COMING SOON! Special Event: Jennifer A. Schultz and WHERE WE COME FROM

This is a one time only special event!

March 16-May 18, 2018

Where We Come From/Jennifer A. Schultz

Reception Friday March 16, 7-9pm. 



WHERE WE COME FROM is an exhibit of small books created by artists from Buffalo, MN as well as bookworks by Jennifer A. Schultz. Each explores the ways in which landscape- the physical place we live, the places our people come from- helps determine our identity.  Buffalo artists participated in two bookmaking workshops taught by Schultz at Wright County Historical Society last August.

Jennifer A. Schultz was a recipient of the 2017 Minnesota Artists initiative Grant. She led workshops in Buffalo, MN, collecting stories and teaching people how to put their stories into book form.  

This weekend event is your opportunity to see what's been cooking up in Buffalo and to enjoy seeing more of Jennifer's work in the Window Gallery.

Redaer's Art 12: Jamie Weaver

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home


Jamie Weaver

West Virginia in Quilts recalls my childhood memories of growing up in rural Appalachia.  My family has long been involved with folk arts and crafts, and I was encouraged to explore these creative outlets both at home and in school.  Looking back, I realize that much emphasis was placed on West Virginia as a center for Appalachian crafts and tourism, and larger issues affecting the state, like mountaintop removal and rampant meth use, were swept under the rug.  When I was in school, we weren’t taught how to be socially, financially, and environmentally loyal to our state – we were told that to be successful adults, we’d probably have to move out of state.  So, with West Virginia in Quilts, I wanted to use a traditional Appalachian craft, quilting, to bring awareness to more serious issues affecting West Virginia. 

            I chose an accordion fold structure so that the book unfolds and spreads out like a quilt.  The title of the book works on a couple of levels:  It is a glimpse of West Virginia through beautiful quilt patterns, and it is also a state in quilts, or covered from view.  Since the truth rarely remains hidden, I let the ugliness underneath peek through the quilts on the surface; when the quilt unfolds, the whole story is revealed.  The front and back are covered with handmade paper that reminds me of quilt batting.

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

Reader's Art 12: Jennifer Vignone

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home   Jennifer Vignone

Fall 2011

Kitakata, Gampi, encaustic, linoleum cut, gold leaf, pencil, original text, ink, nails, wood. 

Following is the text of the book.

"Let me die," he says. 
He is yelling it at Mom,
at the nurse, there in his room, 
at me at the long end of the phone 
and at God -- hovering, 
as he'd like to hover, 
freed from his stagnant frame.
"I'm old and want to die in peace."
All the yelling doesn't seem peaceful 
but I know it is what he wants.

We had to remove the gun and knives 
after we caught him with 
the .22 in his mouth. 
Were his hands too arthritic 
as he fumbled for the trigger? 
Or was he, even then, 
thinking it over?
I wondered what it would have been, 
over the phone, to hear the silence after the blast?

"Why didn't I find you on the floor?"she demanded. 
He had threatened to throw himself 
from the bed in an effort 
to kill himself.

In the delicately gnarled strands 
of their life together, 
they felt out the hereafter. 
Mom negotiated the exit 
as he struggled in his unresponsive shell.

Their conversation was peppered 
with allusions to the great beyond.
Its smell was in the air. 
She said to him, ìI thought you'd 
be more of a man," 
in the way he dealt with age 
and what followed.

I think of the time that I cannot grasp.
And what if I could, 
but grasped the wrong moment?
Mother. Father. A woman and a man, 
in time, and running out of time.

A flicker of light suddenly blinding gold and yellow 
and white in hand-to-hand combat with Darkness. 
A bird wing glide suspends briefly before free-fall.
Are there miracles?

I'd never understood the things 
that seemed so important to him -
ancient not-working timepieces, 
tie clips, old radios that he described 
as brand new, his Hathaway shirts 
with their three-hole buttons - until now. 
These were the things he had to offer 
after so many years. These were his legacy, 
not of typical fortune, but of a life.

I have an image of him in my head 
from a photograph of him
as a young man, before knowing my mother. 
She sits now by his side and holds his hand. 
She dials me with her free hand 
and rasps into the phone. 
He sleeps and when he wakes, he gasps. 
I think he is surprised to find himself still here.

Rich laughter chimed like 
heavy glass but I couldn't tell 
what caused such a sound. 
Spirals held me enthralled, 
rapt, terrified. 
I wandered about, 
hoping not to burst, 
but not afraid to die.

Will I, in my final moment,
hear my own thud? 

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home

March 16- April 26, 2012

Reader's Art 12: Judith Strom

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home  

Judith Strom- This book is an exploration of our acreage here in Montana.  All the materials for book except the thread for binding & stitching and the computer inks came from our property as did the images.  The paper is handmade from yucca.

As with most of my work this piece grows out of my love of the natural world and most especially the beauty of our home here in Montana.

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

Reader's Art 12: Marilyn Stablein

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home

Marilyn Stablein - An ongoing series of artist books Notions and Accessories explores an artist’s whimsical narrative history of needlework, notions, and women’s antique fashion and fabric accessories.  By utilizing actual found antique objects I hope to honor and celebrate everyday women’s historical tools and handiwork. Current completed artist books in this series include works devoted to The Bias Tape, Needles, vintage Handkerchiefs, and vintage nylon stockings and a stocking bag.


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

Reader's Art 12: Esther Smith

 
Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home   Esther Smith




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

Reader's Art 12: Claire Siepser

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home   Claire Siepser

Choices :

This artist’s book is a personal exploration of reproductive choice. With the numerous and intense political messages and brash facts and figures, sometimes it becomes difficult to see the intensely personal nature of the choices we make about our bodies. Despite all the political rhetoric, it remains taboo to speak about reproduction in most circles.

This book acts as a place of calm reflection about the choices I have made and why I feel strongly about women's rights. I have deep convictions regarding my own body but, despite these convictions, this issue makes each of us deeply vulnerable. I decided that I should create a piece that made me deeply vulnerable and shared my difficult trek towards being positive about my reproductive life. I wanted to share my vulnerability with the world in the hopes that it might speak to other individuals trying to make their way in the world.

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

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 : Amandine Nabarra Piomelli

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home   Amandine Nabarra Piomelli

The Caretaker

A series of 14 photographs based on a true story (see below) and presented as a centered accordion book in a fabric like box. The title of the box is hidden by the band to keep the secret of the story safe.

Some secrets become obsessions and can change the course of one’s life. This metamorphosis is at the heart of a project made of several artistic short stories. One of them, The Caretaker, is based on the life of Mrs T. On her wedding day, her aunt, who she thought was her mother broke the secret about her  parents’ identity. This shocking revelation slowly changed Mrs. T.’s destiny and sent her off to roam about the world in search of her father.

Mrs T.’s Vietnamese mother had met a Chinese man in Hong-Kong, but their love story was short lived. Returning home to care for her dying mother, she realized she was pregnant. Two years after Mrs T.’s birth, her mother died and the little girl was raised by her aunt who hid the identity of her parents until her wedding day. Before the ceremony the bride received a box containing an old photo of a young man and a golden ring  that her mother had left for her. After spending the next 20 years raising her children, Mrs T. decides to leave her family to find her father. In order to finance her quest, she will work as a caretaker.

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home

March 16- April 26

Reader's Art 12: Kelly Parsell

Reader's Art : Longing for Home  Kelly Parsell- Circulate

This accordion-fold artist book explores the nostalgia and longing for our pasts. The piece highlights six different homes and their specific qualities for which the speaker/narrator still yearns. Circulate investigates the notion of “absence” and how objects, emotions, and histories can continue living on through memory.

Reader's Art : Longing for Home

March 16- April 26, 2012

Reader's Art 12: Barbara Milman

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home


Barbara Milman- I work primarily in two media: prints and handmade artist books (either in very small editions or unique). The books all have a message or story that is told both by the books as art objects and by their text and images. 

The message, for the past several years, has been about climate change.  My specific concerns have been with the fate of coral reefs, the warming of the oceans and the Arctic, the effect of climate change on different environments and species.

My books are experimental in form.  Most recently I have been making books out of old cigar boxes, which I alter and into which I put smaller books, or texts and images.  The books are multi-media, incorporating monoprints, linocuts, solar plate etchings, hand stamped type, decorative paper, digital photography, and digital design.  At times I use some traditional bookmaking methods, such as accordion books or Coptic bindings, but for the most part techniques are developed for each book to fit the design and the message.

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home

March 16- April 26, 2012

Reader's Art 12: Lisa McGarry

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home  Lisa McGarry, an American living in Italy, sent Four Rooms of One's Own, an original text by the artist exploring the Hindu proverb that says we are each like a house with four rooms: emotional, physical, intellectual and spiritual. Four Rooms of One’s Own takes the form of a varied-fold accordion book, with the individual rooms each assuming a different color and unfolding in a unique way that reveals its degree of publicness/intimacy. 


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

Reader's Art 12: Cathy G. Johnson

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home  Cathy G. Johnson is an artist who creates drawings, watercolors, texts, comics and artists’ books that work with sentimental thought, humor and sincerity. She draws inspiration from personal journals as well as philosophy and critical theory. She explores themes of legitimacy, youth, fear, and the calm, chaotic desire for everything to just be okay. Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home  March 16- April 26, 2012

Reader's Art 12: S. Arden Hill

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home  Canadian artist S. Arden Hill has sent a mysterious book

Cover: modge podge, gel medium, aerosol, dry transfer letters, and thread
Pages: mystery.

This book was inspired by a conversation with Joe Kalturnyk about Peter Eisenman’s theoretical house in which you could not enter. Like Foucault notion of what you can not see being more exciting/interesting than what you can see, Eisenman space is expected behind the walls of the house, hinted at by a small visible space. The Skin I Live in, being Japanese stab bound and transparent suggests something is locked with the cover but what is “the pages” is left a mystery.

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

Reader's Art 12: Amy Pirkle and Bill Hall

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home

Artist Statements

Bill Hall:

Before this book project, it had been many years since my artwork dealt with realistic imagery.  My abstract prints and drawings explored concepts of time and chance among other issues, usually in a geometric format. However, I often thought of producing a series of prints using the processes of my favorite medium, aquatint etching, with the subtle light qualities it affords.

When Amy and I began collaborating on Close To Home, the Hudson River was the obvious and natural choice for subject matter. Observing the river during my daily commute from Ossining to New York became an infatuation. The train runs parallel to the river so the view is unobstructed and dramatic. Sky and water sandwich a strip of land, unchanging but never the same.

In making the plates for these prints, I wanted to give the viewer a sense of time and place without being illustrative, so photographs were referenced for landforms while sky and water were my own inventions. In this way, I could show the majestic changes that are so compelling. In the end, I understood how an artist could take one view of nature and spend a lifetime creating unrepeated interpretations.

Amy Pirkle:

As a book artist, I am most interested in creating a narrative for the viewer. Books are intimate; they demand a one-on-one interaction with the reader. Because my work is often about intimate moments or memories from my own life, I feel that the book structure is the most appropriate form for my work.

Relationships and memories are the primary inspirations for my books and prints, particularly those I share with family members. Memories are often just fragments of images combined in our minds to create an entire picture. In many ways, my own memories about my family are just flashes of moments that I’ve blended together over time. Most of the imagery in my books is derived from photographs, emphasizing the notion that a fleeting moment can be captured and remembered.

I often print books to better understand my family members and the relationships I have with them. Close to Home is no exception. While reflecting on the word “home,” I was not able to disassociate my twin sister from my thoughts, and therefore, she became the subject of my reduction relief portraits.

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

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: Aileen Bassis

Reader's Art 12 : Longing for Home  Aileen Bassis:

"In 2006 I discovered that my mother was developing dementia.  It was a devastating and overwhelming shock.  The person that I knew my entire life was dissolving before me.  As an artist, I make work about subjects that disturb and concern me and so I made art about mom and indirectly, me.  All of the texts are from my conversations with her.  Since I made this work, my father has passed away, and mom is now in assisted living.  I visit often and listen to her rambling words and mourn the loss of the person she used to be.  I no longer make art about her. "


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

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Gotta Love that Laser Level!

Jeff has the coolest tools!

What a cool laser level!

Without a laser level, this is how I would have hung the show!