Celebrating Local Art and Artists

VIVA Gallery’s monthly First Thursday artist reception will be held on July 2 and will feature the work of a number of local artists, celebrating the talents of the area and showing that “Buy Local” means buying beautiful, unusual, lasting and one-of-a-kind items.

Among those whose work will be on display are fiber artists Elin Haessley of Soldiers Grove, who will bring woven window wall hangings, and Susan Johnson, a master weaver and owner of Avalanche Looms near Viroqua.  Blacksmith/artist Nick Smolen of Westby will bring his forged metal cattails, a wonderfully decorative addition to any home.  The whimsical sculptures that are a trademark of Seneca’s Hans Gill will delight young and old.  Jaali Parrish, a talented young artist from Viroqua, will offer her stuffed soft sculptures.  The ceramic sculptures of Ira Slatter and Ellen Reyher, both of La Farge, will be available, as will wooden spoons and buttons by Terry Beck.  Finally, the oil paintings of Gays Mills artist Christine Myhr and the watercolor paintings of Viroqua artist Diane Splinter are waiting to adorn your walls. 

Nick Smolen, Hans Gill

Jaali Parrish

Ellen Reyher, Ira Slatter

Elin Haessly

Susan Johnson

Christine Myhr

Terry Beck

Drifless Area Art Festival Peoples Choice - Painter, Hannah Heyer

Hannah Heyer is VIVA Guest Artist

VIVA Gallery’s monthly First Thursday artist reception will be held on June 4 and will feature the paintings of Hannah Heyer. The gallery sponsors the People’s Choice Award at the Driftless Area Art Festival, and Hannah was the winner of the award at last year’s festival. She has provided the art for the festival’s 2015 poster.

Hannah is a self-taught artist who lives and works in rural southeastern Minnesota. Primarily in oil or watercolor, her work is a study of place, time and season. She loves the place where she lives—as familiar as the back of her hand, yet never the same two days in a row. Hannah enjoys the challenge of plein air painting, and the way it encourages taking a closer look to more fully take in what might otherwise go unnoticed. She tries to capture the beauty she sees in the sun shining through the trees, in the mist that rises out of the valleys after a rain, in the clouds that pile in the west, in the simple, everyday blessings, in faces and events subtle and breathtaking.

Hannah’s paintings, along with the works of member artists, will be featured at VIVA’s First Thursday reception on June 4 from 5:00pm to 7:00pm. The gallery is located at 217 South Main Street in Viroqua. For more information about this and future First Thursday events, contact the gallery at 608-637-6918 or info@vivagallery.net.

The Rooted Spoon bar will be open during the VIVA open house and VIVA members will provide hors d’oeuvres. Rooted Spoon regrets that for the first time since they began First Thursday dinners three and a half years ago, they will be unable to provide a dinner on June 4. Dani Lind and her crew will be catering the Midwest Women's Herbal Conference near Stevens Point (their biggest job ever—four days of meals for 300 attendees). Rooted Spoon will be back in action for the July First Thursday dinner. 

Guest Artist Fran Knapp in May

VIVA Gallery’s monthly First Thursday artist reception will be held on May 7 and will feature the relief and intaglio prints of Viroqua artist Fran Knapp. A true child of nature, Fran spent most of her youth outdoors, roaming the hills and valleys and exploring the creeks close to her home in the Driftless Area. Her return to the area inspired the series of prints on exhibit, an homage to her childhood wanderings and observations. The collection, says Fran, “breaks down the separation between humans and other creatures of nature in a dreamlike narrative, and encourages us to recognize the positive characteristics of the animal world in our own beings.”

Fran was born and raised on a farm outside LaFarge, and attended Pleasant Ridge Waldorf School and Youth Initiative High School. She continued her art studies at the University of Minnesota Morris and completed her BA in Art at the University of Southern Oregon in Ashland. Her emphasis was on printmaking. After graduation, Fran moved to Portland where she worked as an art instructor for adults with developmental disabilities. She returned to the Driftless Area in 2014.

Karen Fitzsimons Featured Artist in April

My Dance with a Paintbrush Karen Fitzsimons
“So You Think You Can Dance”​is a popular T.V. show where very young talented dancers come before a panel of judges to be critiqued. These young dancers have put their whole heart and souls into every movement. They have committed hours and hours of hard work, discipline and passion to go before this panel. Many times after all their hard work they are told “You did very well, but you have to go deeper” and then they are told again to “Go even deeper.”
I believe that each of us has a divine seed asking us to go deeper and then even deeper. This seed waits patiently for us to notice and if we do, little by little it will keep showing up in our lives. If we really pay attention it will start to grow and eventually, with discipline and passion, it will burst open.
My seed is painting and that seed has always been with me. Even though I have been painting my whole life, it is only recently that I can say: “I am a Painter.” It has taken me years to develop my skills and to gain the confidence to say: “I AM A PAINTER.” The paintings guide me now. They are almost always inspired by nature. My morning run on a rural road has been my greatest teacher. Everyday there is a new painting. Each season stretches me to see things differently and to learn to use a new color palette.
The influence of those young dancers stays with me. They have taught me to dance with a paintbrush.
In this very busy world, it is my hope that the viewers of my work slow down for just a moment to feel my experience in nature. What a gift we have with this beautiful landscape that surrounds us all.

Mike Lind Guest Artist in March

Mike Lind was born and raised in Wisconsin. He attended the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting in 2000. After graduating college, Mike lived in and traveled around Europe and found himself working on an organic vegetable farm in the mountains of southern Spain. It was there that he discovered his passion for growing vegetables, setting off a 14 year journey on farms from Wales to Costa Rica, Washington State, and eventually returning to Wisconsin.  Mike now co-owns Driftless Organics, a 50-acre vegetable farm near Soldiers Grove and raises grass fed cattle on his own farm, where he lives with his wife Dani and their 2 border collies/ kayaking partners, Mattie and Lucy. When he's not farming or floating down a river, Mike spends his time painting in the upstairs studio of their old farm house.  In his acrylic paintings Mike seeks to explore the relationship between the topographical landscapes of the Driftless region and the flora and fauna (both natural and farmed) that inhabit these landscapes. His current body of work chronicles the rivers that he, his wife Dani and their 2 dogs paddled down (and sometimes up) in the summer of 2014.

Mister Koppa

Art is the evidence of creative activity.

The activity evidenced in my collages is an exercise in sorting, organizing, and composing. First, I select a few “sets” of images, each set from a specific source (all of which may or may not have any obvious relationship to one another). Then I challenge myself to create a series of related, aesthetically balanced, intriguing, and, at best, amusing compositions. The resulting collages include relationships between color, shape, line, perspective, scale, movement, and often the direction of a gaze. For some, a collage is simply fun to look at, but for those who like to make sense of things, these strange arrangements generate yet another creative challenge: interpretation. There are no wrong answers, nor are there any right answers.

I was born in Milwaukee (January 28, 1969, 5:30 a.m.) and enjoyed working in my family’s grocery store during my teenage years on Milwaukee’s East Side. After receiving a B.S. in Art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1991, I returned to manage the grocery store throughout my 20s. The most important thing I learned at the grocery store, and in school, is that there are opportunities for creative arrangements everywhere we look. By taking time to compose these arrangements, we force ourselves to think creatively about relationships between things. The resulting composition is an artifact, and, whether temporary or permanent, can be an impetus for thoughtful amusement in the minds of those who witness it. I put this knowledge to practice in daily life—in my work and in my play—and it always seems to have a positive impact on the world around me. Creative behavior is contagious and fun. I can’t pinpoint how I caught it, but I hope I can give it to you.

8 x 8 Art SQuared January 2015

                                                                      VIVA Gallery – Art SQuared

A new show, “Art Squared,” features the work of member artists in a unique format.  Each artist has created

a piece on an 8” x 8” wrapped canvas, and these will be displayed in a grid as one large body of work. 

Each artist has been given complete freedom to create a work of their own chosen subject and in their own medium.  Printmaker and ceramic artist Mark Herrling has created a 3D piece called “Star System” using stoneware, metallic acrylics and horse shoe nails.  Painter Liz Quebe offers “Five Below”, one of her signature cows wreathed in an icy cloud of breath.  Photographer Jerry Quebe offers an image of a drift fence buffeted by winter snow.  Jeweler and glass artist M’lou Wilkie will have a glass and tile mosaic on display, and Diane Dahl’s assemblage, “Layered Landscape” is a collage composed of copper mesh, beads and fiber overlaid on a photograph taken at the Neceda Wildlife Refuge. 

Daniel Gilbertson has applied a tooled leather piece of climbing roses on a lattice filigree to the canvas, while weaver Angela Feltes will incorporate fiber into one of her photographs that has been transferred onto the canvas. Painter Anne Tedeschi has chosen a warm subject, a watercolor of a crackling log fire, and Christine Larson’s vibrant red Pegasus is a sure antidote to January cold.