Laura Youngbird: Inde’Wiisagendam (My Heart Hurts)
On View in the Main Gallery from March 19 - April 27, 2024
Opening Reception: 5-7PM Thursday, March 21st, 2024
This event is free to attend and open to the public. About the Exhibition (in the words of Youngbird): Inde’Wiisagendam (My Heart Hurts) is a collection of multilayered, multifaceted monotypes using the dress as a metaphor. The dress addresses a wide range, of social issues, injustices and biases. I am a mixed media artist, combining drawing, painting and prints. The dress has been a consistent and important symbol in my work. The simple garment inspires layer upon layer of meaning. I am amazed how the metaphor continues to unravel, reveal and expose even deeper nuances. It began long ago, when I reacted to pictures of my grandmother. She scratched her face out of most of the pictures we have of her. Pictures of her as a very young girl in her little white dress, were especially haunting to me. She was standing in front of the oldest Catholic Church in Minnesota (Grand Portage) where she made her First Communion. The images launched me on a journey of exploration that continues to challenge me today. I explored identify or the lack of, created by the assimilation policy intended to acculturate Native children into the dominate culture. The symbol also reminds me of my mother sewing dresses for my sisters and me, and then teaching us to sew. Making garments for someone can be an act of love. It can be enveloping, nurturing and protective. On the other hand, clothing can create an illusion, to cover, mask and disguise. I work in series (with mixed emotions) such as Common Thread, Loose Ends, and Blood Memory. I am intrigued with the idea of how intergenerational knowledge and memory are transferred through the maternal ‘blood’ line, coded in the mitochondrial DNA. Iron oxide is an important color that has become integral part of my visual vocabulary. It reminds me of the earth. The Earth is our Mother. Iron is in our blood. Mystifying, but authenticated by science, magnetism empowers migrating birds and animals to know instinctively when and where to travel. I continue to address the Dress and explore the connection between blood and iron, the most common element on Earth. |
For the Birds: A means to create, not waste
On View in Studio K from March 19 - April 27, 2024
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 21st, 2024
About the Installation: For the Birds: A means to create, not waste; is a visual examination of physical and fiscal resource use. A play on words, For the Birds… is a literal description of the pieces in the installation, as well as an example of creation using waste and recycled materials, made possible with the fiscal support of guaranteed income. This installation is in response to the Springboard for the Arts’ ongoing Guaranteed Minimum Income for Artists pilot which supports 75 artists, culture bearers, and creative workers in the Frogtown and Rondo neighborhoods of Saint Paul and in Otter Tail County, MN with $500/month for 18 months in 2023-24; as part of the Artists Respond: People, Place, and Prosperity cohort of artists that have created public projects that demonstrate the root causes that lead to the need for guaranteed income, and the impact of guaranteed income on the families and communities that are supported by it. Artists Respond: People, Place, and Prosperity is a project of the City of Saint Paul and Springboard for the Arts, supported by Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, the Economic Security Project, Ford Foundation and The Kresge Foundation. About the Artists: Jess Torgerson & Erika Frikken began working together in early 2022 during a recycled aluminum mold-making workshop for the Otter Tail County Lakes Area Precious Plastic Lab at the Otter Tail County Recycling Center in Fergus Falls, MN. Jess and Erika continued working together as part of the Lakes Area Precious Plastic Collective where they co-created a Precious Plastic and recycled materials sculpture of a bison titled, 1862, as part of the 4Ground Land Art Biennial. 1862 can currently be viewed at the Prairie Wetland Learning Center in Fergus Falls, MN. |
Katy J. Olson: The Weight of Woman
On View in Kaddatz Building Community Room March 19 - April 27, 2024
Opening Reception: 5-7PM Thursday, March 21, 2024
About the Exhibition (in the words of Olson): I will create plaster torso portraits of women constructed from plaster tape embellished with plastic. We are awash in plastic in every aspect of our lives. This project raises awareness that plastic is both a precious resource and a pervasive environmental pollutant. We are also becoming aware that it is inside us. This body of work highlights the complex relationships we have with plastic, the beauty of the human figure and how all women are objectified. These torso portraits will illustrate how women are taken for granted as producers of children, unpaid household laborers and as decorative objects. Each woman that is cast will have her own narrative fixed to the inside of the plaster cast. These narratives and portraits will explore the double bind that women face today; no matter who you are or what your shape or size; you are still criticized for who you are or what you look like. I want to create thought provoking pieces that highlight the environmental crisis, gender inequality and the hyper sexualization of women. I see connections between these separate issues, and I will use these pieces to explore these complex ideas. About the Artist: Katy J. Olson is an interdisciplinary artist working with felted landscapes, stitched story pieces, and assemblages of found and recycled objects including fiber and thread, wire, beads, and bone. She is a maker and cultural creative; making art is how she communicates a sense of place, culture and lived experience. Her work leads the viewer to connect to their place in nature in a displaced world. Her work highlights rural life, climate disruption and gendered roles, telling the story of the land, its beauty and the heartbreak of what is disappearing and what remains amid climate change. She has organized fiber festivals and taught fiber art classes. |