Calendar

Ancient Survivors

Featuring sturgeon artwork, artifacts, and history. The exhibit also includes decoys, audio and articles related to the culture and science surrounding sturgeon. These elements have been collected from across Wisconsin and the Midwest and will be the first time these will all be together in one place for display. This exhibition comes to THELMA in collaboration with The UW Sea Grant Institute, UW Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences, University of Minnesota Duluth Fine Art Department, Oshkosh Public Museum and Sturgeon for Tomorrow.

Exhibition Dates: January 10 – March 2

The Member Spotlight program will feature a new work of art every quarter, created by members of THELMA, which will be displayed alongside pieces from the permanent collection.

Submissions will be juried by our THELMA curator, with submissions accepted quarterly.

THELMA welcomes and encourages its members to show off their talents for the Member Spotlight regardless of artistic experience. Artists and non-artists are invited to submit work in various forms of media including painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, woodwork, glasswork, jewelry and more. Artists must be age 16 and up.

Submissions for the fourth quarter of 2018 will be accepted via email ([email protected]) or mail. Registration form and display protocols can be found in the documents below.

Current Member Spotlight:

Chris Dolan – Beanfield in Autumn

Medium: Oil on canvas

Laura Schneider – Medieval Paris

Medium: Giclee

Nancy Donohue – Hard Edge

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Download the Protocols Form

Download the Registration Form

Departures by Emmet Sandberg

Exhibition Dates: March 7 – April 20

These “Departures” examine how I process experience and make sense of the world. The act of redacting reveals how the sorting and organizing of experience allows us to explore the references and associations used to create the narratives that situate us in our time and place. – Emmet Sandberg

200 Days: A Life in the Quotidian

Exhibition Dates: March 7 – April 20

“When Thelma Sadoff Center for the Arts first approached me for this solo exhibit over a year ago, I knew I wanted to “go small” but didn’t quite know which medium to showcase. I also wanted to make a ridiculous quantity of pieces. Enter drypoint! And tininess! And watercolor! I wanted to challenge myself and create very tiny prints – each of the prints measures only 1.5×2”. Every one of them is a drypoint print first, and probably 95% of them are enhanced with watercolor.

Beginning on April 1, 2018 and ending on October 20 of that year, I created a drypoint print a day. That’s 200 days (give or take three days, because I just forgot). Each piece began with a photo I took that day, and I gave myself rules – no going out of your way to get a photo; no “cheating” and taking a week’s worth of photos in one day; and try not to “pose”.

Because I had no idea what was going to happen on any given day, this project was a complete surprise to create. I couldn’t plan for anything! It was so exciting to see how my prints turned out once I had created the drypoint print from the photo, and again after applying the watercolor.

This exhibit is site-specific; I purposely made 200 pieces for the exhibit and the size they are to fit the gallery. The only thing I knew immediately was that I wanted the prints to be framed identically and to be hung in a straight line, like a “timeline” or journal of my days.

I hope you enjoy the exhibit as much as I enjoyed creating it for this beautiful space! Approximately 1500 hours went into the creation of these little friends, and it is most certainly my magnum opus at this point in my career.

But something else happened along this 200-day journey – I fell in love with my work again. I would catch myself tearing up with happiness when creating these small friends, because I realized just how lucky I am to be able to do this. It was the most important thing to come from this exhibit.” – Mel Kolstad

Price list for artwork is available in our lobby at our front desk. Call 920-921-5410 for artwork inquiries or stop in Monday through Friday 10 – 5 pm or Saturday 11 – 3 pm.

Cropping to Circles by Kendall McMinimy

Exhibition will be on view from April 25 – June 8, 2019

Cropping to Circles 

“A mechanical marvel, Central Pivot Irrigation Systems deliver water to otherwise dry lands and food to an otherwise hungry planet. With outstretched steel arms, these wheeled giants twirl slow-motion pirouettes of simulated rainfall pumping atomized sprays from groundwater reserves far below the surface.

As an outgrowth of the “Green Revolution,” center pivot irrigation is a system that encircles multiple conflicting truths—a worldwide revolution in food production is also complicit in the depletion of groundwater; humanitarian aid aligns with hegemonic order; global market forces allow and deny local economies; a system simultaneously produces and diminishes.

These structures, chasing their own tails, morph into lumbering memento mori and echo our own existence rotating through the repetitive rhythms and cycles of life.  The images serve as reminders of a reality that is tethered to an ever-increasing detailed, ubiquitous, and immediate ease of technological and satellite surveillance.

Minimal signifiers amplify ambiguities, create associations, and stretch the legibility of representation. Vacillating between the familiar and the fictitious, the work reveals little of the subject’s true spatial immensity, nor the monumental investment represented.

Viewed through the particulars of place, this project is an inquiry into circular arguments, the fluidity of truths encircled by a framework, and the cyclical acceptance and rejection of those truths. It is also an invitation to consider the “in between,” the budding potential revealed in the voids and blanks of the prints. Shifting with time, these breaks from conformity illuminate the continual shifts in the topographies of possibilities.”

Kendall McMinimy

Kendall McMinimy uses photography, digital art, printmaking and sculpture to explore structure and ideology as filtered through place.

Stretching the legibility of representation, his work vacillates between the familiar and the fictitious, amplifying ambiguities and associations to allow for continual shifts in the topographies of possibilities.

Notable awards and exhibits include: “Critical Mass 50, ” GuatePhoto International Photography Festival, Guatemala City, Guatemala (2015); “Process,” Photo Center NW Gallery, Seattle (2014); The Print Center’s 88th Annual International Competition, The Print Center, Philadelphia (2014); and Review/CENTER, Santa Fe. He has participated in numerous solo and group shows around the United States, and “Cropping to Circles” was published in Harpers Magazine (March 2014).

McMinimy holds an MA and MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Born and raised in the High Plains of Kansas, he has resided in Wisconsin since 1998. He is a frequent guest lecturer and teaches Digital Arts at Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin, and Photography at Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Exhibition will be on view from April 25 – June 8, 2019

Opening Reception: Thursday, April 25, 6 – 8 pm

Free admission and open to the public, meet the artist as you view her work. Cash bar and snacks available.

Artist’s Exchange: Thursday, May 30, 6 – 8 pm

Free admission and open to the public, listen to a Q&A talk and learn about her process, inspiration, and execution of her work. Cash bar and snacks available.

Sharon Garrison is an artist who specializes in portrait. She works intuitively as did Alice Neel and Lucien Freud, two of her sources of inspiration. A professor once compared her work to that of Soutine. She was not aware of Soutine at the time and headed straight to the library to look up the artist. She did not see a similarity but others have also made the comparison. Shape and value are of primary importance. Her colors tend to be realistic, even somewhat monochromatic in nature.

Although never one for drawing, her recent work is a series of portraits entitled “Friends & Family plus passing acquaintances and me”, made with Sharpie markers. These drawings are a combination of realism and caricature applied to images of acquaintances, family and friends. She often enhances memory of past relationships to create what she surmises a contemporary version of the past might look like and vice versa.

She is presently exploring cattle markers and cold wax and oil as mediums, using a trial and error approach. Her work in general is based upon trial and error methodology. Although the portraits seem to be classical in nature, there is often an edgy quality to them.

Sharon feels that the artist’s work is complete when she deems the piece finished. It is then time for a dialogue between the viewer and the artwork. With this sequence of events the work takes on a new life with each different onlooker, creating an expanded continuum.  For this reason, she does not attempt to explain her work. If the work is successful, there should be no need for explanation. However, the life experiences of the viewer melding with the art work facilitates a fresh dialogue between the viewer and artist, often resulting in a mutually beneficial understanding of the piece.

She earned an Associate Degree from UW Fond du Lac and a BFA from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.

She has shown in many venues around the state:

2018 Wisconsin Visual Artists Biennial, Mowa

Neville Public Museum

Union at the University of Wisconsin Madison

Gail Steinhilber Gallery, UWO

Frank Juarez Gallery, Sheboygan

1996 Faculty Alumni Show, Priebe Gallery UWO

Two person show UW Fond du Lac

Solo show Langdon Divers Gallery, Fond du Lac

Solo show Riverwalk Art Center Fond du Lac

Many Alive in the Arts juried shows, Plymouth Art Center

Invitational show Trista Holz Studios, Fond du Lac

THELMA member shows

Mowa member shows

Ecological Show, University of Wisconsin Eau Claire art gallery

Signage for Prairie Theater, UW Fond du Lac

Awards:

Mowa Members Show Director’s Award 2017

Merit Award Plymouth Alive in the Arts 2018

First place Plymouth Members show 2018

Three meritorious designations and inclusion the the gallery books for Jack Richeson International Art Competitions

A featured artist in three Frank Juarez Artdose Guides

1994 Designer of the Year, UWO

Many Wisconsin Regional Artists awards

The 2019 THELMA Members Exhibition is a non-juried exhibition that includes submitted work by THELMA’s current members.

Opening Reception: Friday, June 14, 6 pm – 8 pm.

A curator-led tour will begin at 6 pm exploring the current art exhibitions. Free admission and open to the public, meet the artist as you view her work. Cash bar and snacks available.

Exhibition will be on view from June 13 – July 27, 2019.

Not a member? Join at www.thelmaarts.org or call us at 920-921-5410 to participate in our next member exhibition!

Seismic Shifts, Structural Anomalies, and Impossible Dreams by Liz Miller

Exhibition will be on display from June 13 – July 27, 2019

Opening Reception: Friday, June 14, 6 – 8 pm

A curator-led tour will begin at 6 pm exploring the current art exhibitions.

Free admission and open to the public, meet the artist as you view her work. Cash bar and snacks available.

Artist’s Exchange: Friday, June 14, 5:30 pm

Free admission and exclusive for THELMA members, listen to a Q&A talk and learn about her process, inspiration, and execution of her work. Cash bar and snacks available.

Liz Miller received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from the University of Minnesota. Miller’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad. Her awards include a McKnight Professional Development Grant from Forecast Public Art, a McKnight Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, an MCAD/Jerome Foundation Fellowship, and five Artist Initiative Grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Miller recently completed residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, LA and the McColl Center for Art + Innovation in Charlotte, NC. She lives and works in Good Thunder, MN and is Professor of Installation and Drawing at Minnesota State University-Mankato.

My work explores the fallibility of infrastructure and the precariousness of perception, as seen through a materially-intensive, process-based lens. I utilize undulating planar forms in conjunction with fabric and rope as a metaphor for shifting landscapes, altered topographies, and imagined realities. References to the natural world and the built environment collide in interludes that are alternately beautiful, absurd, menacing, and poetic, alluding to the complexity of our world. Tensions between fact/fiction and dimensionality/flatness are endlessly intriguing to me, playing out in my work as a dialogue between reality and illusion.

I have become fascinated with ropes and knotting as byproducts of my process. In my large-scale installations, knotted ropes provide tension that gives volume to otherwise flat materials. This technique has revealed the possibilities of knotting as an autonomous aesthetic expression. The varied use of rope and knotting across cultures and history ranges from utilitarian to decorative, and even deadly. I create interdependent knotted topographies that allude to both structure and malleability. The repeated act of tying by hand integrates an emphatic sense of strength, while the flexibility and nuance of the textile material ensures structural permutations. The resulting works are only quasi-architectural, providing metaphorical insight laced with humor as related to a variety of structural and systemic behavior.