Autumn Art Auction 2014

Autumn Art Auction Volume 16, 2014

Ellen McKinnon (September 25, 1915 – May 20, 2014)

North Dakota Museum of Art

Autumn Art Auction is held in memory of Long-time

Museum Supporters Robert Lewis

and

Ellen McKinnon

North Dakota Museum of Art Board of Trustees

North Dakota Museum of Art Foundation Board of Directors

Evan Anderson

W. Jeremy Davis

Ganya Anderson

Nancy Friese

Julie Blehm, President

Bruce Gjovig

W. Jeremy Davis

Darrell Larson

Virginia Lee Dunnigan, Secretary

Laurel Reuter

Kristen Eggerling Susan Farkas Bruce Gjovig Darrell Larson, Chairman Mary Matson Sally Miskavige, Treasurer Laurel Reuter Lynn Raymond Tammy Sogard Linda Swanston Kelly Thompson, Vice President Lois Wilde Joshua Wynne

North Dakota Museum of Art Staff Matt Anderson Guillermo Guardia Sungyee Joh Danielle Masters Todd Pate Laurel Reuter, Director Gregory Vettel Matthew Wallace, Associate Director Justin Welsh Brad Werner Part-time Staff Sara Anderson

Robert W. Lewis (December 15, 1930 – August 26, 2013)

Corinne Alphson, Emerita

Curtis Longtime Sleeping

Kim Holmes, Emeritus

Sheila Dalgliesh

Douglas McPhail, Emeritus

Erika Gallaway

Gerald Skogley, Emeritus

Nathan Guillemette

Anthony Thein, Emeritus

Chris Gust Greg Jones Kathy Kendle Wayne Kendle Leanna Niebeling Sanghyeon Park Ben Schreiner Evan Sprecher Emily Stenberg

Front Cover: Margaret Wall-Romana, 2014. Oil on wood panel, 24 x 16 x 2 inches

and over fifty volunteers

North Dakota Museum of Art

AUTUMN

Art

Auction

S at u r d a y, N o v e m b e r 1 , 2 0 1 4 Wine and hors d’oeuvres 6:30 pm Auction begins at 8 pm

Auction Preview Sunday, October 18 until auction time in the Museum galleries Monday – Friday, 9 to 5 pm, Saturday – Sunday, 1 to 5 pm All works to be auctioned will be on display.

Auction Walk-about Autumn Art Auction is sponsored by the following Businesses, Not-for-profits and Individuals:

patrons — $1,000 All Seasons Garden Center 69

Laurel Reuter, Auction Curator, will lead an informal discussion about works in the Auction Thursday, October 30, 7 pm, in the galleries.

Sponsors — $750 McDonald Dentistry 64

Dakota Harvest 71 Edgewood Group 82 Hugo’s 61 JLG Architects 77

Supporters — $500 Acme Tools 67 Amazing Grains 81

Minnesota Public Radio 56

Avant Hair and Skin Care Studio 54

William F. Wosick, MD 53

Blue Moose Bar & Grill 60 Bremer Bank 59 Chester Fritz Auditorium 63 Curtis Tanabe, D.D.S. 58 Duc Tran, D.D.S. 83 Empire Arts Center 76 First State Bank 79 Fort Garry Hotel 78 Grand Forks Country Club 81 Ground Round 73 HB Sound and Light 65 Auction Supporters continued next page

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Supporters — $500 Little Bangkok 74 Museum Café 65 North Dakota Quarterly 70 Plains Chiropractic & Acupuncture P.C. 80

Buy local. Read the sponsor pages to learn about those who invest in the Museum.

Almost all are locally

Prairie Public 54 Reichert Armstrong Law Office 80 Rhombus Guys 79 River City Jewelers, Inc. 75 Sadie's Couture & Event Styling 68 Salon Seva 72 Sanders 1907 55 Sanny and Jerry Ryan Center for Prevention and Genetics 75 Summit Brewing Company 62 UND Alumni Association 62 Wogaman Insurance Agency Inc. 60 You Are Here Gallery 57, 66

Contributors — $250 Altru Health System 76 Ameriprise Financial, Debbie Albert 73 Boulder Apartments 57 Burtness Theater 55 Capital Resource Management 63 EAPC Architects and Engineers 58 Economy Plumbing 59 Forx Roller Derby 78 Greater Grand Forks Community Theatre 66 Greenberg Realty, Inc. 76 Henry's Countrypolitan 74 Icon Architectual Group 74 Opp Construction 67 Oxford Realty 70 Kelly Thompson, Oxford Realty 55 Simonson Station Stores 72 Sterling Carpet One 72 Swanson & Warcup, Ltd. 78 The Lighting Gallery 83 Transformations by Twila 59 Truyu 84 Valley Oral and Facial Surgery 67 Xcel Energy 66 2

Zimney Foster, P.C. 83

Advertisers — $125 Artwise 73 Brady, Martz & Associates, P.C. 57 Browning Arts 70 Caribou Coffee 68 Demers Dental, Chelsea R. Eickson, D.D.S. 68 Demers Dental, Paul Stadem, D.D.S. 64 Drees, Riskey & Vallager, Ltd. 58 Forks ChemDry 84 Garon Construction 73 Gate City Bank 68 Good Insurance, Bonnie Baglien 64 Marilee Moen, Greenberg Realty, Inc. 58 Jack Wadhawan, Prudential Crary Real Estate 84 MayPort Insurance 68 Rose Shop 70 Valley Dairy Stores 63 Vilandre Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc. 63 Waterfront Kitchen & Bath 57

COLETTE ANDERSON

ANUBHA BANSAL

Ross Rolshoven, Auctioneer

Auction Committee

Ross Rolshoven is a many-sided man. Foremost, he is an artist who works in assemblage, hand-colored photography, and painting. Among his exhibitions was a solo show of assemblages at the North Dakota Museum of Art in 2002. The work was based in the iconography of The West, in historical myths and representations of cowboys and Indians. These themes overlap with family, relationships, and contemporary life.

Rolshoven is a collector of early Western settlement and American Indian art and artifacts. He is completing his sixth year on Medora’s North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame Board of Directors. He has been a volunteer for numerous civic events and charities over the past thirty years, including the North Dakota Museum of Art.

SADIE GARDNER These wonderful Grand Forks women decided to operate as a Committee of the Whole rather than Chairs and a Committee. They live full lives. Some have always lived in Grand Forks;

In addition to making and collecting art, Rolshoven collects and

others are new to the community,

restores vintage boats. He was North Dakota’s only professional

having moved with their families.

boat racer for a number of years, having finished as high as fourth place in the National APBA tournament in Kankakee, Illinois— and totaled a boat or two along the way.

NATALIE MUTH Collette Anderson works as an OBGYN physician at Altru. Anubha Bansal is a full-time mom and

In everyday life, however, he is a legal investigator who handles

community volunteer. Sadie Gardner

high profile cases involving corporate, civil, and criminal

started her own business, Sadies

matters. He owns and operates Great Plains Claims, Inc. along

Couture Floral & Event Styling. Chilly

with his brother Reid, in Grand Forks, North Dakota. His work

Goodman is a full-time mom and

routinely takes him across the Upper Midwest—a boon to his

community volunteer. Apryl Molstad

collecting and his need to acquire endless numbers of objects for

works in psychiatry at Altru Hospital.

making assemblages.

Natalie Muth is a chiropractor. Denise

Rolshoven is a Summa Cum Laude University of North Dakota graduate and father of three children; his oldest daughter, Ashley,

CHILLY GOODMAN

APRYL MOLSTAD

Wood is an author who owns two companies.

lives in Taos. Daughter Jensen and son Carsen attend school in Grand Forks.

Denise Wood

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Rules of the Auction

•

•

Each registered guest will receive a bidding card as part of

This past year we lost two of our beloved friends, both of whom

the price of admission. Upon receiving the bidding card,

served as Museum Trustees, Robert Lewis and Ellen McKinnon.

each guest will be asked to sign a statement vowing to abide

They were with us from the birth of the institution, and dear to

by the Rules of the Auction listed in this catalog.

me personally. Bob Lewis was my graduate school advisor and

Absentee bidders will either leave their bids on an Absentee Bid Form with Museum personnel in person or by phone, or arrange to bid by phone the night of the Auction. Absentee bidders, by filling out the form, agree to abide by the Rules of the Auction.

•

From the Museum Director

my editor for all Museum publications. His red pen was ever present in my writing life. He also chaired the Museum Board in the 1970s. Ellen McKinnon, after decades of Board work, was voted Trustee Emeritus in 1997, as was Bob. Until her recent death, she paid for a half-page ad in the Auction catalog just because she wanted to—the only individual ever to do so.

Each bidder will use his or her own bidding number during the Auction.

They brought wisdom, elegance, and deep ties to the larger community along with generous financial assistance. They were

•

All sales are final.

•

In September 2002, the Office of the North Dakota State

as we took up the task of building a buying audience for the

Tax Commissioner determined that the gross receipts from

artists who live among us.

with us when we held our inaugural Autumn Art Auction in 1999,

the sales made at the Auction are subject to sales tax of

•

6.75%. This does not apply to out-of-state buyers who have

This Auction set the precedent for paying artists before paying

works shipped to them.

ourselves. We never ask artists to donate art—although some do.

In the event of a dispute between bidders, the auctioneer shall either determine the successful bidder or re-auction the item in dispute.

•

which they are guaranteed to receive. Work that doesn’t reach the artist’s minimum is brought in by the Museum and returned.

Any amount over the reserve and the Museum’s equal match is

Purchasers may pay for items at any point following the

split 50/50. For example: Reserve bid is $1,200. If the work sells

sale of a work but must pay for all art work before the

for $1,395, the artist receives $1,200 and the Museum receives

conclusion of the evening unless other arrangements are

$195. If the same work sells for $2,400, it is split evenly.

in place. Absentee bidders will be charged on the evening of the Auction or an invoice will be sent the next business day.

•

These are the rules of the game: Artists set a minimum price,

Others in the region have adopted our policy. Instead of always being asked to donate, artists can count on actual income from

Works of art in the Auction have minimum bids placed on

auctions. And, bless you buyers for not forgetting that this is also

them by the artist. This confidential “reserve” is a price

a benefit for the Museum, so we greatly value your generosity.

agreed upon between the artist and the North Dakota Museum of Art below which a work of art will not be sold.

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Remember, when you buy through the Auction, the price includes framing. Frames are often custom made by the artists or

The Artists

The Museum

Listed by lot number

#34 Marlon Davidson and

#1 Dan Sharbono

#35 Nancy Friese

#2 Dan Sharbono

#36 Brittney Anderson

#3 Dan Sharbono

#37 John Brummel

#4 Mary Bonkemeyer

#38 Jessica Christy

#5 Micah Bloom

#39 Timothy Ray

#6 Alana Bergstrom

#40 Walter Piehl

#7 Milena Marinov

#41 Les Skoropat

#8 Milena Marinov

#42 Armando Ramos

#9 Milena Marinov

#43 Brian Paulsen

#10 Milena Marinov

#44 Todd Hebert

#11 Marley Kaul

#45 Chris Pancoe

#12 Mollie Douthit

China; Zhimin’s annual choice of a student painter, Brittney

#46 Jessica Mongeon

#13 Mollie Douthit

#47 Ned Krouse

Anderson; John Brummel of Grand Forks; Les Skoropat of Pelican

#14 Vivienne Morgan

#48 Pirjo Berg

Rapids; Greg Edmondson of St. Louis; and Mary Bonkemeyer of

#15 Jon Solinger

#49 Jessica Matson-Fluto

Santa Fe whose exhibition of abstract paintings was on display

#16 Alexander Hettich

#50 Tim Schouten

this summer.

$17 Alexander Hettich

#51 Lisa York

#18 James Culleton

#52 Shawn O’Connor

We could not publish this catalog without the underwriting of

#19 William Harbort

#53 Mariah Masilko

our sponsors. Please take your business to these companies and

#20 Robert Wilson

#54 Kelly Thompson

individuals, thank them for their significant contributions, and

#21 Duane Shoup

#55 Ryan Stander

note how most are locally owned and operated. Sometimes they

#22 Duane Shoup

#56 Jay Pfeifer

say, “I don’t care if I get an ad, I just want to give to you guys.”

#23 Guillermo Guardia

#57 Jenny O

#24 Dyan Rey

#58 Yamin Guan

#25 Dyan Rey

#59 Zhimin Guan

#26 Don Miller

#60 Greg Edmondson Listed by page number

framed by the Museum staff who use archival materials. This adds significant value to most artworks, often as much as $400 in the Grand Forks market but considerably more elsewhere. Please note that sales tax is charged on all art that stays in state.

Each year we widen our pool of artists with ties to our audience, thus creating a richer environment for art to flourish. New to the auction this year are Ned Krouse who once taught at Minot State University; Ryan Stander and Micah Bloom, currently teaching at Minot State; Jay Pfeifer who was last in the Auction in 2001; Don Miller of Grand Forks who has returned to working in the studio after years of chairing the University of North Dakota’s Ceramics Department; Zhimin Guan’s brother, Yamin Guan, who lives in

Supporting cultural life is not in the interest of most chains but rather has become the business of the butcher, the baker and the keeper of bees, that is, those who live among us. Thank you.

—Laurel Reuter, Director Above: Barton’s Place, an installation in the Museum of the late Barton Lidice Benes’s collections as installed in his New York City apartment, where he lived for decades as a practicing artist.

Barton’s Place opened on November 16, 2013 as a re-creation of the original apartment.

Don Knudson

#27 Adam Kemp #28 Adam Kemp #29 Albert Belleveau #30 Albert Belleveau

3 Auctioneer Auction Chairs and Committee

#31 Margaret Wall-Romana

4 Rules of Auction

#32 Dave Britton

5 Director’s Introduction

#33 Madelyne Camrud

Back cover, Trustees and Staff

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Lot #1, #2, #3

Dan Sharbono Minot, North Dakota Left to right:

Dan Sharbono is a Minot artist, designer, and freelance graphic designer. He is known for his threedimensional murals and painted assemblages.

Blue Crown, 2013 Painted assemblage on wood 8.5 x 11 inches Range: $130 – 160 Bosch, 2013 Painted assemblage on wood 30 x 5 inches Range: $175 – 250 Peerless, 2013 Acrylic on wood 23 x 8 inches Range: $190 – 220

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Most of Sharbono’s work is about observing the things around him and learning to appreciate them for their inherent aesthetic qualities—signs of a personality, loyalty, and a past filled with experiences most people can relate to. He rescues found objects and materials from flea markets, yard sales, old barns and garages, and the occasional curbside. They are recycled into his artwork, thus drawing attention—and hopefully appreciation—to things that pass unnoticed in everyday life. Collected, his most recent series of paintings/assemblages, is about appreciating individuality.

According to the artist, my lovely wife Alyssa and I own and operate 62 Doors Gallery and Studios, a community of artists comprised of a small group of crazy art people, in downtown Minot. We’re lucky to have such an amazing arts community in our small midwest town. It keeps us busy, makes us crazy, keeps us all making art.

Being part of a group is a great way to learn to appreciate individuality, which is more obvious when we are given the opportunity to compare and contrast ourselves with others. Our strengths and weaknesses together make us each invaluable parts of the group.

Lot #4

mary Bonkemeyer Santa Fe, New Mexico Lilies, 2014 Watercolor 22 x 15 inches Range: $500 – 700

mary Bonkemeyer: If I were to identify myself as an artist, it would be as a poet/painter or a painter/poet.

I was born in North Carolina. From there I went to the University of Iowa where I studied under Phillip Guston and earned my MA degree. During those years, I met some fine artists. I also studied with Richard Diebenkorn and Nancy Graves. For the last twenty years I have lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Today, I spend my time between Santa Fe and Marfa, Texas.

I’d like to think of myself as having intentions that arise from the heart, rather than the head. The unintended consequences of my process, I think, would be similar to the poet’s in that I discover what I want to say through accidents and what I like to think of as gifts. The gift comes from the material, and when the intention of the heart works with the material, it is just great. Of course, if I am working from the heart, I am fueled by passion rather than a “computerized,” calculated, schematic process that my head guides me through—I hope that our politicians will begin to work from the heart as well.

According to an ancient sage, there is a fine line between genius and one who hasn’t a clue. I like to stick with the one who doesn’t have a clue (laughter) and stay open to these wonderful gifts and accidents that the material affords me. I like to get right in there with the material, with the unpredicted and the unpredictable.

I have just run across a photograph of the heart showing its frequencies or computerized patterns that operated within the body. I like to think of these frequencies as somehow being connected with the earth. Everyone’s heart is regulated by these same frequencies. It’s a lot to think about, but it’s all there and it is something I enjoy pondering.

I’ve been struggling all my life with the idea of trying to define what it means—the difference between the literal and the poetic. To what extent are reality and the literal opposites? This brings us to the definition of words. I have been thinking about power, as a word. Power, in my world, is about governments exploiting people (I didn’t mean to get political so fast, but here I am). The real definition of power is found in giving up power. To be able to give up power, I think, to embrace the other. The opposite of power, or the giving up of power, becomes the reality of power.

—Interview conducted by Patricia Goodrich in 2004 7

Lot #5

Micah Bloom Minot, North Dakota Codex Triptych, 2013 Pigment and print media 14 x 14 inches Range: $1,000 – 1,500

Micah Bloom writes about this series: On June 22, 2011, the Souris River ravaged Minot, North Dakota.

Forcing its way through homes, it seized thousands of precious items carrying them to new resting places.

Foremost among the displaced were hundreds, possibly thousands, of books. Strewn in trees, across roadways, along railroad tracks . . . these books were pilfered from shelves, floated through broken windows, and recklessly abandoned to fend off the natural elements. These books were vessels—surrogates of human soul, shelters, housing our heritage—displaced, now driven over by boomtown commuters and shredded by oil tankers from the Bakken oil fields. It was this surreal situation that stirred me to alter the fate of these books.

When I was a child, my parents instilled in me a reverence for books. Books were not to be stepped on, sat upon or abused, because they contained something mysterious and powerful. Beyond their mere physical composition of wood fibers and ink, they played some indispensable role that demanded respect and preservation. In a magical way, they were carriers of that which was irreplaceable; they housed an intellect, a unique soul. None was more protected than the Holy Bible; to cause damage to its substance was to denigrate its message. In our home, 8 books were elevated in the hierarchy of objects; in their

nature, deemed closer to humans than furniture, knickknacks, or clothing. Under these impressions, I was forced into this relationship with displaced books.

I’ve now spent over two years with these books: spring, summer, fall, winter, night, day, wind, rain, dust, snow, dew, nests, eggs, webs, sprouts, sticks, leaves, ice, snow, bulldozers, trains, trucks, duck weed, worms, spiders, birds, muskrats . . . they are becoming homes to animals, analogies for excess, progress, and harbingers of the encroaching digital age. Over days, weeks, and months, they have persuaded me to tell their story: a story of necessity, ignorance, loss, and valediction.

Micah Bloom is an artist and educator who lives in Minot, North Dakota and teaches at Minot State University.

Bloom holds an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Iowa and has been selected for numerous artist–in–residence fellowships. His works have been published in literary and art journals, and he has shown work nationally and internationally, including private galleries in China and the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art. Bloom is currently working on a multimedia project with flood-dispersed books. This work, titled Codex, involves film, photography, and installation, and explores various cultural themes using the book as subject.

Married for thirteen years, Micah and his wife Sara share four daughters and one son, and they all love to make things.

Lot #6

Alana Bergstrom North and South Dakota Tim, 2013 Acrylic on canvas 42 x 30 inches Range: $700 – 1,000

Alana Bergstrom: The painting Tim is an

emotional response to my brother-in-law Tim, a retired Air Force Major B-52 pilot. Stationed in Grand Forks, he married my sister Nicole thus opening up her world with love, happiness and family. This new and vibrant life continues to reverberate and grow. Using a three-inch brush, I dragged many layers of cobalt blue horizontally across the canvas in order to capture the sensation of vibrations of energy building upon each other and bouncing off one another while moving into the future at a steady pace. With each layer the density and the depth increase, just like the love and life he continues to give to my sister. The density is palpable, yet the expanse feels deep, similar to the mirage created by a B-52 engine exhaust that heats the air to a high degree.This makes it vibrate into a mass that seems to be densely collectable in your hands as something to hold. However, it slides right through your fingers, magically leaving only the heat of its existence and the image of a world imagined.

Layers of cobalt blue produce a mystic quality that seems to glow, to transfers itself onto the viewer. Similar to an Air Force officer, it is as cold as it is professional yet it leaves you feeling calm, safe, and ready to act. The silver suggests danger and the solidity of metal. It captures the light and shoots it back in thin stands, highlighting the delicacy of each decision and the calculation of every move. Tim is a painting of confidence and self-abandon. It holds within it the life of a man that is vibrant and deep, calculated and exposed, as well as constantly in motion and progressing forward.

Alana Bergstrom was born in Rapid City, South Dakota. She grew up in various places in the Dakotas and completed high school in Grand

Forks (2001). She graduated from Massachusetts College of Art under full scholarships. Bergstrom joined the Army and became a member of the Military Police. Her reason: She needed to know more about life in order to become a really good artist.

Spc. Alana Bergstrom, a military police soldier with the 527th MP Company, 709th MP Battalion from Grafenwoehr, Germany was named Warrior of the Year in May 2011. Deployed to Afghanistan, she spent the next years training officers to work in the communities to establish peace. Having finished up her military service, she was accepted twice—in different art divisions—at the Maryland Institute College of Art, graduating in 2013. And across town and as an officer, she taught full-time in the ROTC program at Johns Hopkins University. Currently she is in Ft. Sill, Oklahoma for six months of Air Defense 9 Artillery training.

Lots #7, #8, #9 Milena Marinov Fargo, North Dakota St. Michael the Archangel, St. Ambrose, St. Nicholas 2013 Egg tempera on wood panel with glazes Each 18 x 11.5 inches Range: $800 – 1,000 each

St. Michael the Archangel

St. Ambrose

St. Nicholas Milena Marinov was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. She

fell in love with orthodox religious art during her employment as an art conservator with the Bulgaria National Institute of Cultural Heritage and the Gallery of Old Art. Milena has many pieces in collections throughout the world. She maintains her studio and lives in North Fargo with her husband and two sons.

Theologian Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) forever changed Christianity when he began the Protestant Reformation in 16th-century Europe.

St. Michael the Archangel is the Patron Saint of Police and Warriors. He is also the Patron of Grocers, Mariners, and Sickness. He protected God from the rebellious and disloyal angel, Lucifer. Loyal and trustworthy, he is believed to be the Patron of Pilots and the Airforce in Greece. He is also believed to lead the souls of the dead to heaven. This has led some people to associate him with the god Hermes. He has been present in mythology and biblical texts at least since the Old Testament was written.

Lot #10 Milena Marinov Fargo, North Dakota Luther, 2013 Oil on canvas board 10

23.5 x 17.5 inches Range: $1,500 – 2,000

St. Ambrose (c. 340 – April 4, 397 CE) is the Patron Saint of Bees and Beekeeping. Legend has it that when Ambrose was an infant a swarm of bees settled on his face while he was lying in his cradle and didn’t leave behind a sting, but a drop of honey. This prompted his father to declare it was a sign that his son would become a sweet-tongued preacher of great significance. He did eventually get the title “Honey-Tongued Doctor” because of his speaking and preaching ability.

St. Nicholas (c. 350 CE) One of the most popular saints in Greece, he is the Patron Saint of Sea Farers. Our knowledge of him is based on legend, but we know he came from Asia Minor, and was a bishop of Myra in Lycia.

Lot #11

marley kaul Bemidji, Minnesota Between Light and Shadow, 2013 Egg tempera on board 16 x 20 inches with commissioned cherry frame Range: $2,500 – 3,000

Marley Kaul’s painting is sponsored by Hugo’s

marley kaul: When I was fifteen, I attended a Sunday morning service in our small rural church. There was a young pastor whose sermon was about seeds. The seeds we grow and the seeds that are planted in our minds. I remember that the young pastor had placed on the altar bowls of seeds that the farmers were planting that spring: corn, oats and soybeans. He said, ‘the seeds will grow if we have faith in the seed and in the process of planting.’

This past year I began a series of secular icons that honor small life events using my understanding of basic tenets to build meaning. Many of these icons utilize symmetry and color to establish spatial relationships.

This painting, Between Light and Shadow—or Darkness and Light as he sometimes calls it—is dedicated to those who plant the seeds.

I continue to work daily in my studio with more than one work in progress. My rhythm of working has become a meditative journey, one brushstroke at a time.

Marley Kaul’s work in both content and energy emphasizes his connection with natural forms and poetic metaphor. Born and raised in Good Thunder, Minnesota, Marley Kaul was educated at Mankato State University and the University of Oregon. Now retired, he was long-time chairman of the Art Department at Bemidji State University. Kaul’s work has been collected

by almost every major museum in Minnesota and North Dakota, which speaks to a tireless commitment to his development as a painter and his desire to explore the world around him. In 2009, he completed the design for a stained glass window for the First Lutheran Church in Bemidji, where in 2001 he had designed another window for the chapel, and created a painting for the altarpiece. Ultimately, Marley Kaul became a superb painter with a scholarly bent who is widely respected and loved within the region he calls home.

Like northern European artists of long ago, Kaul paints domestic life: the world surrounding his home in Northern Minnesota, his garden, what he sees out of his windows, the birds who come to the feeders, his grandmother’s tea pot, and all the other utensils and accruements of daily existence. During my career as a painter, Kaul says, my artistic concepts have revolved around ecological issues, natural growth and decay, and what I witness every day in my yard, garden, and community.

In October 2013, the exhibition, The Art of Marley Kaul, opened at The Anderson Center in Red Wing, Minnesota.

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Mollie Douthit’s paintings are sponsored by William F. Wosick, MD

mollie douthit: My practice is about sitting with and looking at objects, relaying with paint what I see.

Through a demanding and disciplined practice I intuitively select the objects I want to see through paint. Often the objects I paint are items I have collected, or saved, which remind me of people and places in my life. The subject of each painting exists in a field of non-representational space. This use of space allows size and identification of the objects to be questioned. The images are initially sparse, and the subjects simple, but formal elements such as color, composition, and paint handling visually request closer investigation of the surface. The paintings become complex, as subtleties in the application of paint are revealed. I believe that through the medium of paint, transcendence of emotion can be relayed in the description of these objects, asserting their presence, while questioning the space they consume.

Lot #12

mollie douthit Grand Forks, North Dakota Mix and Sticko, 2014 Oil on panel 8 x 11 inches Range: $1,000 – 1,400

Lot #13

mollie douthit Grand Forks, North Dakota Rent of it all, 2014 Gouache on paper 11 x 6 inches Range: $400 – 600

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Mollie Douthit was born in Grand Forks in 1986 and received her BFA in 2009 from the University of North Dakota. In 2011, she earned a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She followed up with an MFA from Burren College of Art, Ballyvaughan, Ireland. Her work has been included in the 2013 MFA edition of New American Paintings, Museum of Fine Arts; Boston Medal Award Auction; and the Royal Dublin Society Student Art Awards Exhibition. Her work has been featured on Saatchi Art (online), as well as the Saatchi Gallery in London. Upon completing her MFA, Douthit was nominated for the New Sensation Prize through Saatchi Art. Douthit exhibited in the 2013 Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition and received the Hennessy Craig Award. Douthit moved to Kilkenny in September 2014 to begin the year-long Tony O’Malley Residency.

Forthcoming in January 2015, she will have a solo exhibition in the Ashford gallery space at the RHA, Dublin.

Lot #14

Vivienne Morgan Bemidji, Minnesota Testing Boundaries Lake Windermere, Cumbria, England; Lake Julia, Beltrami County, Minnesota 2014 Archival digital print

Docks are a place of transition a place to stand suspended solid over liquid.

A place to stand or gather in the silence momentarily suspended between answer and question.

Image 18 x 52 inches Range: $1,100 – 1,500

ABOUT THE AUTUMN ART AUCTION In general, artists take with them their past, and that fuels their work. I recently read Painting Below Zero, the autobiography of James Rosenquist. As our work is different, in aspects such as scale and our process of going about choosing what to paint, I found great comfort in his words about coming from a place like North Dakota. I have been living in Ireland so coming home for a few months this summer allowed me to reconnect with the place that will forever be home. The objects I was painting were items unique to America, or my home state—things you never thought you might miss until they no longer are available. Being away, I have a stronger connection to North Dakota because distance can induce clarity of place. For me, having work in this auction that I created while in North Dakota is an honor and allows me to feel that sense of support from home, even at a distance.

—Mollie Douthit

Vivienne Morgan: I am an English woman who has lived in Bemidji for longer than I have lived anywhere else, but it still isn't quite home. Like many immigrants, I draw from distant memories of an idealized home and in an effort to find comfort in my surroundings, I make comparisons between places in England and America. I began a series of typologies in 2010, pairing similar environments of lake and wood in Beltrami county, with those in Cumbria, in the North of England. These typologies categorize the familiar: a dock on a lake in the early morning, a woodland path, or the expanse of an open field. In these pairings, England and America meld in subtle ways; there is the same subject, a similar composition, but different light, different weather, an inexplicable difference. The gap of time and place between the paired images becomes important. What is and is not seen, and what happens in the connection between each image is the nexus of the work.

Vivienne Morgan was born in England in 1958. In 1979 she moved to the United States and earned her MFA from Bowling Green State University. She now lives in the countryside near Bemidji, Minnesota. In 2008-09 the North Dakota Museum of Art mounted a one-person 13 exhibition of Morgan’s photograhs: “A Sense of Place.”

Lot #15

Jon Solinger Pelican Rapids, Minnesota Cats in Barn, 2013 Digital pigment print Image 20 x 13.5 inches Range: $500 – 800

Jon Solinger: Cats in Barn is from my current project, in which I seek to make aesthetically strong images while investigating the meaning behind rural landscapes, lyrically documenting people and their workplaces. The project explores attachment to a place through work, looking at how human labor transforms a particular piece of land, and, in turn, how the land shapes the life of the worker. I will publicly exhibit “Working Land” in August 2015 at the Hjemkomst Center in Moorhead, Minnesota.

Although showing no humans, this image is about the relationship between people and domesticated animals in the rural workplace, a branch of agricultural tradition stretching back over the millennia. It shows the interior of a dairy barn at a small farm in Erhard’s Grove Township, Minnesota. The dairy farmers have a working relationship with the Holstein cows in the photograph, breeding and keeping them for their milk production, providing a livelihood for both cows and farmers. Anyone familiar with farm life knows cats are part of the scene; they maintain their own social system and provide rodent control, companionship, and entertainment in return for a warm place to sleep and some milk to drink. The cats in the image display the family resemblance of their clan, which has made this farm their home for many cat generations.

Although the project has a documentary component, my intention is primarily artistic. I do not attempt to convey 14 journalistic facts; rather I work intuitively, aiming for a

quiet and subtle, but elegant visual style that speaks from another category of truth.

People I know who live and work in my rural neighborhood have a relationship to the land unlike my urban-dwelling friends; they develop a special intimacy with a place by deriving at least part of their livelihoods from it, and by leading lives less buffered from natural processes. By choice or by birth, their lives’ center of balance inclines them toward the natural world, making urban culture feel distant. My ancestry, like that of many others here, includes people who made a living by working directly with the land in some way. These personal and universal roots in a working relationship with a specific piece of land inspire my project.

Jon Solinger grew up at his family’s summer resort business on the shore of Lake Lida in rural Minnesota’s Otter Tail County. He earned a BA degree in art with an emphasis in photography from Minnesota State University Moorhead in 1985. He lived and worked in Minneapolis and Moorhead, Minnesota, for a number of years. Solinger, his wife, and their daughter now reside on Lake Lida, where he maintains his creative photography workplace and is the third generation owner of Solinger’s Resort.

In 2000, the North Dakota Museum of Art secured a grant from the Nodak Electric Foundation to allow him to photograph the shelterbelts of the Red River Valley. The book documenting the work will be published by the Museum in early 2015.

Alexander Hettich was born in Tajikistan, the southernmost republic in the former Soviet Union. He grew up in a valley surrounded by the Soviet Union’s tallest mountains. In 1993, a civil war forced him to flee to a small collective farm in Belarus where the climate and scenery were quite different from what he was used to.

During long Belarussian winters—cold like those here in North Dakota—as he struggled to settle into a new place, he started taking painting lessons from a local artist. He fell in love with the process of creating art, from stretching a canvas to the final steps of framing a painting. His works are images of nature—the beauty he has learned to see in the many landscapes where he has lived.

After several years of looking for a new homeland and unable to return to Tajikistan, Alexander settled in Grand Forks where he lives with his wife and three children. He works in information services at Altru Health System. His wife Bella is Director of the ESL Laanguage Centers (English as a Second Language).

Lot #16

Alexander Hettich Grand Forks, North Dakota Fields, 2008 Oil on canvas 36 x 48 inches Range: $800 – 1,100

Lot #17

Alexander Hettich Grand Forks, North Dakota Crab Apple, 2014 Oil on canvas 14 x 11 inches Range: $300 – 500

All proceeds from the sale of Crab Apple are donated to the Museum by Alexander Hettich 15

James Culleton: In 2011, I was commissioned by the Winnipeg Folk Festival to create a sculpture as a gift to Oscar Brand on the occasion of his receiving their Artistic Achievement Award. I did several drawings of the guitars Brand used over the years and settled on the one from the cover of his 1955 album Bawdy Songs and Back Room Ballads. I created two of these; the first I gave to Oscar Brand and the second is for this Museum auction. As far as the process to create the piece is concerned, first I sketched the guitar as a blind contour drawing, then I redrew the piece in AutoCAD and finally that drawing was used to guide a CNC waterjet which cut the piece out of steel.

James Culleton studied art at the University of Manitoba where he received his BFA with Honors in 1997. While living in Montréal in 2006, he received a grant from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec to rediscover his French roots. He published his first book in 2009, Contouring Québec, in which he used a GPS and blind contour drawings (made quickly while looking at the subject and not down at the pen or paper) to document his movements through Québec.

Lot #18

James Culleton Winnipeg, Manitoba Guitar (Oscar Brand’s Guitar), 2010 Waterjet cut steel 45 x 21 inches Range: $600 – 800

In 2010, Culleton was awarded a commission to create a series of steel sculptures for the facade of the West End Cultural Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 2011 he published Lyrical Lines, a book of drawings and paintings that depict a visual Who’s Who of Canada’s roots music scene in some of Winnipeg’s most venerable music venues. In 2012, he released his fourth music CD, Memento. He is currently the Design Director at Palliser Furniture and an instructor at Red River Community College in Winnipeg.

The father of two children, the artist invited his eight-yearold son to accompany him during his tenure in August 2013 and in 2014 at McCanna House, the North Dakota Museum of Art Artist-in-Residence Compound. During this time, the artist dug back into the history of McCanna, McCanna Farms, and its historic family. This became the beginning of what will evolve into many drawings and songs as well. Drew, the son, made assemblages from the metal bits he found on the gravel roads surrounding

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McCanna House, having been told that this was a place where artists come to make things.

Bill Harbort’s painting is sponsored by the Edgewood Group

Lot #19

William Charles Harbort aka Billy chuck Minot, North Dakota Summer Love, 2014 Mixed media collage 49 x 48 inches Range: $900 – 1,400

William Charles harbort who is also known as Billy chuck: Paint-by-numbers, coupons and clip art are just a few of the ingredients often found in our popular culture landfill, says Harbort. I am fascinated with each individual ingredient and the infinite messages that can be expressed by combining and juxtaposing them. It is through this process that I discover meaning and express thought. Allusion, suggestion and investigation become an important part of the viewing experience.

Bill Harbort is a professor in the art department at Minot State University. He teaches art foundations, graphic design and illustration courses. He is a co-founder and coorganizer of NOTSTOCK, MSU’s signature live arts event that spotlights the arts on campus and in the community.

Prior to teaching, he worked in New York as a package designer for a major cosmetics company, an art director for a children's educational software company, and built a reputation as an award-winning automotive artist. He specialized in airbrush renderings of muscle cars and his work has appeared in over twenty-five different popular automotive magazines.

The artist is best known for his pop art, mixed-media

collages that celebrate calendar girls, clip art, advertisements, and ephemera from pop culture. He often signs his work as “Billy Chuck,” a pseudonym that is taken from his first and middle name, William Charles. He currently exhibits at many lowbrow art galleries. His success at the Museum’s auctions forced him to raise his also lowbrow prices.

Harbort was one of six artists commissioned by the North Dakota Museum of Art to work with the people of North Dakota’s Spirit Lake Reservation to create a body of artwork about contemporary life on the Reservation. An exhibition of the first round of work was shown at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Project Space in New York’s prestigious Chelsea Art District in June 2013, followed by a tour to Fort Totten on Spirit Lake, and finally to the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks.

During the second year of the Rauschenberg collaborative project, Harbort has returned to Spirit Lake for long blocks of time, again working with local people to jointly make art. The results will be seen in an exhibition at the Museum in 2015.

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his family. His brother paints and his great-great grandfather, William Thomas, was a watercolorist. Living in Brighton, England, Mr. Thomas became known for his paintings of ships. A collection of his paintings dating back to 1850 hangs on Wilson’s Winnipeg living room walls where he lives with his quilt-making wife, Diana.

His labor-intensive vessels are sometimes colored with aniline dyes, the most light-resistant dye on the market for wood. The color holds for many years if kept out of direct sunlight. When the basic form is complete, Wilson applies up to fifty coats of Tung oil in order to achieve the remarkable visual depth of the surface.

Lot #20

Robert Wilson Winnipeg, Manitoba

Over the years, Robert Wilson has won many Juror’s Awards from the Manitoba Craft Council. One of his career highlights was when Princess Anne, visiting Winnipeg for the 1999 Pan Am Games, chose a piece of his work as a Manitoba memento. Susan Sarandon also chose a piece of his when she visited Winnipeg for the movie Shall We Dance. Robert’s work is also in the collection of Great West Life & Annuity Insurance Company. The prize-winning prototype for the work in the Museum’s 2011 Autumn Art Auction was included in the touring exhibition “Prairie Excellence” along with work from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.

Covered Vessel, 2013 Turned wood, aniline dyes, Tung oil 13.25 x 6.5 inch diameter Range: $900 – 1,100

ROBERT WILSON: According to Helen Delacretaz, Chief Curator and Curator of Decorative Arts at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, “Robert Wilson’s work is defined by its beauty, sensual finish, and meticulous craftsmanship.”

His proportions are based upon the Greek’s golden mean.

The vessel is divided into thirds with the widest point twothirds up from the bottom. The bulbous, high-shouldered vessel is balanced by the delicate, elongated finial, which he then designs and then turns on a lathe. The finial is mahogany dyed black. This vessel rests upon a contrasting matte finished base.

Before retiring, Robert Wilson was a sheet metalist for the railroad where he worked on engine heat shields among other things. And he taught himself about wood. He read every book he could find on wood turning in order to learn 18 techniques. His sense of art, however, came down through

“Clearly, a Robert Wilson sculpture is a work of art of the highest order, despite its resistance to be photographed,” says North Dakota Museum of Art Director Laurel Reuter.

Lot #21

Duane Shoup Shelvin, Minnesota Bench, 2014 Black ash with white oak stringer 34 inches high, 40 long, 20 deep Range: $1,100 – 1,500

Lower left: Lot #22

Duane Shoup Shelvin, Minnesota Small Table, 2014 Walnut root with white oak base Maple plug 21 inches high, 27 long, 21 deep Range: $700 – 900

Duane Shoup, grandson of a carpenter, grew up in Maryville, Indiana, south of Gary. By his late twenties, he felt the urge to break out so he went fishing in Minnesota.

This self-taught furniture maker ended up buying forty acres near the small town of Shevlin, building a house and all its furnishings, and embedding himself in Northern Minnesota’s deep woods. There he could find the hardwoods he needed to establish his studio, Wildwood Rustic Furnishings.

Shoup says, I use only renewable woods—oak, ash, cherry, walnut, maple, and pine as well as downed and damaged trees that showcase the color and featured wood grains only nature can produce.

Inspiration for my work flows from the natural world all around me and the north woods I call home. Each log, slab, twig, bentwood, or free-form composition represents materials purposefully selected on site and processed at my own mill, giving me complete control of the creative process from forest to final form. Finished pieces preserve the force of nature in furnishings and have the potential to become family heirlooms.

Duane Shoup’s bench is sponsored by the All Seasons He follows in the footsteps of Sam Maloof, who also created his own private world where he made furniture masterpieces known for their simplicity and practicality— he won an early MacArthur Genius Award, the first craftsman to do so. As his own master, Shoup does what he wishes, challenges his already-formidable skills, uses beautiful woods, and makes a living in the process.

The bench was made with the root of a huge walnut tree.

The white linear section on the top and bottom of the back rest results when wood is freshly sawed and not steamed allowing it to remain light in color. The stringers under the seat are white ash. Both pieces are made from sap wood right under the bark.

Advice from Duane Shoup: If you buy a piece, take it home and wax the surface. Sam Maloof developed the finish I used on the table: equal parts polyurethane varnish, Tung oil, and linseed oil. You add the final wax. 19

Lot #23

Guillermo Guardia Grand Forks, North Dakota Ocllo, You Shall Not Pass, 2013 Ceramic 22 x 20 x 8 inches Range: $2,000 – 2,500

before Spaniards arrived in the New World. Guardia’s Ocllo holds a samurai sword.

Although the samurai sword originated in Japan, there is a strong connection between Peru and Japan. Many Japanese immigrated to Peru in the early twentieth century; one of them was my grandfather. In fact, Peru hosts one of the largest Japanese communities outside the Japanese mainland.

Ocllo, You Shall Not Pass continues the line of previous baby devils but adds a deeper look into the Peruvian culture and heritage.

All proceeds from the sale of this sculpture are donated to the Museum by Guillermo Guardia

Guillermo Guardia (Memo) was born in Lima, Peru, in 1975. He hails from an ancient pre-Colombian ceramic tradition. From the time he was little, he was steeped in the images and materials of those early potters.

In particular, he loved the work of the Mochica culture, a pre-Incan civilization that flourished on the northern coast of Peru from about 200 BC to 600 AD. It was known especially for its pottery vessels modeled into naturalistic human and animal figures.

Ocllo, You Shall Not Pass, continues his “Baby Devil” series. Ocllo is a female Quechua name. According to Inca legend, the god Sun created the first two humans: Manco Capac (male) Mama Ocllo (female). Sun ordered them to search a privileged land to establish what would become the Inca Empire.

Ocllo’s surface is covered with Mochica designs. Mochica 20 is one of many cultures that developed in northern Peru

Guardia came to North Dakota in 2002 to pursue his MFA in ceramics at the University of North Dakota. He stayed on at UND to finish an MS in Industrial Technology. Now he works at the North Dakota Museum of Art as the artistin-residence. He is a studio member of Muddy Waters Clay Center in Grand Forks, where he continues producing his own art. Memo has been included in many important juried art exhibitions throughout the United States.

Lot #25

Dyan Rey

Dyan Rey’s paintings are sponsored by the North Dakota Museum of Art

Grand Forks, North Dakota Veranda, 1996 Oil on canvas 72 x 42 inches Range: $1,900 – 2,500

Lot #24

Dyan Rey Grand Forks, North Dakota Still Life with Lilies, 2013 Oil on paper 30 x 15 inches Range: $900 – 1,200

Dyan Rey was born and raised in Grand Forks. She lived for twenty years on the West Coast (California, Oregon and Seattle) and also spent five years on the East Coast in Provincetown, Maine and New York City. She received a BFA from the University of Oregon and an MFA from the University of North Dakota.

Rey has exhibited her work both locally and nationally for over thirty years. Her artwork has been seen in seventeen solo shows and in over fifty group exhibitions. Rey’s artworks have been acquired by many private and public collectors, including Microsoft Corporation, SAFECO Insurance Company, Tacoma Art Museum, City of Seattle, the North Dakota Museum of Art, and the Washington State Arts Collection. She has been represented by the Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle, the Albert Merola Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and The Dakota Collection in Grand Forks.

The painting, Veranda, will bring back memories of the downtown Grand Forks restaurant, Lola’s, where it hung for some time. It has recently come on the market. In 2010-2011, Rey

that suggest Chinese bronzes and porcelain from abstract black and white paintings on paper she made years earlier. They were published along with Glassheims poems in Foreign Exchange, published by the North Dakota Museum of Art in 2010.

exhibited the “Vase Series” at the North Dakota Museum of Art

Dyan Rey maintains a studio/gallery in downtown Grand Forks.

and the Northern Art Gallery at Mayville State University. The

She has taught in the Art Department at the University of North

cutouts were created as a collaboration with poet husband Eliot

Dakota and currently teaches at Northland College, East Grand

Glassheim after they traveled to China. She cut out vase shapes

Forks, Minnesota.

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Lot #26

Don Miller Grand Forks, North Dakota Untitled Basket, 2013 Stoneware 13 x 13 x 12 inches Range: $600 – 800

Don Miller, Professor Emeritus at the University of North

almost. The clay feels like it has taken to the air. Loose, combined

Dakota, taught ceramics at UND for forty-two years. When he

with informal fluting.

retired in 2012, he decided to return to his life as a studio potter.

Little did he expect to find such joy in the studio. He said, I felt a certain amount of misgivings about working in clay again. My wife and I have a special needs kid and that takes time. I worried

At Muddy Waters, I continue to teach four or five classes.

Throughout the UND years my students ranged from rank beginners to incredible professionals like Memo Guardia.

that I would become our daughter’s full-time mentor whem

I don’t need to be in the headlines. I like what I am doing. I like

retired. With her entry, however, into a small college in

the quiet peace of my life. I can go into the studio and take some

Minneapolis, the Minnesota Life College, I was freed up to spend

time, half-days, a day or two, whatever, and I can think about

time in the studio. I joined Muddy Waters Clay Center, a non-

what I want to do. I believe a regular work cycle provides

profit studio for local potters and found great colleagues who

opportunities for fresh ideas to emerge.

were willing to let me let my past go and move on to new ideas and work. In the past I moved more slowly. Now I can pick and

Miller received his BA at North Dakota State University, his MA

choose earlier ideas and work that I want to pursue.

from New Mexico Highlands University, and his MFA from Mills

This was a gift they gave me. They were after me to do a show in

UND’s extensive historic pottery collection and his receipt of the

the Muddy Waters Gallery. I didn’t at first. For several years, I put

Remele Fellowship in 1995 from the North Dakota Humanities

them off. But about a year ago, we set a February 2014 date,

Council. This support led to the 1999 publication of University of

which gave me about a year to get ready for the show. The work

North Dakota Pottery: the Cable Years (1997). His corresponding

in this auction was included in that show.

exhibit was held in two locations: the North Dakota Museum of

College. Among the highlights of his career are his cataloging of

Art and the Columbia Mall in Grand Forks. The show celebrated I love doing functional work. Part of it is living with and using

the fiftieth anniversary of the retirement from UND of former

functional and utilitarian objects. I find myself going back to

ceramics professor Margaret Kelly Cable.

sketches I made years earlier that I never pursued. Baskets were one, and I think these baskets I am making are lovely.

In 2008, Miller’s book was followed by his North Dakota Clay: The Cable Years video production, which won first place in the

They speak to a way of enclosing the space but keeping it

documentary category at the Midwest Journalism Conference (in

transparent. I love the shadows they cast. The positive creating a

competition with other entries within a six- state region).

22 negative space, but the image is exciting to me. Like a hug

Lot #27

Adam Kemp Grand Forks, North Dakota High Water, 1990 – 2012 Collage with acrylic on paper 26 x 36.75 inches Range: $1,200 – 1,700

Adam Kemp: High Water was begun in 1990 and finished

Kemp was born in Ugley, Essex, England. He received a BFA from

twenty-two years later. Adam occupies the out-of-doors, most

Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1986. His studies were based in the

often in the company of Hanna, the special needs child he

rigorous learning of technique and art history. He came to Grand

cosseted under his wing when she was a little girl. He observes,

Forks to cast the sculpture that stands on the northwest corner of

builds, walks, swims, and captures what he sees in drawings and

University Park, having studied bronze casting in Italy. He stayed

paintings. High Water grew out of his recognition that we on the

to earn his MFA from the UND in 1989. Adam continues to

Northern Plains are experiencing a changing relationship with

actively work within the regional arts community, generously

water. It is marked by the abundance of geese that travel along

showing his work on the streets and in local galleries. His

shorelines in spring. In particular, he noted an area surrounding

workshops with teens and children are in great demand

the Point Bridge that straddles Grand Forks and East Grand Forks.

throughout the region, including the weeklong sessions through

Here in the spring, the Red and Red Lake rivers swell into a large

the Museum’s Summer Art Camps. He concludes, “I still look at

lake where elegant masses of Canada geese set down.

the landscape around here as a pleasantly surprised outsider.”

The artist’s paintings are highly biographical. For example, High Water contains references to the Douglas Gallery, one of the first downtown Grand Forks galleries established by Deb Cook (Deb Douglas). Adam volunteered. Embedded in the collage are photos of his workshop, children (including Hanna) responding to the Lewis and Clark exhibition mounted by the Museum in 2004, and a page from a Sears Roebuck catalog he found in a basement where he once lived.

Such themes of water and the philosophy of water management have occupied Adam for the last couple of years. The work Crane is one of three in a series that harkens back to the 1997 flood and

Lot #28

the building of the dike to protect the twin cities. He painted on

Adam Kemp

site as the last section of the dike—behind the Myra Museum—

Grand Forks, North Dakota

was constructed. The sand-colored dike is on the left and notable

Crane, 2014

because it danced around a couple of beautiful old trees, clearly

Acrylic on paper

an attempt by the city to save them. On the right side of the

24 x 12 inches

painting is a tree that didn’t make it. Adam ponders, “Given that

Range: $800 – 1,200

today’s construction is completely intertwined with equipment, the crane itself is a fantastic structure. I can’t compete with it sculpturally but I can reference it in my work.”

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Right: Lot #29

Albert Belleveau Puposky, Minnesota Rock Hound, 2014 Stone and steel 14 x 12 x 9 inches Range: $700 – 900

Above: Lot #30

Albert Belleveau Puposky, Minnesota Rock a Bye Birdie, 2014 Stone and steel

All proceeds from the sale of Rock a Bye Birdie are donated to the Museum by Al Belleveau

9 x 10.5 x 14 inches Range: $150 – 300

Albert Belleveau: Rock Hound and Rock a Bye Birdie are created from red rhyolite stone, which the artist collected along the shores of Lake Superior near Silver Bay. The stone displays the volcanic geologic history of the continental rift region—the earthquakes, silica infiltration and subsequent erosion, the cleaving and wave tumbling that produces these marvelous stones used to create unique sculpture.

Born in Minneapolis in 1959, Al Belleveau started working with metal in his father’s fabrication shop at the age of five.

At age eleven, he moved to his grandparent’s farm, where he endlessly roamed the hills and valleys of Minnesota’s Maple Ridge Township.

Today he lives with his wife in a log house north of Bemidji, surrounded by the fullness of nature that inspires many of his works. He says, I have primarily created with metals in my mature years, but I have always collected sticks and stones and glued them together to create my little sculptures—primarily between the ages of seven to 24 sixteen. After joining the work force as a welder at

seventeen, I often spent my coffee and lunch breaks welding sculptures at my various places of employment.

Even then I was haunted by the shapes and possibilities of cast-off materials. The last ten years I’ve worked vigorously developing Rock Iron Art. Rock Iron Art is the synthesis of a life-long, love affair that I have had with two of northern Minnesota’s most plentiful resources: rocks and metal. I transform them into sculptural forms to depict humorous life forms, unique functional furniture, and decorating accouterments.

I collect the wind and wave-softened stones during my frequent kayaking trips on Lake Superior and I sculpt them at my Puposky studio. The rocks are selected according to size and color, then thrust into cages of steel, formed and tightened under enormous pressure, then welded into my sculptural vision. The finished sculpture is sandblasted to even the surfaces and sealed with two coats of lacquer or left to rust.

The human form shaped from the stuff we often overlook leads us to the excitement of ‘seeing the new in the familiar’ as all art is simply “SEEING” better.

Lot #31

Margaret Wall-Romana Golden Valley, Minnesota Other Seasons, 2014 Oil on wood panel 24 x 16 x 2 inches Range: $1,800 – 2,500

Margaret Wall-Romana: I made this piece specifically for this auction, beginning it while I was Artistin-Residence at the North Dakota Museum of Art’s wonderful McCanna House. One day while standing in the kitchen, I observed a ruby-throated hummingbird. It came to the window and lingered outside there for some time, having confused a red cooking pot (hanging from a pot-rack close to the window) for a flower. That’s when I realized that the painting I had been working on might be “missing” a hummingbird.

Making large paintings is what I do. It’s unusual for me to make something small that isn’t in the nature of a study for a larger painting, and even that is a rare occurrence. That’s what I had set out to do—a kind of study—but the more I worked on it, the more interested I became in pursuing it as a painting proper. In the end, I would describe it as a “large” painting that happens to be very small. It almost feels like a miniature. The painting is comprised of two panels, as many of my paintings are, and it went through all the phases of development that my larger works do. I flipped and rearranged the panels multiple times while trying to find the image, and the only real constant, after its inclusion, was the hummingbird.

For painters like myself who are interested in the history of the medium, paintings speak to and of each other across the centuries. If I study Rogier van der Weyden’s painting, Deposition From the Cross, that I admire (c.1432), it’s not other depictions of religious devotion I’m inclined to think of, but the mighty and often bawdy works of Max Beckmann. Despite the 500 years between them and the dissimilarity of their narratives, both artists loved the human figure and made work whose gravitas and formal

ingenuity link them for me. Looking at a Rembrandt, standing as close as I can and trying to feel what it was like to place those strokes, I’m liable to begin musing about Philip Guston. The centuries collapse in the face of shared sensibilities, and narrative is revealed to be what it has always been for the great painters: an excuse to make a painting.

I love what’s involved in painting representationally—the close observation and concentration required to translate looking through paint into a record of having seen. But my first crush as a serious student of painting was Abstract Expressionism, and for me being a painter is still about that in-the-moment engagement with the developing image, with the possibility of upheaval and radical re-envisioning always near —invited and necessary.

Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Wall-Romana moved to Minneapolis eight years ago. She holds a BA from the University of California, Davis, and an MFA from 25 the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Lot #32

Dave Britton Grand Forks, North Dakota

The Cribbing (Rosville, ND, .5 miles east and 4 miles south of Portland) June 30, 2013 Digital medium: Canon 5D Mark II, with 24-105 mm lens.

Printed by Doug Norby 26.5 x 40 inches Range: $800 – 1,200

Dave Britton: The prolific growth of grain elevators began in the late 1880s and paralleled the settlement of the prairies. More and more farmers produced ever-larger crops of grain that needed to be sold, stored and shipped to market. That need was satisfied by each town’s local grain elevators.

Grain was ‘elevated’ to the top of the elevators, and then redirected by gravity to specific bins. The elevator had to be strong enough to hold the grain’s pressure pushing out on the elevator’s bin walls. The cribbed-construction wall design, in which 2” boards were laid flat on top of each other, provided this strength. 2 x 8 boards were used at the lower portion of the walls, where the greatest pressure occurred. As the walls got higher and less wall pressure existed, 2 x 6s were used, followed by 2 x 4s for the highest wall sections. These flat 2 x 8, 2 x 6, 2 x 4 walls were referred to, in the grain trade, as ‘The Cribbing’.

Grain elevators were usually the tallest structures in town and could be seen for miles. They were reassuring to travelers, symbolizing the courage and persistence of the farmers and small town prairie residents. The elevators were also an informal gathering place for farmers. The coffee pot at the elevator office was often the catalyst for bull sessions, good-natured ribbing, or catching up on how neighbors and their families were doing.

Over the years, the old cribbed elevators lost their 26 usefulness. Modern grain economics demand high-

capacity, high-throughput elevators, capable of loading 110-car trains in a single day. Most of the old cribbed elevators have been idled, abandoned or demolished.

They are a proud, albeit disappearing part of the texture of our prairie heritage—the source of fond memories.

Dave Britton grew up around old grain elevators owned and operated by his father, Clarence Britton. These North Dakota elevators were in Keith—six miles east of Devils Lake—Kempton, Merrifield, and Northwest Mills Elevator in Grand Forks—a partnership of Clarence, Earl Kurtz, and Eugene Ellingrud, which was sold to North Dakota Mill and Elevator in 1953.

For two summers in 1958 and 1959, Britton traveled with his dad as he sold Swenko barley shakers to elevators in eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota. During his high school years, he drove the Merrifield Grain Co. truck, picking up grain his dad had bought from various elevators in the same area. He has fond memories of several of these old elevators, their managers, and their communities.

Britton, who started Britton Transport in 1980 in the basement of his home in Grand Forks, has photographed over 1,000 elevator locations on the plains—often when driving a truck cross-country— some of which no longer exist. This may well prove to be one of the significant systematic records of an important architectural archtype of early twentieth-century America.

Lot #33

Madelyne Camrud

All proceeds from the sale of The Cribbing are donated to the Museum by Dave Britton

Grand Forks, North Dakota Fences, 2012 Acrylic on panel 24 x 24 inches Range: $400 – 600

All proceeds from the sale of Fences are donated to the Museum by Madelyne Camrud

Madelyn Camrud: Raised on a farm near Grand Forks, Camrud is tuned to North Dakota weather and its effects. She draws from her life on the prairie to make her paintings. This work images lush trees and shrubs, products of a summer much like this year (2014) with generous rains and cooler temperatures.

The work has gone through a metamorphosis since its beginning in 2012. At first called Barriers, the title has now changed to simply Fences.

My interest in working a painting like this lies mostly in the sky, she says. The marks cannot be intended. Paint is applied over a lightly sculpted surface. In each wet layer of paint, I write loosely with color pencil anything that comes to mind. A series of quick splashes of house paint (the same that’s on my kitchen cupboards) with a large brush

partially conceals the writing. A coat of paint becomes final only if I have managed to allow the necessary spontaneity and the writing appears half-clouded.

In addition to making art, Camrud has published two fulllength collections of poems, This House Is Filled with Cracks and Oddly Beautiful, along with a chapbook titled The Light We Go After. A broadside, Oddly Beautiful, was published by The North Dakota Museum of Art in 2014.

Camrud received degrees in visual arts and creative writing at the University of North Dakota. She spent a decade employed at the North Dakota Museum of Art and continues to serve in various positions of volunteer work at the Museum.

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Lot #34

Marlon Davidson & Don Knudson Bemidji, Minnesota Sparkling Waters Two, 2013 Wood, acrylic, vinyl fabric 39 x 70 x 3 inches Range: $600 – 1,000

Marlon Davidson & Don Knudson are collaborative artists who have lived in the Bemidji area for twenty-four years. They have individual art careers but have been producing collaborative work for about thirty years. Their art is in private and public venues and they are represented in collections across the United States and Europe. Their collaborative wall work, Great Wave, hangs in the commons area of the University of Denmark. Both artists were educated at Bemidji State College (Bemidji State University), and at the Minneapolis School of Art, (Minneapolis College of Art and Design).

Marlon has had a long history in the area of art education, as a teacher in the public schools of West St. Paul and later as a fixed-term instructor at Bemidji State University. Don worked for some years as a display artist for the Emporium Department Store in St. Paul. He is also a furniture maker 28 and sculptor who makes assembled works for the wall as

well as standing objects. The artists have also owned and operated a bed-and-breakfast, Meadowgrove, in the Bemidji area but they now devote full time to art production. They are life partners who have lived together for fifty-six years.

The artists feel that their primary inspiration derives from nature. They attempt to combine natural elements with contemporary design concepts. They both are perpetual students of art history. They read and listen, they travel and they look at art. Marlon says, We are a collection of influences from our mentors, from other artists, and from the wide world of fine arts. The artist must absorb and then select, finding a voice that speaks for him or her, hoping to achieve some universal truth, seeking perfection through a lifetime.

According to the artists, We are especially grateful to the Museum, to the director, and to the community which offer us an opportunity to have our work seen. We have gained new friends, and have been thrilled by the warm reception our collaborations have received among area people.

Lot #35

Nancy Friese Cranston, Rhode Island and Buxton, North Dakota Among the Trees, 2014 Multi-plate linocut Printed by Sue Oehme Oehme Graphics Steamboat Springs, Colorado Image 12 x 17.75 inches Range: $700 – 900

All proceeds from the sale of Among the Trees are donated to the Museum by Nancy Friese Nancy Friese is a painter-printmaker working in arboretums, national land trusts, and open-air sites. She divides her time between her home in Rhode Island and her farmstead in North Dakota, twenty-five miles south of Grand Forks.

In 2007 Laurel Reuter wrote, Maybe he marveled while watching the heavens as a toddler in Hedalen, Norway.

Maybe his parents directed his attention to the stars as they sailed back and forth across the Atlantic. We know for sure that it was in western Dakota Territory that Ben Huset's interest in the planets turned to fascination and finally to devotion. This self-taught man went on to become the Weatherman of the Great Plains. From 1937 into the 1960s his annual Ben Huset's Forecast served as the farmer's bible.

Huset's granddaughter, the artist Nancy Friese, inherited a similar passion for the natural world. Her art springs from astute observation within the landscape fed by her intense understanding of the forces of weather. Movement, brilliant color, slashing lines, and inner tensions spill onto the canvas and paper and then reappear in woodcuts, drypoints, and aquatints. Weather never exists as a static entity. In her work, change is imminent, the landscape is volatile, hiding great storms and massive cloud buildup, winds, and movement even in moments of calm. The earth, the plant world, and the sky—each has an equal presence just as the whole of her picture plane is potently alive. She works from both the factual and the intuitive and therein lies her art.

The artist credits the grandfather Weatherman with her enduring interest in the landscape. For thirty years this has been her subject. Not the Fauvists, but the grandfather taught her to see the colors of weather. Reflecting sundogs.

Northern Lights. Rainbows. Fiery sunsets. Heat mirages.

Swirling snow transformed by sunlight into an impressionist's palette. For only through light and movement does color exist as a living entity. This is the underriding truth of Friese's art. Like the grandfather, the artist immerses herself into the wilderness of weather, into its untamable energy, into its patterns, and into its beauty, an element never absent in Friese's art. Unfashionable?

Perhaps. True to human experience? Certainly.

Friese has received numerous grants and fellowships including National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the Japan-US Friendship Commission Creative Artist Fellowship, a Giverny Fellowship, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. She has shown in the United States, Europe, and China and Japan. Her works are in fifty corporate and museum collections. She has an MFA from Yale University School of Art and studied at the University of California-Berkeley, the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and Yale University Summer School of Music and Art. She teaches at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) where she is a Mellon Faculty Fellow in the Prints, Drawings and Photographs Department of the RISD Museum. Nancy has served on the RISD Museum Board of Governors, and the North Dakota Museum Foundation, 29 among others.

Lot #36

Brittney Anderson Minneapolis, Minnesota Cloud Series No. 2, 2012 Oil on canvas 36 x 36 inches Range: $600 – 800

Brittney Anderson: Born in 1993 in Bismarck, North Dakota, Anderson is currently obtaining her BFA in Art Education at Minnesota State University Moorhead.

She is specializing in oil painting.

Regarding the work in the Auction, Anderson wrote, I wanted to focus on the environment, the deterioration of land. Today, landscapes are being overlooked by society, going unnoticed and forgotten. By layering, texturing and scraping oil paint with rice paper and graphite, Cloud Series No. 2 evokes an almost tactile and vulnerable quality, bringing back a soft, yet destructive appearance that nature portrays.

Over the last few years, before moving to the FargoMoorhead area, she was involved in a local artist cooperative known as BDAC, (Bismarck Downtown Artist Co-Op). In the cooperative gallery, Bismarck-Mandan artists assemble exhibitions to sell. The organization also gives local artists the opportunity to follow the work of peer artists from the area. Anderson has also taken part in gallery exhibitions during her first year at MSUM, 30 especially in the fall 2013 and spring 2014 semesters.

Currently, I am working on a large sculpture for the West Fargo Spicy Pie, a pizza shop. In the work, I am combining metal, wire, and painting. After I complete my undergraduate degree, I have a keen interest to continue my studies. More recently, I have developed an interest in the deterioration of nature and the human form. I want to capture the truth of what I see and how I see it. My goal is to create paintings that achieve a supple painterly quality between representation and abstraction, sense and nonsense. To captivate the viewers, to disturb them.

Lithograph sage petri dish

Collage air freshener, gold dust

Lithograph North Dakota crude oil

Lot #38

Jessica Christy Minot, North Dakota

John Brummel, a library patron and an Air Force veteran, moved to Grand Forks in 1997. “I’ve always been an artist,” Brummel explains. On Saturdays, he rides a city bus to the Grand Cities Mall, then walks over to use the library’s public computers, not having one at home.

“Sometimes it’s pretty busy,” he observes, “but usually I can get a seat.”

Brummel opens Microsoft’s Fresh Paint and begins to draw on the computer. Half-an-hour later he completes a work, most often a mechanical wonder—war ships, destroyers, fighters, German bi-planes, frigates, the Nautilus submarine, trains and more trains, lighthouses and John Deere tractors. His compositions are impressionistic, marked by a playful freedom of line.

Once the drawing is complete, he prints out two copies, showing them to friends around town or occasionally mailing one to family back in Missouri. Sometimes he drops in unannounced at Museum Director Laurel Reuter’s office, always with a gift drawing in hand.

—Quoted in part from the March 2014 Newsletter, Grand Forks Public Library

Left: Lot #37

The Melancholy of Becoming America, 2014 Each 8.5 x 6.5 x 2.5 inches Range: $400 – 500 for all three

Jessica Christy: Collective experience is an alternative expression of the human condition. The assemblage of happenings, idea, memory, thought and being accumulate in the creation of individuality. The works in this series speak to this collection by gathering the mundane and melancholy, the tactile and tempting, the sordid and verbose. Remnants of the American existence are archived and labeled with everything from nostalgia to fact. These associations aim to suggest that nothing in our lives stands alone, yet is woven into the fabric of the human condition.

Christy is a native North Dakotan, born to two artists on the Sanger Art Farm, located at the northern edge of the Sheyenne River valley. Raised in the arts, she received her BA from Valley City State University, and her MFA from the University of North Dakota. Jessica has shown her work extensively, both regionally and nationally, winning numerous awards. She currently teaches at Minot State University.

John Brummel Grand Forks, North Dakota Chester Fritz Library 2012 Digital drawing with Microsoft’s Fresh Paint 9 x 14.5 inches Range: $300 – 400

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Lot #39

Timothy Ray (1943 – 2013) Forest Light, 1991 Acrylic and paper collage 41 x 31 inches Range: $1,500 – 1,800

Tragedies haunt institutions just as they haunt humans.

Those stormy days in February 2013 will be remembered in the history of the Museum for years to come.

Timothy Ray: On Saturday, February 9, 2013, Tim Ray died of cancer. Eight days later, the North Dakota Museum of Art opened a retrospective of his work. The Sunday afternoon event turned into a memorial on that fiercely stormy afternoon. Despite roads covered by thick, torturous sheets of ice, a hundred people turned out, many having driven the still-open Interstate 29 from Fargo. The funeral was scheduled the next afternoon. Mr. Ray’s son failed to arrive for the funeral. Then news came: In a strange twist of fate worthy of a Greek tragedy, his son, Sean Ray died on the way to his father’s funeral. He and his partner died in a car accident during a blizzard along I-94 east of Moorhead. Tim Ray’s grandson was also injured in the accident and remains in critical condition.

—Jeff Weispfenning

The North Dakota Museum of Art began working with Mr. Ray a year before on the comprehensive retrospective of his artwork. Fargo’s ecce gallery joined the team; the exhibition would move to Fargo after the Museum showing. This was the work that Mr. Ray turned his mind to in the last months of his life, betting against time that he 32 would be at the Grand Forks opening.

The obituary gives the facts: Timothy Ray was born and raised in Indian Head, Saskatchewan. He studied fine arts at the University of Manitoba from 1958 to 1961 and in 1966. And in 1963 he received his Interim Collegiate Teaching Certificate from the University of Manitoba.

Upon receiving his teaching certificate, Ray began teaching at a high school in Manitoba. In 1967, Ray left teaching to continue his education at the Emma Lake Artists’ Workshop under Frank Stella. Ray received his Masters in Fine Arts at the University of Arkansas in 1969.

Young and full of knowledge, Ray began teaching university-level art at Pikeville College in Kentucky. In 1970, he moved to Moorhead, where he taught at Minnesota State University Moorhead until his retirement in 1996.

Although considered an exceptional teacher, it is his art that will be remembered by the larger community.

For the work in the Auction, Tim Ray combined the raw texture of Japanese paper with sections of hard-edged, reverse-painted acrylic monotypes and named the collage Forest Light. The monotype’s patterns were built with India ink and layers of acrylic medium. This contemplative piece mirrors patterns seen in nature and considers how one point of view changes his or her perception of space.

Lot #40

Walter Piehl Minot, North Dakota Son of Hurt’n: “American Minotaur Series” 2009 – 2013 Mixed media and acrylic on paper 19.5 x 27.5 inches Range: $2,200 – 2,500

Walter Piehl is a painter who makes drawings and also incorporates drawing into his acrylic paintings. He does not use drawing to make studies for paintings but as a primary medium, either embedded into paintings or as separate works of art. Ultimately, however, Piehl is most widely known as a painter. His goal is to make his surfaces dance with subtle variations. Drips, feathered edges, scumbled paint, and the judicious use of glazes all contribute to his rich surfaces. His fractured spaces, transparency, multiple images and their afterimages cause his works to sing with movement.

The Minotaur in the Auction harks back to an earlier time when blues and lavenders dominated his paintings. It came before the artist began to split his space with strong diagonals as he does today. Thus, Son of Hurt’n is coveted by collectors wanting to own Piehl’s early as well as late work, his works on paper as well as canvas.

Unlike most artists, Walter Piehl was quite young when he decided to make art from his own life. Born into a family that raised rodeo stock, Walter rode horses as a matter of course. Likewise, in a household without television, he

drew constantly. He went on to paint and draw horses, year after year, never wearying of his subject, never despairing in his quest to create Contemporary Western Art. This master painter, while continuing to live the cowboy life, has found the means to visually enter the sport. In the process he has led droves of artists into a new arena called Contemporary Western Art—but most don’t know that this artist from North Dakota charted their course years ago.

In 2008, Walter Piehl won the Bush Foundation’s first Enduring Vision Prize worth $100,000. Earlier, he received the 2005 North Dakota Governor’s Award for the Arts. The artis has twice served on the Board of the North Dakota Council on the Arts, for several years on the Board of Trustees of the North Dakota Museum of Art, and is on the founding governing board of the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame in Medora. In 2013, United Limited Art Editions (ULAE) created an edition print with Walter for the benefit of the North Dakota Museum of Art. Only a few remain from the thirty-print edition, the proceeds of which were given to the Museum for general operating costs.

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Lot #41 Les SKoropat Pelican Rapids, Minnesota Good Night, 2011 Quad-tone pigment inks on cotton archival paper 14 x 20 inches framed Range: $200 – 300

Les SKoropat: Like entering a mirror and experiencing a different version of the world, my photographs explore reflections of familiar environments.

This distinctive perspective is presented so that others might step into my personal looking glass.

A classic automobile can be photographed as a subject; it also provides reflecting surfaces. While most observers see the gleaming, restored vehicle, at the same time its surfaces reflect the viewer’s present surroundings.

Distorted and shaped by the curves and planes of the surface, the reflected image might also be perceived as something that could be. The qualities of shape, texture and color contribute to a synthesis worthy of exhibition and contemplation.

The photograph in the Auction reflects the power of personal symbols. The car, a 1950 Chevrolet, is owned by 34 a retired history teacher. “Goodnight, Irene” was a popular

song in 1950 when he was courting his wife. The car and the song remind him of a happy time in his life.

According to Skoropat, discovering this song title juxtaposed with the reflection of the clouds reminded me of my mother Irene's passing.

Les Skoropat is a Fargo artist, photographer, and graphic designer whose work has also included modern and tap dance, music, printmaking, painting, fiber art, combined media, calligraphy and the book arts.

Born in 1952 on Flag Day in Bismarck, North Dakota, he first learned about taking photos from his mother, the unofficial family photographer. She could chronicle an entire year of family events with twelve pictures taken with an Ansco 620, which was stored in the kitchen cupboard with a blue flashbulb in place, ready for the next birthday or holiday.

Skoropat worked as a school photographer at St. Mary's Central High in Bismarck, where he developed a fondness for the simplicity of the black-and-white image, and where he began his camera collection, which includes his mother's Ansco and his first camera, a Polaroid Swinger.

The artist has been employed as Art Director for Prairie Public Broadcasting since 1975. His photographs were recently displayed at the Minnesota Pelican Rapids Library.

Lot #42

Armando Ramos Valley City, North Dakota Model 2514, 2014 Slip-cast clay, enamel 31 x 14 x 12 inches Range: $700 – 900

Armando Ramos has been a generous and vibrant force in the North Dakota art scene since moving to the state in 2009 to teach at Valley City State University, according to Museum Director Laurel Reuter. He grew up in Texas but left the state for college. He completed his undergraduate studies at the Kansas City Art Institute and graduate studies at Montana State University. In the years following graduate school he lived and maintained a studio in San Francisco.

He says, Through portraiture and caricature, I create comically irreverent images drawn from my jumbled youth. Pop culture, mass media, religious iconography, and quotidian observations are civilly canonized as high-relief sculptures, minimalist interventions, and absurd juxtapositions that question the largeness of these larger-than-life embodiments. In examining my own history, I deny the authenticity of the past memories and the invincibility of adulthood. Instead, I seek to create an existence of complicated iconography that gives odd relevance to sculptures and paintings.

Ramos has been an artist in residence at The Richard Cartier Studios (Napa, California), Vermont Studio Center at Johnson, and at California State University at Long Beach. He is currently a Professor of Art at Valley City State University and was awarded a 2012 Individual Artist Grant from the North Dakota Council on the Arts.

His work has been exhibited at the Virginia Brier Gallery (San Francisco), The Oakland Museum (Oakland, California), The Dairy Art Center (Boulder, Colorado), Elmhurst Art Museum (Elmhurst, Illinois), Studio Couture (Detroit) and the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks.

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Lot #43

Brian Paulsen Grand Forks, North Dakota Untitled Arrangement, 2014 Color pencil 13.5 x 9 inches Range: $500 – 600

—This is an artist who delights in visual games, in word games, in whimsy. He is well-schooled in the principles of design, in art history, in color theory and formalism, all of which he freely puns. The surreal coupling of images remains, the whimsy and make-believe as well.

Brian Paulsen: —Since Brian’s earliest memories, he was always keenly aware of his living spaces, people’s differences, their odors. His grandfather was a sign painter and a muralist.

His father was an inventor and builder of houses, cabinets and boats. Because his studio was in the same space as his fathers’ wood and tools for many years, he lived with those smells and noise. His early years became the stocked cabinet of memories that feeds his art.

—I was raised with geometry all around me especially in the materials of carpentry, building, repairing, making, and all those other useful occupations. My grandfather was a sign painter and a muralist. My father was an inventor and builder of houses, cabinets, and boats. The realm of Popular Mechanics—a service magazine founded in 1902 that offers written technical material to the average American man—schooled my imagination.

—The hard edges are an outgrowth of his sign painting and graphic design interests, coupled with early copying of 36 cartoons and illustrations.

—I came to know illustration as practiced by professionals, a world given form and order through signs and symbols and hand lettering.

Still today, Paulsen hand letters the exhibition titles on the walls of the North Dakota Museum of Art—maybe the last museum in America to be thus graced.

—Quotes from Laurel Reuter, Brian Paulsen, North Dakota Museum of Art, 2008

Brian Paulsen earned his BA at the University of Washington in 1963 and his MFA in 1996 from Washington State University. His teaching career began at Chico State College in California, continued at the University of Calgary, and in 1973 moved to the University of North Dakota where he retired in 2007. Paulsen, one of North Dakota’s important painters, was named Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor, UND’s highest honor, in 2007. The North Dakota Museum of Art mounted a solo exhibition, which resulted in a book about Paulsen’s work (2008). He has been a visiting artist at dozens of colleges and universities. His work has been shown in more than 100 juried exhibitions, eighty solo shows, and 200 North American invitational exhibitions.

Lot #44

Todd Hebert Grand Forks, North Dakota Windmill with Glacier, 2012 Color pencil with pastel on paper 12 x 12 inches Range: $800 – 1,000

Todd Hebert: Windmill with Glacier was one of the first things I made after returning to North Dakota in 2012.

It resonates with me because it seems to be a reflection of the moment both globally and locally: a suspension between a potential future and an understood past.

Born in Valley City in 1972, Todd Hebert spent his early years in McHenry, North Dakota. His father moved the family to Dickinson in 1980 to accept the job at Dickinson High School coaching basketball and teaching social studies.

Hebert played football, basketball, and baseball. He also drew and painted and took art classes from Michael Dunn, a wildlife watercolorist. According to Hebert, Dunn made watercolors by carefully observing the outdoor world. He taught me to observe and work with great precision, something that is still important in my art making.

He was fortunate in high school as well, studying under teachers such as Lilly Stewart. Next came the University of North Dakota and painting and drawing instructor Brian Paulsen, sculptor Pat Luber, and printmaker Ron Schaefer.

The aspiring artist continued to develop his techniques, especially what seemed to be his innate ability to render the objects of everyday life. Above all, he saw that Paulsen and Luber were always working, always making art. Their work method was important to me. I observed that the intellectual side of art and the material side of making art had to be married in order for the art to succeed.

After graduating with a BFA in painting and drawing from UND, I applied to the Rhode Island School of Design. I saw that North Dakota artist Nancy Friese was teaching

there and thought I might get in. And he did. He graduated with his MFA in 1998, the same year he accepted a yearlong fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusets. A second invitation followed from the prestigious Core Residency Program at Houston’s Glassell School of Art where he spent two years in a postgraduate residency for art critics and visual artists.

His career took off with invitations to show in solo and group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. In 2005, Connecticut’s Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art gave him its prestigious Emerging Artist Award. Today, he is represented by Devin Borden Gallery in Houston and Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe Gallery in New York City. His art, however, stays grounded in the mundane, the ordinary existence of North Dakotans. According to Los Angeles art critic David Pagel, writing in the brochure that accompanied his solo exhibition at the North Dakota Museum of Art in 2012, Hebert’s art is worlds away from the elitist esoterica that holds so much contemporary art in its thrall.

Among the numerous private and public collections that have acquired his work are the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the The Neuberger Berman Collection, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles. Hebert has been an Assistant Professor of Art & 37 Design at the University of North Dakota since 2012.

Lot #45 Chris Pancoe Winnipeg, Manitoba Lidded Jar, 2013 Wood-fired stoneware 12.25 x 9.5 x 9.5 inches Range: $300 – 500

Chris Pancoe is a multi-media artist with a profound

Minnesota. He attended a yearlong residency at Pueblo Espanol

interest in clay. He often fires his work using atmospheric firing

in Barcelona, Spain and has taught ceramics in Winnipeg,

techniques such as wood, salt, and soda because of the unique

Manitoba and Minneapolis and Inver Hills, Minnesota. He has

surface qualities they provide.

exhibited his work both nationally and internationally. Currently,

When asked about his art, he says, I am influenced by a type of

he is the Studio Technician for the Ceramics and Sculpture area at the University of Manitoba. He lives in the West End

urban landscape, mostly in the run-down and decaying industrial

neighborhood of Winnipeg with his daughter Lucie, his dog Sipi,

edges of Winnipeg. I am fascinated by the areas once occupied

and his wife Jennie O—an artist also represented in this Auction.

by immigrant workers of busy garment factories, foundries and steel mills which line the train tracks and the pot-holed service roads as I meander along.

Within the nooks and crannies of these industrial carcasses is where I have taken up this urban landscape as subject. I seek to emulate the rusty, weathered elements and ruins of the containers, hoppers, water towers, and storage receptacles put to rest for the elements to reclaim. My intention is to unite sculpture and utility, and impart a sense of place while bringing the aesthetic of a weathered, well-used utilitarian object to the home and bring it back to use for the everyday.

38 Chris received his Masters of Fine Art at the University of

Lot #46

Jessica Mongeon Jessica

Mongeon:

My work exposes and

Rice Lake, Wisconsin

explores structures that are found in the natural world, as well as

Geothermal, 2014

the world of imagination. Rather than depict a specific

Acrylic, photo transfer on

landscape, I aggregate my feelings from multiple experiences.

wood panel

Sketching and journaling as I travel by foot through various types

16 x 20 inches

of terrain, I collect data for my paintings. I approach my

Range: $400 – 600

environment as an artist, seeking to communicate experiences through painting.

The paintings are left structurally open in order to invite multiple interpretations and places of entry. An otherworldly element is

and blooms of pigment speak to gravity and help to create an

added as I contort and manipulate the space, intuitively working

illusion of deep space or surface tension.

in layers. The process of painting mediates and translates spatial experiences and awareness. Without providing mediation and by

Jessica grew up on a family farm in Rolette, North Dakota. A

obstructing the act of naming, viewers are free to construct their

recent MFA graduate from Montana State University in Bozeman,

own interpretations.

she first completed a BFA from the University of North Dakota.

Her work has been exhibited regionally and nationally, including

Disorder and the inevitable breaking down of systems are part of

a juried exhibition at the Painting Center in New York City, called

the cyclical properties of nature that lead to growth. My

“Natural/Constructed Spaces.” In September 2013, Jessica

processes allow for spontaneity and chance to play a role. This

participated in an Artist Residency at the Anderson Center in Red

involves laying down fluid acrylic with string, spraying, dripping,

Wing, Minnesota. From October through mid-November she

and applying color with wide hake brushes onto an absorbent

took part in a month long Sam and Adele Golden Foundation

panel. An otherworldly element is added as I contort and

Artist Residency in Columbus, New York, sponsored in part by

manipulate the illusion of space on the painted surface,

the Montana Arts Council. Currently she teaches at the University

intuitively working in layers. The process of painting mediates

of Wisconsin–Barron County.

and translates spatial experiences and awareness. Pours, drips

39

Lansing Potters Guild in Michigan. He has presented numerous workshops and demonstrations for colleges, universities, art centers and public schools throughout the country. His work is represented by Milward Ferrell Fine Arts in Madison, Wisconsin; Mostly Clay in Pittsford, New York; and Button Gallery in Douglas, Michigan.

Krouse says, I built my studio on my property so I can move easily to landscaping and gardening. I completed the Michigan Master Gardner Program in 2003 and am still an avid gardner today. Many of my designs come from that experience. Also. for years I’ve participated in weekly figure drawing sessions where I find similarities to working with colored slips.

Raku Process

Lot #47 Ned Krouse Haslette, Michigan Prairie Butterfly Vase, 2014 Wheel-thrown, slip-decorated and raku-fired 9 x 8 inch diameter Range: $400 – 500

Ned Krouse: I raku to produce colors that cannot be achieved in other types of firing. When the clay is leather hard, I brush on multiple layers of colored slip and carve designs that reveal the colors underneath. Next, the pieces are bisque fired and covered with a clear glaze. When the kiln reaches temperature to melt the glaze, pieces are removed with tongs and placed in straw which catches fire and blackens the clay.

Ned Krouse received his MFA in ceramics from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia. He has been producing slip-decorated raku fired work for over thirty years. He has taught at numerous colleges and art centers around the country, including undergraduate and graduate ceramics and design courses at Indiana University–Purdue University, Fort Wayne; Minot State University; and Rochester Institute of Technology.

Krouse’s primary interest in teaching has been community education, thus, he has been an instructor at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York, and the Ann Arbor 40 Potters Guild. Since 2002, he has been at the Greater

Raku ware is a type of Japanese pottery that is traditionally used in the Japanese Tea Ceremony, most often in the form of tea bowls. It is usually shaped by hand rather than thrown. The vessels are fairly porous, which results from low firing temperatures. The glazes are lead based. Finally, the pieces are removed from the kiln while still glowing hot. In the traditional Japanese process, after removal raku pots are allowed to cool in the open air. The familiar technique of placing the ware in a container filled with combustible material, introduced by American Paul Soldner, is not a traditional Raku practice. Raku techniques have been modified by contemporary potters worldwide.

When most potters in the West think of raku firing, they think of what should technically be referred to as “American” or “Western” raku: a process in which work is removed from the kiln at its maximum temperature, thus exposing it to thermal shock or rapid cooling which is stressful on the pottery. The pots don’t shatter because they are made from an open or porus clay body, which acts like a shock absorber, preventing the body from immediately exploding when the pot is removed from the kiln.

Subsequently, pots are subjected to post-firing reduction (or smoking) by being placed in containers of combustible materials, which blackens clay and causes fracturing or crazing in the glaze surface.

These crackle glazes are enhanced in the post-firing smoking as carbon becomes embedded into the cracks in the glaze. This Western raku-firing process attracts many potters because of its excitement and unpredictability.

Pirjo Berg: The stripes in my paintings are inspired by Finnish traditional rag rugs and wall hangings, which fill the floors and walls at the homes in my family. When I was a child my mother, grandmothers, and aunts were busy designing and making them. They were always anchored in beautiful stripes. Even today those striped designs remind me of my home and childhood.

My paintings are based on color, texture, and shape. The stripes, repetition, and texture are found not only in the familiar textiles, but also in geological formations. Over the years, I have traveled with my geologist husband all over the world (Nepal, Greenland, Arctic Spitsbergen, Baja California, Alaska, United States, Southwest Canyon Lands, Sierra Nevada, and so on) as his field assistant. The landscape, the sedimentary rocks and layers or beds (as geologist call them) are elements which have became familiar to me.

In geological formations, such as canyon walls, I see familiar striped patterns, but on an enormous scale representing much longer periods of time. The Core Sample Series was inspired by my experiences in pristine nature. I became interested in the possibilities of capturing the essence of the geological time, a length of time that is difficult to comprehend. The real core samples collected by geologists reveal variations in climate, life forms, and sedimentary composition during geologic history.

My paintings have layers (or beds) of landscapes which are squeezed by time and “flattened”. Some of the pigments I use in painting come from the rocks. The way pigments mix with water imitates the geological processes. In my Core Sample Series I paint these landscapes flat and then force them into a cylindrical form. The work in the Auction is an example. As I am painting stripes, they turn into inner emotional landscapes. One can recognize the landscape in them, but they are in motion all the time as if one were watching a movie, and can slide backward and forward in time and space.

Born in Helsinki, Finland, and now residing in Grand Forks, North Dakota, Pirjo Berg completed her MA in Regional Planning (1991) at the University of Tampere, Finland; her BFA in Painting (2000) at the School of Art and Media, Tampere, Finland; and earned the 2005 EDGE– Program, Artist Trust in Seattle, Washington.

Berg has had solo exhibitions in Washington, North

Lot #48

Pirjo Berg Grand Forks, North Dakota Beds #3, Core Sample Series Watercolor, ink and gouache on Yupo watercolor paper Sealed with Krylon UV Resistant clear protective coat 24 x 48 inches Range: $700 – 1,100

Pirjo Berg’s painting is sponsored by Dakota Harvest Dakota, and Helsinki, Finland. In addition to numerous group exhibits in Finland and the United States, Berg created a 1997 installation for Finland’s eightieth independence celebration, Kiasm, in the Contemporary Art Museum of Finland, Helsinki.

Her work is in public collections in the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks; Valley Medical Center in Renton, Washington; Sacred Heart Medical Center in Springfield, Oregon; Max-Hotel in Seattle, Washington; and the Labor Museum in Tampere, Finland.

Berg has completed residencies at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson (2013); McCanna House, North Dakota Museum of Art (2013); at Willapa Bay Air, Oysterville, Washington (2014); and in Berlin, Germany (2014).

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Lot #49

Jessica Matson-Fluto Horace, North Dakota Detachment, 2012 Oil on canvas 14 x 11 inches Range: $400 – 500

Jessica Matson-Fluto: The work in the Auction,

the Twins from each other. Like the Twins, the landscape has

Detachment, is from a body of work that represents the essence

become abstract as well.

of the human figure which is created primarily from my subconscious mind. These figures are developed by internal

Jessica Matson-Fluto was born in Spokane, Washington in 1980.

dialogues. A particular thought or emotion will impact choices of

She received her BFA from Minnesota State University Moorhead

brushwork and color palette. Through this process, composition

in 2006 and her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine

will begin to take form, often in a more abstracted manner. At

Arts in 2008. Matson-Fluto currently teaches at Minnesota State

times, such ruminations may form into a figure in my mind

University Moorhead and makes work in her studio in Horace,

specifically to express an emotional quality in the painting. The

North Dakota. She exhibits regionally and is included in public

end results, however, may be a figure of a completely different

and private collections throughout the United States. Matson-

body type, position, or gender. Creating, struggling, destructing,

Fluto also continues her education by partaking in workshops

and reworking are a constant in this process.

and master classes with various artists nationwide. She lives in Horace with her husband and twin sons.

Detachment was created while I was pregnant with my identical twins. After having surgery for Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome, I was placed on bed rest for four-and-a-half months.

During this period, I had copious amounts of time to think about my unborn children and the surgery which helped correct their sharing of unequal amounts of nutrients and blood. Detachment represents a monochromatic silhouette of twins. This piece 42 alludes to the disconnect between the mother and the twins, and

Lot #50

Tim Schouten Winnipeg, Manitoba Pay list – Treaty 4 (Boy Born), 2012 Oil, dry pigment, beeswax, microcrystalline wax, dammar resin on canvas 9 x 12 inches Range: $450 – 600

Tim Schouten has been engaged in The Treaty Suites project for over ten years. This body of work examines the eleven “numbered treaties” which were signed between the Government of Canada and First Nations in Central Canada between 1871 and 1956.

Schouten's perspective is that of a non-Aboriginal treaty participant descended from Scottish, Belgian, and Dutch settlers in the Red River region of Manitoba.

Most of the paintings in this project are based on photographs that Schouten has taken at the exact physical locations of the signings of each of the eleven treaties. This particular work however, Pay list – Treaty 4 (Boy Born), is one of six small text paintings that were made after Schouten discovered a copy of an early hand-written “annuity pay list” for the Fort Qu’Appelle Band of Indians who for some reason had received Treaty Annuity payments at Fort Walsh that particular year. The list included notations on the number of people in each family receiving payment, and changes in the family since payments were made the previous year. In this family, it was noted that there had been a “boy born” during the previous year and thus the family would receive an additional $5 for the new member.

The works in this series reflect on the ways in which the treaty making process, the written treaty itself and related documents, created the reserve (reservation) system that we know today. The work asks us to look at the ways in which the treaty process has defined land divisions, ownership rights and set the terms which have led to all of the social and economic inequities that we are all too familiar with today.

Schouten’s process in creating this work involved scanning, enlarging and cropping the original document, and then making a stencil of words, including all of the ink smears and splotches from the quill pen used to record the annuity. The canvas was then painted with varied pigmented wax layers up to a thickness of about oneeighth inch. Using a stencil, the words are then transferred to the wax, the lettering carved out with a sharp tool, the excavation filled with molten-pigmented wax. Once cooled, the surface worked with scraping tools and irons to achieve the finished effect.

A Canadian artist based in Winnipeg, he studied at Art Sake Inc. in Toronto from 1978-1980. He is also a curator, writer, and art educator. He has exhibited his work across Canada and in the United States, and his paintings reside in private and public art collections including the collections of the Winnipeg Art Gallery, North Dakota Museum of Art and Cankdeska Cikana Community College in Fort Totten on the Spirit Lake Reservation.

Schouten was one of six artists commissioned by the North Dakota Museum of Art to work with the people of North Dakota’s Spirit Lake Reservation to create a body of artwork about contemporary life on the Reservation. An exhibition from the first year was shown at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Project Space in New York’s prestigious Chelsea Art District in June 2013, followed by shows at Fort Totten on Spirit Lake, and finally the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks. Prior to this collaboration, Schouten received a $20,000 commission from the Museum to begin painting on Spirit Lake (funded 43 by the National Endowment for the Arts).

Lot #51

Lisa York Gaithersburg, Maryland Wood Shelf with Cups, 2014 Oak shelf with ceramic cups Shelf 29 x 16 x 12 inches Range: $400 – 800

Lisa York is a ceramic artist from the Washington, D.C.

decorate with lines and abstracted flowers, which contribute to

area. She is also delves into wood, glass and book making. She

an overall sense of earthiness. My ceramics are organic and

received her BA in 2008 from Houghton College, a Master’s

individualistic, with rims that wobble and surfaces that are

Certificate in the Ceramic Arts in 2010 from Hood College in

asymmetrical. These qualities reinforce the ideas of landscape,

Fredericks Maryland, and a MFA in 2014 from the University of

and expand the possibilities of how the pieces are seen and

North Dakota. She has worked internationally with ceramic co-

experienced.

ops in Tanzania and Guatemala. Lisa York has also been a resident artist at the Sanbao Ceramic Art Institute, Jingdezhen, China, and at the International Ceramics Studio, Kecskemet, Hungary. She has shown nationally and internationally in China, Canada, Russia, and Hungary. She is currently an instructor, ceramic technician, and gallery director at Hood College.

The utilitarian pieces not only promote social gathering, but are also meant to become cherished objects. The work invites the user to touch and interact, to feel the materials. She is driven by her own curiosity about materials and by the challenge of working with surface, form and function. From the malleability of clay, to the rigidity of wood, these materials contrast and

I was exposed to indigenous textiles and ceramics through

complement each other, both in their material characteristics and

international travel, which increased my appreciation of raw,

human interactions with the finished pieces. Bold lines, circle

simplified forms. In my own work, I record similar shapes,

designs, and the varied surface of the ceramic vessels invite the

patterns, and ideas I find interesting by drawing on the surface of

viewer to enjoy the cup, bowl, or plate from every angle.

44 the vessel. I leave some ceramic pieces unadorned. Others I

Lot #52

Shawn O’Connor Minot, Maine Large Vase, 2014 Stoneware 24 x 18 inch diameter Range: $900 – 1,400

Shawn O’Connor: My desire is to create useful objects for service in the home. Growing up, my home life was strongly focused around the family. Family dinners were important and rarely missed. My extended family often gathered for social events such as birthdays and holidays which always revolved around food. I would like to extend this sense of comfort and warmth through my work to others who use it.

Firing with wood also came with my upbringing. I was raised in a rural Maine home that was heated with a wood stove during the cold winter months. This meant that the fire was constantly being fed in order to heat the house.

This required a lot of work and attentiveness to the fire.

Preparing wood for the winter required many days of hauling, splitting, and stacking. From an early age, I found the physical labor, the rhythm, and the sense of accomplishment enjoyable.

My artwork is tailored for the process of wood firing.

During the making, I leave the surfaces of the work quiet and relatively unmarked to allow the flame to create the modulated surface that I desire. As a child in Maine, I became interested in worn river rocks, the erosion of land, the old weathered farmhouse and the rich colors of leaves as they change in the Fall. These are all records of time, change and decay, much like the surface of my work produced in the wood kiln.

The pieces are marked by the flame, colored by the kiln atmosphere, christened by ash deposit, and freckled by erupting impurities. No two pieces are exactly the same, as the path of the flame records distinct marks on each piece. The wood-fired surface resembles the way wind and water erode rock and earth. The flame moves through the kiln wrapping in and around the work, leaving a mark

dependant on what is next to, touching above or below that particular piece. The path of the flame can be controlled when stacking the kiln. Care is spent on each piece as it is loaded, as this will dictate the way the flame moves over and marks the surface of the piece.

Shawn O’Connor was born and raised in Minot, Maine and completed his BFA at the University of Southern Maine in 2005. After undergraduate studies, O’Connor became a resident and staff member at Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine. He also completed a six-week residency at the Robert M. MacNamara Foundation on Westport Island, Maine. In May 2010, Shawn received his MFA in Ceramics from Syracuse University. The main focus of his research in graduate school revolved around wood firing. While at Syracuse, Shawn designed and constructed a train-style wood kiln.

He published his first article about his kiln in Log Book, an international journal devoted to wood firing. O’Connor completed a year long artist-in-residence at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee in 2011.

In 2012. he traveled to China as a visiting artist for West Virginia University. Most recently, O’Connor was a visiting artist and adjunct professor at the University of 45 North Dakota.

Lot #53

Mariah Masilko St. Paul, Minnesota Room With a View, 2013 Watercolor, 9.5 x 11 inches Range: $250 – 400

Mariah Masilko: Room With A View is based on a photograph taken in 2008 on the fourth floor of Weston State Hospital, a now-abandoned mental institution in Weston, West Virginia. The asylum was built on the teachings of Dr. Thomas Kirkbride, an advocate for the humane treatment of mental illness in the mid 1800s, who thought the architecture and landscaping could have curative properties. Every patient deserved a window, so the light could help with their recovery. The resulting buildings had long, tiered wards on either side of a central administration building. Unfortunately, despite good intentions, many of the patients spent the rest of their lives institutionalized, particularly women who could only be released by a male relative.

This scene struck me, because here’s this tiny window with nothing to see outside but more and more windows, each one with some other soul behind it, each person in their own tiny room, with only this to see day after day.

When patients lived here, the plaster would probably not have been crumbling, and there wouldn’t have been cracks in the windows. But underneath it all, there always have been, and unfortunately may always be, cracks and crumbling spots in the treatment of the mentally ill.

Born and raised in Grand Forks, North Dakota, Mariah went on to study architecture for a short time at the University of Oklahoma, then transferred to the University of Minnesota where she earned her BA in Studio Arts in 46 1997. She currently lives in St. Paul with her family.

Kelly Thompson’s recent works in charcoal follow the aesthetic for which he is most known in his paintings: dramatic and sweeping depictions of North Dakota landscapes with strong horizon lines as focal points, dividing his pieces into earth and sky. This moody new piece shows a fast-moving storm front blowing across a newly-planted spring field. Both the fertile soil and the brightening sky hint of hope and better things to come.

Kelly says, Working in charcoal, an artist is challenged to rely more heavily on composition, form, contrast and texture in the absence of color. It’s a technique I have cultivated over the years as a long-time graphic designer with an emphasis in logo design, where minimalism and editing to essential elements is paramount. My artwork is never detail-oriented. My preference is to relate to all things—life and art—in broader strokes.

From Grand Forks, Kelly Thompson resides there and in Bemidji, Minnesota. He is a local entrepreneur and purveyor of coffee, screen printing, and real estate. A graduate of the University of North Dakota, he is the father of three and a member of the Board of Trustees of the North Dakota Museum of Art.

Lot #55

Ryan Stander Minot, North Dakota Untitled, 2014 Photograph 11.75 x 12 inches Range: $250 – 400

Left, Lot #54

Kelly Thompson Grand Forks, North Dakota Cloud Break Over Field, 2014 Charcoal on paper 76 x 38 inches Range: $1,100 – 1,300

Ryan Stander: Land matters. This simple, two-word

recent transplant to central North Dakota. He has alternated his

sentence sums up much of my artistic practice. As a play on

education between art and religion. An MFA from the University

words, it suggests both the importance of land but also the

of North Dakota, an MA in Theology from Sioux Falls Seminary,

particular physical manifestations of it. For years, I have been

South Dakota, and a BA in Art from Northwestern College,

drawn to ideas and imagery of the landscape and its cultural

Orange, Iowa. Drawing upon his theological background, the

formation. In essence, humanity shapes the land to fit its needs,

themes of memory, identity, and place often rise to the fore in his

and, in turn, the landscape reinforces humanity’s basic beliefs.

work. His artistic practice mirror his interdisciplinary education,

This complex social relationship between people and the land

spanning photography, printmaking, and book arts.

flourishes in both individual and corporate memory, imagination, and identities. My own photographic work then ranges from

His work has been exhibited internationally in South Africa,

objective topographical surveys to the more romantic ideals

Central and South America; nationally in New York, New Jersey

often tied to landscape.

and Texas; and across the Upper-Midwest. Stander is in his third year as an Assistant Professor of Art at Minot State University

This particular piece is a toned, digital print of an unpaved

where he teaches photography and directs Flat Tail Press, a small

parking lot in Minot. A streetlamp casts its light in a shape that

art publishing endeavor.

mirrors the neighboring tree and highlights the recent movement of heavy machinery in the area. The light also makes clear the boundary cut between the partially cultivated dirt before it

Note: The work is a deep golden brown that comes alive when

recedes in grassy darkness up the hill behind it.

seen up close but which is impossible to photograph, according

Originally from the farmlands of northwest Iowa, Ryan is a fairly

to Museum Director, Laurel Reuter.

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Lot #56

Jay Pfeifer Fargo, North Dakota Scape III, 2014 Steel sheet, polyurethane, and elbow grease 50 x 34 inches Range: $2,200 – 2,800

Jay Pfeifer’s painting is sponsored by Minnesota Public Radio

golden mean of the accomplished artist. There is warmth here, and stirrings of loss, of home, of slightly remembered ideals, as if these primal textures and earthen tones might portend the presence of some broader landscape, the shared memory of some larger world.

In this, Pfeifer partakes of the creation of myth—from water to wine, from lead to purest ore—common to the wider range of Jay Pfeifer’s art is defined more by his materials and his long familiarity with them than by any preconceived themes or designs. From the building sites and construction zones of his everyday work life, he gathers the raw components—lath, sand,

painters and sculptors. The singular alchemy of a Pfeifer work is how his roughest of scavengings, the sticks and the pastes, the scraps of the waste, have been so effectively recast as an artifact —as an art—of an idyllic, iconic realm.

joint compound, roofing paper, even coffee grounds and motor

Raised in the bread-basket country of Buffalo, North Dakota,

oil—to meld and transform into the rich forms and vistas of his

Pfeifer now resides in nearby Fargo, in the heart of the Red River

“paintings,” the term he prefers.

Valley, 10,000 square miles of bountiful, flat-as-a-tabletop farmland. After earning an associate’s degree in commercial art

It should be noted that the image in the catalog doesn’t come

from Consumers River College in Sacramento, California in

close to the actual work, which it is painted on a reflected steel

1982, Pfeifer spent the next decade attending schools in

sheet. As one moves around the piece, the color shifts

California and Utah, and working for contractors throughout the

continuously.

Midwest and western United States.

His methods provide a protean means of addressing the scene. A

Pfeifer returned to the Red River Valley in the fall of 1992. “I

fretwork of glazed sand might suggest a distant fence line or, at

never felt connected to a place other than the Red River Valley,”

second glance, an enormous grid of cropland as seen from the

Pfeifer says of his decision to return. “This is a place that is

air. A stroke of rust—residue from a soaking trowel—might be

psychologically comfortable for me.” His art reflects this comfort.

seen as a dry creek bed, an autumn thicket, or the redness of the

A 1995 graduate of North Dakota State University with a BS in

evening sky. Having begun under the economy of thrift, using

Fine Art, Pfeifer works as a foreman for Roers Construction, a

only the supplies he could salvage, and thus afford, Pfeifer now 48 instills in his paintings an economy of statement and purpose, the

Fargo commercial contractor, and exhibits his art at various exhibitions and competitions throughout the region.

Jenny O makes dolls, wonderful dolls, haunting dolls.

A truly original, self-determining, mature artist. One asks, Why dolls?

According to the May 2004 issue of Border Crossing, Jennie O tells a story that could break a girl’s heart. Sitting in her studio, surrounded by fragments of fabric, numerous pairs of scissors, paintings and dolls, and framed by a canopy of fetching lingerie that hangs from a makeshift clothes line, she explains why she makes the art she does.

I guess the doll thing stems from when my parents split up.

I had a million dolls and we had a garage sale and I sold every one of them. It was a rash decision, and I suppose I’m trying to make up for the ones I sold.

Jenny O is a self-taught, interdisciplinary artist from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Best known for her sculptural narratives, Jennie O aims to draw her viewers into a subversive yet honest world of biographical experience, myth and fairytale.

The mixed-media sculptural dolls that she creates are independent characters of different realms, which connect to form a broader mythological narrative that alludes to a specific dream, event or life experience. Beginning with herself as the protagonist of each endless dream-like story, she becomes surrounded by family, friends, and foes in the forms of animal/human, fruit/human or inanimate object/human hybrids. Tongue-in-cheek at first glance, her dolls invite the viewer to explore deeper and critically respond to gender and social roles, the human vs. the animal, the environment, politics and/or identity.

She holds a BA with a major in Anthropology. Despite Forbes magazine’s declaration that Anthropology is the number one worst college major, Jennie O uses her education to inform her practice. She has orchestrated large and small community art projects in Winnipeg, in Canadian First Nation Reserves, and in the United States.

When the North Dakota Museum of Art staff first met her, she was making art with kids at Art City, a Winnipeg innercity drop-in center founded by the international artist Wanda Koop.

She has received many awards and has exhibited locally, nationally and internationally. And now she and her husband, Chris Panceo, have a living doll of their own, a daughter Lucie Rae O’Keefe.

Lot #57

Jenny O Winnipeg, Manitoba Harriet, from the series “Arctic Delirium” 2011 Mixed media 11 x 3.5 x 2 inches Range: $400 – 600

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Lot #58

Yamin Guan Anhui, China Chinese Opera II, 2013 27.5 x 27.5 inches Range: $600 – 1,000

Zhimin and Yamin Guans’ paintings are sponsored by JLG Architects

Yamin Guan was born in 1959 in Anhui, China, where he continues to live. He earned his BA in painting from Anhui Drama Institute in 1981. Many years after he graduated from college, Guan was hired as a theater set designer. Later he became a folk art researcher. Both are resources that feed into his own artworks, which are included in regional and national shows. Guan also organizes community exhibitions of folk art, paper cutting, brush painting, etc. For such professional work he is paid by the government for seven to eight hours a day, five days a week.

His paintings draw inspiration from theater art, Chinese folk art, and paper cutting. He also finds inspiration from Western art, especially by the impressionists—Monet, Picasso, Matisse, and the abstract expressionists. His works have been featured in many significant national exhibitions across China. He also won numerous awards in Anhui Fine Art Exhibitions including a Gold Medal in 50 2001, Excellent Award in 2004, and Third Place 2006.

His paintings have appeared in countless magazines and are collected by many private and public institutions throughout China and abroad.

Yamin Guan’s younger brother is Zhimin Guan who lives in Fargo and teaches at the University of Minnesota Moorhead. Every Summer, when Zhimin travels to China, he gets together Yamin Guan, to discuss art, attend regional artist residencies, and offer art workshops in many cities, especially in northeast China.

The proceeds from the sale of Tide of the Divine III are donated to the Museum

by Zhimin Guan.

Lot #59 Zhimin Guan Fargo, North Dakota Tide of the Divine III, 2014 Acrylic, ink and watercolor on mounted paper 38 x 45 inches image 46.5 x 53 inches framed Range: $1,800 – 2,500

Zhimin Guan: For the last few years, I have been experimenting with creating landscape paintings on various surfaces and scales. My intention has been to blend traditional landscape painting with expressionism, conceptualism, and the aesthetics of Oriental philosophy.

Most summers I return to China. In the summer of 2012, I participated as an artist-in-residence in Xichang City near the southwest corner of China, between Yunan and Sichuan provinces, the Lugu Lake areas. I had never been there before. This region, 9,800 feet above sea level, is covered by a series of huge mountains (about 900 square miles of forests and mountains). One must drive ten hours to reach another city about 300 miles away on circling mountain roads. It is very beautiful, breath-taking, and seems dangerous when riding on the charter bus. There were thirty-five artists from China and the United States painting every day. It was co-organized by Dantang Museum in Xichang and Blue Roof Gallery in Sichuan Province. Temperatures were 50-65 degrees. For me it was the greatest learning, painting, and travelling experience ever.

Inspired by that residency, Guan created twenty largescale, abstract paintings in various media. These paintings draw upon his deep respect and affinity for Chinese calligraphy and abstract expressionism. They also reveal

the influence Chinese landscape painting has on him.

With a minimalistic use of brush strokes, Guan suggests the spiritual presence of mountains, water, and sky.

Zhimin Guan was born in China in 1962. He started to paint when he was nine years old, influenced by his father, Chintian Guan, a traditional Chinese calligrapher and ink painter. Guan received rigorous training in calligraphy and traditional ink painting before he was fifteen years old. At the same time, he developed a strong interest in the Chinese philosophy of Taoism and ancient Chinese poetry.

During his BFA studies at Fuyang Teachers College in China, he concentrated on oil painting and again received intensive training in drawing and painting in the Western classical style. From 1985 to 1994, he taught painting, drawing, and design at Dalian Institute of Industrial Design in Dalian, China. Then in the spring of 1995, Guan moved to the United States. Since 1998, he has been a professor of art and design at Minnesota State University Moorhead; visiting professor at China Dalian University of Technology, School of Art and Architecture, Anhui Normal University; School of Art in Wuhu, Anhui Province; and the Dalian International Institute of Art and Design, among others. He exhibits widely throughout the United States, especially in Upper Midwest, and in China.

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Lot #60

Greg Edmondson St. Louis, Missouri Mastodon, 2013 Pencil and gouache on paper 11 x 23 inches framed Range: $600 – 1,000

Greg Edmondson’s painting is sponsored by Plains Chiropractic & Acupuncture P.C.

Greg Edmondson received his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and his BFA from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he originally enrolled to study biology and philosophy. His change of focus transitioned his life from the library and the laboratory to the studio, but these two initial interests have remained intact.

His current work takes biological nexus as a launching point from which to explore the patterns and codes that run throughout the natural world. Based in simple systems of organic growth, (repetition, sequence and dispersal), these works can be viewed as both schematic and topographical. His drawings themselves are the products of generative processes, as they toggle and shift between microscopic and macroscopic perspectives. This exposes our relationship to both an incalculable substrate and an inconceivable expanse, illustrating our connection with the invisible, he says.

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Edmondson’s art has been shown widely throughout the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. He holds both Fulbright and DAAD fellowships to Germany, and has received numerous artist residency grants

including ArtPark, Kunst Haus Munich, Black Mountain College, Colorado College, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Santa Fe Art Institute, and STARCO. His most recent solo projects include Broken Line, a 14 x 48 foot billboard installed in St. Louis and Detroit (2013), and “DIS-ORGANISM,” an exhibition of objects, drawings and video at Wayne State University in Detroit (2013). This spring, Greg will spend two months at the Osage Arts Community in Belle, Missouri.

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Photograph by Matthew Borgerson

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Autumn Art Auction is held in memory of Long-time

Museum Supporters Robert Lewis

and

Ellen McKinnon

North Dakota Museum of Art Board of Trustees

North Dakota Museum of Art Foundation Board of Directors

Evan Anderson

W. Jeremy Davis

Ganya Anderson

Nancy Friese

Julie Blehm, President

Bruce Gjovig

W. Jeremy Davis

Darrell Larson

Virginia Lee Dunnigan, Secretary

Laurel Reuter

Kristen Eggerling Susan Farkas Bruce Gjovig Darrell Larson, Chairman Mary Matson Sally Miskavige, Treasurer Laurel Reuter Lynn Raymond Tammy Sogard Linda Swanston Kelly Thompson, Vice President Lois Wilde Joshua Wynne

North Dakota Museum of Art Staff Matt Anderson Guillermo Guardia Sungyee Joh Danielle Masters Todd Pate Laurel Reuter, Director Gregory Vettel Matthew Wallace, Associate Director Justin Welsh Brad Werner Part-time Staff Sara Anderson

Robert W. Lewis (December 15, 1930 – August 26, 2013)

Corinne Alphson, Emerita

Curtis Longtime Sleeping

Kim Holmes, Emeritus

Sheila Dalgliesh

Douglas McPhail, Emeritus

Erika Gallaway

Gerald Skogley, Emeritus

Nathan Guillemette

Anthony Thein, Emeritus

Chris Gust Greg Jones Kathy Kendle Wayne Kendle Leanna Niebeling Sanghyeon Park Ben Schreiner Evan Sprecher Emily Stenberg

Front Cover: Margaret Wall-Romana, 2014. Oil on wood panel, 24 x 16 x 2 inches

and over fifty volunteers

Autumn Art Auction Volume 16, 2014

Ellen McKinnon (September 25, 1915 – May 20, 2014)

North Dakota Museum of Art