An Open Book: Conversation with Fred Stonehouse

Saturday, February 24th,

Fred Stonehouse led discussion exploring his paintings on repurposed book covers and the importance of tactile and material nature. You can view a small showcase of his book cover here.

Mark Mulhern -Conversations

October 20th - November 25th

Mark Mulhern is an American painter best known for his large figurative works capturing the human experience. In each piece, Mulhern encourages the viewer to enter his realm of real and imagined scenes where his characters engage in the simple acts of walking and conversing to more sumptuous moments of making party preparations and enjoying elegant gatherings.

George Shipperley - Expressions

January 28 - February 25, 2023

Based on years of observation of the natural world, George Shipperley merges memories of nature with his imagination to create a vision all his own. The artist applies multiple layers of oil pastel and occasionally employs a sgraffito technique to the work, creating expert layers of colors and forms. The finished works reveal poetic compositions rooted in realism and finished with the immediacy of abstract expressionism. 

A native of Illinois, Shipperley studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and Aurora University. His works are in public and private collections throughout the United States.

Guzzo Pinc - NOMOS

January 6 - February 25, 2023

Wisconsin painter, Guzzo Pinc, showed a voracious interest in the visual arts from a very early age which led him to study and copy works ranging from skateboarding graphics to canonical paintings of art history. He majored in chemistry in college but switched to art history at the last minute, a degree that offered little in terms of financial stability. 

For the next two decades painting became his single form of consistency as he struggled with itinerance and personal issues. Finally, opportunities began to arise after he was "discovered" on Instagram by faculty members of UW-Madison's painting program who encouraged him to enroll in the MFA program. 

After completing his MFA, Guzzo was offered representation by galleries in the Midwest and included in international shows and museum exhibitions. His work continues to become known in larger and larger circles throughout the world.

Throughout this strange journey, Guzzo Pinc has come to respect and be influenced by sources that are considered very "low" and ones that are very "high", ranging from graffiti and comic books to the canonical artists of the Western and Eastern traditions --and it is this blending of such a diverse range of influences and experiences that gives his painting its unique style.

Mary Bero - Strange Days

December 3 - 31, 2022

 Wisconsin artist Mary Bero breaks all the traditional rules of fiber art. She weaves what she calls "tapestry paintings." Her primary technique is to hand-stitch cotton or silk thread or floss to a cloth backing, simultaneously building up areas of color and texture that form striking images and patterns when seen together. Sometimes Bero augments these methods with acrylics, cloth, or paper, creating primitive explosions of vibrant color and emotion. This new body of work includes a multi-themed series of Ideograms sewn on black fabric.

Bero's subject matter may seem simple and direct; freely-rendered human faces and forms, animals and plants, repeated shapes and patterns. However, her artistic choices and technical execution reveal dimensions of subtlety and refinement that belie such impressions of thematic simplicity. As the viewer moves closer to one of Bero's pieces, the complexity and variety of her surfaces become increasingly evident.

Bero's work has been shown in exhibitions across the nation over her thirty-plus-year span of art-making. She is a two-time recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and is in the collections of Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, MA; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI; Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, WI; Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, and more.

John Wilde - Love & Death

December 3 - 31, 2022

Tory Folliard Gallery celebrates the work of Wisconsin artist John Wilde with Love and Death, an exhibition of his paintings and drawings from 1940-2005.  

John Wilde’s work constantly balances life with death. These elements were most frequently integrated, side-by-side, or embodied through objects or figures betraying one foot in ecstasy and the other in the tomb. His attention to their embrace comes through the ripeness of fruits and inquisitiveness of insects from his garden, runs through the flight of birds and their songs, is overlaid upon his reflection, hides in the smile of frolicking naked ladies, and rests in the crisp glow of talismanic objects.

-- Robert Cozzolino

John Wilde (1919-2006) was a leader in the American surrealism movement known as Magic Realism. He was a consummate draftsman employing Renaissance painting and drawing techniques in his compositions. He was known for his beautiful and bizarre subject matter, and his adoration of the natural world. Wilde's ideas of life and death interact contrapuntally, or, as Wilde put it more bluntly, "from sex to the awareness of death." 

Wilde's work is represented in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Walker Art Center, Art Institute of Chicago, Milwaukee Art Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Museum of Wisconsin Art, Detroit Institute of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Portland Art Museum, and Smithsonian American Art Museum, among many others.

The Tory Folliard Gallery has represented John Wilde's art since 1993.

Catalog with essay by Robert Cozzolino will accompany this exhibition.

Anne Siems - Muse

October 21 - November 26, 2022

Anne Siems' watercolor paintings take on a distinct and powerful posture in her new body of work - Muse. The exhibition presents an intimate look at exposed female figures whose bodies are marked with tattoos of fables, myths, and poems. Their poses and baldness express a vulnerability not of victimhood, but of the strength and courage found in today's women. 

Born in Berlin, Anne Siems lives and works in Seattle. Her drawings and paintings can be found in numerous collections across the country, including the Tacoma Art Museum, Arkansas Art Center, Boise Art Museum, Museum for Contemporary Art & Design- Kansas City,  Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Microsoft, Nordstrom, and Hallmark Collection among others.

Craig Blietz - Haul Road

October 21 - November 26, 2022

Craig Blietz creates masterful paintings of farm animals and rural imagery that observe the quiet beauty of agrarian life.

In the new body of work, Haul Road, Blietz reflects on his time spent on a Wisconsin farm. Shortly after the artist's visit the property was sold and destined for residential development.  With his usual cast of domestic farm animals, Blietz replays the reductive imaginings he experienced during his visit to that farm.

Craig Blietz received his BS from the University of Denver and continued his art and design studies at the Harrington College of Design.  He completed his formal studies with academic training at the School of Representational Art in Chicago.

Selected Collections

Museum of Wisconsin Art, West Bend, WI; Miller Art Museum, Sturgeon Bay, WI;  JB and MK Pritzker Collection in the Governor’s Mansion, Springfield, IL; Northwestern University, Evanston, IL; Dohmen Company, Milwaukee, WI;  Sprint Corporation, Kansas City, MO; NiSource of Indiana, Merrillville, IN;   West Bend Mutual Insurance Company, West Bend, WI

T.L. Solien - Interiors, Exteriors, and Divided Lights

September 16 - October 15, 2022

 Landscapes are often the setting and the stage upon which TL Solien’s doleful characters experience significant changes or depart on life-changing journeys. Solien's new body of work, "Interiors, Exteriors, and Divided Lights" continues this tradition by pulling viewers into his disquieting orbit of sardonic scenes through his compositions of impeccable narratives charged with signs, symbols, and tropes mimicking socio-political culture.

Born in Fargo, North Dakota in 1949, Solien earned a BFA from Moorhead State University, Moorhead Minnesota, and an MFA in Painting and Sculpture from the University of Nebraska.  He is the recipient of many honors and awards including the Whitney Biennial Exhibition, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship in Painting. 

Solien’s work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions across the country and is included in public and private collections around the world.  

Selected collections include: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Art Institute of Chicago; Milwaukee Art Museum; Madison Museum of Contemporary Art;  Minneapolis Institute of Art; Tate Gallery, London;  National Gallery of Australia; Singapore Art Museum, among others.

Of Nature

July 15 - September 10, 2022

Of Nature lies between the boundaries of the physical and the imaginary realms.  Glimpses of ephemera and captivations of the natural world are represented in painting, photography, sculpture, and works on paper by thirty-two Midwest artists.

Participating Artists include: 

Chris Berti, Christina Bothwell, TD Brenner, Mark Chatterley, El Gato Chimney, Emma Daisy, Laura Dronzek, Kathy Hofmann, Laurie Hogin, Ron Isaacs, Claire Kellesvig, Flora Langlois, Veronica Mortellaro, Mark Mulhern, Katie Musolff, Dennis Nechvatal, William Nichols, Michael Noland, Judy Onofrio, Russell Panczenko, Bill Reid, Jeffrey Ripple, Jan Serr, George Shipperley, Aniela Sobieski, Fred Stonehouse, Robin Whiteman, Tom Uttech, John Wilde, Jonathan Wilde, Mary Alice Wimmer, and James Winn.