Winds of Inspiration, Winds
of Change
Combined Check List/Artist Statements for the exhibition
- Barbara Thill Anderson
- Gallery Director and Professor of Art, Emeritus
- Concordia College-Moorhead
- Windward Journey, 2009
- Mixed media assemblage, oil paint
- 96 x 42 inches
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- Generally, my medium is oil paint on canvas, but since
the theme for this exhibition is renewal the idea of using recycled materials
for this piece appealed to me. The base for the painting is an old bulletin
board of the sort that hung above a classroom blackboard. Enough primer
allowed the cork surface to take paint. The windmill vanes are made up
of a frame containing rug making webbing, a wing sewn from canvas and inserted
with flexible wire, an imitation leaf from the now defunct World Market,
and paint stir sticks.
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- In my mind was the idea of the old farm windmill that
pumped water, the Dutch windmill vane, and those pieces from nature that
catch the wind allowing flight or wind-cooling. Progress is often just
a matter of simplifying our needs and the ways of attaining those needs.
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- Pam Bidelman
- Painter
- les totems dans le soleil, 2009
- Oil on canvas
- 36 x 48 inches
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- Roaming through southern Minnesota has become an otherworldly
experience with tall spires of white looming over the rolling green and
ochre fields. The hypnotic movement of hundreds of elegant blades in slow
rotation with the force of invisible wind announces the possibility for
profound change to the human ethic of living on fragile earth. Dare we
imagine causing less harm to ourselves and to the other sojourners on this
globe?
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- I would like for my painting to be experienced as a wish
that we might as a species share a new totem. In the wind turbines I see
a totem image that emerges from history in a new incarnation representing
a shared philosophical, spiritual, and political commitment to the well
being of all life for all time.
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- David Boggs
- Professor of Art
- Concordia College-Moorhead
- Abandoned Roadway at the Dawn of a New Age, 2009
- Watercolor on paper
- 13 _ x 27 inches
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- In much seventeenth-century Dutch (and other) landscape
tradition, paintings show a somber or threatening tempestuousness of nature
marked by rays of hope, by promises of enlightenment or salvation. In
this painting, I submit that in our age, energy salvation will come by
way of the enlightened breath of the wind. In the painting, the fossil
and nuclear fuel-based energy production on the left befouls the sky, darkening
and dirtying the cloud base. It gives way to the brilliant light of dawn
against the receding empty roadway at painting center, which separates
the grime at the left from the glistening wind turbines and the cleaner
sky at right. The road devoid of travelers suggests that fossil fuels
are either in short supply or are exhausted, while the gentle giants of
Zephyrus touched by crepuscular rays that extend from breaks in the clouds,
are clearly indicated as anointed life-givers of the new age.
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- Given that the topography of far west central Minnesota
(my home is Moorhead, on the western boundary of the state) is much like
that of the Netherlands, it is perhaps natural that I drew upon Dutch landscape
tradition in order to develop a painting that speaks of humankind's place
in the world relative to nature. While the themes of this work are renewal
and emergence, the scene depicted is largely sky. I show the landscape
as the totality and grandeur of nature, with the heavens dominating all,
and human evidence (roadways and other structures) as but scratches on
the surface of the earth. This painting was created specifically for this
exhibition; the idea of "Winds of Change" leading me to consider
Thomas Kuhn's (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) assertion
that "once we understand nature's transformative powers, we see that
it is our powerful ally, not a force to be feared or subdued."
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- Priscilla Briggs
- Associate Professor of Art
- Gustavus Adolphus College
- Untitled, 2009
- Video
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- The wind turbine is a beautiful sculptural object. It
is massive and monolithic in the modern landscape and imagination. Its
presence in the middle of an idyllic cow pasture can be disconcerting,
but it also offers hope for the future. This video approaches the subject
from both directions, with no attempt at reconciliation.
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- Daniel Bruggeman
- Senior Lecturer in Art, Drawing Instructor
- Carleton College
- Compensation for a Permanent Loss # 7, 2008
- Gouache on Paper
- 24 x 24 inches
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- The history of the settlement of North America has been
the impetus for most of my work the past twenty years. Like most compelling
stories, this one is rich in encounters with exotic cultures, mysterious
landscapes and disharmony. The transformation of the landscape from wilderness
to domesticated environment is the primary legacy of the North American
narrative. The displacement of indigenous life in favor of cities, agriculture,
mining and logging was considered an essential component to a growing new
country, but the consequences have been costly. The loss of native habitat
has devastated many species of plants and animals.
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- Recent paintings from the series, "Compensation
for a Permanent Loss," focus on the disappearance and fabricated re-introduction
of extinct native elements of the prairie. The scenes suggest that if
a species once as abundant as the Passenger Pigeon (with a population estimated
to have been in the billions on the North American continent) could disappear,
what else might be at risk? In the painting for this exhibit, Compensation
for a Permanent Loss #7, I considered the unlikely disappearance of
the wind and its surrogate replacement of electrical fans.
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- The coexistence of discordant feelings is reminiscent
of a vignette from Melville's Moby Dick, a story in which the character
Ahab is asked about the pain in his non-existent leg:
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- Yes, I have heard something curious on that score, sir;
how a dismasted man never entirely loses the feeling of his old spar, but
it will still be pricking him at times. May I humbly ask if it really
be so sir?
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- Like the lingering sensation of Ahab's severed leg, there
is a kind of irrational hope that is represented by pain when one considers
the permanence of extinction. Like a prosthetic device, these paintings
are a reminder of the unsatisfactory substitutes that we are left with
when we lose something from our environment.
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- William S. Bukowski
- Professor of Art
- Bethany Lutheran College
- Minnesota Landscape in Three Views, 2009
- Oil on linen canvas (triptych)
- 24 x 54 inches
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- As an artist I prefer to work directly from life. My
current paintings use garden imagery, so the theme of man manipulating
nature interests me. I looked at the wind turbine subject with some curiosity
because I don't see them on a daily basis. After looking at my options
to find wind turbines in Minnesota, I settled on the Butterfield area.
The site really looked to me like a 1950s era science fiction movie set.
I also thought of Pop art and an artist like Claes Oldenburg making lawn
ornaments for a giant.
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- I liked the idea of connecting three slightly different
views of the same landscape. One view didn't seem like enough. I wanted
to create an integration of traditional landscape with non-traditional
energy source. It will become commonplace.
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- Becky Carmody
- Carnegie Art Center Gallery Coordinator-Mankato
- Zephyr Goddess, 2009
- Linoleum block print on paper
- 6 _ x 9 inches
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- I make linoleum block prints, which is a type of relief
print. I am drawn to the simplicity of black and white prints and the
unique quality of line that is characteristic of this technique. I have
learned to accept the inherent imperfections and even have learned to love
the spontaneous, happy accidents that happen when carving into a piece
of linoleum. I am also a very low-tech kind of person so instead of using
a printing press, I hand-rub my prints using an old porcelain doorknob.
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- While the environment benignity of wind power promises
great potential for clean, alternative energy, intrusions on the visual
landscape seem to be the primary opposition in communities. As landscape
architects and communities continue to struggle to balance sustainable
technology with visual aesthetics and community impact, I chose to represent
the positive aspects of wind power using a female mother earth metaphor
incorporating visual symmetry, graceful movement and the sustainability
of life.
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- Carol Lee Chase
- Assistant Professor
- St. Catherine University
- Spinning, 1999
- Super 8 black and white film (with sound track by Guy
Klucevsek)
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- When I lived in the Bay Area in California, the high
point of going to the Central Valley was Altamont Pass near Livermore.
Rows and rows of wind turbines flapped and spun in the breeze -- often
brisk in the canyon. They were mesmerizing.
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- It was the movement of these wind "creatures"
that was so visually appealing to me and that is why I have submitted a
film piece for this exhibition.
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- Shot on Super 8 film (hand held), I was fascinated with
the wind turbine on the roof of my studio in Oakland. By moving the camera
in sync with the spin of the turbine, I was able to portray more than a
static shot. Through the eye of the lens, I was able to distort and change
the fluidity of the movement and create a visual study of my own.
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- Jason Elliott Clark
- Assistant Professor of Art
- Bemidji State University
- The Source of Wind, 2009
- Relief and monotype on paper
- 22 x 30 inches
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- The thunderbirds are supernatural creatures that were
created to care for the health and well being of the earth. The belief
is that these birds cause the lightning by the flashings of their eyes
and the thunderbolts are flaming arrows shot down to regenerate the forests
and grasslands, to keep the earth fertile and fruitful. The wind and noise
of thunder are produced by the flapping of the wings as the thunderbird
is flying. This cleanses the earth and brings rain to quench the thirst
of the earth when it needs refreshing.
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- I see the wind turbines that are being erected over the
landscape as feathers of the thunderbirds that have fallen as the bird
flaps its wings. These feathers are standing upright ready to catch the
wind that they once created. These feathers still hold the calling of
the bird that they fell from; they were created for the health and well
being of the earth.
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- Kelly Connole
- Assistant Professor of Art
- Carleton College
- Reliable, 2009
- Clay and copper
- 20 x 15 x 7 inches
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- In approaching the theme of this exhibition, my thoughts
began with the movement of wind and the ways in which this movement can
become visible. While wind can be seen in the patterns of sand, the fluttering
of tall grasses, and the rotating blades of windmills, weather vanes have
been used for centuries, throughout the world, as a way to assess the action
of wind. This work explores the link between traditional tools of measurement
and the harnessing of wind power through the use of windmills.
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- The golden retriever, a family dog, is an all-American
symbol of reliability in domestic life and an appropriate image to adorn
this modern take on the weather vane/windmill. The title of this piece,
Reliable, references not only the retriever, but also the contemporary
idea that wind is a constant source of renewable energy. Traditional windmills
provided farmers self-sufficiency as a way to pump water for livestock
and crops. Perhaps contemporary turbines will provide a similar self-sufficiency
in their ability to generate reliable power.
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- Michael Eble
- Associate Professor of Art and Curator of the Humanities
Fine Arts Gallery
- University of Minnesota-Morris
- Oklahoma Windmills, 2005
- Oil on canvas
- 18 x 36 inches
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- The painting titled Oklahoma Windmills, is based
off the following Jack Kerouac haiku poem:
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The Windmills of
Oklahoma look
In Every Direction
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- Oklahoma Windmills is part
of a series of paintings that I produced in 2005 titled "Beats of
Haiga" that are responses to the haiku poems of the American beat
poet Jack Kerouac. A central emphasis of these paintings is the process
in which I reference the Japanese art of Haiga. HAI comes from haiku,
previously known in Japan as haikai or hokku, three-line poems of five,
then seven, then five syllables, respectively. GA is the word for painting,
so Haiga literally means haiku-paintings.
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- Through the combination of haiga and the haiku poems
of Kerouac, I have been compelled to produce this work. As an artist I
see this as an inventive approach to my creative research, where paintings
are built upon concepts of text until a resolution is found within a piece.
It is a process of forming a relationship with the written word that is
compelling and interesting. My main goal for this work is to capture the
simplicity and airiness of haiku, since this is the major goal of haiga.
I also hope to make people more aware of the mature beauty that can be
obtained from these writings and visual images.
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- Gary Erickson
- Visiting Assistant Professor
- Macalester College
- Gingkos and Swirls, 2009
- White earthenware, underglaze decals, glaze
- 18 x 18 x 1 inches
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- My sculptural work represents my travels to Cuba and
China and experiencing cultural rhythms of life. Extended immersion in
different cultures offers new sounds, smells, tastes, sights and textures,
expanding my perspective on the world. A common denominator between home
and being abroad remains my interest in forms from nature and their growth
systems. I have interpreted these experiences into sculptural forms and
large architectural tiles, embedded with symbolism, reflection of place
and natures influence on art. Using the language of both abstract and
narrative sculptural forms, each piece is a whimsical, energetic, animated,
rhythmic, colorful and focused study of life.
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- Jill Ewald
- Director, Flaten Art Museum
- St. Olaf College
- Then and Here (Oh Wind), 2008-2009
- Oil on canvas (diptych)
- 50 x 50 inches
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- My interest in windmills lies in the connections we experience
with wind on the land and sea, and with the energy derived from windmills.
Diagonal lines across the painting refer to the blades of the windmill.
Wind blows and swirls on land and water. The chaos of the piece is broken
by a vertical calm, that stasis when there is too much or too little wind,
or when there is an overabundance of energy produced in a particular place.
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- The spheres, a compositional form that has occupied my
attention for many years, in this piece discuss the wind, and the capture,
storage, and distribution of its energy. My intent is that compositionally
the spheres are more observed into the atmosphere of the work than appearing
to sit on top of the picture plane. Further, the surface markings and
abstract shapes and forms are ambiguous in meaning, allowing the viewer
to construct personal associations and narratives.
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- Judith Forster-Monson
- American Gothic Revisited,
2009
- Acrylic on canvas
- 22 x 18 inches
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- As a committed environmentalist, I have long been interested
in the numerous inventive ideas for saving Mother Earth. Each wind turbine
that is noticeable on the landscape, in particular on the Minnesota horizon,
is cause for celebration. My choice of artwork for this exhibit required
incorporating some sort of humor into the creative process to help with
the gravity of the currant global situation. Grant Wood's well-known 1930s
American Gothic seemed a fitting place to begin.
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- I was born in Springfield, Minnesota, in 1942, am married
(Domestic Engineer as a career), the mother of five, Nana to nine grandchildren
and four granddogs. Being raised in a family where creative expression
was encouraged meant that my childhood love of art, along with the specific
talents of my four sisters, was honored. As I matured, my interests included
music, theater, writing, and the decorative arts. Coming into painting
in my late forties, I initially focused on watercolor, turning soon to
whimsical acrylic paintings and papier-mâché sculptures encompassing
the broad spectrum of satirical interactions people have with each other
and with their pets. Having tried many differing painting styles in acrylic,
I am now currently working towards the goal of creating house and business
portraits.
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- Brian Frink
- Professor of Art
- Minnesota State University-Mankato
- A New Landscape, 2009
- Collage/mixed media
- 41 x 24 inches
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- A couple of months ago my wife and I were driving though
southern Minnesota. We came upon a "wind farm." Four of the
wind turbines lined up with each other causing a rhythmic dance of their
blades. It was a delightful image. This was part of my inspiration for
this work.
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- My work titled A New Landscape refers to the startling
presence of the wind turbine on the American landscape. I have chosen
to work using the technique of collage. I see the modern wind turbine
as a kind of technological collage. Huge, sleek moving forms bisecting
and collaged upon our rural landscape.
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- The particular shapes I have used in my composition make
reference to the overlays of technology and industry on our land and in
our imaginations. Other forms and marks represent such natural elements
and forces such as rain, wind and earth. There are also marks that are
causal "non-drawing" marks. Tears and cuts in the paper or smudges
of dirt, random doodling becomes part of my drawing process. I see these
kinds of alterations in the paper as similar to natural forces such as
erosion and gravity. I am attempting to create metaphorical links between
my process of drawing and the image of the wind turbine within the American
imagination.
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- The act of making a drawing (or art in general) is an
action that is full of optimism and hope. I also see this as a parallel
to the wind turbine. Their presence represents a hopeful future.
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- John Gaunt
- Minneapolis College of Art and Design
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- Ruthann Godollei
- Professor of Art
- Macalester College
- Doña Quijote de la Academia, 2006
- Monoprint on paper
- 22 x 30 inches
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- My work continues a series of prints in the long tradition
of social commentary in the graphic arts. I have been making monoprints
of familiar objects or themes, in this case playing with the famous Cervantes
novel, Don Quixote de la Mancha. The texts and objects in my prints
intentionally float in an "empty" space, the darkness of dreams
or the white expanse of the imagination meant to prompt the viewer to consider
current events in context or in juxtaposition with greater social issues.
I use black humor and irony to both mediate the overwhelming nature of
social, political and cultural misadventures and to point to their abject
absurdity.
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- In this print, gender roles and the setting are changed,
it's Doña Quijote de la Academia, wherein a female professor in
full regalia on horseback charges in to tackle the dragon of the Academy.
She tilts at the whirling windmill with its paddles (or sails) of Fame,
Reason, History and Tenure. It might help the viewer to know that I was
the first tenured woman in the Art Department at my college and am currently
the first and singular female full professor.
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- National statistics show that women are still only about
thirty-six percent of the tenured faculty at four-year degree-granting
institutions and represent only twenty-one percent of the full professors.
To challenge the status quo in academia is what the scholar Paula J. Caplan
termed "lifting a ton of feathers." It's a daunting task, a
fluid, whirling target hard to get your arms (or mind) around, difficult
to strategize in regard to a culture that came up with the absurd notion
that we are now all "post-feminist." Academic tenure has given
me resources to make art, travel the world, exhibit professionally, be
remembered, have a career. It has also allowed me to understand my privilege
in that regard and see what still needs to be done. I hope some humor
and allegory might serve to humanize and make present the greater problematics
of social change and the ongoing struggle for equality.
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- Heidi A. Goldberg
- Associate Professor of Art
- Concordia College-Moorhead
- Where Wind Blows, 2009
- Intaglio and mixed media on paper
- 21 x 27 inches
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- Advancement in the field of wind technology and the promise
of change for good that it will bring is exciting and inspiring to me.
Living in rural southeastern North Dakota (a state which has been referred
to as the "Saudi Arabia of Wind Power") I find it fascinating
to witness the mixture of reactions people of the state and region are
expressing as wind development explodes. Excitement about participating
in new technology that is good for our planet and in the economic boon
that comes with it is cooled by community concerns such as noise, wildlife
disruption, and the change of the horizon.
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- Arnoldus J. Grüter
- Ph.D. Psychologist and Artist
- Artist in Residence, Emeritus, Minnesota State University-Mankato
- FEMINA-TURBINA, 2009
- Acrylic on canvas (triptych)
- 48 x 74 inches
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- As an artist who was born and raised in the Netherlands,
I may have had an unfair advantage of having been exposed to the many kinds
of windmills that little country on the North Sea possesses. To compensate
for this apparent favoritism I have introduced, incorporated and emphasized
the theme of man's and woman's creative urge that so heavily has influenced
the collective actions and endeavors of mankind. Not just satisfied with
the status quo and its relative state of comfort as depicted on the left
panel, a woman as the symbol of creativity, upsets long established patterns
and develops new acceptable actions and behaviors (center panel). The
third and last panel depicts the fundamental changes established by women,
the givers of life who use simple natural forces like wind, to establish
the desired social equilibrium. The whole story is depicted as a triptych,
a traditional way of expressing profoundness by means of the ternary system.
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- Fred Hagstrom
- Rae Schupack Nathan Professor of Art
- Carleton College
- Sentinel, 2009
- Intaglio, chine collé on paper
- 16 x 10 inches
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- In the important article "The Historical Roots of
our Ecological Crisis" (1967), historian Lynn White makes the point
that our ecological problems could be traced to a spiritual problem. His
thesis boils down to this: As long as we see nature as a gift for us to
use, rather than seeing ourselves as bound up within nature, we are doomed
to degrade the natural world. In other words, a religious/world view that
stresses man's dominion over nature has a limited life span. He is concerned
about a particular interpretation of a Judeo Christian viewpoint that has
permitted nature to be used beyond reasonable limits.
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- I agree with this, and so I find it both ironic and hopeful
to now see wind turbines standing up as something like protective figures,
or even as somewhat like the symbol of the cross, across our prairie.
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- Joel Hansen
- Cab Driver
- Turbulence(ine), 2009
- Monotype/linoleum relief on paper
- 27 x 34 inches
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- I have never been to the Netherlands, nor have I lived
in the seventeenth-century. I find that, regardless of time and distance,
the basic elements that my Dutch predecessors revered are in abundance
in modern mid-west America. Undulating lands sans mountains or ocean pressed
under a dynamic, even foreboding, sky, punctuated by evidence of human
intervention can be found everywhere and are no less inspirational here
today than there, then.
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- The majesty and energy of an active atmosphere is a humbling
notion. The idea of human dominion over it is an act of hubris. When
we tap its power for milling or electrical generation only the slightest
portions are used. Still it should be done. An ever-present energy source
without the burning of fuel is a good plan. Additionally, artistically,
the three-blade turbine design is aesthetically pleasing.
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- Ross Hilgers
- Associate Professor of Art
- Concordia College-Moorhead