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Utilizing massed materials, I look to create an energetic impact where a poetic dynamic is felt before the content is understood. With these visually complex works, I strive for a physical and metaphysical experience. Through layered yet lyrical assemblages of everyday materials (tire shreds, paint, bits and pieces of communicative systems), the works play between the boundaries of painting/sculpture/drawing/choreography.

I seek to set up an interplay between the brute/force of the road and the chaos, confusion, and instability of our daily lives. Our ability and disability to understand the fractured world around us I set against the natural vigor and exuberance that we find in life itself. Part of this is aesthetic, part positive energy, part horror, danger, and death.

 The visual pleasure from the abundance of massed surfaces and explosions of black conglomerates can also become metaphoric for the danger of engulfment.

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Michael Knapstein (b. 1956) is a fine-art photographer who has earned international recognition for his insightful and nuanced visual exploration of the American Midwest. His photographs began attracting national attention while he was still in high school. At the age of 17, he was the youngest photographer to have a solo exhibition at the Steenbock Gallery of the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters in Madison, Wisconsin. The following year his work was accepted into the permanent collections of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography in Rochester, New York and Nikon House in New York City. While attending college, his work continued to win national recognition and was included in the Photographic Society of America’s prestigious Young Photographer’s Showcase national traveling exhibit for three years in a row.

After graduating from the College of Fine Arts and Communication at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, Knapstein began a 30+ year career in the world of advertising. He held a variety of creative and leadership positions, ultimately heading one of Wisconsin’s largest advertising agencies. Knapstein sold his agency and retired from the demanding world of advertising in 2010 to return to his first love of photography. Since this reemergence, Michael’s work has been recognized with more than 250 awards in some of the world’s most prestigious photography competitions and his photographs have been widely published and exhibited in museums and galleries around the world.

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A long-time resident of Dubuque, Alda Kaufman immigrated to the United States in 1951 with her Latvian parents. A science major in college, Alda worked as a medical technologist and attended numerous art workshops in her spare time. She currently shares studio space at Studioworks in the Schmid Innovation Center and is represented by Outside the Lines Art Gallery.

Alda finds watercolor a challenging and unpredictable medium. She experiments with non-traditional painting surfaces which make the medium even more interesting to control.

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As an art teacher and artist, Mary Jo Kattelman draws inspirations from history and nature to teach art and create her own art. She strives to communicate nature’s fragile state and our place in the natural world. Born and raised in rural Michigan, she was influenced by the devastating pollution of Lake Erie and the 1970’s environmental movement. She moved to rural Missouri and earned her BSE from NMSU. Living, gardening, raising a family, she continued her art and watched as conservation programs of the 80’s improved habitat and reduced human impact on ecosystems.

She has shown her work throughout the Midwest and has received numerous awards; examples are Best-of-Show at MAEA (Missouri Art Educators member show, 2^nd place at Mary Oakley Lindsay Artist Showcase, and a prestigious showing at DeVos Center in Grand Rapids, MI at Artprize 2015. She received Elementary Art Teacher award and the Kantner Research Award for work on visual literacy between Missouri schools and two schools in Madagascar. Her hobbies include her life: sailing, hiking, cycling, gardening, a conservation advocate, teaching and creating art.

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Peggy Johnston graduated from the University of Wyoming with degrees in art and education. Since then she has continued her studies in painting, printing and the book arts. She has taught locally in the public schools and at the Des Moines Art Center. She has also conducted workshops across the country. Her award winning work is in public and private collections nationally and internationally, including the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.

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Angie Huffman is a known for spending inordinate amounts of time focused on covering postcard-sized sections of canvas exactly how she wants with oils and the smallest available brushes. She moved to Eastern Iowa in 2014, and thanks goodness everyday that she did. She grew up in Dallas-Fort Worth, and studied Drawing and Painting at the
University of North Texas. The school’s focus on the contemporary and postmodernism challenged her to act upon her love of realism and portraiture while avoiding banality.

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I don’t draw or paint and not one person ever pointed to me and said, “He’s going to grow up to be an artist.” In spite of that, I was drawn to the idea of working with clay from a very young age. I believe I was attracted to the possibilities that clay offered and it’s forgiving nature.

My early years with clay were spent trying to find my place and the wheel had great appeal. I found working on the wheel was too disciplined and was not where I wanted to focus. Hand-building was a different experience and I soon found my passion with slabs of clay. I started my clay work building architectural structures and through the years I have experimented with many different forms.

I have been working in clay now for over 30 years. It was in the last 15 years that I began hand-building horses. I have not had a lifetime of loving horses but admit to an awe of their majesty, elegance and power. It has been a challenge both technically and conceptually to capture the horse’s essence. I have focused my work in recent years on translating all that the horse represents into my clay pieces. I feel fortunate to have found my passion in clay and look forward to each new project.

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Hannah Goldsmith graduated from Clarke University with a BFA in Studio Art. Working in both sculpture and painting, she has exhibited work nationally including galleries in New Hampshire, Oregon, and Georgia. She has also received recognition through various fine arts awards and scholarships.

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I am a Galena resident, moving here after college in 1974. My interest in photography began with my first Brownie camera. I worked my way from a point and shoot camera to a completely manual Pentex and on to digital cameras. Where I once developed and printed black and white images in a dark room, I now fine tune and print color images with my computer.
For the past year or so, I have been combining the classic designs of quilt squares with my original photography to create what I call “Photo Quilt Squares.” The process I go through to make the compositions is similar to quilt making: deciding on a pattern, deciding on material (in this case, images), cutting all the pieces to fit together and assembling them on a piece of card stock. I have learned working with photo paper is more exacting than working with fabric. But the visual effect is worth the effort!
I currently show and sell my works, both photographic prints and photo quilt squares, as well as note cards, at Hello Galena and the Galena Center for the Arts.