Autumn Art Auction 2007 by North Dakota Museum of Art

Autumn Art Auction

North Dakota Museum of Art

The North Dakota Museum of Art is grateful to the following entities who have given generously to guarantee that the arts may flourish.

Marking the Land: Jim Dow in North Dakota featured on

PRAIRIE PUBLIC HEAR IT NOW with Merrill Piepkorn Monday, October 22, 2007 Pledge $20 a month or more to Prairie Public and you will receive Marking the Land, soft cover Pledge $1,000 or more and receive a hard cover copy Commissioned by the North Dakota Museum of Art, Jim Dow began photographing folk art within the North Dakota landscape in 1981. By 2000, he was shooting anything he pleased and wandering across the borders into Minnesota and South Dakota. Marking the Land was produced by the North Dakota Museum of Art in collaboration with the Center for American Places: 220 pages, 186 color photographs, hard and soft cover, distributed by the University of Chicago Press or through the North Dakota Museum of Art.

Cover: Melanie Rocan, SWIMMING #2, , 54 x 66 inches, 2007

North Dakota Museum of Art

AUTUMN Art Auction S a t u r d a y, N o v e m b e r 1 0 , 2 0 0 7 Wine and hors d’oeuvres 6:30 pm Auction begins at 8 pm

Autumn Art Auction is Underwritten by

Auction Preview October 14 until auction time in the Museum galleries Monday - Friday, 9 to 5 pm, Saturday - Sunday, 1 to 5 pm All works to be auctioned will be on display. .

patrons Chester Fritz Auditorium Clear Channel Radio East Grand Floral

Supporters Altru Health System, Truyu Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc. Avant

Grand Forks Herald

Blue Moose Bar & Grill

High Plains Reader

Bronze Boot

Holiday Inn

Cancer Research, UND, Mary Ann and Don Sens

KVLY TV

Community Bank

KXJB TV

Curtis Tanabe DDS

Leighton Broadcasting Merrill Lynch Office of Academic Affairs, UND

Farmer's Insurance Group, George Wogaman Greater Grand Forks Community Theatre Gustafson Gluek, PLLC HB Sound & Light

Sponsors Bremer Bank Ellen McKinnon Minnesota Public Radio WDAZ TV

Museum Café North Dakota Eye Clinic North Dakota Ballet Company North Dakota Quarterly Auction Supporters continued next page

Buy local. Read the sponsor pages to learn about those who invest in the Museum. Please return their investment.

Supporters Red Pepper Rhombus Guys Sanders 1907

—John Foster, Retiring Chairman

Special Arrangement, Daryce Van Hoff

Museum Board of Trustees

Special Olympics Suite 49 Summit Brewing Company Valley Bone and Joint Waterfront Kitchen & Bath, Northern Plumbing Supply Whitey’s

` Contributors Axis Clinic Acme Electric Tool Crib of the North Camrud, Maddock, Olson & Larson Capital Resource Management Columbia Liquors D. Tran, DDS Fine Print Greater Grand Forks Symphony Orchestra Gregory J. Norman Funeral Chapel Happy Harry’s Ink, Inc. Letnes, Marshall, Swanson & Warcup Ltd. McDonald Family Dentistry Praxis Strategy Group Rite Spot Liquor River City Jewelers Salon Seva UND Writers Conference Xcel Energy Zimney Foster PC

Advertisers Amazing Grains Best Western Town House Brady, Martz, and Associates Browning Arts Burger King Chad Caya Painting David C. Thompson, Law Office Drees, Riskey, Vallager, Ltd. Economy Plumbing Edward Jones, Mark A. Larsen Forks Chem-Dry Gate City Bank Greenberg Realty, Mary Adams Greenberg Realty, Kelly Thompson Home of Economy Hovet Roofing, Inc. Meland Architecture Monarch Travel & Tours Earl Pomeroy Reichert Armstrong Law Office Robert Vogel Law Office, P.C. Shaft Reis & Shaft Ltd. SuperOne Foods SuperTarget Valley Dairy Vilandre Wall's Medicine Center, Inc. You Are Here Gallery

Burton Onofrio, Auctioneer

Heather and David Schall, Chairs

Burton Onofrio recently retired as Attending Neurosurgeon at the

Autumn Art Auction Committee

Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, where he also served as Professor of Neurosurgery in the Mayo Medical School. His first job after retirement was as Senior Consultant for Pain Disorders, Neurosurgical Service, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. His training includes an M.D. degree from the Medical College of Cornell University (1957); a surgical residency at the New York Hospital Medical Center (1958); and a fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in neurosurgery (1964), all of which resulted in

Heather and David Schall, Chairs Brad and Michelle Stenberg Chad and Elisa Hanson Alan Mulhern Devera Warcup Stacy Warcup

a life-time career at the Mayo Clinic. As busy as his professional career has been, he has also lived a wonderful life within the arts. It began when he married Judy, a self-taught potter who has emerged as a sculptor of national stature. Judy was deeply involved in the Rochester Art Center, and Burton soon joined the Board of Directors. Most recently— another retirement job—he co-chaired the Capital Campaign Building Committee of the Rochester Art Center. The new building opened in the spring of 2004 with the central gallery named in honor of Judy and Burton Onofrio—gifted by a former patient. In another corner of his life, Onofrio runs art auctions. For twenty-six years he was the auctioneer of the Rochester Art Center annual auction, most often organizing it as well. Both the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota Art Department have called upon him to serve as auctioneer. For twelve years he has been the announcer of the Rochester Art Center Art Festival. Onofrio’s days, however, are spent in Judyland, the garden he created with his wife. And finally, this is a man who loves animals, in particular his menagerie of cats who have full run of the garden.

David and Heather Schall reside in Grand Forks with their four children. Jordyn is a sixth grader at South Middle School, Camryn is a third grader at Kelly Elementary, Isaac is four and Ellie is two. David and Heather are both natives of Grand Forks. David graduated from the University of North Dakota and is currently an orthopedic surgeon at Valley Bone and Joint Clinic in Grand Forks. Heather previously was a Diagnostic Cardiac/Medical Sonographer. Photograph by Christy Doyea Photography

Museum Mission Statement

MISSION: To foster and nurture the aesthetic life and artistic

Rules of Auction

Each registered guest will receive a bidding card as part of

expression of the people living on the Northern Plains through

the price of a ticket. Upon receiving the bidding card, each

exhibitions, programs, and publications which engage the

guest will be asked to sign a statement vowing to abide by

region, the country, and the world.

the Rules of the Auction listed in this catalog.

VISION: To create the richest learning environment possible for

Bid Form with Museum personnel in person or by phone, or

experiencing art and developing community that affirms the

bid by phone the night of the auction. Absentee bidders, by

highest level of respect for art, artists, and audiences.

filling out the form, agree to abide by the Rules of the Auction.

VALUES: For the Museum to be successful, our most important resource, our people, must have a clear sense of where we are

Absentee bidders will either leave their bids on an Absentee

going, and the collaborative spirit in which we undertake that

Each bidder will use his or her own bidding number during the auction.

journey. Our values are guiding principles for how we will go about our work. They are guideposts to daily conduct that speak

All sales are final.

to the integrity of our behavior.

In September 2002 the Office of the North Dakota State Tax

1) Rural Lens: We interpret rural life through the arts, just as we

Commissioner determined that the gross receipts from the

view the art of the world through a rural perspective.

sales made at the Auction are subject to sales tax at 6.75 %.

2) Global Context: We place the lives of artists and audiences

This does not apply to out-of-state buyers who have works

within the context of contemporary art and critical thought from

shipped to them.

around the world. 3) Humanities Focus: We function as a laboratory for all forms

shall either determine the successful bidder or re-auction

of artistic, aesthetic and cultural inquiry. 4) Collaboration:

the item in dispute.

We build and nourish relationships with

artists, visitors and each other.

In the event of a dispute between bidders, the auctioneer

Purchasers may pay for items at any point following the

5) Scholarship: Academic rigor and quality research underpin all

sale of a work but must pay for all art work before the

museum programs and publications.

conclusion of the evening—unless other arrangements are

6) Stewardship: We are stewards of the public trust for the

in place. Absentee bidders will be charged on the evening of

artistic environment of our region, and the human, financial and

the auction or an invoice will be sent the next business day.

physical resources of the Museum.

Works of art in the auction have minimum bids placed on them by the artist. This confidential “reserve” is a price agreed upon between the artist and the North Dakota Museum of Art below which a work of art will not be sold.

Photograph by Mike Mohaupt

From the Museum Director

Each year we open the fall season by publishing

and the Museum’s equal match is split 50/50 between the artist

the Autumn Art Auction catalog. Gradually the catalogs are

and the Museum. Example: If a reserve bid is $200, and the work

accumulating into a historical record of art in our time and place.

sells for $395, the artist receives $200 and the Museum receives

If it weren’t for our important sponsors whose ads fill the last half

$195. If the same work sells for $500, the artist and the Museum

of this book, the catalog would not be published. Please take

each receive $250.

your business to these companies and individuals; thank them for their significant contribution; and note how many are locally owned and operated. Sometimes they say, “I don’t care if I get an ad, I just want to give to you guys.” Supporting cultural life is not in the interest of the “big boxes” but rather has become the business of the butcher, the baker and the keeper of bees—and of Ellen McKinnon who buys her own ad because it pleases her.

Gradually we have seen the prices for art increase as our buying audience experiences the pleasure of knowing artists and living with art. And also gradually, the Museum has begun to make some money from the auction as well. It wasn’t long, however, before every art entity in the region began holding their own auctions—and positioning them to compete with the Museum’s auction. Then non-art entities thought, “why not us?” It was as if

In 1992, Madelyn Camrud inaugurated the Museum’s first

the Museum threw a pebble into the pond and art auctions

Benefit Dinner and Silent Auction. She added the Autumn Art

rippled out.

Auction in 1998, assisted by a good committee and supported by the Museum staff. The goal from the beginning was to develop the buying audience for artists from our region. For decades, the only artists who could stay in northern Minnesota and North Dakota

Art has also become an accepted part of younger people’s lives. They participate, they buy, they live with art—and all of our lives become richer.

while continuing their professional careers had to find a different

Remember, when you buy through the Autumn Art Auction, the

way to make a living—usually teaching on the college level. The

price includes framing or presentation. Frames are often custom

mantra became, “If we don’t support them, who is going to.”

made by the artists who pay attention to using archival materials.

From the beginning, the Museum has never asked artists to

This alone adds significant value to some of the work.

donate work. Instead, we allow them to establish their minimum

Not all of the artists live locally, but they all have some

price, an amount the Museum guarantees.

(For the winter

relationship with either the Museum of Art or the region. As I

auction, works of art are less expensive and the minimum is

recently told artist Marjorie Merriman, Nancy Friese has worked

established at $100.) The auction procedures are:

with me on tracing artists who have backgrounds in North Dakota.

DIVISION OF MONEY between the artist and the North Dakota Museum of Art on a work sold in the Auction: The artist is guaranteed to receive the amount of the reserve bid. If work does not reach minimum bid, it will be brought in by the Museum and returned to artist. Any amount over the reserve bid

Because we have so few artists, we sometimes borrow them from the

past.

You

are

being

borrowed!

Marjorie’s

grandparents were early settlers who lived in the Dakota Territory before North Dakota became a state. Her drawing of a Norwegian stave church is in the Auction. Laurel Reuter, Director North Dakota Museum of Art

Lot #1

Vivienne Morgan Bemidji, Minnesota Ennui, 2007 Digital print on Innova paper 18 x 18 inches Range: $150 - 250

Vivienne Morgan: I’m English—not a snow lover—but

took a lot of photos with my Holga. The series I made was for a

the weather in northern Minnesota fills me with nostalgia for

local exhibition called Between Two Lands. It was about

England in winter. I’ve lived in the United States for all these years

absence: the absence of my father whose ashes were scattered on

and I’ve never taken American citizenship. Sooner or later I must

a football pitch in Bristol, England, and my own nearly thirty-year

make a choice. I’ve been thinking about what it means to migrate

absence from my family and England.

and immigrate. What it means to fly, to change, to slow down or grow ill, perhaps grow better or stronger, but to inevitably grow old, and to finally stop in one place. This meditation on acceptance has led me to look locally for places that remind me of England, of Europe, to find solace or perhaps as a point of compromise. I made the The Absence Series using Holga negatives, which I shot in downtown Bemidji, Minnesota, at the Greenwood Cemetery not long after my father died. Because it pleased me, I

I had been watching the Cemetery that fall as I drove by, since it’s the only place in northern Minnesota with anything close to topiary. You have to love the old European order expressed in topiary, the annual clipping of trees and grasses making all things in the garden good. One day a thick fog rolled in and the rest of the town disappeared, and magically I was back on some Devon estate. When you are gone for long enough you are no longer absent, you just cease to exist.

Lot #2

Invented in Hong Kong in 1982, the Holga is an inexpensive, medium format (120 film) toy camera that has come to be appreciated for its low-fidelity aesthetic. The Holga's cheap construction and simple meniscus (convex-concave) lens often yields pictures that invoke an other-worldly presence, resulting from soft-focus tones, misty colors, and streaming lights. Ironically, the camera's quality problems became a virtue among some photographers, with Holga photos winning awards and competitions in art and news photography. Vivienne Morgan was born in England in 1958. In 1979 she moved to the United States and earned her MFA from Bowling Green State University. She now lives in the countryside near

Vivienne Morgan Bemidji, Minnesota Absence Found, 2005-07 Nine Holga negatives cross processed Each 8 x 8.5 inches Range: $500-600

Lot #3

Guillermo Guardia Grand Forks, North Dakota and Lima, Peru Neo David, 2007 High fire ceramic 31 x 9 x 8 inches Range: $300 - 400

Guillermo Guardia (Memo) was born in Lima, Peru, in 1975. He completed a BFA in Industrial Design at the Universidad Católica del Peru in 1999. As part of his studies he took a ceramics class and found he loved it. Soon he was applying to graduate programs in ceramics in the United States. In 2005 he completed his MFA in Ceramics from the University of North Dakota and is currently enrolled at UND in a second graduate degree program, seeking a Master of Science in Industrial Technology. Guardia comes from an ancient ceramic culture of preColumbian Peru. From the time he was little he was steeped in the images and materials of those early potters. From his family, his teachers, television, and classroom visits to museums, he learned to venerate the early traditions. In particular, he loved the work of the Mochica culture, a pre-Incan civilization that flourished on the northern coast of Peru from about 200 B.C. to A.D. 600, known especially for its pottery vessels modeled into naturalistic human and animal figures.

I had to go to Peru and immerse myself in Pre-Columbian ceramics before I understood Guillermo’s work. Given that context, I believe he is creating an important contemporary art form deeply embedded in the past. Laurel Reuter, Director North Dakota Museum of Art

Guardia intuitively carries the past forward in his ceramics, preferring narrative work based on the figure, unglazed and burnished surfaces that allow the clay itself to dominate the work. The work in the exhibition, Neo David, breathes with life, both contemporary and ancient.

Lot #4

Monte Breckheimer Pekin, North Dakota Trillium Oil on old barn wood 16 x 16 inches, 2002 Range: $175 - 225

Monte Breckheimer turns seventy-five years old on

painted trunks. Since they were even farther from the dictating

October 26, 2007. He waited until he was sixty and retired from

guilds, their work became even more original. Breckheimer

farming south of Tolna, North Dakota, before embarking upon his

began to study with these first- and second-generation

artistic career—that is, when he was sixty he began to really

immigrants, and, as always, he bought books and traveled to

investigate art. He had always liked looking at paintings in books

exhibitions, including the Norwegian-American Museum in

and magazines but never imagined he could become a painter.

Decorah, Iowa.

First, he tried his hand at rosemaling, “that decorative folk

Breckheimer was also a woodworker and after a few years he

painting of Norway, which began in the low-land areas of eastern

began to turn the plates and build the boxes to underpin his

Norway about 1750 when such upper-class artistic styles as

painting. Not given to restrictions, it wasn’t long before he began

Baroque, Regency and Rococo were introduced to Norway's

to just paint the world around him and the one that existed in his

rural culture. At first Norway's painters followed the European

imagination. He painted on gourds, on paper, on wood, on

styles closely. Those who rosemaled for their livelihood would

canvas. Soon he was entering the Pekin Art Show and winning

not have been land owners but poor city dwellers. After being

prizes: Best of Show, two Seconds, one Third, two Honorable

trained within a ‘guild’ they would travel from county to county,

Mentions. In 2005 the Jud Days Art show gave him the Artists’

painting churches and the homes of the wealthy for either money

Choice award. Then the North Dakota Museum of Art included

or room and board. Thus rosemaling was carried over the

him in their touring Artists Self-Portrait exhibition. With great fun,

mountains and toward Norway's western coast. Once farther

he painted himself with a goofy, toothless grin, his teeth in a

away from the influence of the guilds, these artists explored new

wineglass in his hand.

ideas and motifs. Soon strong regional styles developed.” (According to the Illinois Rosemaling Association.)

Trillium, the painting in this auction, combines woodworking and painting. Breckheimer first made his intricate support out of

Rural painters of all kinds began to imitate this folk art. Not

barn wood and then painted both the “picture” and the

having been taught in an urban guild, the amateur became

surrounding “frame.” While being interviewed for this auction,

spontaneous and expressive in his or her work on smaller objects

he said, “I didn’t want to let the painting interfere with the

such as drinking vessels and boxes. Immigrants to the United

woodworking, but it sure has. I love painting more than

States arrived with their belongings stuffed into elaborately

woodworking. I just love painting.”

Lot #5

Zhimin Guan Moorhead, Minnesota Violinist II Oil and wax on metal 12 x 12 inches, 2007 Range: $900 - 1,200 Sponsored by Prairie Public

Zhimin Guan speaks of his painting process: I am

When he lived in the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian, Guan

amazed to see how painting materials and gesture marks

was only five minutes from the Yellow Sea. Then in the spring of

transform each other into a spiritually and physically integrated

1995, Guan came to the United States, driven by the desire to

autonomy. I strive to establish a vital breath and universal

examine the complexities of Western contemporary arts. After

harmony through forms, colors, space and dynamic gestures. In

three years, he earned his MFA in Painting and Drawing at Fort

my art career, I have always incorporated the traditional with the

Hays State University, Kansas. Guan has successfully blended

experimental, the figurative and the abstract. I wish to continually

his academic training in visual art with the aesthetics of Eastern

change through aesthetic modification over time and discover the

philosophy. As an artist, he is deeply committed to unifying the

right form and metaphor among endless possibilities.

West with the East in his own distinctive mannerâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a new

The artist was born in China in 1962. He started to paint when he was nine years old, influenced by his father, Chintian Guan, a traditional Chinese calligrapher and ink painter. Zhimin received

synthesis of technique underpinned by a holistic philosophy. Today Zhimin Guan is an Associate Professor of Art at Minnesota State University Moorhead.

rigorous training in calligraphy and ink painting before he was

Guanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s art has been exhibited throughout China and the United

fifteen years old. At the same time, he developed a strong interest

States in such institutions as the China National Art Gallery in

in the Chinese philosophy of Taoism and in ancient Chinese

Beijing; China Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Hangzhou;

poetry. During his BFA studies at Fuyang Teachers College in

Singapore Asian Arts Gallery; the Salmagundi Club, New York;

China, he concentrated on oil painting and again received

CCC/USA, Philadelphia; The Minneapolis Institute of Fine Arts;

rigorous training in drawing and painting in the Western classical

Dunton Gallery in Chicago; Fraser Gallery, Washington, DC;

style. From 1985 to 1994, he taught painting, drawing, and

Museum of Southwest Texas, Corpus Christi; North Dakota

design at Dalian Institute of Industrial Design in Dalian, China.

Museum of Art, and, most recently, a solo exhibition at the

Besides teaching, Guan devoted himself to his art practice.

Plains Art Museum, Fargo.

Daniel Sharbono is a Minot artist, designer, and freelance graphic designer whose recent projects include design work for Main Street Books, 10 North Main, Otis and James Photography, Dakota Kids Dentistry, Minot State University, and 62 Doors Gallery and Studios. Found objects and materials discovered at flea markets, yard sales, old barns and garages, and the occasional curbside shopping trip, are rescued and recycled for use in artwork that gives these objects the opportunity to be appreciated. Most of Danielâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work is about observing the things around you and learning to appreciate them for their inherent aesthetic qualitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;signs of a personality, loyalty, and a past filled with experiences we can all relate to. Lot #6 Dress was created for a juried show with a figurative theme at 62

Daniel Sharbono

Doors Gallery in Minot where it received an honorable mention.

Minot, North Dakota Dress

Lot #7

Acrylic and found materials, 2007 11 x 21 x 3 inches

Doug Pfliger

Range: $250 - 300

Minot, North Dakota Whirly-Gig-Dog-#97 Wood, metal, and paint, 2007 18 x 3.5 x 13 inches Range: $125 - 150

Doug Pfliger has donated the proceeds from the sale of this sculpture to the Museum of Art Doug Pfliger states, Humor and color tend to dominate my art. My work is narrative, as many of the series have a continuous story or repeating characters. I want viewers to respond immediately to a piece for the surface humor, and then look for the deeper psychological content of the work. I have been working for the past few years with the themes of chairs, houses, toys and trailers in 2D and 3D formats. A Hazen, North Dakota, native, Pfliger currently teaches art at Minot State University where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in art education in 1984. He taught art in the public school system for thirteen years before pursuing graduate work. He received his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1997 from the University of North Dakota. After spending several years teaching at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota, he returned to Minot State University in 2001.

Lot #8

Bill Harbort

Bill Harbort was born and raised just north of New York

Minot, North Dakota

City. After receiving his BFA and MA degrees from Syracuse

Dakota in Love

University, he pursued a career in commercial design. Over the

Mixed-media collage

years he worked in New York as a package designer for Revlon,

32 x 38 x 4 inches, 2007

as the art director for a childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s educational software company,

Range: $400 - 600

and as a freelance automobile illustrator. During the 1960s and 1970s, Harbort self-published thirty-one limited edition art prints of American muscle cars. (For the unfamiliar, muscle cars, also called Pony Cars, have giant V-8 engines with super chargers and special exhaust. These gas-guzzlers were really fast! Muscle cars reached their epitome in the 1960s with the advent of such cars as the GTO, certain Mustangs, Camaros, and some Chrysler models like the Challenger. Unfortunately the energy crisis killed the genre.)

art. He states, paint-by-numbers, coupons and clip art are just a few ingredients often found in our popular culture landfill. Being a college professor has given me time to explore my painting,

While working on the East Coast, Harbort was a member of the New York Society of Illustrators. He became widely recognized for his automotive airbrush work, which appeared in over twenty-five

Gradually Harbort, the commercial artist, began to explore fine

different

automotive

publications.

Tiring

which is still driven by pop culture words/images and messages. Each collage is sealed with a yummy coating of poured-on clear-cast plastic. My paintings may be tragic, comical or simply aesthetically pleasing.

commercial work, he moved to North Dakota in 1996 to teach

The artist lives in Minot with his wife Sandy, sons Nicholas and

graphic design and illustration at Minot State University.

Tyler, and three ex-racing greyhounds (Ethyl, Diesel and Petro).

Lot #9

Kim Bromley Fargo, North Dakota Billboard Beauty: Erin 329 Collage and oil on canvas 2004 Range: $3,000 - 3,500 Sponsored by High Plains Reader

Kim Bromley created Erin as part of his Billboard Series. In real life, billboards are changed on a regular basis by slapping a printed sheetâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or sheetsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;of paper on top to cover up the last message. After the billboard accumulates approximately eight layers, they are all stripped off, not unlike removing layers of old wallpaper. Then the accumulation begins anew. Bromley goes to the billboard company and selects scraps of layered

This work is about being a billboard and comments on their

paper, which he collages onto his canvas with rabbit-skin glue,

effect on our society.

over which he commences to paint and draw. The billboard scraps suggest the layering of time.

Bromley has an MFA in Painting and Drawing, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (1986), and an MA in Painting and

According to the artist, The concept of billboards has always

Drawing, University of Northern Iowa (1983). He has completed

fascinated me. First and foremost, they create an immediate and

painting residencies in Cedar Falls (2004); Chicago (1998);

powerful visual impact. They follow principles of design. They

Badlands, South Dakota (1997); Cuba (1994); Jamaica (1993);

mark their territory and influence how we think. Yet, they merely

Ecuador (1992); and in Mexico (1987 and 1990). His work is

illustrate a specific idea.

My challenge in working with

represented by Yvonne Rapp Gallery, Louisville, Kentucky. The

billboards is to create something visually powerful going beyond

artist possesses functional knowledge of the Spanish language

illustration.

and hypnotherapy certification.

Lot #10

Mark Anthony Lot #11

Moorhead, Minnesota Fog, 2006

Jerrel Holm

Archival digital photograph 31 x 8.75 inches

Valley City, North Dakota Badlands Spine Vessel

Range: $350 - 400

Porcelain, 2007

Mark Anthony, an artist-photographer, explores the

31 x 8.75 inches

land around him seeking nuances of poetry and using

Range: $350 - 400

photography to create aesthetic links between the land and the people who live there. Anthony composes images or scenes that

Jerrel Holm became interested in sculpture while attending

combine incongruities or anomalies that reflect tellingly on the

collective relationships to the land.

Minot State University, where he earned a BS degree in Art Education. He earned an MA in Art Education from Saint Cloud State University and an MFA from the University of North Dakota. After teaching high school for twelve years in Watford City, North Dakota, Holm spent ten years working as a studio potter. In 2004 he moved east to Valley City State University to return to teaching, while continuing to make art.

Anthony spent his childhood in Watford City, North Dakota, and

According to Holm, the harsh, rough, and desolate land surrounding my

his high school years in Fargo. He earned a BA in Architecture

former studio in western North Dakota often seems at odds with the

from North Dakota State University and a BA in Biology from

delicate, smooth, and pure porcelain being formed on my potterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wheel. This

Moorhead State University with degree-equivalent class work in

western environmental influence is apparent in the forms I make today rang-

Art and Humanities. His great interest was in architectural

ing from barrel shapes to squat, bulbous, mushroom-like pieces. The simple

restoration but he ended up at Moorhead State as publications

taut forms with clean hard lines expand and contract from a base and con-

photographer. After six years he left to open his own commercial

clude with a small opening on some, while others remain completely closed.

photography studio, now in its fourteenth year. Anthony

The forms become more complex and unusual as the smooth surface is inter-

continues his work as a commercial photographer, an artist, and

rupted by the rhythmic repetition of points, resulting in a sense of

a teacher at both Moorhead State and NDSU.

tension. This tension is repeated in the torn rims of porcelain bowls and sculp-

environs. He may photograph a romantic view of an early morning foggy river bank and include in the picture frame the mechanical ironworks of a deserted riverbank dam. Perhaps above all, he is concerned and interested in portraying the formal beauty of the land, the realities of the land, and human

tural forms to create a natural organic image. Other works begin as vessels but at the end of the forming process are bestowed with masculine

Mark Anthony has requested that his portion of the proceeds from the sale of this work of art be used to purchase a Museum membership.

and feminine characteristics to become sculptural. Some pieces are left naked of glaze to express harsh, frozen winters. An ash-type glaze coats the surface of others, reminiscent of hot arid summers. My sculpture survives the winter season out-of-doors. Porcelain is the most exacting of clays, demanding a special kind of respect and patience. I find the slow meticulous way I work in tune with my nature.

Lot #12

Jessie Palczewski Spearfish, South Dakota Blue, 2006 Collagraph print, gouache, Japanese paper and thread 68 x 60 inches Range: $1,800 - 3,200 Sponsored by Office of Academic Affairs, UND

Palczewski, an enrolled member of the

the quilts completely non-utilitarian, but functional as a

Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, was born in Eagle

communicator of emotion. Furthermore, the medium that I have

Butte, South Dakota, and raised in Reeder, North Dakota. She

chosen allows me to work in the areas of painting and

received her BS in Fine Arts from Black Hills State University

printmaking, which are the foundations of my artistic identity.

Jessie

(2003) and her MFA from the University of North Dakota (2006).

My quilts express personal experiences from both my American

According to the artist, While holding on to the tradition of fine art,

Indian and European backgrounds. They tell stories that words

I wanted to explore the sentimental qualities that exist in the craft

alone cannot accurately depict. Quilts are narrations that

of quilting. Consequently, I decided to investigate this idea further

transform over time carrying a legacy of the past and adapting to

the present, which gives them a timeless quality. As an artist in

communicate a level of fragility that relates to my feelings by

search of personal growth, quilts have been my outlet for life

drawing upon the transparent-look of the paper. The paper makes

occurrences that are otherwise hard to communicate.

using

unlikely

material,

paper.

wanted

Nancy Friese painted this small oil in preparation for the large sixteen-foot painting, Grove, Coulee and Open Sky (2004) installed in the entryway of the Ina Mae Rude Entrepreneur Center, Grand Forks, North Dakota. She painted it out-of-doors south of Grand Forks on a coulee during the month of August. Nancy Friese is a painter and printmaker who has shown extensively nationally and internationally in over thirty solo and 100 group exhibitions. These include the Brandts Klaedefabrik (Odense, Denmark), the Barbican Center (London), Metropolitan Museum of Art (Tokyo) and in the Untied States at the Bronx River Art Center, College of Wooster Art Museum, Chrysler Museum, Everson Museum, Herbert Johnson Museum of Art, International Center of Print New York, The New York Public Lot #13

Library, Rhode Island School of Art and Design Museum of Art, Snug Harbor Cultural Center.

Marley Kaul

She has received three National Endowment for the Arts

Bemidji, Minnesota

Fellowships, including the US/Friendship Commission six-month

Being and Becoming, 2007

grant to Japan. Nancy received the College Art Association and

Egg tempera and acrylic wash on wood panel

Reader’s Digest Giverny Grant, a Blanche E. Colman Award and

17.5 x 21.5 x 3 inches

a George Sugarman Foundation Award for painting.

Range: $1,500 - 1,700 Sponsored by Clear Channel

Nancy has participated in over fifteen competitive art residency programs for both painting and prinkmaking including

Marley Kaul maintains his studio in Bemidji, Minnesota. His paintings continue to explore his surroundings including the

the

MacDowell Colony; Millay Colony; I-Park Enclave; Musee’ de Pont Aven Residency Program in Brittany, France; Theodore

lush farmlands of southern Minnesota; the pinelands and prairies of northern Minnesota and the Dakotas; images from his travels; and, most importantly, daily life in his studio, home, and gardens. Kaul blends personal symbols with social and political issues, transforming simple images into complex metaphorical statements. This work is at once autobiographical and a social commentary on daily life. This small still life, executed in egg tempera, is of the window sill in Kaul’s studio. The plants are the everyday plants of a Minnesota home, the mood one of quiet restfulness. Paintings such as these are creating an important legacy. A hundred years from now, they will be highly prized as historic renditions of an earlier time and place. Kaul is a painter with a scholarly bent

Lot #14

who has become widely respected and loved within the region he calls home.

Nancy Friese Cranston, Rhode Island and Buxton, North Dakota Coulee, 2004 Oil on linen 14 x 18 inches Range $1,800 – 2,200 Sponsored by Holiday Inn

Friese cont.

Roosevelt Medora Foundation Residency in North Dakota’s Badlands;

Ragdale Colony, Illinois; and the Center for

Contemporary Print, Connecticut.

She was a painter in

residence for a four-month residency in Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Studioscape Residency Program in the World Trade Center during 9/11. Friese has an MFA from Yale University School of Art and Yale Summer School of Music and Art. She studied at the University of California, Berkeley and the Art Academy of Cincinnati. She has a B.S. from the University of North Dakota. Friese is a full professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. She spends her summers painting on the family farm near Buxton, North Dakota. Lot #15

Duane Perkins Winnipeg, Manitoba Untitled Porcelain 14.5 x 13.5 inches, 2006 Range: $700 - 900

Duane Perkins has been working as a full-time studio artist for thirty years. Born in 1947 in Chicago, he lived there until he moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, to attend Bethel College where he majored in art and philosophy. During his last year he needed another credit so enrolled in his first ceramic class. A few months later he graduated and moved to Winnipeg with his future wife and immediately set up his ceramic studio. In the summer of 2007, the Winnipeg Art Gallery celebrated Perkins’ sixtieth birthday with a large exhibition about which they wrote: The vessel form is a constant within Perkins’ production. Wheel-thrown and then reduction-fired, the works are beautifully composed both formally and decoratively. The firing technique leads to muted and subtle colour variations within Lot #16

the

glazes,

skillfully

worked

into

abstracted

designs

recalling vegetation such as scattered leaves, twisting vines, and

Duane Perkins

unopened buds. In other instances. . . . the rich colours and

Winnipeg, Manitoba

patterns of oriental fabrics are suggested. Over the last decade,

Untitled

the dimensions of Perkin's work have increased as he creates

Porcelain

broad rimmed platters, flared bowls and vases of soaring heights.

14.5 x 16.5 inches, 2007

In contrast to their considerable sizes, the vessels' decoration

Range: $1,400 – 1,800

mirrors the delicacy of the porcelain body, prompting one writer

Sponsored by Grand Forks Herald

to characterize his work as ‘noble vessel forms decorated with lush surfaces.’

Lot #17 (far left)

Milena marinov Fargo, North Dakota Jesus and Mary Egg tempera on wood panel with glazes 18 x 11.5 inches Range: $1,500 - 1,800 Lot #18

Milena marinov Fargo, North Dakota Jesus Egg tempera on wood panel with glazes 18 x 11.5 inches Range: $1,500 - 1,800

Milena Marinov was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. She

pigments for color. In her work, she uses such hard woods as

graduated in 1982 from Dupnitza College of Education, Bulgaria,

walnut, cherry, or oak. She impregnates the wood with a diluted

with a degree in graphic art. Her life direction changed when she

glue adhesive containing zinc oxide and titanium oxide,

took her first job as an art conservator with the Bulgarian

traditionally rendered from rabbit skin and fish bones. A

National Institute of Cultural Heritage and the Gallery of Old Art

completed drawing is transferred from a sheet of paper to the

and fell in love with orthodox religious art. Bulgarian icons can

surface. Areas where 23-karat gold leaf will be applied are

boast of a thousand year's history. Bulgaria was the first of the

treated with a Pompeii red glue to fix the gold leaf.

Slav peoples to adopt Christianity from Byzantium as her official religion in 865. Since then the Bulgarian icon has developed as a fundamental part of the art of the country from the ninth century through the present day. Milena Marinov continues this tradition while living in North Dakota. She maintains her studio and lives in Fargo with her husband, who teaches at North Dakota State University, and their two sons. In religious art, an icon is an artistic representation or symbol of anything considered holy and divine, such as paintings, sculpture, or mosaics, sometimes quite small in size, generally regarded by their users as a physical manifestation of the thing represented. Icons are used particularly in Eastern Orthodox churches and places of worship.

The artist adheres to the strict guidelines of the canon of icon painting, which can carry very specific instructions. For example, in painting Jesus Entering Jerusalem, Christ must be riding a white mule. Depending upon the complexity of the composition, the artist will spend from two to four weeks completing one icon. The icons offered in this auction are meant to be a pair. They reflect Marinov’s past year of intense work “writing” the icons for the iconostasis of the All Saints Orthodox Christian Church in Fargo. An iconostasis is a wall of icons and religious paintings, separating the nave from the sanctuary in a church. Marinova completed five of the six major icons, which will include versions of the images in the auction, as well as two Annunciation icons for the central King’s Gate that opens into the

Orthodox Christians venerate the icons in order to show honor

sanctuary. She estimates that it will take her another two years to

and respect for the people and events depicted. They do not

complete six icons for the lower story of the iconastsis, which

worship icons, for the same council that defended their use, the

depict stories from the Old Testament, twelve feast icons, and the

Second Council of Nicaea, forbade their worship.

crowning Last Supper.

Marinov utilizes the antique method of egg tempera painting,

While the North Dakota Museum of Art is primarily a

which uses the yolk as a strong, transparent binder, and dry

contemporary art museum, we are pleased to support the work of this superb artist working within an ancient tradition.

Lot #19

Ewa Tarsia, RCA Winnipeg, Manitoba Treasured Memories, 2006 Mixed media including acrylic and plastic on canvas 48 x 48 inches Range: $3,500 – 4,500 Sponsored by Leighton Broadcasting

EWa Tarsia, RCA is a Polish artist who became a Canadian

As an environmentalist, Tarsia sees the irony of using plastic and

citizen in 1995. The success of her artistic career in Canada was

paper to create images that celebrate the beauty of the natural

celebrated in June 2007 when she was officially inducted into

world. “It reflects our society,” she says of the work. “Plastic is

the Royal Academy of Arts. Whereas she works in diverse media

everywhere.”

including painting, sculpture, tapestry, landscape design, and drawing, she is known internationally as a printmaker. She has showed in international print biennials in Spain, France, Poland, Austria, United States, England, Germany, and Korea.

Formally trained in painting and sculpture at the School of Fine Arts in Poland, she began printmaking when she arrived in Winnipeg in 1991. For the past fourteen years, Tarsia has been working full time as a printmaker and painter. Her specific area

The work included in this auction represents the evolution of

of interest, monoprinting, involves the creation of a one-of-a-

Tarsia’s printmaking into personal techniques that meld the

kind image on a smooth surface such as Plexiglas that is

actual printmaking plastic plate into the final work of art, in this

eventually transferred onto paper.

case the painting Treasured Memories.

There is rawness and unbridled energy that comes, regardless of

As a printmaker, Tarsia is part of a tradition of artists who

medium, from her complete preoccupation with process. On her

acknowledge that their plates—the pieces of metal, plastic, wood

printing plates the energy is manifested in intensely manipulated

and linoleum that they print from—are the true objects of their af-

surfaces. She describes building them up, scratching into their sur-

fection. Covered with marks, lines and subtle traces of colour,

faces and then applying layers of colour. “It is a sickness,” she half-

printing plates are often as interesting as the images pulled from

jokes, “an uncontrollable compulsion medicated only by the

them. Each plate is visually complex, offering a fully active and

production of more art.” (Kristen Pauch-Nolin)

engaged surface that, once transformed into sculpture, reveals both the artist’s obsessive process and the beauty that motivates her to continue.

Ewa Tarsia will have a solo exhibition at the North Dakota Museum of Art in 2008.

Lot # 20

Adam Kemp Grand Forks, North Dakota Lincoln Park, 2007

Adam Kemp is donating half of the proceeds of this sale to the Museum of Art

Acrylic, oil hardwood floor with customized wood frame 32 x 99.5 inches Range: $1,000 - 1,200

Adam Kemp, Grand Fork’s unofficial Artist in Residence, was born in 1962 and grew up forty miles northeast of London in the Essex countryside. From age fourteen through nineteen, Adam sketched with watercolors because I could take them anywhere. At about sixteen, I noticed there were a lot of things that could be painted on—and I did. He graduated from Newcastle upon Tyne with a BFA in 1986 but not before studying

Lot #21

for a year at a wood restoration school in Florence, Italy, and

Cheryl Olson

working with a Newcastle blacksmith for six months.

Drake, North Dakota Untitled

While in college he realized he was a failed watercolor painter.

Watercolor on paper

I put too much paint on so I would have to give my pictures a

4.25 x 7 inches, 2006

bath in the tub. Finally the Department of Painting asked him to

Range: $150 - 200

leave just as the Department of Sculpture accepted him. The Sculpture Department was grounded in the tradition of the British Modern School—Sir Anthony Caro, Henry Moore, and most importantly, Barbara Hepworth, whom his parents had taken him to visit when he was a child. Her studio in Cornwall “looked like my bedroom so I figured there was hope.”

Cheryl Olson: I was a farmer's daughter, born and raised in North Dakota. I've lived in the state most of my life. I married a farmer and became a farmer's wife. Living so close to the land, I developed a deep appreciation for the wild and wide-open

Kemp earned an MFA degree from the University of North

landscape of the prairie.

Dakota where he learned to cast bronze in the new foundry. In

balance and design in my paintings, using small detail with

addition to paintings and sculpture, Kemp’s work includes a

obscure impressions, hopefully leaving some of the landscape to

commissioned wall mosaic at the Hotel Donaldson in Fargo

the interpretation of the viewer. I like to play with the vivid and ob-

(summer 2003). Kemp continues to teach popular sessions in

scure colors that our late night and early morning sun paints in the

the Museum’s Summer Art Camp and to run the You Are Here

North Dakota sky.

gallery in downtown Grand Forks, of which he is half-owner.

outside, and I hope you can experience it through my paintings.

I've tried to duplicate that natural

It is a feeling I have every day I look

Lot #23

Linda Whitney Valley City, North Dakota Dakota Plains Portrait, 2005 Encaustic, seed beads and horse hair Each 6.5 x 8.5 inches plus hair Range: $300 - $400 for pair

Linda Whitney has a long history of service to the arts

surface allows me to draw back into the image with my etching

in North Dakota reflected in her current position as President of

needle, satisfying my need for linear detail. Rubbing oilbar into

the Board of Valley City’s Community School of the Arts. In 1999,

the inscribed lines gives me a reason to get my hands dirty.

she was honored for this lifetime of service with the Governor’s Award for the Arts. Whitney took her MFA in Printmaking from the University of North Dakota in 1993 and has gone on to work in the field as a teacher, a juror/curator, and an artist. She currently is Chair and Professor of Art at Valley City State University. She exhibits extensively throughout the region, and

Bluegill comes from those childhood afternoons spent on a lake covered with lily pads fishing for panfish. It comes not from the thrill of catching a living creature on a hook but from the knowledge that one can provide food for supper even though one is only eight.

through the International Print Exchange #5 she will show work

Dakota Plains Portrait: Working with my hands can be a very

in 2008 at SUNY, Buffalo; Pratt Fine Arts Gallery, Seattle; and

spiritual act especially when the mantra of a repeated, some

Denmark’s Roennebaeksholm Arts and Culture Centre.

might say tedious, act is involved. Creating with materials historically used by another culture—the seed beads and

According to Whitney, Everything about the encaustic process

horsehair—vicariously connects me to those artists of another

feeds my personality. The smell of the warm beeswax brings to

time. Using the impression of my own face places me, in an

mind lazy, sun-filled summer days and the smell of the honey

abstract way, in an ancient place on the plains. The portrait mask

being extracted from the hive. The liquid pigments, which cool

is a document of what I want to be when I grow up, working

and solidify quickly, encourage me to work with thick, textural

creatively in a connected way.

layers of color directly on the surface. The thickness of the wax

Lot #22

Linda Whitney Valley City, North Dakota Bluegill, 2006 Encaustic and oilbar on canvas 15 x 21.25 inches Range: $125 - 150

Lot # 24

Melanie Rocan La Broquerie, Manitoba Swimming #2 Oil on canvas 54 x 66 inches Range: $2,000 - 2,500 Sponsored by KVLY TV

Melanie Rocan: Born in 1980, this bilingual Franco-

I rely on an intuitive process to create these works which gives

Manitoban graduated with a BFA from the University of

me the freedom to search and make discoveries. I find the

Manitoba and is currently completing her Master of Fine Arts at

struggles of creating work by intuition and memory takes me on

Concordia University, Montreal. She has recently been

a constant search to re-invent and build the work, within the

nominated as a semifinalist in the 8th annual RBC [Financial

internal domains of my conscience. This process also allows

Group] painting competition. Her work is included in a group

room for balance from my hand and the medium itself to

exhibition traveling to galleries across Canada including the

communicate.

Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal, The Museum of

techniques combined on one surface, a pastiche in the imagery as

Contemporary Art in Toronto and the Contemporary Art Gallery

well as in the way I paint. By using these techniques I want

of Vancouver. In 2005, she was part of an exchange program

to capture and evoke inconsistencies of emotions, making the

with the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. In 2007 she will be

work linger in between a darkness and a playfulness, to be able

part of a Too-Sicks group show at the Harvey Levine Gallery, in

to affect and give sensations.

I use a variety of languages and diverse

Los Angeles. My recent work speaks of the fragility of human beings and the reality of the subconscious state. I want to capture a distressed beauty in the work which suggests the inner emotional condition, highs and lows, a psychological unease. There is a dichotomy between the difficulty to comprehend the reality of the internal world and a reaction to the outside world’s fragility and the present state of the earth.

I use the environment to

address issues concerning identity and by isolating the figure I want to emphasize the ever growing disconnect between us and our environment.

Lot #25

Jessica Christy Valley City, North Dakota that’s how the gypsy went to heaven Encaustic and mixed media 30 x 22 x 3 inches, 2006 Range: $400 - 500

Jessica Christy was born in Valley City, North Dakota, and recently graduated from Valley City State University. The daughter of well-known artist/art professor Linda Whitney, she has lived in and around art her entire life. Consequently she began making and showing art at a young age. In the fall of 2007 she began work on her MFA in mixed media at the University of North Dakota. Asked about her work, she replied: When creating my art, I delve deep into my subjects, to a place where I can look out from their perspective. I grew up having my mischievous behavior blamed on being “bohunk.” I became curious to its origin and started digging into the culture of the Roma. I am fascinated with American culture and its perspective on the world, so studying the world of the Gypsies allowed me to step back and approach Lot #26

tradition and society in a whole new light. That’s how the gypsy went to heaven… discusses some of the most prominent beliefs of the Roma. The power of the color red and strong belief of

Ned Krouse

order and cleanliness are addressed. I created this piece in an

Haslet, Michigan

attempt to highlight and separate the preconceived ideas of the

Prairie Sunset, 2007 Slip decorated and raku fired stoneware

way these people live.

14 inch diameter, 3.25 inches deep Range: $150 - 175

Ned Krouse, a native of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, was an elementary school teacher for many years before his interest in pottery and his desire to make handmade objects led him back to school and a degree in fine art. He completed his MFA at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia in 1982 before moving to Wilmington, North Carolina, where his wife, Susan, was pursuing a career in museum work. Her Doctorate in Cultural Anthropology later allowed them to travel across much of America. Ned's curiosity about other cultures encountered during his travels has allowed him to formulate and incorporate his own ideas about glazes, color, size, and form into his work. Ned's ceramics have been widely exhibited in the Northeast, the Midwest and North Carolina. As a studio potter, Krouse specializes in colorful raku pottery. His pieces are removed from a kiln while red hot and smoked in a reduction chamber (usually a metal garbage can filled with straw and sawdust). Krouse has been a part of the teaching staff at the Potters' Guild since his move to the Lansing area in 2000. Back in 1989-90 Krouse taught for a year at Minot State University, filling in for a faculty member on leave.

Lot #28

KIM FINK Grand Forks, North Dakota The Blood Beneath My Feet Hybrid print (woodcut, flocking, stickers, and serigraph)

Lot #27

38 x 36 inches, 2006 Range: $600 - 800

Brent Braniff Minot, North Dakota Crisis Oil on canvas 24 x 8 inches, 2007 Range: $350-400

Brent Braniff exhibited a color pencil drawing in last year’s auction. However, over the past year and a half my art has taken a drastic change. I have gone from drawing to painting and from tightly planned illustrations to doing work that evolves from idea to idea. The process becomes part of the finished art. Each of these paintings has moments of discovery without the predetermination I was accustomed to with the illustrations. I found that the less I force myself to follow a pre-planned execution the more successful the piece. More recently I began to introduce some of the narrative that I had in my drawings by painting my photography into the work. My themes of spirituality and sensuality become some of the foundation for the color fields and symbols that are major elements in the image. At first, I was convinced that if I turned to this more painterly direction I would lose the directness that I enjoyed with the drawings. In fact, I found the opposite to be true. With each chance I took, reworking the intended outcome, the layers of color became the richness of the story.

Kim Fink’s current work involves hybrid printing techniques, illustrating what he says is an exploration of comparative culture in what is termed “cultural” or “group memory”—implicit as well as explicit—all of which forms us as individuals, as a group, and ultimately as a nation. Conceptually, I develop a visual diary or personal “travelogue” specifically reflecting our times in the early twenty-first century. Images are drawn largely from contemporary

Perhaps this is the direction I should’ve taken all along. Although,

mass media and contrasted by hand-executed application in

I haven’t abandoned drawing all together I’m sure that the past

opposition to mechanical or “cool” reproduction processes. It is

year will have an effect on the look of any future works.

an attempt to create a fusion of cultural realities that explore

Brannif, who grew up in Devils Lake, North Dakota, was studying art with Walter Piehl at Minot State University while

subjective versus objective visions and attempt to develop a synthesis between image and meaning.

exploring electronic music on the side.Today Braniff continues to

As art critic Michael Duncan wrote of Fink’s work: Kim Fink

live in Minot where he works as a television technician.

assembles picture games, refining their strategies in structured

Lot #29

Lot #30

Lot #31

Lot #32

Lot #33

Untitled

2006

2005

2004

2003

2006

9.5 x 6.3 inches

10.2 x 7.25 inches

9.4 x 6.3 inches

8 x 5.5 inches

9.6 x 6.4 inches

Ian August is a painter, lately of portraits from life, and a member of the Winnipeg collective Two Six (or Two-Sicks or 26

Ian August

or Twenty-Six or Too-Six). This group of seven artists in their early

Winnipeg, Manitoba

to mid-twenties began as teenage graffiti writers steeped in

Five paintings on

skateboard culture. Most are recent graduates from the

book covers

University of Manitoba's School of Art in Winnipeg, including

Range: $80 - 100 each

August who matriculated with honors in 2004. According to Winnipeg's artist/critic Cliff Eyland, Two-Six paints quietly in their shared studio and bicycles wildly in the streets, decorating the city with original works of art that they call “prefabs.” Many prefabs are painted with commercial colors called “mistints,” that is, house paint that has been rejected by a buyer after already having been mixed. Mistinted paint on rejected pieces of wood found in the dumpsters makes prefabs a fabulous return of the repressed. Prefabs are small, original paintings that are “nail bombed” to

combinations. These goals are meticulously painted mysteries

city fences and walls during the ritual bicycle expedition 26 calls

and intricately layered prints. It’s an image world, baby. . . you

a “party bike.” In galleries, they install, along with large stretched

gotta know the symbols to survive. . . . (from the exhibition 4-

paintings, collections of small wall works they call “Shame Walls,”

Way Stop, Donna Beam Gallery, University of Las Vegas, 1999).

a punning reference of Halls of Fame.

The Blood Beneath My Feet is the central panel of a five-panel

Each artist in the group also makes his or her personal work.

allegorical work-in-progress that explores human life, addressing

Such are the five small paintings in this auction by Ian August.

such themes as the transience of life, death and wisdom, amongst

Painted on the outside of covers torn from hardcover books, they

others. Primarily woodcut, this hybrid, or mixed-media print

defy logical interpretation although his working titles give clues:

includes silkscreen, flocking and stickers.

wood grain, sore toe, stir sticks, Sumo Love, rope knot. His

Kim Fink teaches printmaking at the University of North Dakota.

charming and not-so charming characters go madly about their unknown business, resembling, if anything, leftover characters from Dr. Seuss. Another clue: Ian spent the last year in Banff but returned to Winnipeg to live “because he missed the winters.”

Lot #34

Jon Solinger Moorhead, Minnesota Elm Elegy, 2006 Digital and film 42 x 19 inches Range: $600 - 700

Jon Solinger: This work is part of a photography project intended to lyrically document the life and death of trees in my Moorhead neighborhood’s landscape. It especially relates to elm trees and Dutch elm disease; how the process of change on my street points out the impermanence of all things.

photographs which opened in Grand Forks in the summer of 2005 and subsequently toured for two years throughout North

In this work I’m experimenting with visual ideas from the world

Dakota through the Museum’s Rural Arts Initiative. The Museum

of books; folding the print to create gutters reminiscent of an open

is publishing a book of these photographs. His most recent

volume, and presenting the print on a wooden easel

exhibition was a two-man show with Mark Anthony at the Plains

inspired by a library dictionary stand.

Art Museum in Fargo, winter 2006-07. Solinger enriches his

I like drawing a parallel between book forms that remind me of many stories read, individual trees’ life stories as told by growth rings in their stumps, and the larger tale of the demise of the elms in my neighborhood. They all unfold in a progression that moves from beginning through to an end.

newest color photographs with layers of information. His themes incorporate ideas of land usage along with the history of the life of trees in the Red River Valley. Solinger teaches photography part-time at the University of Minnesota, Moorhead, and runs Solinger’s Resort on Lake Lida, four miles east of Pelican Rapids, Minnesota.

These landscapes speak to the give and take between humans and the natural world, how we respond and adapt, and signs of time's passage. Jon Solinger of Moorhead has been photographing the trees of the Red River Valley and the Minnesota lake country for years. In 2000 the North Dakota Museum of Art secured a grant from Nodak Electric Foundation to allow Solinger to photograph extensively. The Museum mounted an exhibition of eighty of his

Note: Work will be housed in a Plexiglass box.

Lot #35

Robert Crawford Crowe Moorhead, Minnesota Untitled Pastel on paper 18 x 22 inches, 2007 Range: $800 - 1,200 Sponsored by KXJB TV

Robert Crowe: Having been born into the family who

imposed on simple shapes and forms. These images resonate with

owned the Bergstrom and Crowe Furniture store in Fargo for ninety

many childhood and local memories. At the same time I wish to

years, I spent most of my early life in retail and interior

dazzle the viewer’s eyes with color.

design. During this time I was painting artistically and doing faux finishes in my spare time. Finally, I became frustrated with retail and decided to return from Dallas to Fargo to finish a long overdue art degree at the University of Minnesota, Moorhead. While finishing my BFA, I began teaching at Creative Arts Studio in Fargo. There I became friends with Robert Kurkowski, the

Robert Crowe lives on the family farm near Comstock, Minnesota. This past summer he showed at the Plains Art Museum in Fargo in the exhibition Personal Journeys on Common Ground: Robert Crawford Crowe, Dan Jones, Carl Oltvedt. He is represented by the Boerths Gallery in Fargo.

Studio’s director, and through Bob I fell in love with teaching kids. After getting my BA, I decided to pursue a BS in education. While completing this second degree, also at Moorhead, I met and became friends with painting instructor Carl Oltvedt and Dan Jones, another local painter.

“Plein Aire” painters work on location to quickly capture the

Carl and Dan introduced me to Plein Aire painting. This way of

fleeting light effects that occur in nature. Typically the initial

painting has a long history in that most of the great Impressionists

painting is completed on location in two to three hours before the

and Expressionists painted this way. The three of us became close

quality of the light changes. The artist may return to the same

friends and began to paint together often. Through Carl and Dan I

location at the same time of day to complete the work, or may

learned to appreciate our Lakes Country and our beautiful Red

make adjustments in the studio.

River Valley. These subjects have been my major focus for the last ten years as I continued to paint realistic, local landscapes.

Painting in this manner, rather than from photographs, gives the artwork a quality of being truthful to nature and conveys an

For the last three years I have been concentrating on abstraction of

atmosphere and feeling of a place that is not achievable by any

these local images by pushing color as far as I can. The result is

other means. When viewing a Plein Air painting, you can almost

what you see

imagine yourself in the scene.

in the work in the exhibition: brilliant color

—Carmel Plein Aire Gallery

Greg Blair has donated the proceeds from the sale of this work of art to the Museum of Art

Lot #36

Greg Blair Aberdeen, South Dakota The Holy Trinity Leaves, paper and charcoal 19 x 24 inches, 2007 Range: $350 - 500

Greg Blair: This piece is from my series that integrates

In 2002, he began work on his MFA in sculpture at the University

natural materials with works on paper. I have been thinking

of North Dakota (2004). He currently works as Coordinator of

about the influence of Christianity on our cultural perceptions

Marketing and Graphic Design at Presentation College,

and attitudes towards nature. Within Christian imagery, evil is

Aberdeen. He also serves as an adjunct art instructor at Northern

often represented as an animal or something else from the

State University and Presentation College.

natural world: the snake in the Garden of Eden, the plagues of frogs and locusts, and the devil as half goat. This piece is the

In 2007 Blair completed an outdoor sculpture commission for

opposite in that good is represented by something organic or

Northern State University. The sculpture, My Body is a Cage,

natural. I decided to use the Holy Trinity, God, Jesus, and the Holy

was installed in June in the main green space on campus.

Spirit, because together they sybolize the epitome of goodness. The three leaves, which are positioned level to each other, are almost exactly the same, but each is still unique. One of the leaves has the top portion broken off and placed slightly above the leaf body. This is meant to be the crown that God wears in the kingdom of heaven. I chose this opposite representation of Christian imagery in order to satirically comment on the underlying ideology concerning nature in Christianity.

Blair has a long relationship with the North Dakota Museum of Art as a artist who creates sculpture with children through the Museum’s Rural Arts Initiative. As part of the Museum’s Emptying Out of the Plains project, Blair cast tree sap into the images of the human heart as a memorial to trees that once thrived in North Dakota during the glacial Lake Agassiz era. His tombstone installation also cited trees that have the potential to become extinct. When asked to create an additional sculpture in the

Greg Blair was born in Edmonton, Alberta, but spent his early

Museum Garden, Blair asked himself, “How would a museum

years in Red Deer (south of Edmonton in the treed foothills of the

display a tree specimen?” His answer: Treat it like a dinosaur.

Rocky Mountains). He received his BFA degree from the

His tree dinosaur occupied the southwest corner of the Museum

University of Lethbridge in Alberta with an emphasis in sculpture.

Garden for months.

Lot # 37

Georgie Papageorge draws like an angel. Her line is sure, swift, and elegant. Inevitably the drawings appear in her

Georgie Papageorge

exhibitions as “working drawings.” Rather, I believe them to be summations, made by the artist at the end of a large body of work, incorporating all that has gone before. Once finished, the

Pretoria, South Africa Study, Waiting for the Mountain to Come Out Series Oil and graphite on Fabriano paper

large-scale monumental drawings, laced with calligraphy and

27.75 x 39.25 inches

expanded with washes of paint, become singular works of art, more

comprehensive

and

mysterious

than

1997

the

Range: $800 - $1,200

photographic murals, the sculpture, the installations, and the videos from which they gather their substance.

the United States, including the North Dakota Museum of Art,

Georgie Papageorge, born in 1941 as Jennifer Jane van der

which owns a substantial body of the earlier work and in 2005

Merwe in Simonstown, Cape Province, South Africa, changed

published a full catalogue covering ten year’s work.

her name to George when she was ten—and a few years later, to Georgie. This heralded the beginning of what can only be described as an extraordinary life, marked by tragedy and an incredible ability to rise above it all. She graduated with a BA from the University of South Africa, Pretoria, at the age of 40 and embarked on an international art career. Her art has never been without intense personal, spiritual, and social investment, with the notion of transcending “barriers” central to her work—political in her earlier art and transcendental in later works.

In 1994, Papageorge began working in the Kalahari Desert, Botswana, to produce the Gondwanaland Series, a land-art series based in the Sowa Salt Pan. In pursuit of the Great Rift Valley, she traveled north to Mount Kilimanjaro, which she has climbed three times, making this great African mountain the subject of her next major project. This drawing comes from that large series, “Kilimanjaro Through the Rifting Barrier.” She made the drawing, Waiting for the Mountain to Come Out, in a mealie (corn) field while waiting for the barrier of clouds to move away to reveal the tip of

Throughout the 1980s South Africa and its violent political

Kilimanjaro. She centers herself in line with the mountain

situation provided the conceptual basis of her art. The political

through the use of the circle. In 2008-09 the North Daktoa

work, which came from this time, included Collaboration,

Musuem of Art will mount a major exhibition of Papageorge’s

Suspension and other monumental works that were exhibited in

work, including the Kilimanjaro series.

Lot #38

Todd Hebert Los Angeles, California Snowman with Grass #3 Acrylic and watercolor on paper 2007 10.50 x 29.75 inches Range: $1,800 - 2,200

Todd Hebert is from North Dakota. He sees the world the way North Dakotans do a good part of the time: the world made white and blurry, or gorgeously colored, by shifting snow in a country where the Prevailing Westerlies seldom stop blowing.

Sponsored by East Grand Floral

Todd Hebert’s paintings are fuzzy definition incarnate—

elaborately staged film stills, reminiscent of some of Los Angeles

lush images of melting snowmen, sweating water bottles and

legend John Baldessari's conceptual-based paintings that play with

bubblegum backyard Americana seen, delicately, coolly, through

the nature of meaning and notions of art theory, and of

the prism of the morning dew caught on an invisible spider web.

fiction, abstraction, what constitutes substance.

The young Los Angeles-based artist's paintings are deftly blurry, eerily suggestive, an enigma made out of the familiar and the obvious. There is a special, childlike and almost primeval, sense of wonder at the physical world which the works increasingly con-

Like so many of Hebert’s paintings, Snowman with Grass #3 is full and empty at the same time, and as evanescent, beautiful and ephemeral as they are real.

vey. Still their highly crafted, minutely designed facture

Hebert was born in Valley City, North Dakota, in 1972. He

unabashedly plays with the idea of digital manipulation with a

received a BFA from the University of North Dakota in 1996, and

very knowing, not quite entirely out of focus, playful “broken cam-

in 1998 he earned an MFA from the Rhode Island School of

era” aesthetic—resulting in the mysterious soft edges and off kil-

Design. He has been a fellow at both the Fine Arts Work Center

ter, from the hip perspective that have become one of Hebert's

in Provincetown, and at the Core Program, Glassell School of Art

signature framing games, a magical mixture of thematic heft with

in Houston. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles and is

light-as-air touch. Patient distillation, requiring the same of the

represented by Mark Moore Gallery in Santa Monica.

viewer. The artist recently completed a print edition for the Aldrich Following his Emerging Artist Award exhibition at the Aldrich

Contemporary Art Museum and is also currently in a three-

Contemporary Art Museum (Ritchfield, Connecticut) last year,

person show, “Works on Paper: Todd Hebert, Dennis

Hebert showed five new paintings at Mark Moore in Los Angeles,

Hollingsworth, Jason Meadows,” at the Cirrus Gallery in Los

a show in which he further investigated the physical and

Angeles. Hebert will have a solo show at Jack Shainman Gallery,

metaphorical properties of that which might be his favorite

New York, in 2008.

element—water. As his gallerist points out, his paintings are like

— Quoted passage by London critic Lupe Nunez-Fernandez

Lot #39

Barton Lidice Benes New York, New York Wet Dreams, 2004-05 Twelve constructed lithographs with title pages and box (right) Each approximately 8.5 x 10.5 inches Edition 12/12 Range: $2,500 - 3,000

Barton Lidice Benes’ suite of twelve construction lithographs was produced between October 2004 and June 2005 at the Sequoia Press, in conjunction with the University of North Dakota Art Department. Kim Fink, Chair of UND’s Printmaking Department, founded the Sequoia Press. There are twelve suites, numbered 1/12 to 12/12 and there is no bon a tirer suite or proofs. Each print is signed, numbered and dated by the artist. All images are on archival material as follows: Each “dream” image has been scanned and printed on archival 80 lb. “ultra-white” printing paper, using an Epson 3700 Photo Scanner and MacIntosh G5 computer as matrix. Each “dream” is printed with an Epson Stylus Photo 2200 printer, using T0300 series archival ink, and flocked with #612 “golden flow” Vintage Glass Glitter, and glued onto Arches 400 lb. watercolor paper, using archival glue. Each dream “bubble” is flocked with #612 glass glitter on Arches 300 lb. watercolor paper, using archival glue. Each “stamped” image is printed from aluminum plate lithography matrix.

Lot #40

Walter Piehl Minot, North Dakota red bob: sweetheart of the rodeo, with thanks to Dave Doll Acrylic on canvas 39.5 x 27.5 inches, 2007 Range: $3,500 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 4,500 Sponsored by Merrill Lynch

Walter Piehl was born into a family that raised rodeo

contemporary Western art. By drawing, overdrawing, and re-

stock so he rode horses as a matter of course. When he arrived

drawing, Piehl could leave the traces of movement on the paper.

at graduate school at the University of Minnesota in 1969, Bill

He worked and reworked the surface, always leaving enough

Goldstein, now the Director of Universal Limited Art Editions but

description for the viewer to follow the motion of a falling hat, a

then a fellow student, commented that from the beginning

rider flying backward, the gesture of a flinging hand, a boot

Walter drew with great confidence and skill. We were beginning

following the body into a somersault as the rider is tossed.

students and he arrived full-blown. He put his hand to paper and

Ultimately Piehl is charmed by the bucking horse, for him the

the lines flowed. And he drew horses.

real sweetheart of the rodeo, and the title of his on-going series,

But before that, at the beginning of his experience with the world

of which there are hundreds of paintings and drawings.

outside of Marion, North Dakota, Walter went to Concordia, a

Today Piehl is widely recognized as one of North Dakotaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s senior

small Lutheran college in Moorhead, Minnesota, enrolling in

painters and as the artist who singularly pioneered the

1960. Cy Running was his teacher. Walter was the skittish colt. I

contemporary cowboy art movement. In 2003 the Plains Art

was so used to calendar art, to illustration, to cowboy art as it

Museum mounted a retrospective of his work. In 2004 he was

appeared in the magazines, I had a hard time.

honored with the Governorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Award for the Arts and in 2005 he

Piehl went on to draw and paint horses, year after year, never wearying of his subject, never despairing in his quest to create

was appointed to the North Dakota Council on the Arts as a member at large. And, Piehl continues to ride horses.

Lot #41

Marjorie Talle Merriman Towson and Baltimore (studio) Maryland Stavlirke Series #9 Ink and watercolor on paper 28 x 22.5 inches, 1983 Range: $350 - 450

Marjorie Merriman is a consummate painterprintmaker with deep ties to the Northern Plains region. Her grandparents were married in the Dakota Territory. Her grandfather, Ole Larson Huset, owned two farms in North Dakota and his heirs, including Marjorie, share the ownership. Her mother, Edith Margaret Huset, grew up on a farmstead near Hatton and in a house on Reeves Drive in Grand Forks. Marjorie’s father, Henry O. Talle, was born on a farm near Albert Lea, Minnesota, and graduated from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, in 1917. In 1919 and 1920 he taught and was superintendent of schools in Rugby and Rolette, North Dakota. Shortly after, the family moved to Decorah, Iowa, where they lived for the next two decades and where Marjorie was born. She moved with her family to Washington in 1939 when her father

Norway’s Stave Churches: Most churches built in Norway

became a United States Representative in Congress. Marjorie

before the Black Death swept across the country (and Europe as

graduated from The College of William and Mary and received

well) in the years 1349-51, were stave churches, which take their

her MFA in painting from the Mount Royal School of Art at the

names from the distinctive building technique using vertical

Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore.

staves. There must have been approximately 800 - 1000 stave

Both a painter and a printmaker, Merriman has created a significant body of work about Norway’s stave churches, having

churches in Norway, although there are only about thirty original stave churches remaining today.

visited the stave church in Norway where her grandfather Huset

The oldest type of stave churches were built in the 1000s, but the

was baptized and confirmed.

timber of their walls were set directly into the ground and, as a

Active in Maryland Printmakers Association, she continues to go daily to her studio where she houses her own printing press. Her recent concentration on printmaking has produced work that is

result, they quickly rotted away. In the 1100s it became customary to set the walls on beams or sills above ground. Thus all stave churches still standing rest on such sills.

abstract although it references nature and symbolic forms.

There are several kinds of stave churches. The simplest have only

According to printmaker Nancy Friese (a cousin), “Marjorie’s

a nave, with a narrower chancel—in these churches the roof

work has a direct and graphic strength.”

rests on the walls. Some stave churches have a tall, sturdy upright

Marjorie Merriman has lived in Cornwall, England, and the US Virgin Islands, and she has traveled extensively including four trips to Norway to paint churches. Merriman co-founded a nonprofit exhibition space in Maryland where she curated monthly shows. As a curator she also has produced several large group exhibitions, including a show of five family painters for Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum in Iowa, and has advised corporate collections.

or mast in the middle which supports the ridge turret and strengthens the walls. The biggest and most elaborate type has a central section with a lofty ceiling, which is supported by freestanding posts upon the floor. A lower aisle encircles the central area.

— Arild Hauge, Denmark

Stave churches may be Norway's foremost contribution to world cultural heritage—this church is on UNESCO's World Heritage List.

Lot #42

Jim Bailey Minot, North Dakota Sixtyfour Stoneware, cone six oxidation with metal, vinyl. and rubber 24 x 21.5 inches, 2004 Range: $1,600 – 2,000

At some point these separate passions merged, and my ceramic vessels became infused with the hot-rod aesthetic. The elaborate fit, finish and presentation in my artwork replicate the custom car experience and acts as a testament to a cultural lifestyle. My vessels, like some “show cars,” are no longer primarily about utility. These customized vessels become symbolic Jim Bailey’s work in the auction, Sixtyfour, was given Honorable Mention in ANA 35: A National Juried Exhibition at the Holter Museum in Helena, Montana. Of the 600 entrants, 147 works in all media were chosen. Sixtyfour was reproduced along with half-a-dozen other images in the exhibition brochure.

objects

diverting

attention

surface,

color,

and

imagination. They reveal a host of social and cultural attitudes and beliefs about function, style and individuality. As an undergraduate art major, Jim Bailey enrolled in his first ceramics course in 1992 at Minot State University. A year later

Sixtyfour is part of the artist’s Customized Series, which draws

Bailey joined Davy Pottery in Burlington, North Dakota. During

upon two different but equally important aspects of his life:

his six years as a production potter, he divided his time between

wheel-thrown ceramic vessels and automotive culture. Bailey

production, distribution and marketing of the full pottery line.

seeks to merge these seemingly unrelated topics in his art.

In 2002, Bailey finished his BFA degree and was accepted into

The ceramic vessel evolved as a practical device for food storage.

the graduate program at the University of North Dakota. In 2005

Gradually they took on decorative as well as religious elements of

he graduated with a MFA having also acquired three years of

the local culture including being used as reliquaries for human re-

university teaching experience.

mains. Today ceramic vessels are quite devoid of function, either practical or symbolic. Commercial products have replaced them and contemporary social customs have devalued their importance. Now the ceramic vessel functions solely as a decorative object, the expression of personal taste and interests. According the artist, my interest in cars dates back to my youth, when the automobile represented my first definition of masculinity and personal freedom. As an adult, this interest has shifted to the cultural implications of the customized vehicle. Many embellishments are pure ornamentation as the hot-rodder aesthetic demands that functional parts of the automobile be customized. This ensures a consistency of style throughout the entire vehicle that manifests itself through a strict accordance to form—form follows function.

From 2005 to 2007 Bailey completed a residency at the Custer County Art and Heritage Center in Miles City, Montana. As Resident Artist, Jim was responsible for the in-house adult ceramic classes. He also contributed to the educational outreach programs to area schools and communities, as well as organizing and maintaining the Center’s ceramic studio. Bailey is currently an instructor at Minot State University where he teaches ceramics and other related studio courses. He exhibits, locally, regionally and throughout the United States. Weekends find him working as a track announcer at the local drag strip during the racing season.

Lot #43

Gregory Vettel Friday, August 13, 1806 Digital composite giclee print 26 x 34 inches Range: $400 - 600

Gregory Vettel has donated the proceeds from the sale of this work of art to the Museum of Art GREGORY VETTEL: I was born in Hillsboro, North Dakota,

could not get him. I joined the pirogues and party again in the

and grew up in the flat Red River Valley, lived in western North

bend below and proceeded on. Some Indians were seen in a skin

Dakota, the mountains of Montana and Los Angeles and visited

canoe below. They were descending from an old camp of theirs

New York, Denver, Chicago, Mexico City, Buenos Aires and

on the southeast side, those I suppose to be some of the

Montevideo, Uruguay. I like the contrast of living in and

Minetaras who had been up on a hunting expedition, one canoe

experiencing different geographical regions, but have always

was left at their camp. We had not proceeded far before I

come back to my childhood terrain where the sky and land go on

discovered two Indians on a high hill. Nothing very remarkable

forever.

took place. The mosquitoes are not so troublesome this evening as they have been. The air is cool.

My landscape photography and love of history are combined in

. . .

[spelling has been

regularized]

my auction piece as I attempt to echo the feeling of surviving through hunting in the North Dakota environment under our won-

Greg Vettel received his BA from Minot State University in art and

derful summer skies. I made this work in response to William

graphic design. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spent thirty-eight years studying and

Clarkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s journal entry on Wednesday (Friday), August 13, 1806

repairing all types of mechanisms from motorcycles to telescopes

which said:

before becoming the Exhibition Coordinator and Registrar at the North Dakota Museum of Art. This former automobile,

The last night was very cold with a stiff breeze from the

motorcycle, and truck technician transformed his love of

northwest. All hands were on board and we set out at sunrise and

machines into sculpture and prints made of and inspired by

proceeded on very well with a stiff breeze astern the greater part

discarded Harley Davidson parts, which he has exhibited

of the day. Passed the entrance of the Little Missouri River at 8

extensively throughout the region. Professionally, he serves as

A. M. and arrived at the entrance of Myry (sic) River at sunset and

President of the North Dakota Art Gallery Association and is a

encamped on the northeast side having came by the assistance

new board member of the Grand Forks County Historical Society.

of the wind, the current and our oars eighty-six miles. Below the

He purchased the thirty-acre family farmstead in rural Thompson,

little basin I with Drewyer walked through the northeast point.

North Dakota, and filled it with his wild and eclectic collection of

We saw an elk and several deer. Drewyer wounded the elk but

motorcycles, cars, boats, machines and works of art.

Lot #44

Joan Hall St. Louis, Missouri Bikar Handmade paper, printing, sisal fibers, pulp painting 30 x 40 inches, 1999 Range: $1,200 - 1,500

JOAN HALL is known for her large-scale, sculptural prints

w Linocut, collagraph, monoprint—I’ll use whatever works for a

that are thickly layered with handmade paper, pulp, and printing

particular piece. Printmaking and papermaking are so

ink. The process of addition and subtraction, cutting out shapes

unbelievably physical and labor intensive that if you don’t keep

and painting with paper, creates a deep and complex surface that

pushing, you can get caught up in technique and not think enough

reveals new images as we look deeper into the work. It is as

about making art.

though the viewer is diving through the surface of the ocean. Implicit natural phenomena, such as water, wind, currents, and waves not only show the artist’s long fascination with the sea, but also portray the permeability of human beings’ basic structure from part to whole; we are of and by the sea. Hall has always sailed and always brought the sea into her art. According to Hall: w

I like to work with a mixed media approach to printmaking.

Born and raised in Ohio, Hall earned a BA from Columbus College of Art and Design and spent a summer at San Francisco’s Institute of Experimental Printmaking, working with Garner Tullis before receiving her MFA from the University of Nebraska. Today, Joan Hall is Professor of Art at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis where she holds the Kenneth E. Hudson Professorship.

w The Internet has opened up a good community for

Her work is included in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum

networking and reading technical information, so it's been pretty

of Art; the Saint Louis Art Museum; the Fogg Art Museum at

positive overall.

Harvard University; the Leopold-Hoesch Museum in Duren,

w I love sailboat racing, so many of my pieces are suggestive of the sea. I like to multi-layer the sheets of paper I've made using different textures, weights, and densities. The layering represents the water and the mysteries that lie below. w The ocean is like another world. Being out on the water, when you can no longer see land, you definitely feel like you’re out of your element. [In my prints] I wanted to recreate the sense of journey and of the human need to explore and dream of new horizons. w

Making paper, that’s the easy part.

Germany; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts; the Evansville Museum of Art; the Municipal Museum, Suwa, Japan; and the Municipal Museum, Nanjing, China. Her work has been published in over ten books and her latest exhibition was at the Hillwood Museum, Long Island University, New York. Hall has deep roots in North Dakota, her mother’s home. As a child she spent her summers in Carson, located in Grant County southwest of Bismarck.

Lot #45

Tim Schouten Petersfield, Manitoba From the Treaty 4 Suite 8.5 x 11 inches Oil, dry pigment, microcrystalline wax, beeswax and damar resin on acid free vellum Range: $150 - 250

Lot #46

Tim Schouten Petersfield, Manitoba From the Treaty 4 Suite 8.5 x 11 inches Oil, dry pigment, microcrystalline wax, beeswax and damar resin on acid free vellum Range: $150 - 250

Tim Schouten‘s paintings from the initial Treaty Lands Series present landscapes within the geographic boundaries of Canada/First Nations Treaties. The first body of work was created between 1996 and 2000. The Treaty Lands title has become an umbrella title for an extended series of works which now includes the Distances Between web project, the Roads North and Markers Series of paintings as well as The Treaty Suites ongoing Series of paintings made on the sites of treaty signings between Canada and its native people. The treaties gave rights of land usage and economic support to the native inhabitants in exchange for land ownership, both above and below the surface. Still today, as in the United States, legal wrangling continues between the Canadian government and its native citizens. The lyrical landscapes of the treaty series are visually gorgeous, luminous and shimmering, and all the while underpinned by troubling questions of land ownership in North America. The artist researches each treaty site, photographing the landscape, digging through historical files in search of the records of treaty enactment, intent upon understanding the layers of conflict and beauty associated with each specific place. For Schouten landscape is visual place. Landscape is also the dumping ground of human grief. As the critic Mariianne Mays eloquently

summarizes, political questions of property and Aboriginal disenfranchisement beat at the heart of these paintings. This most recent Treaty 4 Suite contains a couple dozen exquisite little paintings made of encaustic on velum. Part of the on-going Treaty Suites Project, they are based largely on photographs taken by the artist at the two locations where Treaty 4 was signed in 1874. The Cree and Saulteaux of the Qu’Appelle Valley and surrounding regions signed the Treaty with Canada at a spot that is now on a residential street in the town of Fort Qu’Appelle in Saskatchewan. Additional Cree, Saulteaux and Stony of the region made Treaty ten days later at Fort Ellice near what is now St. Lazarre, Manitoba. Treaty 4 Territory covers approximately 50,000 square miles of southern Saskatchewan as well as small portions of Manitoba and Alberta. Note: Today the building in these works of art functions as the local hockey arena.

Lot #47 Marlon Davidson AND Don Knudson Bemidji, Minnesota Five Landscapes, 2006 84 x 28 x 2 inches Mixed media (detail below) Range: $1,500 - 2,000

Marlon Davidson and Don Knudson have devoted their lives to art, first individually and ultimately as collaborators. The work in this auction results from over a dozen years working in wood and collage to make collaborations of varying sizes and shifting configurations. Their collaborative art works are

in private and public collections throughout the

United States and Europe. Davidson and Knudson both attended Bemidji State College and the Minneapolis School of Art (now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design). Davidson combined his art with education, first in public schools and later at Bemidji State University where he taught in the Visual Arts Department. Knudson has worked since the late fifties as a sculptor and furniture maker. We are lifetime artists. We have worked for over four decades, both in the Twin Cities and later in Bemidji where we have lived for eighteen years. We think of our lives as an artistic statement. The great art historian, Bernard Berenson, wrote repeatedly about â&#x20AC;&#x153;life as a work of art,â&#x20AC;? Whereas one never arrives at that state, we find it a worthwhile journey. Making art objects is an everyday part of our lives. We think of our art as a way of explaining ourselves to ourselves. Through it, we try to understand our culture, and to live actively within it. We also explore the past through our artâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;especially the history of art. While we use a variety of materials, our main source of inspiration is nature and historical art. Both born in northern Minnesota, we also lived for twenty years in the Twin Cities. We are aware that our work is informed by the art and artists we knew while living in the Cities.

Lot # 48 (left)

Ingrid Restemeyer Minneapolis, Minnesota Swim School, 2007 Etching and cotton thread on handmade paper 50. 5 x 20. 5 inches Range: $1,800 - 2,200

Lot # 49 (right)

Ingrid Restemeyer Minneapolis, Minnesota Gentlefish scroll #7, 2007 Etching and cotton thread on handmade paper 50. 5 x 20. 5 inches Range: $1,800 - 2,200 These are Sponsored by Chester Fritz Auditorium

Ingrid Restemeyer is a printmaker and fiber artist

in 1996 earned her BFA in Printmaking, Fiberarts and Mixed

originally from North Dakota but now living and working in

Media Visual Arts from the University of North Dakota. In the

northeast Minneapolis. Influenced by generations of fine crafters,

past several years she has shown extensively and gained gallery

Restemeyerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work reflects traditional embroidery techniques

representation across the United States and overseas.

while incorporating other process-intensive mediums through collage. Her latest body of work features recognizable imagery in the form of intricate etchings on handmade papers, successively collaged with fine printmaking papers and punctuated by paragraph-like forms made from hand-stitched threads. For years Restemeyerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s art has alluded to storytelling or narration through the use of her intaglio images as pseudoillustrations which suggest a story when paired with code-like paragraph shapes formed from her hand-embroidery. Restemeyer has spent more than a decade growing and developing her unique combination of printmaking and fiberart techniques. She studied overseas in Auckland, New Zealand and

As well as being dedicated full-time to producing and exhibiting her artwork, Restemeyer is heavily involved in the Minneapolis arts community, serving on the Board of Directors of the Rosalux Gallery and as a lead committee member for the development of the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District.

Lot #50 (left)

Sheila Spence Winnipeg, Manitoba Tulipa #2, Botanicals Pigment on Somerset paper Montage of four digital photographs 44 x 15.5 inches, 2007 Range: $800 - 1,000

Lot #51 (right)

Sheila Spence Winnipeg, Manitoba Tulipa #5, Botanicals Pigment on Somerset paper Montage of five digital photographs 44 x 12.5 inches, 2007 Range: $800 - 1,000

achieve if she photographed the complete flower from one vantage point. Gradually, each tulip’s portrait evolved into a montage of photographs, just as each stage of life demands a shifting pointof-view if it is to be understood. She didn’t hide the passages with the tricks of Photoshop but chose instead to allow the viewer to

Sheila Spence has always used her camera to investigate

consider them. The photo shapes are different; the colors not the

notions of portraiture, self-portraiture, community and identity.

same.

Then in the winter of 2006-07 her subject radically changed. “I made them when my Mom was dying.” With her failing mother

Once finished, she hung a suite of four tulips outside of her

always on her mind, she began to think of flowers. She pondered

mother’s room in the care facility where she spent the last days of

the continuum of life, meditating on birth and death and all the

her life.

stages in between. She longed for spring in the dead of winter. She wanted badly to make portraits of flowers that were achingly beautiful. But first she needed flowers.

Shelia Spence will have a solo exhibition, Portraits, at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 2008. She currently works as Executive Director of the Manitoba Printmakers’ Association, Martha Street

Her mother’s death came slowly, over the course of the winter,

Studio. Spence is a senior Canadian artist based in Winnipeg with

long enough time to force tulips into bloom. The carefully

a long exhibition record and works in the collections of the

guarded bulbs came into flower and she took photographs—

National Gallery of Canada, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the

unsatisfactory photographs. Just as every stage of life has its

Manitoba Arts Council Visual Art Bank, the Government of

season, every part of the tulip needed to be seen head on: the

Manitoba, the University of Winnipeg, Air Canada, and the

roots, the bulb, the stem, the blossom. It was impossible to

Wellness Institute of the Seven Oaks Hospital in Winnipeg.

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North Dakota Museum of Art Board of Trustees

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North Dakota Museum of Art Staff

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North Dakota Museum of Art, 261 Centennial Drive, Stop 7305, Grand Forks, North Dakota 58202-7305 USA