This week Augsburg opens two new art exhibits: Superimpositions by Shannon Collis and Erik Waterkotte in the Christensen Center Gallery and The Mysteries of Ordinary Places by Nick Conbere in the Gage Family Art Gallery in the Lindell Library. All three will speak at a roundtable discussion moderated by studio manager Joanne Price on Nov. 21 at 5:30 p.m. in the Marshall Room, Christensen Center. A reception will follow the discussion.
Collis and Waterkotte are MFA graduates from the University of Alberta, Edmonton. Collis is a former teacher from the Sam Fox School of Visual Art and Design at Washington University in St. Louis, and Waterkotte is an assistant professor of printmaking at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Together, these two artists use a combination of printmaking, photography, and digital technology to create more complex and unique artwork. Each artist brings their own style to the artwork—Collis uses “confetti-like explosions or atmospheric layering of abstract forms” to represent fragmented memories while Waterkotte adds layers of media screen to represent the contemporary world.
Conbere teaches drawing and printmaking at St. Olaf College in Northfield. He has an MFA in illustration and in printmaking. This past year, he was an artist-in-residence in Roswell, New Mexico. His work has also been featured in the Rochester Art Center and will be in the MAEP Gallery at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in 2009. Conbere brings a real world vision into his artwork through drawing, printing, and animated panoramas. He creates multiple points of view in each piece, overlapping small pieces of the world, and then leaves it up to the viewer to find the intertwining stories. For Conbere, “The works represent how our world is structured personally and experientially rather than literally or geographically.”
Exhibits are free and open to the public. The gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.-8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Go to www.augsburg.edu/galleries for more information.
Image caption: Waterkotte, Not to Save Phenomena but to Mislay Them, 2008, unique print, mixed media and collage
Article by Amanda Symes