Nohl: Suitcase Export Fund Winter & Summer Cycles 2017

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.