Stephanie Carpenter, Kinship: Belonging, 2019, Letterpress print from wood type
Stephanie Carpenter: Cultivating Community
Baer Gallery
January 23 -February 16
Coffee and Pastry Reception: Tuesday, February 7, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
Stephanie Carpenter examines the way we create unique communities. She explores modularity and the use of language related to how we are connected. She earned an MFA from Indiana University and her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally in Australia, Brazil, India, Italy and Japan.
Object Matters
Godschalx Gallery
January 23 -February 16
Explorations in clay, wood, and found objects by students in Art 224, Introduction to Sculpture.
Speculative Futures: Visions from Caregiving Printmakers
Baer Gallery
February 27 -March 28
Exhibition events:
March 23, 10 a.m. Bush Art Center: Panel discussion in BAC 130 with artists Katie Ries and Carrie Scanga, and labor historian Jessica Wilkerson. Panel followed by a reception in the gallery.
Speculative Futures is a portfolio of prints that imagine the future of caregiving. All of the participating artists are caregiving printmakers. The portfolio includes an essay by labor historian Jessica Wilkerson.
Design Localitas
Godschalx Gallery
February 27 -March 28
Featuring designs by the St. Norbert College Student Design Center.
2023 Senior Art Exhibition
Bush Art Center
April 11- May 4
Reception: Friday, April 21, 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
The Senior Art Exhibition is the capstone experience for all St. Norbert College art majors.
According to exhibition curator Brandon Bauer, “this exhibition brings together works by Aram Han Sifuentes that focus on democracy, citizenship, and political participation. The works in this exhibition manifest the notion of democracy as a contested space in which one can gain a political voice through citizenship, protest, or giving voice to those excluded politically.” It includes handmade protest banners, an Official Unofficial Voting Station, and a banner lending library.
A central feature of the exhibition is a wall of handmade protest banners. Sifuentes hosts workshops to teach sewing skills and banner-making techniques, passing on a traditional, intergenerational skills while drawing communities into conversation about protest and demonstration. Some banners were created by Sifuentes or during previous lending libraries, but a collection of banners made by campus community members are available to be checked out. Next to the poster is an instructional video on how to create a fabric banner with felt letters. A banner making workshop, with instruction by Moki Tantoco, will be taking place at noon on Thursday, October 20 at noon in the Mulva Library.
The St Norbert Community’s Protest Banner Lending Library
The Official Unofficial Voting Station is a symbolic voting station open to all. In addition to creating opportunities for anyone to cast a vote, stations bring together communities for conversation, protest, and celebration. Sifuentes, as a noncitizen immigrant, created the program in response to her inability to vote. The first iteration, prior to the 2016 election, included 25 collaborative activations of the station through performances and installations. The project was reiterated during the 2020 elections, with 50 voting station kits sent across the nation. A voting station is housed online, along with a developing archive of responses and vote tallies.
At the Bush Art Center’s Official Unofficial Voting Station, gallery visitors can fill out a freeform kind of ballot, sharing the reasons that they vote, as well as listing local, national, and global issues they’d like to vote on. The Official Unofficial Voting Station, a station for all people and for all issues, creates conversation around who can vote, and what issues visitors most want brought to the ballot. The anonymous ballot responses will be recorded and archived.
Ballots, a ballot box, and stickers, as well as voting rights informational handouts.
The exhibition will be on display between October 3 and October 27, with a reception from 2 p.m.-3:30 p.m., on Thursday, Oct. 20.
A Call to Halt is an installation and critical timeline of the Euromissiles Crisis, and the nuclear abolition movement in the United States from 1977-1987. The installation includes a reenactment of the 1982 Nuclear Freeze Referenda, in which Wisconsin was the first in the nation to put international nuclear disarmament policy to a popular vote.
Th exhibit includes a timeline of important events during the crisis as a series of archival images and captions superimposed with stenciled spray paint. Cultural, political and activist events are referenced, telling a story of collective public outcry and the power of ordinary people.
Visitors can use provided ballots and reenact Wisconsin’s nuclear disarmament referendum. The reenactment is both a reminder of the power of democracy and an opportunity for viewers to become active participants.
A Call to Halt will be on display from September 26 to October 27 in the Permanent Collection Gallery.
Baer Gallery: October 3 – October 27, 2022 Exhibition Reception – October 20
This exhibition brings together works by Aram Han Sifuentes that focus on democracy, citizenship, and political participation. The works in this exhibition manifest the notion of democracy as a contested space in which one can gain a political voice through citizenship, protest, or giving voice to those excluded politically. Sifuentes’s work investigates identity politics, immigration, citizenship and belonging, dissent and protest, and racial politics in the United States today.
A Call To Halt by Brandon Bauer
Permanent Collection Gallery: September 26 – October 27, 2022
A Call To Halt is an installation and critical timeline of the Euromissiles Crisis, and the nuclear abolition movement in the United States from 1977-1987. The installation includes a reenactment of the 1982 Nuclear Freeze Referenda, in which Wisconsin was the first in the nation to put international nuclear disarmament policy to a popular vote.
Angry Sandwich People or in Praise of Dialectics by Chto Delat?
Media Space Gallery: August 29 – October 27, 2022
In this piece, the Russian art collective Chto Delat? (What is to be done?) imagines protest as a form of theatrical happening in urban space by bringing to life Bertolt Brecht’s poem “In Praise of Dialectics”. The action was carried out in close collaboration with two local activist groups, Worker’s Democracy and The Pyotr Alexeev Resistance Movement at Stachek Square, an important historic site where in 1905 striking workers marched on the Winter Palace.
Art & Society Lectures and Events
September 6 – Aram Han Sifuentes Virtual lecture (Zoom) @ Noon
Aram Han Sifuentes is a fiber and social practice artist who works to claim spaces for immigrant and disenfranchised communities. Her work often revolves around skill sharing, specifically sewing techniques, to create multiethnic and intergenerational sewing circles, which become a place for empowerment, subversion, and protest. This lecture is associated with her exhibition in the Bush Art Center Galleries.
September 13 – Dmitry Vilensky Virtual lecture (Zoom) @ Noon
Dmitry Vilensky is an artist, writer, and founding member of the Russian art collective Chto Delat? (What is to be done?), a platform initiated in 2003 by a collective of artists, critics, philosophers, and writers with the goal of merging political theory, art, and activism.
September 22 – U.S. Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC) Virtual lecture (Zoom) @ Noon
Founded in 2013 The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC) is a “people-powered department” (not a federal agency) committed to supporting individuals and organizations in mobilizing creativity in the service of justice.
September 28 – Center for Artistic Activism lecture (BAC 130) 1:10 – 2:10 pm
The Center for Artistic Activism has helped to build, sustain, and develop the field of artistic activism since its inception in 2009 through innovative research and by providing free resources and training to artists and organizations around the world.
October 20 – Get Out The Vote Banner Making Workshopwith Moki Tantoco @ Noon in the Mulva Library First Floor Flex Space
This banner-making workshop is in association with the Aram Han Sifuentes Exhibition in the Bush Art Center Galleries. Moki Tantoco has collaborated with Aram Han Sifuentes and will lead this banner making workshop. Moki is an arts administrator, educator, and artist based in Illinois who encourages exploring socially engaged art practices through writing, performance, and installation.
November 15 – Oliver Ressler Zoom Virtual lecture (Zoom) @ Noon
Oliver Ressler is an artist who lives and works in Vienna, Austria. He produces theme-specific exhibitions, projects in the public space, and videos on issues such as democracy, capitalism, and social alternatives to our existing political realities. His work blurs the boundaries between art and activism.
November 17 – Jonas Staal Zoom Virtual lecture (Zoom) @ Noon
Jonas Staal is a Dutch visual artist. His work deals with the relationship between art, democracy, and propaganda.
Special Thanks to The Norman Miller Center for Peace, Justice, & Public Understanding, The Sturzl Center for Community Service and Learning, The Honors Program, The Office of Student Inclusion and Belonging, The Mulva Library, the Bush Art Center Galleries, and the Art Department for support of this programming.
Rebecca Jabs illustrations center on the intersection between art, science, and education. By observing and recording nature through art, we gain a greater understanding of the world and our place within it. This exhibit features works portraying notable species from Wisconsin’s native flora and fauna. Selected illustrations from an upcoming book written by Wisconsin Naturalist John Bates will be on view.
The following exhibition-related events will be open to the SNC community. Zoom links will be posted here one week prior to the events. You need to be logged into your SNC account to access the Zoom meeting.
Artist’s Talk: Illustrating Nature with Rebecca Jabs
Tuesday, February 23, 12:30 – 1:30 PM, via zoom (link will be posted closer to the event)
Workshop with the Artist
Thursday, February 25, 10:15 – 11:15 AM, via zoom (link will be posted closer to the event)
“Light doth beguile the shining dark.”
Godschalx Gallery, February 1-March 12
Featuring objects that glow by sisters April Beiswenger, Gina Williams, and Dr. Lisa Beiswenger
Fine art for $5 – or less. That was the promise of an art-vending-machine initiative that added an interactive component to the 2019 “Why We Collect” exhibit at the Baer Gallery at St. Norbert College.
St. Norbert College is celebrating the distinguished 50-year career of tattoo artist Rick Harnowski in “The Needle Has Moved,” a retrospective art exhibit on display through Friday, Nov. 2.
Chicago-based painter and commercial artist Shelby Rodeffer, a visiting artist on campus, is painting a mural in the north entryway of the Bush Art Center with the assistance of SNC Art Students!
Stop by to see the work or lend a hand. An exhibition of Rodeffer’s art will be in the Bush Art Center later this semester.
Mothology artists Wendy Deschene and Jeff Schmuki discuss with Kevin Quinn (Schneider School) how PlantBot Genetics combines activism, research, and social space in order to promote ecological awareness.
