Project Art at UIHC

Today we are taking a closer look at Ann Klingensmith's "Dancing with the Red Devil" from her current exhibition at UI Health Care! This linocut is a self-portrait surrounding Klingensmith's experience with breast cancer. The work is a visualization of the chemo and treatment regimen, an imagining of an internal dance intermixing her thoughts and mediations augmenting the treatments.

✨ To view more of her work, please visit annklingensmith.com ✨

Image:
Ann Klingensmith
"Dancing with the Red Devil", 2024
Linocut
9" x 12"

Behind-the-Scenes: It is a RED-LETTER Day for Project Art! Today, the sculpture “Folded Square Alphabet D”, by artist Fletcher Benton, moves to its new location on the UI Health Care university campus. Even though it is only a move of 50 yards, this collaborative effort represents more than a year of planning.

Moving “Folded Square Alphabet D” is part of UI Health Care’s long-range plan which is preparing for a new adult inpatient tower. Additional information on this plan can be found at the link below.

✨ https://fo.uiowa.edu/featured-news/2023/04/ui-makes-space-new-adult-inpatient-tower-improve-health-care-access-iowans ✨

Fletcher Benton
"Folded Square Alphabet D", 1981
Steel
Collection #3004

IOWA CONNECTION: Today we are highlighting this duo, Doug Hendrickson and Lee Ferber, in the permanent collection! Doug Hendrickson met Lee Ferber while they were both teaching at Drake University in Iowa. They collaborated on numerous pieces and established a joint studio in the Missouri Ozarks in 1983. Ferber enjoyed working with clay, often creating the initial form to be cast in bronze. Hendrickson eventually began working with forged iron to create sculptures and tools.

Image:
Lee Ferber and Doug Hendrickson
"Untitled," [1976]
Bronze and walnut
18" x 10.25"
Collection -b

🔴 Highlighting this serigraph as we will SOON be relocating and conserving the Fletcher Benton sculpture at UI Health Care! This print is signed by the artist and depicts a similar work by Benton from 1980 for the San Jose State University. 🔴

🐸 In synchrony with Frogman's Print Workshops we are featuring artwork by Joel Shapiro in the permanent collection! 🐸

Joel Shapiro is an artist mostly known for his sculptures, configuring rectilinear blocks and beams suggesting figures in motion. He often explores the expressive possibilities of form and color in space, engaging the viewers' physical and psychological relationships with their surroundings.

In 1970, Shapiro's first prints were etched fingerprints made at the New York Graphic Workshop. Ever since he worked intermittently in printmaking. In this etching, a blue square is seated firmly atop a black rectangle, which has seemingly landed haphazardly. Shapiro's etching of primary forms is infused with powerful yet subtle modulations of texture and color. Among others, this print was published by Pace Editions and was created in collaboration with Aldo Crommelynck, a master of etching techniques and world-renowned printer and collaborator of Pablo Picasso. Shapiro's prints amalgamate the graphic elegance of his compositions with a sculptor's interest in elemental material.

Image:
Joel Shapiro
"Untitled I", 1992
Etching and aquatint
31" x 24"
Collection #3730

🟡ARTIST SPOTLIGHT🟡

This series is an opportunity to meet Project Art's current exhibiting artists at UI Health Care! Today we are featuring Ann Klingensmith, you can find her artwork in the Patient and Visitor Activities Center (Level 8, between Elevators D-F) at the university campus through September 23, 2024.

Ann Klingensmith creates images using a figurative vocabulary, a narrative voice, and the perspective of time. She earned her BA in Studio Art from Graceland College. Klingensmith went on to receive her MA and MFA from the University of Iowa in Printmaking. She is also a Professor Emeritus of Art at Iowa Wesleyan University in Mount Pleasant.

✨ To view more of her work, please visit annklingensmith.com ✨

Image:
Ann Klingensmith
"Semblance"
Linocut
9" x 12"

UNFRAMED: Today we are taking a closer look at artwork by Amanda Knowles in the permanent collection! She creates pieces that are an abstract acknowledgment of the growth happening all around us. Her work is structured around science but in the abstract. Knowles shapes images culled from scientific texts and her investigations using the Scanning Electron Microscope. Some of her studies begin with capturing photographs to explore our built environment. The photos are utilized as a point of departure and a way of thinking to activate her creative process.

Image 1:
Amanda Knowles
"Orbit II", ca. 2004
Mixed media on paper
14.5" x 27"
Collection #6283

Image 2:
Amanda Knowles
"Faceted III", 2012
Screenprint and acrylic on Duralar collage
17" x 23.25"
Collection #7036

TIPS & TRICKS

Transporting artwork can be a difficult task. Large pieces, three-dimensional artworks, or delicate mixed media objects; all have unique needs for moving throughout the hospital between installations. One way we temporarily protect unframed two-dimensional artwork is with a flat pack. Constructed in layers like a sandwich, a flat pack secures the loose artwork with corner pockets and an acid-free lining protects the delicate surface. Importantly, the pockets can be moved, allowing us to re-use the materials again and again. Grab some foamboard and paper to create your own at-home flat pack for protecting, storing, or moving artwork, documents, and photographs.

Project Art completes 1,000+ installations every year. With all this time focused on moving and hanging art, efficiency is key. We have developed some helpful tips & tricks and want to share them with you-even if you only have on piece of art to transport or hang.

🐸 In conjunction with Frogman's Print Workshops we are featuring print-based artwork from the permanent collection! 🐸

Today we are highlighting woodcuts by Valerie Lueth and Paul Roden! In 2006, Lueth moved to Pittsburgh and co-founded Tugboat Printshop (T.B.P.S.) with her then-partner Paul Roden. T.B.P.S. is an internationally recognized artist press specializing in finely-crafted, original woodcut prints. These woodcuts are traditionally hand-crafted, quality artworks on paper. Prints are published directly from hand-drawn and hand-carved woodblock(s) to archival papers using top-shelf, oil-based inks.

Lueth (Artist/Printmaker/Owner) runs operations and draws/carves/produces the woodcuts at T.B.P.S. Lueth's grassroots approach to making and sharing is hands-on and upbeat.

In 1998, Lueth moved to Vermillion, South Dakota, as a student and became involved with the University of South Dakota Printmaking Department. Over the following years, she has assisted and attended countless Frogman's Print Workshops.

Image 1:
Valerie Lueth and Paul Roden
"Moth"
Woodcut
16" x 21"
Collection #10437

Image 2:
Valerie Lueth and Paul Roden
"Community"
Woodcut
16" x 20"
Collection #10435

IOWA CONNECTION: Today we are highlighting Laurel Farrin in the permanent collection! She is a Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History. Farrin earned a BFA from Ohio University-Athens and an MFA from the University of Maryland.

She is an artist working on abstract paintings, drawings, and videos using visual structures of comedy - incongruity, awkwardness, and disruption - to elicit empathy for human predicaments. Farrin mixes elements of hard-edge painting with varying references to pop culture.

Image:
Laurel Farrin
"Resist," 2013
Acrylic on canvas
16" x 20"
Collection #10572

🐸 In synchrony with Frogman's Print Workshops we are featuring artwork by James Claussen in the permanent collection! 🐸

He was born in Iowa City and is a contemporary lithographer and abstract painter. Claussen earned a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and his MFA from the University of Washington.

Classen states, "The inspired images in my earlier work started with narrative content and were considered surrealistic. In later years these concepts evolved into more abstract animate fluid images. My recent work combines these two directions of surrealism and abstraction to form a different visual and spatial consideration."

Image:
James Claussen
"Freeze Dried", 1978
Lithograph
25" x 17"
Collection #3817

Behind-the-Scenes: In preparation for some upcoming conservation, restoration, and relocation efforts of Fletcher Benton's "Folded Square Alphabet D" we are sharing photographs from the original installation in 1981! In the first black and white photograph, the artist pauses during the installation of the sculpture and sits with the maquette.

Image 1:
Smithsonian image (DSI-AAA) 17175

Images 2-3:
On-site assembly, John Colloton Pavilion, 1981

Image 4:
Fletcher Benton
"Folded Square Alphabet D", 1981
Steel
Collection #3004

Today we are taking a closer look at Chelsea Herman's "Mother Tongue" from her current exhibition, "Where the Root is in the House", at UI Health Care!

As language shapes human relationships, ecologies, and landforms, how might shared language represent both a point of origin and a barrier to developing an intimate knowledge of place? The asemic text or invented glyphs in "Mother Tongue" constitute gestural, dance-like responses to birdsong, become artifacts of listening, as well as memory devices recalling encounters with home places. The audio information of spectrograms - originally intended to chart and monitor soundscapes - erodes through the process of photogravure and assumes an abstract, visual form better suited for the functions of metaphor. Image, structure, and the written word overlap, combine, and hybridize to explore spectrums of legibility, the mutable nature of shared language, and the possibility for language to breathe life into forgotten, absent, erased, or dormant human-land relationships.

Images:
Chelsea Herman
"Mother Tongue", 2024
Artist's Book
Open: 7.5" x 25"

🐸It is that time of year, the FROGMAN'S PRINT WORKSHOPS are here! 🐸

During the next two weeks, the Frogman's Print Workshops will be taking place in Iowa City! In conjunction with the workshop, we will be highlighting prints from the permanent collection.

We will be kicking off the first session with work by Amy Worthen! Worthen is a Des Moines artist specializing in burin engraving, burin is an engraving tool needed to cut lines into a metal plate. She earned her BA in Art from Smith College, studying with Leonard Baskin, and her MA in Printmaking from the University of Iowa, studying with Mauricio Lasansky.

Image 1:
Amy Worthen
"50319"
Engraving
12.5" x 9"
Collection #2513

Image 2:
Amy Worthen
"Tayra Cage", ca. 1980
Engraving
8.25" x 9.75"
Collection #10863

Image 3:
Amy Worthen
"Vaulted Atrium"
Engraving
10.5" x 16.75"
Collection #2512

🐸🐸🐸The first session of the Frogman's Print Workshops begins TOMORROW! 🐸🐸🐸

Frogman's will be celebrating its second year in Iowa City and at the University of Iowa! Iowa has a rich print tradition and is one of the strongest graduate programs in the nation.

In 1979, Frogman's began when Professor Lloyd Menard led five school teachers from Sioux City, Iowa to the Black Hills of South Dakota for a drawing class. Printmaking was introduced in 1981 and the workshops evolved into the Black Hills Print Symposium which took place at various sites in Western South Dakota. By 1996, with the growing popularity of the workshops they moved to Beresford, South Dakota, then home of Frogman's Press & Gallery. They only spent two years based out of Beresford before moving to nearby Vermillion and the University of South Dakota, where they would spend nearly twenty years. After Vermillion, the workshop spent seven years at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where Frogman's founder, Lloyd Menard, took his first ever print class.

✨ To learn more, please visit https://frogmans.net/ ✨

Frogman's Print Workshops Frogman's Print Workshops is one of the largest printmaking intensive workshops in the world, now hosted by the University of Nebraska Omaha

🌸🌷We love the significance florals are playing in some of our current exhibitions! 🌷🌸

🌸 "and Poppies Adorned Her" featuring Ann Klingensmith is on view through September 23, 2024 in the Patient and Visitor Activities Center.

🌷 "24: sub rosa" featuring Abbey Peters is on view through July 22, 2024 in the Fountain Lobby.

🌸 "Where the Root is in the House" featuring Chelsea Herman is on view through September 2, 2024 on Level 6 in the John Colloton Pavilion.

Image 1:
Ann Klingensmith
"and Poppies Adorned Her", 2024
Monotype
22" x 30"

Image 2:
Abbey Peters
"Tulip", 2024
Ceramic
10" x 10" x 11"

Image 3:
Chelsea Herman
"Mother Tongue" (detail), 2024
Artist's Book
Open: 7.5" x 25"

UNFRAMED: Today we are taking a closer look at Malcolm Morley (1931-2018) in the permanent collection! He was a British-American artist credited with founding a method for linking theories of abstraction with realistic pictorial subjects in super-realism. He had a difficult childhood, during World War II his family was homeless for a period as a bomb had partially blown up their home. As a teen, Morely served a couple of years in prison, after he went on to join an artists' colony and study art. In 1958, he moved to New York City after meeting artists such as Cy Twombly, Roy Lichenstein, and Andy Warhol.

Image:
Malcolm Morley
"Kite On Gibson Beach"
Lithograph
40" x 45"
Collection #2915

Today we are taking a closer look at Chelsea Herman's "Kaleidoscopes" from her current exhibition, "Where the Root is in the House", at UI Health Care!

"Kaleidoscopes" responds to the post-forest fire landscape of the Monterey Bay Area and ponders how to contextualize, read, and articulate the sudden bloom of life and growth encountered in the wake of a firestorm.

Want to explore further? The University of Iowa Special Collections and Archives has a copy of "Kaleidoscopes" if you are interested in reviewing this artist's book.

✨ https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/primo-explore/search?sortby=rank&vid=01IOWASC&tab=default_tab&lang=en_US&query=any,contains,chelsea%20herman ✨

Images:
Chelsea Herman
"Kaleidoscopes", 2022
Artist's Book
Extended: 14.5" x 29.5"

✨ A UIHC patient referencing artwork by Ellen Little in the permanent collection. ✨

NEW TEMPORARY EXHIBITION: We are thrilled to announce our newest exhibition "Steamroller Prints"! On view through September 23, 2024, in the Patient and Visitor Activities Center (Level 8, between Elevators D-F) at UI Health Care!

✨Artists featured in this exhibition: Melinda Stockwell, Suzi Morrison, Ann Klingensmith, Dawn Ripley Wiley, Willow Barton, and Samantha Rose✨

Steamroller Printing is a unique printing demonstration that is part of the Midwest Old Threshers Reunion. A crew of 4-5 volunteers from Printers' Hall work for months to create exquisite hand-carved plates that become one-of-a-kind prints. During this demonstration, each ink-covered carving is laid on the ground and then covered with a layer of wood and a layer of rubber. A steam-powered 1905 Kelly Springfield Road Roller then transforms into a printing press with 12 tons of pressure forcing ink from the massive plate onto paper.

In 2017, on a hot July day, Kirsten Heerdt and Melinda Stockwell tested out this process. Accompanying them was Kenny Huffaker, who was key to the Kelly Springfield Road Roller's restoration process, and owner, Dave Gross. For years, the idea of steam roller printing at the Reunion was considered. With Traction Steam and Printers' hall volunteers working together, they established the steamroller printing that is annually demonstrated at the Midwest Old Threshers Reunion. This year it is scheduled for August 29 - September 2 in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. If you want to witness this process in action, the event occurs at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of the Reunion.

✨Check out this demonstration from 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa7PZIRZg6g✨

Image 1:
1905 Kelly Springfield Road Roller

Image 2:
Photo credit - "The Hawk Eye"

NEW TEMPORARY EXHIBITION: We are excited to introduce our newest exhibition "and Poppies Adorned Her" featuring Ann Klingensmith! On view through September 23, 2024, in the Patient and Visitor Activities Center at UI Health Care!

Ann Klingensmith's original prints are mostly created using the relief process. She utilizes gouges and knives to carve and remove the non-image into either wood, linoleum, or both. Klingensmith then applies the ink, using pressure to transfer the ink and image onto paper. These works are built up with many intricate layers.

Her images are narrative in nature, reflective of personal experiences, and Klingensmith's response to those experiences. She thinks of her work as a visual diary revealing internal conversations. This selection of artwork spans the past 24 years, reflecting the richness of challenges endured and Klingensmith's shifting of understanding of these experiences over time. These images are evidence of her great joys and sorrows, love and loss, contemplation and release.

✨ To view more of her work, please visit annklingensmith.com ✨

Image 1:
Ann Klingensmith
"and Poppies Adorned Her", 2024
Monotype
22" x 30"

Image 2:
Ann Klingensmith
"Keeper of Secrets", 2011
Linoleum Relief
16" x 24"

Image 3:
Ann Klingensmith
"Allegory", 2003
Linoleum Relief
16" x 24"

Image 4:
Ann Klingensmith
"Crows on Snake Alley", 2020
Relief two plates, Woodcut and Linoleum
16" x 21.5"

REMINDER: Applications for the 44th Annual Staff Art Show are due TODAY by 4:00 p.m.! All UI Health Care staff and volunteers are encouraged to participate.

✨Learn more: https://uihc.org/44th-annual-staff-art-show ✨

Image 1:
Ellen T. Haman
"Cauliflower & Chef Drifty Bernard"
Acrylic on canvas

Image 2:
Linda Bergquist
"Summer Sunset Runner" (detail)
Weaving

Image 3:
Robert Barta
"Shaker Crown (round) Box with Rim"
Cherry, maple, and white pine wood

Image 4:
Matthew Foster
"8 of dogs"
Painting

Behind-the-Scenes: Have you noticed that Project Art includes artwork dimensions in posts about the permanent collection? Often it is difficult to accurately depict the size of an artwork through a digital image. For example, Object ID #6913, “Black Flying Horse”, by artist Barbara Robinette Moss is a striking 5 ½ feet tall and more than 7 feet long. As a singular image presented online, this cannot be comprehended but, when we provide dimensions or depict the artwork with a reference point, the size and power of the artwork unfolds.

Image:
Barbara Robinette Moss
“Black Flying Horse”
65” x 87”
Collection #6913

SNEAK PEEK: We are excited to announce there will be TWO new exhibitions located in corridor Gallery II opening Monday, June 24th! Don't miss "and Poppies Adorned Her" featuring artwork by Ann Klingensmith! The second exhibition, "Steamroller Prints", features artists Melinda Stockwell, Suzi Morrison, Ann Klingensmith, Dawn Ripley Wiley, Willow Barton, and Samantha Rose!

Today we are taking a closer look at Chelsea Herman's "Millie's Foil" from her current exhibition, "Where the Root is in the House", at UI Health Care!

"Millie's Foil" reflects on the recovery of generational knowledge and wisdom, and considers how these may simultaneously be protected, sabotaged, lost, transformed, and recovered. Trees encountered in cityscapes or isolated from the forests in which they evolved act as muses for this book. This serves as an analogy for language taken out of context and planted in another.

"Millie's Foil" includes multi-plate etchings and a poem by Herman. Etchings and trace transfers are printed on Rives paper and the text was set in Perpetua and printed letterpress. The book is bound with a Crisscross binding and includes an image of the artist's grandmother as a young woman on the cover. The edition is limited to eight copies.

Want to explore further? The University of Iowa Special Collections and Archives has a copy of "Millie's Foil" if you are interested in reviewing this artist's book.

✨ https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/primo-explore/search?sortby=rank&vid=01IOWASC&tab=default_tab&lang=en_US&query=any,contains,chelsea%20herman ✨

Images:
Chelsea Herman
"Millie's Foil", 2022
Artist's Book
Open: 17" x 25.25"

IOWA CONNECTION: Today we are highlighting a selection of artworks by Elizabeth Miller in the permanent collection! Elizabeth Miller (1929-2013) was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. She earned her BFA in painting and printmaking at the University of Nebraska and her MFA at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. Miller received the title of Distinguished Professor at Iowa State University where she taught painting and drawing for 24 years.

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson appointed Merriweather Lewis and William Clark to lead the Corps of Discovery up the Missouri River. They were tasked to scientifically observe and collect plant, animal, and mineral specimens, as well as map geographic features, record weather data, and document important observations and events in daily journals. This selection of work is from a series of twelve paintings, Miller depicts landscapes along the Lewis and Clark Trail. At UIHC these works are accompanied by Miller's selection of excerpts from the Lewis and Clark's journals.

Miller was inspired after reading several edited forms of the journals. Completely absorbed by the subject, she traveled the entire Lewis and Clark Trail to the Pacific Ocean to observe the landscape and create studies for this series of paintings.

During her travels, she noted the course of the rivers had been tamed, and the woodlands and forests had greatly diminished. Miller's paintings exude a personal journey of appreciation and fascination with the vastness and the variety of the land.

Image 1:
Elizabeth Miller
"Shoreline at Boonville", 1991
Watercolor
20.25" x 28"
Collection #3238

Image 2:
Elizabeth Miller
"Lolo Hot Springs", 1991
Watercolor
21" x 28"
Collection #3243

Image 3:
Elizabeth Miller
"Hills Along the Snake", 1991
Watercolor
21" x 28"
Collection #3244

Image 4:
Elizabeth Miller
"Woodbury County Overflow", 1989
Watercolor
20.5" x 28"
Collection #3085

REMINDER: Applications for the 44th Annual Staff Art Show are due by 4:00 p.m. this Friday, June 21st! All UI Health Care staff and volunteers are encouraged to participate.

✨Learn more: https://uihc.org/44th-annual-staff-art-show✨

UNFRAMED: Today we are highlighting Sol LeWitt's "Eight Cubic Rectangles" in the permanent collection! His work ranged from sculpture, painting, and drawing to conceptual pieces that only existed as ideas or elements of the artistic process. His vocabulary of visual art consisted of lines, basic colors, and simplified shapes. LeWitt applied them according to a formula of his own invention, which hinted at mathematical equations and architectural specifications, such as geometric shapes, but were neither predictable nor necessarily logical.

In LeWitt's practice, the directions for producing art became the work itself; it no longer required to have an actual material presence to be considered art. He believed in the artist as a generator of ideas. LeWitt challenged some fundamental beliefs about art, including the authority of the artist in the production of a work. His emphasis is most often on process and materials rather than imbuing a work with a specific message or narrative. For LeWitt, art could exist for its own sake; the meaning was not a requirement.

Image:
Sol LeWitt
"Eight Cubic Rectangles-38"
Color print of an etching
61" x 16.25"
Collection #4306