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The Washington Pavilion's Visual Arts Center features changing exhibitions of local and regional artists, as well as national touring art exhibitions, year round.  For a description of current exhibitions just click on the links below.

 

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS AT THE VISUAL ARTS CENTER





 

Mark McGinnis: This World of Ours
Paintings Inspired by the Haikus of Kobayashi Issa 
January 8 – April 4, 2010 
Gallery A 

In the past two decades I have created numerous projects with a literary base.  This World of Ours… is the latest in this series.  The sixty paintings in this exhibition are based on haiku poems by Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828), who is considered to be one of the four greatest masters of the Japanese haiku tradition.  Issa’s short poems explore nearly all aspects of human experience with delightful brevity.

The works of art in this showing are painted with acrylic (mostly Golden Fluid Acrylics) on watercolor paper (300 lb. Fabriano Artistico soft press).  The linen scroll presentation alludes to traditional Japanese scrolls and also creates a light-weight method of touring the exhibition.

 A number of the haiku I chose might be viewed as being melancholy—dealing with topics such as death and loss.  What appeals to me in these poems is the clear sense of acceptance and non-resistance.  These are qualities that I find (as I grow older) to be of the utmost importance in order to live a life of contentment.  The paintings were a joy for me to do.  My hope is that they will also be a joy for your viewing.

www.markwmcginnis.com

 


The South Dakota tour of this exhibit received partial funding from the South Dakota Arts Council, provided with funds from the State of South Dakota, through the Department of Tourism and State Development, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

 Reception: February 19, 2010, 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.

Sponsored by: Excel Energy

 

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Stacey Evangelista: Quiet Studies
Arts Night Curator’s Choice 2009
February 19 – May 5, 2010
Gallery F
Reception: February 19, 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Sponsored by: Excel Energy 

Stacey Evangelista was the winner of the Arts Night 2009 Curator's Choice Award.  Evangelista is a largely self-taught figurative painter whose work, nourished by the artist’s passionate thirst for learning and exploration, shows a sophisticated understanding of and appreciation for painterly expression.  Many of the works in this exhibition were created during open figure drawing sessions at Augustana College on Thursday nights. 

The artist has graciously offered to donate all proceeds from the sales of work from this exhibition directly back to the Visual Arts Center.  We would like to thank the artist for her selfless generosity and support.  The works will be sold through a silent auction, with bidding taking place from the opening reception on February 19th through final bidding on the Great Hall stage of the Washington Pavilion at Arts Night 2010 on May 7th.  Arts Night is an annual charity art auction benefitting the Visual Arts Center of the Washington Pavilion.  Contact the Pavilion Box Office (605-367-6000) to purchase tickets for the event.


Upcoming Exhibtions in the Visual Arts Center
Keep checking back for updates.



Tied to the Cause: Art from the Avera Cancer Institute
Dates: TBA
Display Space: TBA
Reception: TBA
Sponsored by: Avera Cancer Institute
 
A diagnosis of cancer touches everyone—from the diagnosed person to loved ones, friends, neighbors, co-workers and caregivers—all of whom experience the journey of cancer in their own unique way. The Avera Cancer Institute has asked local artists and community members to depict the "walk through the cancer experience" in the Tied to the Cause project by creating and donating artworks that feature shoes. This project brings awareness to the emotional, physical and spiritual dimensions of the journey through the experience of cancer. Funds raised will assist the Avera Cancer Institute’s Integrative Medicine Program. Voting for People’s Choice Award will take place in the exhibition space during the exhibition as well, and the winning piece will then be on display at the Avera Cancer Institute in the fall of 2010.
 

 


Arts Night 2010
Artist Awards Reception: April 23rd, 5:00 – 8:00 p.m. 
Arts Night Preview Exhibition March 5-May 5. Sponsored by Phil  & Martha Helland.
Arts Night: May 7, 2010
Galleries B and C 

The Arts Night exhibition is held each spring in conjunction with the annual Arts Night benefit art auction. Arts Night is the area’s largest benefit art auction; the funds raised from it directly support the exhibitions and programming of the Visual Arts Center at the Washington Pavilion of Arts and Science. Regional artists are invited to donate original artwork for this special fund-raising event and exhibition. Juror Mary Maxon, Curator of the Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City, will divide the works into either the live or the silent auction portions of the exhibition and event. Awards for People's Choice, Artists' Choice and Juror's Choice will be announced at the Artist Awards Reception on April 23rd. The artwork will be auctioned at Arts Night 2010 on the Great Hall stage on May 7th.
Arts Night on the web!










Denny Pearson—Portraits from Guatemala: Elders and Students
April 9 – June 27, 2010
Reception: April 9th, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Sponsored by: XRX, Inc. and Xcel Energy
 
In 2003, local photographer Denny Pearson had the opportunity to travel to Guatemala as the photographer for an organization based out of Vermillion, SD, called "Sharing the Dream in Guatemala.” STDG is a non-profit organization that promotes fair trade with cooperatives and small businesses in Guatemala in order to provide fair wages and employment opportunities to low-income artisans and encourage sustainable markets for their products. STDG's craft products are handmade by Mayan artisans using many traditional techniques. The sales of these crafts provide work for the artisans, and the profits are used to support community development projects in Guatemala.
 
Through this organization Pearson was allowed access to people, homes and schools that the typical traveler doesn't usually have. His mission was to photograph some of the students for whom STDG provides scholarships and to make a visual record of other projects that STDG has been involved with. One such project—the Juanita Elder Project—provides food, medical attention, support and companionship to nearly 60 elders, mostly women who have been widowed by the Civil War that ended in 1996. In 2008, STDG asked Laura Wilson, a bi-lingual writer, to interview the elders of the Juanita Elder Project in order to capture their many stories and then, along with Pearson's photographs, create a book. The photographs in this exhibition focus on the images and stories of the students and elders that Pearson and Wilson captured. The images and stories provide an intimate glimpse into the lives of these people. 
 
Copies of the book will be available for sale through the Visual Arts Center reception desk, and Denny Pearson will be bringing some of the handicrafts from STDG to the reception for sale that evening as well.
 


 



Envisage (Invention) = Analysis + Allegory + Affixation
J. Charles Cox Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition
May 14 – July 25, 2010
Galleries D and F
Reception: May 21st, 5:30 –7:30 p.m.
 
J. Charles Cox received a B.F.A. from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and is currently an M.F.A. candidate at the University of South Dakota. This exhibition will be his Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition, which is required for graduation from the University of South Dakota. 

Drawing on the rich history inherent in existing cross-cultural folklores, Cox's artwork focuses on the creation and individualization of a contemporary, mythological dramatis personae. Beginning with portraiture as a base, Cox utilizes a mixed media approach, including drawings, paintings, and prints, in order to engineer a “pantheon” of sorts. Using portraiture to juxtapose a personal identity with the ideal characters of mythos provides the artist with insight into how the individual functions within his surroundings, and Cox hopes his audience is inspired to analyze their own surroundings through a dialogue with his work.

 


Sara Woster: Home Is Where You Start From
May 21 – August 15, 2010
Galleries B and C
Reception: May 21st, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Sponsored by:

 
Artist and writer Sara Woster is a native of South Dakota who left the state twenty years ago. She spent ten years studying and living in Minneapolis, France and Greece, and has lived for the past ten years in New York City. She has received the Jerome Foundation Fellowship and has been published in many anthologies, literary magazines and online journals. Her paintings have the looseness of a fleeting memory—they are epic, expressionistic and laced with a delightfully edgy sense of humor. 

For the past twenty years, Woster has been writing and painting her stories of love, travel and troubles. She has filled sketchbooks and canvases with words and images about her life. In the past two years, the object of her affection has been South Dakota. She is returning to where she started from; her recent painting has focused on images of South Dakota, and she is creating stories that are centered here. This past summer Woster traveled around South Dakota for several weeks, making paintings and writing accompanying essays and stories about what she saw and the people she met. This exhibition will be a combination of these new works and some that were created before her travels that use images and writing appropriated from a collection of internet images, personal photos and non-fiction descriptions of South Dakota. Some recently created animated videos may also accompany these words and paintings. The works in this exhibition are all inspired by South Dakota. The artist envisions the show to be a textured, layered and complicated story that takes all of the elements of family history, painting, stories, landscapes and memories and attempts to answer the following questions: What do refugee eyes bring home? What does time do to the way things are seen? What kind of portraits and landscapes are made by someone who is seeing places and meeting people with a nostalgic set of eyes?
Artist website 










Shifts of Perception: Paintings by Michelle Anderson, Megan Dirks and Mary Laube

 

 

June 11 – September 5, 2010
Everist Gallery
Reception: August 6th, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Sponsored by:
 
Centering around the concept of shifts of perception, the paintings in this exhibition are the work of three emerging artists from Iowa City. While the artists are linked through their concepts of consciousness of space and intuitiveness of perception and their use of colorful abstraction, each artist deals with the interaction and experience of psychological and real space in different ways and with unique visual results. All of the artists view themselves as constructing realities that reflect the study of consciousness and our ways of being within social situations, space and architecture. Concepts addressed in these works include memory and imagination (Mary Laube), the spontaneity of mark-making versus a sense of place (Megan Dirks), and questions of disassociation and convergence (Michelle Anderson).
 


 



Mary Lucier: The Plains of Sweet Regret
March 12 – June 6, 2010
Everist Gallery

Mary Lucier’s 18-minute five-channel surround-sound video installation, entitled The Plains of Sweet Regret, was commissioned by the North Dakota Museum of Art as a part of an initiative to collect artists’ responses to the population shifts that are forcing the people of the Northern Plains to re-imagine their lives. The mixed media video installation utilizes four large video projections, two plasma screens, four loudspeakers and vintage school chairs in a darkened space to create a contemplative experience of the Great Plains. The artist traveled to selected sites in North Dakota over a period of several years, observing and recording the local landscapes, architecture, and inhabitants in such a way as to articulate the persona and drama of place in an area that is witnessing the greatest outward migration since the Great Depression. The characters in this are both real people and the elements themselves—the severe winter landscapes and the vast spaces, the languid melancholy of the domestic and industrial remains, all contrasted with the vitality of the farm and the rodeo. Within the 360 degree installation—surrounded by synchronized sound and moving images—the viewer becomes actively engaged with the contradictions of fecundity and decline, abundance and hardship, and the beauty and cruelty embodied in a rural lifestyle in the midst of change.                                                 
 
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