Duality | Discovery Through the Glass

DUALITY

Discovery Through the Glass

LAURIE BIEZE GALLERY

September 1, 2023 - January 7, 2024

DUALITY

Discovery Through the Glass

LAURIE BIEZE GALLERY

September 1, 2023 - January 7, 2024

What is learned in the mirror? For centuries, people have been scrying into the glass, seeking information that can only be found through the echoes found there. What information does the mirror reveal? We explore the past, present and future in this exhibit of reflected surfaces culled from the Laurie Bieze Art Collection.

ROSE DOLAN-NEILL, CURATOR Assistant Director, Visual & Literary Arts

There is so much beauty tucked away in our art collection. We are proud to offer you a glimpse. Pablo Center prides itself on it’s permanent art collection filled with works of art that inspire, educate and provide insight into the human condition. There are currently over 350 works of art in housed at Pablo Center. Named in honor of artist, Laurie Bieze whose personal motto was Shakespeare’s famous words, “To thine own self be true…”, we feel it is our responsibility to take on her legacy, to acquire artwork that not only reflects our community, but enhances the community; artwork that inspires, delights, questions the status quo, takes risks, gives a sense of place, explores human nature and provokes dialogue; these are the works of art that we seek for our collection.

Pablo Center collects and displays a variety of artistic mediums, styles, prints originals, sculptures, pottery, and some artifacts that bare significance to the arts in the Chippewa Valley.

This collection is displayed throughout Pablo Center in it’s traveled hallways, busy classrooms, high-traffic office spaces and conference rooms. It is used to inspire touring artists by gaining an appreciation of the Chippewa Valley’s natural beauty, history, and current creative culture. We consider all of Pablo Center as a work of art.

The Laurie Bieze Gallery on the second floor serves as exhibition space for themed exhibits culled from our collection.

Contributions to the Laurie Bieze Permanent Art Collection enrich the art experience for anyone who walks through the doors of Pablo Center. To make a monetary contribution please go to our website: pablocenter.org/support/donate.

GOOD TO KNOW

PLEASE KEEP A SAFE DISTANCE FROM ALL ARTWORK AND PEDESTALS

Be conscious of backpacks or strollers that may bump into walls, pedestals, or artwork. Do not touch artwork on display unless a label tells you specifically how to interact with the artwork.

SUPERVISE CHILDREN AT ALL TIMES

We strongly encourage children viewing the artwork on display. Please instruct children to not touch artwork on display, to not run in the gallery, and to be kind and respectful of other people viewing the artwork by viewing artworks quietly and keeping a safe distance from others. Children must be supervised by their guardian at all times.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Pablo Center at the Confluence encourages personal photography of our exhibits and permanent art collection. Please use care both for the artwork and the people viewing it. Please no flash.

SKETCHING

Yes, please. You may certainly sketch in our facility. We ask that you use a lapboard or clipboard. Please only use lead or colored pencils. Please do not use the walls or pedestals as supports for sketching.

ARTWORK FOR SALE

All artwork pricing is set by the artist and is non-negotiable and nonrefundable. All artwork sales are by commission with Pablo Center at the Confluence. Your purchase supports our endeavors to present quality visual arts programming that is free and open to the public. Thank you for considering.

ARTISTS STATEMENTS & BIOGRAPHIES

Statements and biographies are written by the individual artist and are published with their permission. The views expressed are their own.

BOB ANDRUSZKIEWICZ & MARK RUDDY

JANUS EX MACHINA, 2017 Found objects

Life Saving Collaboration. Bob Andruszkiewicz & Mark Ruddy support sustainable living. Advocating for recycling is a way of expressing through art. “Janus Ex Machina” was part of their desire for being conservators of a positive life force that happens if one acts responsibly with stewardship for our planet.

Creativity and hope are an undeniable force which has allowed them to now survive two separate major medical diagnoses. The artists hope that Janus will help others in the foreseeable future. “Janus Ex Machina” embodies this new phrase “Creativity is the true mother of intervention!”

Donated to the Laurie Bieze Permanent Art Collection by the artists.

PLEASE INTERACT WITH THIS ARTWORK

LAURIE BIEZE

1944 - 2014 | Eau Claire, Wisconsin

UNTITLED

Stained glass wall sculpture

Donated to the Laurie Bieze Permanent Art Collection by Rachel & Allen Keniston.

MARK BLASKEY & MEL SUNDBY

2014 JUBILEE AWARD

Metal collaborative sculpture

This work of art was commissioned by the Eau Claire Regional Arts Council as an

MARK BLASKEY

Altoona, Wisconsin

A bit like Grandma Moses, Mark Blaskey came to art late in life, but unlike her, he didn’t wait until he was 79. Mark started working with his dad-a math teacher, carpenter and welder-when he was 12. He bought a welder and plasma torch and started cutting figures in steel and combining them with wood, fabric and found materials. Many of the pieces are the human body in motion pursuing silent sports,

which have been a large part of Mark’s life. In the last few years, encouraged and helped by Mel Sundby, Anders and Barbara Shafer, Dave Constantine, and inspired by his late sister, Mary Wells, Mark Blaskey’s artwork has taken a rapid expansion in scope, subject, and form.

MEL SUNDBY Fall Creek, Wisconsin

Mel Sundby is a retired college art professor who now has a working studio and gallery located north of Fall Creek, WI. Manyfires Studio has been a dream of his for most of his career. Mel generally works in clay, mostly in the Raku method, but also with his new wood fired kiln. His work often incorporates the human condition and portrait. Mel is also a painter with acrylics and watercolor. He taught painting at Century College and also teaches private watercolor lessons. Mel’s collaboration with Mark Blaskey for the Sculpture Tour is a new venue for both of these artists. Mel has shown in many venues, including art fairs and group exhibitions. He is represented in numerous galleries throughout the mid-west as well as collections all over the world.

HOPE GREENE FOREST

Photograph on brushed aluminum

Forests are why Eau Claire was founded and while our relationship to the surrounding forests has changed over our history, the forest remains an integral part of the city’s story and its soul. This piece would use an image of one of the local forests printed onto a sheet of glass (where again, shadows would be black and highlights go clear) and mounted about ½” in front of a frosted mirror. This positioning creates a depth and luminosity that suggests the enchantment and possibility of a stage set or the quality of a memory.

I am fascinated by the infinitely varied, yet bone familiar forms, shades, colors, movements and rhythms of the natural world. They are deeply ingrained in us as members of that world, as is the drive to find meaning and connection in the things around us. The image of a tree against a rock, a parasitic vine, or an unattainable height so easily slips into symbolic communication with our interior life. The landscapes that I make attempt to illustrate that intersection between human imagination and earth’s appearance. When something is important to me I like to know how it works from the ground up, and so as a photographer I do a fair amount of chemical photography, working with antique processes, creaky machinery, test tubes and thick gloves, but do not hesitate to use all available technology, mixing and marrying whatever techniques I need in order to make the final object as true and eloquent as I can.

Right now, I am enjoying the more deliberate pace of the older so-called “alternative” photographic processes and their dependence on hand work. It is a bit of a novelty

for me as a photographer to be making unique objects, prints that are not infinitely, identically reproducible. But the semi-preciousness of these objects, these delicate crusts of light-darkened metal, reproducible in theory but only each with their distinct uniqueness, seems a true way of conveying my small, finite reports of the world’s infinite and astonishing lavishness.

JOIE HERTZFELD 1946 - 2015 | Wausau, Wisconsin

SOARING BOWL OR BOWL IN FLIGHT Metal works

Originally from Wausau, Wisconsin, Joie Hertzfeld graduated from Stout University in 1969. For the next thirty-five years he was an art teacher and was known to the students at Chippewa Falls Middle School as “Mr. H”. He taught and lived the motto, “He who works with his hands is a Laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a Craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an Artist”. He retired in 2005 to spend time pontooning on the lake at sunset, seeing Wisconsin, visiting campsites, traveling its rustic roads with his wife, and enjoying his kids and grandson.

STEVEN TERWILLIGER

1946 - 2021 | Eau Claire, Wisconsin

GEMINI, 1989 - 1990 Photo collage

In my work I use many narrative elements: drama, absurdity, irony, miscommunication, alternate understandings, ah-ha understandings, humor, enigma, contradiction, multiple meanings, entertaining engagement, pent-up energy, sympathy/empathy with humanity… The work can also just be seen as abstraction: orchestrated arrangements of shape, form and tone. The act of constructing objects and images I find particularly enjoyable, especially when there are inventive solutions needed.

Steve Terwilliger grew up on a farm in northern Illinois. In high school he was a member of the FFA and also “Mr. Science” in biology and physics. He started college in pre-medicine, switched to theater, then to pre-architecture, and last to design theory/photography. During this time, he worked for campus motion picture services helping with educational films and shooting countless hours of sports coverage. Twice back to grad school landed him first a graduate degree in design theory/media and a few years later a graduate degree in sculpture and drawing. Following his first grad school stint Steve taught at the college level for five years in Ohio and three in Appleton, Wisconsin. He started 27 years of teaching in Art and Design at University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire while finishing his second graduate degree. Steve lived and

worked on art in Eau Claire as well as doing advocacy for sustainability and a major amount of gardening.

Donated to the Laurie Bieze Permanent Art Collection by the Terwilliger family.

LAURIE BIEZE

“Fire in the belly“ is that quality of mind which has guided Laurie Bieze, stained glass and multimedia artist, from the beginning. She never really wanted to do anything else but create, and that intense dedication to her craft led her on a merry chase as something of a gypsy, until she landed in Eau Claire. After completing her studies at the Colorado Institute of Art, she took various jobs across the US, as well as abroad, doing art for movies, TV, and print media, as well as other design work.

While she was working at the University in Oregon, her skill as an artist who could actually draw, loved to sketch, and produce original designs, opened the door to getting involved with designing stained glass windows for other glass artists. Her subsequent study of the art of stained glass processes gave her the confidence to think that she could work for herself and actually make a living as a stained glass artist in Eau Claire. She began designing for homes, as well as producing windows, doors, sculptures, mobiles, and other spectacular stained glass art for churches and restaurants, CVTC, the IBC, Luther Hospital, among many other clients. One can follow Laurie Bieze’s footsteps as an artist, by traversing the Chippewa Valley from one glistening shimmer of evocative color to another.

She had a studio at Banbury Place for over fourteen years. The ambiance seemed to attract a broad spectrum of creative tenants, who of course come and go, but mutually benefit from the eclectic mix. Laurie Bieze described the energy in downtown Eau Claire as wonderful…“positive and forward thinking“.

Laurie Bieze passed away at the age of 70, on June 22, 2014 after a 3-year battle with breast cancer. Throughout her life and even through cancer, she strove to live her life according to one of her favorite quotes, “To thine own self be true”. Listening to her inner voice, pursuing her love of art, and finding the light in others were values she held dear to her heart. This gallery and Pablo Center’s Permanent Art Collection are named in her honor.

This content was taken from a November 2011 interview of Laurie Bieze from Chippepedia.org and from Laurie Bieze’s obituary in the Leader Telegram on June 29, 2014.

THANK YOU TO OUR 2023-2024 PRESENTING SPONSORS, MEMBERS, & DONORS