2020
  • Making Arrangements: Ataraxia by Crit Streed
    ​January 23, 2020: 5:30-7pm
    January 30, 2020: 5:30-7pm
    along with video installation; exhibit will also display additional work by the artist.
    "Making Arrangements is an ever-changing configuration in glass positioned in relationship to a video projected on the wall. The woman in the video is endlessly moving two chairs in an empty room in pursuit of the perfect arrangement. The shelves of milk glass have equally been arranged to balance, flow, fill the eye and evoke an interest."
    Crit Streed was born in 1948 in Washington, Iowa, where she grew up. She received a B.A. in art from the University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, and her M.A. in painting and drawing and M.F.A. in painting and lithography from the University of Iowa, Iowa City. Between short-term teaching positions, she lived and worked in Nepal from 1982 to 1984, and has participated in various artist residencies nationally and abroad. She has exhibited widely and is Professor Emeritus of Art at the University of Northern Iowa, where she had taught since the 1980s. Recently, she completed a residency in Cadaqués and currently lives and creates in Cedar Falls, IA.
  • Collector Showcase
    ​Reception: February 21st, 5:00-7:30pm
    Exhibit Dates: February 18 - April 4, 2020
    ​Select group exhibit of renown artists of the Midwest.

    This group exhibit celebrates the rich history of Iowan and Midwestern artists on a national stage. Their contributions to current regional arts programming, funding, and institutions are fundamental and they continue to garner attention on prominent platforms.
    Artists featured:
    Marvin Cone
    Bertha Evelyn Jaques
    Mauricio Lasansky
    Conger Metcalf
    Grant Wood
  • Stillness and Occurrence by ​John Beckelman
    Reception: [updated] May 22nd, 5:00-6:00pm
    Exhibit Dates: April 17 - June 13, 2020
    Due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, the gallery has adjusted the reception date to a "Closing" reception. On view dates will remain the same. Check back periodically for updates on virtual reception.
    Using the expressive potential of clay and a variety of other materials, the work explores liminal space and are often times referenced as topographic or cosmographic. At the same time, this work attempts to gently entice the viewer into the inner landscapes and interior spaces of our imagination and memory.

    John Beckelman's  work has been exhibited in shows throughout the country, including California, New York, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Ohio, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, South Dakota, Montana, and Iowa. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, commissions, and grants. He received his Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics and his Master of Science in Ceramics from Illinois State University. John is the Robert O. Daniel Professor of Art, Emeritus at Coe College. He lives and works in Cedar Rapids, Iowa where he maintains a studio at the Iowa Ceramics Center and Glass Studio in the Historic Cherry Building.
  • Peculiar Reality
    Exhibit Dates: June 26 - August 8, 2020
    Virtual Reception with Mary Koenen Clausen: July 24th, starting at 5:30pm CST
    Virtual Reception with Jillian Moore: July 25th, starting at 11:00am CST
    *RSVP for video details
    Due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, the gallery is withdrawing submissions for the national call. Instead, Peculiar Reality, will be a 2-Person exhibit with the invited gallery artists to participate: Mary Koenen Clausen and Jillian Moore. Peculiar Reality: National Juried Exhibit will be announced at a later date when threat to health becomes less of a concern. For more information about the call, visit Call for Entries.
    Check back periodically for updated dates for the reception. We're navigating our schedule day-to-day.
    Mary Koenen Clausen’s mixed media collages are rich in texture and image. Her works frequently are comprised of three visual fields or planes: the heavens, earth, and underworld. Figures composed of mismatched heads and bodies float among animals, icons, musical notes, and foreign texts on backgrounds thickly painted with deep hues. Mary sees the musical notes, symbols and foreign text, many of which she reproduces in her own hand, as messages emanating from her spiritual guides while channeling energy from other time and space dimensions. She gathers her material from Italian magazines, 17th and 18th century Bibles, antique books, among other sources. Mary also uses photographs of her surroundings in her work. Her home and studio are full of paintings, photographs, wall hangings, dolls, and other collected objects, an environment that reflects the complexity of her work. Mary lives and works in Muscatine, Iowa.
     

    Jillian Moore is an artist and writer based in Iowa City, Iowa working primarily in the field of contemporary jewelry and small sculpture. Her work is inspired by forms in the biological world and amplified by an interest in the fantastical. Operating with a background in metalsmithing and a foreground in experimental resins and other plastic processes, Moore's work is comprised of a variety of new materials and techniques executed with the obsessive, monomaniacal approach of her craft discipline training. "Our natural tendency to seek out patterns results in a sensitivity to the congruities in biological forms. Deliberate exploitation of these phenomena results in objects that are both ambiguous and evocative. Some are organs removed from the body in which they once belonged, revealing structures with unknown functions.”
  • Vision: Inner and Outer by Marcia Wegman
    Exhibit Dates: August 21-October 2, 2020
    Reception: Virtual, September 18th @ 5:30pm cst.
    Due to the Derecho that impacted Cedar Rapids August 10th, the gallery opened the exhibit August 28th.
    Marcia Wegman lives in Iowa City, IA. She has worked in multiple media, including intaglio printmaking (which she studied for her MFA at the University of Iowa), oil, watercolor, collage, and paper making. Her landscapes of the Midwest capture the spirit of Iowa. In addition to pastoral pastels, she also paints abstract landscapes on Yupo. They convey a feeling rather than the exact details of a location. The layering of long brushstrokes fractures the landscape and rebuilds it in new and exciting ways.
  • Endless Planes
    by Julia Kottal and David Kupferman
    Due to the staff testing positive for (COVID-19), the gallery has adjusted the reception date with Julia to a "Closing" reception. On view dates have been extended.
    Exhibit Dates: October 16 - November 28, 2020
    Reception with Julia Kottal: December 4th, 5:30pmCST
    ​Julia is a native mid-westener, born in Michigan. She has studied art in Florida, Maryland and California before moving to Iowa in 1992. She has a B.A., with painting as her emphasis, from Coe College. She has work in various collections nationally, including Alliant Energy, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Coe College, Kirkwood Community College, University Miami of Ohio, Millhiser Smith, Terry, Lockridge and Dunn, and United Fire Group. She is currently a full time painter.

    Kupferman’s  work combines spontaneous, gestural imagery with geometric abstract shapes of color and linear patterns that weave a tapestry of flowing images in a unique fusion of Eastern and Western styles. He was born in Boston,and is son of artists Ruth Cobb and Lawrence Kupferman. He studied and apprenticed with his father, Head of the Dept. of Painting, at the Massachusetts College of Art and with sculptor Mirko at Harvard University.  He attended the University Of Wisconsin, Madison and MERU, Switzerland.
  • Mission Happiness by Mary Zeran
    Exhibit Dates: December 11, 2020 - January 23, 2021
    Virtual Reception with Mary Zeran: December 11th, 5:30pm CST
    Mary Zeran was raised in a family of women artists whose textiles, embroidery, and woodcarvings, existed as their visual language; enigmatic shapes and forms were their words.  Each time she picks up a brush or scissors she immerses herself in the language of her family, which brings her ever closer to their traditions, histories, and stories.

    ​Mary Zeran received her B.F.A and M.F.A from University of Iowa. She was born in Iowa City in 1964 and now lives and works in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She is the recipient of several awards and honors and her works are in numerous public and private collections as well as many notable corporate collections. Her collage works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the United States and abroad including  the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art; Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, in Kansas City; SOIL Gallery in Seattle; Higher Art Gallery in Michigan; and Chaing Mai University in Chaing Mai, Thailand.

  • ​Jewelry Cocktail Party

    Due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, the gallery will not be hosting it's yearly Jewelry Party in-person.
    Join us on our social media, where we are holding our "Stories Jewelry Party" each day the week of December 14th!

    Follow us and check in on our available jewelry selections this year.

2021
  • Picking up the Pieces by Kimberlee Rocca
    Virtual Reception: February 5th, 5:30pm CST
    Exhibit Dates: January 29- February 27, 2021

    "I am an Iowa artisan working by day in new home construction and remodeling. My job sites are filled with a myriad of common, yet uncommon materials that continually spark my imagination and wiggle their way into my fine art works. Designing and building homes captures a desire for large scale creativity, but the ever-flowing variety of construction waste products intrigues my bold color loving side. My two artistic disciplines are intertwined and I have found that I can barely do one without the other."

  • TBD by Ann Royer
    ​Reception: TBD
    Exhibit Dates: March 5- April 17, 2021
    "It was with some reluctance that I agreed to write about my art. I have always thought each person looks at art bringing with them their own experiences, which governs what they see (no one should interfere with that process). Over the years I have tried to explore the horse and female images. Every time I worked with other animals I would always return to the horse. Its exquisite form is universal as a war horse, sport horse, or plow horse. The female form represents mother earth. Its pear-shaped, voluminous form is fun to work with. I have always felt free to work in many media and examine an image in a representational, semi-abstract, or totally abstract form. It is personally satisfying. The need to create images precedes recorded history. The drawings in the Caves of Lascaux are an example. I have that need. I hope the people see something magical in all art in any form."
  • Polyphonous 2021:Mimetic Lives II by Satomi Kawai & Jillian Moore
    A collaboration exhibition during Munich Jewellery Week with Polyphonous partners in Europe.
    Virtual Reception: March 13th, 11am [video details announced soon]
    Exhibit Dates: March 5- April 17, 2021
    Satomi Kawai ​"I would like to invite you to join me as I explore life and nature as a contemporary jewelry artist.
    I grew up in a rich natural environment in Japan, and I have always enjoyed observing nature.  I learned traditional Japanese cultural practices, including flower arrangement, tea ceremony and calligraphy.  Also, my grandmother encouraged me to develop my artistic appreciation when I was a little girl. With this background, today, I live in Iowa. I feel a strong tie to nature wherever I am, and I enjoy traveling and experiencing different environments. Substances in and outside of the body consist of solid and fluid, and something in between.  Also, substances transform as a solid becomes fluid, and fluid becomes gas.  Over time, matter changes color, pattern, shape/ form, and substance.  This macro process in an external environment- nature- is reflected by the micro environment in our own bodies, including cell activity.  By exploring the internal environment, I focus my observations on several layers of personal femininity, including the physical, emotional, and psychological quality of being a woman.

    Jillian Moore is an artist and writer based in Iowa City, Iowa working primarily in the field of contemporary jewelry and small sculpture. Her work is inspired by forms in the biological world and amplified by an interest in the fantastical. Operating with a background in metalsmithing and a foreground in experimental resins and other plastic processes, Moore's work is comprised of a variety of new materials and techniques executed with the obsessive, monomaniacal approach of her craft discipline training. "Our natural tendency to seek out patterns results in a sensitivity to the congruities in biological forms. Deliberate exploitation of these phenomena results in objects that are both ambiguous and evocative. Some are organs removed from the body in which they once belonged, revealing structures with unknown functions.”
  • 10 Year Anniversary Party
    Date: April 1st, 2020
    A treat for you and a treat for us. More details to come! Mark your calendars
  • TBD by Thérèse Murdza
    Exhibit Dates: April 30- June 12, 2021
    Reception: TBD
    A writer turned visual artist, Portland painter Thérèse Murdza began drawing big words on giant rolls of paper in 1998. Using an evolving and animated range of circles, lines, and colors, she continued her work onto stretched canvas in 2001, eventually building her now signature bright, richly textured paintings on large, sometimes mult-paneled works on canvas, and smaller paintings on canvas and paper.  From her studio in Portland, Oregon, she partners with gallerists, design professionals, and private collectors to place her artwork nationwide. 
  • TBD
    by Suzy McGrane-Hop, Linda Ge & Lauren Tucci
    Exhibit Dates: June 25- August 7, 2021
    Reception: TBD
  • TBD by Fred Easker
    Exhibit Dates: August 20- October 2, 2021
    Reception: TBD
  • TBD by Ellen Kleckner
    Exhibit Dates: October 15- November 27, 2021
    Reception: TBD
  • TBD by Mary Zeran
    Exhibit Dates: December 3, 2021 - January 15, 2022
    Reception: TBD
    Mary Zeran was raised in a family of women artists whose textiles, embroidery, and woodcarvings, existed as their visual language; enigmatic shapes and forms were their words.  Each time she picks up a brush or scissors she immerses herself in the language of her family, which brings her ever closer to their traditions, histories, and stories.

    ​Mary Zeran received her B.F.A and M.F.A from University of Iowa. She was born in Iowa City in 1964 and now lives and works in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She is the recipient of several awards and honors and her works are in numerous public and private collections as well as many notable corporate collections. Her collage works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the United States and abroad including  the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art; Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, in Kansas City; SOIL Gallery in Seattle; Higher Art Gallery in Michigan; and Chaing Mai University in Chaing Mai, Thailand.

  • ​Jewelry Cocktail Party

    Thursday, December 9th  5:30pm
    Check back for the RSVP in early November!

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