I remember instructing Thomas Agran to look for a small, gray-haired woman at the Grinnell College’s Bucksbaum Center for the Arts opening for the summer of 2009’s exhibit.

I had a few pieces in the show, and I wanted to meet Thomas and visit his studio during the same trip to Grinnell. I felt more than a bit lame using such a generic description that would easily apply to a third of the women likely to attend the event. I don’t remember how Thomas described himself to me so that I might recognize him, but I did pick him out rather quickly in the crowded gallery. He has a shock of very dark brown hair that shoots out at dramatic angles framing his affable features.

This meeting had been machinated because Victoria Brown, a tenured history professor at Grinnell, had encouraged me to contact Thomas. She believed his work to be “remarkable”. Victoria’s is not an opinion to be taken lightly, and I contacted Thomas very shortly after our conversation- making arrangements for a studio visit.

I wasn’t disappointed. Craig and I viewed work from Thomas’s senior thesis show. It’s scale, painterly fluency, and conceptual punch gave the work all the power Victoria had described and more.

A year out of undergraduate work, Thomas has continued an exploration of aerial landscapes on colossally sized canvases. I’m so pleased to announce that an exhibit of this exciting young artist’s work will open to the public at Campbell Steele Gallery next Friday, June 16. Thomas has said that he’ll attend the Music in the MUD events next weekend- might be just the time to meet a fantastic new artist to the gallery and enjoy an evening of visual art and musical performance.

Indeed, I know for a fact that Steve does have the “big sky thing down,” so to speak. When he lined his latest paintings up against the gallery’s baseboard, my first thought was that I could almost feel the intensity of the sun and hear the late summer drone/buzz of locusts. My fellow gallery worker, artist Karen Hoyt, commented with the objectivity of a seasoned art teacher, “I admire the restraint of the palette.” She then rejoined with the UN-restrained farm girl’s observation, “That looks just like the ditches on my dad’s farm!”

This immediate identification with the land is a natural response to Lauterwasser’s works. He paints in fields as well as the aforementioned god-forsaken roads, and captures an unsentimental view of the rural landscape. Ditches and expanses of weedy pastures cresting at hazy horizons push the viewer to find poetry in what is commonplace.

Lauterwasser is participating in our artist’s talk on Thursday evening at 6:30 with two additional landscape artists, Gordon Kellenberger and Marcia Wegman. I’m genuinely intrigued to learn about the distinctions and aesthetic kinships of their work.

The customary pot of soup, fresh bread and Irish oatmeal cookies will be laid out for any and all takers for as long as they last. I hope that you’ll join us. This event is free, in case you were wondering!

Craig and I spend a lot of time discussing what gallery hours should be; far more than you would imagine! Almost all of our “traffic” happens on Fridays and Saturdays and during events, but we also want to be available to you and open as much as we can be. We’re only two people, though, and two very busy people with several irons in the fire, at that.

As of June 1, we’re starting with new summer hours! We will be open on Wednesdays from 12-4, Thursdays from 11-9, Fridays from 11-5, and Saturdays from 11-5. And, though you may not have known this - we are open by appointment any time. Just give us a call if you’d like to stop by! (The photo above bears testament to the reality of this statement.)

And, of course, the gallery is open for business during all of the events that we host as well. It’s a pleasure to work with each of you, and please don’t hesitate to call with any questions that you may have!

Violet

“These will be so great for a Mother’s Day post!” Maggie crowed after I sent her my first drawings of some spring ephemerals that we hope to use for a collaborative project. In short, I’ve done the drawings and the plan is that Maggie (and Charlotte) will produce letterpress cards from them.

I was genuinely excited to get to these drawings after finishing a commission that had dominated my time. (I’m not complaining.) First, the “spring ephemerals”–those most delicate and stalwart of flowers that are the first to show their faces in the woods—were just about to be past their brief, blooming peak. Second, few things delight me more than to find these harbingers of the change from Iowa’s punishing winters to glorious spring.

Dutchman’s Britches

I did many drawings. The Dutchmen’s Britches were the most problematic, and caused me to conclude that it was best to render of each plant only as much as you might furtively pinch off in a woods that is not your own.

Oh, and Mother’s Day is BEFORE the Marion Arts Festival. Our jewelry, pottery and glass make particularly wonderful gifts that no other mother but yours can receive!

That same self was jerked to life this past Saturday. Seventeen years has taught me that there is much wisdom behind the statement: “The customer is always right.” I have engaged in many conversations with such an attitude and learned much about a specific customer’s view-point that
was couched in sound, logical thought, that was not my own. A respectful divergence of opinion was established.

That said, when I was confronted by a customer ridiculing a piece in the gallery, I accepted his remarks and replied that he wouldn’t care to have a casual conversation with me about the piece. He persisted, laughing that the piece looked like a “drop-cloth”. I suggested that he might like to go on to my neighbor’s shop and make fun of her inventory. Undaunted, he went through the gallery looking at our holiday exhibit, and returned to apologize for his remarks. I smiled and responded, “It’s easy to make fun of things you don’t understand”.

The woman with whom I work was appalled by my comment. I thought only that I was never rude, though I was truthful. If you’re still reading this, I’ll add that, the more art you look at, the broader your tastes will become. Academic education doesn’t have to have anything to do with this process- sensitivity is everything. Responding to color, line, form, composition, distortion, texture and content will reward you whether you’re looking at the world about you or an art object. Try it!

To that end, I’m initiating a daily series that will last up ‘til December 23rd. I’ll pick out one piece of art each day and hopefully provide some comments that won’t be hopelessly obvious, but which may focus right in on why a piece “works”. You may or may not agree with me, but if you read and look, I’ll provide you with a leg up in gaining a greater insight into the art we exhibit.

#1, for the first of December

Steve Maxon’s “Baby Hammerhead” takes parts of two familiar objects that would not normally be paired. When they are, the result is a laughably absurd hybrid. Steve’s humor resides in edgy terrain. He and his wife, Doris Parks, cast their own work, and that of sculptors throughout the country at their studio in Kalona, Iowa.