Midwestern landscape and architecture are not unfamiliar themes for visitors to DuMA. The uniqueness of our natural and man-made scenery inspires many artists. Illinois artist Nichole Gronvold Roller is no exception, though her irregular polygonal canvases and abstract kaleidoscope imagery might deceive the casual viewer. This selection of twelve new paintings conceal the familiar Midwest themes that inspired them and encourage a closer examination. Those who stop for a longer look will find that the artist has made a deep and considered examination of our region.

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Portraits of the Pandemic is an exhibition of self-portraits made during the pandemic by artists in Dubuque and surrounding counties in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois. As the nation went into quarantine in March 2020, life for many in the Tri-State area was abruptly reduced to their immediate surroundings. Business closures and the sudden shift to more people being home day and night affected us all in varying ways. During this protracted period of uncertainty, isolation, and controversy around the COVID-19 pandemic, when so many must look inward for ways to stave off boredom, depression, frustration, or fear, DuMA called on our local artists to submit a work that represented their personal experience. Through the works in the exhibition and the artists’ personal reflections, we can address and gain a deeper understanding of our own experiences and thoughts of the time.

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Iowa’s park system began 100 years ago when Backbone State Park was dedicated on May 28, 1920, and has grown to encompass 72 parks and forests across the state. In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Iowa state parks in 2020, 20 faculty and graduate student artists from three of Iowa State University’s colleges—Design, Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Liberal Arts and Sciences—were matched with 20 state parks to create artwork during summer residencies from April through August 2019.

20 Artists, 20 Parks is an exhibition of these artworks that utilizes the arts to facilitate a greater understanding and appreciation for Iowa’s natural landscape. State parks selected for the project represent diverse ecological, geological and cultural experiences that make Iowa unique. From paintings to quilts to sound installations, the artworks included in 20 Artists, 20 Parks are as distinct as the parks themselves. The artworks capture the sights and sounds of Iowa’s natural landscape illuminating the relations hip between art and nature.

“The artwork is as varied as the parks themselves, from the Maquoketa Caves to Stephens State Forestto Gull Point on Lake Okoboji,” said the Iowa Arts Council’s Veronica O’Hern, who helped curate the show. “Together the paintings, sculptures, textiles, photos, videos and other art forms capture the sights and sounds of these unique pockets of the Iowa landscape.”

During their residencies last summer, the Iowa State artists–including students and faculty members from the Colleges of Design, Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Liberal Arts and Sciences–worked closely with DNR park rangers to learn about the parks’ ecosystems. The artists visited often to take notes, draw sketches and gather ideas.

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20 Artists, 20 Parks is a partnership between the Iowa Arts Council, a division of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs, Iowa Department of Natural Resources, and Iowa State University College of Design. The program is funded by the Iowa Arts Council.

Peoria, Illinois artist Carrie Pearce explores the unlimited realm of imagination in her latest series The Merry Makers. The exhibition features ten figurative oil paintings from the series and opens January 25 in the Dubuque Museum of Art’s Kris Mozena McNamer Gallery.

Pearce’s style has been described as imaginary realism. The fantastic figures in her work derive from a combination of imagination and photographic references. Although dedicated to the rigorous 16th century painting techniques of the Old Masters, she paints curious scenes of children interwoven with an array of toys and pets. The figures in her paintings are inspired by vintage family photos, particularly of children, which she finds at antique stores and estate sales. Pearce describes her work as emotional portraits rather than portraits of people. She imagines what life was like for these unknown children, what their thoughts, hopes, and dreams were. Her paintings become phantasmagorical worlds that explore each figure’s story.

Carrie Pearce was born in Peoria in 1969. She has been drawing and painting for as long as she can remember. She attended the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia where she graduated with honors. Pearce’s work has been featured both nationally and internationally. She was one of only ten finalists selected for the 2019 Bennett Prize, a national juried art competition and exhibition to honor and encourage women figurative painters. She is a “Living Artist” with the Art Renewal Center, an organization dedicated to the revival of realism in fine art. Her work has been featured in Fine Art Connoisseur, American Art Collector, and Hi-Fructose magazine.

Carrie Pearce: The Merry Makers

As part of Art and Music in our Schools Month, the works of students from all Dubuque Community and Holy Family elementary and middle schools are displayed at the museum each spring.

Families of student artists are encouraged to come to the museum and see their art proudly on display. The student art is displayed in the lobby and a purchase of museum admission is not required to view it.

Note: The K-8 student art exhibition has been extended until May 17.

View the DuMA Facebook’s Photo Gallery of K-8 Artwork Here!

Flow: Journey Through the Mississippi River Watershed brings together five large-scale installations, by five Midwestern artists, that reveal our connections to water in unexpected ways.

Water is ubiquitous and essential to human life. Frequently we see stories of flooding and water quality featured in local and regional news reports. Arguably, the Mississippi River defines the quality of life across the Tri-State region; this major artery of water along with its massive watershed impacts everything from industry, agriculture, and recreation, to our physical health and well-being.

Removed from the customary grand vista – how rivers and bodies of water have traditionally been represented in painting and art history – the artworks in this exhibition draw inspiration from science and the fields of hydrology, water quality, and water conservation.

Reuter and Joshua Rowan of St. Louis, Missouri mark the locations of watersheds, and where streams have been harmed or buried, with fragile glass cairns, which the artists then photograph and present as ‘waterscapes’. According to Reuter, “Our work celebrates the Mississippi River basin – [covering] 40% of the continental United States – and its water wealth that provides drinking water for 50 million people and irrigation for 90 percent of agricultural exports.”

Clean Water, a site-specific installation by artist Jennifer Bates of Cedar Falls, Iowa, consists of approximately 1,500 recycled water bottles, colored a vibrant blue, that take the form of a section of the Mississippi River that extends through the Greater Dubuque region.

In two separate installations, Susan Knight of Omaha, Nebraska examines the natural and symbolic cross-currents around bodies of water. Working with plastic and paper, Knight’s works mimic the movement of water, itself, and the impacts of industry, agriculture, and recreation.

Upstream, an installation by Anna Metcalfe of Minneapolis, Minnesota, reflects the artist’s decade-long investigation of the waters of the Upper Mississippi and interest in socially-engaged art. Through an ongoing series of conversations in communities up and down the river, Metcalf collects residents’ stories and experiences related to water, which are then incorporated into ceramic tea cups.

Flow: Journey Through the Mississippi River Watershed
Organized by the Dubuque Museum of Art

A City at Work: Dubuque Portraits from 1912 features rarely-seen images of Dubuque industries as they existed more than a century ago.

As described in the exhibition catalog by co-authors Tim Olson and Mike Gibson of the Loras College Center for Dubuque History: In the spring of 1912, two men arrived in Dubuque and began shooting the photographs that would become the Klauer Collection. For three weeks they traveled throughout the city with a large format camera and a magnesium powder flash lamp, photographing workers in factories, offices, shops, saloons, and even the operating room of St. Joseph Mercy Hospital. We don’t know the photographers’ names, though they each posed as customers when needed, leaving us several self-portraits. … When the photographers left Dubuque, they left behind roughly 440 extraordinary photographs documenting a city at work.

To mark the 100th anniversary of the project, in 2012, Dubuque artist and photographer Tim Olson returned to the same locations and photographed the places as they existed a century later. The resulting exhibition, A City at Work: 1912 to 2012, shown at DuMA in partnership with the Loras College Center for Dubuque History, was among the best attended and most popular in the museum’s history.

However, when this exhibition closed in 2013, that wasn’t the end of it. Olson and Gibson continued to research and exhibit the Klauer Collection. With the assistance of several local historians, they completed two books of the collection, one for the 1912 images and one for the 2012 images.

As a result, the Dubuque Museum of Art is once again revisiting these familiar and beloved images from Dubuque’s significant industrial history. This new exhibition focuses on six of the 1912 images along with newly researched biographies of the men and women in the photographs.

A City at Work: Dubuque Portraits from 1912