Often encompassing religious or surreal contexts, his paintings are a materialization of his nostalgia for familiar cartoon figures of the past, blended with the artist's own delicate balance of humor, beauty and derangement. The artist, a Milwaukee native, has enjoyed over fifteen museum exhibitions across the country including a retrospective at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and has been featured in Blab and other magazines.
Read MoreBreehan James Featured In The American Scholar
Wisconsin-native Breehan James has spent the past 10 years depicting her home state and the Boundary Waters of Minnesota. A professor at Boston University, James says the works of 19th-century Nordic landscape painters have greatly influenced her own compositions. Here, she discusses how painting from life is liberating, the benefits of immersing oneself in nature, and why the wilds of Wisconsin always refresh her spirit.
Read MoreRodger Bechtold and Richard Taylor Exhibitions Reviewed In The Shepherd Express
Two solo exhibitions opening Jan. 5 at Tory Folliard Gallery find two regional artists meditating on the singular beauty of Midwestern landscapes.
Read MoreWisconsin State Journal Reviews Gerit Grimm's MOWA Exhibition
Many fairy tales begin on an ordinary day. Then, something extraordinary happens.
That’s what occurred in the art studio of ceramicist Gerit Grimm in 2010. Grimm, who had long created ceramics with light colored clay and bedazzling glazes, came across some raw, dark clay that somebody had left behind.
Read MoreGerit Grimm's Museum Of Wisconsin Art Exhibition Featured In The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Grimm, who teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a meticulous and accomplished ceramicist. Her work reflects an accumulation of influences and interests that date back to her childhood in the former German Democratic Republic, her years as a production potter, and her early fascination with the California Funk ceramic movement. She is a voracious consumer of art history and a determined boundary-pusher at the potter’s wheel.
Read MoreBill Reid Interview For His Exhibition, Weigh High, Featured on Urban Milwaukee
A Universe of Fanciful Animals
Sculptor Bill Reid, now at Tory Folliard Gallery, has created his own looniverse, as he puts it.
By Brendan Murphy
Jan Serr Painting Featured on the Cover of Chicago Life Magazine
Rodger Bechtold's Upcoming Exhibition Featured in Plein Air Today
Exuberant color and painterly interpretations of place and moment fill Rodger Bechtold’s Wisconsin landscapes. Based on direct observation, recollection, and some invention, Bechtold’s paintings illustrate the grandeur in the everyday.
Read MoreJeremy Popelka and Jason Rohlf Exhibitions Reviewed in the Shepherd Express
Jason Rohlf’s paintings are abstract, yet conjure ideas of maps or stories. In the exhibition “Kismet,” on view at Tory Folliard Gallery, endless rings of circles, rows of arches, hanging diamonds and more play out in bright acrylic colors, sometimes painted on the relatively modest materials of shop rags or tarps.
New sculptures by Jeremy Popelka in his exhibition “Gravity” are also on view, and it is a good pairing as his figurative pieces share this type of synthesis. Inspired by his recent time in Thailand, Popelka fashions masks out of glass, incorporating textured surfaces that reference symbolic concepts.
Read MoreJeremy Popelka and Stephanie Trenchard Featured on the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, & Letters
An iron casting ladle, steel blowpipes, and oversize shears rest just steps away from the work stations where Sturgeon Bay artists Jeremy Popelka and Stephanie Trenchard transform molten glass into sometimes practical, sometimes whimsical works of art.
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