NDMOA June 2010 Newsletter

North Dakota Museum of Art into the tuSSoCK: Contemporary art from iCeland opening June 22, 5:30 pm, followed at 7 pm by the inagural performance of the 2010 Summer Concerts in the Garden series.

Four artists are flying in from Iceland to attend opening events. The exhibition, which continues through August 15, was organized by the North Dakota Museum of Art in collaboration with the North Dakota Council on the Arts; The Icelandic Foreign Ministry, and the participating Icelandic artists.

Helgi Þorgils Friðjónsson, Icelandic Dog, Horse and Fish, 2002-04, 13 x 13 feet. Oil on canvas

Co-curated by artist Helgi Þorgils Friðjónsson and Museum Director Laurel Reuter, Into the Tussock is an exhibition of contemporary Icelandic art based in making, constructing, storytelling, and mythmaking. In the last decades of the 19th century, twenty-five percent of Iceland’s population immigrated to a region overlapping North Dakota, Manitoba, and Minnesota. Whereas both minimalism and landscape are strong forces in contemporary Icelandic art—the fantastic, object based art in the show has been chosen to resonate with the descendants of early settlers.

Artists include painters Birgir Snæbjörn Birgisson and Helgi Þorgils Friðjónsson; Helgi Hjaltalín Eyjólfsson and Guðjón Ketilsson, both sculptors in wood; video artist and photographer Olöf Nordal; sound aritst Finnbogi Pétursson; and sculptor Katrín Sigurðardóttir. Snæbjörn Birgisson, Hjaltalín Eyjólfsson, Nordal, and Þorgils Friðjónsson will travel from Iceland to North Dakota for the opening.

Helgi Hjaltalín Eyjólfsson, Favorable Circumstances.

Size variable. Pictured: 11 x 23 feet. Installation objects also vary.

All artist’s works are titled “Favorable Circumstances” based upon his reading of Darwin’s Origin of the Species. Every circumstance is someone or something’s favorable circumstance.

Images are of exhibition at Kunsthalle Bremerhaven in 2007.

The exhibition will premier at the North Dakota Museum of Art and then travel to four sites in North Dakota through the Museum’s Rural Arts Initiative beginning with and in collaboration with the North Dakota Council on the Arts. In addition to the North Dakota tour, it will be offered to one Minnesota venue and one in Canada, preferably Manitoba, the home of great numbers of Icelandic Canadians.

Below: Guðjón Ketilsson, Shell, 2008, 7 x 11 x 1 feet, two shelves plus objects carved from wood, plaster, sugar cubes, medium-density fiberboard and paper.

Upcoming Classes and Events Summer art CampS The week-long Summer Art Camps filled quickly.

Camps are supported by enrollment fees and Shirley Bostrom, Art Grabowsky, Steve Augustin, Katherine Campbell, Jeff and Tami Carmichael, Sheila Dalgliesh, Dorothy Dillard, Dianne Paulsen, Donovan Widmer, Kim Wilson, Alerus Financial, Grand Forks Park District Ulland Grant, River City Jewelers and Mike and Tammy Zhorela, Sam’s Club, Sanders 1907, Toasted Frog, Xcel Energy, Zorrel’s Jewelers, University of North Dakota Department of Art and Design and UND’s Summer Program Events Council.

Summer art ClaSSeS in the muSeum Call for prices and availability, 701-777-4195 June Watercolors: Artist, Jessica Mongeon, adults Tuesdays, June 8, 15, 22, 29, from 6 – 8 pm Painting / Design: Artist, Jessica Christy, children Saturdays, June 5, 12, 19, 26, from 9 – 11 am Printing: Artist, Jessica Christy, children Saturdays, June 5, 12, 19, 26, from 11:30 -1:30 pm July Jewelry: Artists, Nancy Greenwood, and Tessa Hiney, adults Tuesdays, July 6, 13, 20, 27, from 6 – 8 pm Miniature Books: Artist, Mollie Douthi, children Saturdays, July 10, 17, 24, 31, from 9 – 11 am august Clay and Sculpture: Artist, Memo Guardia, adults Tuesdays, August 3, 10, 17, 24, from 6 – 8 pm Drawing and Painting: Artist, Mollie Douthit, children Saturdays, August 7,14, 21, 28, from 9 – 11 am

Museum Hours; 9 - 5 weekdays 1 - 5 Saturday and Sunday No admission charge 261 Centennial Drive Stop 7305 Grand Forks, North Dakota 701.777.4195 www.ndmoa.com

Summer ConCertS in the Garden underwritten by Summit Brewing Co. Sponsors: Canad inn and hB Sound and light Supporters: el roco Bottle Shop Bar and Grill and rite Spot liquor, inc.

June 22, 7 pm, the north river ramblers in conjunction with the opening of Into The Tussock: Contemporary Icelandic Art. This local, well-established group is known for their unique folk-bluegrass style.

James Feist, Kris Leirfallom, Twiddlin’ Josh Driscoll, Xavier Pastrano, and Katy Diers combine such instruments as acoustic guitar, harmonica, fiddle, mandolin, banjo and didgeridoo into an old-time bluegrass style.

July 6, 6 pm, hoots and hellmouth; opening June panic Philadelphiabased Hoots & Hellmouth creates new music for old souls. Their second full-length effort, The Holy Open Secret, MAD Dragon Records (ADA/WEA) continues to blaze a trail forward in the name of progressive revival. Rob Berliner, Andrew Gray and Sean Hoots return as the core trio of string slingers and harmonious vocalizers, co-producing in collaboration with Bill Moriarty (Dr. Dog, Man Man) at Philadelphia’s American Diamond Studio.

July 20, 6 pm, alison Scott; opening June panic’s Wife Alison Scott is the strongest new voice to come out of the Minneapolis music scene in many years. Her soulful, organic sound ignors the “rules of cool” that limit so much of today’s music. Her band includes platinum and Grammy-winning guitarist Kevin Bowe (Paul Westerberg, Etta James, Jonny Lang), drummer Peter Anderson (Polara, Honeydogs) and bassist Steve Price (Rex Daisy). august 3, 6 pm, Charlie parr; opening my two toms Charlie Parr grew up in Austin, Minnesota, in a house filled with music.

He picked up the guitar around age eight but lessons never held his interest. Over the next decade-plus, self-taught Parr continued to hone his style and took up songwriting in earnest. He also earned a degree in philosophy and became an outreach worker for the homeless, working for the Salvation Army in Minneapolis. His life in social services can be heard in his songs. august 24, 7 pm, post-traumatic funk Syndrome Back for their fourth year! Post Traumatic Funk Syndrome is Fargo’s newest and hottest classic rock / horn band. This twelve-piece group (six horns, keyboards, bass, drums, guitar, male and female vocals) performs the best of classic horn band hits.

Bring a blanket or lawn chairs. Buy your casual supper.

Season tickets: $25, $7 at the door. Kids under twelve free. in event of rain, the concerts will be moved into the galleries.

Specimen Peony Garden in Full Bloom fantaStiC — With a venGenCe opens in the museum Galleries august 24 Fantastic, the next Rural Arts Initiative exhibition begins its tour at the Pekin Community Center October 18 and continue for a month. The Seal with Straw painting is a wry comment on Iceland’s stringent “protect the seals” laws. Finally even the seal isn’t allowed into the water but must drink with a straw. All of the paintings will ask the viewer to create the narrative from seemingly unrelated elements in the painting.

Argentinian photographer Res creates what looks like a historical painting but La Dama (The Lady) is cradling a pig’s head. Imagine the story a child will attach to that painting. To learn to imagine is one of the great gifts we can give children.

XCel enerGy foundation fundS mayville Student art eXperienCe

Helgi Þorgils Friðjónsson, Seal with straw, 2004, Oil on canvas, 28.5 x 35.5 inches.

The North Dakota Museum of Art in cooperation with the Northern Lights Art Gallery, Rainbow Garden, Mayville Public Schools, and surrounding community schools including Portland, Hatton, Buxton, Larimore, Thompson, and Reynolds is offering a summer art camp, June 7-11, at May-Port High School to introduce students to a sculpture experience with ceramic artist Guillermo (Memo) Guardia. public presentation at Garden art party in mayville’s Rainbow Garden in Mayville, Saturday, June 19, 2 to 3:30 pm. Everyone welcome.

from the direCtor Thanks to our supporters and members, the Museum came through the economic downturn with balanced budgets. Given that the not-for-profit world takes an extra couple of years to recover after the rest of the economy is declared “out of the woods,” we are looking at a challenging 2010-2011, again without the grants that sustained the Museum over the last two decades.

Still, many good things keep happening: Guillermo Guardia, our Artistin-Residence for the Rural Arts Initiative continues to exhibit his own clay sculptures all over the United States. Concurrently, we are booking his week-long clay workshops in schools throughout North Dakota.

Res (Constanza Piaggio), La Dama, 2006, Lambda print, 46 x 48 inches.

The fall will bring two solo exhibitions to the Museum, both by artists who have been working toward these exhibitions for years: John Snyder with new paintings and sculpture, August 2010. He is followed by Lena McGrath Welker in November. She will fill the whole Museum with new installations in her Navigation Series.

Eliot Glassheim’s book of China poems with images by Dyan Rey will be off the press by fall. And I have begun work on Xu Bing’s authorized biography with the intial research funded by New Media of Shanghai.

Laurel Reuter

E x h i b i tio n Cl ose s Ju ne 1 3 Shared hiStorieS Keith BerenS, Carol hepper, and tim SChouten Exhibition continues through June 13, 2010 opening event in museum’s new commissioning initiative to examine contemporary life on north dakota’s american indian reservations, territory shared by native americans, hispanics, americans of european and african descent, mixed Bloods, and the rare asian.

The artists in Shared Histories come from diverse but overlapping cultures. Carol Hepper, who grew up on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation that bridges North and South Dakota, is of non-Indian lineage. She, however, has been a New York artist for the last three decades. Canadian Keith Berens is an “urban Native” of Indian descent who grew up in Winnipeg and has traveled much of Europe and North America. He draws his greatest influence from early American abstract artists. Tim Schouten was born in Winnipeg, resided on the Canadian East Coast for years, and then returned to make his home north of the city near Lake Winnipeg.

Above left: Carol Hepper, Vertical Chamber,1984.

Animal bones, wood and rawhide.

Right, Keith Berens, White Shell 3, 2009. Encaustic on panel.

Below: Tim Schouten, Road (Treaty 5), 1997.

Oil, sand, soil, and rust on canvas.

Yet all make art deeply based in the history, culture, landscape or materials of Native people. All three also make art that grows out of mainstream Western art. They share contrasting ethnic and art history backgrounds out of which come surprising bodies of work that relate to the past and that challenge Northern Plains stereotypes. For example, through his art non-Indian Tim Schouten has spent years tracing the history of the treaties between Native peoples and the Canadian government. Schouten depicts what is often perceived as Aboriginal history when in fact those events are shared. Berens, an aboriginal artist, breaks the bounds of traditionally perceived Aboriginal styles of expression to create his own powerful abstractions drawn from the history of place. Hepper claims her own shared history through her materials and forms that are endemic to both Indian and non-Indian life on the high plains.

The idea of the exhibition originated with Canadian curator, Pat Bovey, who included Schouten in her original two-person exhibition under the same title at the Buhler Gallery at Winnipeg’s St. Boniface General Hospital. NDMOA Curator Laurel Reuter, who grew up on Spirit Lake Reservation where her family homesteaded, has long wanted to examine the mixed culture of today’s reservations and this seemed like an ideal beginning. Keith Berens and Carol Hepper round out this first North Dakota exhibition.

June 2010