Willy's blog

In the nineteenth cycle, the Fund made twenty-eight awards, providing assistance with shipping and travel to twenty-seven individual artists and one duo (for a total of twenty-nine individuals). We were also able to see projects through to completion from previous cycles that had been postponed during the pandemic. The awards made in the 2022 cycle took artists and their work to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Monica, and Santa Paula, California; Baltimore, Maryland; Manchester, New Hampshire; New York, New York; Portland, Oregon; Austin, Texas; Spokane and Tacoma, Washington; and Appleton, Madison and Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Outside the United States, artists (or their work) traveled to Canada (Victoria and Winnipeg); Finland (Hämeenkyrö); France (Caylus, St. Erme, and Paris); German (Berlin); India (Bangalore); Italy (Verona); Japan (Tokyo); Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek); Mexico (Guadalajara); and The Netherlands (Amsterdam).

2022 Winter Cycle (January-June 2022)
Rosalie Beck shipped two pieces selected by Albert Handell for the Northwest Pastel Society’s 36th Annual International Exhibition to the Art Company Gallery in Tacoma, Washington.

Debra Brehmer spent six weeks in Caylus, France for a drawing/writing residency. She created a drawing response to her encounter with some of the earliest known images of humankind at the nearby Pech Merle caves, and she wrote an essay for Hyperallergic. The drawings were featured in exhibition with the work of other residents.

Paul Druecke (Nohl 2010) used his Suitcase funds for multiple trips to install Sign of the Times, an LED sign scrolling messages from 33 people with different relationships to the city of Appleton. The artist’s latest work of public inscription was produced for Sculpture Valley’s Acre of Art IV and was installed in the windows of the Trout Museum, where its messages scrolled day and night.

Paula Lovo’s film Colorin Colorado was selected for the 2022 Latina Independent Film Extravaganza (LIFE) Film Festival in Los Angeles, a festival created to build a network of Latina filmmakers and to increase awareness of the growing number of Latinas working behind the camera. This was the artist’s first international film festival, and she attended her screening and other festival events.

Robin Jebavy (Nohl 2016) received funds for Seeing Is Being, a solo exhibition of seven large paintings at the James Watrous Gallery in the Overture Center for the Arts in Madison, Wisconsin. The artist delivered a talk at the opening.

Shane McAdams has received an award for his fourth solo show with the Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland, Oregon. The artist is making a new body of paintings for the show and will ship many of them to Portland. He will travel there for the opening and a gallery talk.

Colin Matthes (Nohl 2007, 2012) took his Essential Knowledge drawings to A Perfect Day Tekenshow in Amsterdam. The exhibition featured drawings with text by more than 45 international artists that reflect the poetic, absurd, frustrating, and glorious aspects of daily life. Matthes led a Total Essential Knowledge workshop while there.

Kim Miller (Nohl 2009) co-conducted a three-day workshop with Vanessa Ohlraun, “Humans are Verbs,” at the Performing Arts Forum (PAF) in St. Erme, France during the Summer University Reboot. The workshop, open to the public, resulted in a series of group performances.

Grace Mitchell presented Ocean Without Fish, a film program she curated featuring six Milwaukee artists—including herself—in Berlin at ORi, a gallery and screening space in Neuköln.

Tori Tasch traveled to the Santa Paula Art Museum in California to install work, conduct workshops, and attend the opening reception of Impending Storms, an installation on climate change that included drawings by Wisconsin artists and students. She also exhibited six of her own works on paper in a parallel exhibition. Tasch met California artists she will invite to participate in a future exhibition in Milwaukee.

After two years of being unable to accompany her work to any international film festivals, Sophia Theodore-Pierce brought Other Tidal Effects, a 16mm film, to the Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, an annual showcase for contemporary experimental film and video. She participated in filmmaker Q&As and onsite workshops.

Chris James Thompson (Nohl 2010) traveled to the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, for the world premiere of We Are Not Ghouls, his new, feature-length documentary about US Air Force JAG Attorney Yvonne Bradley, assigned to defend a man held at Guantanamo Bay. The film won the Audience Award and, through connections made at SXSW, was released commercially in early 2023.

Thanks to the Suitcase, Sonja Thomsen (Nohl 2011) was on hand in Verona, Italy, to install her first solo exhibition in Europe. The site responsive installation at Fonderia 20.9 contained photographs, sculptures, and a new film reflecting her research on Italian mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi. Thomsen attended the opening and book signing for her recent publication, You will find it where it is: a reader, which includes material on Agnesi.

Shane Walsh went to New York, sending his paintings on ahead, for a solo exhibition at Asya Geisberg Gallery.

2022 Summer Cycle (July-December 2022)
Ben Balcom (Nohl 2015) screened his film Looking Backward at Crossroads 2022, an annual film festival organized by the San Francisco Cinematheque that specializes in experimental/artist-made cinema.

Sara Caron (Nohl 2017) finally made it to Tokyo for a pandemic-postponed solo exhibition of watercolor paintings and drawings at Shin-Yoshiwara. The new date coincided, fortuitously, with an independent art fair.

Richard Galling (Nohl 2011) participated in the 8th edition of Paris Internationale, a nonprofit art fair that supports younger galleries. His paintings were on view in the Green Gallery booth.

Jon Horvath (Nohl 2015) was onsite at UNSEEN Amsterdam, the largest annual photography festival in the Netherlands, to sign his new book, This Is Bliss, and to secure future publishing and exhibition opportunities.

The Fine Arts Department at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, invited Brit Krohmer for a solo exhibition in their Living Learning Commons Gallery. With three floors of exhibition space, Krohmer curated a parallel show for five more artists, three based in Milwaukee.

Alive Within the Mystery, Mary Mendla’s solo exhibition at the Aylward Gallery at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, featured nearly 50 pieces in a variety of media. She attended an opening reception and returned twice for artist talks.

Zachary Ochoa traveled to Los Angeles for a solo exhibition of new paintings at the Steve Turner Gallery. The artist attended the opening and met with collaborators who were interested in publishing a graphic novel based on their paintings.

Open Kitchen (Alyx Christensen and Rudy Medina) were the guests of the Bishkek School of Contemporary Art and Tazar Kyrgyzstan for TRASH-4, a mini-festival in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The international festival works at the intersection of art, science, and trash to develop tools and strategies for better understanding pollution issues. It was an opportunity for Open Kitchen to build relationships with international artists who share their commitment to critical, cross-cultural conversations on food, identity, and ecology.

Alan Peralta will travel to Guadalajara, Mexico, for a two-month residency at Jupiterfab Asociación Civil, a nonprofit that focuses on work with social impact. Work created during the residency will be exhibited in a gallery space in the Jupiterfab house.

Zack Pieper created one of his “ghost galleries”--a large-scale mosaic constructed during a seven-day public “improvisation” from thousands of individual ghosts drawn on post-it notes in magic marker—at Cotyledon Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland. The gallery is located in a building that houses artists, and the work was installed in a street-facing window where the process could be shared with the local arts community.

Lenore Rinder was invited by the Watchers India Trust to screen her short video, Kagaraja, during the opening celebration of a World Wildlife Week art show at the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath Gallery in Bangalore, India. Once there, the screening opportunities multiplied.

Alli Smith attended a “Silence Awareness Existence” residency at the non-profit Arteles Creative Center in Hämeenkyrö, Finland, where she worked on soft sculptures and began a new video/sculpture project. Instead of mounting an exhibition, Arteles publishes the work of all residency artists in an online catalogue.

Sara Sowell performed Dada's Daughter, a 16mm expanded-cinema piece, at Antimatter [Media Arts] Festival in Victoria, Canada. Antimatter is a festival important to filmmakers the artist admires and who have influenced her work, and it provided an opportunity to meet other artists and curators who are interested in moving-image works.

Siri Stensberg received support for a solo exhibition of her installation work at the Spokane Falls Community College Fine Arts Gallery in Spokane, Washington. She gave a public artist lecture and led a workshop for students.

In the eighteenth cycle, the Fund made nineteen awards, the majority of them in the final months of the year, providing assistance with shipping and travel to seventeen individual artists and two duos (for a total of twenty-one individuals). We were also able to see projects through to completion from the previous cycle that had been postponed during the pandemic. The awards made in the 2020 cycle took artists and their work to Miami, Florida; Bloomington, Minnesota; Kansas City, Missouri; Binghamton and New York, New York; Nashville, Tennessee; and Cisco, Utah. Outside the United States, artists (or their work) traveled to Guayllabamba, Ecuador; Kouvola, Finland; Aix-en-Provence and Paris, France; Skagaströnd, Iceland; Syracuse, Italy; Aveiro, Portugal; Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia; and Barcelona, Spain.

2020 Winter Cycle
Recent graduates Felipe Pagan Cancel and Jacquelin Valadez participated in Nave Proyecto, an artist-run initiative in Guayllabamba, Ecuador, that provided an opportunity to develop a body of work among like-minded artists. Each residency culminated in an exhibition.

Felipe Pagan Cancel

Jacquelin Valadez

Carey Watters has been invited as an artist-in-residence/visiting professor to Made Labs in Syracuse, Sicily. She will focus on a developing body of work she that weaves together feminism, historic map making, and religious and pagan symbolism drawn from her travels in Italy and research on Byzantine architecture, design, and religious reliquaries. The three-week residency will conclude with in an exhibition.

2020 Summer Cycle
Kyoung Ae Cho’s work was selected by Marika Szaraz and Raija Jokinen for the Asia-Europe 5 international touring textile exhibition. The exhibition showcases works by European and Asian textile artists and launched in Poikilo-museums, Kouvola, Finland. It will travel to museums in Belgium, Germany and Denmark in 2022.

Christopher Davis Benavides shipped his sculpture, "Chimeneas Despobladas," to Portugal for the XV International Ceramics Biennial of Aveiro at the Aveiro Museum. Although the artist was not able to travel with the work, following the biennial it will travel to Spain for an exhibition that is proposed for the Museo del Ruso in Alarcón, Spain.

Emma Daisy Gertel participated in Bubblegum, a themed exhibit presented by Muros, a “global art activation agency,” in partnership with the Hilton Cabana Miami for Art Basel 2021. The exhibition celebrated the “playfulness and positivity” of the new Pantone color, qualities that resonate with the artist’s work. Gertel showed a new painting and did a live painting.

Britany Gunderson screened her short film, “Background Material,” at the 39th Festival Tous Courts in Aix-en-Provence, France. Gunderson participated in screenings, a Q&A, and the awards ceremony. It was an important opportunity for a young filmmaker to “meet more filmmakers, festival organizers, and see films that I would not be able to see otherwise.”

Gregory Klassen’s solo exhibition at ZieherSmith in Nashville, Tennessee featured twenty-six drawings from Their Four of Hearts, a series of 176 drawings. The opening coincided with Nashville’s downtown art crawl.

Kate Klingbeil traveled to New York for a solo exhibition of new work in several media at Hesse Flatow. The exhibition included cast iron and brass sculptures were made during a recent Arts/Industry residency at the John Michael Kohler Art Center and was a meditation on resilience and tenacity after hardship.

Brad Lichtenstein (Nohl 2011) previewed American Reckoning, a film he is making with Yoruba Richen, at an event that included a public exhibition at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. American Reckoning is part of Un(Re)Solved, a project from Frontline that includes an interactive exhibition and a podcast as well as this film.

Nancy McGee was invited to exhibit six works in the 6th edition of the Biennial of Fine Art & Documentary Photography, an exhibition of international award-winning photography at the FotoNostrum Gallery in Barcelona, Spain.

Keith Nelson (Nohl 2018) was finally able to travel to Nashville, Tennessee, for a solo exhibition of work--some made during his Nohl Fellowship--at ZieherSmith.

Melissa Paré traveled to Kansas City, Missouri, for a group show with two other artists at Troost Gardens. She exhibited her framed silk pieces.

Nirmal Raja (Nohl 2020) and Lois Bielefeld (Nohl 2012, 2017) will participate in a solo show at Artistry in Bloomington, Minnesota, featuring collaborative works from their previous exhibition, On Belonging. In addition to photographs, video, and sculptural work, the exhibition will include a site-specific installation by Raja.

John Riepenhoff (Nohl 2009, 2014) spent a month in the Republic of Georgia during the grape harvest making work with Georgian artist Mamuka Japharidze for an exhibition at Gallery Art Beat in Tbilisi. Individually and together they painted the night sky over the vineyards.

Nicole Shaver and her collaborator, Heidi Zenisek, have been invited by the NES Artist Residency to create and install a light sculpture as part of Light Up 2022, a January 2022 festival marking the darkest month of the year in Skagaströnd, Iceland. The immersive light and projection installation will be created during a month-long residency which will culminate in an artwalk.

After pandemic delays and reroutings, Nathaniel Stern was able to travel The World After Us: Imaging techno-aesthetic futures, a solo exhibition, to Binghamton University Art Museum in Binghamton, New York. The exhibition of sculptures, installations, prints, and photographs combine plant life with electronic waste, and scientific experimentation with artistic exploration.

Jenny Jo Wennlund will travel to France for a solo exhibition at Les Mésanges, an art space, gallery, and cafe in the Belleville neighborhood of Paris. She will be showing ten paintings, selling her archival prints at a nearby gallery, and meeting with gallerists interested in showing her work and commissioning murals in the future. She relied on her network of Milwaukee artists, including at least one former Nohl Fellow, for introductions.

Natasha Woods (Nohl 2019) travelled to Cisco, Utah. As a visiting artist at Home of the Brave Residency, she created a visual and sound installation onsite using equipment she acquired as part of her Nohl Fellowship. She also worked with the organizers to archive past projects and artist interviews in an accessible online platform.

In the first half of the seventeenth cycle, the Fund made twelve awards, providing assistance with shipping and travel to ten individual artists and two collectives (for a total of sixteen individuals). Of these projects, five were postponed or cancelled due to the pandemic). In the second half, the Fund made three mini-shipping awards, all to individuals. These artists—seven of them Nohl Fellows—work in a range of media. For those whose opportunities were not interrupted by the pandemic, exhibitions took them, or their work, to Wickenburg, Arizona; Los Gatos, California; Winchester, Massachusetts; Poplar Bluff, Missouri; Santa Fe, New Mexico; New York, New York; and Johnson, Vermont. Destinations abroad included Cernay-Lès-Reims, France; Bologna, Italy; and Mexico City, Mexico.

Peter Barrickman (Nohl 2003, 2009) travelled to New York City for a solo exhibition of paintings and drawings at the Nathalie Karg Gallery. It was an opportunity to strengthen his professional network by reconnecting with artists he had known in graduate school, and to make new connections with artists and curators.

Santiago Cucullu (Nohl 2006) was invited by Galeria Umberto Di Marino (Naples, Italy) to participate in Arte Fiera Bologna 2020. He traveled to Italy to install his work and meet collectors, gallerists, and artists at the fair—and was written up in Artribune. According to the artist, seeing his work installed in proximity with the works of Arte Povera and Italian contemporary artists “gave me a wonderful sense of context in a larger art historical field.”

Jon Horvath attended the opening for his first East Coast solo exhibition at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Massachusetts. He showed his long-term transmedia project, This Is Bliss, originally supported by his Mary L. Nohl Fellowship in 2015. The large space enabled him to experiment with installation strategies and sequences for the work, and the increased national visibility led to a publishing agreement with Yoffy Press.

Shelby Keefe was invited to participate in the 15th annual Cowgirl Up! Art from the Other Half of the West exhibition at the Desert Caballeros Western Museum in Wickenburg, Arizona—one of the major national events for Western women artists. Her plans to attend the opening were thwarted by the pandemic, and the exhibition, though extended, was largely virtual.

Katie Avila Loughmiller used the exhibition at the start of her month-long Labor Residency at the Santa Fe Institute of Arts in New Mexico to showcase the work of LUNA, a Milwaukee Latinx artist collective she co-founded. The artist was able to talk about her own work as well as the work she has done with LUNA.

Molly Hassler drove to Johnson, Vermont for a month-long residency at the Vermont Studio Center. She exhibited work during two open studio events and was invited to participate in an exhibition in Gainesville, Florida. Hassler particularly appreciated the time to “do a lot of writing and planning for future projects…To come back with new work to make was really great.”

As part of a soft launch of the publication Open Recipe, published by sodA mundial in Mexico, Open Kitchen (Alyx Christensen and Rudy Medina) co-hosted a food exhibition/talk around the duo’s Open Recipe contribution at a communal space in Mexico City. Open Kitchen shared their artistic research on food, identity, and ecology with a Mexico City arts community, allowing the collective to see the relevance of their food and art practice to a broader/international community: “It strengthened our belief that food can act as a medium and mediator across cultures.”

Steven Burnham (Nohl 2004) shipped a painting to the inaugural group exhibition at La Grange Gallery in Cernay-Les-Reims, France.

Christine Buth Furness, a long-time award-winning member of the Watercolor USA Honor Society, was invited to send a painting to an exhibition of paintings of past award winners at the Margaret Harwell Art Museum in Poplar Bluff, Missouri.

Marsha McDonald had a piece juried into a group exhibition at the New Museum Los Gatos in Los Gatos, California. Art in the Time of Corona is the museum’s inaugural benefit auction exhibition of artwork created during and inspired by the massive social and political upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic. The auction exhibition is on view both virtually and in the NUMU galleries.

In the first half of the sixteenth cycle, the Fund made thirteen awards, providing assistance with shipping and travel to thirteen individual artists, two of whom worked on the same project. In the second half, the Fund made twelve awards, all to individuals. These artists--five of them Nohl Fellows—work in a range of media and their exhibitions took them to Carbondale, Colorado; Miami, Florida; Portland, Indiana; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Kansas City, Missouri; New York, New York; Charlotte, North Carolina; Brownsville, Texas; and Park City, Utah. Destinations abroad included Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, France, Georgia, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

Debra Brehmer will create daily drawings during a one-month residency at Arte Studio Ginestrelle in Assisi, Italy that will become part of the International Collective Exhibition of works produced by the artists and writers attending the residency during the past year. She will also engage local populations in the Portrait Society’s (her Milwaukee gallery) nonprofit sketchbook project, On the Wing.

HIJOS (Children of the Disappeared) invited Brian Carlson to install his memorial to the disappeared in Latin America, Aparecidos, at ex(ESMA), formerly a notorious detention and torture center and now a Museum of Memory in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The installation now includes more than 3000 painted portraits of victims of state terrorism in Latin America.

Kyoung Ae Cho brought two works to Minneapolis for Silver Jubilee, an exhibition celebrating the Textile Center’s 25th Anniversary. The exhibition featured eleven artists who have made significant and unique contributions to the field of fiber art over the past quarter century.

Christopher Davis Benavides was invited to participate in American Clay 2019, an exhibition held in the Sala de Exposiciones Roman Zaldivar during the XI Feria Nacional de Alfareria y Cermanica in Navarette, Rioja, Spain. Davis Benavides will also conduct a three-day workshop and deliver an artist lecture.

Makeal Flammini (Nohl 2018) brought her husband and two small children to the family-friendly Hotel Pupik in Schrattenberg, Austria, for a two-week residency that culminated in a public exhibition. Flammini created 20 drawings and paintings and two performances, and shared a studio with a long-time artist colleague based in Europe.

Sæter Jørgensen Contemporary, a non-profit gallery and nomadic curatorial practice focused on realizing projects in Norway and France, invited Skully Gustafson to participate in a solo exhibition in the Gaillac region of the Tarn in France. For Le mouton à cinq pattes, the artist showed portable works on paper, and sold several.

Hannah Hamalian took her film and animation work on a solo screening tour in the United Kingdom and Ireland. As part of her tour, she participated in residencies at Greywood Arts in Killeagh, Ireland, and at Createspace in Cardigan, Wales.

Maeve Jackson created work onsite during a residency at Hotel Pupik in Schrattenberg, Austria that became part of the three-day group exhibition at its culmination.

Director Brad Lichtenstein (Nohl 2011) and co-producer Madeline Power took Ashe ’68, a virtual reality short film about tennis champion Arthur Ashe, to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. They participated in the New Frontier section as part of the VR Cinema exhibition.

Kim Miller (Nohl 2009) screened a new work, ReWilding (2019), as part of an artist residency at the Performing Arts Forum in St. Erme, France. Initiated and run by artists, theoreticians and practitioners themselves, PAF is a user-created, user-innovative informal institution and all public events are open to the local population.

Melissa Mursch was one of eleven women artists featured in Soft Somethings, a group exhibition at the University of Texas Rio Grande in Brownsville, Texas. Mursch is submitting soft sculptures/wall hangings that explore her experiences as a racially ambiguous queer woman. She will travel to Austin and Houston to meet other artists and to see where her grandfather grew up as she prepares to make a new body of work.

Rosy Petri was represented by six textile works in a group exhibition hosted by the Black Archives of Mid-America and held in conjunction with the National African American Quilting Convention. This was Petri’s first exhibition outside Wisconsin, and she took advantage of her time in Kansas City, Missouri to visit the Negro League Baseball Museum and the American Jazz Museum to discuss works for their collections.

John Riepenhoff (Nohl 2009, 2014) travels to Tbilisi, Georgia, to stage an iteration of Handler, an exhibition of sculptures of legs that support paintings by other artists at Project ArtBeat. The opening of the exhibition coincides with the city’s contemporary art fair. Riepenhoff, who runs the The Green Gallery in Milwaukee, will also do studio visits with local artists.

Lenore Rinder screened her 2018 documentary, People of the Wild Tiger, at the Indian Institute of World Culture in Bangalore during Conservation Week. The film focuses on the people who live and work as naturalists and ecologists to save India’s endangered tigers in Karnataka; she remained in India for a month to pursue new collaborations with her Indian cast and crew.

Kristina Rolander traveled to Sudbury, Ontario, to create a multi-use and immersive installation for Up Here, an independent urban art and music festival. Each summer, Up Here brings together dozens of muralists, musicians, and installation artists to transform the city’s downtown. Rolander’s installation, within the foyer of the Grand Theatre, was a life-size diorama with hand-painted backdrops, hanging elements, sheer fabrics, and environmental structures that transformed from day into night.

Nicole J. Shaver drove her work to Charlotte, North Carolina, for Homeward Bound, a group exhibition she curated at Goodyear Arts, a nonprofit multi-arts space.

Anja Notanja Sieger produced the fifth iteration of her Advice Tent project--its first foray outside Milwaukee--at the O, Miami Poetry Festival in Florida. She trained twenty local teens to offer advice to visitors.

Cris Siqueira (Nohl 2013) attended the premiere of her documentary, Ape Girl—a film supported by her Nohl Fellowship—in São Paulo, Brazil. The film screened five times to full houses at two venues. The success of the premiere acted as a spur to distribution in both Brazil and the United States.

Roy Staab was invited to exhibit photographs, video, and new site-specific work in conjunction with his Proyecto en Sitio residency at La Coyotera Taller-Estudio in Umecuaro, Michoacan, Mexico. For the residency, he created site-specific outdoor work, as well as a work with native sunflowers in the gallery. This was Staab’s first exhibition in Mexico.

Hungry Gardens, Tori Tasch’s solo exhibition at the Portland Art Center in Portland, Indiana, included 30 wall panels, four silk panels hung from the ceiling, and books. She offered workshops and a gallery talk that focused on sustainable art making practices.

Gabrielle Tesfaye screened her latest film, The Water Will Carry Us Home, and previewed her next film, Yene Fikir, Ethiopia, at the Alliance Éthio-Française in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She also facilitated community discussions about her new work, taught a stop-motion animation workshop, and gave an artist talk connecting her cultural storytelling to ancient and contemporary Ethiopian art practices.

Shane Walsh shipped several large paintings to New York City for his solo exhibition at the Asya Geisberg Gallery. He followed to install them and attend the opening.

Michael Ware was in Colorado, for the opening of Clay National XIV Nature Reconsidered: Reimagining the Natural World through Ceramics, the annual juried exhibition at the Carbondale Clay Center. His work was included in the exhibition.

Rina Yoon exhibited a large installation work in With Through and Beyond: Celebrating the 20th Year of the Women’s Art Institute, a twelve-artist invitational exhibition at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

In the first half of the fifteenth cycle, the Fund made fifteen awards, providing assistance with shipping and travel to thirteen individual artists and two collectives. In the second half, the Fund made fourteen awards, twelve to individuals and two to groups. These artists--eight of them Nohl Fellows—work in a range of media and their exhibitions took them to Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose, California; East Haddam, Connecticut; Tampa, Florida; Chicago and Peoria, Illinois; Ames, Iowa; Baltimore, Maryland; St. Louis, Missouri; Chadron and Lincoln, Nebraska; Caldwell, New Jersey; Glens Falls and New York, New York; Raleigh, North Carolina; Columbus and Youngstown, Ohio; De Pere, Wisconsin. Destinations abroad include Toronto, Canada; Orquevaux, France; Chennai and Kolkata, India; Dublin, Ireland; Durban, South Africa; L’Alcora, Spain; Gothenburg, Sweden; and London, England.

American Fantasy Classics (Nohl 2011) was invited by former Milwaukeean Ashley Janke to create Another Side to My Dream, an installation inspired by Orson Welles’s 1938 broadcast of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds. A “textured mesh of fact and fiction incorporating radio broadcasts, installation, and sound artists,” the exhibition took place at Enclave Lab in Deptford, London, and included two-way transmission of “sound, narrative, and acts of collective joy.”

James Barany (Nohl 2004) was commissioned to paint a 90-foot mural in downtown De Pere, Wisconsin. The mural, which addresses the industrialization of the Fox Rivers, is a part of the city’s public art collection. Barany returned for the unveiling and several public events.

Rosalie Beck shipped three pastels to the Adirondack National Pastel Exhibition, a juried show sponsored by the Adirondack Pastel Society at the Shirt Factory Gallery in Glens Falls, New York.

Tom Berenz (Nohl 2017) shipped a large painting to the Mueller Gallery at Caldwell University in Caldwell, New Jersey, for Play: An Iconography of Sport. He also attended the opening of the group show.

Kelly Bronikowski traveled to Toronto, Canada to present Mom’s Tiger Lilies, an expanded film Performance, at 8 Fest, a festival that programs film works created and finished on Super 8mm film. Bronikowski was one of two performers at the festival, which also included more than sixty screenings.

Cecelia Condit (Nohl 2004) was invited by Kamila Kuc and Sam Jury to screen Tales of a Future Past (2017) as part of Disasters of Peace, Vol. 5, a curated international film program about the environment, at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, England.

Paul Druecke (Nohl 2010) presented his project, Spinning Underfoot, a series of custom-printed carpets that reimagine the domestic welcome mat as a public site and catalyst for community conversation, as part of a residency at the Luminary in St. Louis, Missouri. He offered a public talk, displayed prototypes, and piloted site-specific interventions.

Fiddle & Hammer (Jordan Waraksa and Cora Monis) traveled to San Francisco to exhibit The Bellaphones--a pair of wooden horn speakers made from reclaimed whiskey barrels that are functional sound sculptures--at NEXUS, the juried exhibition held in conjunction with the Furniture Society's 2018 conference.

Karen Gunderman exhibited five ceramic works in an invitational group exhibition, American Clay, curated by Xavier Monsalvatje Vich at the Museu de Ceràmica de L’Alcora, Spain. During the week of the opening, Gunderman delivered a lecture and a master class at the Escuela Superiorde Ceràmica ESCAL.

Cynthia Hayes traveled to Kolkata, India for a solo exhibition, Eternal Visions, at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture Museum and Art Gallery. Hayes exhibited more than thirty paintings and drawings focused on historical styles of sculptural representation in Indian mythological subjects.

Rachel Hausmann received her award for a solo exhibition at Project 1612, a garage gallery space in Peoria, Illinois. She arrived early to make some of the work and install the show.

Thad Kellstadt will go to Tampa, Florida to make work onsite from found/repurposed materials and to install his solo exhibition at Coco Hunday. He will be showing 20-30 smaller pieces in addition to the works made in Tampa.

Erik Ljung’s feature-length documentary, The Blood Is at the Doorstep, made in part while he was a Nohl Fellow in 2014, is receiving limited theatrical release. The Suitcase Fund enabled him to travel to several cities with the film, and to bring members of the Hamilton family—featured in the film—for talkbacks. According to Ljung, “A national theatrical release for a small independent social justice documentary is an incredible opportunity to revitalize exposure for the film in hopes of acquiring a more permanent and broad distribution partner.”

Colin Matthes (Nohl 2007, 2012) was invited to participate in the Royal Hibernian Society’s 188th annual exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin. The exhibit, accompanied by an extensive catalogue, is a major event in the Irish arts calendar; Matthes sent a large painting.

Kym McDaniel, Grace Mitchell, and Ariel Kate Teal traveled to the Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles to screen a program of work by six female Milwaukee filmmakers curated by Teal. It was the first time McDaniel’s work had screened outside the Midwest.

Kevin J. Miyazaki (Nohl 2007) has been spending time in Lincoln, Nebraska. He opened Echo, a solo exhibition of photographs, at the Workspace Gallery in Lincoln and, as a Hixson-Lied visiting artist and scholar at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s School of Art, Art History & Design, gave a public lecture and visited undergraduate and graduate students.

Shannon Molter followed her two sculptures to the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles in California for The Art of Labor, a curated group exhibition of work by members of the Surface Design Association. This was Molter’s first opportunity to show her work alongside other contemporary fiber artists in a museum outside Wisconsin.

Allen Morris drove himself and twenty-five framed photographic prints from ISO, a recently completed body of work, to Youngstown, Ohio, for a solo exhibition at the Thomases Family Endowment Art Gallery at Youngstown Area Jewish Federation.

Nirmal Raja, Jessica Meuninck-Ganger, Christiane Grauert, and Julie Vondervellen are traveling to Chennai, India for Hanji Translated, an exhibition at the Lalit Kala Academy sponsored by the Indo Korean Centre of Chennai. The group exhibition, curated by Raja and Chelsea Holton, also includes work by local artists Rina Yoon and Marna Brauner, as well as pieces by an artist from Detroit and three artists each from India and Korea. The travelers will carry all the American work with them to India.

Sara Risley was selected for a four-person “winners” show at 311 Gallery in Raleigh, North Carolina. One of her photographic works was Best in Show at the gallery’s Abstracts Matter show.

Pacia Sallomi will participate in a two-person exhibition at the Octagon Arts Center, a nonprofit community arts center in Ames, Iowa. This is Sallomi’s first exhibition in this region; she will include ten paintings from her Roundabouts series.

Nathaniel Stern produced and installed a series of his “Server Farms,” using computers and other technological equipment as well as native plant species, at the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) in Durban, South Africa.

Takahiro Suzuki went to San Francisco for two events: to present Schrödinger's Cat Part I, a video, as part of the San Francisco Cinematheque’s CROSSROADS festival, and to have another video, 9214, installed as a supplement to SFMOMA's exhibition The Train: RFK’s Last Journey.

Janelle VanderKelen presented an hour-long solo screening of six recent video works, including two world premieres, at the Grange Film Series in East Haddam, Connecticut. The Grange is an emerging microcinema, founded by a Josh Weissbach (Nohl 2013), that exhibits contemporary experimental and non-fiction film and video work. The screening was accompanied by an artist lecture and a Q&A session.

Jason Vaughn flew to Gothenburg, Sweden for a solo show—his first in that country--at the Nevven Gallery. The gallery hosted a book signing event for Driftless, Vaughn’s recently published book of photos with text by Brad Zellar.

Melissa Wagner-Lawler will be showing a new body of work, including prints and an installation, in her upcoming solo exhibition at Chadron State College in Chadron, Nebraska.

Della Wells traveled back and forth to Chicago several times for the events surrounding her solo exhibition at the Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA). These included a workshop at Intuit, a talk at a school, and a gallery talk and a gallery conversation at the museum.

Jaymee K. Harvey Willms was invited to create a work for the permanent collection of the Chateau Orquevaux as part of a two-week residency in France. The works of the artists-in-residence then become part of a travelling exhibition.

In the second half of its fourteenth cycle, the Fund made 6 awards, providing assistance with shipping and travel to 7 individual artists (some of them applying as groups traveling to shows outside Milwaukee). These artists--two of them Nohl Fellows—work in a range of media and their exhibitions took them to Glacier Bay, Alaska; Miami, Florida; Grand Rapids, Michigan; and New York, New York. Destinations abroad include Robertsbridge, England; and Naples, Italy.

Santiago Cucullu will head to Naples, Italy in early 2018 for a solo exhibition at Galleria Umberto Di Marino in Naples, Italy. Cucullu will be presenting new paintings, ceramics, and video.

Paula DeStefanis was invited to participate in the Robertsbridge Arts & Crafts Fair in Robertsbridge, East Sussex, England. The fair included local and international artists; she sold several of her paintings and received a commission.

Melissa Dorn Richards participated in The Jump Off, a juried exhibition that focused on turning points in artists’ careers. Dorn Richards had four paintings in the exhibition at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Sally Duback transported a large mosaic mural to the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as part of Art Prize Nine. She remained on hand for two weeks to meet the public (she dispensed 14,000 business cards), give artist talks, and spend time with her fellow exhibitors.

Guntis Lauzums used his award to attend the opening reception for Wandering Curves, an exhibition hosted by the New York Center for Photographic Arts at the Jadite Gallery in New York City. Lauzums’s work was chosen from more than 800 submissions and won the grand prize award and two honorable mentions.

Jack Long received the second prize in photography in the first Open Art Miami international art competition, and has been invited to exhibit four large prints in their group show at the Artium gallery during Art Basel Miami. He will attend the artists’ reception in early December.

For Above Low Tide, Joseph Mougel (Nohl Fellow 2016) and his collaborator Cynthia Brinich-Langlois used Glacier Bay, Alaska, to explore environmental issues and human-scale interactions with the natural world. Mougel exhibited ambrotypes, framed works, and videos at the Roland Dille Center for the Arts Gallery at the Minnesota State University-Moorhead.

In the first half of its fourteenth cycle, the Fund made nine awards, providing assistance with shipping and travel to nine individual artists, two of whom were participating in the same group show. These artists--three of them Nohl Fellows—work in a range of media and their exhibitions took them to Flagstaff, Arizona; Denver and Grand Junction, Colorado; Park City, Utah; and Austin, Texas. Destinations abroad include Scheifling, Austria; Toronto, Canada; and Jeonju, South Korea.

Ben Balcom received funds to travel to the Hotel Pupik Artist Residency in Scheifling, Austria, where he will create a site-specific video installation for the Pupik group exhibition. This work of expanded cinema will deploy video projection, objects, and still images in architectural arrangements, and will be similar to the work he exhibited as a 2016 Nohl Fellow.

Mark Borchardt screened The Dundee Project, his first film in 20 years, at the Slamdance Festival in Park City, Utah; the festival runs concurrently with Sundance. He made many professional contacts, and noted that “it definitely reminds one that there is an enthusiastic audience out there with interest in my work.”

Marna Brauner and Rina Yoon are among a group of six Milwaukee-based artists invited to participate in an exhibition in Jeonju, Korea, during the Jeonju Hanji Festival. Jeonju is known for its long handmade paper tradition, and during this ten-day festival there will be many exhibitions, papermaking demonstrations, public events, and activities related to hanji. This is the group's second exhibition in Korea; they also exhibited at the Villa Terrace Museum in 2015, and this exhibition brings together new work with work from the Milwaukee show.

Two of Daniel Fleming’s paintings were selected for Contemporary 2017: Retellings, a national juried biennial at the Western Colorado Center for the Arts in Grand Junction that focuses on artists who use traditional materials or narratives in new and innovative ways.

kathryn e. martin flew to Flagstaff for the labor-intensive installation of her solo show at Northern Arizona University Art Museum. She filled three large galleries with 15,000 paper airplanes, 15,000 cast rocks, wall drawings, and piles of discarded objects.

Co-cinematographer Dan Peters, one of the core members of the production team for The Blood is at the Doorstep, 2014 Nohl Fellow Erik Ljung’s film about the police killing of Dontre Hamilton, traveled to Austin, Texas for the SXSW (South by Southwest) Documentary Feature Competition, where the film received its world premiere.

2014 Nohl Fellow Kyle Seis contributed several photographic works to What Are the Wild Waves Saying, a two-person exhibition at Dateline, a gallery for emerging artists in Denver, Colorado. The exhibition was part of Denver’s annual photography festival, “Month of Photography.”

Andrew Swant’s (Nohl Fellow 2008, 2013) new short film, Silently Steal Away, was selected for the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, and he traveled to Toronto for the screenings.

In the second half of its thirteenth cycle, the Fund made 11 awards, providing assistance with shipping and travel to nine individual artists, one duo, and one collective. These artists--two of them Nohl Fellows—work in a range of media and their exhibitions took them to Denver, Colorado; New Brighton, Minnesota; Millerton and New York, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Austin, Texas. Destinations abroad include Austria; Nikko and Tokyo, Japan; and Romania.

After School Special is heading to Philadelphia with two cars full of artists and work. Each of the nine members of the collective (including 2015 Nohl Fellow Zach Hill) is making something for an exhibition at Little Berlin curated by Brett Suemnicht.

Sara Caron is transplanting her nomadic bar, the Bermuda Triangle, to Misako & Rosen in Tokyo. There, the project will be reshaped by new ingredients, new practices, new experiences, and a new audience. The Bermuda Triangle is an experiment in just what is needed to make a space, and to create, build, and contribute to a community around that space.

Sheila Held (Nohl Fellow 2013) shipped several tapestries to the Center for Art, Faith and Culture at the United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities in New Brighton, Minnesota, for a solo exhibition. The gallery noted that Held's work was "a constant topic of conversation" among the students, and that public events were well-attended.

Alexander Herzog exhibited a new body of work--eight paintings, some of them large--in a solo show at Geary Contemporary in New York. Because of the Suitcase support for shipping, the gallery was able to print a catalogue, and they also decided to represent Herzog.

Kyle Jablonski participated in a two-person exhibition, Jabroni, Jabroni, Jabroni, at the Shipman Gallery in Brooklyn. He spent four days in New York installing, meeting artists and seeing lots of work, and attending the opening. Back in Milwaukee, the exhibition "freed me up to install another show" at a local restaurant. Jablonski has discovered that "putting challenging art in familiar places" enables people to unpack its meaning far from the restrictions of the gallery space.

Kayle Karbowski used her month-long residency at MASS Gallery in Austin to "get back into a rhythm with her work and ideas" and to give her personal practice her undivided attention--for the first time since completing her BFA--as she prepared for her solo exhibition. She also spent time with other artist-organizers who share her interest in finding a balance between studio and community, and who are also navigating smaller “art cities" that operate outside the national spotlight. Upon her return, Karbowski was able to show her new work in Chicago.

Greg Klassen created a site-specific "Nature Table"--a self-generating sculpture of plants growing in studio debris--on site at the Re Institute gallery in Millerton, New York. Located in upstate New York, the Re Institute is a working farm that hosts small group shows in its hayloft; their goal is to allow artists to observe their work in a new context.

Matthew Warren Lee had a painting selected for the First Street Gallery's 2016 National Juried Exhibition. It was his first opportunity to exhibit outside the Midwest, and he met curators, gallery directors, and other artists at the opening in New York. While in the city, he visited museums and learned more about the gallery ecosystem in Manhattan.

Longtime collaborators Lindsay Lochman and Barbara Ciurej mounted a solo exhibition of work that addresses sustainable food policy at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Denver. While in Colorado they met fellow photographers, worked with high school students, participated in a panel discussion with other artists and members of the Denver Sustainable Food Policy Network, undertook museum research, scouted sites for future projects, and met with the director of a gallery in Fort Collins who promptly offered them a show. They also made connections in Colorado Springs, and agreed to host the Mobile Garden of a local Denver food justice organization when it travels to the Midwest in 2017.

When Madeline Power screened Across the Line at the Astra Film Festival in Romania in October, she was the first virtual reality filmmaker to show VR work in Eastern Europe. As the resident expert, she was much in demand for panels and received invitations to speak at future events.

John Riepenhoff (Nohl Fellow 2009, 2014) will spend a month at the Troedsson Villa residency in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Nikko, Japan, making plein air paintings and working with local potters to develop a set of usable ceramic ware. At the end of the month, Tokyo's XYZ Collective will host a public event featuring the paintings and a shared meal served on the new ceramic ware. Riepenhoff looks forward to bringing his production experience back to Milwaukee, where he is designing a collaborative ceramics studio.

In the first half of its thirteenth cycle, the Fund made 12 awards, providing assistance with shipping and travel to eleven individual artists and one duo. These artists--two of them Nohl Fellows—work in a range of media and their exhibitions took them to Sonoma, California; New York, New York; Minot, North Dakota; Ashland and Portland, Oregon; and Park City, Utah. Destinations abroad include Scheifling, Austria; North Vancouver, Canada; Kolkata, India; Monte Castello di Vibio, Italy; and London, United Kingdom.

Cynthia Hayes travelled to Kolkata, India, for a solo exhibition of her paintings--which focus on Southeast Asian art history--at the government-run Academy of Fine Arts Central Gallery. She spoke at the opening, met many Indian artists, appeared on national television, and was able to use some of her time in India to do museum research.

Joshua Hunt sent two paintings that "represent misogyny as a historically systemic issue" to STOPJECTIFY, an invitational group exhibition at Gallery Different in London. The show was organized by artist and freelance curator Jess de Wahls to coincide with International Women's Day.

Maeve Jackson and Keith Nelson will both spend time at Hotel Pupik in Scheifling, Austria, participating in residencies that culminate in public exhibitions. Hotel Pupik hosts up to thirty artists each year from around the world; they live and work on the grounds.

(Maeve Jackson)

(Keith Nelson)

Recent MIAD graduate Nicholas Kinsella was invited by a fellow alum to exhibit at Pacific Northwest College of the Arts in Portland, Oregon, as part of a series promoting exchange between PNCA students and emerging artists from around the country. The solo exhibition included film recorded on VHS, sculptures that function as props in the videos, and clothing designed for the characters.

Matthew Konkel (screenwriter/co-producer) and Erin Maddox (producer) attended the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah where their feature-length narrative film, Neptune, was accepted for competition. They were on hand to support the film and seek distribution.

Erik Ljung was invited to screen Mothers for Justice, a short film he completed while a Nohl Fellow, at the Sonoma International Film Festival in Sonoma, California. Ljung, who is making a feature-length film on the same subject, met with distributors, investors, and fellow filmmakers.

Photo: Vallen Gillett

Shane McAdams was the sole Wisconsin participant in an exhibition of mostly Oregonian artists at the Schneider Museum of Art at Southern Oregon University in Ashland. He co-curated Exploring Reality with Scott Malbaurn, the director of the museum, wrote the catalogue essay, and delivered a talk.

Jessica Meuninck-Ganger is headed to Italy for a solo exhibition at the International Center for the Arts Monte Castello di Vibio. The exhibition is part of a program promoting contemporary applications of traditional intaglio printmaking and handmade papermaking in the region known as the cradle of modern papermaking. The artist will share her research on sourcing native plant materials and fibers for papermaking and pigments and provide a lecture in the local theatre.

Kim Miller took part in Life/Death, a program of experimental documentaries curated by Lana Lin and Cauleen Smith on the Flaherty NYC series at Anthology Film Archives in New York. She was on hand for the screening of her video, Madame Mae Nang Nak, and the Q&A that followed.

Greg Schoeneck will bring work to the one-day Art World Expo in North Vancouver, Canada, and make a live painting at the charity auction. Two works will remain on exhibit at MAB Studios through the end of June.

Tori Tasch exhibited "Tokyo"--an accordion-fold sculptural book made following a Suitcase Fund-supported trip to that city in 2013--in Paperworks 2016, a national exhibition at the Northwest Art Center in Minot, North Dakota. Attending the exhibition helped Tasch to plan the 2017 Wisconsin Visual Artists exhibition, which is devoted to paper.

by Andy Yencha, Senior Land Manager

Land Manager Weston Wagner tending the burn

Lynden’s grounds include several natural areas we manage as prairies. This means that within these habitats that range in size from 1-3 acres, we are trying to grow the native flowering plants and grasses that were once common in this part of Wisconsin before logging and farming transformed our landscape in the 1800’s. Once you get them growing, native plants require remarkably little care because, after living here for thousands of years, they are well adapted to our local soil and climate conditions. But getting them growing takes some work because existing “weedy” plants like Canada Thistle, Kentucky Bluegrass, European Buckthorn and Honeysuckle, don’t willingly vacate their space to newcomers, even when the new plants claim original title to the landscape. To discourage weeds and encourage native plants we use methods like manual weeding, mechanical mowing, and the judicious application of herbicides. In late April we tried another tool, a controlled fire, to achieve this same goal.

Fire creeps along consuming years of plant litter

Why Fire Helps
Under the supervision and guidance of an experienced contractor we burned portions of our Northwest and Southeast prairies. Conditions for the fire were nearly perfect, including light but steady winds around 10 miles per hour, low relative humidity, and sunny skies. The fire moved slowly, converting years of accumulated plant litter into nutritious ash. After 6 hours we burned 3 acres and were happy with the results. By exposing large patches of soil and covering them with sunlight absorbing black cinders, the burn helps the ground warm up more quickly. This in turn will help desirable “warm-season” prairie plants get a head start over less desirable “cool-season” weeds.

Black earth will warm quickly benefiting prairie plants

Kill the KGB
One cool-season weed we especially hope to set back is Kentucky blue grass or KGB. Although desirable in our formal lawns, KGB is much too abundant in our prairies where it outcompetes native species for food and sunlight. Judging by the fire’s immediate aftermath, we successfully burned away a significant amount of newly greening KGB. Unfortunately, just burning away its leaves won’t kill it. The roots likely survived the fire and we suspect they contain enough food reserves to fuel new grass shoots. But hopefully, in the window of time it takes the KGB to recover, new prairie plants will gain a foothold. Over the 2016 growing season we’ll keep a close eye on the burn areas and provide updates on how the land recovers.

Charred blue grass