Relief From Endlessness ANDA TANAKA & JEREMY RUDD
2017-11-03 - 2017-12-21 | Octagon Center for the Arts, 427 Douglas Avenue, Ames, IA, 50010, United States
Relief From Endlessness
ANDA TANAKA & JEREMY RUDD
NOVEMBER 3 – DECEMBER 21, 2017, SWEENEY GALLERY
Jeremy Rudd
Artsist Bio A native Iowan, Rudd grew up in rural Benton County thirty minutes outside Cedar Rapids. He attended Iowa State University receiving a BFA in visual Studies with an emphasis on Three Dimensional Design, and completed his Master of Fine Arts at the CVPA of The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. He was a Professor of fine arts for four years at Lasell College, Boston MA and Bristol Community College, Fall River MA. Since returning to the Midwest Rudd has worked as Assistant Professor of Art for divine word College in Epworth, IA, and worked as a professional artist completing many liturgical, private and commercial projects.
Anda Tanaka
Arist Statement I have lived in the Midwest for my entire life and have always appreciated our open spaces- cornfields, prairies, the huge starry night sky. Until recently, though, I did not realize how important the Midwestern landscape is to my art practice and how I yearn for expansiveness to find peace within myself.
Beginning in January 2014 I endeavored to make one 2 inch by 2 inch painting or drawing every day for a year. The project called for discipline but also trust in intuition. Reviewing the pieces now points to my impulse to create imagined and remembered landscapes: At least a third of the three-hundred-something squares could be interpreted as landscapes.
In July of 2015 I visited my brother in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina where the trees grow tight together and the roads wind endlessly up hills and mountainsides. The novel setting was beautiful and exciting, but I felt a sense of claustrophobia. We were always climbing in search of a clear view, to see the sky above or the valley below.
Since then I have become committed to dedicating an extended period of time to painting and printing landscapes that specifically explore my attachment and deep interest in the vistas of the states I call home, Iowa and Minnesota. The abundance of open space in these places lends itself to creating abstractions that are visually quiet. In paring down a landscape, the essence of my experience of the space is intensified.
We can search for drama in our travels, but here at home we have a deep and special calm.
Artist Bio Anda Tanaka is a Minneapolis-based painter and printmaker. She was raised in Ames, Iowa and is thrilled to be showing at the Octagon, the site of some of her very first art classes! Drawn north to study music and studio art at St. Olaf College, she has lived in Minnesota for the past 10 years. In 2013 Anda completed an emerging artist residency at St. Olaf, during which she continued to study painting and printmaking with Wendell Arneson and John Sauer, respectively. She now works out of a studio in her home as well as the artist co-op at Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis.

Running With Scissors STEVE HOSCH
2017-11-16 - 2017-12-21
Running With Scissors
STEVE HOSCH
NOVEMBER 16 – DECEMBER 21, 2017, COMMUNITY GALLERY
Making art, to me, is not necessarily a response to the world. Rather, it’s often just a reaction to what’s rattling around in my head. It’s an attempt to make sense of my own inner clutter; regrets, hopes, doubts, dreams, fears. It’s problem solving. It’s catharsis. It’s play. It’s taking risks and letting go. Ultimately, it’s akin to closing my eyes and running with scissors even as my conscience holds up his hands and screams “Stop, idiot!”
Not surprisingly, my process is also disjointed. It, too, begins with clutter, the tangible kind, the collage artist’s raw materials: paper. Boxes and files and piles of paper. From there I sift and sort, and an image, color, shape, or snippet of text sometimes calls to me, asking to be the focal point. Then it’s simply a matter of more sifting, gathering complementary bits and pieces, arranging, shifting, cutting, turning, rearranging all the while trying to ignore my conscience (he’s a jerk) gluing, layering, tearing, sanding, slinging paint, adding transfers, and so on. Eventually, I step back and either smile or curse.
This exhibition is the result of a couple of years worth of that process. Paper and scissors and glue (oh my).
