002 Range: $2600-3000
Walter Piehl, born into a family that raised rodeo stock,
contemporary Western art. In the beginning he worked alone,
rode horses as a matter of course. Likewise, he drew as a matter
one of the very first to turn his back on the established ways of
of course. When he arrived at graduate school at the University
painting and bronze casting, rendered into cliché by followers of
of Minnesota in 1969, Bill Goldstein, now the Director of
Frederic Remington and Charles Russell.
Universal Limited Art Editions but then a fellow student, commented that from the beginning Walter drew with great
By 1978 Piehl and his horses were well on their way. By drawing,
confidence and skill. We were beginning students and he arrived
overdrawing, and re-drawing, Piehl could leave the traces of
full-blown. He put his hand to paper and the lines flowed.
movement on the paper. He worked and reworked the surface, always leaving enough description for the viewer to follow the
But before that, at the beginning of his experience with the world
motion of a falling hat, a rider flying backward, the gesture of a
outside of Marion, North Dakota, Walter went to Concordia, a
flinging hand, a boot following the body into a somersault as the
small private Lutheran college in Moorhead, Minnesota,
rider is tossed.
enrolling in 1960. Cy Running was his teacher. Walter was the skittish colt. "I was so used to calendar art, to illustration, to cowboy art as it appeared in the magazines, I had a hard time. The art coming out of Concordia College was too abstract for me. It took me a long time to appreciate the stylization, the abstraction, the simplification. I wasn’t one of the stars. I was one of the guys on the outside looking in, trying to figure out what they were doing. But I was desperate to stay there, I didn’t want to go back to that haystack. Even though I wasn’t a great student, Running was willing to stay with me, to teach me."
As he matured, his skill as a painter matured as well. Just as he was interested in observing the subtlety of a crick bottom, he wanted his surfaces to dance with subtle variations. Drips, feathered edges, scumbled paint, the judicious use of glazes, all contribute to his rich surfaces.* Today Piehl is widely recognized as one of North Dakota’s senior painters and as the artist who singularly pioneered the contemporary cowboy art movement. *Extracted from an essay written by North Dakota Museum of Art Director Laurel
Piehl went on to draw and paint horses, year after year, never
Reuter for the catalog for Piehl’s 2003 retrospective exhibition at the Plains Art
wearying of his subject, never despairing in his quest to create
Museum in Fargo.
Lot #34
Marjorie Schlossman Fargo, North Dakota Maragoli Charcoal, matte medium and acrylic on paper 50 1/4 x 40 inches, 1989 Range: $2,000–2,500
Fargo native Marjorie Schlossman earned a
and children and soon, the twenty-six-year-old North Dakotan
B.A. in literature from Northwestern University while continuing
was talking to dignitaries, distributing food, issuing tarps for
to study violin. She then moved to the West Coast and for eight
shelter. The Red Cross pulled out; Herbie remained, wearing an
years studied with Richard Bowman, whose academic career
arm band instead of carrying a gun.
included a stint at the Art Institute of Chicago—where he taught Joan Mitchell—and Stanford University, Palo Alto, California.
Marjorie Schlossman, the mother, was back in California, pregnant, unable to reach her son. Frantic, she began to paint. As
Schlossman developed her aesthetic while in California as she
one sorts through the abstractions in Maragoli, one sees on the
absorbed the West Coast life style, art, and landscape. Richard
right an African mother figure, laden with bundles, a child
Diebenkorn lived nearby. Painters practicing a California brand
clutching her leg. Across her, shrouded in blue, might be a
of abstraction, coupled with a keen interest in the perception of
mother saint. Faces abound. The landscape is the desert, its
light, abounded. Out of this came her mature style.
essence defined by California but suggesting the African desert inhabited by her son. Helicopters hover at the top of the picture.
The work in the auction, Maragoli, represents the flowering
The colors and lines are calm, peaceful. The picture becomes the
Schlossman’s talent. Maragoli is the town in Kenya near Lake
prayer of a mother for a far away son.
Victoria where her son, Herbie Ludwig, served in the Peace Corps. Like so many of his peers, he quickly learned the local
Schlossman returned to Fargo in 1992 and quickly became active
dialect, immersed himself in the culture, and began to tackle
in the local art scene. When the Plains Art Museum opened its
water issues. East Africa was in great turmoil; civil and tribal wars
new building in the fall of 1997, Schlossman was president of the
threatened. Herbie finished up his Peace Corps term only to be
Board of Trustees, having spent several years collaboratively
hired by CARE to work in a refugee camp swollen with fleeing
developing architectural plans and raising funds. She is currently
Somalis. His charge: provide pure water and sanitation. War hit,
completing her M.A. in liberal arts with a concentration in
he went into the battle zone in Mogadishu, Somalia, to work for
philosophy from Minnesota State University Moorhead, writing
UNICEF to bring food, shelter and medical equipment to mothers
her thesis on the sublime.
Lots #35, 36, 37 Zoran Mojsilov was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1955. From early childhood, he excelled in wrestling, having
Zoran Mojsilov
discovered that sissies make art, but wrestlers aren’t sissies; so to
Minneapolis, Minnesota
make art I became a wrestler. His experiences as a wrestler
Three Chairs (may be purchased separately)
evolved into a love for the physical form. He learned how the
Coldspring Minnesota Granite and steel rod
body functions from the inside out. This, combined with
40 x 38 x 35, 41 x 34 x 38, 42 x 36 x 35, 2003
schematic knowledge of the muscular system, would inform his
Range: $2,000 – 2,500 each
art for a lifetime. But first, Zoran had to make his way into art,
The photo above shows the artist with two of the chairs.
starting with a degree from the University of Belgrade in 1979. sculpture. In 1987 he received the McKnight Foundation Visual After working as an artist and teaching for a year in a small
Art Fellowship. In 1990 Mojsilov was the artist-in-residence at
village elementary school, Mojsilov left for Paris in 1983. It was
the Vie des Formes and Athena Foundation in France. He was
here that he moved away from the highly polished, classical
awarded the Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Assistance
sensibility that came with his European Beaux Arts education. He
Fellowship in 1994. He was named the Lacoste (France) School
began to combine materials into assemblages, thus discovering
of Art research fellow in 1996. That same year he won an Artist
abstraction. While in Paris he met the American painter, Ilene
Fellowship from the Bush Foundation in St. Paul. His solo and/or
Krug, who convinced him to move to Minneapolis. They were
group exhibitions have appeared throughout the Midwest and in
married in Minnesota in 1986.
Pennsylvania, New York, California, Arizona, France, Taiwan and the former Yugoslavia.
Wood, stone, and steel are my basic materials, said Mojsilov. Natural forces have imprinted themselves on wood and stone,
His first commission came in 1988 from the Socrates Sculpture
and these elements are revealed in the primary structure of a
Park in Long Island City, New York. It was followed by a dozen
sculpture. Links are completed with steel or iron that is one step
more including three memorial benches for the Museum Garden
removed from its natural setting. Wood trunks, granite fragments,
of the North Dakota Museum of Art (installed in 2002).
and steel rods are cut, chiseled, stacked, and bent according to— or sometimes in—near opposition to the laws of gravity.
Mojsilov’s relationship with the North Dakota Museum of Art began in 1990 when he participated in the exhibition Nature’s
Mojsilov's work began to receive recognition in 1985 when he
Materials. The artist’s first retrospective exhibition will be
was awarded the Paris Gallery Centrale Gold Medal Award for
organized by the North Dakota Museum of Art in 2004-05.
Unwilling Bestiary: Retrospective and Recent Work. In conjunction with the exhibition, the Museum produced a catalog and she created a book, The Unwilling Bestiary, with the poet Lea Littlewolf (Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 1998). In 1993 the Art Gallery of South Western Manitoba, Brandon, mounted a major exhibition and produced a catalog as well. In addition to her active exhibition schedule, Thorkelsson is often commissioned for special projects. These have included: Commission to produce the Green Globe Awards for the West End Biz Association, Winnipeg, 1999; Carey Awards for We Care, 1995 et seq.; award-winning series of stoppered bottles by Fusion Group for the Flax Council of Canada, 1994; the Blizzared Awards for the Manitoba Motion Picture Industry Association, 1993 et seq.; chalices for St. Alphonsus Church, Winnipeg, 1990; and altar vessels for St. Mary ‘s Cathedral, Winnipeg, 1998.
David Madzo, born in 1954, grew up on a ranch in Medora, North Dakota, in the German immigrant community of Lot #38
southwestern North Dakota. About it he says, I’m from a divided household: German Catholic and agnostic. We call it renegade
Ione Thorkelsson
Catholic. This blended background continues to surface in his
Roseisle, Manitoba
paintings fifty years later. Although the family left the farm
Laguna Vase, 2001
decades ago, David and his brother Michael have recently built
Blown glass
a home on the family property so they can return with their
9 1/2 high x 4 7/8 diameter at top
families. Their next project is to add two studios so the brothers
Range: $300-400
can spend summers making art.
Ione Thorkelsson works as a glass blower in her studio
Madzo, a voracious reader of contemporary fiction, is attracted
and home near Roseisle, Manitoba. Primarily self-taught, she first
to the 15th and 16th century mystical realists. He is also drawn
established a studio in 1973 after taking a short workshop at the
to the turn-of-the-century painters who specialized in social and
Sheridan College School of Design, Mississauga, Ontario. She
Christian symbolism. Given the artist’s entanglement with myth
has supported herself by making glass ever since. Her personal
and mysticism, archetypes such as the hermit, the fool, the
explorations in hot- and warm-glass techniques have been
monkey, the searcher, the martyr, and the winged woman
augmented by attendance at workshops and conferences.
dominate his paintings. Madzo explains, As with many other painters, I am also inspired by reading, positioned somewhere
Her formal training is in architecture, which she studied at the
between the word and the image. I have a painting of a brown
University of Manitoba from 1965-69. In 1999 she accepted a
bear which started off with something I read about Cortez
one-year appointment as an adjunct professor in the faculty of
attacking and burning the castle of the Incas and then I read in
architecture at the University of Manitoba.
the newspaper about the bear in Sarajevo which was the last animal in their zoo. The people did not have much food but they
Thorkelsson’s work has appeared in one-woman and group
still brought scraps of food to feed this bear, which came to
shows across Canada, the United States, and in Hong Kong. In
represent the struggle of their culture to survive.
1998 the Winnipeg Art Gallery mounted her retrospective titled, David Madzo is a technically accomplished painter. He handles
Lot #39
David Madzo St. Paul, MN Untitled, 1992 Acrylic on paper Two images framed separately Each image 65 x 22 inches Range: $1,500-2,000 for the pair
pigment, washes, and glazes like a master, according to North
graduation he moved to the Twin Cities where he still
Dakota Museum of Art Director, Laurel Reuter. Using thinned
paints in his downtown St. Paul studio. He was quickly
acrylic, he builds up layer after layer of transparent washes, the
picked up by the Thomas Barry Gallery where he had his
surface made rich with both under- and over drawing. The
first solo exhibition in 1986 and he continued to exhibit
winged angels in this auction were created with washes of
for the next decade. Madzo has a long relationship with
acrylic paint on paper, as opposed to board or canvas, common
the North Dakota Museum of Art which culminated in a
supports for his paintings.
solo exhibition that opened in January 2003.
Madzo graduated with a B.F.A. from the Minneapolis College of
Madzo has been the recipient of a Jerome Foundation
Art and Design (1977) and an M.F.A. from the University of North
Fellowship (1983), a McKnight Foundation Fellowship
Dakota, with a concentration in painting in 1980. Following
(1985) and a Bush Foundation Fellowship (1987).
'2003 Marshall
North Dakota Museum of Art, Post Office Box 7305, Grand Forks, North Dakota 58202-7305 USA Phone: 701.777.4195 Fax: 701.777.4425 E-mail: ndmoa@ndmoa.com www.ndmoa.com
North Dakota Museum of Art Board of Trustees
North Dakota Museum of Art Foundation Board of Directors
Corinne Alphson, Emerita
Karen Bohn
David Blehm, Emeritus
Merlin Dewing
Julie Blehm, Emerita
Daniel E. Gustafson
Ann Brown, Chair
Richard Larsen
Charles Christianson, Secretary
Darrell Larson
Virginia Dunnigan, Emerita
Fern Letnes
John Ettling
Sarah Lutman
John Foster, Vice Chair
Margery McCanna
Bruce Gjovig, Emeritus
Betty Monkman
David Hasbargen, Vice President
Laurel Reuter
Jean Holland
Gerald Skogley, Chairman
Cynthia Kaldor Sandy Kaul
North Dakota Museum of Art Staff
Barb Lander, Emerita Darrell Larson
Heather Bush
Lisa Lewis
Natalie Bowen
Robert Lewis, Emeritus
Reanna Dixon
Mary Loyland
Sharon Ennis
Ellen McKinnon, Emerita
Kara Evenson
Douglas McPhail, Emeritus
Sue Fink
Chester E. Nelson, Jr.
Ellen Gagnon
Judi Paukert
Amy Hovde
Brian Petersen, Treasurer
Kathy Kendle
Laurel Reuter, President
Rachel Evenson Kopp
Annette Rorvig
Jennifer Kotrba
Pat Ryan
Brian Lofthus
Sanny Ryan, Emerita
Laurel Reuter
Gerald Skogley, Honorary Chair
Bonnie Sobolik
Anthony Thein, Emeritus
Liz Stempinski
Mary Wakefield
Sissy Stempinski
Rex Wiedereanders, Emeritus
Jayne Stempinski
Candice Wood
Greg Vettel
Wayne Zimmerman
and over fifty volunteers