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Spring 23 in the Galleries

| Shan

Stephanie Carpenter, Kinship: Belonging, 2019, Letterpress print from wood type

Stephanie Carpenter: Cultivating Community 

Baer Gallery 

January 23 -February 16

Coffee and Pastry Reception: Tuesday, February 7, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. 

Stephanie Carpenter examines the way we create unique communities. She explores modularity and the use of language related to how we are connected. She earned an MFA from Indiana University and her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally in Australia, Brazil, India, Italy and Japan. 

Object Matters

Godschalx Gallery 

January 23 -February 16

Explorations in clay, wood, and found objects by students in Art 224, Introduction to Sculpture. 

Speculative Futures: Visions from Caregiving Printmakers

Baer Gallery 

February 27 -March 28

Exhibition events: 

March 23, 10 a.m. Bush Art Center: Panel discussion in BAC 130 with artists Katie Ries and Carrie Scanga, and labor historian Jessica Wilkerson. Panel followed by a reception in the gallery.

Speculative Futures is a portfolio of prints that imagine the future of caregiving. All of the participating artists are caregiving printmakers. The portfolio includes an essay by labor historian Jessica Wilkerson. 

Design Localitas

Godschalx Gallery 

February 27 -March 28

Featuring designs by the St. Norbert College Student Design Center.

2023 Senior Art Exhibition

Bush Art Center 

April 11- May 4

Reception: Friday, April 21, 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.

The Senior Art Exhibition is the capstone experience for all St. Norbert College art majors.

Brandon Bauer — A Call to Halt

| Catherine Nelson

A Call to Halt is an installation and critical timeline of the Euromissiles Crisis, and the nuclear abolition movement in the United States from 1977-1987. The installation includes a reenactment of the 1982 Nuclear Freeze Referenda, in which Wisconsin was the first in the nation to put international nuclear disarmament policy to a popular vote.

Th exhibit includes a timeline of important events during the crisis as a series of archival images and captions superimposed with stenciled spray paint. Cultural, political and activist events are referenced, telling a story of collective public outcry and the power of ordinary people.

Visitors can use provided ballots and reenact Wisconsin’s nuclear disarmament referendum. The reenactment is both a reminder of the power of democracy and an opportunity for viewers to become active participants.

A Call to Halt will be on display from September 26 to October 27 in the Permanent Collection Gallery.

Fall 2022 Exhibitions

| Shan
Painting of a woman playing a trumpet in front of red and white stripes.
Rafael Francisco Salas, Song, 2022, Oil on canvas

Fall 2022, Bush Art Center Galleries

Rafael Francisco Salas: Summer’s End

Baer Gallery, August 29-Sept. 22, 2022, Reception: Sept. 8, 5-7 p.m.

“Summer’s End” imagines a metaphorical change of season. It is an oblique, atmospheric meditation on political and social divides. The landscape emerges as an emotional place rather than a literal one. The county fair at summer’s end is a place of reckoning, full of innocence, and innocence lost.

April Beiswenger: An Advocate for an Imposter

Godschalx Gallery, August 29-October 20, 2022, Reception: Sept. 8, 5-7 p.m.

A mixed media project by April Beiswenger, Associate Professor of Theatre at St. Norbert College.

Aram Han Sifuentes: Let Us Vote! 

Baer Gallery, October 3 – Oct. 27

Exhibition events: Banner Making: Noon to 2:00 pm, Thursday, October 20 (location tbd) Reception: Bush Art Center, 2 p.m.-3:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 20

Let Us Vote features the work of Aram Han Sifuentes and highlights participation and disenfranchisement in the political process. This exhibition is curated by Brandon Bauer, Associate Professor of Art.

2022-23 Juried Student Art Exhibition

Baer Gallery, November 7- Dec. 2, 2022, Reception: Thursday, November 10, 4:30-6:30 p.m. 

An annual juried exhibition of work by current St. Norbert College students. 

Senior Art Exhibition: Rachel Stover

Godschalx Gallery, November 7- Dec. 2, 2022, Reception: Thursday, November 10, 4:30-6:30 p.m. 

The Senior Art Exhibition is the capstone experience for all St. Norbert College art majors. 

Third Coast Prints: A selection of work from Really Big Prints 2021

| Catherine Nelson

Be drawn into the Godschalx Gallery to experience a series of large-scale relief prints from last summer’s Really Big Prints! Organized by Berel Lutsky (UW – Manitowoc), Ben Rinehart (Lawrence University), and Katie Ries (St. Norbert College), this biennial event in Manitowoc, Wisconsin allows printmakers to stretch the limits of printmaking and produce work up to 4 by 6 feet in size. By carving into large panels, made out of birch plywood or medium density fiberboard (MDF), only the uncarved area can be covered with ink. When paper is pressed to this inked surface, the resulting image is known as a relief print. Prints on this scale are too large to be pressed with a traditional printing press, so a City of Manitowoc steamroller steps up to the task.

A steamroller press in action. Underneath the steamroller is board and a thick foam mat, protecting the paper and the carved, inked block from shifting.

Woodblock prints on this intimidating scale can take hundreds of hours to carve and create, months before any steamrollers are involved. On the day of, each artist’s printing process depends on a whole team of “clean hands” and other assistants. After the event, artists wheat-paste one of their prints in an alley in Manitowoc, Wi on Washington Street, across from the courthouse. Though those prints have come down, each artist also contributes a print to the Really Big Prints Archive, to be shared in future exhibitions.

Wheatpasting Really Big Prints in Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

The selection of prints from the 2021 event currently on display include work by a St. Norbert art professor, Katie Ries, as well as illustrator Rebecca Jabs, who exhibited in SNC’s Baer Gallery last year. These immersive paper-and ink worlds can initiate reflections on a sense of self and place, the role of stewardship, and the meaning of the natural world. Take an opportunity to surround yourself with these incredible prints before the exhibit closes on March 31!

Spring 2021 Senior Art Exhibition Artist Talks: Audrey Shreiner, Sophia King, and Grace Beno, Will Donohue, Rebecca Jacques, Olivia Platz, Annicka Rabida, and Neale Tracy

| Shan

The Senior Art Exhibition is the capstone experience for all art majors. Art Majors produce a body of work around a theme of their choice and exhibit it in the Bush Art Center Galleries. The Spring 2021 Senior Art Exhibition is on display in the Baer and Godschalx Galleries of the Bush Art Center, St. Norbert College through May 5.  In these videos students reflect on their concepts, process, and techniques.

Rebecca Jabs – Illustrating Nature

| Rachel Stover

Rebecca Jabs is an artist and freelance scientific illustrator based in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. She began her professional career as a K-12 Art Teacher in Manitowoc before graduating in 2016 from the Science Illustration Graduate Program at California State University at Monterey Bay. She has had her work displayed in a variety of exhibitions including Illustrating Nature, her most recent solo exhibition. Illustrating Nature, on display in the Baer Gallery at St. Norbert College through March 12, 2021, features a collection of watercolor, gouache, and ink pieces which illustrate some of the flora and fauna of Wisconsin. Jabs explained that her journey as a naturalist was a recent one and stated that, “When we grow up in a place, we become so accustomed to it that we aren’t as amazed by it as we probably should be,” when speaking about her love of wildlife and nature in Wisconsin. Her favorite birds native to Wisconsin are the Caspian Tern and the American White Pelican; which she illustrated in her gouache and watercolor painting, American White Pelican, 2017. Many of her paintings in the exhibition in the Baer Gallery illustrate flower species in Wisconsin as well. Although Jabs was never really interested in illustrating botany originally, she has found a love for the shapes and how she could piece the plants together in a composition commenting on how she is, “very drawn to geometry and pattern in my artwork.” In fact, Monarda punctata is one of her favorite flowers and she used this plant to study flowers when she painted Monarda Puctata & Bombus spp., 2020. The project that Jabs is working on currently is a collaboration with Wisconsin naturalist, John Bates. He is working on a book about the last undeveloped lakes of Wisconsin, and Jabs is illustrating plant and animal species found in those habitats; some of which are included in her Illustrating Nature exhibition such as four watercolor paintings of turtle species. Jabs’ work for Illustrating Nature beautifully illustrates Wisconsin wildlife in a variety of ways; from scientific illustrations for research to personal projects which celebrate the amazing plants and animals found in the state.

American White Pelican, 2017, Watercolor and gouache
American White Pelicans are present in increasing numbers in Wisconsin during the summer months. Birds of breeding age develop a nuptial tubercle, a ridge on the top of the bill, that falls off after breeding season, American White Pelicans often feed cooperatively in groups, forming a semi-circle to drive and concentrate fish within the shallows.
Monarda Puctata & Bombus spp., 2020, Watercolor
Monarda punctata, commonly known as Spotted Beebalm or Horsemint, can be found growing in sandy soil in Wisconsin. It is pollinated by a wide variety of insects including the many bumblebee species native to Wisconsin. Bombus species pictured: Tri-Colored, Rusty-Patched, Common Eastern, Brown-Belted, and Yellow-Banded Bumblebee.
Painted Turtle, 2020, Watercolor
This illustration is part of a current project with Wisconsin naturalist John Bates, to be included in his upcoming book on the last wild lakes of northern Wisconsin.
Astral Mirror, 2019, Ink on scratchboard
Observing the Common Loon at such a close range, white spots appear brilliant against the dense, absorbent black of its back. On such an encounter, I imagined the stars of the northern night sky woven into its wings.
Greater Prairie-Chicken, 2019, Watercolor and gold leaf
The Greater Prairie-Chicken nearly disappeared from the Wisconsin landscape by the mid 20th century due to the loss of its native prairie habitat. The management program at the Buena Vista Grasslands, pioneered by the research of Frances and Fred Hamerstrom, sustains today’s population of this bird in our state. Each April, male prairie chickens gather at dawn on booming grounds. Their display includes drumming feet and the inflating of air sacs on the side of their throats. the scientific name, Tympanuchus cupido, aptly translates to “drummer of love.”
Crystal Bog, 2018, Gouache
This painting was created for the Drawing Water artist-in-residence program at the UW-Madison Trout Lake Research Station near Boulder Junction, WI. Crystal Bog is one of the seven Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites at the Research Station. The acidic, low-nutrient conditions in a bog limit the plant life existing within the characteristic mats of Sphagnum Moss. Plants found at Crystal Bog include Leatherleaf, Bog Rosemary, Bog Laurel, Pitcher Plant, Roundleaf Sundew, Small Cranberry, and Labrador Tea.

“Light doth beguile the shining dark.”

| Ally Laidlaw

This month in the Bush Art Center’s Godshalx Gallery, you control what you see: sisters April Beiswenger, Gina Williams, and Dr. Lisa Beiswenger’s exhibit features objects that glow and shine––but only if you tell them to.

Their show, which is visible through March 12, casts the gallery in darkness. Quiet and unsuspecting though the room may seem, once you step inside, you may notice that it appears to glow. Each piece incorporates reflective and glow-in-the-dark surfaces which pass around what little light is available from the small strip of LED guides trailing near the walls of the galleries. This alone is a curiosity, but switch on the flashlight supplied at the gallery’s entrance, and the show comes to life.

Wherever you point the flashlight beam, an artwork will return an opalescent glow. Patterns jump to life, a long and trailing mobile appears to move with the light, casting dappled shadows around the gallery. The pieces offer themselves to the imagination, and the shadowed room feels like a little world of its own.

April Beiswenger is an Associate Professor of Theatre and a Scenographer here at St. Norbert College. Her previous shows in the Bush Art Center Galleries include The Making and Giving Project from August and September 2018. Light Doth Beguile the Shining Dark was created in collaboration with her sisters Gina Williams and Dr. Lisa Beiswenger.

Current Exhibitions

| Shan
Image: Rebecca Jabs, Painted Turtle, 2020, Watercolor on paper

Rebecca Jabs: Illustrating Nature

Baer Gallery, February 1-March 12

Rebecca Jabs illustrations center on the intersection between art, science, and education. By observing and recording nature through art, we gain a greater understanding of the world and our place within it. This exhibit features works portraying notable species from Wisconsin’s native flora and fauna. Selected illustrations from an upcoming book written by Wisconsin Naturalist John Bates will be on view.

The following exhibition-related events will be open to the SNC community.  Important Note: you need to be logged into your SNC account to access the Zoom meeting. 

Artist’s Talk: Illustrating Nature with Rebecca Jabs
Time: Feb 23, 2021 12:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada). This event is one hour long.

Zoom Meeting link for this event:
https://snc-edu.zoom.us/j/81894127237?pwd=cmNPQitaa3RkOU9tV05lQ01nS3U4Zz09

Meeting ID: 818 9412 7237
Passcode: 434922

Topic: Workshop with artist Rebecca Jabs
Time: Feb 25, 2021 10:15 AM Central Time (US and Canada). This event is one hour long.

Zoom link for this event:
https://snc-edu.zoom.us/j/82328525963?pwd=QUthNWRaTEViKy9WR2VmN1VIM2szZz09

Meeting ID: 823 2852 5963
Passcode: 433650

“Light doth beguile the shining dark.”

Godschalx Gallery, February 1-March 12

Featuring objects that glow by sisters April Beiswenger, Gina Williams, and Dr. Lisa Beiswenger