Adu Gindy | Artist |
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Adu Gindy was born in Parnu, Estonia, and following six years in post-war relocation camps in Germany, emigrated with her mother to the United States in 1950. Adu earned her B.A. from Vassar, her M.A.T. from Columbia, and has also attended classes at the Art Students League in New York City, the Silvermine School of Art in New Canaan, Connecticut, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine, prior to earning an M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1989. Her work is in museum collections in Sweden, Cuba and throughout the Midwest region’s art centers, and she has gallery affiliations in Chicago, Duluth and the Twin Cities. Adu taught in the Art and Design Department at the University of Minnesota, Duluth until her recent retirement. She now devotes full time to her painting.
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Scholarly Interests: Scandinavian Art Education, Museum Based Art Teacher Training, and Multicultural/Environmental Curriculum Development. Artistic: Painter and Illustrator.
Teaching Area: Area Coordinator Art Education/Museum Education, BFA Art Education K-12 Women Artists in History
Link to Alison Aune's Work
Link to Massachusetts' Exhibit
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Born in Chicago, Illinois, Carla Stetson has lived and worked in Duluth, Minnesota for the past 18 years. She is best known for her three commissioned public sculptures in Duluth, including The Language of Stone, a series of bronze fish and animals embedded within large boulders for the Great Lakes Aquarium and The Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial, a small park featuring a curved walkway, plantings, a large concrete wall with incised quotations, and three larger-than-life bronze figures.
Stetson’s work is characterized by transformation and combination of unlikely elements into new hybrid entities. She works with a broad range of techniques and media, including mixed media collage-paintings, drawing, and installation. She teaches figure drawing and sculpture at the University of Wisconsin, Superior.
Link to Carla Stetson's Website
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Originally from Wisconsin, Eric Dubnicka moved to Duluth in 2002 after receiving his BFA from the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, MN and currently lives and creates his artwork in Washington Artists' Studios Cooperative in Duluth.
Eric's primary focus is as a painter but has also shown photographs and sculpture. His work involves social commentary, anxiety and worry and often with a humorous slant that pits the individual against many.
Link to Eric Dubnicka's Website
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Lauri E. Olson Hohman | Artist |
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Lauri E. Olson Hohman lives along the North Shore has 3 grown children, 2 grandchildren and is married.
Graduated from UMD in 1994 in art education and has painted full time since. She has done 10 years of substitute teaching and is now looking for something different.
Her passion is the outdoors – hiking, biking, swimming, traveling, etc…….
She is 52 and growing younger each new year.
“Those whom the gods love grow young”
Still playing
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"This process of giving mortal man a god-like status tends to diminish somewhat as time goes on. Nonetheless, sports remains so surely a secular religion inhabiting the minds of most Americans (with saints and sinners, its popes, its bishops, and so on) that it bears inspection."
- George Plimpton
Artist's Statement
I am fascinated with American culture and the endearing components that form our identity. Since 1996, I have concentrated on the dominant theme of American identity. This exhibition is part of an ongoing project that looks at parts of American culture and the elements once considered archetypal icons but are now fading, soon to be lost. This is a multifaceted project called, “Lost Icons: American Myth and Identity”, with a variety of subtopics (separate bodies of work) including: The American Barn, The Kennedy era, Jazz and my current theme - Baseball.
I started this body of work by literally depicting images surrounding the game of Baseball –players, balls, bats and stadiums. I was obsessed with everything associated with the game. I began to investigate the way even basic experiences are shaped by desire and memory. I have always used direct experience to feed my work: seeking out and attending baseball games at the older stadiums, playing long ballgames with my kids, obsessively discussing the nuances of past games.
I started to think of these activities as rituals. Suddenly, it all made sense. The association came quickly, the familiar rituals, the revered gods, the overwhelming cathedrals, the weathered amulets and the glorious uniforms. The definition between Baseball and religion became blurred and my studies more insightful, my education more full. I quickly became a card-carrying member of this community of worshipers.
"It is a community activity. You need all nine people helping one another I love the idea of the sacrifice play. Even the word is good. Giving yourself up for the good of the whole. That’s Jeremiah. That’s thousands of years of wisdom. You find your own good in the good of the whole. You find your own individual fulfillment in the success of the community – the Bible tried to teach you that and didn’t teach you. Baseball did."
- Mario Cuomo
It wasn’t until I was deep in the middle of this project that I realized just how important this sport and these players were to me as a child. They were my companions, in books, on television and most important, on the playground. At a very young age, I was obsessed with the sport. When we weren’t playing organized games, we invaded empty neighborhood fields and played well into the evening until we could no longer see the ball.
The players and their actions consumed our conversations on the field. Their plays inspired our movements. There was no doubt in our minds that we were inhabiting their uniforms and we could make the same play that we had witnessed on television the night before. These were dear friends, they taught us all the moves and fueled our dialogue. That’s how I choose to remember them…as old friends. They became something more than just a distant image on the television. They became the fabric of our lives.
At the heart of this series lies the unmistakable belief that the game of baseball embodies a great depth of meaning, its scope too great, for it to be reduced to simply a form of entertainment. Through our shared experience of the history and events surrounding the game, intimate personal memories are formed through the connective tissue of witnessing the same events. A mutual sense of value is formed.
As this series progressed, the players clearly became less the idolization of gods and more like a visit with familiar friends. The act of making each one of these works has granted me more time with my childhood heroes. I worshiped them as a child and that deep faith has not vanished. Oh, how I’ve missed them.
It’s been a gift to step back in time for a moment to hear their voices again. Many believe that baseball fosters an illusion that we could be this player. It infiltrates us, seduces us and we are better for it. This is the opinion shared by the faithful followers of the game. And, is unapologetically mine.
Link to Jen Dietrich's Website
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Keith E. Johnson | Artist |
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Keith E. Johnson is a photographer by profession but has chased the elusive watercolor for over twenty years. Watercolors are wily and can be cruel but when captured their transparency can be quite beautiful.
Primarily a self-taught watercolorist he has learned a few things from museums, books, videos, and workshops but wouldn't want to blame anyone in particular. As native of the Northshore many of his paintings represent this area but not exclusively. He also does other locales, figures, and still-lifes. He is a member of the Lake Superior Watercolor Society and the Transparent Watercolor Society of America.
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Dave Carroll | Photographer |
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After seeing a lot of locals in Duluth with beards, Dave Carroll decided to grow one and at same time, fell in love with photography.
He doesn't know if has something to do with the beard but either way, the pictures started flowing. He has lived in Duluth for 7 years and plays in a couple of bands. He mainly likes taking pictures of nature but will settle with taking pictures in bars.
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Christine Gildersleeve | Artist |
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Christine Gildersleeve is a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Superior majoring in art. Originally from Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, she now resides in Duluth, Minnesota with her family, Taelem and Erik Berry. Her artistic pursuits are ceramics, abstract painting and mixed media.
Form, function and movement create a statement about Christine’s love of art. Her pottery integrates elements of fluidity and nature. The use of organic materials such as shells, seeds and her own fingertips create distinctive textures and surfaces. A passion for the unique finishing of wood firing completes her work.
All potters break pots sooner or later and Christine’s fascination with the shards of her own broken pots soon combined with her love of abstract painting. She particularly enjoys incorporating an individual’s broken or discarded memorabilia with natural items such as seeds, dried foods and herbs along with her broken pots into unique wall art. “Art out of Anything” perfectly describes this fusion of mediums.
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I was initially drawn to work with pastels because of their directness of application. I continue to work with them because of their luscious colors and the special light the finished paintings emit.
With three small children, there was little time to pursue the passion of painting. Discovering pastels, compressed sticks of pigment applied to paper, I discovered my medium. I set up an easel and a still life in my basement next to the washing machine. It seemed I spent much of my time doing laundry, so it was easy to apply a few strokes of color between loads. No mixing of paints, fumes or waiting for paint to dry. It was slow going, but I finished paintings. I continued to paint and took classes. It was at one of these classes that I met a woman with a large studio. She invited me to paint with her weekly. My art took a step forward as I committed real time to working on it. Once out of the basement and into the light, I was better able to instill a sense of light into my paintings. I now have a studio of my own.
Michelle Wegler's paintings have been exhibited locally and regionally. Commissions include calendar illustrations, book covers and portraits. Her paintings have won awards and honors, and are included in private and corporate collections.
Ms. Wegler has studied under national and regional pastel artists. She is affiliated with the Pastel Society of America, Lake Country Pastel Society, Duluth Art Institute, and Artists of Minnesota.
Michelle Wegler was born in Buffalo, NY, and currently lives in Duluth, MN.
Link to Michelle Wegler's Website
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David Bowen is a studio artist and educator. His work has been featured in numerous group and solo exhibition nationally and internationally. He received his BFA degree from Herron School of Art in1999 and his MFA degree from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis in 2004. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Sculpture and Physical Computing at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.
Link to David Bowen's Website
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Kristina Estell was born and raised in the rural landscape of Indiana. She has a B.F.A. in sculpture from Herron School of Art in Indianapolis and an M.F.A. in sculpture from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Estell has shown her work locally, nationally and internationally as well as attended artist residencies within and outside of the US. She currently lives and works in Duluth and continues to pursue her sculptural and installation research.
"My work references the physical world through an examination of the theme of landscape and vision. Using a range of sculptural, installation and drawing techniques, my work considers the solid and transparent, the gigantic and miniscule, the altered and untouched elements that make up our living environment. Ideas of manipulation, exploration, and ownership within this territory are intriguing to me as a conceptual framework for thinking of the term landscape. Through devices of distance and proximity, my work places the viewer in the position of an observer and challenges one to consider the perception of our physical world and the means by which it is understood."
Kristina Estell will also have art on display at the Duluth Art Institute on May 15, 5 – 7 pm. Please feel free to check out her work at the Duluth Art Institute, and then join us at ShipRock. For more information, click here.
Link to Kristina Estell's Website
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