Exciting New Exhibits!

In the mood for something new? We’ve updated 2 of our galleries with fantastic works just in time for the colder months!

In our Forsberg Riverside Galleries we have Earthly Beauty, a collaborative show featuring works by Sue Coleman and Sandra L. Dyas.

Earthly Beauty muses on the ordinary and often overlooked aspects of the local environment, beauty that is unpolished and raw, quirky and tangled, sometimes difficult to interpret and codify. Though working in different media, these artists’ interest in what is considered “mundane” or “less than significant” speaks of an aesthetic that is integral to the world we inhabit.

For many years Coleman’s work has focused on drawing and painting within the open-ended theme of landscape, which provides many points of departure and return. Dyas, with camera in hand, has made photographs about her surroundings, capturing and constructing images of both place and people for over thirty years. The duo are Lecturers in Art at Cornell College. Dyas teaches photography, video and performance art. Coleman teaches drawing, 2D studio, and serves as Gallery Coordinator.

Head upstairs to our Rotary Lichty Gallery to view works by Will Overstreet.

Will Miracle Overstreet is a longtime Cedar Valley community member and artist who studied at the University of Northern Iowa and currently teaches elementary art classes in the Waterloo Community School district. Additionally, Overstreet is a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan with the IA National Guard from 2010 to 2011.

At age 9 Overstreet received a collection of art supplies as an inheritance from his grandfather who was an Oklahoma farmer, mechanic, and artist. In the following years Overstreet devoted himself to working with those supplies and studying art. His influences include: Dali, Picasso, Van Gogh, Escher, Kahlo, Kandinsky, and Ibrahim El-Salahi. He is also heavily influenced by native northwest coast art, wood grain patterns, nature, and album covers he encountered as a child.

Overstreet describes his process as involving two methods. Detailed blueprints pave the way for a second work flow, which he calls the jazz. This step is fearless. Like flowing magma, the jazz can’t be stopped and it seeks new artistic territory. As a part of the jazz process Overstreet listens to the painting allowing it to determine what happens next. Sometimes he hears wild and dangerous sounds, while other times canvases speak more quietly. Setting aside time to listen to the art work allows Overstreet to blend his own artistic inspirations to create canvases that exhibit surreal iconography, expressionistic whims, geometric forms and improvisation.