IN THE WINDOWS Mississippi River: Water Washes

I met Annie Hejny last summer, during the Women's Art Institute at St. Kate's.  She began this series of paintings then, collecting river water and combining them with her paints.  A subtle, worshipful consideration of the value of our water supply.  These paintings, that will be up through October, are especially beautiful at night.   Come by at night to see them glow.

Mississippi River: Water Washes

by

Annie Hejny

Annie Hejny was born in St. Paul and studied at the University of St. Thomas and St. Catherine

University, earning a double-major B.A. in Elementary Education and Studio Art with honors (2012).

Participating as a mentor and artist in the Twin Cities community, she has volunteered with Free Arts

Minnesota, blankslate theater, VISION and founded the PAINT Project, a collaboration between local

establishments to implement mural painting events in 10 countries during 2010-2013. Since 2014,

Annie is a member of the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association (NEMAA) and the Women's Art

Resources of Minnesota (WARM).

As an emerging visual artist, she intentionally explores the spaces from her daily life and larger travels to create highly-saturated paintings. Recent exhibitions include Art-A-Whirl (Minneapolis, MN), 6x6x2015 (Rochester, NY) and One Wall (Chicago, IL).

She currently resides in St. Paul and works at the Casket Arts Building in Northeast Minneapolis. Last summer she participated in the Women's Art Institute at St. Catherine University. Most recently, she converted her single-stall garage into Gallery Three, a pop-up exhibition space for local artists.

The gallery is a studio, but the windows are a gallery

Reader's Art 12: Elizabeth Schendel

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home   Elizabeth Schendel- I have always enjoyed looking through my family’s collection of photographs and listening to the stories that have been passed down and told over and over again, and I recently realized that my family’s stories are significant to me not just for what I can learn about the past, but also for the new perspective that I can take on the present. My grandparents’ stories provide insight into their character, into my parents’ lives, and even into myself, as I see their influence on the family and also learn about what influenced them.  Even the family stories that I am not personally aware of have influenced how I view myself and understand the world.  Because of this recognition of both the textual and visual narrative influence, my work makes use of found texts and photographs, as well as original imagery, to create pieces that, while of a personal nature for myself, create a space for viewers to create and consider their own narratives.

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home

March 16- April 26, 2012

Reader's Art 12: Vida Sacic

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home   Vida Sacic

Cityscapes project - hand-bound letterpress printed book (4 colors / 64 pages /50 copies produced)

produced during an artist residency at the Center for Book and Paper Arts Columbia College Chicago

The printed book serves as one of two parts of the project - the second being an interactive app that can be viewed on a personal iPad. In both iterations of the books, the same content is used but presented in a way that takes advantage of the medium.

Thematically, in this collection of over 40 illustrations of imaginary landscapes, themes of materiality are explored through images of cities whose landscapes juxtapose buildings from varied time periods and geographic areas. The landscapes mostly combine sights from Chicago, where I currently live, with images from my home town in Croatia. In such spaces realities collide and coexist furthering a notion of vague familiarity mixed with displacement that mirrors the 21st century experience.

I believe that this book is well suited to the theme “longing for home” because of it’s strong personal subtext which alludes to our tendencies to carry our past with us and often find it resurrected in front of us when we least expect it. I find it fascinating that we carry it all with us no matter where we go.

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home
March 16-April 26, 2012

Reader's Art 12: Robin Ross

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home   Robin Ross  Aerie and Prayers of Being Winged 

Home to me as the person Robin is very much about belonging to community.  Practicalities such as   structure and spirituality both occur and can enhance our belonging.  Home to me as the creature Robin, or as any other bird, is about flying and looking below and above, about survival, wanting long life for continuation of my species.  As creature I am always connected to my environment - questions of spirit and belongingness don't occur. 

I am a painter. I paint paintings and sometimes re-create old unwanted books through the use of carving and painting and drawing.

Book as object and art allows me to enhance what already exists.  I’m both  playful and serious when using serendipity and precision in cutting, manipulating, collaging and painting. The books are unique, and usually graffitied, foxed, water damaged, or otherwise unwanted. This combines my love of language with visual and sensual art. Often the old paper, the smell, and the description of knowledge and poetry inspire what I paint; inversely, what I paint may evoke more writing.  In the case of these bird books, there is very little word-formed writing other than bits of asemic chicken scratch.

Each book is given new life. Previous words and images  peek through or are covered with layers of paint. Each original page is inclusive to what I am painting. It folds and opens; containing a  time past below the surface of the present story I put upon it - each embellishment places history upon history. The changing nature of the paper and print underneath the actual oil paint and ephemeral chance are part of the character of each book. 

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home

March 16- April 26, 2012

Reader's Art 12: Carol Morris

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home   Carol Morris-The place is the exotic landscape of childhood in rural Ohio. Where tigers and lions could co-exist with squirrels. While doing the book I was enchanted by feelings of beauty and safety. Altered  books are my favorite medium. I love books and love discarded books. By altering them,  I preserve  them.

Bio:     I try to remember it's not about me so I will talk in the third person. Carol is a poet, video film maker, and visual artist.  Painting, assemblage and altering things are her favorite mediums. In the last year she's been included in exhibits in Michigan, California and Colorado.

She continues her decade long work of bringing art to women in prison. She lives in Ann Arbor Michigan and loves her grandsons abundantly, as  her grandmother did her.

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home

Reader's Art 12: Maggie Miller

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home   

Maggie Miller:

"The project is a visual interpretation of the book Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino.   Calvino’s book is a dialogue between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan as Marco Polo reports on the vast Tartar Empire through the lens of personal insights that arise from interactions each place.  A fourteen odd page mixed media piece, working with pop-up architecture and found prints, my work creates vignettes of Khan’s cities, participating in the conversation as a reader reflecting on Polo’s discoveries about the relationship between self and setting.  The viewer is given a chance to engage with a city fully assembled, stretching out as an accordion of compiled images and quotations.  Closed, pop-ups retreat back into blank pages, just as Calvino’s cities themselves are in essence bare canvases.  Prints draw on the discussions of the limitations of language in establishing a common vernacular of experience. "

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home

March 12- April 26, 2012

Reader's Art 12 : Patricia Dahlman

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home  New Jersey artist, Patricia Dahlman, embroiders her story. Her piece in the show,"Why?", is a humorous but tragic story of suburban clear cutting in the artist's hometown of Lyndhurst, New Jersey. 


Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home
March 16- April 26, 2012

Reader's Art 12: Rita Collins

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home  Montana artist Rita Collins  is an explorer,"At sixty, I am putting more focus on my own art. I find myself making lists of collages I want to create or books to write and bind. Many of these themes are from my daily experiences as an older woman trying to find her place in the 21st century."


Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home
March 16-April 26, 2012

Reader's Art 12: the opening

Reader's Art 12 opened, Friday, March 16 to good crowds and good sales.  The evening was the first lovely, dulcet evening of our extremely early spring.  Today the elm  trees are spewing pollen and the daffodils are poking up through the soil, eager to bloom .

The evening of the opening was busy enough that I forget to get photos of all the people reading the books.

Reader's Art 12: Irene Chan

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home  Washington, DC artist Irene Chan is continually confronted by stereotypes concerning Asians: Her book,  The Asian American? Project is made from business cards with text that respond to comments and questions that strangers ask Asian Americans. Every week since age 12, I am asked one to ten of the same questions. Since these questions and comments are common to other Asian Americans as well, I created a set of business cards to flash or hand out for the appropriate moments. Through the interaction of questions and answers, lasting racial stereotypes and myths of the concept of the “Asian American” are revealed.




Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home
March 16- April 26, 2012

Reader's Art 12 : Stephanie Carpenter

Reader's Art 12: Longing for HomeI  Stephanie Carpenter wants to challenge the viewer to interact with the book through more than the text by engaging the physical presence of the book itself. Through deliberate physical action with the entire piece, the viewer is asked to slow down while in- teracting with my work. Thus each book is a tangible reminder of how the journey is an important and relevant part of any interaction. Each printed piece was created with handset type, hand-cut illustrations and traditional bookbinding methods. The time that it takes to create the piece is then mirrored in the action the viewer must take to reach the entire content of the book.

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home

March16- April 26, 2012

opening reception, Friday, March 16, 7-10 pm

Reader's Art 12 :Mary Bergs and Beth Dorsey

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home  Mary Bergs and Beth Dorsey are Minneapolis artists who collaborate. For the Reader’s Art Exhibition they are creating a collaborative book. Using the structure of an accordion book they plan to visually explore the concept of home as: 

·      A place

·      A state

·      A building

·      Something within us

·      A memory

·      A history

·      A facade

·      An emotion

·      Something familiar

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home
March 16- April 26, 2012
opening reception, Friday, March 16, 2012

Reader's Art 12:Fran Beallor

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home  New York artist Fran Beallor is well established as a painter but of this work she says, "This is my first altered book. When I think of books, I think of a warm, cozy room. So I put my warm, cozy room inside the book and above, a skylight to see the stars. I call it "Home.""

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home

March 16- April 26, 2012

opening reception Friday, March 16, 7-10pm

Reader's Art 12 opening soon

Changing Landscapes by Elizabeth Carls

LONGING FOR HOME: Reader’s Art 12

March 16-April 26

Susan Hensel Gallery, 3441 Cedar Ave S, will take a break from retirement for the annual book extravaganza, Reader’s Art 12: Longing for Home , Friday March 16 with a reception and celebration for the artists from 7-10pm.  

This long running show is a national/international survey show of artists books originated by Ms. Hensel when she lived  in East Lansing, Michigan. Now in its twelfth consecutive year, forty two artists form the US, Canada and France responded to the call for artists books that considered the following questions:

What does home mean to you?

Is home a place, a building, a feeling, a belief system,a family, a way of being in the world?

What do you long for?

Not surprisingly, in these transitional times, many artists dwelt in nostalgia for a past time that may or may not have been their own.  There are also political pieces dealing with immigration, and environmental destruction of the planet.  There are pieces that deal with the body as the ultimate home, with identity.  There are beautiful, ethereal books; crudely natural books; creepy books; humorous books; elegant books.

Among the forty two artists are many local folks:  Carolyn Halliday, Phillip R. Luoma Anderson Elizabeth Carls, Maggie Miller, Mary Bergs and Beth Dorsey.

Most of the books may be handled and read. After all, what’s a book if you cannot read it?

Come join the fun, Friday, March 16, 7-10pm.

§  Reader’s Art 12 : Longing for Home

§  March 16- April 26, 2012

§  Susan Hensel Gallery

§  3441 Cedar Ave S., Minneapolis, MN 55407

§  

###

A conversation, but not a closing

Tonight we had a conversation, wide ranging, fun, about the return to physicality in art . Jeff Rathermel, Paulette Myers -Rich and Marianne Combs led the discussion with much response from the audience.

Perhaps Jeff looks like he is pontificating and perhaps Marianne looks a bit incredulousBut, really, we were having a great discussion that ranged across history and media.

The show continues next week, through Friday, November 18. The gallery is open Monday, 10-5 . Other days, you should call ahead to set a time. I have a few appointments off site, but would love to have you in to see the show.

PROJECT GUTENBERG PROJECT

PROJECT GUTENBERG PROJECT

Saved words, broken books, new appreciation

September 23- November 18

Jeff Rathermel is the executive director of Minnesota Center for Book Arts. But he is also an artist. Running a non-profit often saps his energy and thought processes for studio work. It is with great relief and excitement that he presents the Project Gutenberg Project, opening Friday, September 23 at Susan Hensel Gallery.

More and more, we are giving up the tangible for the digital. Project Gutenberg Project responds to this by celebrating the material beauty of the book and the value of tactile experience. Using book remains to create two and three dimensional work, this project both embraces and criticizes the power of technology to shape our understanding of the world.

The idea for the project grew out of a donation received by the Minnesota Center for Book: broken, dis-bound, trashed books. There were great works of literature, minor literary works, beautiful papers, illustrations, bits and pieces of varying quality that were the remains of the process of digitizing libraries undertaking by Project Gutenberg. In order to save the words, the books were destroyed. The organization could use little of what remained. Jeff Rathermel looked at these remains with the eyes of an artist who has been devoted personally and professionally to book and paper arts for years.

Project Gutenberg Project may be viewed simply at face value - a commentary on digital libraries and the "demise" of physical books - but it also has deeper underpinnings that explore notions of aesthetics, immediacy, cultural values and the basic human need to engage all senses to most effectively and satisfactorily experience the world they live in. And the reasonably priced objects and publications are just plain beautiful.

The show opens at Susan Hensel Gallery Friday, September 23, with a reception from 7-10pm. Also join Jeff for a closing event ,Keep in Touch: Physicality in Contemporary Art , on Friday November 11, 7-9pm, when he will be joined in conversation by Marianne Combs and Paulette Myers-Rich.

What: Project Gutenberg Project, by Jeff Rathermel

Where: Susan Hensel Gallery, 3441 Cedar Ave S, Minneapolis

When: September 23-Nov 18

Opening Reception : Friday, September 23, 7-10pm

Closing Conversation : Friday, November 11, 7-9pm

City: A language we Spoke!

It was a good problem to have! Rosemary Ann Davis curated and organized a reading for the Susan Hensel Gallery last night. Twelve readers, including Susan Hensel, read about cities they have known and loved.
There were actually too many people to all fit inside for the festivities. Luckily, it was our first balmy night of spring. Crown Coffee, the new shop next door, stayed open late selling their Fair Trade coffee and putting out lawn chairs for the overflow.Reader's read. Listeners listened. Jaipur, Seoul, Istanbul, San Francisco,Buenos Aires, McMurdo Station, Cairo, Quetzaltenango,Paris,St. Petersburg and The Cities That Marco Polo Left Behind were all represented.Don't let the serious faces fool you. There was, as usual, much laugher, much levity.

Reader's Art is ready to be seen!

It is always exciting! The work is hung, the labels are attached, the lights are balanced! It's another opening! Another show! Sing, everybody! Sing! All that's left to do is a little housecleaning!

Reader's Art eleven opens Friday, March 4, 7pm!

In the House of the Mineral Spirits: PHOTOS! VISITS!

I just heard from Dean Ebben, today. He will be coming back into town later this month, arriving sometime on February 22. If you want to actually meet the artist, make an appointment between February 23 and February 28 before we take the show down!

Remember, the gallery is ALWAYS open 10-5 on Mondays and by very generous appointment on other days. We just compare schedules and, voila! you can see the show.

IN THE HOUSE OF THE MINERAL SPIRITS

video, installation, works on paper

by

Dean Ebben

through February 28.