Nohl: Suitcase Export Fund Winter & Summer Cycles 2022

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.