Wantoot welcomes new artist Wallace Bowling. A show of his current work opens Saturday, October 20, coinciding with the driftless area’s annual Fall Art Tour.
Cigar Boxes provide the three dimensional canvas for many of the mixed-media sculptures in the show. Found industrial artifacts are used to reinforce or compliment the message of the piece.
Manufactured Landscape
Labeled “constructs,” the pieces intentionally focus on the action of viewing an image or object.
Minor details, as the direction a particular piece opens, dictate the viewer’s interface.
Wallace notes, “Some constructs evoke a tinge of pleasure while others may create a distinct uneasiness. One’s emotions are heightened by this channeled participation. Hence the viewer becomes an intimate part of the piece.”
Anibus
CONSTRUCTS could be construed as a culmination of Wallace’s formal education as an Architect, his love of historic artifacts, his innate artistic ability, and his long-term work as a gallerist in Chicago, alongside partner Douglas Dawson. Dawson comments, "…In many cases the conceptual ‘seed’ for the box was a surreptitious marriage of found object with box – one physically fitting perfectly with the other, then later suggesting the story.”
MEDUSA
CONSTRUCTS opens at Wantoot’s Mineral Point Gallery on Saturday, October 20, and runs through November 25, 2018.
SKY DETERMINES, featuring the work of Kristin Quinn, opened at Wantoot Gallery on Saturday, October 21st. Kristin is chair of the art department at St. Ambrose University, Davenport, Iowa.
Originally from Washington, D.C., Kristin's youth was greatly influenced by her physicist Father. She learned to look at the world through a very inquisitive lens. Why is the sky orange? What caused hail? How are tunnels built under a bay?
Kristin still refers to these questions as "tunnel talk" questions. Her paintings start with questions like, How can wind and water be suggested? or What is the color of amber, iron-ore, pollen? The paintings gradually grow in layers, over many months, sometimes years.
"Jacobs Ladder" Mixed media on paper 32" x 40"
SKY DETERMINES features works in oil on canvas, oil on board, and select mixed media works on paper. The works on paper were created using acrylic, gouache and ink and are displayed unframed. Kristin also works in a very large scale. These pieces are not part of the current show, but several examples are shown on our the website, for example.
"Blow The Wind Westerly" oil on canvas, 20" x 24"
SKY DETERMINES runs through late December 2017.
Daithi visited Wantoot on August 5 for opening of his show, CONVERGENCE: The Art of Daithi. Running through October 1, the show features new examples of three distinct bodies of work. Large paintings in both acrylic and oil on canvas comprise the first group. The second group includes several examples of Daithi's Woodland Series of oil, acrylic and ink on panel, sealed with two-part epoxy resin. The third group comprises new additions to the popular "script" series of large pen and ink drawings.
To celebrate, The art of Daithi converged with canvas, the human body and the music of Mineral Point musician John Birner during the August 5 opening. Daithi's process of creating art on canvas and the human body, simultaneously, was a joy to witness.
The Sanctuary
Heart on a Sleeve
Dreamers
Daithi paints on model during the opening of "Convergence: The Art of Daithi" August 5, 2017 at Wantoot.
Daithi, John Birner, Leah, the painting.
We’re delighted to share the news that Sandra Peterson has been selected to receive an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Individual Support Grant for 2017. This award is given to 12 artists each year in recognition of the quality of each artist’s work and the artist’s dedication to their work over a period of many years.
The artists for this year’s awards were selected from nearly 400 applicants. Art was chosen for the award by a panel of five advisors, each of whom is either a working artist or a professional curator or critic.
“dog with botanyII” 48”x40” oil on canvas
Wantoot is celebrating Sandra’s grant by hosting a show of some of her most recent work. The show opens on June 3, during Galley Night. Meet Sandra between 5:00 - 8:00pm during the opening reception at Wantoot Gallery.
The Gottlieb Foundation is named after Adolph Gottlieb, who began his career as an artist in New York in the 1920s. He became one of the small group of artists who initiated the movement known as Abstract Expressionism, and achieved artistic and financial success far beyond his early expectations.
“mighty tree” 20”x16” oil on canvas
The foundation has been operating since 1976 with two main purposes. They offer grants to individual visual artists through two programs: an annual Individual Support Grant and a separate program to assist visual artists in cases of catastrophic events through an Emergency Grant program. They also maintain an archive on the art and life of Adolph Gottlieb and organize exhibitions of his art and that of others.
Over the course of his life Gottlieb had several friends and colleagues who, despite their artistic achievements, were not able to support themselves either through the sale of their art or through teaching or related work. Adolph and his wife Esther were known among their friends as people who would help out when times were hard or when someone was in serious need.
You can learn more about the Gottlieb Fountain and about the art of Adolph Gottlieb at gottliebfoundation.org.
While Cindy Taylor has worked in a variety of mediums over her career, she finds oil is ideal for her current work. She has always been drawn to the organic, natural forms found in nature, and she studies plant and flower forms and how they change with the seasons.
Her paintings begin with a rough idea and frequently change during the process. Organic subjects ultimately move in a motion of “growing up.”
The title of this show, “New Earth,” was the title of her first painting that evolved through the synergism of Cindy’s imagination, and forms found in nature. The subsequent artworks are different versions of the original concept.
Cindy says it best: ”These are oil paintings of abstract landscapes, containing colorful organic forms, growing wildly in a vast array of strange configurations."
“New Earth/Alternate Versions” consists of 20 works of oil on canvas in various sizes, with frames by the artist. It opens Saturday, April 1, during Mineral Point's Gallery Night. Meet Cindy at the opening reception from 5:00 - 8:00 pm. The show runs through Thursday, April 27 at Wantoot Gallery in Mineral Point.
"Oh, Joyous Spring" 20" x 30"
"Garden In the Deep" 24" x 24"
"Composition With White" 16" x 20"
"Lodestars And Polestars" 14" x 14"
Illinois artist Michael Costanza returns to Wantoot Gallery on Saturday, December 3, 5:00pm - 8:00pm, for the opening of FIELDS: An Exploration Into The Immediate and Automatic Act of Mark-making. Wantoot patrons know Michael for his complex college compositions that weave multiple story lines. Michael was on hand for Wantoot’s gallery grand opening in 2012, and returned a few years later to create and host a 5 piece presentation for SLOW ART DAY.
"Dirt Cloud"-- An example of Michael's earlier collage.
Michael’s show FIELDS is his first exploration into the immediate and automatic act of mark-making, treating each picture plane as a field on which to make the mark. Just as games are played on fields, this body of work consists of a variety of art games where a rule or set of rules were created and followed to execute the work. Occasionally, rules may have been broken to make the piece work.
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As the body of work continued to grow, themes and representation began to transpire from the automatic marks. Certain marks began taking on representational meaning: the sights and sounds of water, waves, streams, land, grass, dirt, mountains and natures’s textures became the most prevalently used. With these thematic attachments transpiring, the images then developed a distant relationship with ancient, writing systems such as hieroglyphs and aa variety of other pictographic scripts.
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FIELDS features over 17 artworks ranging in size from 5" x 5" to 24" x 36".
L. Stephanie Tait completed a Bachelors of Arts in Film Studies from UW-Madison. She earned a Masters of Arts from the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, and spent four and a half years pursuing a PhD with the University of Edinburgh's Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies Department. She also spent her time in Scotland curating and organizing independent film festivals and screenings with the Film House Theatre in Edinburgh. In between her M.A. and PhD, Stephanie was the Marketing Director for the world-renowned University Research Park in Madison. Stephanie is the daughter of Steven Tait and Susan Whitworth-Tait, residents of Wantoot's home, Mineral Point, Wisconsin.
Putting her PhD on hold, Stephanie moved to Los Angeles in 2010 to continue her work in producing, writing, and directing. When not creating fantastical realities on stage and screen, she runs her new independent publishing firm, Verthandi Press, which specializes in Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Faerie Tale books written by female authors.
Verthandi Press’ mission is to be a company that serves to be the change that Stephanie has worked to see in the world: a publishing company that focuses on narratives about, and driven by, women.
Verthandi’s first project,"Telling it to the Moon", is a book of 15 original faerie tales by Stephanie. She recounts, “none of the stories are based on anything other than the crazy dreams and ideas that frequent my brain. These are characters with whom I have spent years writing, developing, and living. I'm excited to finally share them with the world and hopefully have people love them as much as I do.”
The book features 15 illustrations (one for each of the stories) by illustrator Brian Carroll. As Stephanie’s close collaborator (and husband), Brian created illustrations that beautifully capture essential storylines of all 15 faerie tales.
Stephanie will be at Wantoot on August 6, from noon - 2:00 pm and again from 4:00 - 6:00 pm, to sign copies of the brand-new 350 page hardcover book. Wantoot will exhibit book illustrations by Brian Carroll, that will also be available for purchase.