Moving on.

Recently my husband accepted a job at UW-Oshkosh as the Director of the School's Recording program.  We'll be packing up and moving to Wisconsin sometime late in the summer or early fall.  We're already neck-deep in packing and prepping our house to sell while continuing to work on our personal artistic works.  I'm prepping for multiple exhibitions, and Nate is promoting his newest album.  We have a knack for unintentionally overlapping time-consuming commitments!  I'll be taking a break from teaching in-person next semester to focus on my studio work and teach solely online.

We'll really miss our South Dakota family though - we've made such great friendships while living here over the last five years that will be hard to leave.  I'll also really miss my students at DSU - they are a great bunch!  But, we're familiar with the commute from WI to SD, so I know we'll be traveling back to visit.  We both attended UW-Oshkosh for our undergrad degrees though, and have kept in touch with a lot of our friends in the area, so at least we'll be moving someplace that is familiar this time around.

Keep your fingers crossed for us that our move will go smoothly and will time out well. :)  To our South Dakota friends: you'll always have a place to stay/visit in WI.

Exhibition: Strange Atmosphere at the Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts

Here are some installation shots and the postcard for the three-person exhibition titled 'Strange Atmosphere' at the Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts that I exhibited my work at last month alongside the wonderful artists Rachel Quirk and Zina Mussmann:

In this exhibition, three artists consider conceptual aspects of space, place and time. They explore questions ranging from the psychological, emotional and existential, to the contextual and art historical. 

Cassie Marie Edwards’ work is about boundaries. Her practice consists of constructing landscape still life models out of ordinary household items such as cotton balls and pipe cleaners. The paintings that result from observation of these models are highly rendered and are several times removed from the original subject. The works blur the margins between traditional landscape, portraiture and still life, and pose questions about representation and “high” and “low” modes of expression. 

  Rachel Quirk investigates how time and place interact, and how they often lead to emotional states of uncertainty and angst. She uses familiar imagery and manipulates it in a way that makes the everyday seem alien and pensive. Through mixed-media photo transfers and video, she creates alternative realities that reflect the internal struggle to reconcile feelings about the unknowable. 

Zina Mussmann eliminates visual indications of context in minimalist mixed media drawings. She appropriates elements from various sources and separates them from their original subtexts in order to create a non-space. The newly constructed images float in an absurd arena where there is no reference to time or place—where there is an irrationality of experience, and where question

Exposure Gallery Opening and Exhibition

I had my exhibition at Exposure Gallery in Downtown Sioux Falls about a month ago, and it was a really great time.  It was so nice to catch so many of my art friends in SD - I was totally humbled by the stellar attendance and kind words that floated through the gallery that night.  I'm super thankful to Zach DeBoer for his support through Exposure Gallery, and his great arrangement of the many paintings I brought to fill the space.

I was so busy that night I totally forgot to take pictures!  Thankfully Exposure and some other friends had that covered for me.  Check out some more pictures from that night (and a lovely little write-up) at the JAM Blog - Thanks to Sharon Wegner for assembling it and taking some photos!