Sarah Grant

Des Moines’ Art Mama

Sarah Grant is the mother of Des Moines‘ ar scene. More than any person, agency or organization, she gave birth to it, bestowed an identity on it and nurtured its growth. When Grant started Sticks in 1985, as a one person studio, committed artists in Des Moines had to choose whether they wanted to be artists, or to live here. Her company let them do both, by giving full time jobs to some 100 artists at a time. They formed the creative core that snowballed into a legitimate art scene. Sticks makes furniture and art that is now sold in fine galleries and art museums all over the country. Its design work has become as recognizable as an icon, making it easy for tourists from Des Moines to spot it in Los Angeles or New York and feel some local pride.

Grant’s personal art career is also best known in large scale. She constructed, with Michigan architect Stephen Fry, a 30,000 pound kitchen table atop downtown Grand Rapids’ Blue Bridge.

Her giant murals “What I Love About Iowa State,” “We Shall Know Iowa State University by Its Myriad Parts,” and “My World Is So Full of Many Things,” grace Iowa State’s campus. She won an Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects.

Grant has also chronicled her emotional life in abstract paintings. Her annual shows at Olson-Larsen Galleries have been distinguished by moody colors that have made her fans either happy or sad for her. Whether dark or sunny, Grant’s paintings have always been characterized by heavy layering. Even in gay years, they revealed a compulsiveness that almost seemed penitent. One fan called it “the yin to the carefree yang of Sticks.”

Her current exhibition of new work is remarkably restrained. I’m tempted to say it’s better edited. However, painters don’t have an editor’s luxury of going back and subtracting the superfluous. So it’s more as if Grant has attained a new clarity and now simply intuits when less is more. This year’s work is also more narrative and less abstract. She even pushes narratives with playful Sticks-like titles such as “With Bloodhounds, Band-aids Don’t Work,” “Is It Good News?,” “Four Guys in Sports Coats & Ties.”

Most of the new pieces focus through frames within frames, as if the artist is looking reflectively through windows of perspective. “Just an Old Printmaker,” a painting added to the show at the last minute, is autobiographical. (Grant holds an MFA in intaglio printmaking from the University of Iowa.) It is also the most restrained work in the show. All Grant’s work begins as black on white. This painting adds little additional color and yet makes a most dramatic impact.
This exhibition plays through Nov. 26 along with shows of new works by printmaker Paula Schuette Kraemer and painter Thomas Jewell-Vitale. Kraemer exhibits visual prayers, for nurseries and kennels, that have long distinguished her career. Jewell-Vitale reveals a dramatically different palette within his familiar medium of oil and wax. He deserts his trademark cool colors for a sunny excursion to new emotional territory.

Touts

Paintpushers, a group of past and present Sticks artists, are holding their tenth anniversary retrospective at Heritage Gallery through December 1… Jeremiah Elbel, a Des Moines artist who won England’s Saatchi Prize, is exhibiting in Iowa State University’s Memorial Union Pioneer Room through Dec. 5. An artist reception will be held Nov. 30, 5 p.m. - 8 p.m.… Robyn O’Neil, who rocked the Des Moines Art Center two years ago with her black & white visions of Armageddon, is currently exhibiting a single drawing, “Hell,” which took two years to complete and includes 65,000 characters, at New York City’s Susan Inglett Gallery… Des Moines painter Alex Brown has begun work on next year’s return exhibition at Feature Inc., a renowned New York City gallery. He will show drawings as well as paintings this time and a new, retro style.

In the Details, or Not

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive." Albert Einstein

Houston scientist-artist-disc jockey Dario Robleto hangs out near “the boundaries of life - those strange places where the longest of odds are defied.” There he seeks the world’s oldest living humans, curators for The Guinness Book of World Records, survivors of lightening strikes, and scholars of antiquated medical practices, defiant gardens (built by soldiers in combat zones) and trench art (found object art built during combat). Robleto spends much of each year with scientists who study glaciers, collecting the flotsam of their melting masses - things like cave bear claws and wooly mammoth tusks. He also kicks around with North Sea fishermen, wounded soldiers and admirers of anything bizarre.

“I want to find the unexpected strangeness of a moment,” he explained.
A casual walk through the Des Moines Art Center’s exhibition “Dario Robleto: Survival Does Not Like in the Heavens” might reveal nothing more spectacular than “another Day of the Dead memorial” as one opening night visitor described it. Like Einstein though, Robleto finds his inspiration in slight details. Just consider the media with which he works. In “No One Has Monopoly Over Sorrow,” he built of basket out of the skeletons of human soldiers’ ring fingers, covered with lead from melted bullets. The rest of that piece consisted of shrapnel, waxed dipped bridal bouquets, flowers of human hair that was braided by a a Civil War widow, and fragments of a mourning dress.

In “Defiant Gardens” Robleto used paper he made from letters exchanged between soldiers and their wives or sweethearts, the skeletons of carrier pigeons, carrier pigeon message capsules, dried flowers collected on famous battlefields, mourning dress fabric, bullets and shrapnel, seeds, seashells, silk, gold leaf and glass. Even the small letters folded into carrier pigeons’ message capsules were from actual battlefield correspondences. This work could be mistaken for a funeral wreath, but only before the slight details are perceived. “Some Longings Survive Death” uses 50,000 year old wooly mammoth tusks, hair flowers that intertwined hair of various 19th century lovers with that of mammoths, plus ivory, bone, ribbon and typeset. That work was enshrined in a case made of bocote, an endangered wood.

“The Common Denominator of Existence Is Loss” is the most dramatic piece in the show. A spotlight shines through a showcase, also made of bocote, which holds the paws of cave bear skeletons which have been extinct for 50,000. They are intertwined with human hand skeletons around a braid of audiotape which holds the first human recording in history. Shadows move under the showcase.
Other pieces in the exhibition are considerably more whimsical, mostly sweet parodies of music album covers and historical signs. Everything though is far more than the sum of its extraordinary parts. This exhibition plays through Jan. 15.

At Moberg Gallery, Mary Kline-Misol unveiled her two year series “Awakenings: The Journey from Pain to Empowerment.” Painting portraits of Des Moines’ homeless became therapeutic for Kline-Misol whose husband, artist and surgeon Sinesio Misol, killed himself in 2010. The portraits in this exhibition leave faces poignantly unfinished, missing the fine details in Kline-Misol’s other portrait series (including a pair of Mahatma Gandhi and George Washington Carver that were unveiled last week at World Food Prize headquarters), or even in marvelous head studies of the same subjects included in the Moberg show. Sometimes the devil is in the detail, sometimes in their detachment.

Touts

After a year off, Metro Arts Expo will feature fine art by juried artists from across the United States, Nov. 4 and 5 at Capitol Square… Paintpusher’ s Ten Year Exhibition features 31 current and alumni artists of the influential Des Moines art collective. Through Dec. 1, with a reception Nov. 12… Olson-Larsen Galleries hosts new works by Sarah Grant, Thomas Jewell-Vitale and Paula Shuette-Kraemer, through Nov. 26.

A Sobering September

September is a virtual second Lent for Des Moines’ art scene, a sobering season that follows a Mardi Gras summer filled with big festivals and light entertainments. At the Des Moines Art Center “Survival Does Not Lie In The Heavens” takes the Lenten theme to existential lengths. That major show of Texas conceptual artist Dario Robleto opens September 23 to explore longevity and extinction.

Metro Arts Alliance and Des Moines Social Club take the post Mardi Gras theme more literally with “Sweeping Up the Mess” opening this Friday at White Carpet Gallery at Hillyard (4267 109th St., Urbandale). That juried exhibition of painting, sculpture, poetry, and other art forms requires the use of custodial supplies and highlights Iowa’s refugee community. Rex Haussmann, Deb Seeger, Jennifer Rivera, Jason Barr, Katherine O'hara, and Yarn Dawgz will exhibit.

At Moberg Gallery, Thomas Jackson’s “Child’s Play” continues a forty days run providing an ironic look at the ambiguity of American character. For a decade now, Jackson has been composing stacked images that consider a subject from seemingly incongruous points of view. His choice of subjects has been influenced by Robert Frank’s mid - 1950’s series “The Americans.” That work, which reduced 28,000 images into a seminal look at the national character in mid century. Jackson has been trying to do the same thing for the new millennium. While most of his imagery began as a photographic safari, he now translates much of it into paintings and ink brush drawings. His most dramatic painting, “Photo Op,” stands on its own and translates a famous film image of George W. Bush hearing the news of the 9-11 disaster into giant pixels.

The dominant ambiguity of Jackson’s new show stacks images of child’s play with deadly serious stuff like hand guns, violence, sex and advertising. “American Cypher 40” places a doll house under the image of an actual row house that barely looks real. In another, a messed up hotel bed is stacked over another doll house. Clenched teeth of an anxious lady stand above symbolic ruby slippers. Several works use hand guns and rifles juxtaposed with the toys of little boys. Toy trucks collide in one ominous childhood scene while another toy truck graces a dashboard in an eerie dessert. Wedding cake figures of a bride and groom lurk over dancing senior citizens in another. One collage of photographic images compiles roadside attractions that fight for tourists’ attention. This show plays through October 1.

Other area artists have been busy with large public commissions. Frank Hansen’s three story mural on the side of a Des Moines Street building has been turning heads for much of the summer. People love it and people hate it with equal fervor. Des Moines artists Thomas Rosborough and William Barnes won commissions by the Army National Guard and the United States Army Reserve to paint a giant mural in the new Armed Forces Reserve Center in Middletown, Iowa, as part of Iowa’s Art in State Buildings program. Also in that program, Sarah Grant is currently in residence at Iowa State University creating an installation within the atrium of Horticulture Hall, as part of the Horticulture Teaching and Research Greenhouse Complex.

Locally works by William Barnes, Scott Charles Ross and John Preston will be shown at Olson-Larsen Gallery through October 8. New, more whimsical works by Jamie Navarro are on display at Pegasus Gallery, along with large paintings by the late Don Dunagan. Hilde DeBruyne-Verhofste and John Schwatzkopf are showing through at the Polk County Heritage Gallery. An opening reception will be held this Sunday.

Two Iowa artists are showing in America’s first and second cities. Anthony Pontius opened last week in “Shirts & Destroy,” a major group show at Tara Mcphearson’s “The Cotton Candy Machine” Gallery in New York City. Brent Houzenga’s show “Remixed Media” continues at Pawn Works in Chicago.

August Is the New October for Color

Three new exhibitions in Des Moines examine color from different points of view. Less (color) is more in Steven Vail Fine Arts current exhibition “Selective Color in Printmaking.” Curator Breianna Cochrane talked about the show’s forefather.
“Barnett Newman, a color field painter, came under fire when the National Gallery of Canada bought one of his works for $1.8 million in 1989. A nearly monochromatic piece of blue and red, it was mocked for its simplicity and extravagant cost, to the point where it was slashed with a knife by an angry viewer. Without innovations like that, the path to selective color might never have been explored.”

The Vail show, which h. In this show their works explore how minimal uses of color - black, as drawn attention from the New York City art media, includes works of such pathfinders from five different countries, some with big names: Rita Ackermann, Kamrooz Aram, Carlos Amorales, Donald Baechler, José Bedia, Ross Bleckner, Robert Cottingham, Eric Fischl, Wayne Gonzales, Antony Gormley, Beverly Semmes, Josh Smith, Pat Steir, and Donald Sultan. They demonstrate how restrained use of just black, white, gray and the primary colors can have major dramatic impact in reductive art. Using a variety of print media, their works communicate more through texture, pattern and balance, avoiding the use of color as their primary expressive tool.

“The simplicity inherent in primary colors is often reflected in the pieces themselves,” Cochrane explained.


Matt Corones designed this shirt to match his window installations.

Less (volume) is also more as the Des Moines Art Center’s “Iowa Artists 2011” continues with just two works by Matt Corones- large-scale “stained glass” windows in the museum’s lobby and Pei wing. These were each built with three patterns, based on photographs of flowers, and digitally-created patterns influenced by Middle Eastern decoration and by "Matisse Camouflage," - brightly-colored riffs on the Modernist master’s cut-paper collages. Each pattern was printed on large sheets of transparency film, which were then layered on top of one other and adhered to the glass. The effect is anything but minimal color wise - it dazzles entire rooms. These windows will be on exhibit through October 2.

In a separate exhibit under the “Iowa Artists 2011“ umbrella, Matthew Kluber presents a series of abstract “paintings” that also reference Barnett Newman. They profess an additional debt to the color studies of Joseph Albers, in which one color changes by its association or proximity with another. Kluber fuses color, line, digital formations, and projected light to create dramatic visual spaces with more of an embrace of new technologies than the works at Vail. His exhibition continues through October 2. Corones and Kluber will both speak at the museum on September 1.

Road trips to two Iowa art museums offer far more traditional experiences. Mason City’s MacNider Art Museum is exhibiting forty original photogravure prints by Edward S. Curtis, through October 29. That selection provides an overview of Curtis’s legendary “The North American Indian Collection.” Famous images like “Geronimo” and “Cañon de Chelly – Navaho” mix it up with lesser known but equally intriguing images like “Bear Bull – Blackfoot” and “Wichita Grass-House.” Cedar Rapids Museum of Art is preparing for a September 3 opening of its exclusive showing of “An American Masterpiece: Charles Wilson Peale's George Washington.” Commissioned by John Hancock , this was Peale’s first portrait of Washington to portray him as commander in chief of the Continental Army. America’s daddy will hang around until New Year’s Eve.

Notes

Ames artist Peter Goché’s “Water Hutch,” has been on exhibit this summer in Omaha’s Bemis Center for Contemporary Art… Moberg Framing plans a September opening of the their new shop on Ingersoll… Frank Hansen will auction several of his paintings at The Mansion September 24 in a “Paint It Black” event. Any painting that does not receive a minimum bid will be painted black and recycled. The Snacks will play.

Fall Arts 2011

For Des Moines‘ fine art scene, autumn is the sobering, back-to-work season that follows carefree summers filled with big festivals and light entertainments. This year‘s fall calendar supports such sobriety with a preponderance of deadly serious exhibitions. “Survival Does Not Lie In The Heavens,” a major show of Texas conceptual artist Dario Robleto at the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) explores longevity and extinction. Another DMAC exhibition “Black White Gray Blue” revisits the horrors of American slavery. A third DMAC show studies the psychology of portraiture with a title nod to dementia a la Vincent Van Gogh.

“Mingled Visions: Selections from Edward S. Curtis's ‘The North American Indian‘” revisits the extinction of the Plains Indian way of life at the MacNidar while The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art (CMA) goes to THE founding father for gravity, showing “An American Masterpiece: Charles Willson Peale's George Washington.” CMA also studies photography‘s effect on grave social conditions in “Shout Freedom! Photo League Selections from the Columbus Museum of Art.”

The gallery scene is also filled with deep stuff. Mary Kline-Misol’s long awaited series of portraits of homeless Iowans comes to Moberg, as do Thomas Jackson’s ironic reflections on serious matters. William Barnes will show his latest meditations on ephemerality and wistfulness at Olson-Larsen while Steven Vail Fine Arts will continue to show “Selective Color,” a nationally acclaimed exhibition that demonstrates how subtle uses of color can make dramatic statements.

For levity, fall also brings annual celebrations with Art Stop, Quilt Walk and the fall studio tours of arty Winneshiek County highlighting that genre.

Calendar (*APT* indicates a special Art Pimp tout)

Recurring Events and Family Attractions
Thursday Night Art Walks in downtown Newton

First Friday Art Walks, Fairfield Town Square
Open houses at Studio 100 (304 Fifth St., 778-8768,
http://www.jamesellwanger.com)
James Elwanger plans on monthly open houses, mostly on the last Thursday of each month, but subject to change. Check website for latest details.

Special Events
September 8
Pecha Kucha VI
The international anti-Power Point movement takes on the arts and creativity this year, in the Des Moines Art Center courtyard.

September 23-24
Art Stop - ( www.myspace.com/artstop, www.artstopinfo.com )
A two day visual and performing arts event, with shuttle busses to Valley Junction, East Village, Ingersoll, Gateway West and Roosevelt, but not Drake.

October 7-9
Northeast Iowa Artists Studio Tour (Winneshiek County Convention and Visitors Bureau, 800-463-4692, www.iowaarttour.com ) APT
Iowa’s original art studio tour takes places around Decorah‘s autumn majesty.

September 28 - October 1
“Quilt Walk”
Nine Historic Valley Junction merchants feature quilt-related exhibitions and demonstrations, and hosting opening receptions with artists. Special open house events on September 29.

Galleries
Ongoing

Art Dive (1417 Walnut St., www.artdive.com )
Des Moines’ original alternative gallery plans alternative exhibitions. Be surprised.

2AU (200 Fifth, West Des Moines)
Pearls reign this fall in Au‘s effort to provide Art Deco comforts in a troubled year.

Finder's Creepers (515 18th St. www.finderscreepers.com)
Alternative to alternative.

Kavanaugh Gallery (131 5th Street West Des Moines, 279-8682, http://www.kavanaughgallery.com)
Specializing in purchased estate collections, there’s no telling what you might find here.

Susan Noland Studio Gallery (902 42nd St.)
The psychological properties of gems are front and center in this master goldsmith‘s repertoire.

Teeple Hansen Gallery (108 W. Broadway, Suite 206. Fairfield)

University Museum (3219 Hudson Road, Cedar Falls, www.uni.edu/museum)

Special ExhibitionsOlson-Larsen Galleries (203 Fifth, West Des Moines, www.olsonlarsen.com )

Through September 3
“Three Takes on Photography”
Peter Feldstein, David Ottenstein, Dan Powell.

September 9 - October 8
“New Works by John Preston, Scott Charles Ross, William Barnes” ATP

October 14 - November 26
“New Works: Sarah Grant, Thomas Jewell-Vitale, Paula Schuette-Kraemer”

December 2 - January 7, 2011
“Debra Smith, Tilly Woodward” APT

Moberg Art Gallery (2921 Ingersoll Ave., www.moberggallery.com )

August 26 - October 1
“Thomas Jackson” APT

October 7 - November 26
“Mary Kline-Misol” APT
Historical realist Kline-Misol reveals her long awaited series of homeless portraits. Coincidentally, her portraits of George Washington Carver and Mohandas K. Gandhi will also be unveiled at the World Food Prize headquarters.

December 2 - February 2011
“New Works by Bill Luchsinger & Karen Strohbeen” APT
Creating their first prints in 1970, Karen and Bill were among the nation’s digital print making pioneers, even before David Hockney made it cool. The exhibit will showcase new work on paper, canvas, and ceramic tile.

Heritage Art Gallery (111 Court Ave., www.heritagegallery.org)

August 29 - October 9
To Be Announced

October 17 - December 1
“Ten Year Exhibition”
Featuring 31 current and alumni artists of Paintpushers, a Des Moines artists collective. Reception - Saturday, November 12 from 3 to 8 pm.

December 5 - 2011
“Des Moines Exhibited”

Steven Vail Fine Arts (300 E. Locust St., 309-2763, www.stevenvailfinearts.com )

Through December
“Selective Color” APT
Works by Rita Ackermann, Kamrooz Aram, Carlos Amorales, Donald Baechler, José Bedia, Ross Bleckner, Robert Cottingham, Eric Fischl, Wayne Gonzales, Antony Gormley, Beverly Semmes, Josh Smith, Pat Steir, and Donald Sultan demonstrate how minimal color in reductive art can have a dramatic impact.

Museums
Des Moines Art Center (4700 Grand Ave., www.desmoinesartcenter.org )

Through September 4
“Surface Value”
James Gobel, Alison Elizabeth Taylor, and Mickalene Thomas present visions of American life and lifestyle, exploring pop culture influences, issues of racial and sexual identity, and the varying subcultures that make up our diverse population.

Through October 30
“Single Channel Two Melodrama” APT
Split screen high definition video features Christopher K. Ho’s Lesbian Mountains in Love.

Through September 18
“The Fashion Show”
An examination of how clothing communicates who we are and who we wish to be through the ages.

Through October 2

“Iowa Artists 2011: Matt Corones” APT
Corones created two large-scale “stained glass” windows in the museum’s lobby and Pei wing, each with three patterns, based on photographs of flowers, digitally-created patterns influenced by Middle Eastern decoration and "Matisse Camouflage," a brightly-colored riff on the master’s cut-paper collages

“Iowa Artists 2011: Matthew Kluber” APT
Kluber projects an ever-changing computer generated image onto a field of multi-colored stripes, resulting in a work that constantly changes form over time. You have to see this to believe it.

September 23, 2011 — January 15
“Survival Does Not Lie In The Heavens “ APT
Dario Robleto’s recent exploration of longevity and extinction through his incorporation of 19th-century folk traditions used to create visually arresting objects. This is a major national art event.

September 23 — January 29
“Black White Gray Blue”
Revisiting the horrors of slavery in the US.

October 7 - January 25
“Vincent van Gogh and the Psychology of Portraiture” APT
Portraits from the Des Moines Art Center's Permanent Collection, including the recent Vincent van Gogh acquisition.

Ankeny Art Center (1520 SW Ordnance Rd., www.ankenyartcenter.com )

September
“Jacklin Stoken and group”

October
“Works by Ben Schuh”
“Works by Marry Rork-Watson”

November
“Works by Heather and Nicole from Studio3”

Octagon Center for the Arts (427 Douglas Avenue, Ames www.octagonarts.org)

Through October 15
“Linda Lewis & Annick Ibsen” APT
Sculptures of irony and human nature.

Through October 23
“Iowa Watercolor Society Exhibit”

Brunnier Museum of Art (University Museums, 290 Scheman Bldg., Ames, 515.294.3342, www.museums.iastate.edu )

Through December 30
“French Art Nouveau”
Decorative arts, particularly glass and tapestry, are featured in this exhibition.

“The Age of Brilliance”
Twenty nine cut glass pieces from the Brilliant Era of American glass, circa 1876.

“Relationships: Interstitial Connections”
Studio faculty make connections to other disciplines.

“ Fragile Thread of Glass”
Thirty centuries of glass as aesthetic objects for utilitarian uses.

“Priscilla Sage: Contemporary Sculptures”
Textile sculptures.

“Iowa City and Keota Glass”
Works from two 19th century Iowa glass companies that were directed by J. Harvey Leighton.

“NC Wyeth: America in the Making”
Saturday Evening Post illustrator’s works chronicle 20th century.

“Ulfert Wilke: Words to Be Seen”
German immigrant to Iowa, Wilke’s art was heavily influenced by Asian calligraphry.

Christian Petersen Art Museum, Morrill Hall, Iowa State Campus

Through December 16
“Subject to Change: Art & Design in the 20th Century”
Rotating show from the permanent collection.

“Commissioning a Collection: 75 Years of Public Art”

Anderson Sculpture Garden, around Morrill Hall, ISU campus

Through August 2012
“Realities: the Lyric Sculpture of William King” APT
Pop Artist’s work commissioned for ISU.

The Vesterheim (523 W. Water St., Decorah, www.vesterheim.org)

September 1, 2011 - September 3, 2012
“Sigvald Asbjørnsen, Sculptor”
Works by the renowned artist, including portrait busts of famous Norwegians and Americans.

Through April, 2012
“Polar Exploration” APT
Featuring Roald Amundsen, Richard Byrd, and Bernt Balchen.

Through April 7, 2012
“Norwegian-American Lutheran Colleges”
Institutions of higher education shaped by religious and ethnic identity.

Faulconer Gallery (Grinnell College, www.grinnell.edu/faulconergallery)

Through September 4
“Liz Steketee - Family Albums” APT
"Reconstructed memories" offer creative insight into the act and the art of taking family photos.

September 7 - November 30
“Chinese Propaganda Posters”
Exhibition of posters will open on September 7 with a gallery talk by Yang Pei Ming of the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center. We don’t make this up.

September 23 - December 11
“Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin in Iowa”
Renderings and models of Griffin works, focusing on those in Iowa, will put the College's Griffin-designed house, Ricker House, in regional context on the centenary of its construction

September 23, 2011 - December 11
“From the Book Forest: Commercial Publishing in Late Imperial China”
Commercial printing during the Ming and Qing dynasties (15th-19th centuries), this exhibition will feature visiting artists from China who will demonstrate traditional woodblock printing techniques.

Cedar Rapids Museum of Art (410 Third Avenue SE, Cedar Rapids), www.crma.org

Through September 4
“Shout Freedom! Photo League Selections from the Columbus Museum of Art”
Non-profit organization of photographers committed to the transformative power of photography to effect social change. Its members included Berenice Abbott, Lewis Hine, Lisette Model, Aaron Siskind, W. Eugene Smith, Paul Strand, and Weegee.

Through October 9
“A Show of Hands: Ceramics from the Collection”
Studio ceramics from the 1970’2 and 80’s.

September 3 - December 31
“An American Masterpiece: Charles Wilson Peale's George Washington”
Commissioned in 1776 by John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, this was Peale’s second full-scale life portrait of Washington, and the first to portray him as commander in chief of the Continental Army.

September 24 - January 15, 2012
“Seeing and Remembering: Portraits and Their Stories”
Exhibition looks at the different types and situations within portraiture.

Blanden Art Museum ( 920 Third Avenue South
Fort Dodge, 515-573-2316, http://www.blanden.org )

Through October 29
“Don Heggen: Master of Luminous Watercolors”

Through January 21
“Joyce Blunck: Assemblages & Paintings”
Venerable found object artist retrospective.

MacNider Art Museum (303 2nd Street Southeast, Mason City,
641- 421-3666, www.macniderart.org

Through September 10
“A Series in Progress by Larry Gregson”
Winner of Area Show: 42 exhibition gets a solo show.

Through October 29
“Mingled Visions: Selections from Edward S. Curtis's ‘The North American Indian‘” APT
Photogravures include famous images like “Geronimo” and “Cañon de Chelly – Navaho” and less well-known images like “Bear Bull – Blackfoot” and “Wichita Grass-House.”

November 10 - January
“Iowa Crafts 40”

July used to be the dead month for Des Moines fine arts. Not any more. This year the kind of big brilliant shows that galleries used to hold back until autumn are opening this month at four different venues.

Travis Rice’s exhibition “Contamination” is the largest one person show ever at Moberg Gallery, taking up the entire gallery plus an outdoor wall. It’s inspired by a 1980 Italian cult film of the same name. That sci fi classic was about alcoholism, green eggs and coffee with the green eggs plotting to take over the world. I don’t make this stuff up. You can leave all expectations at the door of the exhibition.
“I’ve always had issues with germs and bacteria. I became interested in the way they move and multiply. I observed some bacteria that expanded into aerial routes, detracting and retracting to new hosts. That’s the way they are. That’s what I tried to capture in my prints, then in the paintings. Those are my ideas about what a 3D diagram of a sneeze might look like,” Rice explained.

Rice’s meditations on bacterial growth also include neon sculptures, 3D paintings, video monitors,

and several metal sheds filled with fluorescent lights and props one might use in decontamination zones. Some of those are covered with metastasizing green eggs. All are covered with textured fluorescent film and separated from each other with shredded colored paper, a Rice trademark. This show is serious summer fun. Through August 20.

James Ellwanger’s new exhibition “41 degrees N / 93 degrees W” presents a series a ten portraits of Des Moines. Each composition is printed on four layers of Plexiglas stacked on top of each other. The background prints are satellite photos of Des Moines while the top three layers consist of various images within the satellite photo. Each set of prints is made in an edition of five and many have already been sold.

Ellwanger will also be showing a series of sculptures he’s been making out of motorcycle parts. Each portrays an animal, complete with a taxidermy tick bird. “I like to think about what it might be like some day when our pets are all robots. Plus it’s a lot of fun to work with motorcycle parts,” he said. The show begins July 28 and runs two months in the former Fitch Gallery, at 304 15th St..

Steven Vail Fine Arts’ new exhibition also opens July 28 and studies “Selective Color” in printmaking. Artists come from five different countries and use minimal color for dramatic effect in reductive art. Works range from figural to virtual abstraction and include Eric Fischl, Donald Sultan, Carlos Amorales, Robert Cottingham and seven others.
Vail quoted Alberto Giacometti while explaining the inspiration for the show. “My colleagues admonish me, ‘paint with more color,’ Isn’t grey a color too? If I see everything in grey and if within that grey I see all colors that impress me and that I would like to convey, why should I use another color?”

Works range from a screen print with flockings from Sultan’s seminal Poppies series to black on black etchings of butterflies from Amorales. The exhibition has already attracted interest from the New York City art media. One national writer expressed hope it would travel to the Big Apple.

Olson-Larsen Galleries opens “Three Takes on Photography” demonstrating different approaches by Peter Feldstein, David Ottenstein, and Dan Powell. Feldstein uses cliché verre, a technique first practiced in the 19th century, applying ink and paint to glass, film, or translucent paper by etching, rubbing and daubing. He then scans his "positive" and manipulates it digitally. Ottenstein presents new prints from travels through Iowa and the West. Powell’s hand-manipulated photographs feature out of focus objects blended with unusual scenes, enhanced by bleaching, toning and the application of pencil and oil paint. This show runs through September 3.

More Summer Fun

Steven Vail Fine Arts’ new exhibition also opens July 28 and studies “Selective Color” in printmaking. Artists come from five different countries and use minimal color for dramatic effect in reductive art. Works range from figural to virtual abstraction and include Eric Fischl, Donald Sultan, Carlos Amorales, Robert Cottingham and seven others.

Vail quoted Alberto Giacometti while explaining the inspiration for the show. “My colleagues admonish me, ‘paint with more color,’ Isn’t grey a color too? If I see everything in grey and if within that grey I see all colors that impress me and that I would like to convey, why should I use another color?”

Works range from a screen print with flockings from Sultan’s seminal Poppies series to black on black etchings of butterflies from Amorales. The exhibition has already attracted interest from the New York City art media. One national writer expressed hope it would travel to the Big Apple.

A new Matthew Clarke sculpture showed up last week at Moberg Gallery. We heard Jim Hubbell gave him a home.
Olson-Larsen Galleries opened “Three Takes on Photography” demonstrating different approaches by Peter Feldstein, David Ottenstein, and Dan Powell. Feldstein uses cliché verre, a technique first practiced in the 19th century, applying ink and paint to glass, film, or translucent paper by etching, rubbing and daubing. He then scans his "positive" and manipulates it digitally. Ottenstein presents new prints from travels through Iowa and the West. Powell’s hand-manipulated photographs feature out of focus objects blended with unusual scenes, enhanced by bleaching, toning and the application of pencil and oil paint. This show runs through September 3