Upcoming Exhibits
Boats Will Float and Bumble Bees Will Sting
Jerry Allen Gilmore
June 6 – June 24, 2013
Gallery Celebration: June 20, 5 to 7pm
Steffl Gallery
These series of works reflect the artist’s realization that life’s every movement possesses a humorous bend in the river, where one may be given aid by animals, magicians and shamans or menaced by devils, clowns and bumble bees. Where you go depends upon where you have been, and where you can go depends upon what you can imagine.
My work has always claimed an element of water in it’s narrative, because of the movement and immigration of my Irish family and my being baptized, or my first bath in the columbia river, I have alway’s looked for fresh water. Characteristically all of these works are autobiographical, different chapters and never in order of appearance, markings on my life.
Water Works
Celebrating our most precious resource and the artists who share in the primitive pull towards H2O
June 20 – August 25
Gallery Celebration: June 20, 5 – 7pm
Weekly enhancement events June through August
Closing event: August 15, 5 – 7pm
“They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.” -Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Water is a source of continuing fascination – there is an undeniable visceral connection to this literally life giving force. Water takes up sixty-five percent of our bodies and it was in hot, bubbling pools of water that living organisms originated. We’ve all seen the stunning beauty water can create, as well as the devastating destruction it can cause. Artists of all different mediums - painters, ceramicists, fiber artists – rely heavily on water to bring forth their creations. Water centers us, inspires us, and mesmerizes us. It provides recreation, transportation, and economic possibilities. We clean with water, consume water, tend gardens with water, and live by water. The United Nations declared 2013 ‘the year of water’ and the Duluth Art Institute is dedicating this summer to celebrating this sacred resource with artists who share our primitive pull towards H2O.
Water Works shows off artists like Robert Porkorney, an avid surfer in both Duluth and California, who depicts the source of his recreation and enjoyment in breathtaking paintings of Lake Superior and the Pacific Ocean. The exhibit features the ceramic wall installations of Liz James who draws on the glistening shimmer of light on water for her three dimensional visions. The exhibit also highlights the work by artists who engage with the liquid in ways not so literal. Artists who depict the power, danger, drama and delight that water, and specifically Lake Superior, has to offer.
Revisiting Twain’s Mississippi
New Photographs by Chris Faust
July 1 – September 8, 2013
Steffl Gallery
In the years 1882-1892, Henry Peter Bosse (1844-1903) travelled the Upper Mississippi River Valley, as a member of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Some 100 years later, Bosse’s navigational maps in hand, St. Paul native Chris Faust has been carefully re-photographing the same views as Bosse, from exactly the same sites. This exhibition examines the role of photography in cartography and our continued investigation in documenting our surroundings.