Beni Benyei (they/them/theirs)
Outgrown
Dried flowers, glass, mixed media
April 7 - May 5, 2023
Beni is a self taught artist and lover of art born and raised in Rochester, MN. They create beautiful dried flower terrariums, turning miniature enclosures into magical worlds. They also love watercolor painting and pencil drawing. They run the small business Small but Mighty and hope to bring joy and positive change into the world through their artwork.
Instagram: Beni_loves_art
Etsy: SmallbutMightybyBeni
Outgrown
Dried flowers, glass, mixed media
April 7 - May 5, 2023
Beni is a self taught artist and lover of art born and raised in Rochester, MN. They create beautiful dried flower terrariums, turning miniature enclosures into magical worlds. They also love watercolor painting and pencil drawing. They run the small business Small but Mighty and hope to bring joy and positive change into the world through their artwork.
Instagram: Beni_loves_art
Etsy: SmallbutMightybyBeni
ARCHIVES: smallärt in Soldier's Field, Rochester, MN
Most recent listed first
Alexis Zaccariello
Raku Vessels
Ceramic
March 3-April 7, 2023
Zaccariello is an art educator and ceramic artist living in SE Minnesota. She teaches High School art at the Rochester Alternative Learning Center. She began her ceramic practice in 2019 and is developing her throwing skills and experimenting with surface design and firing techniques. She is particularly interested in sgraffito and “smoke painting” using alternative firing techniques. She is currently experimenting with encaustic paint as surface design for her smoke fired vessels.
Instagram: @alexiszaccarielloart
Online: www.alexiszaccarielloart.com
Raku Vessels
Ceramic
March 3-April 7, 2023
Zaccariello is an art educator and ceramic artist living in SE Minnesota. She teaches High School art at the Rochester Alternative Learning Center. She began her ceramic practice in 2019 and is developing her throwing skills and experimenting with surface design and firing techniques. She is particularly interested in sgraffito and “smoke painting” using alternative firing techniques. She is currently experimenting with encaustic paint as surface design for her smoke fired vessels.
Instagram: @alexiszaccarielloart
Online: www.alexiszaccarielloart.com
Retta Conboy
January 6-February 2, 2023
Once Upon a Winter's Night
felt, yarn, clay, glaze, rocks, acrylic paint, canvas, crystals
2022
Statement:
I really enjoyed putting this together, making pieces and having so much fun. I am thankful for my family's encouragement and help, and I am so proud of myself.
About the artist:
I am 8 years old and I was born in Minneapolis. I have lived in Rochester for 6 years, and I have always loved art.
*Showed at SF and 2nd St.
January 6-February 2, 2023
Once Upon a Winter's Night
felt, yarn, clay, glaze, rocks, acrylic paint, canvas, crystals
2022
Statement:
I really enjoyed putting this together, making pieces and having so much fun. I am thankful for my family's encouragement and help, and I am so proud of myself.
About the artist:
I am 8 years old and I was born in Minneapolis. I have lived in Rochester for 6 years, and I have always loved art.
*Showed at SF and 2nd St.
Rene Shoemaker
November 19-January 5,2023
Jess' Farm
dye, silk
2022
November 19-January 5,2023
Jess' Farm
dye, silk
2022
René Shoemaker is a master silk painter, born in New York City, who maintains studios in Athens, GA, USA and Aubusson, France. Spanning four decades and embracing a variety of mediums, her artwork highlights a sense of place while capturing the ways spaces work together and how people inhabit and interact with those spaces. René has exhibited in museums in Georgia, Mississippi, and Paris and in galleries and public spaces in Georgia, New York, the UK, and France. She teaches and speaks on silk painting and in 2020 she received a Fiber Forward Focus Fellowship from AIR Serenbe in Georgia.
My paintings on silk explore a sense of place with a curious eye that delights in positive and negative space. I have continued to explore this path of discovery during quarantine, resisting the urge to dampen my color palette during this time of global distress. As an artist who works with color as my primary language, I wish to share this expression of joy with the world at large.
After much reflection, I discovered that a sense of space and openness exists in my work; through my paintings, one is able to move in space, around buildings, through streets and towns, across non-populated landscapes. In these spaces I find peace and joy. I could happily continue to create and live in these spaces that eliminate the need for social distancing, mask wearing, and constant vigilance.
The mystery of these locations bring us within: into our own mind, our own being, our own curiosity, our own universe. Now that it is difficult or risky to travel even to places in close proximity, my art provides a connection with a sense of place that is even more elusive, and therefore more valuable, during this unprecedented lockdown. Where will we find ourselves as a civilization after this pandemic is over? When will it end? Who are we as part of our community? What shape will our relationships take in the future? What will our relationship be to space, and to place, and how will these change after such a long period of forced isolation?
My mission is to regard how people react to their space. I look forward to a day when I can look back on this year and see how my work was impacted by my own and others’ reactions to this global pandemic.
My work has explored a sense of place through exhibits in New York, Georgia, Mississippi, Paris, and central France. My métier is fine art on silk—hand painting on silk with fiber-reactive dyes. The colors are brilliant, the lines strong, and this technique enables me to bring into the world a new vision of life to share with others.
www.reneshoemaker.com
Katayoun Amjadi
Nov.1-November 18, 2022
Nightingale and Rose Souvenirs
slip cast porcelain, gold luster
2017
Sodier's Field smallärt gallery
Katayoun Amjadi is an Iranian-born, Minneapolis-based artist, educator, and independent curator. In her work, she often considers the sociopolitical systems that shape our perceptions of Self and Other, such as language, religion, gender, politics, and nationalist ideologies. Amjadi blurs these boundaries and creates an off-balance, hybrid style that is slightly acerbic and a little bit tongue-in-cheek. Her art probes the relationship between past and present, tradition and modernity, and individual versus collective identity, and simultaneously seeks to spur discussion about our place in the temporal arc and the interwoven roots of our histories.
Amjadi holds an MFA in ceramics and sculpture from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and currently teaches in the Art Department at Normandale Community College in Bloomington, Minnesota. She also teaches as a visiting lecturer at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design and the University of Minnesota. Her work has been exhibited in several group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally.
Instagram @katceramics
website www.katayoun.com
Nov.1-November 18, 2022
Nightingale and Rose Souvenirs
slip cast porcelain, gold luster
2017
Sodier's Field smallärt gallery
Katayoun Amjadi is an Iranian-born, Minneapolis-based artist, educator, and independent curator. In her work, she often considers the sociopolitical systems that shape our perceptions of Self and Other, such as language, religion, gender, politics, and nationalist ideologies. Amjadi blurs these boundaries and creates an off-balance, hybrid style that is slightly acerbic and a little bit tongue-in-cheek. Her art probes the relationship between past and present, tradition and modernity, and individual versus collective identity, and simultaneously seeks to spur discussion about our place in the temporal arc and the interwoven roots of our histories.
Amjadi holds an MFA in ceramics and sculpture from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and currently teaches in the Art Department at Normandale Community College in Bloomington, Minnesota. She also teaches as a visiting lecturer at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design and the University of Minnesota. Her work has been exhibited in several group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally.
Instagram @katceramics
website www.katayoun.com
Laurie Cohrs
September 27-October 22, 2022
Mugs
varied dimensions
Ceramic
2022
About:
Cancer brought me to clay. I am a 9 year cancer survivor. Three surgeries and chemo left me with debilitating joint pain. A friend’s invitation to an art class changed my life. When I was engaged in something creative, time stood still and my joint pain disappeared. I took a pottery class and I was hooked. I love every step of the process! I named my business Healing Hands Pottery. It’s through God‘s healing hands that I am here as well as my creations. My hope is that my pottery brings joy to one’s every day routine.
instagram @laurie_cohrs
September 27-October 22, 2022
Mugs
varied dimensions
Ceramic
2022
About:
Cancer brought me to clay. I am a 9 year cancer survivor. Three surgeries and chemo left me with debilitating joint pain. A friend’s invitation to an art class changed my life. When I was engaged in something creative, time stood still and my joint pain disappeared. I took a pottery class and I was hooked. I love every step of the process! I named my business Healing Hands Pottery. It’s through God‘s healing hands that I am here as well as my creations. My hope is that my pottery brings joy to one’s every day routine.
instagram @laurie_cohrs
Judy Onofrio
August 16-September 26, 2022
In Full Bloom
mixed media
From the Bliss series
2021-22
About:
Judy Onofrio has always been in love with the stuff of the world. In the first three decades of her sixty-year career, she worked with clay, then built, painted, and often set on fire enormous sculptural constructions. For the next twenty years, she told optimistic stories about strong women, lush gardens, and circus through her elaborately embellished figurative sculptures.
In 2008, when Onofrio was confronted by serious illness, everything changed and she turned to her studio practice to process her experience of mortality, renewal and healing. The resulting series mirrored Onofrio's own journey through illness to renewed health. Always a master of material, Onofrio began to subtly and organically integrate animal bones into her repertoire of sculpted, embellished and painted forms. Eventually the forms were made entirely of bone and white.
In 2020, another monumental change took place as a pandemic swept across the world. Always an optimist, Onofrio looked inward. She made a conscious decision to embrace joy. Imagery sprang from memories of a childhood on the beach and in the garden. Onofrio sculpted flowers and fruit, birds and fish, transformed bone to botany and began to paint in luscious, ripe full color. It's as if the Garden of Eden is in bloom again.
- Sherry Leedy, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, 2022
Bio
Born 1939, New London, Connecticut, USA, Judy Onofrio invented herself as an artist and in the process enriched the whole of Minnesota cultural life. Her art education was a result of her insatiable curiosity and independent spirit. As she forged her own way, she sought out art at every opportunity; artists were her friends, mentors and collaborators.
Beginning with ceramics in the 1970s, Judy Onofrio moved through a wide range of materials and exploration of form. She has created large-scale installations, sculptural fire performances and elaborately carved and obsessively embellished sculpture. Her most recent works are monumental and made entirely of bone. They speak to the transitory nature of life.
Onofrio's dedication to Minnesota's art community has been a life long focus. She was the founding director of the Minnesota Crafts Council, served as Acting Director of the Rochester Art Center and founded the highly regarded children's Total Art Day Camp at the Rochester Art Center.
In 2005, Onofrio was awarded The McKnight Foundation Distinguished Minnesota Artist Award in recognition of her ongoing contribution as an artist and educator. She is a recipient of the Rochester Art Center Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 A. P. Anderson Award and the Minnesota Crafts Council Lifetime Achievement Award. Grants and fellowships include, Minnesota State Arts Board, Arts Midwest/NEC, the Bush Foundation and the McKnight Foundation.
Her work is in found in the national and international collections including: The National Gallery of Art, Victoria, Australia; Arabia Museum Helsinki, Finland; The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Renwick Gallery, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; The Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Frederick R. Weisman Museum, Minneapolis, MN and over 40 other museum and public collections.
instagram @judyland.studio
Find her work here www.judyonofrio.com
August 16-September 26, 2022
In Full Bloom
mixed media
From the Bliss series
2021-22
About:
Judy Onofrio has always been in love with the stuff of the world. In the first three decades of her sixty-year career, she worked with clay, then built, painted, and often set on fire enormous sculptural constructions. For the next twenty years, she told optimistic stories about strong women, lush gardens, and circus through her elaborately embellished figurative sculptures.
In 2008, when Onofrio was confronted by serious illness, everything changed and she turned to her studio practice to process her experience of mortality, renewal and healing. The resulting series mirrored Onofrio's own journey through illness to renewed health. Always a master of material, Onofrio began to subtly and organically integrate animal bones into her repertoire of sculpted, embellished and painted forms. Eventually the forms were made entirely of bone and white.
In 2020, another monumental change took place as a pandemic swept across the world. Always an optimist, Onofrio looked inward. She made a conscious decision to embrace joy. Imagery sprang from memories of a childhood on the beach and in the garden. Onofrio sculpted flowers and fruit, birds and fish, transformed bone to botany and began to paint in luscious, ripe full color. It's as if the Garden of Eden is in bloom again.
- Sherry Leedy, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, 2022
Bio
Born 1939, New London, Connecticut, USA, Judy Onofrio invented herself as an artist and in the process enriched the whole of Minnesota cultural life. Her art education was a result of her insatiable curiosity and independent spirit. As she forged her own way, she sought out art at every opportunity; artists were her friends, mentors and collaborators.
Beginning with ceramics in the 1970s, Judy Onofrio moved through a wide range of materials and exploration of form. She has created large-scale installations, sculptural fire performances and elaborately carved and obsessively embellished sculpture. Her most recent works are monumental and made entirely of bone. They speak to the transitory nature of life.
Onofrio's dedication to Minnesota's art community has been a life long focus. She was the founding director of the Minnesota Crafts Council, served as Acting Director of the Rochester Art Center and founded the highly regarded children's Total Art Day Camp at the Rochester Art Center.
In 2005, Onofrio was awarded The McKnight Foundation Distinguished Minnesota Artist Award in recognition of her ongoing contribution as an artist and educator. She is a recipient of the Rochester Art Center Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 A. P. Anderson Award and the Minnesota Crafts Council Lifetime Achievement Award. Grants and fellowships include, Minnesota State Arts Board, Arts Midwest/NEC, the Bush Foundation and the McKnight Foundation.
Her work is in found in the national and international collections including: The National Gallery of Art, Victoria, Australia; Arabia Museum Helsinki, Finland; The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Renwick Gallery, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; The Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Frederick R. Weisman Museum, Minneapolis, MN and over 40 other museum and public collections.
instagram @judyland.studio
Find her work here www.judyonofrio.com
Amarama Vercnocke
June 16-August 16, 2022
Here and now while in transition
mixed media
varying dimensions
2022
Statement
The art created in this piece goes onto the topic of gender identity on personal levels for the artist and how they interact with it in the world. Being a non-binary transgender person that experiences gender dysphoria especially in a plus sized body is a painful experience for the artist.
The artist does not know what it is to be a woman or man and often times questions what that means in their life.
The materials for the rug are hand dyed, hand spun and crocheted by the artist meditatively as this question is pondered.
The sculpture of a small plus sized incomplete bust sits on top of a hand crocheted cloth that is meant to be a self portrait of the artist. It has glass shards on one side of the chest. They try to show their internal pain with gender dysphoria with their chest while trying to make a new beautiful presence with the broken glass mosaic pieces.
In the background is a nature scene needle felted with wool on a hoop. It shows the location where the artist was married 17 years ago and focuses on a willow tree. Scenes of nature bring a sense of balance to the artist in their search for their own inner gender identity and ways of honoring their lived experiences.
instagram @amaramaart
Their inspirations are Cassandra Buck @cassandrabuckart
and Freeon Whittle, their father
June 16-August 16, 2022
Here and now while in transition
mixed media
varying dimensions
2022
Statement
The art created in this piece goes onto the topic of gender identity on personal levels for the artist and how they interact with it in the world. Being a non-binary transgender person that experiences gender dysphoria especially in a plus sized body is a painful experience for the artist.
The artist does not know what it is to be a woman or man and often times questions what that means in their life.
The materials for the rug are hand dyed, hand spun and crocheted by the artist meditatively as this question is pondered.
The sculpture of a small plus sized incomplete bust sits on top of a hand crocheted cloth that is meant to be a self portrait of the artist. It has glass shards on one side of the chest. They try to show their internal pain with gender dysphoria with their chest while trying to make a new beautiful presence with the broken glass mosaic pieces.
In the background is a nature scene needle felted with wool on a hoop. It shows the location where the artist was married 17 years ago and focuses on a willow tree. Scenes of nature bring a sense of balance to the artist in their search for their own inner gender identity and ways of honoring their lived experiences.
instagram @amaramaart
Their inspirations are Cassandra Buck @cassandrabuckart
and Freeon Whittle, their father
Kathleen Hawkes
May 20-June 15, 2022
May Day
inkjet print installation
15 x 15 x 9 inches
2022
Statement
May Day was my great grandmother's birthday (1900) and my great grandfather's birthday(1896). She was a Swiss immigrant. He was an Irish immigrant. They met at a May Day dance in New York amidst the 1918 flu pandemic. Neither knew it was the other's birthday. They were married in May of 1920. I use what remains of their wedding china to make these improvisational compositions. Like many inherited china sets, there are dishes long since missing, chipped, and broken. What was once whole is now hardly recognizable. As I arrange the surviving pieces as repeated photographic elements in an infinite number of visual relationships, I breathe new life into a disintegrating family heirloom.
Bio
Kathleen Hawkes creates photographs, drawings and installations that explore ideas of slow erosion, shifting equilibrium, and an ever-changing sense of belonging. She earned a BFA from Cornell University and an MFA from the University of New Mexico. In 2012 Hawkes was awarded a Fullbright fellowship to photograph childhood memories and domestic spaces in the South Pacific. Hakes lives and works in Winona, Minnesota and is an Associate Professor of Photography at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse.
www.kathleenhawkes.com
Instagram @hawkkate
Angela Cooper
April 22-May 20, 2022
Phoebe
8" x 8" x 1.5"
Acrylic, Metal Leaf
2022
Cooper was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014. With multiple surgeries and long recovery times, she paused and took stock of her life. After many years in the design field Cooper had drifted away from her love of making art. She reestablished her art practice by painting her pets. She began posting the images and received a tremendous amount of positive feedback and requests. Cooper stated, “I love painting these pet portraits, to hear their stories and I know that the people who seek me out love their pets as much as I love mine.”
Cooper has a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and lives in Philadelphia with her partner Michael and their two dogs, Phoebe and Abbie.
Instagram @paintofheartpets
Website www.paintofheartpets.com
Millicent Fambrough
March 25-April 21, 2022
Hot Mess
4" x 6"
Acrylic
Fambrough is a contemporary artist and writer from San Antonio Texas USA. Currently focusing on mail artwork, photography, and writing poetry for publication. Find her on instagram @millicent210
March 25-April 21, 2022
Hot Mess
4" x 6"
Acrylic
Fambrough is a contemporary artist and writer from San Antonio Texas USA. Currently focusing on mail artwork, photography, and writing poetry for publication. Find her on instagram @millicent210
Nina Martine Robinson
February 17-March 24, 2022
the incurable silencers
varied dimensions
cotton yarn, beads, polyester stuffing
2022
Robinson is a textile artist that works in a variety of fiber mediums. Robinson has been exploring the societal inequities among neurodivergent folks through her textile installations. Because the umbrella of neurodiversity covers many types of brain differences, she wanted to highlight this uniqueness by crocheting a series of whimsical figures. Robinson uses bright colors and assorted shapes as a playful way to celebrate the wide variety of personalities that exist under the umbrella.
Nina Martine Robinson lives with her adult autistic son in a multi-generational household. Her artistic practice focuses on neurodiversity, specifically autism spectrum disorder and age related dementia.
Find her on Instagram @collaborativeseamstress
February 17-March 24, 2022
the incurable silencers
varied dimensions
cotton yarn, beads, polyester stuffing
2022
Robinson is a textile artist that works in a variety of fiber mediums. Robinson has been exploring the societal inequities among neurodivergent folks through her textile installations. Because the umbrella of neurodiversity covers many types of brain differences, she wanted to highlight this uniqueness by crocheting a series of whimsical figures. Robinson uses bright colors and assorted shapes as a playful way to celebrate the wide variety of personalities that exist under the umbrella.
Nina Martine Robinson lives with her adult autistic son in a multi-generational household. Her artistic practice focuses on neurodiversity, specifically autism spectrum disorder and age related dementia.
Find her on Instagram @collaborativeseamstress
Erica Duryea
January 13- February 17, 2022
GLOW OF LIFE
acrylic
14 x 11
2021
Artist Statement
I view my work as an intuitive process of tapping into layers of experience with elements both physical and metaphysical, and conveying that experience through bold color, texture, and dynamic strokes, creating an alluring world which invites the viewer to step inside. This painting is titled GLOW OF LIFE and is part of a body of work that I created to embody the experience that is available to us when we surrender to our senses and perceptions of the natural world around us and the inner world of our own being, while allowing the exploration of the unseen and intangible. This is what I am most drawn to explore in my work- the concept that there are complex and layered dimensions to our experience of life and the natural world, and that if we practice openness, stillness and tuning in, we can gain access to entirely new worlds of perception and intuition that exist in and alongside our daily surroundings. I experience this work as a moving meditation of receiving and expressing simultaneously, inhabiting the space where the natural and supernatural intermingle.
Artist Bio
Erica Duryea is a professional artist from Montauk, New York. She earned her Bachelor's Degree in Studio Art and Art History from Wake Forest University, North Carolina. Her studio training was focused in abstract oil painting, with a secondary focus in sculpture and printmaking. She fell in love with painting as a mechanism to create new worlds that give the viewer an experience of depth and entry to these worlds. She was drawn specifically to abstract painting for its limitless potential for nuanced and untethered expression of elements beyond the tangible. She has always been magnetically drawn to nature environments such as forests and the sea, and having lived in coastal settings in both Montauk and the west coast of Ireland, she finds strong inspiration for her work in exploring the relationship between natural elements such as seawater, plantlife, wind and rain and the metaphysical forces of energy and spirituality that she perceives through and around them. She utilizes her experience in sculpture and printmaking to suffuse her paintings with an abundance of texture and dynamic marks made by various tools, applying paint and other mixed media in a multitude of overlapping layers. Her works on canvas range from small to quite large- the immediacy of her process lends itself best to larger surfaces, but she relishes the contrast of working at a smaller scale.
She lives in Brooklyn, NYC with her husband from Ireland and their two young children.
She is inspired by
Melanie Daniel
Erika b Hess
Michelle Blade
Alicia Reyes McNamara
Erin Eastabrooks
Aimee Parrott
Shara Hughes
Emma Larsson
See more of Erica's work on Instagram @erica_duryea_artworks
January 13- February 17, 2022
GLOW OF LIFE
acrylic
14 x 11
2021
Artist Statement
I view my work as an intuitive process of tapping into layers of experience with elements both physical and metaphysical, and conveying that experience through bold color, texture, and dynamic strokes, creating an alluring world which invites the viewer to step inside. This painting is titled GLOW OF LIFE and is part of a body of work that I created to embody the experience that is available to us when we surrender to our senses and perceptions of the natural world around us and the inner world of our own being, while allowing the exploration of the unseen and intangible. This is what I am most drawn to explore in my work- the concept that there are complex and layered dimensions to our experience of life and the natural world, and that if we practice openness, stillness and tuning in, we can gain access to entirely new worlds of perception and intuition that exist in and alongside our daily surroundings. I experience this work as a moving meditation of receiving and expressing simultaneously, inhabiting the space where the natural and supernatural intermingle.
Artist Bio
Erica Duryea is a professional artist from Montauk, New York. She earned her Bachelor's Degree in Studio Art and Art History from Wake Forest University, North Carolina. Her studio training was focused in abstract oil painting, with a secondary focus in sculpture and printmaking. She fell in love with painting as a mechanism to create new worlds that give the viewer an experience of depth and entry to these worlds. She was drawn specifically to abstract painting for its limitless potential for nuanced and untethered expression of elements beyond the tangible. She has always been magnetically drawn to nature environments such as forests and the sea, and having lived in coastal settings in both Montauk and the west coast of Ireland, she finds strong inspiration for her work in exploring the relationship between natural elements such as seawater, plantlife, wind and rain and the metaphysical forces of energy and spirituality that she perceives through and around them. She utilizes her experience in sculpture and printmaking to suffuse her paintings with an abundance of texture and dynamic marks made by various tools, applying paint and other mixed media in a multitude of overlapping layers. Her works on canvas range from small to quite large- the immediacy of her process lends itself best to larger surfaces, but she relishes the contrast of working at a smaller scale.
She lives in Brooklyn, NYC with her husband from Ireland and their two young children.
She is inspired by
Melanie Daniel
Erika b Hess
Michelle Blade
Alicia Reyes McNamara
Erin Eastabrooks
Aimee Parrott
Shara Hughes
Emma Larsson
See more of Erica's work on Instagram @erica_duryea_artworks
Laura Wennstrom
December 11, 2021-January 13, 2022
nuance
thread, yarn, wire, shoelaces, beads, fabric, trim, piping, and other found textile materials
2021
Artist Statement
I am a multimedia artist, most recently making large scale sculptural installations, small textile assemblages, and functional textile objects. Drawing from painting, collage, and quilt making traditions, I create heavily saturated color compositions. I am interested in gathering found materials and objects: the cast off, the forgotten, the incidental. Through an intuitive process combining color and pattern, I find new ways to tell stories.
I primarily use found or secondhand fabric and textiles in my work. This has ecological and economic advantages, but most importantly, I am drawn to the connection that discarded materials have with their previous owner. These objects carry stories and mystery, they have access to the banal secrets and intimate everydayness of strangers.
nuance was made and titled after the messy experience of living 2 blocks from where George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police in 2020. I have witnessed over the past 18 months the outpouring of community support, rage, hope, alongside the complicated racial, political, power, and interpersonal dynamics we have within this community. The issues and tensions that have bubbled to the surface are much more complicated, rich, and nuanced than the media can portray.
See more of her work www.laurawennstrom.com, Follow her on instagram @laurawennstrom
December 11, 2021-January 13, 2022
nuance
thread, yarn, wire, shoelaces, beads, fabric, trim, piping, and other found textile materials
2021
Artist Statement
I am a multimedia artist, most recently making large scale sculptural installations, small textile assemblages, and functional textile objects. Drawing from painting, collage, and quilt making traditions, I create heavily saturated color compositions. I am interested in gathering found materials and objects: the cast off, the forgotten, the incidental. Through an intuitive process combining color and pattern, I find new ways to tell stories.
I primarily use found or secondhand fabric and textiles in my work. This has ecological and economic advantages, but most importantly, I am drawn to the connection that discarded materials have with their previous owner. These objects carry stories and mystery, they have access to the banal secrets and intimate everydayness of strangers.
nuance was made and titled after the messy experience of living 2 blocks from where George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police in 2020. I have witnessed over the past 18 months the outpouring of community support, rage, hope, alongside the complicated racial, political, power, and interpersonal dynamics we have within this community. The issues and tensions that have bubbled to the surface are much more complicated, rich, and nuanced than the media can portray.
See more of her work www.laurawennstrom.com, Follow her on instagram @laurawennstrom
Lisa Truax
October 29-December 9, 2021
Vestiges
Varied dimensions
Ceramic & locally sourced materials
2021
Artist Statement
I am interested in the contrast between places such as parks and natural areas and modern ways of building and living. We have cultural ideas of beauty and the sense of the untouched associated with these places. Outdoor landscapes seem to be in their natural state, but are often actually created, planned, built, and maintained as part of our culture.
I question the idea of culturally valuable versus personally valuable natural space. The contrast between the natural and man-made, and the seen and the unseen are determining factors. The effect of these elements on our lives and psyche are important considerations. Natural places can have positive effects on our well being, many of which we may not yet understand, and the effects of created nature may have the same effects as the real. We often collect things such as stones and coral and bring them into our homes, reminding us of our fascination with natural objects. The relationship we have both culturally and individually to nature, the contrast between wildness and wilderness, human versus geologic time, permanence and impermanence, and the effect these areas have on our lives is the focus of my work.
Lisa S. Truax is originally from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. She attended Carthage College, gaining BA degrees in Studio Art and Graphic Design with a Business minor. After working in design for 5 years, she attended Michigan State University and earned her MFA in ceramics. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art and Design at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota in Winona. She maintains a studio in Pickwick, Minnesota.
See more of her work www.redreduction.com, Follow her on instagram @redreduction
Artists Truax finds inspirational Tara Donovan, Maya Lin, Tony Marsh and his Crucible Series, David Maisel and Bobby Silverman
Truax primarily hand builds her work. If you are interested in learning more about hand building with clay watch this.
If you are in the southeast of Minnesota try a class at 125Live. Community Ed in Rochester also offers some adult and children's classes.
October 29-December 9, 2021
Vestiges
Varied dimensions
Ceramic & locally sourced materials
2021
Artist Statement
I am interested in the contrast between places such as parks and natural areas and modern ways of building and living. We have cultural ideas of beauty and the sense of the untouched associated with these places. Outdoor landscapes seem to be in their natural state, but are often actually created, planned, built, and maintained as part of our culture.
I question the idea of culturally valuable versus personally valuable natural space. The contrast between the natural and man-made, and the seen and the unseen are determining factors. The effect of these elements on our lives and psyche are important considerations. Natural places can have positive effects on our well being, many of which we may not yet understand, and the effects of created nature may have the same effects as the real. We often collect things such as stones and coral and bring them into our homes, reminding us of our fascination with natural objects. The relationship we have both culturally and individually to nature, the contrast between wildness and wilderness, human versus geologic time, permanence and impermanence, and the effect these areas have on our lives is the focus of my work.
Lisa S. Truax is originally from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. She attended Carthage College, gaining BA degrees in Studio Art and Graphic Design with a Business minor. After working in design for 5 years, she attended Michigan State University and earned her MFA in ceramics. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art and Design at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota in Winona. She maintains a studio in Pickwick, Minnesota.
See more of her work www.redreduction.com, Follow her on instagram @redreduction
Artists Truax finds inspirational Tara Donovan, Maya Lin, Tony Marsh and his Crucible Series, David Maisel and Bobby Silverman
Truax primarily hand builds her work. If you are interested in learning more about hand building with clay watch this.
If you are in the southeast of Minnesota try a class at 125Live. Community Ed in Rochester also offers some adult and children's classes.
Jovan C. Speller
September 24-October 24, 2021
Artifacts
Assorted dimensions
Mixed Media
2021
Artifacts is an installation from the artist's recent series entitled Eulogy. This series, which includes photographs, resin encased images and objects, and mixed media works, references cinematic imagery and elements of visual story mapping to document a metamorphosis.
Eulogy questions the role of memory and the transient nature of consciousness, resulting in the documentation of Speller’s notions of reincarnation. The works represented in this series are materializations of distant recollections of a past life - accepting the unreliability of memory itself, and exploring the myths that remain instead. Artifacts represents the memories that remain and the reminance of a life lived.
Jovan C. Speller is a multidisciplinary Minnesota artist. Speller holds a B.F.A. in Fine Art Photography from Columbia College Chicago. Speller’s work has been exhibited at The Plains Art Museum, the Bockley Gallery, and Minneapolis College of Art and Design, with upcoming solo exhibitions at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Katherine Nash Gallery, the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation and St. Augustine College. She is a recipient of the McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship, a Next Step Fund Grant, the Jerome Emerging Artist Fellowship, and a Minnesota State Arts Board grant. She completed a residency at Second Shift Studio Space in St. Paul and was awarded the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Minnesota Art Prize in 2021.
Speller explained that her work is more a reaction to, or investigation of, something that has caught her attention. She recommended looking at Andrea Chung whose work she admires
Find her work online www.jovanspeller.com and on instagram @jovancspeller
Pat Dunn-Walker
August 27-September 24, 2021
Where I Live
11" x14"
Acrylic, collage
2021
Find her work online at www.patriciadunnwalker.com and on instagram @patriciadunnwalker
“Where I Live" remembers a dollhouse my mother had which is now in my possession. A friend of my grandmother’s made this as a gift for my mom in 1936 and it was modeled after what was thought to be the ideal home at the time, equipped with a modern kitchen, a nursery and a living room with the finest furnishings.
This ideal 1936 home was the inspiration for “Where I Live”. I thought about what makes a home in 2021. People who share your home are as important as the structure of the home itself. Who are the people I would want to include in my home? Perhaps I would expand from my family of origin to include people of I haven’t met but still care about. My house is painted rainbow colors to symbolize people from a variety of backgrounds. The people included in the collage are from the past and present.
I collect lots of different print materials from many sources such as old record covers and discarded signage. These materials are included here. I enjoy using found paper because of its texture and also how it adds an element of surprise to my work. I love the texture of acrylic paint and its mediums and am experimenting with different color combinations. Currently my favorite artists are
Henri Matisse, Raymond Hains and Romare Bearden.
I love Matisse’s colors and his later collages and Bearden’s way of telling a story by changing things up with varying scale and juxtaposition. Raymond Hains abstract collages of found print are elegant and mysterious and I aspire to this feeling in my work.
August 27-September 24, 2021
Where I Live
11" x14"
Acrylic, collage
2021
Find her work online at www.patriciadunnwalker.com and on instagram @patriciadunnwalker
“Where I Live" remembers a dollhouse my mother had which is now in my possession. A friend of my grandmother’s made this as a gift for my mom in 1936 and it was modeled after what was thought to be the ideal home at the time, equipped with a modern kitchen, a nursery and a living room with the finest furnishings.
This ideal 1936 home was the inspiration for “Where I Live”. I thought about what makes a home in 2021. People who share your home are as important as the structure of the home itself. Who are the people I would want to include in my home? Perhaps I would expand from my family of origin to include people of I haven’t met but still care about. My house is painted rainbow colors to symbolize people from a variety of backgrounds. The people included in the collage are from the past and present.
I collect lots of different print materials from many sources such as old record covers and discarded signage. These materials are included here. I enjoy using found paper because of its texture and also how it adds an element of surprise to my work. I love the texture of acrylic paint and its mediums and am experimenting with different color combinations. Currently my favorite artists are
Henri Matisse, Raymond Hains and Romare Bearden.
I love Matisse’s colors and his later collages and Bearden’s way of telling a story by changing things up with varying scale and juxtaposition. Raymond Hains abstract collages of found print are elegant and mysterious and I aspire to this feeling in my work.
Nicole Havekost
June 18-July 15, 2021
Balance
10 ¼” x 4 ½ “ x 14”
Wool, polyfil, hooks & eyes, thread
2021
Havekost explores the simultaneous
joy, sublime embarrassment and
disorderly beauty of the human body
through her anthropomorphic sculpture
Series: Chthonic. (prounounced-thaa-nuk)
Find her work online at www.nikimade.com Find her on instagram @nikimade
Niki also shows at Dreamsong Gallery. They are in Minneapolis as well.
Interested in more textile work?
Read this about women pushing the boundaries with contemporary textile sculptures
Miriam Schapiro was considered a leader in textiles as well a leader in the feminist art movement
Faith Ringgold, produced quilt paintings and is included in a list of the most influential African-American artists living today
Want to try your hand at some felt projects?
For the craftier ideas look at this
If you want to make a sculpture like niki's you need to first build an "armature" or the substructure beneath the fabric
Click here to learn Once the armature is done you can start to build padding with poly-fill, paper or whatever else you have around the house. Old pillows make a great place to get cheap poly-fil
After you build the armature you will need to decide what kind of materials to use. Purchase materials at Michael's or JoAnns locally. Otherwise online here. You can sew with dental floss, embroidery floss, yarn or anything a little heavier than thread. Upholstery needles can be helpful, but big straight needles do the trick as well. Don't be fussy about the sewing quality, just close the seams!
If you do a project post your picture and tag @smallartgallerymn
June 18-July 15, 2021
Balance
10 ¼” x 4 ½ “ x 14”
Wool, polyfil, hooks & eyes, thread
2021
Havekost explores the simultaneous
joy, sublime embarrassment and
disorderly beauty of the human body
through her anthropomorphic sculpture
Series: Chthonic. (prounounced-thaa-nuk)
Find her work online at www.nikimade.com Find her on instagram @nikimade
Niki also shows at Dreamsong Gallery. They are in Minneapolis as well.
Interested in more textile work?
Read this about women pushing the boundaries with contemporary textile sculptures
Miriam Schapiro was considered a leader in textiles as well a leader in the feminist art movement
Faith Ringgold, produced quilt paintings and is included in a list of the most influential African-American artists living today
Want to try your hand at some felt projects?
For the craftier ideas look at this
If you want to make a sculpture like niki's you need to first build an "armature" or the substructure beneath the fabric
Click here to learn Once the armature is done you can start to build padding with poly-fill, paper or whatever else you have around the house. Old pillows make a great place to get cheap poly-fil
After you build the armature you will need to decide what kind of materials to use. Purchase materials at Michael's or JoAnns locally. Otherwise online here. You can sew with dental floss, embroidery floss, yarn or anything a little heavier than thread. Upholstery needles can be helpful, but big straight needles do the trick as well. Don't be fussy about the sewing quality, just close the seams!
If you do a project post your picture and tag @smallartgallerymn