The paintings by Charles Munch can be thought of as nature icons, that is, images conducive to meditation on questions that may have no answer but are worth exploring. The mysterious stillness inherent in painted images encourages meditation on the twin riddles: What happened before? & What will happen afterwards? Munch believes that the more deeply we explore our relationship with other animals and the rest of the natural world, the healthier the world will be. The use of bright, clear colors and simplified shapes, convey a distinct image by the plainest means possible. Eliminating extraneous details, allowing room for the expression of emotion through the abstract elements of color, line, and shape. He depicts his subject with barely enough description to make it recognizable, and then brings it to pulsing life through vibrant color relationships and dynamic compositions. Creating images that are even truer to his vision of nature and the emotions about it than a realistic painting could be.
Thursday October 2 through Friday November 21, 2014 in the Besse Gallery, Bay College, Escanaba, MI.
Gallery Hours: 8am to 5pm Monday through Friday
Read MoreDance is inherently based in time and motion. Artist Jan Serr suspends moments of the dancers’ art through a brightly lyrical series of monotype prints in an exhibition of her new work, “Summer Dances,” at the Museum of Wisconsin Art On The Lake.
Read MoreTwo new exhibitions at the Tory Folliard Gallery (233 N. Milwaukee St.) each introduce the everyday into their art. Cathy Martin comes to her craft from an earthy angle, which steered clear of the contemporary artist’s traditional MFA-lined path. She is an artist whose day job puts food on her table by putting food on other people’s tables. Indeed, her oil paintings on display in the exhibit “This & That” reveal a sensitivity to nature no doubt nurtured by her years as a Wisconsin farmer. Although she is self-taught, the technical execution of her work indicates a rare talent.
Mark Mulhern’s “New Work” uncovers a different domain of reality by means of a different technical approach. Photographic accuracy is here exchanged for figurativeness and atmosphere, which evoke a more primal, immediate stratum of experience. From dog walkers, pigeons amongst passing crowds and the backs of people’s heads, the subject matter also belongs to the everyday world.
The exhibitions open with an artists reception on Friday, Sept. 12 from 5-7:30 p.m. You have until Oct. 11 to make these images part of your everyday.
Read MoreThe Betty Foy Sanders Department of Art at Georgia Southern University presents Derrick Buisch: Off Season from August 18 – September 19 on campus in the University Gallery of the Center for Art & Theatre. The exhibition includes an artist lecture Thursday, September 18, at 5 p.m. in the Visual Arts Building, Room 2071, followed immediately by an artist reception in the gallery. The events are free, and the public is welcome.
Derrick Buisch: Off Season features imagery culled from pedestrian subjects including maps, album covers, roadside signs, and commercial products. Informed through his practice of maintaining sketchbooks, Buisch creates distinctive images that present an extensive exploration of graphic motifs. Often influenced by aspects of music, such as LPs and zines, Buisch’s paintings and drawings are simultaneously playful, celebratory, and subversive.
Read More"Craig Blietz: Eight Years of Pastoral Dreaming" was published in conjunction with the 20 year survey of Blietz's work held at the Miller Art Museum in Sturgeon Bay, WI in the Fall of 2013. It is hardcover, measuring 12" x 12", has 192 pages with color and black & white images. Included in the book is an Introduction by Bonnie Hartmann, Director of the Miller Art Museum. Deborah Rosenthal, Miller Art Museum Curator provides an interview with Blietz. Essays and reviews in the book have been contributed by Lauren Levato-Coyne, Shan Bryan-Hanson, Peggy Sue Dunigan, and John Mendelsohn.
"Eight Years of Pastural Dreaming" is available at Tory Folliard Gallery for $60 plus tax or shipping.
Read MoreJanica Yoder's photograph, Untitled: Chicken Series, c. 1980 will be featured in the upcoming J. Paul Getty Museum book "Animals in Photographs" by Assistant Curator Arpad Kovacs. To be published in the Spring of 2015, "Animals in Photographs" highlights work from the Getty Museum's permanent collection and will be available in print and digital formats.
Read MoreJan Serr will be exhibiting her new Summer Dances monotypes at MOWA on the Lake in St. John's on Milwaukee's East Side. In Summer Dances she concentrates on figures that explore the body in motion with expressive, gestural lines. This new group of prints radiates color and celebratory movement.
Read MoreTrina May Smith's painting "Conjoined I" was chosen for a national juried art show at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition. If you are in New York, stop in to see the show, juried by the Guggenheim's Lauren Hinkson!
Read MoreThis touring exhibition organized by Plains Art Museum in Fargo, North Dakota features mixed media works on paper and oil paintings by artist T. L. Solien. Known for cartoon-like and surreal imagery with references to art and cultural history, Solien explores his life, mind, and emotional states as modern man, artist, husband, and father.
Read MoreMary Bero's work is in the nationally traveling exhibition INNOVATORS & LEGENDS: Generations in Textiles and Fibers. Organized by the Muskegon Museum of Art, Innovators and Legends explores the explosion of fiber as a fine arts movement during the latter half of the 20th century with over 75 works by 50 artists. The exhibition tells the story of the ongoing transformation of fiber arts from the functional and decorative to the innovative and experimental, and the creative potential of the wide array of diverse materials and techniques being used today. Contemporary themes such as narrative, identity, ecology, recycling, and political thought are explored, while continuing to draw upon the beauty and visual richness achieved through color, pattern, texture, and form.
The idea for the exhibition was conceived by Geary Jones, a Grand Rapids, Michigan based artist and teacher and has traveled to the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center in Auburn, New York, the Art Museum at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky and the University Art Museum of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. Currently at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, IA, Bero's work was featured on for the building's banner.
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