PLOCH ART GALLERY SEASON ARCHIVE

Joye Moon
Realism, Abstraction and Non-Objective Motifs
(July – September 2023)

“Since I enjoy painting many different types of subject, presenting them through realism, abstraction and non-objective motifs, this exhibit is a combination of the many ways I like to present paint on paper.

Painting a variety of subject matter keeps me fresh and enthusiastic. I can present these subjects in countless ways. Portraits can expand into semi-abstraction, landscapes can take on a fantasy quality and florals can combine lots of design elements and techniques.”

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Kendra Bulgrin
All in a Dream
(May 25 – July 31, 2020)

Kendra Bulgrin’s oil paintings examine the longing for identity and the subsequent expectations associated with identity and memory, questioning how identity is constructed through images, place, memory, decoy, and the miniature.

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Daniel Klewer
Linear Tactility: Paintings as Sculpture
(March 2 – May 8, 2020)

Daniel Klewer is best known for his painting process, which has evolved over the years into nearly doing away with the brush and implementing a non-traditional paint application process. Viewers of his work will experience an investigation into the visual and psychological resonance of color relationships and texture.

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Lynn Rix
Embracing Winter en Plein Air
(December 2, 2019 – February 25, 2020)

The landscape of Wisconsin offers a vast array of inspiration from lush forests to lakeside charm, however its winters are harsh and long. It is this bleak winter where painter Lynn Rix finds austere yet magical inspiration.

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Beki Borman
Earth & Sky: Deconstructing the Landscape
(September 3 – November 22, 2019)

Fascination with plains, farm fields, and skies make up the last three years of Beki Borman’s artistic practice. This appreciation of the land through her distinctive abstract style has transformed her canvas into geometric and dynamic planes, lines, and angles.

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2018-2019 EXHIBITIONS

Presenting Sponsor • Given in loving memory of Marjorie Vallier

James Barany
Amalgamated Anthropologies
(June 17 – August 3, 2019)

Through a compendium of interdisciplinary and time-based means, artist James Barany attempts to embrace the emotion and memory of the human condition. His newest studio works are a return to the human form, offering an infusion of visceral media and a new platform to investigate time and empathy.

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Jon Horvath & Hans Gindlesberger
Street Scene
(April 22 – June 8, 2019)

In choreographing a mashup of content that offers varied perspectives of a place, artists Jon Horvath and Hans Gindlesberger overlay iconic images with the virtual landscape. Photography, cinema, and newer technologies like Street View share a relation as mediums that have been used as surrogates for travel and a way of augmenting our lived experience.

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Melissa Dorn & Kate E. Schaffer
The Everyday Feminist: Fine China
(February 25 – April 13, 2019)

What does it mean to be a feminist? What does it mean to be a feminist every day? The exhibition will explore this question through installation, paintings and sculpture. The work of Melissa Dorn and Kate E. Schaffer revolves around commonplace objects, those often overlooked, just as women’s work is often overlooked.

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Timothy Haglund
Nocturne: Landscapes of the Milwaukee River
(January 7 – February 16, 2019)

Artist Timothy Haglund strives to capture the world of nature at night: a dramatic, mysterious, and magical time wherein senses are heightened, sounds and temperature become more distinct, and one’s presence in the landscape is often solitary. With this exhibition, Haglund emboldens viewers to come to know their landscape and go beyond viewing beauty to be enveloped in nature’s nuances.

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Kelly Frederick Mizer
Traces & Threads 
(October 29 – December 21, 2018)

When Mizer's youngest son was four, he asked, “Mom, you know that voice in your head? Who is that?” Her work is an attempt to answer that question, exploring the idea of memory and identity as they relate to relationships—particularly the relationships that must change in order to grow. For Mizer, drawing and painting give voice to hurt, intrigue, and betrayal, examining those parts of the past that continue to reside in the present.

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Joseph Mougel
Herbarium
(September 4 – October 20, 2018)

Herbarium reveals the desire to capture and preserve things that comprise a place. The subjects include botanical specimens native to the prairie, as well as introduced varieties that now encroach upon the landscape, and the components describe narratives of transition, colonization, and exploration of the prairie ecosystem.

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2017-2018 EXHIBITIONS

Presenting Sponsor • Given in loving memory of Marjorie Vallier

Nina Ghanbarzadeh & Ethan Krause
Conversations
(June 16 – July 26, 2018)

In a celebration of printmaking, artists Nina Ghanbarzadeh & Ethan Krause will draw inspiration from each other’s process. Krause’s current screen printed work uses four-color process printing to enter into dialog with print culture, scanning and photographing old material, (re)arranging it digitally, and returning it to print. The recent focus in Ghanbarzadeh’s work has been the intersection of text and image and the potential of using text to create movement and texture.

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Robin Jebavy
Glass Utopias
(April 28 – June 7, 2018)

For years, artist Robin Jebavy has been making densely layered paintings of glassware arrangements with a focus on fusing the unbounded expanse of the inner, intuitive world with private, domestic environments. Glass Utopias, experiments with glassware imagery to reference our fragile and often precarious human condition and ask questions about our intimate relationship with the external world.

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Cynthia Brinich-Langlois
Water Sheds
(March 3 – April 19, 2018)

The lithographic prints that comprise Water Sheds present a variety of landscapes altered by drought, with small figures moving through panoramic compositions. The environments depicted are drawn from deserts and boulder formations that evoke regions of the Southwest, to references to agriculture and livestock that speak to uses of the Midwestern landscape.

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Kristen Bartel
Water Works
(January 13 – February 22, 2018)

Water Works is an exhibition of prints and photographs that look at the incongruous relationship we have with our landscapes. Looking at both the large and small aspects of constructed landscapes, this exhibition is an inquiry into how we understand the natural.

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Pacia Sallomi
Above & Below
(November 26, 2017 – January 4, 2018)

Artist Pacia Sallomi paints as a way of exploring the spiritual qualities of lived life. It is an intuitive process that is informed by experience, research, and journaling. She works in series; each exploring an idea that comes to completion when the underlying questions have been resolved and/or another question becomes more compelling. 

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Jessica Meuninck-Ganger & Marna Goldstein Brauner
Wall Paper
(October 3 – November 11, 2017)

Milwaukee-based artists, Jessica Meuninck-Ganger and Marna Goldstein Brauner combine technologies of printmaking with fibrous materials such as paper and fabric to create new visual representations of space and site. Both artists explore cultures through traveling and making, through examining the environment via mediation, process, and materials.

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Ephemeral Forest  |  A UW-Milwaukee Immersive Media Lab Augmented Reality Project Led by Creative Director Christopher Wiley and created by Sarah Wright, Adam Wertel, Christian Holland, and Maggie Franzen
(September 7 – 22, 2017)

Through the use of 3-D animation, projection mapping, and augmented reality, this project will demonstrate how new technologies can provide meaningful experiences and new forms of storytelling.

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All Strings Attached
The Eisner Guitar Collection with Photography by Jay Filter
(July 24 – September 2, 2017)

Aural innovation and visual beauty combine as award-winning photographer Jay Filter captures the craftsmanship and ubiquitous influence of the guitar.

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Michael Ware
Traversing the Transformed
(May 14 – July 8, 2017)

Michael Ware focuses on the tremendous forces that shape the landscape, concentrating primarily on the geologic transformations that occur in the natural world. Rather than an actual depiction, Michael’s sculptures suggest the essence of transformation—the movement, energy, and life.

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Nirmal Raja & Leslie Vansen
Accumulation
(March 12 – May 6, 2017)

Accumulation is a mixed media exhibition featuring current and recent works by Nirmal Raja and Leslie Vansen. This show has evolved from their shared interest in accumulation and complexity, and investigates their understanding of the present moment.

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Karri Jamison
Whimsical Nature
(January 15 – March 4, 2017)

Karri Jamison is the 2015 Wilson Center Hidden River Art Festival Best in Show award winner. Her current series of paintings feature the birds and woodlands of the Midwest.

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Exhibit Sponsor • Lois Clementi and Karleen Haberichter

Tyler Meuninck
The Harbor Estuary
(November 13, 2016 – January 7, 2017)

Tyler Meuninck creates paintings of overlooked, regional panoramas of cityscapes in transit from Milwaukee to neighboring locations and states. The series is sourced from a visual journal of photographs and drawings, and includes modern candid and traditional painting configurations.

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Michael Borowski
Home Reports
(September 11 – November 5, 2016)

In Home Reports, Michael Borowski digitally collages material from recent data reports, published by IKEA, on household rituals across eight global cities. The resulting digital images disrupt ideal representations of home in advertising, abstracting the photographic space with strips of color and pattern, and highlighting poignant gestures.

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Tonia Klein
Mythologies
(July 10 – September 3, 2016)

Tonia Klein's screen prints are influenced by fairy tales and world mythology. She uses these as a basis for sharing personal stories and investigating the role of women throughout history. In this way her work addresses and represents the social and political spheres of women.

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Digging Deep | Exploring Process & Presentation
Curated by Lena Vigna, Curator of Exhibitions at the Racine Art Museum with assistance from Jim Charles
(May 22 – July 3, 2016)

Seven artists were asked about what motivates them and how they work through ideas. This exhibition is the result of visits to the artist’s studios and in-depth conversations with them regarding their interests and their process for making work.

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Lynne Railsback
Wild & Wonderful
(March 5 – April 23, 2016)

Lynne Railsback doesn’t paint roses or orchids. The plants that grow in Midwestern woods and prairies are her subjects. Her unique watercolors have been exhibited in botanical gardens, galleries, corporations, libraries, and museums throughout the United States and Europe.

Stacey Steinberg
Camouflage
(January 9 – February 27, 2016)

Stacey Steinberg’s recent work explores the glory and decline of the honeybee. Her mixed-media images camouflage them in beauty and remind viewers of the power and vulnerability of these insects.

Exhibit Sponsor • Lois Clementi and Karleen Haberichter

Kay Knight
Scavenged
(November 7, 2015 – January 2, 2016)

Influenced by apocalyptic novels and real-time disasters, Knight’s paintings have begun to comment on our society’s collective fear of defeat. In the paintings, houses are destroyed beyond rescue. Left behind are colorful pieces of structure remnants. These fractured parts become the residue of our past, as well faceted patterns of light reflecting a brighter future. Rebuilding is still possible.

Peter Ciesla & Skye
Works from Bazyli Studio
(September 12 – October 31, 2015)

From fashion-driven, one-of-a-kind clothing and couture jewelry to two-dimensional decorative textiles, this multi-dimensional exhibit features works by 2011 and 2013 Hidden River Art Festival “Best in Show” winners Peter Ciesla and Skye of Bazyli Studio.

2014-2015 EXHIBITIONS

Presenting Sponsor • E.C. Goggio Foundation

Jean D. Sobon
Memories, Dreams, Imaginings
(June 6 – July 18, 2015)

The natural world can overwhelm, and occasionally take over, the fanciful creations of Jean Sobon. The richly layered watercolors and drawings invite viewers to marvel at the pulsing world around us.

Photographs from the Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University  |  Barbara Morgan (1900-1992)
(February 7 – March 14, 2015)

American photographer Barbara Morgan became captivated by the “rhythmic vitality” of modern dancers in the 1930s. From 1936 through the 1940s Morgan photographed over forty dancers considered to be pioneers of modern dance, including Martha Graham, Valerie Bettis, Merce Cunningham, Jane Dudley, and many more.

Sarah Marie Becker
Free Advice and Define Yourself
(January 9 – 31, 2015)

2014 Wilson Center Hidden River Art Festival Emerging Artist People’s Choice award winner, Sarah Marie Becker utilizes photography and self-portraiture to investigate the ways in which social media dictates contemporary human behavior. Her exhibition will feature works from the series Free Advice, a performance photography series that relies on the advice of strangers, and Define Yourself, an exploration of self-identity through the eyes of others.

Larry Chapman
Where We Live
(November 8 – December 20, 2014)

Larry Chatman’s photographs are at once beautiful and unsettling. Choosing to stare when others look away, Chatman encourages us to take another look down abandoned streets, at neglected facades, and faded signs to recognize their beauty and distinction.

Katie Musolff
My Peeps
(September 6 – October 25, 2014)

Activated by a sense of curiosity and wonder, Katie Musolff’s creations invite us into her neighborhood, her home, and her backyard. These sensitive and witty watercolors will make you laugh and marvel at the vibrant world around us. 

2013-2014 EXHIBITIONS

Presenting Sponsor • E.C. Goggio Foundation

Boris Osterov
Reaching Higher: Stacks and Wasted Series
(June 7 – July 23, 2014)

Boris Osterov explores the physicality of paint to create juicy and visceral abstract paintings that are imbued with a sense of directness, mystery, urgency, and excessiveness.

Maggie Szpot
Wild House
(May 3 – May 31, 2014)

The 2013 Hidden River Art Festival Emerging Artist Gallery People’s Choice Award Winner, Maggie Szpot, digitally “re-homes” taxidermy animals from museum displays into familiar domestic scenes. 

Michael Imes
An Exploration of Vessel Archetypes
(March 8 – April 26, 2014)

Known for his highly textural pieces, Michael Imes creates sculptural and functional works using pinch and coil hand-building techniques.

Patricia Frederick
Beyond Belief
(January 10 – March 1, 2014)

Graceful abstractions created with translucent layers of color seduce viewers into Patricia Frederick’s dreamy color-rich worlds.

Lisa Koch
Traveling with Clouds
(November 2 – December 22, 2013)

Lisa Koch’s background in biochemistry inspires her to push the boundaries of material expectations. Her glass sculptures shift with each new reflection, creating the impression of many works within one.

Beki Borman
Textured Landscapes
(September 7 – October 26, 2013)

Using the framework of Wisconsin landscapes to explore vibrating and soothing color relationships, Borman creates stunning oil paintings with an unusual technique of placing paint on canvas with a pallet knife.

Exhibit Sponsors • Lois Clementi, Karleen Haberichter, and Agustin and Rebecca Ramirez

Karen Ragus & Leslie DeMuth
Looking In, Looking Out
(June 8 - July 31, 2013)

Contrast of styles, contrast of inspiration, and a contrast of imagery, but with a shared passion for color, mood and personal expression, painters Karen Ragus and Leslie DeMuth create two very different kinds of paintings.

Makeal Flammini  |  The Fire Museum
Robert Meincke  |  Witness from Afar
(May 4 – June 1, 2013)

Selected by 2012 Emerging Artist Gallery attendees as the Hidden River Art Festival “People’s Choice” winners, Makeal Flammini and Robert Meincke are rising art stars that offer a unique view of the world around them.

Sarah Stonefoot
In Her Absence
(March 9 – April 27, 2013)

The photography of Sarah Stonefoot invites us to stop and stare. What at first glance appears to be a white pillowcase with an ornate red design is in fact a pillowcase covered in intricately placed red ladybugs. Stonefoot describes: “The botanical objects I have brought into the home are stopped in transformation. Their location is often questionable and their capacity for self-motivation is ambiguous. Fluent in a secret language that’s rich in mythic rawness, they crawl, branch, sprout and mimic their surroundings.” The subtlety and humor of her work set it apart. In 2009 Sarah was singled out as a “Pick of the Month” artist in Photo District News and was recently selected to participate in the Catherine Edelman Gallery’s Chicago Project.

Craig Blietz
Yard: The Art of Craig Blietz
(January 5 – February 23, 2013)

Best known for his rural inspired imagery, Craig Blietz's work amalgamates that vision with a formal and conceptual approach to painting. Blietz received a BS from The University of Denver. He continued his art and design studies at Harrington College of Design and finished his formal studies at The School of Representational Art. Blietz studied privately with master draftsman and Chicago figurative artist Fred Berger, Chicago portrait artist Richard Halstead, and painter/printmaker/illustrator John Rush.

Exhibit Sponsor • Lois Clementi and Karleen Haberichter
Courtesy of Tory Folliard Gallery

Rory Burke
Finite Differences
(November 3 – December 21, 2012)

Interested in the shared experience of our finite existence, Rory Burke creates work that strips humans, quite literally, to the bone. Working with cast resin, ashes, ink, and other mixed media, Burke creates skulls and busts that provide a unique, introspective interpretation of the human condition. Burke exhibits her work internationally, has been awarded an Outstanding Scholastic Achievement award by the International Sculpture Center, and was the Arts/Industry Resident at the Kohler Company, Kohler Wisconsin during the winter of 2011.

Richard Jones
Requiem
(September 1 – October 27, 2012)

An exhibition by Madison artist Richard Jones. Traditional glassmaking techniques are an integral part of Richard’s work, allowing for a wide variety of designs and imbuing each piece with subtle but significant features.

2011-2012 EXHIBITIONS

Presenting Sponsor • Lyle Husar Designs

Wilson Center | 10th Anniversary Retrospective
(June 1 – July 30, 2012)

Since the opening of the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts in 2002, exhibiting the work of Wisconsin visual artists has been integral to the Center’s mission to be the catalyst for lifelong discovery and exploration of the arts. The Ploch Art Gallery has featured the work of Wisconsin artists who spark conversation, engage imagination, and connect us to our humanity. The Wilson Center 10th Anniversary Retrospective is a celebration of the artists, committee members, staff, and community who have been part of making the Ploch Art Gallery one of southeast Wisconsin’s premier visual art venues.

Exhibit Sponsor • Andrea & Anthony Bryant

Joseph Schwarte
Revisions
(March 7 – April 26, 2012)

Regarding his own work as “functional sculpture,” Schwarte's sleek and sophisticated pieces bring functional woodwork into an artistic realm. Schwarte is a master of cabinetry and furniture in the most creative ways.

Dean Valadez
Our Plastic Visage and the Rainbow Machine Complex
(January 6 – February 26, 2012)

Using acrylic paint, paper collage, and printing techniques, Valadez creates futuristic, mechanical worlds that feel like a deconstruction of space and matter. Drawing inspiration from George Orwell’s 1984, Valadez focuses on the ways in which technology shapes our experience of the world and how we are in turn seen by it.

Jane Foster Doud Collection
Educator, Innovator, Promoter, Collector
(November 4 – December 26, 2011)

Jane Foster Doud’s many years of energetic involvement within our regional arts community have resulted not only in an extensive collection of works by Wisconsin artists, but a vast historic knowledge of their lives. She has had a unique vantage point to observe the dynamic changes to our state’s visual arts scene to which she has made a significant and lasting contribution. The late Doud was a local artist, educator, and arts patron. Her collection represents well-known and highly respected artists of the mid 20th century in Wisconsin such as Schomer Lichtner, Aaron Bohrad, John Colt, Ruth Grotenrath, and Karl Priebe. Doud’s illustrious collection is greatly enhanced by the stories and experiences of her full-filling life and the strong relationships she had with the work.

Exhibit Sponsor • Lois Clementi and Karleen Haberichter

Katie Musolff
The River Journal
(September 2 – October 23, 2011)

Katie Musolff’s oil paintings and drawings present a study of landscapes, figures, fish, and botanicals that reveal a delicate sensitivity in painting as well as her observations of life. Musolff is a graduate of the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, completed a residency at the Pfister Hotel, and is a 2008 Hidden River Art Festival "Best in Show" award winner.

PAST 2010-2011 EXHIBITIONS

Presenting Sponsor • Lyle Husar Designs
Contributing Sponsors • Andrea & Anthony Bryant and Susan & James Cerletty

The League of Milwaukee Artists
(June 1 – July 28 2011)

The League of Milwaukee Artists formed in 1947 as a visual arts organization whose purpose was to bring together artists for the mutual advancement of its members and their work, and to promote interest, appreciation, and understanding of art in Milwaukee. In the 1950s the LMA became the first art group in the midwest to hold outdoor art fairs. Since then the LMA has become a staple in the Wisconsin arts community and has become a resource for many outstanding Milwaukee area painters by promoting art through exhibitions and fairs, and has exhibited in such venues as the Museum of Wisconsin Art, The Cedarburg Cultural Center, and the Charles Allis Art Museum. This exhibition at the Wilson Center features over 30 juried members. Selected works will include drawing, oil painting, watercolor, and acrylics. 

Exhibit Sponsor • Lois Clementi and Karleen Haberichter

Rodger Bechtold
Landscape Fascination
(March 4 – April 22, 2011)

Painting with a colorful and vibrant palette, Rodger Bechtold gives the viewer a transformative vision of landscapes through his rich interpretations of the Midwest. Bechtold says his subject has always been landscape, and his artwork as a whole has always been about color. He frequently works and teaches en plein aire, working directly outdoors.

Exhibit Sponsors • Pat & Phil Crump and Elaine Peterson

Yevgeniya Kaganovich
inhabit/infest
(January 14 – February 23, 2011)

Yevgeniya Kaganovich is a Belarus born, Milwaukee-based artist, whose hybrid practice encompasses jewelry/metalsmithing and sculpture/installation. She has created site-specific artwork for installation in the Ploch Art Gallery using sheets of latex draped from the ceilings, extending over the walls, and transforming the space. In writing about her work Kaganovich says, “inhabit/infest implies that the Wilson Center is more than an edifice for art and culture; it is a living organism that we, too, are a part of.”

Joann Engelhart
At Garden's Edge
(November 5 – December 24, 2010)

Joann Engelhart’s mixed media pieces combine textile, print, and found organic materials to present us with a balanced, harmonious, and artistic use of nature. In addition to using various processes of fibers surface design, Engelhart also incorporates decayed leaves and tediously hand-stitches them. Dried and preserved in shellac, they represent the passage of time and create extraordinary color, patterning, and texture.

Emily Belknap
Wetlands
(September 11 – October 29, 2010)

Emily Belknap uses large stone sculpture to create a sense of time, describing its impact on nature. By focusing on simple patterns and movements, she reminds us of how fragile a moment can be. Belknap graduated from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design in 2007. She has shown her work throughout the Milwaukee area, including the Museum of Wisconsin Art, the Mitchell Park Domes, and has also participated in three Hidden River Arts Festivals.

2009-2010 EXHIBITIONS

Presenting Sponsor • Lyle Husar Designs
Contributing Sponsors • Andrea & Anthony Bryant and Susan & James Cerletty

Coalition of Photographic Artists
Wisconsin Artists Capture Nature
(June 4 – July 30, 2010)

Founded in 2006, the mission of CoPA is “to develop appreciation, promote growth, and support the creation of photographic arts in the Greater Milwaukee Region.” Thirty artists have been selected for this juried exhibition, which focuses on visions of the natural world. Jurors are Chinese brush painter Charlotte Fung Miller and nature and landscape photographer, Wayne Nelson.

Kathleen Raash
The Lake Studies
(March 10 – April 30, 2010)

Kathleen Raash’s paintings reflect the influence of living on a small lake in northern Wisconsin. Her interest is in capturing the rippling reflections on the lake, flickering images of trees, texture of bark, moss, and water, and the strong colors of the sunsets and northern lights. Raash finds that, in lake studies, the quality of light reflected in the water is not a direct reflection of sky in the water, but rather an expression of changes caused by the motion of the surface. A Wisconsin native, Raash completed her undergraduate work at UW-Eau Claire and her graduate studies in fine art at UW-Milwaukee.

Exhibit Sponsor • The Private Client Reserve at U.S. Bank

Barry Roal Carlsen
Shifting Ground: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings
(January 4 – February 27, 2010)

Barry Roal Carlsen works frequently in oil and encaustic on panel, but has incorporated both drawing and prints for this show. This body of work speaks to Carlsen’s breadth of approach in interpreting the imagery and feeling of landscape. His paintings, drawings, and prints provide a sense of the artist’s own history and imagination. Carlsen states, “My paintings are reconstructions of another time, spawned from memory, at once real and yet imagined. They are amalgamations, the kind of blending and restructuring of place and situation that revisiting the past creates.”

Exhibit Sponsors • Pat & Phil Crump and Elaine Peterson

Melanie Kehoss
Decorario
(November 6 – December 28, 2009)

Using silhouettes and cut-outs as imagery, Melanie Kehoss’ work seamlessly combines drawing and sculpture with printmaking in intimate light and shadow boxes. Commonplace materials—scrapbook paper, paint swatches, and fleece—are props for ambiguous narratives, almost “peep shows,” to which the viewer brings their own interpretation. Kehoss is interested in public space, human interaction, and awkward moments between strangers. “The interactions I tend towards are a balance between warmth and tension. Warm in the sense that people are attempting to connect and sometimes having a positive experience that way, but also tense because it’s hard, it’s awkward trying to connect with someone. That’s all portrayed in the body language.”

Exhibit Sponsor • Lois Clementi and Karleen Haberichter

Aron Meudt
If I'm Gone Before You Wake Up
(September 4 – October 28, 2009)

Photographer Aron Meudt caught the attention of the judges at the 2007 Hidden River Art Festival with her striking photographs documenting the realities of Wisconsin farm life, and her concern over the disappearance of the family farm. A graduate of the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Meudt’s youthful perspective earned her the Best in Show Award. Her current body of work is no less personal, capturing memories associated with a dear childhood friend who passed away. These evocative, thoughtful images convey Meudt’s grieving for a shared past.

2008-2009 EXHIBITIONS

Contributing Sponsors • The Equitable Bank, Andrea & Anthony Bryant
and Susan & James Cerletty

Wisconsin Visual Artists Juried Exhibition
(June 1 – July 24, 2009)

At 109 years of age, the Wisconsin Visual Artists (formerly the Wisconsin Painters and Sculptors) is the oldest juried member art organization in the state. Founded in 1900, the group has included many of Wisconsin’s most prominent artists, sponsors the Wisconsin Biennial and the Japan Art Exchange, and co-sponsors the Wisconsin Visual Arts Lifetime Achievement Awards. This exhibition features the work of the Southeast Chapter, comprising the region including and surrounding the metropolitan Milwaukee area. Artworks were chosen by Ray Gloeckler, a noted artist/printmaker and Professor Emeritus of Art at UW-Madison.

Amy Arntson
A Visual Dance
(March 2 – April 18, 2009)

Amy Arntson, a retired Professor of Art from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, has had gallery showings in cities around the world from Milwaukee to Beijing, China. She has been the Artist in Residence at both Isle Royal National Park and Voyageurs National Park, and given lectures about her work at international conferences in Sweden, Peru, Spain, Costa Rica, China, and England. Influenced by a range of work from 17th century illuminists’ wash drawings to 20th century abstraction, Arntson’s paintings focus on light, texture, shape, and the movement of water.

Gary Gresl
I Am Solitaire
(December 8, 2008 – January 31, 2009)

Gary Gresl, a Manitowoc native, has been featured in exhibitions throughout Wisconsin. He has received numerous awards for his work including multiple best in show awards and jurors’ selections. He is the founder and co-chair of the Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Awards, as well as one of the co-founders of the Milwaukee Visual Arts Roundtable.

Michael Foster
Transitions
(October 8 – November 21, 2008)

Michael Foster uses his natural interest in working with people to find the primary subject matter of his art: the human figure. His art focuses the attention on the subject, with minimal detail in the background and searching for highly expressive personalities. He deliberately paints the background using colors from the figure so that the finished piece harmonizes with the subject. Foster is a full-time art teacher at Waukesha South High School and a graduate of Cardinal Stritch University with a Masters in Art. He was commissioned to produce a series of paintings for the Waukesha Public Library which now hangs in the entryway of the new addition and won the 2006 Hidden River Art Festival’s Best in Show award.

Governor's Awards in Support of the Arts
A 25 Year Retrospective
(September 2-28, 2008)

Shown together for the first time, a collection of twenty-five commissioned works by Wisconsin artists given as the annual Governor’s Award in Support of the Arts. This retrospective exhibit of artworks was created in honor of more than 135 individuals, businesses, and organizations which have made extraordinary contributions to the vitality of the arts. The Governor’s Awards in Support of the Arts is a program of the Wisconsin Foundation for the Arts, an independent citizen body advocating for the arts in Wisconsin.

2007-2008 EXHIBITIONS

Presenting Sponsor • Marjorie A. & Raymond G. Vallier
Contributing Sponsors • The Equitable Bank

Laurel Lueders
Nether Realm
(June 5 – July 25, 2008)

Laurel Lueders takes photographs of what constitute personal symbols, then weaves them together creating a map that can be followed by a public audience. Her work is deeply layered with overlapping and emerging images, and deals with history, political situations, and an underlying element of inner disturbance. In describing her most recent work, Lueders said, “I went around Germany and photographed archeological dig sites of lost cities, many of them 1000-2000 years old. I was fascinated by this cycle … a city built over a city, how cities (and also people) go back to the earth, how it is built and rebuilt … both in a physical way and also symbolically.”

Exhibit Sponsor • Dolan Productions

Jeremy Wolf
Magnus Bestia
(March 3 – April 18, 2008)

Sculptor Jeremy Wolf’s objective is to strike a balance between the natural world and our increasingly artificial one. Wolf has adopted animals, for their easy personification, as a symbol of nature as a whole. By giving his sculpted animals human features and qualities, or having them interact with symbols of modern life, he forces us to consider them as part of our world. “I often create my artwork with the goal of blurring the boundary between humans and animals,” states Wolf. He creates standing sculptures as well as those that are suspended in the air, giving viewers the feeling that they are sharing the space with the artwork and not merely looking at it.

Exhibit Sponsor • Holly & Jon Sorenson

Wendy Mukluk
Worldview
(January 7 – February 22, 2008)

For Wendy Mukluk there is more than meets the eye and this is apparent in her digital photographs. “I’m basically a historian … I draw what I can’t photograph,” says Mukluk. She sees the artist’s role being similar to that of a shaman, as a vehicle by which things from other realms can surface for everyone’s benefit. It is in a very holistic sense that Mukluk tries to record “the wonders all around us,” focusing especially on those that exist in “ordinary” objects. With a background in traditional photography, digital techniques, drawing, lithography, etching, and painting she is well qualified to, through painterly manipulations, impose her own sense of aesthetic and beauty onto her digital prints.

Exhibit Sponsors • Karleen Haberichter & Lois Clementi, Faye's 1 and Faye@play

Amy Ruffo
Flats; Fissures; Elevations
(November 5 – December 30, 2007)

Methodical would be one way to describe Amy Ruffo’s drawings. Being exposed to the Great Plains and expansive horizon of her native Nebraska, Ruffo has developed a taste for a particular sort of line. She has identified this line in views of treetops against a clear sky, a mass of power lines, and a detailed view of newly leafing trees. Ruffo uses her camera to capture and recall the lines she observes, then transfers the lines from photographs to her sketchbook where she works them extensively—as if in a conversation to get to know them. It is this working relationship with lines that allows her to create drawings that reveal the individual character and energy of each line that Ruffo so sensitively delivers.

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Derrick Buisch
Splitscreen
(September 4 – October 26, 2007)

Derrick Buisch started as a landscape painter and while he would no longer be classified as such, his present work could be described as abstract, in a way he still paints landscapes. A precedent was set for Buisch’s style of abstract painting by American abstract painters of the 1950s. Abstract painter Barnet Newman painted time by painting a line to divide an otherwise solid field of color on his canvas. This sort of painting makes time more real; viewing one you can appreciate finitude and an amalgamation of energy and stillness. Buisch’s paintings work with something even more nondescript than time. He concentrates on the development of an idiosyncratic abstract visual language, while focusing on the drawing, structure, and color of pedestrian sources such as roadside signs, strip malls, graffiti, tattoos, and product symbol design.