Fresh Eye presents a group exhibition that centers on the individuality and personal motivations of the artist, each with a different perspective, inspiration, and purpose. 

Curated by Jessica Williams.

Exhibition Dates: March 30 - May 6

Join us for the Opening Reception on
Friday, March 31, 6 - 8 PM

This exhibition centers on the individuality and personal motivations of the artist, each with a different perspective, inspiration, and purpose. “What I want as an artist is to explore aspects of invisible disabilities, whether that be mental health, intellectual, or physical,” she says. “So, I create drawings, paintings, sculptures, and more that capture this through colorful, inviting motifs.” Jessica curates a show that honors this approach and features the importance of one’s unique creative voice. Photography, paintings, drawing, sculpture, and more make up a diverse set of work on display.

Exhibiting artists:

BAEVY

Artist Statement: My artwork is largely autobiographical. I have always seen the limitations of my perception as generative and necessary as my pulse beating. My childhood consisted of pews, moving houses, hot summers, and the static on the TV, after the Disney movie played. If there is something universal it would be heartbreak, a sadness that is so profound it has almost lost its ugly. Almost. My work can be uncomfortable, like the moment your voice cracks and tears begin to fall. It happens when you’ve been trying to hide how you are feeling. I believe it is necessary to breakdown romantics, challenge semantics, and find intimacy in the harshness.

Bio: Baevy is a queer interdispinary artist. She graduated with a BFA from the University of Arizona and currently teaches art a Magnet High School in Tucson, AZ. She explores themes of divinity and how it clashes with themes of sexuality, gender, mental illness, and social justice. Her work straddles controlled chaos and unwielded expression. Her work can be viewed at www.baevy.love.

Racquel Banaszak

Artist Statement: As an Anishinaabe woman, I was raised in Native and urban spaces. My work often focuses on Indigenous histories and relationships. I am interested in how Indigenous people continue to hold on to who we are as people of this land in spite of settler colonialism. My work is influenced by the ways Indigenous people draw from the strength and tenacity of our ancestors including our more-than-human kin. Sing Our Joys centers on two relatives enjoying each other’s presence as they sit around a blueberry camp and play music. Like the embroidery thread weaves together the past and the present, music can bring us back to the moments we cherish.

Bio: Racquel Banaszak is a multidisciplinary artist whose works include beadwork, collage, embroidery, and drawing. As an enrolled citizen of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, her work often focuses on Indigenous histories, representation, and kinship. Her visual imagery is an ode to her ancestors whose strength and perseverance has paved the way for her today. She is studying heritage studies and public history with a focus on Indigenous representation at the University of Minnesota. She earned her graduate certificate in Native American Studies from Montana State University (2018) and a Bachelor of Science degree from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (2012). She studied Indigenous Visual Culture at the Ontario College of Art & Design University in Toronto, Canada.

Daniel Benedum

Artist Statement: My art practice engages community by creating visual representations of what it means to exist within a space and how a sense of connection and belonging are established. The work depicts shared public spaces connected to my individual experience of time within a community. Driven by a daily exchange of exploring what is observed and how that is shared. Exploring my community by using photography to then become physical representations with paint. Color and abstract components are used to push an emotional connection between space and viewer. Breaking down architectural elements to simpler forms and exaggerating hue aims to visually represent the atmosphere associated within each space. Using interiors and exteriors in an expressive documentation expresses a shared sense of belonging. This project evolved from living in Minneapolis, MN and using visual art to connect with other community members about the daily life experiences we share together. Depicting alleyways, changing infrastructure, and intimate cafe and restaurant interiors. The work can evoke a sense of familiarity and mystery. While each image has visual clues to the exact location and time, each leaves a sense of ambiguity evoking a bit of wonder to where each exact place is.

Bio: Daniel Benedum started his artistic career when moving to Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2016. Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin his artwork has centered around the emotional aspects of being in a new environment, community, and space. Working in 2D and 3D materials, Benedum pursues an artistic practice connected to painting, collage, and sculpture. His art practice has revolved around different ideas such as identity, intimacy, shared relations, and community. By creating artwork from his surroundings Benedum has worked around a narrative of what it means to seek belonging. Completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin River Falls, Benedum explored using art as a way to document his relationship to community. Benedum is currently enrolled at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Graduate Art Therapy Program. He is interested in exploring how art making, community, identity and belonging intersect.

Rhiannon Davis

Artist Statement: I have always tried to make pieces that would make me, as a viewer, stop with delight if I saw it “in the wild”. I love bright, chaotic scenes with details that are buried in plain sight. In my work, I explore my mental health and try to personally unfold my fears and struggles surrounding it. I often explore themes of OCD and anxiety and try to portray the opposite of what I feel my depression is through symbols that carry strong meaning for me. You will find repeating 8’s, toothbrushes, and smiles in a lot of my work. I hope these pieces give the viewer time to pause, take it all in, and smile.

Bio: Rhiannon Davis is a collage and mixed multimedia artist from Minneapolis with a maximalist, layered style that draws from metropolitan scenes and vintage magazines. She is particularly inspired by the textures, layers and graffiti that build on city walls. “When someone looks at something I create, I want them to feel overwhelmed, but still able to find joy. That’s how I feel existing in the world, completely overwhelmed all of the time but absolutely in love with the way everything is happening at once.”

Aaron Delaney

Artist Statement: I love to draw at home, but the staff at MSS really help with my artistic expression. Drawing and painting are my favorite pastimes. My mom refers to art as “my gift.”

Bio: I am a 32 year old man with autism. I’m also nonverbal, and art gives me a voice. There’s a statement in every piece that I create.

Vincent DeZutti

Artist Statement: I am a lens-based artist living and working in Minneapolis. I am interested in the relationship between humans and images: how and why we make them, consume them, and how that affects our relationship to nature, other people, and our memories. My work is an attempt to understand what the act of photography means in the digital age where images are ubiquitous, easy to create, and easy to manipulate. Self Portrait is a literal self portrait. By cutting and re-assembling four instant photos of myself, the piece reflects my own unsure and often fractured identity. The grid arrangement references the pixels on a screen, but is not nearly as exact, suggesting an element of disorder and chaos.

Bio: I grew up in the San Francisco-Bay Area and moved to Minnesota to attend Carleton College. There I earned a degree in Cinema and Media Studies in 2016. My work is primarily interested in the relationship between humans and image-making and consuming. This manifests itself in work spanning digital video, digital photography, analog photography, cyanotyping, and more. Recent projects include: "Roberts Diptychs", a series of cyanotypes and digital photographs documenting Robert’s Bird Sanctuary in South Minneapolis; "Tettegouche Collages", a collage series using 35mm photos taken at Tettegouche State Park; and "Cyanotapes", a series of cyanotypes created from still frames of his family video tapes;. He has exhibited work in various galleries in the Twin Cities metro, the greater Midwest region, and beyond, as well as screened moving image work at both U.S. and international film festivals.

Kate Forer

Artist Statement: In my art practice, I use many types of media together to tell stories. At the center of my work, textile costumes (crocheted, knitted, sewn) serve as a tool for creating characters. These designs use bright colors, absurd proportions, and ambiguous features to create comic yet unnerving representations of human bodies. Storytelling, photography, sound, and analog and digital technology all may play a role in creating “narratives” for these characters to occupy, with specific formats varying based on their respective stories. I photograph myself and friends wearing these costumes in a narrative context, engineering scenes and stories for the characters to inhabit. I use music, soundscapes, and props to further develop these worlds and write associated stories in standard prose, comics, and non-linear digital formats. The stories I am interested in telling often have tragicomic elements, using a joking tone to make themes of loneliness, alienation, and discomfort in one’s body more palatable while still impactful. I enjoy hypermodern fictional settings, where aspects of contemporary life are exaggerated for both humor and drama.

Bio: Kate Forer (she/they/he) is an artist working in Madison, Wisconsin. Born in Carbondale, IL, Forer attended Southern Illinois University Carbondale and received a BA in Art and Art History. Currently pursuing an MFA at University of Wisconsin- Madison, Kate is a sculptor (for lack of a better term). She works primarily with fiber, creating surrealist and cartoonish costumes. Digital art, photography, analog technology, and storytelling are also important components to their practice. Forer is interested in conversations about humans and their role in an increasingly digital, commodified, observed, and isolated social landscape, frequently taking a humorous approach to this conversation. Out of the studio, Kate can be found hunting Bandcamp for new artists, reading 2000s era webcomics, and watching impressively long video essays about cable television.

Gailyn

Artist Statement: Please consider the attached images for display at Fresh Eye Gallery. The images are part of a series titled, In Journeys: Acceptance, Gratitude, Destination. As a philosophical surrealist I express my reverence for the planet guided by Andre Breton's theory of Surrealism expressed in automatic painting and cognitive disconnection. Rene Magritte's technique of incongruent images, the political viewpont of Hannah Hoch; and to honor the craftsmanship of Andrew Wyeth. I work in water based media and wax, discarding the dogma of traditional watercolor or appropriated photographic images to express my vision of what might be too late to save.

Bio: Studies afforded a chance to study in the Czech Republic in 1999. Observing the underground nature of occupation artists helped me understand the need for visual expression of the natural world without nostalgia or magical thinking; and it's probably already too late.

Jo Garrison

Artist Statement: Thinking of still lifes as snapshots of gender identity, sexuality, and cultural contexts, I create narratives about embodiment from an intersectional perspective. Textiles handed down from my matriarchy become intertwined with objects of classic symbolism and current cultural euphemisms. Patterns are used as a distraction device to bifurcate the viewer's focus, forcing them to look simultaneously at the densely packed backdrop, and at the conceptual still life. Elements within the work may become abstracted in order to reconcile the extremely personal, yet playfully relatable complexities of femininity.

Bio: With a background in photography, graphic design and cake decorating, Jo Garrison’s painting practice draws on these disciplines to inform the way she renders and observes gendered objects, interiors, and patterns. Her still-life paintings offer personal narratives intertwined with shared experiences surrounding female identity. Garrison earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Minnesota with a minor in Interdisciplinary Design and was the recipient of an Undergraduate Scholarship Award from the Department of Art. Her work has been exhibited at the Regis West Gallery, Nash Gallery and published in The Tower⁠—the University of Minnesota’s art and literary magazine.

Will Gonzalez

Artist Statement: Hi, I'm carlos gonzalez from Puerto Rico, I like to paint. Everything around me makes me want to paint, it all inspires me in a way. I was influenced by graffiti, skateboarding, hip hop, music, that kind of culture opens your mind a little bit. Other artists that I've known inspire me.

Niki Grangruth

Artist Statement: The Longest Day is a series of images and fiber-based works that explore the malleable, and sometimes contradictory, relationships between the female body, motherhood, matrilineality, and domesticity through a personal and symbolic lens. The title, The Longest Day, refers to the simultaneous contraction and expansion of time that I experienced the day my firstborn arrived and in the following days, weeks and months. The experience of entering motherhood was the greatest shift in my emotional, psychological and physical existence. This experience instantly changed and intensified my perception of what I consider our most primal and universal experiences including birth, love, death, pain, the body, beauty, and fear.

This work is an exploration of these physical and psychological shifts through the use of symbolic materials and objects often associated with the representation of time, femininity and the domestic sphere. I see the work as a kind of visual poem, with the repetition of objects, patterns and themes forming verses, stanzas, and refrains. I use the objects and materials to represent the juxtapositional and complex experiences of motherhood that often occur simultaneously -- trauma and joy, anxiety and serenity, love and pain, sentimentality and apathy, the domestic and the public, and the beautiful and grotesque just to name a few.

Bio: Niki Grangruth (b. St. Paul, MN) is an artist working in Minneapolis, MN (formerly Chicago, IL). Her work explores issues of gender identity, socially-constructed beauty ideals, archetype, iconography, the body, memory and contemporary motherhood. Her work has been exhibited nationally at museums and galleries such as the Center for Fine Art Photography, the Indianapolis Art Center, the Kinsey Institute Gallery and the Zhou B. Art Center. Grangruth received her B.A. in Studio Art and English from Saint Olaf College in Northfield, MN (2006) and her M.F.A. in Photography from Columbia College Chicago (2009).

Colleen Guenther

Artist Statement: As a painter, my work is a visual exploration of the human form and the subtle gestures that reveal the complexities of the human experience. My background as a photographer has greatly informed my artistic pursuits, lending me a discerning eye for capturing the subtleties of expression and body language. Through the use of color, texture, and form, I seek to express emotions, thoughts, and perspectives that we all share. My pieces invite the viewer to engage with the work on a personal level, through the representation of the human form and the emotions that it conveys. Further, I hope that my work will serve as a catalyst for deeper conversations and a better understanding of the human condition. By representing the human form in a way that is both personal and universal, I aim to create a connection between the viewer and the piece, encouraging self-reflection and promoting empathy, understanding, and compassion.

Bio: Beyond my painting works, I am a commercial freelance photographer. I earned my B.S. at the University of MN in retail merchandising and studied 2 years towards my MFA in Photography at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. That education has given me the useful tools to explore my work more deeply while consistently assessing where I am with the work and where I would like to go.

Darrell Hagen

Artist Statement: My acrylic paintings deal with a mixture of style and ideas, combining abstract ideas with color, along with more traditional figurative work. My goal is to capture the innate human spirit and reveal a provocative narrative between the subject and its surroundings. The intentional play with perspective allows the viewer to see the art as being much about composite space as it is about hidden meanings. My influences come from several places: friends, surrealism, erotica, and life experiences. They help me create work that I hope will be both striking and seductive.

Bio: Darrell Hagan has been working in the Minneapolis arts district for 25 years.

I have a gallery space in the Northrup King Building where I’ve been selling my own work and occasionally showing other artists.

Aisha Imdad

Artist Statement: Being a Pakistani origin artist trained in traditional miniature painting and printmaking, my art practice is inspired by the local myths and folklores of Pakistan. I am also inspired by Indian, Mughal and Persian miniature paintings and frescos. My current art practice primarily features contemporary miniature style paintings in water-color and Gouache techniques. My present subject of interest is the idea of gardens as they have an important place in our cultural heritage, and also what they represent for me: they are an important aspect of our spiritual being. To make my gardens, I research historical texts, examine existing artworks, and study the history of gardens, understanding how their representation has evolved over time in different cultures from across the world. These reference materials are the source of my art practice. Through my paintings, I have embarked on my own spiritual journey.

Bio: Aisha Imdad is a Pakistani-origin fine artist based in Texas. Using watercolor and gouache, she paints contemporary miniatures exploring the myths, folktales, and history of South Asia. With over 25 years of experience as an educator and crafts and heritage expert, Aisha’s art practice is inherently research-based; she conceptualizes her paintings by reviewing historical texts, examining existing artworks, and studying the history of her subject(s). Aisha holds a B.F.A. and M.A. (Hons.) in Visual Art from the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan.

Shanice Jackson-Ellison

Artist Statement: The work I make establishes a system of visual symbols to communicate my experience as a black body. There is a sense of community - sometimes the viewer is welcomed in and sometimes they are pushed out. I record my body's relationship with the different neighborhoods I have lived in. Each closed curtain and tall wood fence or each good morning and smiling face that reflects my own.

Bio: I'm a black, queer, non binary artist based in Saint Paul. I consider myself a messy painter - something that reflects my degree in Sculpture (MCAD '16). My day job at Wet Paint, a local art supply store, allows me the brain space to constantly be thinking about art.

Jodi Janz

Artist Statement: Even though I spend time doing abstract landscapes, figures have always shown up in my work. Some of my new works explore the relationship between the female figure and feminist thinking of women, power, and beauty through my Breast Cancer series, along with landscapes, and most recently animals. I’m often working on all three at the same time! My artistic influences range from mid 20th century women working with Abstract Expressionism, to the Neo-Expressionism of the 1970’s and 80’s. My work as a graphic designer often shows up in my paintings. I frequently paint with flat colors and crisp lines. I work intuitively, layer upon layer, with each piece manifesting into something unintended. I get excited by vibrant colors and exploring different techniques and tools. My work is healing for me and documents my journey to understand my life as an artist with a disability, what I see, and how I feel. My submissions are examples of my current abstract work.

Bio: Jodi Janz is a contemporary painter and mixed media artist living and working in Minneapolis, MN. She has been creating art since she was a young child. In the late 80’s she attended the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design to pursue her love of art. She freelanced as a graphic designer for 18 years, working in Milwaukee, Chicago, and Minneapolis. After spending a week painting with an artist in NM, she made the leap to start painting full time. Her painting style is often influenced by her design background. She brings energy, color, light, and emotion to all her work. Whether it’s part of her breast cancer series, or her abstract landscapes. She now shows and sells her work in galleries, arts orgs, and out of her studio in NE Minneapolis. She is a big supporter of fellow artists with disabilities and has been volunteering for The Show Lowertown for the last 6 years. In 2021 she started working with the Bakken museum, and is now curating shows with them.

Allison Keirstead Jones

Artist Statement: I resonate with Audre Lorde’s concept of the erotic as power: when we are guided by our deep internal sense of what feels right and good, it gives us access to a kind of power. I first created these designs simply because it felt good to draw those shapes with my pencil. When I recreated them in thread, it slowed me down and gave me time to contemplate the different meanings that could emerge. The abstract images began to look like some of the simple shapes that appear in nature, from microscopic beings to planets and galaxies. I am comforted and excited by these points of resonance in the universe around us. What do you see when you look at these pieces? What do you feel?

These embroideries were made on a set of napkins from the bargain bin at a vintage store. I am intrigued by the ways that textile objects connect us as they pass between hands and the ways that their surfaces reflect the lives that have come into contact with them. I l use secondhand materials for my work not only as a way to save objects from the landfill but as a way to bring each object’s history into my work. The stories of these napkins’ makers, sellers, and users live in the warp and weft of the material, and my engagement with them connects me to a lineage of other beings.

Bio: I am an interdisciplinary artist born, raised, and based in St. Paul MN. My current focus is on textile art and especially embroidery. I started embroidering over 10 years ago as a teenager, customizing my clothes as a way to explore my identity and my place in the world. Embroidery, to me, is a contemplative practice and a way to work through feelings and ideas. I believe that art and art-making should be woven into the fabric of our everyday lives and that lovingly-made objects increase our quality of life. I am also the editor of Social Fabric, an anthological zine about the lives of textiles.

Constance Klippen

Artist Statement: Constance Klippen is a creative artist currently working out of Saint Paul, Minnesota. With a natural inclination toward visual art since childhood, she has expanded upon her unique style of expression into adulthood. As a child, she was able to easily visualize ideas for blank space, and as she grew older began to value originality over all else in her work. Originality still remains the foundation of her creative ideas and completed work. Constance primarily paints on large scale canvas with a combination of acrylic paint, latex paint, and oil pastels. Art courses in high school and higher education expanded her technical abilities and their influence can be found in her work today. She remains consistent in drawing inspiration from the images her mind visualizes on blank space, and has deepened intent and complexity throughout the years of her practice.

Bio: Constance is a creative artist working out of Saint Paul, Minnesota. She will be graduating from Metropolitan State University in December of 2023 with a Bachelor's Degree in Studio Art, although she has been individually developing her craft since 2016. With large-scale abstract paintings and creative writing in focus, she plans to continue to develop the intensity and aesthetic of her medium as she paves the way for a professional career in the arts.

Lalita

Artist Statement: Lalita's personal illustrations mainly use traditional and digital techniques on photoshop inspired by religious imagery and themes of rebirth. These pieces often center on the complexity and messiness of an individual’s experience through original characters situated in surrealist, fantastical narratives. These narratives include experiences like learning how to move on from the past and trying to redeem oneself. These original characters have intentionally sketched or non-fleshed out lines and strokes on familiar-to-fantastical backgrounds to express various emotions of longing, isolation or other intricate feelings conveyed in their respective pieces. Their inspiration behind the use of pseudo-religious imagery comes with a mixture of the artist processing their life experiences with the admiration for renaissance paintings and how they portray mythological-esque forms and bodies both struggle and triumph. Even if a scene depicts hardship, the characters are still envisioned with this “invincible grace” that makes them able to withstand any hardship. Their works are an attempt to understand and achieve an acceptance with what has occurred, and to look onward with new connections, experiences and encounters that was never there before, however now outstretched in a hand to hold them tightly.

Bio: Lalita is a detail-oriented Lao-American illustrator based in Minnesota, with experience in both digital and traditional mediums. They have the affinity to work in various styles and techniques with a heavy focus on quality and organization. Examples of their personal work range from character illustrations in eye-catching compositions to album cover illustrations for clients and poster work regarding effective placement of typography and graphical elements.

Kimberly A. Laudert

Artist Statement: I elevate materials traditionally used in ‘women’s work’ into fine art through the lens of feminism. The fibers and materials I use are soft and feminine, strong, and resilient like I am. The older I get the less incongruent the juxtaposition of soft and strong. I use repurposed and new materials to create pieces that are colorful, at times moody, tactile, and visually compelling. The Advocate is the first in the series of weavings called Primary Purpose. The work is based on the struggles and successes in a difficult passage of my life. In it, I integrate internal processes with my practice as an alchemist.

I thrive because I believe that difficulty, darkness, and even death can give rise to creativity, grace, and joy. This philosophy illuminates my path. In my practice, I tap into the energy that is greater than myself to connect my body with the spiritual as it manifests in the physical. The tangible result is a work of art. M.C. Richards expressed this so well when she said “…I learn through my hands and my eyes and my skin what I could never learn through my brain.”

Bio: Kimberly Laudert is an interdisciplinary artist who grounds experiences in life through fiber and visual arts, as well as in poetry. She explores resilience in her artistic practice. In addition to creating her solo art, Kimberly enjoys the collaborative process. She generates and facilitates projects that offer free access to art and art-making with people who live with mental illness, for which she was awarded Minnesota State Arts Board grants in 2021 and 2022.

Kimberly lives in Minneapolis and works in a progressive art studio, Fresh Eye Arts, in St. Paul. Mentors have included Chiaki O’Brien and Carolyn Halliday. She has shown her work at various places throughout the Twin Cities including Fresh Eye Gallery, the Hennepin County Library, Art-a-Whirl, Art of Possibilities, Show Gallery, and Science Museum of Minnesota. Kimberly’s latest project, Our Personal Stories, is based on a series of workshops culminating in a published chapbook.

Katie Laux

Artist Statement: This series "I-94" is about families, and how a long rainy drive can inspire you to reflect on your life and the world. On a rainy drive to Wisconsin, the colors were great outside and I asked my daughter to take photos that I could paint. She took tons and I think they are so cool. It's a really special capsule of a drive I have done hundreds of times, seen in a different way. We drive I-94 to be with our family. The drive was to Minnesota when I was a kid. Now it's the reverse, to Wisconsin. We stay with family to be together and laugh together. I wonder what my children's children will see on this drive someday. Our country produces the second most emissions of the entire world. Other families in the world are already uprooted because of climate change. In Julia's photos, I saw beautiful farms, hills, and families. Cars, trucks, gas stations. Trees. Cars. Businesses. Signs. Cars. Homes. Trees. Barns. Hills. Will they see the same amount of trees? Farms? Cars? Families able to be healthy? Businesses? Food being grown safely? Families safe from fires and floods? Every city I pass on my drive has a million more just like it to come.

Bio: I make art that 1) Finds truth 2) Records life and/or 3) Helps each other. My creative practice includes painting, drawing, graphic design, and teaching kids (of all ages) a love of art, learning, and nature. I believe the arts can transform and heal people. I love helping people connect through art!

MOLLIERAE

Artist Statement: MOLLIERAE creates art that pushes the puzzle pieces of the casual versus concrete lifestyles together. While stripping inspirations down to pure shape, color and texture most of their art is emotion or portrait portraying or about societal settings. With an appreciation of the materials the broader the spectrum of medium the better.

Recently I have focused on the use of cotton soaked in the acrylic paint then pasted to the canvas to create texture and dynamic. Stencil printing onto canvases has symbolism in the use of repetition. 3-D structures soaked in acrylic on the canvas create unique relief sculpture. Sgraffito styles also give a personal touch to my works. ​Living in Minneapolis has flooded me with an obsession for experiences as well as smothered me in questions about how the people around me participate with their own perceptions. Let’s get radical and do something different for each other. Down with fanatics!

Bio: MollieRae (they,she) is a nonbinary painter that has lived in Minneapolis for over 10 years.

I graduated with a Fine Arts degree in 2017 yet have been pursuing painting since I was a child. Since pursuing a second degree in Library Science I have shifted focus to studies in dystopian scenes, technology revolution, science fiction, anarchy, anarcho-syndicalism and creative anti capitalism and anti fanaticism. I highly recommend reading works by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky!

Isaiah Okongo

Artist Statement: I am a visually impaired artist who specializes in drawing downtown scenes from around Minnesota in pen. I started creating downtown scenery in 2020 in part because I have had a lifelong interest in architecture, but also as a way to understand and capture the details of buildings that I cannot see without taking reference pictures beforehand. drawing is a very personal method of rendering a interpretation of my surroundings. I feel that by drawing places I come across I can familiarize myself with the places I have drawn while also being relatable to the people who frequenting these areas in their everyday lives.

Bio: I am a visually impaired artist who is based in Central Minnesota. I am also a student majoring in art at St. Cloud State University. Over the past two years I have exhibited my work in juried shows throughout Central and northern Minnesota and have had two solo exhibitions in St. Cloud. I will graduate with a Bachelor's degree in Art in December and plan to move to Minneapolis within the next year to further establish my artistic career.

Josiah Ortner

Artist Statement: I like to draw, paint, and make animal sculptures out of clay. I love making art about birds and other animals. I enjoy sharing my artwork with others and am excited to have my art on display at the gallery.

Bio: Josiah Ortner is an artist who likes to work in different mediums. His favorite subject to make art about is birds. Ortner not only loves making art of birds, but also has a lot of knowledge about different breeds of birds. He is currently learning new art mediums and subjects to incorporate into his art practice at MSS.

Erin Pena

Artist Statement: My medium is woven seed beads. I have experimented with many forms of textile art over the years but nothing gives me the same satisfaction as working with beads. When I’m asked “Why beads?”, there are two main components to my answer. The first is that I weave without armatures and every one of my pieces is an engineering challenge. I see the shape I want in my head and I work backwards from there, inventing new techniques or new ways to use old techniques to get the sculpture to the end point. This is math, spacial reasoning and intuition. The second is the medium itself. Someone once said that working with glass beads is like working with light and this phrase has stuck with me. Beads take in light and give it back differently at every stage of the day. Although I carefully pick the colors I use in my sculptures, the mutability of the beads compounds with the dozens of colors and thousands of individual beads to the point where I am often genuinely surprised by the end product. That feeling never gets old and it always pushes me towards the next sculpture, the next discovery. I love that the beadweaving I do perfectly marries two spheres most of us are taught oppose one another. Math or art. Numbers or colors. I like to think that just practicing art (or engineering) the way I do is a little subversive.

Bio: I learned fiber crafts as a child from my grandmothers and I believe that my early familiarity with needle and thread is what enabled me to explore beadweaving as a teenager and young adult. I’ve always loved color and when I first began to play with beads I wasn’t even making anything, just mixing different sizes and shapes and colors together for the visual effect. I gradually learned different beadweaving techniques from library magazines and books and by the time I started college I had a solid understanding of geometric peyote stitch. I began to experiment with pure geometry, mixing shapes now as well as colors. I discovered other geometric beaders through the internet and I honed my craft over the next decade through study and practice. This year I have stepped into art as a profession, beginning the next phase of my journey fully confident in my work.

Emily Quandahl

Artist Statement: As an artist, I record the space and moments around me by finding visual harmonies between contrasting subjects, deconstructing the expected, and putting the pieces back together through layering to create a balance and conversation. My goal is to find balance in my surroundings and translate it to my work, whether it be organic vs structured, chaos vs calm, dark vs light, or sharp vs soft. To me, there is a beauty that comes from the tension that is created by two contrasting visual languages having a conversation. In every studio session, I throw away preconceived notions of what my work should be and play with textures and colors until the balance I crave is found. This mindset allows me a sense of vulnerability as I find relationships between musical movements, instinctual marking, and planned line-work to take in and record the space and events around me.

Bio: Emily Quandahl (b. 1994) is a self taught artist and muralist based in Minneapolis. Her compositions utilize bold palettes and textures that are built up in layers, starting on the floor with a base of diluted acrylics. Her studio work consists of varying techniques and mediums on the ground, while her murals are an indirect interpretation of that process developed for linear surfaces. With a background of over a decade studying classical music, her compositions are inherently musical in their movements, while maintaining a balance between organic gestures and line-work.

Aspen R

Artist Statement: For me, art is a language in which I speak of vulnerability, connection, sorrow, and wrestle with what it means to exist in a world that pushes unique voices to the margins. When I make art, I do not run out of breath, nor do I stutter or wonder if others see me as bumbling or inelegant—as I otherwise view myself. I simply create. My art is and has always been centered around navigating, processing, and visualizing my emotional language. It is its own language—one in which I feel comfortable communicating my thoughts and I will never need to have the right words in order to speak.

Bio: Aspen R is a disabled, trans-masculine potter and sculptor working in Saint Paul Minnesota to make their life about the things that they love. Having a background in Art Therapy, they strive to connect with the ways in which art can heal and speak when we do not have the words.

David Roers

Artist Statement: I use Photoshop to blend together photographs I’ve taken to create one surrealistic image. Inspiration can come from all sorts of places; pop culture, modern technology, the environment, social, political or religious issues. Bending and reshaping our reality to make a statement or just to create something that's aesthetically pleasing. Make something thought-provoking, interesting and unique, while also capturing the eye. I've always thought that if you have a voice to the world, say something worthwhile.

Bio: I was born in Minneapolis in the mid-1970s and grew up in Bloomington, MN. I took photography class throughout high school and attended Hennepin Technical School for photography. I’m self-taught in Photoshop. My first professional job was creating the cover art for my father’s (Walter J. Roers) second novel Pathos Rising. Since then, I’ve had my art displayed in a dozen galleries in and around the Twin Cities. I’ve had my work featured on the both the Walker Art Center, and the Mia’s websites. I’ve participated with the MN State Fair Fine Arts three years running, including being one the Artists in Residency with STUDIO: HERE.

Virginia Townsend

Artist Statement: I paint the structure of memory as I understand it. Creating lines and shapes that weave over and under each other, I demonstrate the different perspectives parts of ourselves have, and how memory’s narrative can be broken and picked up again. Shapes overlap shapes indicating how a single event can be experienced multiple ways by our wise selves, critical selves, and wounded selves.

Bio: I am a disabled painter who struggles with memory. I often find myself feeling as if I’ve forgotten how to paint. To combat this, I memorize instructional sentences - cover the canvas, make marks. I’ve painted since high school trying many different styles however this body of work is the first to express my human experience.

Nat~Tuna

Artist Statement: My artistic journey began in the culinary arts practicing Travalien-style multi-component plating. After several years in the industry, I was forced to step away to deal with my physical and mental health. During this time, I discovered painting as a means of healing and a new purpose in life. My work contains elements of graffiti, Jackson Pollock inspired splatter art, and sacred geometry. I work primarily on canvas with spray paint and acrylic paint. The stencils I used are specifically chosen for their spiritual and metaphorical properties. The colors I choose are vibrant and joyful, which is what I hope my work exudes and translates to viewers.

Bio: Nathaniel Quenzer (Nat~Tuna) is a mixed media visual artist who lives and works in St. Paul. He is inspired by spirituality and music and uses an intuitive process to create his work. He has shown his artwork in various venues and galleries around the Twin Cities with a recent exhibition at the Northrup King Gallery in Northeast Minneapolis. He creates work at Fresh Eye Arts, a progressive art space in St. Paul.

Margaret Vergara

Artist Statement: I view painting as an introspective process. Often times when I paint, it is to reflect on events in my life usually involving my mental or physical health. I examine how I feel and how my emotions interact and overlap with each other. The work I'm submitting all deals with feeling a loss of self after a debilitating medical condition. Both "To float, to fly / to crash, to fall" and "This Body, This Score" are about my experience with Lemierre's syndrome a year ago. "This Body, This Score" is a chronicle of my illness, hospitalization, and rehabilitation. In "To float, to fly / to crash, to fall" I was focusing more on the aftermath of being sick and how while I was in recovery, I was overwhelmed by waves of rage and gratitude. "A Self-Portrait of Sorts" was made in a moment of frustration while in recovery from a traumatic brain injury.

Bio: Margaret Vergara is a queer Asian American artist and designer based in Minneapolis. They are currently a Public Functionary Studios Resident at Studio 306 in the Northrup King Building. They work primarily as a painter creating abstracted landscapes that reflect their experiences with mental health, family, and disability. Their art explores the relationship, interaction, and coexistence of conflicting emotions, such as pain and joy or gratitude and rage.

CJ Weydert

Artist Statement: I am a cartoonist. I create drawings with paintings on canvas's, screen printing, and more. My cartoons and art are often about important people in my life, My original characters "Brad" plus "Astro Invaders" comic novel, and railroad related stuff sometimes. It just means a lot to me.

Bio: CJ Weydert is an all around USA dude that lives in Minnesota. When he's not home doing his illustrations sometimes, he can be seen on the streets messing around saying classic stuff, he has great friends to hang out with too. He is also a co-creator on "Brad" plus "Astro Invaders" one of the comic strip cartoon characters.

Lucas Williams

Nate Woodard

Artist Statement: Nate Woodard (b. 1980) is a multi-media artist based in the Twin Cities. Mostly self-taught, Woodard has been drawing and creating artwork all his life. His work reflects his experience as a person of color moving through this world. Many of his pieces have themes of spirituality, independence, and the struggles of everyday life. Recent exhibitions include Entrance at the Institute on Community Integration (U of M), Creature Comforts at Fresh Eye Gallery, So Free and Suburbia at Banfill Locke Center for the Arts, and Speculative Futures, Present Imaginations at the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery (online), and C4W:2021 Elemental at Gamut Gallery.

Bio: Nate Woodard (b. 1980) is a multi-media artist based in the Twin Cities. Mostly self-taught, Woodard has been drawing and creating artwork all his life. His work reflects his experience as a person of color moving through this world. Many of his pieces have themes of spirituality, independence, and the struggles of everyday life. Recent exhibitions include Entrance at the Institute on Community Integration (U of M), Creature Comforts at Fresh Eye Gallery, So Free and Suburbia at Banfill Locke Center for the Arts, and Speculative Futures, Present Imaginations at the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery (online), and C4W:2021 Elemental at Gamut Gallery.

Jammo Xu

Artist Statement: As an immigrant artist with an interdisciplinary background, I have been drawn to the deconstruction and reconstruction of self-cognition within multiple cultures. After several years of conservative living during the pandemic, I have found solace in the traditional and silent art medium of oil painting, which allows me to slow down and capture the unique light of each moment. Rather than focusing solely on technique, I aim to delve deeper into the artistic concepts behind my work, exploring the collision and fusion of different ideas. Drawing on my interests in Western philosophy and Eastern Zen Buddhism, I incorporate elements of nature, fantasy, dreams, memory, feeling, and mysticism into my art. By intentionally blurring specific identity labels, I seek to explore common human dilemmas faced by individuals within the broader community and natural environment.

Bio: Jammo Xu is an immigrant artist who earned her MFA degree from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Her artwork has been displayed in exhibitions across China, Britain, and the United States. Jammo received the MCBA/Jerome Foundation Book Arts Fellowship for her public art project, and her comic book was selected for the MCAD library collections, which promote international cultural integration. Currently, she is focused on storytelling through her oil paintings, which have been showcased in group exhibitions at various galleries in the Twin Cities area, including the Hallberg Center for the Arts, Solidarity Street Gallery, Argyle Zebra gallery, Sower Gallery, View Point Gallery, and Friedli Gallery.

Image art by Emily Quandahl