Mary Bacon

As an artist, I love to follow several trains of thought simultaneously, and am always working on multiple series’. My interest lately is with modernized still life on canvas, and images of war and Christianity. I enjoy paring a still life down to simplicity, really engaging the essential nature of these beings, interpreting my relationship with them and with my own psyche. My interest in painting images of war in with Christian religious icons has been to juxtapose images of Christianity's stated values with images of some of the deadly consequences of its actions. Jesus's desciples armed and dangerous, bombs with a pro-life message, etc. I am an interior designer by trade, and consider that part of my art as well.

Joshuwa Bialik

Joshuwa Bialik is an artist who does "Vehicular Car Satire." He says this piece is worth $25 million dollars because it has better chance of catching Osama Bin Laden than the US government.

Florence Brammer

Appropriation is starting point for my artwork. When I least expect it, a visual image materializes from snippets of overheard conversation, literary passages, quirky news stories or even scientific phenomena.

As a full-time attorney with no formal art training, I use art-making as a vehicle for exercising underutilized parts of my brain. By profession and by nature, I am immersed for hours every day in a language-based culture of reading and writing. It is liberating and exhilarating to shift to visual imagery as a means of reacting to the world.

A labor attorney by day, I am a cooperative member of Highpoint Center for Printmaking, a tour guide for the Walker Art Center and a volunteer space educator for NASA. My husband and I have lived in Uptown ever since we moved to Minnesota in 1982. Our three adventurous and creative daughters were all born and raised within the 55408 area, where they have been nurtured and energized by this vibrant and eclectic community. What a great place to live.

This is my fifth year of participation in 55408, and I am increasingly grateful for Intermedia Arts’ commitment to this show.

Ron Brown

Ron Brown would describe himself as a transplant to Minnesota. He consistently pushes what people think of as art, and refuses to be a passing fad. A native of Gary, Indiana, Ron Brown is influenced by his own life experiences, Hip-Hop, Politics, Japanese Animae, and the box people create for him that he constantly tries to escape. "I used to call myself a Hip-Hop artist, but then people thought I would dance or rap-- I do not dance the jig for anyone..." An artist from a different planet perhaps, as the images he creates with pen, watercolors, and other media challenge our thinking and provoke the mind in a way that is sure to start conversation.

Alejandra Campbell

Sol Azteca 

The main focus of my work are color and texture and the effect they have on the viewer. I am drawn to the way mosaics infuse small bits of color that are different from the predominant color to excite the eye, so I tend to add little surprises of color in my paintings. I am also inspired by the bold, simple lines in Mexican folk art and Aztec art, and I try to recreate that uncomplicated-yet-powerful style in my work.

Michael Carina

Pompeii 

Mike’s ongoing mission is to document the otherwise unseen beauty in the mundane moments and places throughout his world travels. Whether touring factories in industrial China or pondering a lofty waterfall in the depths of a Chilean rain forest, his quest to “bring back” these moments is ongoing. With an emphasis on minutiae and layers of history, his work incorporates illegible handwriting, collage, scribbles and layers of writing and iconography based on memories of these places. His goal is to invite the viewer to a place otherwise unfamiliar and keep them there as long as possible. Mike graduated from the College of Visual Arts with a BFA in Communication Arts/Illustration. He balances his time between producing illustrations for publications nationwide and translating his travels through paint in his studio.

Michael Carney

Turkey Pirate 

Life- learning lessons to better equip the decision-making process of future experiences. Lessons are learned by one’s own experiences and learning from another’s. My work is a balance between exploiting life’s dualities and embracing those very dualities to find the productive middle ground. Whether it is life and death, street art and fine art, love and hate or fear and comfortability, the lines are never as black and white as we attempt to make them. When the polarities of day to day life come together, they birth a tragically-beautiful juxtaposed encounter with the lucky soul being challenged to view their existence just a little outside the box.

Ray Caron

Unison 

These paintings reflect my research in creating non-objective work that borders on the objective. Having explored formal paintings with obvious narrative I now turn to abstract painting striving for a more intuitive narrative. The paintings contain shapes and lines that evoke the figurative but remain undefined proto-symbolic forms. I begin with the interplay of gestural forms then refine them to create solid compositions. I accept self imposed rudimentary rules and tools of discovery. Elements such as format and color palette become the boundaries of possibility, which I explore. Creating the excitement in the latitudes and vicissitudes working with leitmotifs and patterns, I entice the viewer to distinguish and interpret these primordial hieroglyphs.

Westy Caswell Copeland

I am a full-time artist living in Minneapolis. My family, (including three cats) and my New England roots, all serve as inspiration for the cast of characters that appear in my art. As I get older, the layers of meaning get thicker, the symbolism gets deeper, and the more joy I find in color and texture. . The world portrayed in my art is full of chaos and simplicity, containing both busy cities and solitary places, neither being fully realistic nor totally abstract. Like the well-known artist Chagall, I enjoy making the boundaries between reality and imagination fuzzy, using images and symbols borrowed from both worlds. My images contain many layers of history and meaning, which can be read in a rather archeological manner. I have no slick “artspeak” to explain why I do what I do. All I know is that I simply must paint. It gives me joy, and I hope it makes people smile. My art is a doorway between my own passions and the viewer’s interest and exploration.

Sarah Chicone

Six watercolor and ink sketches illustrate important remnants of the past. Three were painted while living in Rome in 2004 and three were painted in the present while residing in Minneapolis. Of the local images, the Red Tile Mill and the Stone Arch Bridge have become well known cultural icons, beckoning to the grain milling history of the city. The third image represents a piece of the much less captured Shoreham Yards Roundhouse. Painting is for me a process of uncovering the essence of a subject. Portals reveals utilitarian structures built neither by nor for today’s contemporary culture. Punctured apertures, tactile textures and brightly lit brick and stone invite introspection into societies that have heavily influenced who we are today.

Bill Colburn

This is what I see through the north window of my living room – Grand Avenue, Lyndale School, and the inside of my front porch. The image was simplified to these essential elements from an earlier graphite study. I currently only work with a large painting knife, which alters my control over every exact mark. It also allows me to enjoy the subtleties of paint in itself, as well as in service to the larger image. This painting is about the beauty of undulating paint and light, as well as a document of where I live.

Katelyn Farstad

I think one of the main underlying themes I try and convey in my art is a sense of wonderment and nostalgia for one’s childhood. Childhood: a time in your life when you had minimal responsibility, and you could be happy and free just using your imagination, hopping fences, getting dirty, and playing dress-up. I also strive to make art that takes people out of their comfort zone, and create imagery that is overloaded with pattern and color, and use grotesque or odd imagery to add a sense of humor. I often create works that have a central figure, with little or no background. This is because I feel that even though we are surround by millions of people, one of the greatest emotions I feel is isolation, and a lack of connection to others.

I create imagery drawn from my imagination, folk art, found imagery, and various textile designs. My personal beliefs are that there is no one right religion, sexual openness; love for family and friends, equality for all, and celebration of the individual, and all of our imperfections come through in my work. My body of work includes drawings, paintings, and photographs, and I try to integrate the three as often as possible. Process is a huge part of my work; because some of the patterns and textures I create take painstakingly long to do, and that process is meditative for me.

Mary Gibney

These paintings are the beginning of a series inspired by mugshot portraits. The arrested are defiant, abashed, teary-eyed, unrepentant. Their faces looking straight at the camera, in combination with the graphic element of the booking number, city, state & date on the plate in front of them are very appealing to me. As I paint them I wonder what crime they committed and how they came to be arrested. Some have descriptions of their violation – everything from drug addiction to vagrancy to leader of a boy gang of car thieves.

Jeffrey Farnam

I am photographing mobile homes and parks around Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

My interest in documenting mobile homes and parks was as result of a news story about a mobile home park in one of our close suburbs being zoned out of existence.

There are mobile home parks that were established in these suburbs when they were on the edge of the developed metro area. Now development has pushed far beyond these first ring suburbs and the land occupied by mobile home parks may present an opportunity for more profitable usage.

Mobile homes provide affordable for retired and working people with limited incomes. Developers looking for land and local governments seeking increased tax base may see mobile home parks as expendable.

I would like to preserve something of these unique homes and places.

Jane C. Gordon

Unfriendly Bloom
ceramic

In the last few years, I have developed work that explores human and natural qualities by combining shapes, colors, and textures reminiscent of plant life with my ideas of the human psyche. The themes I have touched on include vulnerability, support, uniqueness and individuality, community, reticence and solitude, openness and approachability, delicacy and strength.

Jack Hanson

I have always been a collector. Objects that are historically significant, aesthetically pleasing, and objects that show the evidence of man’s use and care are often the raw materials of my art works. Objects themselves may tell a story or evoke an emotional response, but put into the context of art they are more likely to be pondered, symbolized, and thought to be communicating. A broom screwed to the wall demands a different kind of attention than a broom leaning in the corner.

The silkscreen prints in this show are thematic still life arrangements assembled and recorded from objects I have collected. They are assembled with concern for formal art principles, not unlike traditional still-life arrangements of oranges and bottles. I hope the viewer considers the symbolic reference of the objects and is able to recognize that the works have narrative possibilities. However, like all art works, the viewer interprets the data through their own filters. Sometimes, kids, a rope is just something to tie it all together.

Timothy Haugen

My vintage inspired fine art toys recall daydreams from an idealistic childhood. A bygone era where fantastic stories of well-dressed animals entertain children before they fall asleep. These fantasies from children's literature, antique toys, and the theatre are some of the elements that influence my work.

Adam Jonas

Temporal and sensorial scenes generate degrees of encounter between multiple beings. Organ I contemplates how we view one another and ourselves relative to how we are viewed. A universal confrontation occurs between that which is soft, supple, and delicate and that which is rigid, piercing, and stoic. Vessel I questions notions of trust, vulnerability, and security through the quotidian event of rest. Participants are invited to alter the support they sit upon in proportion to their respective comfort level of absent structure.

Patrick J. Kinne

Untitled 

My inspiration tends to be the abandoned places and disused objects in the urban environment, with an eye especially cast towards rust and decay. With photography I tend to look for abstract beauty in places and things that are either forgotten and ignored or actively disliked by many people. I see the work as being engaged in trying to bring new life to old places and objects. I incorporate this interest into my painting by using what I think of as an industrial palette of such colors as stainless steel, metallic copper, red oxide, and quinacridone/nickel azo gold. Lately I have started bringing my painting and photography together by painting over archival digital prints of photos. My objective is two fold: to cover the world with rust and decay (which is aesthetically pleasing to me) and to make each print a unique art object. I love photography and it will always be the basis for what I do, but I cannot help but feel that digital photography is quickly challenging us, as artists, to do something more than straight photography because taking photos has become so easy.

Jessica Kitzman

Wedding Day 

After graduation in 2006 from the University of Iowa with a BFA in photography and minors in French and International Studies I moved to Minneapolis to serve a year with City of Lakes Americorps at Whittier Elementary School. The children at Whittier gave me a year of incredible enlightenment, and I am now pursuing graduate programs in art education. I believe a pedagogy of equality and social change can be significantly expanded with a greater emphasis on art education in public schools. As an artist I am interested in the ways identity is influenced by social forces. I constantly ask the question: Do people build society or does society build people? My artwork addresses the complexity of this dilemma by connecting seemingly innocent experiences in my youth to their various manifestations in my life today. “Barbie and Kendra Live Happily Ever After” presents the Barbie we all know as an icon of consumer culture...with one small change. This piece sheds new light on the plastic life of the American Ideal and poses the question, “Who really decides what a woman wants?”

David Luke

The Politics of Presentation #3
C-print
2003

Several years ago I underwent a shift from a concentration on cultural phenomenon to something more overtly political in nature. Though pieces prior to this shift alluded to something within a political landscape, they didn’t address them directly. One form this work takes on is specifically related to the historical and political uses of photography. I collect photographs from a variety of sources such as flea markets, the Internet, magazines and my own camera. Whether it is the political photo-op or a 1940’s wallet sized portrait, these images become the visual seeds for a project that I have already conceptually conceived. These pieces use a combination of digital manipulation and traditional darkroom techniques in order to expose and question the histories and political usage of certain types of imagery. Another common thematic device used is that of “the game”. I have utilized card games, chess, checkers and golf as vehicles to analyze global and corporate politics as well as U.S. involvement in these policies and situations. This work has, for the most part, consisted of sculptural installation and interactive digital media. Several of these pieces have been positioned publicly, whether it is in a courtyard or on the web, in an attempt to heighten accessibility and social relevance of art in times such as these.

Curt Lund

Curt Lund is a graphic designer, writer, spoken word performer, arts nonprofit marketing manager, found text collage artist, art museum tour guide... what all these things have in common is what he loves best: combining visual arts and the written word in new and interesting ways.

Norbert Marklin

Midway Fighter Woman #1 

I search for flowing movement, patterns that repeat, and undercurrents that subtly define a subject. I seek out shadows and reflections, contrasts and interesting compositional juxtapositions. Even in faces I look for the defining angle, the personality revealed, that glimmer of life looking back at me through my viewfinder.

Ellen Mueller

Your Turn Series: March 19
2007 

This series examines how people measure time. Inspiration came from the well-known Newsweek essay series, "My Turn," where readers write about significant personal events marking various points in their lives. Using these stories as measurements of time, the pieces illustrate potential covers for Newsweek (in contrast to covers currently determined by editors and marketing executives). In theory, these covers may more accurately measure a week of time than perhaps the many various images of our political leaders, etc. The specific essays are listed below under the date of creation. I encourage viewers to read them.

Sara Myren

Untitled 

Evolving into layers of life, my work, moving towards layering my images to create a visual sensory journey. Taking imagery to a level that is dreamlike and overflowing with fantasy.

reid olson

time and change are unavoidable. i am interested in how both show and are perceived. these works are about deterioration and watching things fall apart. in this process old things become new. they circle and don’t go away, only reform w/ a different brand of beauty and ugliness.

Rachel Orman

Snake Charmer 

I am an expressionist oil painter whose work explores the psychological world through the figure. The saturated blends of color and exaggerated movement of the subjects break open commonplace living into raw expression. I adore the shape and the ability the human body has to move, and the strength the human soul has to adapt and endure. I explore the differing consolations and needs of human beings, and our individual and collective connections to the world.

Lyz Preus

Untitled 

The most vivid memory of the day my Mother died is the pillow I cried on.

By creating objects that speak of comfort, and also feel comfortable, my work is filling the holes of grief and loss with playful forms and textures.

During sewing, by machine and hand, the connection is either gentle or forceful, creating a dichotomy of control and lack thereof. The forms either adapt to my manipulation, or reject it in certain areas, then morphing on their own.

Roberto Rivera

My artwork is a spontaneous combustion of raw expression; creativity and nothing else. It reflects my past and present state of the physical, mental and spiritual paths, which I have traveled and trek on. It is a reflection of my culture, my thoughts, my dreams, my loves, my fears and our world.

My vision and philosophy is to help create a peaceful world without oppression, poverty, tyranny, war or discrimination through the power of ART! We must investigate the truths and principles of being, of knowledge, and of our human conduct by uncovering the lies and manipulations of humanity.

It is my vision to create art that will not only evoke emotion and thought, but will open the eyes and ears of some of my viewers to the reality of the world in which we all share in hopes of fostering positive change for our future.

Suzanna N. Schlesinger

Stones, twigs, pebbles and leaves were building-blocks of the fanatical imaginary worlds I created as a child. Today, with an awareness of the long history of Jewish practice and belief and of the feminist tradition, these and other natural elements make up the visual language through which I explore the struggles of the here and now.

Stones and pebbles, moved and etched by passing water, help me explore the grief of my father's illness and death. Seedpods, crustaceans, muscles and veins, help me explore issues of sexual violence and recovery.

As I rework these natural forms, abstract and create them out of the organic and elemental tool of clay, I reconfigure and represent the individual struggle of life. The small scale of the ceramic sculptures is used to draw the viewer in, encouraging an active and engaged examination of each piece.

The duality of inner and outer, of dry and wet, colorless and vivid, depicts a multiplicity of existence. Through these juxtapositions, I ask the viewer to break beyond the outer shell, to explore the inner being as well as the outer, to move beyond the border, to discover the possibility of the unknown.

Jacob Seal

I create my clay creatures to have an inexpensive toy to use in case I get bored. Also, making small creatures lets me express my desire to have very tiny things. I have two continuous projects that are still in the making - one is a clay ship, which is capable of floating. Another is a guard tower, which I am working on.

Duane Thorpe

I prefer to paint outside quickly to capture the vitality of the subject rather than labor over details in the studio. I paint images with an accurate light and shade pattern and less precise colors with loose brush strokes that create movement within a strong composition. The intent of my paintings is to grab your attention to invoke a memory or stir an emotion.

Tonja Torgerson

ThinkGirl 

“Girls struggled with mixed messages. [..] Be honest, but don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. Be independent, but be nice. Be smart, but not so smart that you threaten boys.” –Mary Pipher, Reviving Ophelia

Growing up as a white girl on the edge of the White Earth Indian Reservation in rural Minnesota, I feel strongly shaped by the experiences of my childhood. My art is biographical; for example the print ThinkGirl was inspired by a childhood memory of my mother advising me to marry a rich man so my life could be easier than hers. Through printmaking I deal with the conflicts I have with my birthplace, as well as my understanding of its strong influence on my character. My work addresses adolescence, when I first became aware of the obstacles of my sex.

I am drawn to the wide scope of printmaking; it allows me to make dozens of political posters or tiny handmade treasures. The use of printmaking complements my work, as I am interested in examining the position of women in our current society and my own connections to femininity through the use of color, pattern, and craft. I borrow vintage images from the early 20th century because they are more accessible than contemporary images. I fear that society is so saturated with images of mass media that using more recent imagery would lack resignation. Although the messages in my art may be discomforting, the work remains inviting with my use of humor and child-like aesthetic.

Anita White

From 1975 to 1979 I found myself living on the small island of Inisheer off the west coast of Ireland. I lived alone in a thatched cottage that had once been the house of the storyteller. That guaranteed that by the time I left the small island 2 miles by 2 miles that I would have a story to tell... and so I do. While I was there I lived a simple life in my cottage with no running water or electricity. I wove belts for a living, painted, wrote and kept my coal fire lit. I also learned how to knit socks. The islanders were wise people who knew the ways of the sea and the wind by heart. I learned a lot from them and carry them in my heart, even though many years have passed. This cartoon graphic novel is an attempt to knit together the years through the vehical of memory and the fantasy of me at age 50 visiting myself at age 22. Oh the tales there are to tell back and forth across the years. I found this format intuitively and the tale was sparked by a visit to our primitive cabin in Wisconsin one weekend when I took my manual typewriter along. Therein I recalled my simple life of many years ago.

Wallace White

art dream name: Wallace Standing Rock White Feather

Art is like catching a dream, like a dream catcher.
The dream catcher also gets rid of the bad art.
Art is like a dream landscape.

Pastels can bring out the color and the form and the best in animal or insect life and people.

Christopher Williams

My current defining mediums are unlimited I consider myself an experimenting artist always ready to make the next discovery and to produce something new or make my arch on something out there that really speaks to me. The mediums that I’m currently using are painting, animation, illustration, screen-printing, and experimental music.

Most of my work reflects the extreme use of many layers upon layers while being chaotic the overall piece holds it’s meaning well. My energy is visible across all my mediums- mostly shown in my animations where my subconscious kicks in a rude sense of humor, horror and shock will get you standing up; frenzied into a parallel with chaos- but happily bringing you back home with an interesting message. Illustration with me is my more minimalist medium- I tend to never leave the house without at least one sketchbook and a handful of markers to entertain me and keep my wits sharp.

To draw and produce art work with my ideals means to gather the flow of energy from our environment and then to develop it (with whatever medium) from my subconscious thoughts, decisions, and feelings. After the gathering has started it’s time for the contours and feelings to emerge straight out of my mind, throw some color into the mix and then the canvas becomes a great explosion of the senses that just cant be stopped. Time becomes no obstacle, underlying messages of humanity and lines of good and evil are my driving force nothing can hinder my spirit.

The inspiration comes from the subconscious mind and the belief that the purpose of creation and beauty isn’t about how things are perfect. How being human making mistakes and living life separates us from the divine purity of God, or the static perfection of math and machines.

Inspiration is what makes me happy and my artwork inspires me to do more work, this isn't a phrase to live by but what I do makes me happy and that's why I pursue to make it better and not worse. The reason why I create is so that I can share beauty and hopefully send the viewer home with inspiration to pass on.

John Zimmerman

Local folk artist John Zimmerman is proud to present a mixed media interactive piece in the form of mini-collage work based on “Text Messaging” and “The Law of Attraction”.

So step up for some free advice and test your text skills.