Exhibitions

Aram Han Sifuentes — Let Us Vote!

| Catherine Nelson

According to exhibition curator Brandon Bauer, “this exhibition brings together works by Aram Han Sifuentes that focus on democracy, citizenship, and political participation. The works in this exhibition manifest the notion of democracy as a contested space in which one can gain a political voice through citizenship, protest, or giving voice to those excluded politically.” It includes handmade protest banners, an Official Unofficial Voting Station, and a banner lending library.

A central feature of the exhibition is a wall of handmade protest banners. Sifuentes hosts workshops to teach sewing skills and banner-making techniques, passing on a traditional, intergenerational skills while drawing communities into conversation about protest and demonstration. Some banners were created by Sifuentes or during previous lending libraries, but a collection of banners made by campus community members are available to be checked out. Next to the poster is an instructional video on how to create a fabric banner with felt letters. A banner making workshop, with instruction by Moki Tantoco, will be taking place at noon on Thursday, October 20 at noon in the Mulva Library.

The St Norbert Community’s Protest Banner Lending Library

The Official Unofficial Voting Station is a symbolic voting station open to all. In addition to creating opportunities for anyone to cast a vote, stations bring together communities for conversation, protest, and celebration. Sifuentes, as a noncitizen immigrant, created the program in response to her inability to vote. The first iteration, prior to the 2016 election, included 25 collaborative activations of the station through performances and installations. The project was reiterated during the 2020 elections, with 50 voting station kits sent across the nation. A voting station is housed online, along with a developing archive of responses and vote tallies.

At the Bush Art Center’s Official Unofficial Voting Station, gallery visitors can fill out a freeform kind of ballot, sharing the reasons that they vote, as well as listing local, national, and global issues they’d like to vote on. The Official Unofficial Voting Station, a station for all people and for all issues, creates conversation around who can vote, and what issues visitors most want brought to the ballot. The anonymous ballot responses will be recorded and archived.

Ballots, a ballot box, and stickers, as well as voting rights informational handouts.

The exhibition will be on display between October 3 and October 27, with a reception from 2 p.m.-3:30 p.m., on Thursday, Oct. 20.

April Beiswenger: An Advocate for an Imposter

| Catherine Nelson

Through a broad, tactile mixture of textiles, printmaking, painting, and sculpture, An Advocate for an Imposter explores the nuanced relationship between imitation and authenticity. Beiswenger’s embroidery, sculpture, and weavings comprise an expansive, kind, and thoughtful conversation.

The central feature of An Advocate for an Imposter is a formal armchair upholstered in AstroTurf, flanked by two log end tables and resting on a large rug. On one side is a bowl of acorns. The arrangement creates interesting conversation about the distinction between “imposter” and “genuine.”

The AstroTurf upholstery is a particularly entertaining juxtaposition. AstroTurf is definitely an imposter, oversaturated plastic pretending to be a perfect, living yard. As upholstery, it’s doubly false–fake grass pretending to be an appropriate fabric for a seat (but actually a prickly, unpleasant surprise). The natural end tables, however, complicate the situation. Raw, unfinished wood–bare nature–is inserted into this indoor, almost domestic scene, yet the AstroTurf upholstery attempts to imitate the vibrance of living plants outdoors. Which belongs where? Who is really the imposter?

The rug below the chair has been printed with scrabble-worthy words that would pose a challenge for even the most experienced elementary school spelling bee champion. The nest of words is beautiful but overwhelming. It can be easy to feel like an imposter, standing in a space covered in terms you are ashamed you don’t know.

The wall facing the gallery entrance is dedicated to a life-sized skeleton, layers of patterned fabric exactingly embroidered with tight, floral embellishments. Next to it is pinned a small, three-inch square portrait. The contrasts between the two–in size, media, style, and presentation–are stark. The portrait, in its intimately small scale and open, unguarded expression, offers a deeply genuine moment of connection, while the skeleton is a much more precisely arranged look inside a person (literally). Both are undeniably appealing, but deeply different.

A series of cloth panels juxtapose carefully embroidered forms with sketches, splotches, and smudges. The organic, unintentional flaws and the precisely realized diagrams both have an appealing integrity to them. Sketches, coffee stains, and wrinkles–the fingerprints of an imperfect reality–honor the time, effort, and person beside the ideals of their work.

An Advocate for an Imposter will be on display in the Godschalx Gallery through October 20.

Rafael Francisco Salas – Summer’s End

| Catherine Nelson

As fall semester begins, take a moment to reflect on Summer’s End, an exhibition of achingly beautiful work by Rafael Francisco Salas. The exhibition primarily features oil paintings of indistinct rural landscapes and a county fair in “a metaphorical change of season. It is an oblique atmospheric meditation on political and social divides. The landscape emerges as an emotional rather than a literal one. The county fair at summer’s end is a place of reckoning, full of innocence, and innocence lost.” 

From left to right: County Fair #3 (Calf), County Fair #1 (Princess), County Fair #2 (Shovel), 2021. Oil on canvas.

Salas’ paintings feature luminous backgrounds, their inner glow contrasting with a persistent shadow that creeps in at the corners of the canvases. He doesn’t shy away from saturated, earthy colors, but, paired with muted grays, the overall effect is a sense of disillusioned nostalgia.

2021 Landscape, 2021. Oil on canvas.

Summer’s End layers the hopefulness of the ideal, the clarity of recollection, and the crumbling of memory. Sharply rendered figures and sparkling fireworks are placed atop hazy rural landscapes, bleeding into but distant from their surroundings. Focal points dissociate into abstract strokes of jeweled color, and backgrounds fade into the feeling of a landscape, rather than a physical location.

In addition to large oil paintings, Summer’s End includes a collection of process sketches. This body of delicate, thoughtful works contextualize the ideas that culminated in each painting. It’s interesting to see how a change in medium affects the perception of each subject, with small studies in ink, acrylic, and collaged paper a quietly different treatment than the large oil paintings.

Process work.

Salas is a professor of art at Ripon College, where he also serves as chair of the department of Art and Art History, and has also been appointed to the Wisconsin Arts Board. His work has been displayed in New York City, San Diego, and Boston. He’s also shown work extensively in the Midwest, including in the Neville Public Museum, the Museum of Wisconsin Art, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, and the Frank Juarez Gallery. His work is represented by Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee. Salas has also worked as an arts writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Newcity Art Chicago, The Isthmus Magazine and Urban Milwaukee.

Rockets #1 and Rockets #2, 2022. Oil on canvas.

Summer’s End opened on August 29 and can be viewed in the Baer Gallery through September 22. A reception will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, September 8. The gallery is open to the campus and the community.

County Fair #3 (Calf), 2022. Oil on canvas.

Blake Williams — Commonplace

| Catherine Nelson

Blake William’s Commonplace is anything but ordinary. The show, which was housed in the Baer Gallery at the start of the spring semester, includes ceramic and wire sculptures, as well as furniture sourced from Williams’ family, like her great-mother’s dining room table. These sculptures explore the human condition, how an individual relates to their surroundings, and how identity is formed and reformed.

Gammy’s Runner, Great-Mother’s Table, 2009-2010. Porcelain, wire, and table. In the back, Secret Recipes, 2019. Porcelain, wire, digital decals, and chair.

Through imagery of bones and flowers, Williams studies the ghosts of the past in the everyday, the transience of life, and the search for identity. Her work places a special significance on the contributions of domestic work and honors the memories bound up in objects of ancestors.

Gammy’s Runner, Great-Mother’s Table, as well as Resilience II, with Waiting for Summer in March on the far left.

Blake Williams is an artist and Associate Professor at Michigan State University. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and she has pieces in national private collections, as well as the Jingdezhen Ceramics Museum. Williams has also been featured in American Craft and Ceramics Monthly magazines.

Nourish 2010. Porcelain, wire, and chair.

This peaceful, contemplative exhibition was on display between January 24 and February 17 in the Baer Gallery. It was a quiet space to consider home and self, and to honor the sacredness of memory.

2022 Senior Art Exhibition

| Catherine Nelson

The Senior Art Exhibition is the capstone experience for all art majors. Each art major creates a body of work centered around a theme of their choice and exhibit their work in the Bush Art Center galleries. This year’s exhibition, featuring work from eight seniors, explores a wide range of topics, including the greatest moments in sports history, a fantasy world that feels like home, and the power of water.

Kori Halstead
Trevor Cornell
Rita Hamm
Cora McMains
Left to right from top: work by Kori Halstead, Trevor Cornell, Rita Hamm, and Cora McMains

Our graduating art majors this year are Francesca Facchini, Cora McMains, Marybeth Koss, Kori Halstead, Ally Laidlaw, Trevor Cornell, Megan Huth, and Rita Hamm. The 2022 Senior Art Exhibition is on display in the Baer and Godschalx Galleries until May 6.

Works of Water. Marybeth Koss
Bare Witness (detail). Ally Laidlaw
JOIN Brewing Co. Megan Huth
Utopia (detail). Rita Hamm
Ophidiophobia—Fear of Snakes. Francesca Facchini
Bare Witness (detail) Ally Laidlaw

Althea Murphy-Price ─ From Me to You

| Catherine Nelson

The current exhibition in the Baer Gallery, From Me to You, explores topics of self-perception, beauty and the Black female identity through photography and sculpture. Murphy-Price reflects on the problematic weight of expectations as an inherited female legacy, “passed down from me to you.” 

Althea Murphy-Price is an artist and professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville whose work explores the social implication of beauty and its relationship to female identity, women, and culture. Her pieces, which range from screenprint collages to rugs made from human hair, have been shown internationally, including in Spain, China, Japan, Italy and Sweden. She has also been featured in Art Papers Magazine, CAA Reviews, Contemporary Impressions Journal, Art in Print, Printmaking: A Complete Guide to Materials and Process, and Printmakers Today. She studied at Spelman College and received a Master of Arts in Printmaking and Painting at Purdue University, as well as a Master of Fine Arts from Tyler School of Art, Temple University.

Much of Murphy-Price’s work grapples with the social perceptions and the sense of personal identity tied to Black women’s hair and hairstyles. Her Goody Girl series of photographs responds to the high expectations of #blackgirlmagic, a hashtag intended to uplift and empower, but can also feel like a pressure to perform. Through a metaphor of barrettes and bows, Murphy-Price explores how trying to live up to fantastical expectations can have real consequences.

Her more recent prints, including Black Bird Girl and Requiem, feature 3D printed objects arranged sculpturally in young children’s hair. The dizzying array of hair accessories used in these photographs also composes her sculpture Counter. Some of these accessories, like bows and flowers, are innocent and childlike, but others, like satellites, bullets, and birdcages, have connotations associated with heavier subjects. All have implied expectations, and carrying their weight can be difficult.

Counter (detail) 2021. 3D printed polymer.

From Me to You opened in two stages, on Feb. 28 and March 3, and can be visited through March 31.

2019 Senior Art Exhibition

| Katie Hopkins

IMG_3582

The 2019 Senior Art Exhibition boasts the work from seventeen graduating studio art and graphic design major seniors, featuring mediums such as printmaking, packaging design, short film, oil painting, and sculpture, just to name a few. Up now until May 3, 2019 in the Bush Art Center Galleries you can come see the ultimate works of:

  • Julia Allen
  • Emerson Bartch
  • Sarah Chojnacki
  • Carla Davila
  • Joseph Donohue
  • Madeline Gassner
  • Jennifer Han
  • El Hein
  • Katie Hopkins
  • Sam Kalies
  • Lindsay Kropp
  • Emma May
  • Kayla Mitchell
  • Cate O’Brien
  • Morgan Pennings
  • Nicolette Sylvain
  • Elizabeth Schaal

Artist statements explaining the artists’ work and visions are provided by each artist and are available for viewing in a binder found inside the doors of the Baer Gallery. Come celebrate the hard work of the graduating art class of 2019 while you can!

 

Current Exhibitions: February/March 2019

| Katie Hopkins

IMG_1852

Sandra Martinez: Between the Lines

Baer Gallery

February 25-March 29

Sandra Martinez is a symbolist painter based in Door County, WI. Martinez renders contemporary works on paper, vellum and other materials that reference human, plant, and shelter forms. As part of Martinez Studio, she was recently awarded a prestigious USA Artists Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited at many institutions, including the Smithsonian Craft Show and the Museum of Wisconsin Art.

Martinez’s exhibition, Between the Lines, displayed in the Baer Gallery, is a mixture of paper sculptures and wall hangings, paintings, and woven rugs. Her bold sense of shape and design transports the viewer into entirely new physical and mental spaces: a feat well worth the time to come and experience. Come see her work before it moves on!

Martinez will also be giving an Artist’s Talk in the Bush Art Center on Friday, March 1 from 12-1p.m. Refreshments will not be served, so feel free to bring your lunch while listening and learning something new.

Details on this exhibition’s reception can be found at the bottom of this post.

Visit Martinez’s website here.

IMG_1857IMG_1853

Brian Pirman: Experimental Digital Patterns

Godschalx Gallery

February 25-March 29

Recently returned from a fall semester sabbatical, Brian Pirman, Associate Professor of Art at the BAC, has taken over the Godschalx gallery with an explosion of color and pattern. From wall to wall and floor to ceiling, Pirman’s Experiemental Digital Patterns is a visually kinetic space that refuses to be ignored. Don’t miss your chance to experience this show and be struck with wonder.

Visit Pirman’s website here.

IMG_1867IMG_1863IMG_1864

Reception

A reception for both shows will take place on Thursday, February 28 from 5-7p.m. in the Bush Art Center lobby. Both Martinez and Pirman will be in attendance, and light refreshments will be served.

Awards Results: 2018-2019 Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition

| Katie Hopkins

IMG_0225

This past Thursday, November 15 marked the 2018-2019 Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition Awards Reception. Students, both art majors and non-majors, put out a strong showing for this year’s exhibition, creating a monumental task for awards judge Dr. Carol Bruess.

Dr. Bruess is an alumna of the St. Norbert College Art Program and received her M.A. and Ph.D from Ohio University’s School of Interpersonal Communication. She is the author of numerous books spanning topics of family relationships, marital relationships, and communication in the digital age. Dr. Bruess remains an active supporter of the arts and was a jovial and inspirational presence for the students at last week’s event.

The awards shook out as follows:

Honorable Mentions:

Morgan Pennings, A Day in the Life, Short film

IMG_0212

Lukas Thornton, Dysphoric, Watercolor on paper

IMG_0221

Emerson Bartch, Flesh Eater, Wax, soil and wood

IMG_0219

Third Place:

Katie Hopkins, Communio, Screen print on paper

IMG_0215

Second Place:

Elizabeth Hein, Reliance, Screen print on paper

IMG_0223

First Place:

Devin Morrisroe, Eavesdropping, Charcoal on paper

IMG_0217

To see even more of the artwork in this exhibition, come visit the gallery when its regular hours resume after Thanksgiving Break: MTWF from 9am-3pm, and Th from 9am-7pm. The show is up until December 7.