Get your walking shoes on, or maybe it's your flipflops before that summer feel leaves us...The final Gallery Walk of the year takes place Friday, October 5, 5-8pm at 16 venues in downtown Iowa City and coincides with American Craft Week, October 5-14. This national event celebrates fine craft art and their makers. Gallery Walks are scheduled for March, June and October and are self-guided, free, family-friendly and open to the public. Maps are available at each location.
Gallery Walk venues include Active Endeavors, AKAR, Bella Joli, the Chait Galleries, the Englert Theatre, Glassando, Home Ec Workshop, Iowa Artisans Gallery/D.J.Rinner Goldsmith, Iowa State Historical Society, MidWestOne Bank, MC Ginsberg, r.s.v.p., the Senior Center’s Old Post Office Gallery, Textiles, The Paper Nest, and United Action for Youth (UAY).
Active Endeavors, 138 S. Clinton St, is one of two new Gallery Walk participants. On display will be Chris Mortenson: Sylvaticus, a show of photography. Mortenson is an artist and founding Co-Director of the Zenzic Press in Iowa City. His work is concerned with Wildness and the way that society engages with the natural world through imagery, definition, and experience. Chris received his MFA from The University of Iowa and is currently the Adjunct Professor of Photography at Augustana College.
Another new Gallery Walk participant is The Paper Nest, 220 E. Washington St, inside Beadology Iowa. On display is Paperworks by Katharina Siedler. Inspired by traditional Islamic techniques of paper beautification, Siedler's Paperworks is an installation series of handmade flax paper, dyed with indigo and walnut. Each piece is sized with starch and burnished by hand, achieving a surface structure that is reminiscent of animal skin/ parchment rather then paper. By following repetitive dying patterns, a tension between order and unpredictable effects is created.
The Englert Theatre features Jamie Tucker: This is a Stick Up. “I fell into duct tape almost by accident, following a family in-joke about how I wanted to work in a tape factory as a child... It has followed me ever since, from science projects to car repairs to developing a unique art form. The show is a loosely-related collection of pieces united by the idea of pop-culture across the span of time, from historical icons, American heroes, and local legends to Hollywood stars. Having been gone from my home state for nearly ten years, I wanted to incorporate as much Iowa as I could into the show, from featuring local Iowa City legends (The Black Angel, Grant Wood, Kurt Vonnegut) to re-imagining portraits of Iowan villains and heroes. As part of the idea that pop-culture captures a moment in time, I also included a series of portraits of the 27 Club, icons that died entirely too young but live on in the last few snapshots before they were gone. The exhibit is located on the second floor in The Douglas & Linda Paul Gallery of the Englert, 221 E Washington St.
The State Historical Society of Iowa features Daniel Young Bear-Brown: Jewelry and Sarah Young Bear-Brown: Ceramics & Beadwork. Daniel and Sarah, brother and sister, are both members of the Meskwaki Nation in Tama, Iowa. Their mother, Mary Young Bear, works at the tribal museum as a textiles curator and at their school as a culture teacher and is an expert regalia maker. Daniel Young Bear-Brown is a member of the Bear Clan and loves to dance. “I have been participating in the powwow circle all of my life. Because of this, I learned how to make beadwork. Beading regalia and beading just for the sake of beading is a way of life in my family. Besides making traditional regalia, I’ve been experimenting with cartoon images because it forces me outside the typical “native” box and is also a lot of fun. I plan to attend the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe to study jewelry making. Sarah Young Bear-Brown is part of both the Native American Culture and the also part of the Deaf Culture. “These two unique worlds have had a strong impact on who I am and the art I create. My medium of choice is clay. I enjoy shaping forms into pieces that reflect day-to-day images with a sense of humor. While going to school at United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck, North Dakota, I was introduced to small sculpture with wire. I became fascinated with the freedom of this medium and made many pieces reflecting the human form. I also love doing beadwork in the form of earrings and necklaces and bracelets. The State Historical Society of Iowa is located at 402 Iowa Avenue.
r.s.v.p. hosts the exhibit Thomas Agran: silkscreen postcards. For this series, each seed sign from Monsanto's 2008 demonstration plot has been drawn and screen printed as postcards. When we travel, we buy postcards that represent important monuments, individuals, or subtle facets of a culture, sending them back to family and friends. The postcards are free to visitors, with the intent that they mail it and share a little bit of Iowa with someone they know. r.s.v.p. is located at 140 North Linn St, next to the Motley Cow.
Iowa Artisans Gallery/D.J. Rinner Goldsmith presents two exhibits. Try This On! Jewelry by Patricia Knox, and "Falling For You." Patricia Knox shows cuffs, rings, pins and earrings that are one-of-a-kind or part of a series, in combinations of silver, gold, copper and gemstones. “Years ago in college I thought of myself as a potter and loved the way I could wedge, slash, throw, and slap the clay into place,” says Knox. “ Clay was loose. It was not tedious to me. In order to work in metal, it is implied that a careful plan has been laid out. But as I pay attention and am open to what is happening with the piece, I let the design be in flux and realize that often the most important results are not those for which I thought I was striving.” DJ Rinner’s Falling for You is a celebration of the autumn colors through gemstone jewelry by Don Rinner, Bethany Young, Brittany McConnell and Louise Rauh. Iowa Artisans Gallery/DJ Rinner Goldsmith is located at 207 E Washington St.
Located at 109 S. Dubuque St., Textiles shows Julie Staub: Mixed Media. "Combining both painting and photography, local photographer and artist Julie Staub morphs the relationship between her original acrylic abstract paintings and her photographic exploration of those paintings. The digital images extract portions and skew perspectives of the paintings and are then printed on canvas or printed with a brush stroke texture to create the illusion and texture of a canvas painting."
Glassando hosts Kathy Cornett: Photographs & Jewelry. Cornett enjoys photographing old barns, old towns, and rural scenes “while they are still here,” as she puts it. Her photos often also include courthouses and post offices. Photographing older building, gives her photography a vintage look that can also be seen in her jewelry. Glassando is located in the Old Capitol Mall.
Bella Joli features Scott Christian Hage: Texture of Bereavement. Hage has been a freelance photographer for the past 10 years. This exhibit is an attempt to quantify loss. In his words, “Bereavement, a staggering form of loss, offers many manifestations of a relative nature. It sets before our eyes many textures.” Discovering and capturing images of the beauty within loss itself, has been his quest. Bella Joli is located at 125 S. Dubuque St.
MC Ginsberg Jewelers hosts Bio Art Design: From the Carotid to the Optic Nerve. The focus is to exhibit a working model of invention, intersection, advancing research and the art of manufacturing complex parts, and illustration of practice and prototyping models for education, clinical 3D modeling for interaction with patient consult or pre-gaming surgical approach(es). The exhibition will include computer aided designers, 3D design, sculpting and ceramics, master bench mechanics and machinists. The technical studio will be on display, with two mills (1-3 axis and 1-4 axis), two 3D printers (1-using a high resolution castable resin and 1 high resolution using photopolymers), vacuum and induction thermal casting, laser welding and four design benches used for the creative (IP) process. MC Ginsberg Jewelers is located at 110 E. Washington St.
The Old Post Office Gallery (Senior Center) shows two exhibits. In Michael Brau: Photography, Brau, a local artist, seeks to capture the grandeur and awe-inspiring ability of the natural world as well as its intimate, sometimes abstract nuances and subtleties. His images are typically photo-realistic in approach with only minor manipulation of images, allowing nature to express its emotional qualities directly.
Cathmar Shaw Prange, in her exhibit Florabundance II, comments “I have taught all grade levels, including college where I specialized in dance and swimming. After the birth of our children, my first art lesson brought together a lifelong fascination with color, movement, and rhythm. Images of what I see dance in my muscles, my head, and my camera to inspire my paintings. Now a looser way of painting begins to affect my work.” The Old Post Office Gallery is located at 28 S. Linn St.
Chait Galleries features Monumental Impressions: Landscapes by Nancy Lindsay and Drawings by Priscilla Steele. Large canvases and over-sized papers start the creative process for Priscilla Steele, owner of the Campbell Steele Gallery in Marion, Iowa, as well as well-known local oil painter, Nancy Lindsay. Though these two artists’ work differ in approach, they both share the common curiosity involved in the creation of larger scale work- which requires the mind to shift the gears of thought. These artists are not native to Iowa, but they use it to their own advantage. Steele gravitates toward human and botanical forms, and in this event, her choice of scale is larger-than-life. She experiments with mark making, which refers to techniques used to create different lines, patterns, and textures in an artwork; her mark making is sophisticated and calculated. Nancy related to landscape, including the deep woodlands of Iowa she paints on location, referred to as “en plein air.” She prefers to complete a work in a single painting session, “alla prima”, in itself a remarkable task. Chait Galleries is located at 218 E Washington St.
Home Ec Workshop features Installation: Amy Nichols. Local artist Nichols shows several knitted clay pieces. Home Ec Workshop is located at 207 N. Linn St., in the near Northside Neighborhood.
UAY (United Action for Youth) shows Brand New: Creating Real Change in our Community. This multi-media show will display the work of youth artists sharing their stories of how personal transformation can make a positive impact on their community. The UAY Youth Center is located at 355 Iowa Avenue.
MidWestOne Bank features Rebecca Clouse: "Sacred Spaces.” This show includes works in pastel, egg tempera, and mixed media. MidWestOne Bank is located at 102 S. Clinton St.
AKAR presents New Ceramic Works: Judith Duff & Ron Meyers. AKAR is located at 257 E. Iowa Avenue.