2024 Grantees
Lisa Truax
For her project, Lisa will create wall-based, abstract ceramic work based on the concepts of the Biophilia hypothesis, environmental psychology, geology, and mapping, with a focus on individual relationships with local natural environments. This new work continues the modular format of her past work but will increase in complexity by using layering, newly developed glazes, and locally sourced materials.
The resources of the project space grant will allow her to focus on creating a new and cohesive body of work, exploring her concepts through a lens of individual relationships and interactions with locally experienced natural environments. Lisa has always wanted to explore creating more intricate and layered installations but has not had the time and resources available. Usually, Lisa would not know where her work is to be exhibited as she creates, which has been limiting. With the resources and space provided by the grant, Lisa will have something to work toward, allowing her to devote full time to the artwork as her main source of inspiration. Developing a more complex body of work with the support will help her achieve a more focused goal.
Lisa is a ceramic artist who has exhibited regionally and nationally in group and solo exhibitions, including at Site: Brooklyn, Northern Clay Center, and the American Swedish Institute. She was an Artist in Residence at Isle Royale National Park in 2022 and has worked in the collections of hospital facilities in Michigan, Nevada, and Georgia. Lisa received her Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics from Michigan State University and her Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art and Graphic Design from Carthage College.
Kolman & Reeb Gallery will host Lisa’s Project Space exhibition January 11 through March 1, 2025.
Andrew Wykes
Andrew’s work derives from Minnesota and Ireland’s landscapes, but he works from both the studio and on scene. Andrew’s work is seen as abstract in its formal understanding of composition and space; however, figuration is seen at first glance. Andrew is interested in combining abstract values with radical ideas about landscape.
With his Project Space Grant, Andrew intends to capture an extreme viewpoint by using a drone to make footage from above. He will then synthesize these aerial vantage points with traditional views from below to present a scene. Curious about scale and space, Andrew is interested in collapsing multiple views together. He aims to move towards a new, diverging development in his work. With the ariel photograph in viewpoints from above, both selected urban and rural views, the collected images would be the basis of new semi-abstract paintings.
Andrew Wykes was born in the UK, just outside of London. He studied at Richmond upon Thames College and Epsom School of Art and Design, where he received his undergraduate qualifications in fine art. Andrew’s graduate studies were completed at the American University in Washington, DC, where he received his MFA in painting. Andrew has taught art for forty years in schools and universities in the UK, Belgium, and the US. He has shown his work in solo shows nationally and internationally, including in London and New York.
Kolman & Reeb Gallery will host Andrew’s Project Space exhibition March 8 through May 3, 2025.
Regan Golden
With her Project Space Grant, “Learning from Roses,” Regan will create collages made from cut paper, gouache, and photographs based on roses at the Lyndale Rose Garden in Minneapolis. To better understand the complex botanical history and rich symbolism of roses, Golden will learn the history and cross-cultural significance of the species, capturing photographs along the way.
Since 2015 Golden’s artwork has focused on native prairie plants that retain their original structure and appearance. Using resources from the grant will allow her to shift the focus to roses, seeing this as a collaboration between humans and plants. Roses have been selected and altered based on human definitions of beauty, yet still retain their thorns! Golden sees that roses have a lot to teach us about how to be resilient, adaptable, and open to the world around us. What she has learned about the world from roses will be communicated in her collages.
Golden’s artwork has been exhibited in solo and group shows both nationally and internationally. As an artist and writer, Golden’s recent publications include, “Seeing Plants: Vision and Botany in Contemporary Art” in MnArtists/Walker Art Center Magazine and “Collage as a Way of Living” in March International Journal. Regan Golden is the Interim Chair of Fine Arts and an Assistant Professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Golden is an avid gardener and member of the District 12 Land Use Planning Committee, which works to create sustainable development and green space in one of the fastest-growing urban centers in the nation.
Kolman & Reeb Gallery will host Regan’s Project Space exhibition July 26 through September 20, 2025.
2023 Grantees
Cheryl LeClair-Sommer
Cheryl LeClair-Sommer’s Project Space Exhibition, Scents to Scenes, showcases landscape paintings created exclusively for this show. A plein air artist Cheryl pairs visual and olfactory stimuli to whisk us off to those romantic little hideaways of Minnesota. By pairing essential oils with her expertly painted landscapes, Cheryl hopes to deeply immerse the viewer into the scene and encompass the entirety of the artist’s experience.
With the resources provided by a Kolman & Reeb Gallery Project Space Grant, Cheryl used fragrance as a catalyst to search for locations that embodied the properties of those scents. This allowed for the characteristics of each perfume to inspire the mood and help predict the color palette of the work. Scents to Scenes features paintings paired with the corresponding scent, in hopes that the viewer will deeply connect to the location and atmosphere depicted. Gallery patrons have the opportunity to sample the scents associated with each painting to fully appreciate the experience.
As an example of her concept for the show, in her painting, A Promise of Renewal, Cheryl set out to visually capture a scene encompassing fragrance notes of both intensely warm and deeply cool. To accomplish this, in early spring, she searched for a place where the winter snow was stubborn to melt. In her skilled and masterful technique, Cheryl captured a warm breeze as it swept down the hillside. The intense sun caressed the remnants of winter, snowmelt trickling from beneath; from this came the rich odors of mossy decay as it blended with the light grassy aroma of new life.
Cheryl lives and works in a suburb of St. Paul. To create her plein air paintings she travels throughout Minnesota, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and the Tahoe, California area. Cheryl has been recognized for her paintings with artwork regularly juried into national exhibits, awards at outdoor painting competitions, a Master Circle award from the International Association of Pastel Societies, an award of a two-week residency, and a feature on the television show MN Original in 2011.
Kolman & Reeb Gallery hosted Cheryl’s Project Space exhibition February 10 through March 23, 2024.
Carolyn Halliday
Embracing the sometimes denigrated term, “fiber artist”, Carolyn Halliday’s art is grounded in the use of textiles. Knitting wire is a favorite material and technique. Deeply connected to nature and influenced by two biologists/ecologists in her family, Carolyn’s work references the natural world and our environment.
Drawing inspiration from the clarity and intensity of the blue skies and the majesty of vividly colorful sunsets over Minneapolis, textile artist Carolyn’s Project Space Exhibition, Making Climate Change Visible, points to a time when the presence of climate change was noticeably minimalized.
Taking advantage of the resources provided by a Kolman & Reeb Gallery Project Space Grant has allowed Carolyn to experiment at a grand scale. In her site-specific installations, she uses knitted wire to characterize a vibrant sky brought on by the apparent transformation of three important moments in recent history.
Drawn from her experiences during the global pandemic lockdown of COVID-19, Carolyn hopes to summon gallery patrons’ awareness of the increased clarity of the sky because of reduced commuter traffic. Something that, sadly, is no longer visible with the return of ordinary commerce. Secondly, Carolyn’s work will remind us of the smokey grey horizon we endured during the summer of 2023 caused by rampant forest fires. An annoyance, the smoke was an ever-present reminder of our burdened environment. Finally, Carolyn asks us to consider the startling and colorful orange, red, and pink sunsets, made intensely more beautiful by the presence of heavy particulates that cause air pollution.
Carolyn thinks of herself as a materialist. Driven by process, she uses visually intriguing materials that are malleable enough to knit and then emphasizes the elements with needlework techniques to communicate her artistic concerns.
Carolyn hopes viewers respond to the elements of color and the tactile essence of her knit work, reminding them of the reality of the negative impact we all have on our environment, and the positive shifts that are possible based on recent experience
Carolyn has been showing her work for over two decades both nationally and internationally. Her work is in the collection of the Minnesota Historical Society and in the Weisman Art Museum. In spring of 2014, she was the featured visual artist for an episode of Twin Cities Public Television’s production of Minnesota Original. And she was one of the showcased artists in the 2006 TPT production of the Textile Center’s Artwear in Motion Runway Show.
Carolyn has also has earned a variety of awards. She was a 2013 fiscal year recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. In 2015 she was appointed the first member and Chair of the National Artists Advisory Council for the Textile Center: A National Center for Fiber Art in Minneapolis. In 2020 she received the Textile Center’s Spun Gold Award for a lifetime commitment to textile art and to the Textile Center.
Carolyn is a featured artist in the books: Sculpture, Artistry in Fiber, Volume 2, The Language of Making, Visual Voices from the Textile Study Group of New York, Knitting Art: 150 Innovative Works from 18 Contemporary Artists, and How to Be a Feminist Artist: Investigations from the Women’s Art Institute. Her work has also appeared in Surface Design Journal, Interweave Knits, and Jacquard, a publication of the Fondazione Arte della Seta Lisio in Italy.
Kolman & Reeb Gallery hosted Carolyn’s Project Space exhibition March 30 through May 11, 2024.
Kate Casanova
Kate Casanova, a multimedia sculptor, has long been fascinated with the paradoxical relationship we have with our bodies. We know our bodies intimately and yet they are utterly mysterious. Even as science explains more and more about how we function, these processes remain largely invisible inside oneself. Kate used her Project Space Grant to create an exhibition, Foreign Bodies, of abstract sculptures using glass blowing, a new medium for her, to she explore recurring themes of bodies and their environments.
Hanging daringly over the gallery or displayed on custom-made tables and shelves, Kate’s exhibition explores bodies and the foreign materials, such as clothing and skin piercings, that inhabit them. With a focus on organic shapes, Kate combines glass pieces with various metals, silicone, and bioplastic. She wants viewers to see her sculptures as strange yet somehow familiar.
Initially attracted to the fluidity and translucency of glass, Kate saw blown glass as the perfect medium to further explore recurring themes of bodily transformation and change. By incorporating glass with disparate materials that push and pull against each other, for example, a glass bubble blown into a copper net, which constrains and distorts the original glass shape, the sculptures imply that humans are biological entities that form, and are formed by, the material world.
Kate is an interdisciplinary artist who explores the post human through sculpture and video. Exhibited nationally and internationally, Kate’s past venues include the Black Cube Nomadic Museum (Denver), the Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis), and Doug Aitken’s Station to Station, an exhibition that traveled by train from New York to California. Kate is represented by Yi Gallery (Brooklyn) and Myta Sayo Gallery (Toronto). She received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Minnesota in 2013 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2008. She serves as Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the University of Denver.
Kolman & Reeb Gallery hosted Kate’s Project Space exhibition June 15 through August 3, 2024.
Holly Streekstra
A conceptual artist, Holly Streekstra works with multiple modes and forms of expression to investigate our subjective inner states, our relationship with wonder, and our desire for mystery and enchantment. In her work, created exclusively for her Project Space Grant exhibition, Interpreting the Invisible Universe, she uses encaustic paint, photograms, and photo-based collages to investigate and explore images of deep space.
Holly wanted to move her primary focus from the conceptual art she’s so well known for to more traditional, two-dimensional works that balance high-quality, idea-driven art with greater accessibility to art patrons. The pieces she created have a nice balance between an abstract use of color and form mixed with keenly representational images. The result is beautiful and collectible artworks.
For her exhibition, Holly used the publicly owned photographs captured by the James Webb Space Telescope as reference material. While studying the images for her show, Holly learned how astronomical telescopes capture images in the infrared, ultraviolet, X-rays, and radio wavelengths. While they provide valuable information about space objects, these wavelengths are not visible to the human eye. To construct the colorful photographs we see from space, scientists re-interpret this data, assigning colors to the various wavelengths through a process known as “false-color imaging” or “color mapping.” This technique highlights specific features and details that are otherwise invisible. This process is done primarily to make the scientific data accessible and engaging for the public.
Realizing how these wildly colorful, unbelievably beautiful space clouds are formulated through human interpretation, Holly was eager to expose the underlying truth.
To create her work for Interpreting the Invisible Universe, Holly uses these color-mapped images as a reference to form her own, unique interpretations of the data. She highlights the methods used to question the truth of the photos. She also intends to reveal our capacity to suspend disbelief as we gaze upon these depictions in unquestioning wonder and awe with little concern for accuracy or truth.
Holly, based in Minneapolis, is a versatile artist working with video, sound, movement, installation, image, and object making. Her work has been showcased at venues like SooVAC, Minnesota Museum of American Art, Minneapolis St Paul International Film Festival, and Franconia Sculpture Park in Minnesota, as well as the Invisible Dog (Brooklyn) and Good Children Gallery (New Orleans). Holly was a 2016 Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist Fellow and a 2013 Fulbright Teaching Scholar in Hungary. She holds a BFA from the University of Minnesota and an MFA from Louisiana State University.
Kolman & Reeb Gallery hosted Holly’s Project Space exhibition August 10 through September 7, 2024.
Annie Hejny
Acknowledging that all humans are bodies of water and are connected by water, is the primary message of abstract painter, Annie Hejny’s artistic practice. She creates textured acrylic paintings with respectfully collected water and sediment from significant freshwater sources. Each of her paintings is a call to tell the water stories in our communities.
With her Project Space grant, Annie will create a multimedia exhibition of paintings, video, audio, and storytelling that celebrates water and inspires climate consciousness. Annie will begin this project by researching and traveling the circumference of Lake Superior, documenting through video the natural landscapes while collecting water and sediment to create six large-scale, site-specific paintings. Culminating with an exhibition at Kolman & Reeb Gallery wherein abstracted videography is projected among the paintings, viewers will be transported to the shorelines of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ontario, while a written storytelling component depicting Annie’s travels will strengthen the narrative and sense of place.
Annie has exhibited in numerous regional venues such as the Katherine Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota, University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota; Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona, Minnesota; and Chicago’s salonlb Gallery. Her artwork is held in many private and public art collections including the Minnesota Museum of American Art, Minnesota Vikings Art Collection, Target Corporation, Hilton Corporation, and Minnesota Marine Art Museum.
She was an artist-in-residence with Lanesboro Arts in Lanesboro, Minnesota; the Science Museum of Minnesota Pine Needles Residency, Grand Marais Art Colony in Grand Marais, Minnesota; and the Anderson Center at Tower View, Minnesota. Annie has also been a recipient of the Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. She is a certified Nature and Forest Therapy Guide, and for 2023 will become a certified Minnesota Water Steward with the Freshwater and the Mississippi Watershed Management Organization.
Kolman & Reeb Gallery will host Annie’s Project Space exhibition September 14 through October 26, 2024.
2022 Grantees
Cameron Zebrun
Cameron Zebrun is best known for elegant sculptures formed from thin layers of wood on which he paints, and collages abstractions based on his direct observations and experiences in nature. Thus, Cameron’s used the funds from his Project Space grant to travel to inspiring new locations in Banff and Olympic National Park and areas along the Canadian Rockies and the northern US West Coast.
“I spent a lot of time documenting my experiences through sketches and photography,” he says. These fresh perspectives ignited Cameron’s ever-evolving fascination with portraying landscape subject matter in surprising and non-traditional ways, giving life to his show, Currents. These new places gave Cameron new viewpoints for his sculptures and inspired photographic collages and video animation specific to this show. “The small collages bridge my sculptural and photographic work,” Cameron says. “For this exhibition, I’ve experimented with different forms and media to manifest my ideas. The work reflects my obsessions over the last three years and represents a culmination of my aesthetic interests.”
Cameron will create a gallery installation that will become a visual journal of his travel experiences. Although he creates art based in nature, “the work is far from traditional or sentimental. Instead, it presents a challenging and surprising way to consider landscape. Even as viewers look at the different media, they’ll see my recognizable style while also sensing mystery and content open to interpretation.”
Cameron is a sculptor and photographer who lives and works in Minneapolis. He has an extensive record of solo and group exhibitions nationally including Arts North International, Hopkins Center for the Arts in Hopkins, Minnesota; North of the 45th, DeVos Art Museum at Northern Michigan University; Pulse Art Fair in Miami Beach; Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, Scope Art Fair in Miami Beach and New York City; Katherine Nash Gallery, University of Minnesota; Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport; and St. Mary’s University of Minnesota.
Cameron has received three Minnesota State Artist Initiative Grants in 2005, 2015, and 2019. He has been an Artist in Residence at Grand Marias Artist Colony, Grand Maria, Minnesota and at the Petrified Forest National Park. He was a member of Form+Content Gallery in Minneapolis between 2009 and 2015.
From 1991 through 2017, Cameron was employed at the Walker Art Center as Director of Program Services. As part of Walker Art Center’s team, Cameron managed the technical installation of all art works for the renovation of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden which reopened in 2017. Also, during his time at the Walker, Cameron managed the technical installation of all exhibitions for Walker’s Visual Arts Program.
Cameron earned a Master’s Degree of Fine Art at Cranbrook Academy of Art and a Bachelor’s Degree of Fine Art at Cleveland Institute of art.
Kolman & Reeb Gallery hosted Cameron’s Project Space exhibition January 14 through March 11, 2023.
Jil Evans
Kolman & Reeb Gallery took patrons on an immersive exploration of light and shadow with its Project Space grantee exhibition, Light Tales, by internationally known Minnesota artist, Jil Evans. With her dynamic and energetic style, Jil captures the essence of Minnesota’s seasons using video, a new medium for her, through light and shadow to reflect the inner experiences of our minds. By using the gallery space in a unique and captivating way, this show is sure to impress the contemporary and abstract audience the gallery appeals to most.
For over four decades, Jil has used her visual vocabulary to explore abstraction. Through her project space grant, she examines how light dances to mesmerize; how in solid form, it can stop movement with a sudden jolt; or how it travels in gentle, rhythmic waves to narrate a foreboding story. Evans’ immersive experience displays light as it takes us to the limitless possibilities of infinity and then back to the microcosmic constraints of our imagination. From awestruck to heartbroken, light is the medium Jil uses to translate her inner realm of consciousness to the viewer.
Evans’ artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work is held in both private and public collections, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art and Walker Art Center. Evans has also participated in residencies and was a featured painter in the documentary film, Painting the Place Between.
Kolman & Reeb Gallery hosted Jil’s Project Space exhibition June 17 through August 19, 2023.
Chris Rackley
Visitors will have a chance to step into the art of Chris Rackley at the Kolman & Reeb Gallery during his Project Space grant exhibition, Life As A Mall Brat.
Spending a large part of his youth at a shopping mall where his father managed a shoe store, Chris is a self-proclaimed mall “brat.” On days when not in school, Chris spent his time at the mall sketching, reading, and exploring; curiously comparing what we experience as shoppers with the hidden inner workings of the retail meccas. From these unique and humble beginnings, Chris examines the inaccuracy of memories with how we perceive them as truths.
Chris uses drawings, sculptures, and an interactive video to explore his memories of a shopping mall in Duluth, Georgia. Chris recreates miniature versions of architectural elements of the mall—a place he wandered every day for ten years in the 1980s. These recognizable facades and embellishments are presented at different scales relative to one another, emulating the way memory can be fragmented and accompanied by a longing to reconstruct significant moments from the past.
From miniature replicas of lost toys and misplaced trash as bits and pieces of memory, Chris has opened his mind to expose a childhood of experiences, immortalizing a shopping mall from a young boy’s perspective as though daring us to go back into this precious place of youth in our own minds.
Chris’s work has been exhibited at Rochester Art Center, Minnesota; DeVos Art Museum, Michigan; Boston Cyberarts, Massachusetts; Open Space Gallery, Maryland; Artisphere, Virginia; and Transformer, Washington DC; and other art spaces regionally and nationally. His collaborative work has been shown at Badischer Kunstverein, Germany; Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC; and Mair Museum of Art, Virginia.
Rackley earned a Bachelor of Arts from Davidson College and an Master’s of Fine Art from George Mason University. Rackley was an adjunct professor at Winona State University before earning an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board and an Art(ists) On the Verge Fellowship in the same year, allowing him to begin working full-time in his studio. Rackley served on the Board of Directors for the Rochester Art Center in Minnesota and currently serves on the Davidson Arts and Creative Engagement Advisory Board for Davidson College in North Carolina. He currently lives and works in Rochester, Minnesota.
Kolman & Reeb Gallery hosted Chris’ Project Space exhibition August 26 through October 21, 2023.
Kelly Jean Ohl
Kelly Jean creates intricately carved ceramic artworks that are engaging because the viewer is often able to touch and pick up her objects resulting in an intimate and sensory experience. Kelly Jean used her grant to investigate enlarging the scale of her artworks to give her the opportunity to create more dramatic interactions with her audience.
As we lose ourselves in lives constructed of distractions and uncertainty, master ceramist, Kelly Jean ,dares us to set down the glass we interact with daily and experience the ancient, prehistoric, and most fundamental substance this planet has to offer. By challenging our minds with unique textures and patterns, Ohl believes interacting with her art will ignite within us emotions of cosmic and instinctual origins.
Using haptics and non-language communication, with her show, Contemplations in Patterns and Textures, Ohl exhibits large intricately carved ceramic pieces sure to provide a unique sensory experience. These new pieces were designed specifically for the Kolman & Reeb Gallery using resources provided to her by her Project Space Grant.
The large, abstract clay forms are inspired by and reference the patterns and textures of our living planet. The earth tone colors reflect the most basic origin from which the clay is sourced. Intrigued and inspired by the similarities between microscopic single-cell organisms and macroscopic land formations, these visuals are an endless source of inspiration for Kelly Jean’s work.
Kelly Jean received a Bachelor of Arts degree in both Theatre and Art, as well as a Master of Arts degree with an emphasis in ceramics from Minnesota State University at Mankato (advanced education). She also earned a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan. Her work has been featured and sold in over 70 galleries across 25 states. It is also in private collections in all 50 states and internationally. Kelly Jean’s ceramic work can also be found in public and corporate collections in the US and around the world.
Kolman & Reeb Gallery hosted Kelly Jean’s Project Space exhibition October 28, 2023 through January 6, 2024.
2021 Grantees
Betsy Ruth Byers
Betsy has systematically shifted the focus of her work to intentionally address climate change through visual representations of ice since her sabbatical research in 2017-2018 of glaciers in Glacier National Park. She is drawn specifically to disappearing glaciers for two reasons. One, glaciers are sensitive indicators to climate change due to their isolated nature. Two, the landscape of glaciers has historically been connected to the human experience of the sublime in nature and art.
The Project Space Grant has enabled Betsy to move from two-dimensional painting to installation-based work as she has developed a of a full-scale gallery installation inspired by glacial loss due to climate change. The exhibition. entitled, Scaffold, is a multi-sensory, multi-media manifestation of Betsy’s alpine and equatorial glacial experiences and the global realities related to climate change.
For several years, Byers has accompanied scientists on trips to various glaciers, hiked the Aletsch Glacier in the Swiss Alps, and observed how glacier tourism now requires bridges and ladders to reach receding and melting glaciers.
“Many people’s experiences of arctic, alpine, and tropical glaciers (often located on equatorial volcanoes) are through screens, and through the speed of social media,” Betsy says. “In this exhibition, through which I’ve been processing my experiences, I hope to create contemplative, sensory spaces people can step into and come to an embodied understanding of what’s happening in our world.”
Betsy continues, “The work within Scaffold, is visually anchored in the aesthetic of survival gear—colors like bright orange and metallic reflectives—and the language of temporary solutions and adaptations.” Elements include a survival tent, a soundscape created from heartbeats heard via a digital stethoscope, paintings, and an olfactory piece. “Smell is so connected to brain function. My goal is to create an interactive space that engages the senses and creates physical lasting memories of the exhibition.”
Betsy also wants viewers to consider concepts such as time and change, the temporary, and ideas of survival. “The earth is reacting to climate change in survival mode, and we are slow to act. I hope to create a space in which people can contemplate this and let the elements of installation affect them physically.”
Betsy chose to study art “because art classes challenged me more than anything else.” After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in studio art from St. Olaf College, she was awarded a Master of Fine Arts from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She shares her love and enthusiasm for making art with students as an Associate Professor at Gustavus Adolphus College. Her work has been exhibited at numerous venues both nationally and internationally, such as. PULSE Miami Beach 2019, SCOPE New York 2017, the Minnesota Museum of American Art in St. Paul, DeVos Art Museum at Northern Michigan University, Hillstrom Museum of Art at Gustavus Adolphus College, Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, Guilford Art Center in Guilford, Connecticut; The Soap Factory in Minneapolis, The Institute Gallery in Sogndal, Norway; and the National Galleries of Scotland. Her work resides in several private, corporate, and museum collections including the Weisman Art Museum, Hillstrom Museum of Art, Target Corporation, Nordstrom Corporation, BMO Harris Bank, LPM Corporation, and Allina Health Center.
Kolman & Reeb Gallery hosted Betsy’s Project Space exhibition March 19 through May 7, 2022.
Julie Snidle
For years, Julie has been fascinated by the color, shape, and texture of Xanthoria parietina. The bright yellow-orange lichen that cling to the grey rocks along Minnesota’s North Shore and the East and West Coasts are, to Julie, some of the most beautiful. For her project, Julie sought to learn more about these amazing organisms and to create abstract paintings and install them in the Kolman & Reeb Project Space as an exhibition. In addition to the paintings, Julie envisions this exhibit as an opportunity to introduce the viewer to some basic lichen biology as well as an introduction to the encaustic process.
The motivation for the exhibition, Artistic Lichens, came to Julie while she was attending an encaustic conference on Cape Cod. “I’d walk out onto a nearby seawall, which was comprised of gray boulders encrusted with bright, yellow-orange lichens, Xanthoria parientina,” she recalls. “I couldn’t stop looking at them. I knew I had to create a new body of work inspired by those beautiful lichens.”
The Kolman & Reeb Gallery Project Space Grant made it possible for Julie to paint 51 abstract encaustic artworks of different sizes: “A whole gallery of paintings that celebrates these fascinating organisms,” she says. “Even though I’ve done a lot of research on lichens the paintings are not scientifically accurate. They’re not biological studies. They’re abstracted interpretations.” Encaustic, or beeswax, she adds, “has a wonderful malleability that adds multi-dimensionality to the paintings. The series has allowed me to explore new and unusual methods to achieve the colors, textures, and shapes I’ve appreciated for so long.”
Julie concludes the Project Space Grant has “opened a pathway for me to explore the idea of abstracting nature. I see something every day that catches my eye, a color combination, a play of light and shadow, an unusual plant. Through this grant, and the making of this work, I’m now comfortable with the idea of abstracting those visual surprises. I hope visitors to the gallery delight in what I’ve achieved.”
With a degree in education, Julie taught professionally in the classroom and was a corporate training administrator in Dallas, Texas, before following her passion for art and painting. A self-taught artist, Julie is a Core Teaching Artist for R&F Handmade Paints. Julie has taught at the International Encaustic Conference held annually in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and she continues to teach workshops in her studio and across the country. Julie’s work appears in numerous galleries and in private collections throughout the United States.
Kolman & Reeb Gallery hosted Julie’s Project Space exhibition June 11 through August 6, 2022.
Jodi Reeb
The focus of Jodi Reeb’s artwork has always been about the beauty of nature and finding inspiration from nature’s extraordinary colors, light, and shapes. Although primarily a painter, Jodi has recently begun creating sculptures that reflect some of the shapes, lines, and textures she finds in nature. Her Project Space grant has allowed her to explore new materials and new spaces in which to create free-form assemblages and sculptures that explore the qualities of nature that feeds her with artistic creativity.
For her Project Space exhibition, Emergence, Jodi has filled the gallery with a series of sculptures and site-specific installations. Jodi originally began working with the concepts she explores in Emergence during a workshop she attended four years ago, where she’d construct a temporary installation, then tear it down, every morning and afternoon. “I became intrigued with the idea of place and site-specific artworks, and ideas about economy of means as I worked through each installation using materials such as wire, tape, string, and newsprint,” she says. “I also became interested in the idea of the three-dimensional line, mark-making objects, and creating shadows on the wall. The Project Space grant has allowed me to take time out of my schedule to fully experiment with these ideas and bring them to fruition.”
For her show, Jodi has created sculptures and site-specific art installations throughout the gallery that depict organic forms found in nature. In this way she seeks to experiment with new materials that are wall pieces and artworks suspended from the ceiling and on the floor. She has used materials that have the ability to mimic nature such as tubing, tape, wax, and wire that have been transformed into works that resemble branches or seed-pods.
Jodi has been a full-time artist and teacher for over 20 years. She has taught printmaking, acrylic and encaustic painting as well as book arts. She is a CORE instructor for R&F Handmade Paints and is a GOLDEN Acrylic Paints Artist Educator. Jodi’s artwork has been shown nationally and is in many private and corporate collections including Target Corporation, United Health Care Group, Hilton Hotel in Minneapolis, and Wells Fargo Mortgage in Minneapolis. She was the recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant in 2018. Jodi graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design (MCAD) where she instructed printmaking for almost a decade.
Kolman & Reeb Gallery hosted Jodi’s Project Space Exhibition August 27 through October 29, 2022.
2020 Grantees
James Holmberg
James Holmberg chose to use his Kolman & Reeb Gallery Project Space grant to investigate loss, memory, and transformation through a painting process of accumulation and erasure captured with video and experienced via an app, entitled, “Absence Show,” which is available in the App Store or on Google Play. By so doing, James has married his two interests, art and technology, and has sent his artistic practice in a new direction and taken the next step in his artistic evolution. “The grant has completely given me the freedom to explore some of the conceptual ideas I’ve been grappling with for a long time,” he says.
James’ exhibition, Absence, includes five canvases that James painted, scraped off, washed with mineral spirits, and painted again 12 times, while he was recording the process on video. The ghost paintings on each of the five canvases can only be viewed by downloading the app, “Absence Show,” via a smartphone or tablet. The app reveals the images attached to each canvas, images that now only exist in the cloud.
While the canvases retain the ghostly memories of previous paintings, generating a sense of loss and impermanence with each iteration, they’re also digital assets through which memories remain intact. The exhibition also includes a pedestal on which James troweled all of the paint or content from the canvases. “The pedestal is a collective of all the canvases and paint that was used. It’s a sculpture.”
“I’m questioning the importance of an image, of a painting, at a time when we’re mostly sharing images via cell phones, which in turn brings up questions about the numbing abundance of imagery. The work also investigates feelings of creative loss, which is uncomfortable and challenging for me,” he adds. “The real core of the show and project is about absence and presence and transition, and the ability to let go.”
James is a graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design where he remains both a mentor and Alumni Board member. He is well known as an abstract painter and long-time artist with Circa Gallery in Minneapolis, and he has had two shows at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Along with his successful visual art practice, James is co-founder of Kinetic Legacy and partner and principal designer at Kinetic Contemporary, the interior design and art consulting division of Kinetic Design Build. James has had a long career in creating physical and conceptual structures that allow a space to do its job most efficiently. Whether it’s designing floor layouts that use color and shape to guide customers through major department stores, building functional closets and storage areas out of the formerly unused nooks and crannies in a client’s home or conceiving of a digital platform to house stories and memories that would otherwise be lost to time, James understands how to create structures that are multidimensional, intuitive, and approachable.
Kolman & Reeb Gallery hosted James’ Project Space exhibition September 11 through October 30, 2021.