Shikishi board #1 / 9.5″ x 10.5″ / $150 (framed) / Karen Kurka Jensen
“Living only for the moment, turning our full attention to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms and the maple leaves; singing songs, drinking wine, diverting ourselves in just floating, floating; … refusing to be disheartened… this is what [...]
Category Archives: Artists
Karen Kurka Jensen / Shikishi boards
June 30, 2009, 6:10 pm
Pen Andrishok and Marcia Wegman
June 25, 2009, 6:16 am
A box arriving from metal-smith and jeweler, Pen Andrishok, is always exciting for me. Pen’s craftsmanship is impeccable, and her choices in stones and design are guided by a richly personal aesthetic. “Serpentine”, a green to yellow stone with mottling that people are accustomed to seeing in turquoise, and Lake Michigan granite both feature subdued [...]
Tana Acton
June 18, 2009, 6:33 am
Though she insists that I did meet the red-haired version of her in the late 90’s, I have no memory of a face-to-face encounter with Tana Acton. Doubtless this was the result of the chronic state of distraction that engulfed me in the first years after unexpectedly buying a building and opening a gallery/theatre. So, [...]
Wendy Rolfe
June 4, 2009, 6:36 am
“… one direction in Surrealist painting presents, in meticulous detail, recognizable scenes and objects which are taken out of natural context, distorted and combined in fantastic ways as they might be in dreams…”
H..H. Arnason
Bird With a Bun / 8″ x 10″ / Oil on panel / Wendy Rolfe / $475
In early March I drove [...]
“Then give to the world the best you have and the best will come back to you.”
April 29, 2009, 3:49 pm
Gertrude Gill
Every child needs one person who always has time for him or her. For me, that person was my mother’s mother, Gertrude Gill. I can state unequivocally that I inherited two things from my grandmother. First, I’ve got her feet. MY feet, literally, stand me in good stead. They hold me upright and allow [...]
Tyler Speicher
April 15, 2009, 4:57 pm
Canister Jar / 10″ high, 6″ diameter / Stoneware / $125
The profile of grain elevators and barns against the prairie sky is a sight that lays bare human purpose across vast stretches of our state. Icons of the Midwest’s farming industry, these buildings endure the extremes of weather. Their angular silhouettes stand unadorned-dramatically contemporary and [...]
Fishing
April 8, 2009, 1:26 pm
Fishing, March 23, 7″ x 9″, Watercolor, Stan Fellows
“If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there’d be a shortage of fishing poles.” ~Doug Larson
Fishing, March 20, 15″ x 20″ / Lures, 11″ x 14″ / Waiting for the Truck, March 25, 7″ x 9″ / Watercolor, Stan Fellows
The [...]
Julie McLaughlin / Metro Spring Gallery Tour
April 1, 2009, 6:54 am
I was about 10 years old when Marilyn Monroe was captured on film, her voluptuous, fleshy pillow of breasts rising and falling with a breathy rendition of “Happy Birthday” to our president. Not long after, an improbably skinny “Twiggy” stared out at teen-aged girls from the pages of fashion magazines. Is it any wonder then [...]
Michael McAreavy
March 25, 2009, 7:38 am
Oak Tree, Napa Valley, 8″ x 10″, Photograph, Michael McAreavy / $250 (framed)
Despairing of the ability of their hyperactive son to succeed in a traditional academic setting, the parents removed him from the last of the private schools that they had sought out. For the next year, the 12-year-old boy daily attended the Panama – [...]
Michael Bond
March 15, 2009, 5:21 pm
City View, Michael Bond
On a trip to Italy about four years ago, I luxuriated in visits to places and art about which I had studied in a succession of classes with renowned Italian Renaissance scholar and professor, Dr. Wallace Tommasini. For legions of students at the University of Iowa, Dr. Tommasini’s brilliant, spontaneous lectures have animated three centuries of art [...]