VOLUME 38 NUMBER 3 | FALL 2020
25
By Karen Lindell
supplies into storage and “took a drive to heal,” along with his dog Jack. One of his sisters lives in Big Sur, so he spent some time with her, then did house-sitting for a friend in Silverlake (near Los Angeles) and volunteered at an animal sanctuary in Malibu. Something happened that surprised him: “Southern California started to grow on me,” he said, and suddenly, he no longer wanted to return to the upper Midwest and “hide out the rest of my life.” Dubnicka, who grew up in a small Wisconsin town, said it took him a while to realize art could be a career. As a kid he mainly drew pictures of deer or portraits of famous people. In college, he studied wildlife biology, and took some art classes to earn easy A’s. A mentor urged him to pursue art, but he was reluctant to explore the arts as a profession and ended up working for the Forest Service at a bear sanctuary in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. Encouraged by others, Dubnicka eventually earned his BFA at the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota. In Duluth, he was part of an artist cooperative and served as a gallery and collections manager at the Tweed Museum of Art. Dubnicka said he’s always looked at success as an artist “in terms of what I’m making and the impact I’m having on the viewer.” Duluth, he said, was a “great training ground.” In addition to curating, designing and installing museum shows, he created pop-up and group exhibits. “I just became so ensconced in the community, I became lost in it, so it became time to blow it up,” he said. Left:, Nonessential Art Gallery, April 2020. Right: Untitled (Ascension series), mixed media on fencing, 2020.