Chad Nelson
Moonrise
handmade watercolor, 2007

“Moonrise” started with my son and me sitting on the walkway in front of our house testing rocks to see if they leave marks on the concrete. When I was a kid we called these chalk rocks. We found a variety of colors and I began to wonder if I could make paint or stain out of the rocks. We began to crush the rocks and add them to a water solution. After doing some research and perfecting the refining process, I discovered one could very easily make watercolor paint from these rocks. After adding only gum Arabic and a touch of corn syrup, we were able to make stable and very usable paint that demonstrates beautiful granulation effects.

While painting “Moonrise,” I tried to see through the eyes of a Stone Age artist; painting the things that would be important during that age. The full moon is also an important keeper of time, a reminder of stability and predictability in a chaotic hostile world.

Julie Niskanen
Pine Cones II
mezzotint, 2008

The natural forms that permeate our world too often become background patterns in our hectic lives. For the most part, people no longer feel the wonder of the complexities and intricacies seen in forms such as a single seedpod. All too often one walks by a scene or object without noticing it. Many people go through a day or lifetime ignoring the small beauties and ideas around them. What happens when we slow down to truly notice and examine what is around us? Examining these organic forms allows me to reflect on the human disregard for so many things, while also reflecting on and bringing forth these rhythms of nature that are often unnoticed in our lives. The images I work with address this issue and elucidate the beauty I find within these natural forms.

Transformation is an underlying theme in these works, as I am constantly working through my own transformative journey. The subtle changes and cycles in nature are often unnoticed, and I work to bring attention and give power to them, as meaning can be found in the smallest things. In the course of exploring my connection with natural forms, I imbue them with my own feelings and experiences. For me, these prints are reliquaries – containers for powerful forms and ideas.  By altering the scale, space, and context of these forms, I work to free them from their concrete cognitive associations and augment interpretations of the forms. These forms become signifiers the viewer can associate with a range of ideas from their own personal experiences. The printmaking processes I use give me an invaluable vocabulary of marks that feeds my thoughts and work. The process of creating each plate parallels the history of the forms, images, and their metaphors. Through using mezzotint and various etching techniques, I am able to achieve a wide range of tones and textures to complement the images and ideas.

Phyllis Packard
Missouri River March
fibers, 2007

My imagery is primarily landscape interjected with seascape and mindscape. I live and weave on a bluff over looking the Missouri River Valley where at every moment the light and colors provide a display at times soft and subtle and other times violent with storms. I grew up near Cape Cod and memories of the sea will forever invade my work. The river valley and the prairie have become my ocean.

I have worked as a fiber artist since my study and graduation with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Syracuse University in 1967/8. Through the years life has provided many challenges and changes including leaving teaching art to work in environmental programs. For the past 20 years I have worked with landfills and recycling. The environment is extremely important in my life and work and in my art I see landscapes as a metaphor for human existence. In each of our lives there are storms and winds, moments of shining brilliance, days of darkness and a desire for peace. The interwoven thread variations of texture, sheen, and color allow me to create windows through which you may view an ever changing vista. I use a multi-harness loom and shuttles, ancient tools, to combine warp and weft in a mix of tapestry, pattern, and plain weave. Writers throughout history have borrowed words from the weaver to describe life. I am a weaver describing life through weaving.

Dean Pearson
Prairie House
photography printed on canvas paper, 2007

I found this old house in north-eastern South Dakota several years before this image was taken. I knew that given the correct lighting and weather, it would make for a wonderful image. Each time I returned the light was not correct, either too many clouds and rain, or no clouds and sunshine. This morning the weather finally cooperated where I had transitional light, going from good to bad weather.

The image reminds me of what life would be like around the turn of the century for the early farmers on the exposed plains were weather could be your friend and ally or a formidable foe.

Technical Data: Canon 20D camera, Canon 17-40 F/4.0L lens, Cokin
2 stop graduated neutral density filter printed on Epson Canvas Paper.

Larry Piersol
Siberian Iris
oil, oil pastel with acrylic under
painting, 2007

My wife gave me a Siberian Iris as I love them. I think they are beautiful and sensuous. Despite my inattention, they have flourished at the farm. Toward the end of summer, only two remained. All others had been blue but these were white. I plucked them, walked to my studio and painted them.

Jim Pollock
Palisades State Park
water color, 2007

Jim Pollock says capturing the essence of the Dakota landscape with watercolors is challenging and fun. This painting was done on location at Palisades State Park located east of Sioux Falls.

Gerry Punt
Untitled
salt fired ceramic, 2006

As members of society we tend to develop a collective preconception. This often impairs our personal vision and prejudices our sense of beauty. My experience making objects started out by spending 10 years developing the skills to create those preconceptions. The next 20 years have been spent in a process of continually trying to redefine my idea of visual perfection, and to share those perceptual changes with the community. For me the act of creation exposes the questions that give life its purpose. As an educator I try to provide an environment that is dripping with those questions.

Stephen Randall
Minerva’s Table
Minerva’s Planter
watercolor, 2007

While a great deal of ‘plein air’ art is oriented to ‘scenic wonders’ or rural landscapes, and I also appreciate the many opportunities South Dakota offers to paint such things, I intend to work at and learn from the people, forms and places that are distinctly South Dakota ‘urban landscapes’ – downtown, uptown, and suburban.

TJ Reardon
Wickaninnish Sunset
oil, 2008

The tide was out; the waves were crashing on the shore buffeted by northwest October winds. The anticipated sunset was everything we hoped it would be. As the flaming orange ball sank well below the horizon, we watched the kaleidoscope of colors projected on the screen of the sky. We gathered our equipment and began walking back to the hotel. It was nearly dark. All of a sudden the most spectacular display of deep pink colors reflected on the clouds above. It was breathtaking – two vastly different sunsets in the same evening. This painting is my recollection of our final moments on the beach.

John Rychtarik
Missouri River Blues
acrylic on canvas, 2008

I grew up along the Missouri River and saw the beautiful natural shorelines flooded due to the construction of dams. Today we have unnatural shorelines conforming to man’s drive for perfectionism. That is why I call this painting “Missouri River Blues.”

Shannon Sargent
Hobgoblin
mixed media, 2007

I am currently working on two installations.  A collaborative installation with John Bowitz, Chair of the Morningside College art department, that is titled Residual Images: A Collaborative Installation.  This installation is a record of a visual communication between two artists that has been exhibited at Morningside College, Northwestern College, and in May at the University of South Dakota.  The other installation, Recycled Images: An Installation, is the recycling of images and concepts from the past few years.  In conjunction with Residual Images, this installation will be exhibited in May at the University of South Dakota.  The Hobgoblin is a mixed media painting which led to this new approach and the development of these two installations.

My struggles with the human condition are the premise behind my installations.  I create visually stimulating environments that engage the viewer in this search for understanding.  These environments activate the space utilizing a mixed media/material method that implements many processes.       

Paul Schiller
Stormy Path
photography, 2008

Nothing captures your attention like an approaching massive thunderstorm crossing the vast prairie of South Dakota.  In most cases it is pure luck to come across something this dynamic.  But, when you ride with the KELO storm-chasing team, the occurrences happen more often than not. This image was captured last June just south of Murdo and the storm then raced across the entire state that night.

(The image was captured with a special Hasselblad Xpan Panoramic Camera using Fuji Velvia film (yes they still make film!). The film was scanned and the image was output onto a radiant watercolor paper—Giclee.

My wife, Koni, represents me throughout the country.  Locally, Rehfelds and Piper Galleries represent our work.  Currently I’m working on a joint show with Julie and Jerry Punt at the Center for Western Studies Gallery this fall entitled “South Dakota…the Beautiful”.

Terri Schuver
Untitled
treated metal and fibers, 2008

David Sieh
Golden Fields
acrylic, 2008

My abstract and mixed media works are an inner search for a visual truth. Atomize drawing is a release of something we already know, and is expressed without prejudice of forethought.

Gary Siska
Ruffled Bowl
raku, 2006
There is something extraordinary about the feel of clay as you squeeze it through your fingers and it oozes out the sides. If you’ve ever made mud pies as a child you know exactly what I mean. It’s a consuming process. Once started, you can’t stop until your completely finished or totally covered in clay.

As a result, my work is an effort to discover the nature of clay and to define volume, shape and space. I rely heavily upon the use of line and texture to encourage the viewer to explore the piece. It should be considered an invitation to see and touch. Consequently, the vessel’s finished surface and physical characteristics are essential ingredients in its creation. 

Tim Steele
The Highmore Effect
encaustic on paper, 2007

My painting for this exhibition is an encaustic work on paper. Encaustic is the process of painting with molten wax and pigments that are fused together with heat and applied to the painting surface. The first encaustic paintings are known to date from the 1st Century C.E. when artists painted portraits and scenes of mythology on panels. Encaustic was also used for the coloring of marble, terra cotta and work on ivory for coloring the incised lines. After being applied to the surface, encaustic does not need to dry it needs to cool. Once its surface has cooled, encaustic paint presents permanent lustrous enamel like finish.

The Highmore Effect, is from a series of works that explore the ground sky phenomenon often experienced on the South Dakota prairie. It is particularly evident when traveling over flat stretches of landscape where one may experience the illusion of the background rising up to meet the foreground. Encaustic allows me to add small found graphic elements to the composition incise the surface and build up rich layers of color.

Mark Stemwedel
Soap Bar I
oil paint on canvas panel, 2008

Still life painting has long been a focus of my work. I paint still lifes because of their obvious connection to reality and their very presence before me. The intriguing ability of the inanimate objects to elicit both formal and reflective responses constantly invigorates my creative interest. Expressing a deeper understanding of my experience and its fleeting nature through the materiality of the world that I live in is the basis of my inquiry. The ability to express or communicate these ideas through an inanimate object intrigues me.

There is an immediate recognition of a more significant understanding of reality that is conveyed through still life painting. It has a sense of stripping the object bare of its pretense in order to see and experience it more clearly. It is the metaphysical presence and materiality of these objects that express, at a certain level, how we understand and experience the realness in the world, all the while highlighting our existential connection to this world as conscious beings.

Signe Stuart
Stanze
acrylic on pounded paper, 1998

Most of Stuart’s work appears simple, and almost spare. However the viewer soon discovers that the artist’s refined palette, elegant lines and subtle modulations of color result in paintings that are a distillation of both the visible world and the unseen realms of the spirit. And every viewing yields another level of meaning, a heightened awareness, or an altered perception.

My paintings are visual meditations on the dynamics of nature; the interplay between the physical and psychic. These Images have the power to transform consciousness.

Dave Tunge
Queen of the Falls
photography, 2007

As a kid growing up in Sioux Falls, I have fond memories of the many hours my buddies and I spent fishing at the falls and exploring the old building structures of the Queen Bee Mill. What a difference 50 plus years have made to Sioux Falls’ namesake…. the old Mill foundation still stands but is now inaccessible to barefoot kids with fishin’ poles.

This early morning aerial view shows the obvious pride taken in restoring this area of Sioux Falls… with the old “Queen of the Falls” still standing guard.

Jo Vander-Woude
Time Well Spent
pastel, 2008

What brings us joy? Certainly art, literature and music represented in this pastel painting would be included in the list. The arcs in the background represent time; things that are cyclical such as the hours on the clock and the earth’s rotation which cause our day/night cycles and our seasons. The arc bisecting the painting illustrates an acute awareness of time while the ones in the background represent time passing without much thought on our part. In addition, many of my works are painted in separate sections then matted and framed as one piece giving the impression of either looking in or out of a window. My paintings that include abstract elements have been well received and make them more meaningful to their owners.

Time Well Spent reflects the direction my art has taken me this past year; a journey I plan to continue to explore.

Joshua Watts
Catharsis Considers the Grand Machine
gum dichromate, drawing on birch, 2006

The gathering of meaning is an idea that permeates all of my work, both in concept and execution. The imagery I use is inspired by historical customs, beliefs, and mythologies, which are still ingrained in us today and remain a significant part of our lives and culture. I explore the recurring archetypes presented in various world mythologies by personalizing the narrative using my own collection of experiences as a resource to draw upon. Although drawing from many sources for inspiration and ideas when creating my pieces, my reflections of our collective unconscious do not try to simply illustrate stories that are already told.

As a piece progresses, it is constantly reinterpreted although the initial ideas and inspirations remain present; the work begins to take on a meaning of its own, which becomes more important and relevant than the original concept. I record this growth by utilizing a pliant surface in which there is always the possibility of change. The use of a wood substrate allows me to add (paint, draw, print, collage, sew) and subtract (sand, carve, drill) freely in response to creative impulses. Text, symbols, objects, icons and marks interact with the figures and subjects in my work to create a layering of valences and possibilities within the picture plane. This responsive layering creates the energy that drives my work and allows the play necessary to the creative process.

Although the themes and concepts presented in my work have a foundation within historical mythologies, they become an entity which is distinct from the initial source. Each work is intended as a complete and unique idea, allowing the viewer to ask questions and draw conclusions from the imagery I present. This search for meaning is essential for my artwork to function effectively in the public sphere and acts as an impetus for the dialogue between viewers and my work. The narrative that develops as the creative process for each piece unfolds culminates in a finished work of art that is the result of countless decisions and possibilities, all of which leave a residue of meaning in the final product.