Though there’s a light, fresh blanket of snow, water is running in the streams. There are frequent snippets of bird song as Buddy and I run along the creek each morning. And, that’s the sun sending shafts of light through the bare trees- just a bit earlier each day. There’s nothing like an Iowa winter [...]
Category Archives: Events
Larry Welo / Talk in the M.U.D. / November 5
November 2, 2009, 2:45 pm
The thing about Larry Welo being consistently winning is that when I prepare to write about him, the same adjectives spring right to mind. With work that is informed by a dry, self-effacing humor and a dash of romanticism that plays out as poignancy, Larry Welo is one of the stars gleaming brightly among the [...]
Talk in the M.U.D. with Dean Dunkel /October 22
October 21, 2009, 6:17 pm
“Talk in the M.U.D.” started this fall to explore, quite simply, why artists care about the things that they do, and why we should- or shouldn’t care. It’s free and open to the public.
Pit-fired stoneware vessels, Dean Dunkel
Trying to wrestle the mythic, transformative “power of art” to the ground in casual conversational terms is the [...]
Carlos Ferguson / Tiny Circus
September 24, 2009, 6:11 am
I’ll tell you a story.
I first met Carlos Ferguson in the summer between his junior and senior year at Grinnell College. He was venturing into the fabled printmaking program at the U. of IA, where I was a graduate student. My hours at that point in my life were ungodly. I got up at 4:30 [...]
Larry Welo & Talk in the M.U.D.
September 9, 2009, 12:11 pm
Our Maggie’s Matt was describing to me a business trip that took him from Brooklyn N.Y., where he and Maggie live, to San Francisco. In terms shaded by an unspoken sense of the irretrievable nature of the past, this transplanted Midwesterner recounted his feelings as he flew over Iowa at 35,000 feet and 700 m.p.h.
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Miss Myers, Kimberlee Rocca, and foil stamping
August 27, 2009, 6:47 am
Miss Myers
It’s a little intimidating when a person is described as an “institution”. Mental images of bricks, mortar and imposing classical columns spring readily to mind. But, in fact, Professor Virginia Myers IS an institution in the printmaking department at the University of Iowa. “Miss Myers”, as she has been known to generations of Iowa [...]
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 – [...]
Stan Fellows
March 10, 2009, 3:41 pm
About two months ago, a tall man strode into our drawing group’s regular Sunday session. He was late, and he made a fair amount of noise getting his materials prepared as the rest of us drew for the allotted twenty minutes. There hadn’t been much time left for the newcomer to observe the model, but [...]
Mary Snyder Behrens
March 5, 2009, 7:14 am
Judges 9 / Mary Snyder Behrens
So, I’ve come up with a (somewhat) popular musical analogy, which may prove helpful in approaching the enigmatic and beautiful, collaged work of Dysart artist, Mary Snyder Behrens. The rich colors, carefully chosen elements and implied content in Mary’s pieces are not unlike the essence of a Leonard Cohen song. They are not always [...]