2011 Selected Artists

Elizabeth DeCleene
Elizabeth was born in Iowa, but has lived in Texas, Georgia and Ecuador. She majored in fine arts at Grand View University, with a minor in graphic design. Elizabeth states, “I can't remember when I did not like to draw or paint. I’ve enjoyed experimenting with new methods and processes of painting, whether it’s texture or color. It’s important to try different things. Time, season, scenery, colors—all hold significance. Nature has its own beauty, whether it’s trees or a hay stack; the balance and character make me want to replicate it in my own way. As I try new methods, I realize how subjects are vitally important in my work.” To contact Elizabeth, email elizabeth.decleene@gmail.com.

     

Marcia Joffe-Bouska
A Chicago area native, Marcia received her Bachelor of Arts degree in art and art education from Clarke College in Dubuque, Iowa, and obtained her Master of Fine Arts degree from Northern Illinois University. After graduation, she relocated to Council Bluffs, where she still resides. Marcia describes her work as, "colorful, complex and layered with meaning.” She says that her wall reliefs and in-the-round sculpture combine familiar imagery, rich in symbolism, with organic forms, found objects and traditional and non-traditional media and techniques. This creates tension between the image and the associations suggested by incongruous materials. The work may incorporate glass mosaic, cement, soldered wire, woodcarving or burning, embedded items, found objects, painted or carved text and representational images. Also present is a strong attention to color, form, design and construction.

Though the natural world always provides inspiration and reference, Marcia’s artwork investigates universal themes of relationship and nuances of the human condition, such as alienation, loss and longing, healing and forgiveness. Her artwork reveals her interest in cultural icons and belief in the transcendent nature of art. She considers her work to be her interface with the world around her and her way of seeking meaning in the most mundane of experiences. It is simply her method of processing and making sense out of life. To contact Marcia, email mjbstudio@cox.net.

Saharu Fakhraie
Saharu was born in Japan as the third child of a Japanese mother and an Iranian father. She eventually moved to the United States with her family after living in Japan for a decade. Her interest in the vast world of the arts inspired her to pursue fine arts studies in high school and college. Saharu states, “It intrigues me to zoom in on the details created by folds and creases of organic matter. I find joy in taking those newfound dimensions of an object and illustrating and recreating them on another surface―painting a flowing stream where, in reality, only a sigh of a wrinkle can be seen on a petal.” To contact Saharu, email saharu.f@gmail.com

Janet Hart Heinicke
Janet is one of those people who has always “made art.” She was born in Indiana, went on to become a college art professor in Chicago, and then later, in Iowa. Her work has been exhibited in Japan, Tanzania, the Ukraine and Russia, along with more than a hundred exhibits in venues across the United States. Janet states, “Making something, watching a shape, a color or a texture emerge from the ‘nothing’ of a piece of paper is deeply satisfying. My spirit sings when I make something! So…yes…making art is an extension of life for me. Without it, I would be (and am) less whole―less human.” To contact Janet, email janetheinicke@earthlink.net.

Wendy Romero
Some of Wendy’s earliest memories are from the time her family lived in Europe. The experience of being exposed to a variety of cultures helped shape her perception of the world and nurture her creativity. After earning her Master of Fine Arts degree from Georgia Southern University, she began teaching art and design at Loras College. She states, "I strive to create works that reflect an experience―a ‘visual journal.’ A set of experiences, by extension, defines our story and our lives. My aim in my art is to create works that call for physical and emotional awareness in the viewer by using unexpected, yet familiar, materials and spatial arrangements." To contact Wendy, email romerowm@yahoo.com.

Chuck Richards
An Illinois native, Chuck was blessed with a family that was supportive of his artistic interests. When he was six, his father even built him a light box so he could trace his favorite comic book characters. He has been teaching drawing at Iowa State University’s College of Design since 1998. He states, “The processes that I use in creating my own work emphasize all that I teach in foundation and life drawing courses at Iowa State University. Most of this is very fundamental. To my mind, ‘good drawing’ stresses critical thinking, which directs a purposeful application of conceptual, compositional, perceptual and technical skills.” To contact Chuck, email chuckric@iastate.edu.

Peggy Jester
Peggy is a lifelong Des Moines area resident, who realized in 8th grade that her ideas and dreams could be drawn. She went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The University of Colorado and moved back to Urbandale with her husband, returning home to the Des Moines metro where she’d grown up. Later, as her own children grew, she earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in painting at Drake University. Peggy also taught drawing and printmaking at the Des Moines Art Center.

Peggy works in several mediums: painting, drawing and printmaking. The Botanical prints are monotypes, one-of-a-kind prints, made by laying plants onto a painted sheet of plexiglass. Paper is put on top and the "sandwich" is rolled through a press. This technique for printing plants combines Peggy's love of plants and gardening with her love of art. She currently works primarily from her home studio, and her work is included in many private and corporate collections. To contact Peggy, please email pjester@mchsi.com.

Catherine Dreiss
Catherine teaches at Drake University and lives in Des Moines. She is represented by Moberg Gallery. She states, “I am a practitioner of what New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman recently called the ‘Cinderella Art’ printmaking. For the past eight years, I have been working almost exclusively with woodcuts that are based on photographs and appropriated patterns. All are hand carved and printed in a succession of plates using a method known as reduction prints. All are printed using oil-based inks on Stonehenge paper, on either a Charles Brand or Takach etching press.” To contact Catherine, email twomooks@mac.com.

Holly Kellog
Holly graduated from Kansas City Art Institute in 1978 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting. She comes from a family of artists and architects who were instrumental in nurturing her visual awareness and love of the visual arts. She states, “I am drawn to and influenced by color, light and the rhythms of nature. In my work, I have been exploring ways to create depth through color and through the layering of form, either through collage or paint. The work I do comes from careful observation of the world around me, and causes me to examine the way I live, and what I value.” To contact Holly, email kellogg@smunet.net.

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2009 Selected Artists

Sue Hettmansperger
A University of Iowa professor of undergraduate and graduate painting and drawing, Sue is a recent 2008 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship recipient whose work is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago to name a few. Sue states, " The language of painting embodies the morphology of form through process, materiality and its collaboration with the structure of space. Walking the line between abstraction and representation, the imagery of this series refers to the human body, botany, digital distortion, and manufactured objects… This work seeks to mirror a current cultural perspective in which boundaries between organisms are increasingly blurred, and our awareness of digitally altered images makes us question the truthfulness of everything we see in visual culture." To contact Sue, email sue-hettmansperger@uiowa.edu.

Robert Gillespie
A self taught "hands on" nature photographer, Robert has progressively created more of his work digitally than on film. He has experimented with infrared film, filters and enhancing with Photoshop. Robert is a teacher and mentor for local youth groups learning photography. He states, "Using all of these techniques by themselves or in combination results in a departure from reality." To contact Robert, email phylabob@msn.com.

Thomas Jewell-Vitale
Thomas teaches painting and drawing at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa. He studied at the Academie der Bildenden Junst in Vienna, Austria and completed his graduate studies at the University of California at Berkley. Thomas indicates that he has found inspiration in the works of others, "Inspiration comes in all forms. I know that what attracts me to some things and not others is the little glimpses of truth they contain. Sometimes truth comes in the awareness of things made well, other times, in the turn of a sincere phrase; most often, just a fragment will do to catapult an avalanche. Little gifts, embedded in all sorts of careful human production, revealed daily, are all I look forward to; such an elegantly subversive cosmic plan that inspires others, bit by bit, to evolve into the change that suits them." To contact Thomas, email thomas.jewellvitale@loras.edu.

Karen Kurka Jensen
Karen has studied the classical sumi-e techniques of East Asian brush painting for over 10 years. She teaches sumi-e painting at several local locations and serves on the national Sumi-e Society of America Board of Directors. Karen writes, "My work is largely abstract and impressionistic, derived from hours, sometimes days, sometimes years spent out of doors in contemplation and reverie. I don’t always go to sketch but at times to simply drink in all of my surroundings, to be at one with the world around me. I have always felt the power of the beauty of the earth and through my art yearn to pay back just a little of the wild peace and wonder that I find." To contact Karen, email eagletouch@gmail.com.

Hiromi Okumura
Born and brought up in Japan, Hiromi arrived in Seattle in 2000. As a painter who loves to dance, the energy, movement, and space which dance creates in Hiromi's inspiration for painting. Hiromi writes, "Painting for me is dancing. Dancers create their fantastic world with bodies and emotions, as painters do with colors, paints, and brushes." "…as a painter, I am very interested in movement in space; my forms come in and out of space as they move throughout the picture plane." Hiromi enjoys the problems and accidents that occur in painting noting that, "after struggling hard enough with the chaos, somehow, suddenly, everything will start to work. This is the creative miracle that I live for." To contact Hiromi, email hiromiokumura@gmail.com.

Gabriel Lueders
Gabriel lives and works in the Des Moines area, currently working in the production of a film doing set building and scenic work. Gabe received his college education at the University of Iowa where he studied various forms of art including bronze casting and work sculpture to painting and intermedia work. Landscape painting has been a part of Gabe's life since he was a young boy as his father would take him to do "plein-air" watercolor painting. He says he maintains a strong connection with nature and the beauty found around us. Gabe writes, "I am fascinated with the textures and surfaces in raw untouched nature." "These are the things that inspire me to paint and travel and see the world. To feel its rocks and breathe the air and see its vastness that I might capture a fleeting moment of its ever changing beauty through brush, charcoal or pencil." To contact Gabriel, email gabelueders@gmail.com.

Stewart Buck
Stewart graduated from ISU in 1973 with a Bachelor's Degree in Advertising Design and continued on to receive his Master's Degree in Design in 1975. He has taught art at Bondurant-Farrar Community Schools for the past 3 decades as well as maintaining a freelance art business. Stewart works with pastels creating drawings with predominantly railroad and landscape themes. Stewart writes about his work, "The strength of a work comes from the foundation established by the composition and other technical elements. It's important to base a work on this foundation, but art must go beyond technical skill." "The artist should have a resonance, or spiritual connection with the subject." To contact Stewart, visit sbucko2@aol.com.

Robert Reeves
Robert is a Waterloo native and graduate of the University of Northern Iowa with a Bachelor of Arts in Studio/Painting. He currently lives in Des Moines and has two sons. Of his work, Robert says he likes to use, "pure colors, wide brushes, and aggressive strokes to create stark, colorful portraits of very specific moments in our everyday (and night) lives." He dreams of traveling to, and painting every major city in the world. "Our cities and towns have a music and motion. A rhythm and energy that ultimately comes from within us. I seek to portray this spirit." To contact Robert, email Rob@RobReevesStudio.com.

Sara Slee Brown
Sara was born in 1945 in St. Louis, MO. She received her BFA in Painting from the University of Michigan in 1968. She moved with her husband and children to Iowa City in 1977 where she earned her MFA in Painting from the University of Iowa in 1981. In 1997 Sara established Virginia Grove Studio in Iowa City. She states, "After many years of oil painting, gauche and mixed media work, I discovered the power and beauty of digital imaging." Using her scanner as a camera, Sara refines the image on her computer. "For me the works evoke a sense of quiet, beauty, and serenity that I find very satisfying." To contact Sara, email vagrove@mchsi.com.

Marcia Joffe-Bouska
A Chicago area native, Marcia received her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Art and Art Education from Clarke College in Dubuque, Iowa and obtained her MFA from Northern Illinois University. She relocated after graduation to Council Bluffs and lived there ever since. Marcia describes her work as, "colorful, complex, and layered with meaning. It reveals my interest in cultural icons and the transcendent nature of art. I often incorporate common imagery, rich in symbolism and associations, with organic forms, found objects, and traditional and nontraditional art media and techniques. Themes investigate nuances of the human condition and often parallel the significant threads of my life." To contact Marcia, email mjbstudio@cox.net.

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2007 Selected Artists

Artie Brewer
Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Artie has lived in Des Moines since the age of six. A graduate of Roosevelt High School, he received his BFA from Iowa State University. Artie is working as a Web Developer at the Art Store, as his fine arts career gains momentum. He has participated in many exhibitions throughout the state. To contact Artie, email artie018@hotmail.com.

Steven W. Lauterwasser
A native of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Steven graduated from Jefferson High School in 1997, where he began painting in oils during his junior year. He likes the solitude of Iowa's rural landscapes and roadways, particularly those classified as "level B" or "low county Laura Young is a landscape and still life painter and is currently a lecturer in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa. She has won numerous fellowships and awards such as a Pollock Krasner Foundation Fellowship, two Iowa Arts Council Grants, a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship, and residency fellowships including Yaddo, The Tyrone Guthrie Centre Residency, and The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has shown across the United States in museums, galleries, juried and group shows, as well as internationally in Denmark and Nigeria and is represented nationally in corporate and private collections. She is currently represented by The Hudson River Gallery in Iowa City. . Wooded and rutty, these roads have character and Steven is always looking for the next bend or scenic hillside. Iowa's rural landscapes speak to him and he strives to make that evident in his paintings. Steven has three children with his wife Christina, and currently drives a bus full time for the city of Cedar Rapids. To contact Steven, email swlauterwasser@q.com or call 319-366-3824.

Earle Rock
Earle was born in 1968 in Clinton, Iowa. He was educated in the Clinton Community School District where he majored in art and graduated in 1986. During the summer of 2001 Earle had an opportunity to Visit Tuscany and Rome, resulting in the decision to go back to Iowa in the fall of 2002 to pursue his undergraduate degree at Drake University. The spring of 2005 found Earle walking the aisle to receive his Bachelor of fine Art's Degree with Honors, majoring in drawing with a sculpting minor. After graduation, a Des Moines agent was secured to represent his art work, and Earle has participated in several shows since that time as well as receiving private commissions. His most current work was displayed in the Annual Westminster Presbyterian Fine Arts Show. The love of art continues to course throughout Earle's being and he is currently seeking ways to expand every avenue to fulfill his creative passion with photography playing an ever increasing role.

Laura Young
Laura Young is a landscape and still life painter and is currently a lecturer in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa. She has won numerous fellowships and awards such as a Pollock Krasner Foundation Fellowship, two Iowa Arts Council Grants, a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship, and residency fellowships including Yaddo, The Tyrone Guthrie Centre Residency, and The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has shown across the United States in museums, galleries, juried and group shows, as well as internationally in Denmark and Nigeria and is represented nationally in corporate and private collections. She is currently represented by The Hudson River Gallery in Iowa City.

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2005 Selected Artists

Dan Ferro
Dan has over thirty years of experience in the arts and the computer industry. His experience in music, photography, sculpture, and interaction design has all contributed to the vision expressed in Dan’s work. His work is a photographic exploration of the unnoticed and commonplace, the disregarded and transitional. His subjects are common, everyday things that include advertising space being prepared for new posters and cooking pans. The subjects are the foundation for a visual exploration of form, color, and detail. His process results in a unique interaction between the artist, the subject and the technology, guided by his years of experience in both the arts and the computer industry. Dan's technical experience includes research and medical photography, advertising photography, multimedia design and production, and complex web application development. To contact Dan, email dan@danferro.com.

     

David Heffner
David's entire life has revolved around art, whether making, studying, teaching or collecting it. After receiving an undergraduate degree focusing on photography and studio art, he turned to art history, receiving a PhD. in 1991 from the University of Pennsylvania. David has pursued a variety of jobs and career paths, including garbage man, chef and restaurant owner, eventually returning to photography. He considers himself an escapist and would prefer to have very little contact with the outside world. He does not view technology as a friend and his work reflects this personality trait/flaw. He utilizes archaic equipment and techniques, and has built his own pinhole cameras. With these tools, he tries to depict and/or create his own world. Currently, David works in a camera store, freelances and actively shows his work. To contact David, email dthphoto@yahoo.com.

    

Steven Lauterwasser
A native of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Steven graduated from Jefferson High School in 1997, where he began painting in oils during his junior year. He likes the solitude of Iowa's rural landscapes and roadways, particularly those classified as "level B" or "low county maintenance" roads. Wooded and rutty, these roads have character and Steven is always looking for the next bend or scenic hillside. Iowa's rural landscapes speak to him and he strives to make that evident in his paintings. Steven has three children with his wife Christina, and currently drives a bus full time for the city of Cedar Rapids. To contact Steven, email swlauterwasser@q.com or call 319-366-3824.

    

Diane Naylor
Diane has studied at UTU-College of Commercial Design, Montivideo, Uruguay, Minneapolis College of Art and Design and Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. In the past five years alone, she has participated in 26 exhibitions around the United States. Diane was raised in the rolling hills of Grant Wood county in eastern Iowa. From this background of rural Iowa she speaks of her art, "It is the foundation of strength within land and its bountiful array of colors of nature that has colored my palette. From warm saffron coated skies to emerald islands of turquoise horizons to thundering navy blue monsoon skies, I want landscapes to have an enchanted feeling." Although EMC features her landscapes, Diane has many different mediums. She also creates whimsical sculptures and was televised on the "That's Clever" show of the HGTV channel on satellite television in 2007. Her company, Diane’s Fine Art, was created over a decade ago and features her many different avenues of creativity. Diane's work is also featured on You Tube, where she has created several different movies of her artwork under the name of "artistdiane." Diane creates magical landscapes, fairy portraits, wall sculptures of whimsical animals, garden art of "Fish Schticks," "Birds on a Schtick" and more. For more information, contact the artist at 641-472-3921.

    

Cathy Palmer
Cathy Palmer is an abstract painter, working with oil paint on canvas and cold-wax-oil paint on panel. Her paintings begin, progress and resolve through an accumulation of brush strokes laid horizontally across the canvas. Each layer of color is manipulated, intertwining personal/universal symbols of images. Throughout the process, Cathy says she initially controls much of what is happening on the canvas, but if she visually listens, the painting ultimately tells her what needs to be done. To contact Cathy, email cathy.palmer6@gmail.com.

    

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