New Artists, Shakespearean Artists & Emerging Artists

Moberg Gallery’s “New Artists Exhibit” (through August 18) introduces five artists from far parts of Iowa and the world. 

Last year at Travis Rice’s opening, that artist recognized a gallery visitor and exclaimed “Holy shit, you’re Bart Vargas.” Vargas, who has an international reputation as a found object and up cycling artist, responded “Holy shit, someone here knows who I am.” Well traveled Vargas hangs his hat in Council Bluffs these days and debuts in Des Moines with an installation of 104 latex paintings on panels, all with the look of Pointillism on steroids. 

From the other side of the state Gary Kelley brings a series of paintings depicting famous Iowans. Young Laura Ingalls Wilder reads to her Holstein cow, Bix Biederdeck relaxes with his horn, Norm Borlaug works in front of the family barn in Cresco, Black Hawk poses ominously for a portrait, Bill Cody works the range, the Ringling Brothers do their thing in the ring, and Carl van Vechten has drinks with Lost Generation super stars Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Alice B. Toklas and Ernest Hemingway. 

David Rose grew up the nephew of his inspiration - Chuck Close. Rose taught meditation in Europe for many years and now brings to this show a digital series of deeply meditative fractal and vector images on aluminum and paper. Some can astound the eye. 

Finally, old India hands Michael and Charlotte Cain share their Hindu inspired meditations on Vedic gods and Moghul miniaturists. Charlotte’s are in gouache on panel and Michael’s are bronze and wooden sculptures.  

Makeovers for the Bard

Shakespearian doings are quite different this year. Repertory Theater of Iowa’s partnership with Salisbury House is kaput. There will be no Shakespeare on the Lawn this summer. After a couple years of experiments with re-interpreted, multimedia Shakespeare, the Iowa Shakesperience Fest is returning to literal Bard interpretations -  with “Romeo & Juliette” at Simon Estes Pavillion July 18 - 22. There may never have been such a tale of woe, but happily these productions remain free.  

After debuting earlier this month in Ames’ “the alley behind Burger King,” Matt Foss’s Iowa State University theater troupe is taking their shoestring budget, big imagination production of “A Hamlet” to Mississippi, coincidentally the site of William Faulkner‘s “The Hamlet.” What’s in an article? This brilliant show uses just six actors playing many parts. Ophelia is also Gertrude which explains a lot about the problems of the former. No liberties are taken with the script despite the fact that Laertes is played by a football and several characters by puppets. The troupe hopes to bring this show to Des Moines and Council Bluffs after Mississippi. 

Raw Art

Mixology (July 21 at Wooly’s in the East Village) brings a “circus” of local emerging artists in hair, makeup, fashion, photography, visual art, performing art, and music to town. This event is the local kickoff of “Raw: Natural Born Artists,” an arts group out of Los Angeles that promotes similar monthly shows in 54 cities now with Des Moines on board. Their mission is simply to help artists in the first ten years of their careers “get their work out there.”

The lineup at Wooly’s will include: hair stylists Brianne Cummins, who is also celebrating her one year anniversary in her salon this month, and Amanda Marie; makeup artists Kourelea Nicole, Pamela Loyola and Lindsay Ritland; fashionista La Bella Figura (Elena Flores); jewelry maker Joy Hockensmith; exotic dancer Jen Kees; body artist Emily Svec (Body by Svec); photographers Tessa Leone and Cameron Hart; tattoo artist/painter Knappy; artists Brent Westpahal, Brianna Dawson, Michelle Holley, Ryan Siedel, Christina Tufty, Ryan Saggau and D. Ryan Allen; and the bands Hath No Fury and Longbottom Leaf. 

If that’s not enough of a circus for you, Woz will be ringmaster and DJ Flash will do his thing too. Tickets are $10 advance or $15 at the door. Artists may submit their work for future shows at http://www.rawartists.org/register 

Touts 

Olson-Larsen Galleries opens their exhibition of New Works by two of Iowa’s most interesting stylists Mary Koenen Clausen and Kim Hutchison.

The Art of 2011

A Year of Unexpected Strangeness

“The unexpected strangeness of the moment.” Artist Dario Robleto used those words to explain the qualities he sought in his art, exhibited in the Des Moines Art Center’s (DMAC) “Survival Does Not Lie In The Heavens.” His phrase works just as well though as an explanation of the year 2011 in Des Moines’ art scene. It was a year in which unexpected media such as dirt, projected light and neon often stood in for paints, when green eggs and lasers became sculpture, when worldly artists like Bill Luchsinger unexpectedly turned their visions upon local subjects, and when Stephanie Brunia’s girls in white underwear, Tom Jackson’s children with guns and Jeremiah Elebl’s decapitated humans became subjects of exceptional exhibitions.

The year ended with an unexpectedly strange controversy. Half a century after Andy Warhol placed low culture’s signage (Campbell‘s) on the walls of high culture’s grandest palaces, local paragons of elite culture raised a public fuss about Subway’s signage on Subway’s own venues, at least when they were visible from the perspectives of high culture. Still excellence stood out amidst the strangeness:

Artist of the Year - Sarah Grant’s exhibition at Olson-Larsen demonstrated a new clarity, as if the artist simply intuited when less had become more. Her new work was also more narrative and less abstract than in past years. A ten year retrospective of Paintpushers, almost all artists who were recruited here and employed by Grant, further demonstrated her extraordinary influence on the city’s entire art scene.

People of the Year - TJ and Jackie Moberg nearly doubled the number of artists in their Moberg Gallery stable, salvaged the defunct Art Store’s inventory, saved all the jobs of that company’s employees, opened Moberg Framing, Moberg Editions (an online gallery selling inexpensive art) and Moberg Consultations (a full service firm that directs clients from design to installation of artworks). TJ also worked on a major installation at Prairie Meadows.

Painter of the Year - Matthew Kluber’s series of abstract “paintings” in his DMAC exhibition fused color, line, digital formations, and projected light to create dramatic visual spaces that embraced new technologies.

Exhibition of the Year (museum) - German Anselm Reyle’s exhibition at DMAC introduced Iowans to the contemporary German scene, where in the artist’s words “Cologne is the past. Berlin is the future.” Chrome, bronze, piano lacquer, plinth, aluminum, glass, neon, electric cables, rust, plastic, LED lights, and wood veneer hung out with more traditional Modernist media.

Exhibition of the Year (gallery) - Travis Rice’s “Contamination” became the largest one person show ever at Moberg, taking up the entire gallery plus an outdoor wall. It was inspired by a sci fi film was about alcoholism, green eggs and coffee, in which the green eggs plotted to take over the world.

Exhibition of the Year (non-traditional venue) - “Jeremiah Elbel” at Mars Coffeehouse exhibited a monstrously talented young artist’s black and white, tar and charcoal portraits of decapitated humans - some Mexican drug war victims, some victims of Islamic terrorists, others of Shari'a, or French law.

Design of the Year - InVision’s two story, glass and steel addition to the Iowa State Veterinary Teaching Hospital glowed like a sanctuary on a storm-plagued prairie. It finally presented a coming home platform for Christian Peterson’s iconic statue “The Good Doctor.”

New Artist of the Year - Madai Taylor painted with earth, red dirt of the South and black loam of Iowa, mixed with gesso. That paint was applied in layers on which he scratched while they were drying, much like the plows of agriculture scratch at the same dirt in its natural environment. He process becomes a unique form of shorthand - a primitive scripture.

Rising Star - Stephanie Brunia, a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, became DMAC curator Gilbert Vicario’s latest discovery. That museum showed a series of her prints that mimicked classics like Leonardo‘s “The Last Supper,” Michelangelo’s “Pieta,” and John Everette Millais’ “Ophelia” with decidedly modern, edgy takes of young girls in white underwear.

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.

Travis Rice Has Serious Fun

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.