Artistry and the Minnesota Wildlife Refuge are proud to present The Leaf Has a Song in It by Stephanie Hunder.Her work expresses a desire to place the natural world in a human context, specifically the Minnesota woodlands and prairies where she grew up. Her prints often begin with documented forms and textures drawn directly from the landscape. She combines these images with scientific diagrams as a way to study our contemporary relationship to the natural world. Merging these distinct types of information creates a visual connection between sense and comprehension; the complex, qualitative physical characteristics of the environment, and the simplified constructs we use to think about them.

Opening Reception: March 7, 2025 from 6:00-8:00 pm
Artist Talk: Friday, April 25, 2025 from 6:00-8:00 pm

Paula Menchen’s stencils, stamps, dyes, and uses resist techniques to create a rich palette of colors and textures. Her work blends the tactility of Japanese Washi paper with painting and printmaking, resulting in intricate, layered surfaces. Through texture and transparency, she explores the harmony of raw materials, nature, and transcendence. She documents objects by creating a material record, stamping them on paper, and incorporating them into her work through collage.

Her process poetically merges the tactile qualities of Washi paper with painting and printmaking, producing evocative, layered compositions that emphasize surface texture and transformative color. Inspired by her time in Tokyo, Paula’s collage work re-examines landscape painting through both Asian and Western perspectives. By experimenting with techniques, she reframes compositions, fragmenting them into abstracted surfaces that challenge traditional representations of space.

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 25, 2025, Noon - 2pm
Interactive Artist Talk: Saturday, March 1, 2025, 1pm - 2pm

Artistry and the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge are excited to announce Under the Canopy by Emily Gray Koehler. Under the Canopy is a collection of traditional woodcuts by printmaker Emily Gray Koehler investigating the flora, fauna, and fungi found in our Midwest forests. Join the artist as she looks up through pines at the Milky Way on a crisp winter night, steps softly into a golden wood enveloped in the scent of fallen leaves, dips her toes in a wooded river at dawn, and studies the delicate ephemeral beauty of a forest floor blanketed in spring flowers. Revel in the artist’s eye as she seeks to remind us of what we have yet could so easily lose.

Artistry is thrilled to have Jon Kamrath, MaryBeth Magyar, and Paul Stapp in the Inez Greenberg Gallery with their exhibitions Public Offerings. They explore the question of what makes something public. What one person sees as a mundane storefront can be a beautiful reminder of the past. Everything we see is full of stories that aren't visible to the naked eye. How does the meaning of something change when only part of it is public? In nature, is anything private? By bringing together these artists, Artistry hopes our audience can find art not only in Inez Greenberg Gallery, but in the world around them.

Artistry is thrilled to present Small Sentiments by Tara Robinson in our Atrium Gallery this winter. She creates works that explore the interplay of memory and identity. Her paintings feature realistic forms paired with emotionally resonant colors. These palettes invite reflection on the bittersweet nature of nostalgia-giving form to the emotions that define our experiences and the objects we encounter, and giving permission to the viewer to find solace in small and past things.

Gifts in the Gallery is a juried, boutique-style holiday sale located in the beautifully decorated Inez Greenberg Gallery. Find unique, one-of-a-kind gifts for everyone on your shopping list. This two-week sale features a stunning array of items—including beautiful jewelry, ceramics, wood-turned home goods, and much more—handmade by over 50 local artists.

Artistry and the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge are excited to announce Little Spirits by Moira Villard. This thrilling exhibition highlights insects and wildlife Moira that shaped her childhood on the Fond du Lac Reservation in Cloquet, Minnesota. We are especially delighted to showcase new works Villard has created that celebrate the rich history, vibrant ecology, and natural beauty of Minnesota.

Artistry is excited to present Revisiting Past Exposures by Matthew Terry in the Atrium Gallery. Matthew's journey in photography began at 16, when he discovered the medium as a way to express himself and connect with others who shared his sense of detachment. Through a blend of subjective perspective and universal appeal, his work explores questions of identity and how we interact with our surroundings.

Whether capturing landscapes, architecture, or the human form, Matthew’s photographs challenge the boundaries between truth and fiction in our existence. His use of contrasting tones and deliberate composition, influenced by the interplay of conscious and subconscious thought, invites viewers to question reality. By evoking a subtle sense of detachment, his conceptual photos offer a powerful reminder of our shared human experience

Artistry and the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge are excited to announce Perspective Memories by Jade Lent and Billy Thao. Both Jade and Billy grew up in Minnesota and have been creating illustrations since they were children. Their process and perspectives grew with them creating the artist they are today. We are excited to bring them together in the Confluence Gallery to share their perspectives of the Minnesota River Valley and how nature has influenced their lives.

Artistry is excited to exhibit Dan Tran’s exhibition Precarious Equilibrium of Ambivalent States in the Atrium Gallery September 7th through November 3rd, 2024. Tran intertwines his experience as a bioengineer and artist to interpret the world at a molecular level. His geometric abstraction body of works paints a world of dynamic shapes and colors – mirroring the diversity of humankind and the fluidity of the human condition. We look forward to our audiences taking the time to observe his work and find the deeper connections within it.

Artistry is thrilled to announce the forthcoming exhibition, "An Anthological Journey: The Art of Luis Fitch," which will feature the extraordinary works of Mexican artist Luis Fitch from 2014 to 2024. 

Opening Reception:    Friday, July 12, 2024, from 6:00-8:00 pm

Closing Reception:      Sunday, September 15, 2024, from 2:00-4:00 pm to celebrate the start of Hispanic Heritage Month)

Artistry is excited to present artists MaryBeth Garrigan and Petra Johnita Lommen’s work that immerse you in the celestial wonder of their "Avian Night Sky" exhibition. This captivating display celebrates the fading beauty of our night skies, threatened by light pollution. Through ethereal paintings, the artists explore the transformative power of darkness. As birds soar through starlit heavens, they become metaphors for our own journeys through the subconscious realms of life. Garrigan's environmental activism echoes in the celestial backdrop, while Lommen's narrative weaves threads of the LGBTQ experience into the cosmic tapestry. Enhancing the multi-sensory experience is poetry by Stephen Wilbers. You can experience music by Jerry Kosak inspired by the artwork, at the closing reception and Star Party. Garrigan and Lommen have partnered with Starry Skies North to share resources on light pollution.

June 7th - August 18th, 2024

Opening Reception/Artist Talk: Wednesday, July 17th from 6 - 8pm

Lou Ferreri’s exhibition, INTERNAL AFFAIRS in our Atrium Gallery will be filled with his extravagant mixed-media drawings on the editorial pages of The New York Times. Initiated in 2010 as a continuing series, they elaborate on ordinary and extraordinary phenomena, physical preoccupations, anxieties, and observations regarding the details of everyday living. Influences for these daily drawings derive from news stories, op-eds, personal interactions, memory, history, intuition, or a previous night’s dream. Interspersed between the mixed-media drawings will be large charcoal drawings. Lou would work on four to five charcoal drawings at time allowing the music he would listen to drive him from one to another. In this exhibition you will not just see how his mind operates, but be able to dig into his thoughts by reading the many poems that will go along with his pieces.

Opening Reception: Thursday, June 6, 2024 from 6:00-8:00 pm

Artistry is excited to bring the work of Klaire Lockheart and Laura Wennstrom together, telling two stories of how women are seen in society, in our Inez Greenberg Gallery.

The Bloomington Elementary Schools Art Show, featuring work from K-5 students, is put on every year by Bloomington elementary art specialists in collaboration with Artistry Theater and Visual Arts. This show is one of Artistry's most popular exhibits and a favorite for so many in the community!

 The exhibition, Used, brings together sculptural and wall installations by Rachel Breen, Heather M. Cole, and Shana Kaplow. Made from reclaimed and new materials, their works speak to how we use materials and how they also “use” us. This exhibition offers space for reflection and introspection about our relationship to what we consume, and its personal and collective impact.  

Artistry presents A Delicate Society: Minnesota’s Wild Plants & Vertebrates in Watercolor & Pencil by Tanya Beyer in the Confluence Gallery located in the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge’s Education March 14, 2024 through April 28, 2024.

Gallery Hours: Thursday-Sunday: 10:00am-4:00pm; Closed on Federal Holidays

Free Painting Clouds using Watercolor Workshop: Friday, April 5, 2024 from 1:00-2:00pm. CLICK HERE TO RSVP FOR THE WORKSHOP.

Opening Reception: Friday, April 5, 2024 from 2:30-4:00pm

Upon Closer Examination by JOHN PEARSON is an exhibition of polymer photogravure prints that invites exploration of our beautiful and mysterious natural surroundings. Rooted in locations from the Saint Croix River Valley to the shores of Mille Lacs Lake to his Saint Paul backyard, John seeks to expand upon traditional nature photography—which emphasizes portrayal of an idealized, untouched world—by giving attention to subjects in ways that further reveal their visual and narrative possibilities.

Artistry presents Endemic by Fawzia Khan and The Culturing of Guns by Jane Powers in the Inez Greenberg Gallery January 19, 2024 through March 7, 2024.

Opening Reception: Friday, January 26, 2024 from 6:00-8:00pm

Artist Talk: Tuesday, February 27, 2024 from 6:30-7:30pm

“Endemic” and “The Culturing of Guns” are two separate exhibitions by Fawzia Khan and Jane Powers, intertwined in our Inez Greenberg Gallery at the Bloomington Center for the Arts.

In “Loud Joy,” Leeya Jackson’s work is equally multi-modal, noisy, and curious, exploring themes related to her own neurodivergence, blackness, femininity, shame, and joy. Her interests lie in the complexity and strange beauty of Black neurodivergent girlhood, memory, and things in our shadows that others struggle to see. She is also inspired by and references the works of Afro-futuristic writer Octavia Butler, the story quilts of Faith Ringgold, the self-portraits of Frida Kahlo, and the heroic portraiture of Kehinde Wiley. She uses various mediums, such as painting, printmaking, design/typography, film, and animation, to create vibrant, lush, layered, and scattered imagery.

Stephanie Hunder’s mixed media works on paper are inspired by memories of growing up in Minnesota’s woodlands and prairies, intersected with scientific interpretation of natural phenomena. Using printmaking and antique photography, she mingles theoretical diagrams exploring the growth of complexity with documentary traces of trees and plants, building a synergistic vision of the environment.

Each year this exciting competition and exhibition brings together Artistry’s talented members. It is always a varied and eclectic collection, selected by prominent members of the local arts community, showcasing many different mediums, styles and techniques.

IDENTITY

Blair Treuer

Artist Talk: Thursday, October 26th, 2023 from 6 - 7pm

www.blairtreuer.com

The Audacity to be Asian in Rural America: we owe you no apologies is a series of 12 watercolor and Chinese ink scroll paintings on rice paper that visually tells the story of the Hao family’s Chinese American immigrant experience in rural west central Minnesota.

Chromatic Dialogue by Kathleen Kvern and Dodie Logue

Opening Reception: Friday, August 18th from 6-8pm. Free and open to the public.

Artist Talk: Tuesday, September 12th from 6:30-7:30pm. Free and open to the public.

Many old buildings and neighborhoods have a lot of memories and history, yet they are being torn down to make way for the new.  My recent drawings and paintings are an attempt to pay tribute to these artifacts from an earlier time.  I have been painting outdoors for over thirty years. I frequently paint in northern Minnesota and various locations while traveling, but most of my work has focused on the Twin Cities. I often paint in the older parts of the city, trying to capture the distinct character of each area before it vanishes.  When painting I work on site and try to create a spontaneous impression of the scene, the light, and the feeling of the subject while looking at it.  Although I spent several years studying and painting in the classical realist style, my goal now is not to create photorealistic representations, but rather capture the immediate essence of the places that resonate with me. I am inspired by the work of the early impressionists, the Camden Town group painters, and the Group of Seven.

Opening Night Reception: Thursday, June 29th from 6-7:30pm. The reception is free and open to the public.

Artist Talk: Tuesday, July 25th from 6:30-7:30pm. The Artist Talk is free and open to the public.

ARTIST
Gordon Coons

RECEPTION
TBD
The reception is free and open to the public.