(Images: Courtney Cushing Kiernat)
Colorful oil paintings focused on historical issues affecting Native Americans. Monochromatic figure drawings in charcoal, pencil and pastel by six different artists. Both “Jim Denomie: Renegade” at the Bockley Gallery and “Parallel Practice: Life Drawing Collective” at the Lowry Hill Gallery explore the process involved in creating a body of art.
Denomie’s Foundations
Jim Denomie’s colorful style is very recognizable in such works as “Standing Rock 2016” (2018) at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and “Custer’s Retreat” (2009) at the Walker Art Center. These are large satirical paintings filled with humorous figures. The Renegade paintings are from the beginning of Denomie’s artistic career and are the foundation for those later artworks.
Although he always wanted to be an artist, Denomie did not begin to study and create art until he enrolled as an older student at the University of Minnesota, where he was especially influenced by fellow Ojibwe artist George Morrison. Morrison had started the American Indian studies department there, which awakened Denomie to disturbing events and history. In these smaller paintings, one sees hints of the bigger issues explored in his later body of work.
“Jim was interested in people coming to the artwork with their own interpretations.”
Todd Bockley, the gallery’s owner, says, “Jim started to learn so much of the history of the country and started to know it in a much more involved way. These paintings are really important to see to understand Jim’s work.”
The artworks are surreal, colorful landscapes with small figures. The mesas represent reservations with their isolation and limitations. The flying figures speak to “the privilege of being able to fly. They can access the resources, the land, the water, education. Those who cannot are denied those opportunities.” The opportunity of privilege brings mixed results. For example, in “The Posse” (1995), the casino speaks to an influx of money, but from a non-Native origin and with new problems.
Bockley says that Denomie did not speak a lot about these pieces. That is fine, though, because “Jim was interested in people coming to the artwork with their own interpretations.”
Six Painters, One Model
The Lowry Hill Gallery exhibit displays a bounty of drawings by six artists who are better known as painters. It highlights the foundation of the artist’s technique, specifically the importance of returning to pencil on paper.
Michael Banning, Dan Bruggeman, Jessie Fisher, Michael Kareken, Carl Oltvedt and Scott Seebart hatched a plan. Over three years, on alternate weeks, the six artists gathered and sketched the same model together. Muriel Lang, the gallery manager, explained that in this vacuum “they could take different approaches but enjoy a shared language.” They could also give one another feedback in the moment.
The drawings allow the viewer to see how the six artists approached the process differently. For example, when drawing a dancer in motion, one artist has more of an impressionistic feel while another focuses on a specific part of the body. Same model, different outcomes.
Once the body of work was complete, Kareken and gallery director Andrea Bubula devised how to exhibit the drawings. They are presented in two ways. Many are hung unframed, salon style, using magnets. Others are wrapped so people can flip through them and have hands-on experience. “This is something interactive, and so to have unframed pieces on the wall offers an immediate way to engage with the work,” Bubula said. “It is intended to be informal in that way.”
The artists are all teachers and wanted to extend the drawing experience to others. Two teaching sessions have already happened, but there is one more at Case Edgerton Studios in St. Paul on Oct. 10, followed by an open house from 5 to 8 p.m. to which the public is invited to join in an exploration and discussion of the drawing process. And the Lowry Hill Gallery will have a concurrent exhibit of large landscapes by Gary Bowling, a Missouri artist known for his rich, colorful paintings of the vast prairies. He will give an artist talk Oct. 3 at 5 p.m.
Josie Owens writes for the Hill & Lake Press. She lives in Lowry Hill.
