A u t u m n A r t A u c t i o nV o l u m e 1 6 , 2 0 1 4

N o r t h D a k o t a M u s e u m o f A r t

Ellen McKinnon (September 25, 1915 – May 20, 2014)

Autumn Art Auction

is held in memory of

Long-time Museum Supporters

Robert Lewis

and Ellen McKinnon North Dakota Museum of ArtBoard of Trustees

North Dakota Museum of ArtFoundation

Board of Directors

Evan Anderson

Ganya Anderson

Julie Blehm, President

W. Jeremy Davis

Virginia Lee Dunnigan, Secretary

Kristen Eggerling

Susan Farkas

Bruce Gjovig

Darrell Larson, Chairman

Mary Matson

Sally Miskavige, Treasurer

Laurel Reuter

Lynn Raymond

Tammy Sogard

Linda Swanston

Kelly Thompson, Vice President

Lois Wilde

Joshua Wynne

Corinne Alphson, Emerita

Kim Holmes, Emeritus

Douglas McPhail, Emeritus

Gerald Skogley, Emeritus

Anthony Thein, Emeritus

W. Jeremy Davis

Nancy Friese

Bruce Gjovig

Darrell Larson

Laurel Reuter

North Dakota Museum of Art Staff

Matt Anderson

Guillermo Guardia

Sungyee Joh

Danielle Masters

Todd Pate

Laurel Reuter, Director

Gregory Vettel

Matthew Wallace, Associate Director

Justin Welsh

Brad Werner

Part-time StaffSara Anderson

Curtis Longtime Sleeping

Sheila Dalgliesh

Erika Gallaway

Nathan Guillemette

Chris Gust

Greg Jones

Kathy Kendle

Wayne Kendle

Leanna Niebeling

Sanghyeon Park

Ben Schreiner

Evan Sprecher

Emily Stenberg

and over fifty volunteersFront Cover: Margaret Wall-Romana, 2014. Oil on wood panel, 24 x 16 x 2 inches

Robert W. Lewis (December 15, 1930 – August 26, 2013)

1

Auction PreviewSunday, October 18 until auction time in the Museum galleries

Monday – Friday, 9 to 5 pm, Saturday – Sunday, 1 to 5 pm

All works to be auctioned will be on display.

Auction Walk-aboutLaurel Reuter, Auction Curator, will lead an informal

discussion about works in the Auction

Thursday, October 30, 7 pm, in the galleries.

patrons — $1,000All Seasons Garden Center 69

Dakota Harvest 71

Edgewood Group 82

Hugo’s 61

JLG Architects 77

Minnesota Public Radio 56

William F. Wosick, MD 53

Sponsors — $750McDonald Dentistry 64

Supporters — $500Acme Tools 67

Amazing Grains 81

Avant Hair and Skin Care Studio 54

Blue Moose Bar & Grill 60

Bremer Bank 59

Chester Fritz Auditorium 63

Curtis Tanabe, D.D.S. 58

Duc Tran, D.D.S. 83

Empire Arts Center 76

First State Bank 79

Fort Garry Hotel 78

Grand Forks Country Club 81

Ground Round 73

HB Sound and Light 65

Auction Supporters continued next page

North Dakota Museum of Art

A U T U M N A r t A u c t i o nS at u r d ay , N o v em b e r 1 , 2 0 1 4

Wine and hors d’oeuvres 6:30 pm

Auction begins at 8 pm

Autumn Art Auction is sponsored by the following

Businesses, Not-for-profits and Individuals:

2

Supporters — $500Little Bangkok 74

Museum Café 65

North Dakota Quarterly 70

Plains Chiropractic & Acupuncture P.C. 80

Prairie Public 54

Reichert Armstrong Law Office 80

Rhombus Guys 79

River City Jewelers, Inc. 75

Sadie's Couture & Event Styling 68

Salon Seva 72

Sanders 1907 55

Sanny and Jerry Ryan Center for Prevention and Genetics 75

Summit Brewing Company 62

UND Alumni Association 62

Wogaman Insurance Agency Inc. 60

You Are Here Gallery 57, 66

Contributors — $250Altru Health System 76

Ameriprise Financial, Debbie Albert 73

Boulder Apartments 57

Burtness Theater 55

Capital Resource Management 63

EAPC Architects and Engineers 58

Economy Plumbing 59

Forx Roller Derby 78

Greater Grand Forks Community Theatre 66

Greenberg Realty, Inc. 76

Henry's Countrypolitan 74

Icon Architectual Group 74

Opp Construction 67

Oxford Realty 70

Kelly Thompson, Oxford Realty 55

Simonson Station Stores 72

Sterling Carpet One 72

Swanson & Warcup, Ltd. 78

The Lighting Gallery 83

Transformations by Twila 59

Truyu 84

Valley Oral and Facial Surgery 67

Xcel Energy 66

Zimney Foster, P.C. 83

Advertisers — $125Artwise 73

Brady, Martz & Associates, P.C. 57

Browning Arts 70

Caribou Coffee 68

Demers Dental, Chelsea R. Eickson,

D.D.S. 68

Demers Dental, Paul Stadem,

D.D.S. 64

Drees, Riskey & Vallager, Ltd. 58

Forks ChemDry 84

Garon Construction 73

Gate City Bank 68

Good Insurance, Bonnie Baglien 64

Marilee Moen, Greenberg Realty,

Inc. 58

Jack Wadhawan, Prudential Crary

Real Estate 84

MayPort Insurance 68

Rose Shop 70

Valley Dairy Stores 63

Vilandre Heating & Air

Conditioning, Inc. 63

Waterfront Kitchen & Bath 57

Buy local. Read the

sponsor pages

to learn about those who

invest in the Museum.

Almost all are locally

3

Ross Rolshoven is a many-sided man. Foremost, he is

an artist who works in assemblage, hand-colored photography,

and painting. Among his exhibitions was a solo show of

assemblages at the North Dakota Museum of Art in 2002. The

work was based in the iconography of The West, in historical

myths and representations of cowboys and Indians. These themes

overlap with family, relationships, and contemporary life.

Rolshoven is a collector of early Western settlement and

American Indian art and artifacts. He is completing his sixth year

on Medora’s North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame Board of

Directors. He has been a volunteer for numerous civic events and

charities over the past thirty years, including the North Dakota

Museum of Art.

In addition to making and collecting art, Rolshoven collects and

restores vintage boats. He was North Dakota’s only professional

boat racer for a number of years, having finished as high as fourth

place in the National APBA tournament in Kankakee, Illinois—

and totaled a boat or two along the way.

In everyday life, however, he is a legal investigator who handles

high profile cases involving corporate, civil, and criminal

matters. He owns and operates Great Plains Claims, Inc. along

with his brother Reid, in Grand Forks, North Dakota. His work

routinely takes him across the Upper Midwest—a boon to his

collecting and his need to acquire endless numbers of objects for

making assemblages.

Rolshoven is a Summa Cum Laude University of North Dakota

graduate and father of three children; his oldest daughter, Ashley,

lives in Taos. Daughter Jensen and son Carsen attend school in

Grand Forks.

Ross Rolshoven, Auctioneer Auction Committee

COLETTE ANDERSON

ANUBHA BANSAL

SADIE GARDNER CHILLY GOODMAN

NATALIE MUTH

APRYL MOLSTAD

These wonderful Grand Forks women

decided to operate as a Committee of

the Whole rather than Chairs and a

Committee. They live full lives. Some

have always lived in Grand Forks;

others are new to the community,

having moved with their families.

Collette Anderson works as an

OBGYN physician at Altru. Anubha

Bansal is a full-time mom and

community volunteer. Sadie Gardner

started her own business, Sadies

Couture Floral & Event Styling. Chilly

Goodman is a full-time mom and

community volunteer. Apryl Molstad

works in psychiatry at Altru Hospital.

Natalie Muth is a chiropractor. Denise

Wood is an author who owns two

companies.

Denise Wood

4

From the Museum Director

• Each registered guest will receive a bidding card as part of

the price of admission. Upon receiving the bidding card,

each guest will be asked to sign a statement vowing to abide

by the Rules of the Auction listed in this catalog.

• Absentee bidders will either leave their bids on an Absentee

Bid Form with Museum personnel in person or by phone, or

arrange to bid by phone the night of the Auction. Absentee

bidders, by filling out the form, agree to abide by the Rules of

the Auction.

• Each bidder will use his or her own bidding number during

the Auction.

• All sales are final.

• In September 2002, the Office of the North Dakota State

Tax Commissioner determined that the gross receipts from

the sales made at the Auction are subject to sales tax of

6.75%. This does not apply to out-of-state buyers who have

works shipped to them.

• In the event of a dispute between bidders, the auctioneer

shall either determine the successful bidder or re-auction

the item in dispute.

• Purchasers may pay for items at any point following the

sale of a work but must pay for all art work before the

conclusion of the evening unless other arrangements are

in place. Absentee bidders will be charged on the evening of

the Auction or an invoice will be sent the next business day.

• Works of art in the Auction have minimum bids placed on

them by the artist. This confidential “reserve” is a price

agreed upon between the artist and the North Dakota

Museum of Art below which a work of art will not be sold.

This past year we lost two of our beloved friends, both of whom

served as Museum Trustees, Robert Lewis and Ellen McKinnon.

They were with us from the birth of the institution, and dear to

me personally. Bob Lewis was my graduate school advisor and

my editor for all Museum publications. His red pen was ever

present in my writing life. He also chaired the Museum Board in

the 1970s. Ellen McKinnon, after decades of Board work, was

voted Trustee Emeritus in 1997, as was Bob. Until her recent

death, she paid for a half-page ad in the Auction catalog just

because she wanted to—the only individual ever to do so.

They brought wisdom, elegance, and deep ties to the larger

community along with generous financial assistance. They were

with us when we held our inaugural Autumn Art Auction in 1999,

as we took up the task of building a buying audience for the

artists who live among us.

This Auction set the precedent for paying artists before paying

ourselves. We never ask artists to donate art—although some do.

These are the rules of the game: Artists set a minimum price,

which they are guaranteed to receive. Work that doesn’t reach

the artist’s minimum is brought in by the Museum and returned.

Any amount over the reserve and the Museum’s equal match is

split 50/50. For example: Reserve bid is $1,200. If the work sells

for $1,395, the artist receives $1,200 and the Museum receives

$195. If the same work sells for $2,400, it is split evenly.

Others in the region have adopted our policy. Instead of always

being asked to donate, artists can count on actual income from

auctions. And, bless you buyers for not forgetting that this is also

a benefit for the Museum, so we greatly value your generosity.

Remember, when you buy through the Auction, the price

includes framing. Frames are often custom made by the artists or

Rules of the Auction

framed by the Museum staff who use archival materials. This adds

significant value to most artworks, often as much as $400 in the

Grand Forks market but considerably more elsewhere. Please

note that sales tax is charged on all art that stays in state.

Each year we widen our pool of artists with ties to our audience,

thus creating a richer environment for art to flourish. New to the

auction this year are Ned Krouse who once taught at Minot State

University; Ryan Stander and Micah Bloom, currently teaching at

Minot State; Jay Pfeifer who was last in the Auction in 2001; Don

Miller of Grand Forks who has returned to working in the studio

after years of chairing the University of North Dakota’s Ceramics

Department; Zhimin Guan’s brother, Yamin Guan, who lives in

China; Zhimin’s annual choice of a student painter, Brittney

Anderson; John Brummel of Grand Forks; Les Skoropat of Pelican

Rapids; Greg Edmondson of St. Louis; and Mary Bonkemeyer of

Santa Fe whose exhibition of abstract paintings was on display

this summer.

We could not publish this catalog without the underwriting of

our sponsors. Please take your business to these companies and

individuals, thank them for their significant contributions, and

note how most are locally owned and operated. Sometimes they

say, “I don’t care if I get an ad, I just want to give to you guys.”

Supporting cultural life is not in the interest of most chains but

rather has become the business of the butcher, the baker and the

keeper of bees, that is, those who live among us. Thank you.

—Laurel Reuter, Director

Above: Barton’s Place, an installation in the Museum of the lateBarton Lidice Benes’s collections as installed in his New York Cityapartment, where he lived for decades as a practicing artist.Barton’s Place opened on November 16, 2013 as a re-creation ofthe original apartment.

The Artists

5

The Museum

Listed by lot number

#1 Dan Sharbono

#2 Dan Sharbono

#3 Dan Sharbono

#4 Mary Bonkemeyer

#5 Micah Bloom

#6 Alana Bergstrom

#7 Milena Marinov

#8 Milena Marinov

#9 Milena Marinov

#10 Milena Marinov

#11 Marley Kaul

#12 Mollie Douthit

#13 Mollie Douthit

#14 Vivienne Morgan

#15 Jon Solinger

#16 Alexander Hettich

$17 Alexander Hettich

#18 James Culleton

#19 William Harbort

#20 Robert Wilson

#21 Duane Shoup

#22 Duane Shoup

#23 Guillermo Guardia

#24 Dyan Rey

#25 Dyan Rey

#26 Don Miller

#27 Adam Kemp

#28 Adam Kemp

#29 Albert Belleveau

#30 Albert Belleveau

#31 Margaret Wall-Romana

#32 Dave Britton

#33 Madelyne Camrud

#34 Marlon Davidson and

Don Knudson

#35 Nancy Friese

#36 Brittney Anderson

#37 John Brummel

#38 Jessica Christy

#39 Timothy Ray

#40 Walter Piehl

#41 Les Skoropat

#42 Armando Ramos

#43 Brian Paulsen

#44 Todd Hebert

#45 Chris Pancoe

#46 Jessica Mongeon

#47 Ned Krouse

#48 Pirjo Berg

#49 Jessica Matson-Fluto

#50 Tim Schouten

#51 Lisa York

#52 Shawn O’Connor

#53 Mariah Masilko

#54 Kelly Thompson

#55 Ryan Stander

#56 Jay Pfeifer

#57 Jenny O

#58 Yamin Guan

#59 Zhimin Guan

#60 Greg EdmondsonListed by page number

3 Auctioneer

Auction Chairs and

Committee

4 Rules of Auction

5 Director’s Introduction

Back cover, Trustees and Staff

6

Lot #1, #2, #3

Dan SharbonoMinot, North Dakota

Left to right:

Blue Crown, 2013

Painted assemblage on wood

8.5 x 11 inches

Range: $130 – 160

Bosch, 2013

Painted assemblage on wood

30 x 5 inches

Range: $175 – 250

Peerless, 2013

Acrylic on wood

23 x 8 inches

Range: $190 – 220

Dan Sharbono is a Minot artist, designer, and free-

lance graphic designer. He is known for his three-

dimensional murals and painted assemblages.

Most of Sharbono’s work is about observing the things

around him and learning to appreciate them for their

inherent aesthetic qualities—signs of a personality, loyalty,

and a past filled with experiences most people can relate

to. He rescues found objects and materials from flea

markets, yard sales, old barns and garages, and the

occasional curbside. They are recycled into his artwork,

thus drawing attention—and hopefully appreciation—to

things that pass unnoticed in everyday life. Collected, his

most recent series of paintings/assemblages, is about

appreciating individuality.

According to the artist, my lovely wife Alyssa and I own

and operate 62 Doors Gallery and Studios, a community

of artists comprised of a small group of crazy art people,

in downtown Minot. We’re lucky to have such an amazing

arts community in our small midwest town. It keeps us

busy, makes us crazy, keeps us all making art.

Being part of a group is a great way to learn to appreciate

individuality, which is more obvious when we are given

the opportunity to compare and contrast ourselves with

others. Our strengths and weaknesses together make us

each invaluable parts of the group.

7

Lot #4

mary BonkemeyerSanta Fe, New Mexico

Lilies, 2014

Watercolor

22 x 15 inches

Range: $500 – 700

mary Bonkemeyer: If I were to identify myself as

an artist, it would be as a poet/painter or a painter/poet.

I was born in North Carolina. From there I went to the

University of Iowa where I studied under Phillip Guston

and earned my MA degree. During those years, I met some

fine artists. I also studied with Richard Diebenkorn and

Nancy Graves. For the last twenty years I have lived in

Santa Fe, New Mexico. Today, I spend my time between

Santa Fe and Marfa, Texas.

I’d like to think of myself as having intentions that arise

from the heart, rather than the head. The unintended

consequences of my process, I think, would be similar to

the poet’s in that I discover what I want to say through

accidents and what I like to think of as gifts. The gift comes

from the material, and when the intention of the heart

works with the material, it is just great. Of course, if I am

working from the heart, I am fueled by passion rather than

a “computerized,” calculated, schematic process that my

head guides me through—I hope that our politicians will

begin to work from the heart as well.

According to an ancient sage, there is a fine line between

genius and one who hasn’t a clue. I like to stick with the

one who doesn’t have a clue (laughter) and stay open to

these wonderful gifts and accidents that the material

affords me. I like to get right in there with the material,

with the unpredicted and the unpredictable.

I have just run across a photograph of the heart showing its

frequencies or computerized patterns that operated within

the body. I like to think of these frequencies as somehow

being connected with the earth. Everyone’s heart is

regulated by these same frequencies. It’s a lot to think

about, but it’s all there and it is something I enjoy

pondering.

I’ve been struggling all my life with the idea of trying to

define what it means—the difference between the literal

and the poetic. To what extent are reality and the literal

opposites? This brings us to the definition of words. I have

been thinking about power, as a word. Power, in my

world, is about governments exploiting people (I didn’t

mean to get political so fast, but here I am). The real

definition of power is found in giving up power. To be able

to give up power, I think, to embrace the other. The

opposite of power, or the giving up of power, becomes the

reality of power.

—Interview conducted by Patricia Goodrich in 2004

8

Lot #5

Micah BloomMinot, North Dakota

Codex Triptych, 2013

Pigment and print media

14 x 14 inches

Range: $1,000 – 1,500

Micah Bloom writes about this series: On June 22,

2011, the Souris River ravaged Minot, North Dakota.

Forcing its way through homes, it seized thousands of

precious items carrying them to new resting places.

Foremost among the displaced were hundreds, possibly

thousands, of books. Strewn in trees, across roadways,

along railroad tracks . . . these books were pilfered from

shelves, floated through broken windows, and recklessly

abandoned to fend off the natural elements. These books

were vessels—surrogates of human soul, shelters, housing

our heritage—displaced, now driven over by boomtown

commuters and shredded by oil tankers from the Bakken

oil fields. It was this surreal situation that stirred me to alter

the fate of these books.

When I was a child, my parents instilled in me a reverence

for books. Books were not to be stepped on, sat upon or

abused, because they contained something mysterious

and powerful. Beyond their mere physical composition of

wood fibers and ink, they played some indispensable role

that demanded respect and preservation. In a magical

way, they were carriers of that which was irreplaceable;

they housed an intellect, a unique soul. None was more

protected than the Holy Bible; to cause damage to its

substance was to denigrate its message. In our home,

books were elevated in the hierarchy of objects; in their

nature, deemed closer to humans than furniture,

knickknacks, or clothing. Under these impressions, I was

forced into this relationship with displaced books.

I’ve now spent over two years with these books: spring,

summer, fall, winter, night, day, wind, rain, dust, snow,

dew, nests, eggs, webs, sprouts, sticks, leaves, ice, snow,

bulldozers, trains, trucks, duck weed, worms, spiders,

birds, muskrats . . . they are becoming homes to animals,

analogies for excess, progress, and harbingers of the

encroaching digital age. Over days, weeks, and months,

they have persuaded me to tell their story: a story of

necessity, ignorance, loss, and valediction.

Micah Bloom is an artist and educator who lives in Minot,

North Dakota and teaches at Minot State University.

Bloom holds an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the

University of Iowa and has been selected for numerous

artist–in–residence fellowships. His works have been

published in literary and art journals, and he has shown

work nationally and internationally, including private

galleries in China and the Shanghai Museum of

Contemporary Art. Bloom is currently working on a multi-

media project with flood-dispersed books. This work, titled

Codex, involves film, photography, and installation, and

explores various cultural themes using the book as subject.

Married for thirteen years, Micah and his wife Sara share

four daughters and one son, and they all love to make

things.

Lot #6

Alana BergstromNorth and South Dakota

Tim, 2013

Acrylic on canvas

42 x 30 inches

Range: $700 – 1,000

Alana Bergstrom: The painting Tim is anemotional response to my brother-in-law Tim, aretired Air Force Major B-52 pilot. Stationed inGrand Forks, he married my sister Nicole thusopening up her world with love, happiness andfamily. This new and vibrant life continues toreverberate and grow. Using a three-inch brush,I dragged many layers of cobalt bluehorizontally across the canvas in order tocapture the sensation of vibrations of energybuilding upon each other and bouncing off oneanother while moving into the future at a steadypace. With each layer the density and the depthincrease, just like the love and life he continuesto give to my sister. The density is palpable, yetthe expanse feels deep, similar to the miragecreated by a B-52 engine exhaust that heats theair to a high degree.This makes it vibrate into amass that seems to be densely collectable inyour hands as something to hold. However, itslides right through your fingers, magicallyleaving only the heat of its existence and theimage of a world imagined.

Layers of cobalt blue produce a mystic qualitythat seems to glow, to transfers itself onto theviewer. Similar to an Air Force officer, it is ascold as it is professional yet it leaves you feelingcalm, safe, and ready to act. The silver suggestsdanger and the solidity of metal. It captures thelight and shoots it back in thin stands,highlighting the delicacy of each decision andthe calculation of every move. Tim is a paintingof confidence and self-abandon. It holds withinit the life of a man that is vibrant and deep,calculated and exposed, as well as constantly inmotion and progressing forward.

Alana Bergstrom was born in Rapid City, South

Dakota. She grew up in various places in the

Dakotas and completed high school in Grand 9

Forks (2001). She graduated from Massachusetts College of

Art under full scholarships. Bergstrom joined the Army and

became a member of the Military Police. Her reason: She

needed to know more about life in order to become a

really good artist.

Spc. Alana Bergstrom, a military police soldier with the

527th MP Company, 709th MP Battalion from

Grafenwoehr, Germany was named Warrior of the Year in

May 2011. Deployed to Afghanistan, she spent the next

years training officers to work in the communities to

establish peace. Having finished up her military service,

she was accepted twice—in different art divisions—at the

Maryland Institute College of Art, graduating in 2013. And

across town and as an officer, she taught full-time in the

ROTC program at Johns Hopkins University. Currently she

is in Ft. Sill, Oklahoma for six months of Air Defense

Artillery training.

Lots #7, #8, #9

Milena Marinov

Fargo, North Dakota

St. Michael the Archangel,

St. Ambrose, St. Nicholas

2013

Egg tempera on wood panel

with glazes

Each 18 x 11.5 inches

Range: $800 – 1,000 each

Milena Marinov was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. She

fell in love with orthodox religious art during her

employment as an art conservator with the Bulgaria

National Institute of Cultural Heritage and the Gallery of

Old Art. Milena has many pieces in collections throughout

the world. She maintains her studio and lives in North

Fargo with her husband and two sons.

Theologian Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) forever changed

Christianity when he began the Protestant Reformation in

16th-century Europe.

St. Michael the Archangel is the Patron Saint of Police and

Warriors. He is also the Patron of Grocers, Mariners, and

Sickness. He protected God from the rebellious and

disloyal angel, Lucifer. Loyal and trustworthy, he is

believed to be the Patron of Pilots and the Airforce in

Greece. He is also believed to lead the souls of the dead

to heaven. This has led some people to associate him with

the god Hermes. He has been present in mythology and

biblical texts at least since the Old Testament was written.

St. Ambrose (c. 340 – April 4, 397 CE) is the Patron Saint ofBees and Beekeeping. Legend has it that when Ambrosewas an infant a swarm of bees settled on his face while hewas lying in his cradle and didn’t leave behind a sting, buta drop of honey. This prompted his father to declare it wasa sign that his son would become a sweet-tonguedpreacher of great significance. He did eventually get thetitle “Honey-Tongued Doctor” because of his speakingand preaching ability.

St. Nicholas (c. 350 CE) One of the most popular saints inGreece, he is the Patron Saint of Sea Farers. Ourknowledge of him is based on legend, but we know hecame from Asia Minor, and was a bishop of Myra in Lycia.

St. Michael the Archangel St. Ambrose St. Nicholas

Lot #10

Milena Marinov

Fargo, North Dakota

Luther, 2013

Oil on canvas board

23.5 x 17.5 inches

Range: $1,500 – 2,00010

11

Lot #11

marley kaulBemidji, Minnesota

Between Light and Shadow, 2013

Egg tempera on board

16 x 20 inches

with commissioned cherry frame

Range: $2,500 – 3,000

marley kaul: When I was fifteen, I attended a Sunday

morning service in our small rural church. There was a

young pastor whose sermon was about seeds. The seeds

we grow and the seeds that are planted in our minds. I

remember that the young pastor had placed on the altar

bowls of seeds that the farmers were planting that spring:

corn, oats and soybeans. He said, ‘the seeds will grow if

we have faith in the seed and in the process of planting.’

This past year I began a series of secular icons that honor

small life events using my understanding of basic tenets to

build meaning. Many of these icons utilize symmetry and

color to establish spatial relationships.

This painting, Between Light and Shadow—or Darkness

and Light as he sometimes calls it—is dedicated to those

who plant the seeds.

I continue to work daily in my studio with more than one

work in progress. My rhythm of working has become a

meditative journey, one brushstroke at a time.

Marley Kaul’s work in both content and energy

emphasizes his connection with natural forms and

poetic metaphor. Born and raised in Good Thunder,

Minnesota, Marley Kaul was educated at Mankato State

University and the University of Oregon. Now retired, he

was long-time chairman of the Art Department at

Bemidji State University. Kaul’s work has been collected

by almost every major museum in Minnesota and North

Dakota, which speaks to a tireless commitment to his

development as a painter and his desire to explore the

world around him. In 2009, he completed the design for

a stained glass window for the First Lutheran Church in

Bemidji, where in 2001 he had designed another

window for the chapel, and created a painting for the

altarpiece. Ultimately, Marley Kaul became a superb

painter with a scholarly bent who is widely respected

and loved within the region he calls home.

Like northern European artists of long ago, Kaul paints

domestic life: the world surrounding his home in

Northern Minnesota, his garden, what he sees out of his

windows, the birds who come to the feeders, his

grandmother’s tea pot, and all the other utensils and

accruements of daily existence. During my career as a

painter, Kaul says, my artistic concepts have revolved

around ecological issues, natural growth and decay, and

what I witness every day in my yard, garden, and

community.

In October 2013, the exhibition, The Art of Marley Kaul,

opened at The Anderson Center in Red Wing, Minnesota.

Marley Kaul’s painting

is sponsored by

Hugo’s

12

Lot #12

mollie douthitGrand Forks, North Dakota

Mix and Sticko, 2014

Oil on panel

8 x 11 inches

Range: $1,000 – 1,400

Lot #13

mollie douthitGrand Forks, North Dakota

Rent of it all, 2014Gouache on paper

11 x 6 inches Range: $400 – 600

mollie douthit: My practice is about sitting with

and looking at objects, relaying with paint what I see.

Through a demanding and disciplined practice I intuitively

select the objects I want to see through paint. Often the

objects I paint are items I have collected, or saved, which

remind me of people and places in my life. The subject of

each painting exists in a field of non-representational

space. This use of space allows size and identification of

the objects to be questioned. The images are initially

sparse, and the subjects simple, but formal elements such

as color, composition, and paint handling visually request

closer investigation of the surface. The paintings become

complex, as subtleties in the application of paint are

revealed. I believe that through the medium of paint,

transcendence of emotion can be relayed in the

description of these objects, asserting their presence, while

questioning the space they consume.

Mollie Douthit was born in Grand Forks in 1986 and

received her BFA in 2009 from the University of North

Dakota. In 2011, she earned a Post-Baccalaureate

Certificate from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She

followed up with an MFA from Burren College of Art,

Ballyvaughan, Ireland. Her work has been included in the

2013 MFA edition of New American Paintings, Museum of

Fine Arts; Boston Medal Award Auction; and the Royal

Dublin Society Student Art Awards Exhibition. Her work

has been featured on Saatchi Art (online), as well as the

Saatchi Gallery in London. Upon completing her MFA,

Douthit was nominated for the New Sensation Prize

through Saatchi Art.

Douthit exhibited in the 2013 Royal Hibernian Academy

Annual Exhibition and received the Hennessy Craig

Award. Douthit moved to Kilkenny in September 2014 to

begin the year-long Tony O’Malley Residency.

Forthcoming in January 2015, she will have a solo

exhibition in the Ashford gallery space at the RHA, Dublin.

Mollie Douthit’s paintings

are sponsored by

William F. Wosick, MD

Docks are a place of transition

a place to stand suspended

solid over liquid.

A place to stand

or gather in the silence

momentarily suspended between answer

and question.

Vivienne Morgan: I am an English woman who

has lived in Bemidji for longer than I have lived anywhere

else, but it still isn't quite home. Like many immigrants, I

draw from distant memories of an idealized home and in

an effort to find comfort in my surroundings, I make

comparisons between places in England and America. I

began a series of typologies in 2010, pairing similar

environments of lake and wood in Beltrami county, with

those in Cumbria, in the North of England. These

typologies categorize the familiar: a dock on a lake in the

early morning, a woodland path, or the expanse of an

open field. In these pairings, England and America meld in

subtle ways; there is the same subject, a similar

composition, but different light, different weather, an

inexplicable difference. The gap of time and place

between the paired images becomes important. What is

and is not seen, and what happens in the connection

between each image is the nexus of the work.

Vivienne Morgan was born in England in 1958. In 1979

she moved to the United States and earned her MFA from

Bowling Green State University. She now lives in the

countryside near Bemidji, Minnesota. In 2008-09 the

North Dakota Museum of Art mounted a one-person

exhibition of Morgan’s photograhs: “A Sense of Place.” 13

Lot #14

Vivienne MorganBemidji, Minnesota

Testing Boundaries

Lake Windermere, Cumbria, England;

Lake Julia, Beltrami County, Minnesota

2014

Archival digital print

Image 18 x 52 inches

Range: $1,100 – 1,500

ABOUT THE AUTUMN ART AUCTION

In general, artists take with them their past, and that fuels

their work. I recently read Painting Below Zero, the

autobiography of James Rosenquist. As our work is

different, in aspects such as scale and our process of going

about choosing what to paint, I found great comfort in his

words about coming from a place like North Dakota. I

have been living in Ireland so coming home for a few

months this summer allowed me to reconnect with the

place that will forever be home. The objects I was painting

were items unique to America, or my home state—things

you never thought you might miss until they no longer are

available. Being away, I have a stronger connection to

North Dakota because distance can induce clarity of

place. For me, having work in this auction that I created

while in North Dakota is an honor and allows me to feel

that sense of support from home, even at a distance.

—Mollie Douthit

14

Jon Solinger: Cats in Barn is from my current

project, in which I seek to make aesthetically strong

images while investigating the meaning behind rural

landscapes, lyrically documenting people and their

workplaces. The project explores attachment to a place

through work, looking at how human labor transforms a

particular piece of land, and, in turn, how the land shapes

the life of the worker. I will publicly exhibit “Working

Land” in August 2015 at the Hjemkomst Center in

Moorhead, Minnesota.

Although showing no humans, this image is about the

relationship between people and domesticated animals in

the rural workplace, a branch of agricultural tradition

stretching back over the millennia. It shows the interior of

a dairy barn at a small farm in Erhard’s Grove Township,

Minnesota. The dairy farmers have a working relationship

with the Holstein cows in the photograph, breeding and

keeping them for their milk production, providing a

livelihood for both cows and farmers. Anyone familiar

with farm life knows cats are part of the scene; they

maintain their own social system and provide rodent

control, companionship, and entertainment in return for a

warm place to sleep and some milk to drink. The cats in

the image display the family resemblance of their clan,

which has made this farm their home for many cat

generations.

Although the project has a documentary component, my

intention is primarily artistic. I do not attempt to convey

journalistic facts; rather I work intuitively, aiming for a

quiet and subtle, but elegant visual style that speaks from

another category of truth.

People I know who live and work in my rural

neighborhood have a relationship to the land unlike my

urban-dwelling friends; they develop a special intimacy

with a place by deriving at least part of their livelihoods

from it, and by leading lives less buffered from natural

processes. By choice or by birth, their lives’ center of

balance inclines them toward the natural world, making

urban culture feel distant. My ancestry, like that of many

others here, includes people who made a living by

working directly with the land in some way. These

personal and universal roots in a working relationship with

a specific piece of land inspire my project.

Jon Solinger grew up at his family’s summer resort business

on the shore of Lake Lida in rural Minnesota’s Otter Tail

County. He earned a BA degree in art with an emphasis in

photography from Minnesota State University Moorhead

in 1985. He lived and worked in Minneapolis and

Moorhead, Minnesota, for a number of years. Solinger, his

wife, and their daughter now reside on Lake Lida, where

he maintains his creative photography workplace and is

the third generation owner of Solinger’s Resort.

In 2000, the North Dakota Museum of Art secured a grant

from the Nodak Electric Foundation to allow him to

photograph the shelterbelts of the Red River Valley. The

book documenting the work will be published by the

Museum in early 2015.

Lot #15

Jon SolingerPelican Rapids, Minnesota

Cats in Barn, 2013

Digital pigment print

Image 20 x 13.5 inches

Range: $500 – 800

15

Lot #16

Alexander HettichGrand Forks, North Dakota

Fields, 2008

Oil on canvas

36 x 48 inches

Range: $800 – 1,100

Alexander Hettich was born in Tajikistan, the

southernmost republic in the former Soviet Union. He

grew up in a valley surrounded by the Soviet Union’s

tallest mountains. In 1993, a civil war forced him to flee to

a small collective farm in Belarus where the climate and

scenery were quite different from what he was used to.

During long Belarussian winters—cold like those here in

North Dakota—as he struggled to settle into a new place,

he started taking painting lessons from a local artist. He fell

in love with the process of creating art, from stretching a

canvas to the final steps of framing a painting. His works

are images of nature—the beauty he has learned to see in

the many landscapes where he has lived.

After several years of looking for a new homeland and

unable to return to Tajikistan, Alexander settled in Grand

Forks where he lives with his wife and three children. He

works in information services at Altru Health System. His

wife Bella is Director of the ESL Laanguage Centers

(English as a Second Language).

Lot #17

AlexanderHettich

Grand Forks, North Dakota

Crab Apple, 2014

Oil on canvas

14 x 11 inches

Range: $300 – 500

All proceeds from the sale of Crab Apple are donated to

the Museum by Alexander Hettich

16

Lot #18

James CulletonWinnipeg, Manitoba

Guitar (Oscar Brand’s Guitar), 2010

Waterjet cut steel

45 x 21 inches

Range: $600 – 800

James Culleton: In 2011, I was commissioned by

the Winnipeg Folk Festival to create a sculpture as a gift to

Oscar Brand on the occasion of his receiving their Artistic

Achievement Award. I did several drawings of the guitars

Brand used over the years and settled on the one from the

cover of his 1955 album Bawdy Songs and Back Room

Ballads. I created two of these; the first I gave to Oscar

Brand and the second is for this Museum auction. As far as

the process to create the piece is concerned, first I

sketched the guitar as a blind contour drawing, then I

redrew the piece in AutoCAD and finally that drawing was

used to guide a CNC waterjet which cut the piece out of

steel.

James Culleton studied art at the University of Manitoba

where he received his BFA with Honors in 1997. While

living in Montréal in 2006, he received a grant from the

Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec to rediscover his

French roots. He published his first book in 2009,

Contouring Québec, in which he used a GPS and blind

contour drawings (made quickly while looking at the

subject and not down at the pen or paper) to document his

movements through Québec.

In 2010, Culleton was awarded a commission to create a

series of steel sculptures for the facade of the West End

Cultural Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 2011 he

published Lyrical Lines, a book of drawings and paintings

that depict a visual Who’s Who of Canada’s roots music

scene in some of Winnipeg’s most venerable music

venues. In 2012, he released his fourth music CD,

Memento. He is currently the Design Director at Palliser

Furniture and an instructor at Red River Community

College in Winnipeg.

The father of two children, the artist invited his eight-year-

old son to accompany him during his tenure in August

2013 and in 2014 at McCanna House, the North Dakota

Museum of Art Artist-in-Residence Compound. During this

time, the artist dug back into the history of McCanna,

McCanna Farms, and its historic family. This became the

beginning of what will evolve into many drawings and

songs as well. Drew, the son, made assemblages from the

metal bits he found on the gravel roads surrounding

McCanna House, having been told that this was a place

where artists come to make things.

17

Lot #19

William Charles Harbortaka Billy chuckMinot, North Dakota

Summer Love, 2014

Mixed media collage

49 x 48 inches

Range: $900 – 1,400

William Charles harbort who is also known

as Billy chuck: Paint-by-numbers, coupons and clip

art are just a few of the ingredients often found in our

popular culture landfill, says Harbort. I am fascinated with

each individual ingredient and the infinite messages that

can be expressed by combining and juxtaposing them. It is

through this process that I discover meaning and express

thought. Allusion, suggestion and investigation become an

important part of the viewing experience.

Bill Harbort is a professor in the art department at Minot

State University. He teaches art foundations, graphic

design and illustration courses. He is a co-founder and co-

organizer of NOTSTOCK, MSU’s signature live arts event

that spotlights the arts on campus and in the community.

Prior to teaching, he worked in New York as a package

designer for a major cosmetics company, an art director for

a children's educational software company, and built a

reputation as an award-winning automotive artist. He

specialized in airbrush renderings of muscle cars and his

work has appeared in over twenty-five different popular

automotive magazines.

The artist is best known for his pop art, mixed-media

collages that celebrate calendar girls, clip art,

advertisements, and ephemera from pop culture. He often

signs his work as “Billy Chuck,” a pseudonym that is taken

from his first and middle name, William Charles. He

currently exhibits at many lowbrow art galleries. His

success at the Museum’s auctions forced him to raise his

also lowbrow prices.

Harbort was one of six artists commissioned by the North

Dakota Museum of Art to work with the people of North

Dakota’s Spirit Lake Reservation to create a body of

artwork about contemporary life on the Reservation. An

exhibition of the first round of work was shown at the

Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Project Space in New

York’s prestigious Chelsea Art District in June 2013,

followed by a tour to Fort Totten on Spirit Lake, and finally

to the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks.

During the second year of the Rauschenberg collaborative

project, Harbort has returned to Spirit Lake for long blocks

of time, again working with local people to jointly make

art. The results will be seen in an exhibition at the Museum

in 2015.

Bill Harbort’s painting

is sponsored by the

Edgewood Group

18

Lot #20

Robert WilsonWinnipeg, Manitoba

Covered Vessel, 2013

Turned wood, aniline dyes, Tung oil

13.25 x 6.5 inch diameter

Range: $900 – 1,100

ROBERT WILSON: According to Helen Delacretaz,

Chief Curator and Curator of Decorative Arts at the

Winnipeg Art Gallery, “Robert Wilson’s work is defined by

its beauty, sensual finish, and meticulous craftsmanship.”

His proportions are based upon the Greek’s golden mean.

The vessel is divided into thirds with the widest point two-

thirds up from the bottom. The bulbous, high-shouldered

vessel is balanced by the delicate, elongated finial, which

he then designs and then turns on a lathe. The finial is

mahogany dyed black. This vessel rests upon a contrasting

matte finished base.

Before retiring, Robert Wilson was a sheet metalist for the

railroad where he worked on engine heat shields among

other things. And he taught himself about wood. He read

every book he could find on wood turning in order to learn

techniques. His sense of art, however, came down through

his family. His brother paints and his great-great

grandfather, William Thomas, was a watercolorist. Living

in Brighton, England, Mr. Thomas became known for his

paintings of ships. A collection of his paintings dating back

to 1850 hangs on Wilson’s Winnipeg living room walls

where he lives with his quilt-making wife, Diana.

His labor-intensive vessels are sometimes colored with

aniline dyes, the most light-resistant dye on the market for

wood. The color holds for many years if kept out of direct

sunlight. When the basic form is complete, Wilson applies

up to fifty coats of Tung oil in order to achieve the

remarkable visual depth of the surface.

Over the years, Robert Wilson has won many Juror’s

Awards from the Manitoba Craft Council. One of his

career highlights was when Princess Anne, visiting

Winnipeg for the 1999 Pan Am Games, chose a piece of

his work as a Manitoba memento. Susan Sarandon also

chose a piece of his when she visited Winnipeg for the

movie Shall We Dance. Robert’s work is also in the

collection of Great West Life & Annuity Insurance

Company. The prize-winning prototype for the work in the

Museum’s 2011 Autumn Art Auction was included in the

touring exhibition “Prairie Excellence” along with work

from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.

“Clearly, a Robert Wilson sculpture is a work of art of the

highest order, despite its resistance to be photographed,”

says North Dakota Museum of Art Director Laurel Reuter.

19

Duane Shoup, grandson of a carpenter, grew up in

Maryville, Indiana, south of Gary. By his late twenties, he

felt the urge to break out so he went fishing in Minnesota.

This self-taught furniture maker ended up buying forty

acres near the small town of Shevlin, building a house and

all its furnishings, and embedding himself in Northern

Minnesota’s deep woods. There he could find the

hardwoods he needed to establish his studio, Wildwood

Rustic Furnishings.

Shoup says, I use only renewable woods—oak, ash,

cherry, walnut, maple, and pine as well as downed and

damaged trees that showcase the color and featured wood

grains only nature can produce.

Inspiration for my work flows from the natural world all

around me and the north woods I call home. Each log,

slab, twig, bentwood, or free-form composition represents

materials purposefully selected on site and processed at

my own mill, giving me complete control of the creative

process from forest to final form. Finished pieces preserve

the force of nature in furnishings and have the potential to

become family heirlooms.

He follows in the footsteps of Sam Maloof, who also

created his own private world where he made furniture

masterpieces known for their simplicity and practicality—

he won an early MacArthur Genius Award, the first

craftsman to do so. As his own master, Shoup does what

he wishes, challenges his already-formidable skills, uses

beautiful woods, and makes a living in the process.

The bench was made with the root of a huge walnut tree.

The white linear section on the top and bottom of the back

rest results when wood is freshly sawed and not steamed

allowing it to remain light in color. The stringers under the

seat are white ash. Both pieces are made from sap wood

right under the bark.

Advice from Duane Shoup: If you buy a piece, take it

home and wax the surface. Sam Maloof developed the

finish I used on the table: equal parts polyurethane

varnish, Tung oil, and linseed oil. You add the final wax.

Lot #21

Duane ShoupShelvin, Minnesota

Bench, 2014

Black ash with white oak stringer

34 inches high, 40 long, 20 deep

Range: $1,100 – 1,500

Lower left: Lot #22

Duane ShoupShelvin, Minnesota

Small Table, 2014

Walnut root with white oak base

Maple plug

21 inches high, 27 long, 21 deep

Range: $700 – 900

Duane Shoup’s bench

is sponsored by the

All Seasons

20

Lot #23

Guillermo GuardiaGrand Forks, North Dakota

Ocllo, You Shall Not Pass, 2013

Ceramic

22 x 20 x 8 inches

Range: $2,000 – 2,500

Guillermo Guardia (Memo) was born in Lima,

Peru, in 1975. He hails from an ancient pre-Colombian

ceramic tradition. From the time he was little, he was

steeped in the images and materials of those early potters.

In particular, he loved the work of the Mochica culture, a

pre-Incan civilization that flourished on the northern coast

of Peru from about 200 BC to 600 AD. It was known

especially for its pottery vessels modeled into naturalistic

human and animal figures.

Ocllo, You Shall Not Pass, continues his “Baby Devil”

series. Ocllo is a female Quechua name. According to

Inca legend, the god Sun created the first two humans:

Manco Capac (male) Mama Ocllo (female). Sun ordered

them to search a privileged land to establish what would

become the Inca Empire. 

Ocllo’s surface is covered with Mochica designs. Mochica

is one of many cultures that developed in northern Peru

before Spaniards arrived in the New World. Guardia’s

Ocllo holds a samurai sword. 

Although the samurai sword originated in Japan, there is a

strong connection between Peru and Japan. Many

Japanese immigrated to Peru in the early twentieth

century; one of them was my grandfather. In fact, Peru

hosts one of the largest Japanese communities outside the

Japanese mainland.

Ocllo, You Shall Not Pass continues the line of previous

baby devils but adds a deeper look into the Peruvian

culture and heritage.

Guardia came to North Dakota in 2002 to pursue his MFA

in ceramics at the University of North Dakota. He stayed

on at UND to finish an MS in Industrial Technology. Now

he works at the North Dakota Museum of Art as the artist-

in-residence. He is a studio member of Muddy Waters

Clay Center in Grand Forks, where he continues producing

his own art. Memo has been included in many important

juried art exhibitions throughout the United States.

All proceeds from the sale of this sculpture are donated to

the Museum by Guillermo Guardia

21

Lot #24

Dyan ReyGrand Forks, North Dakota

Still Life with Lilies, 2013

Oil on paper

30 x 15 inches

Range: $900 – 1,200

Dyan Rey was born and raised in Grand Forks. She lived for

twenty years on the West Coast (California, Oregon and Seattle)

and also spent five years on the East Coast in Provincetown,

Maine and New York City. She received a BFA from

the University of Oregon and an MFA from the University of

North Dakota.

Rey has exhibited her work both locally and nationally for over

thirty years. Her artwork has been seen in seventeen solo shows

and in over fifty group exhibitions. Rey’s artworks have been

acquired by many private and public collectors, including

Microsoft Corporation, SAFECO Insurance Company, Tacoma Art

Museum, City of Seattle, the North Dakota Museum of Art, and

the Washington State Arts Collection. She has been represented

by the Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle, the Albert Merola Gallery

in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and The Dakota Collection in

Grand Forks.

The painting, Veranda, will bring back memories of the

downtown Grand Forks restaurant, Lola’s, where it hung for some

time. It has recently come on the market. In 2010-2011, Rey

exhibited the “Vase Series” at the North Dakota Museum of Art

and the Northern Art Gallery at Mayville State University. The

cutouts were created as a collaboration with poet husband Eliot

Glassheim after they traveled to China. She cut out vase shapes

Lot #25

Dyan ReyGrand Forks, North Dakota

Veranda, 1996

Oil on canvas

72 x 42 inches

Range: $1,900 – 2,500

that suggest Chinese bronzes and porcelain from abstract black

and white paintings on paper she made years earlier. They were

published along with Glassheims poems in Foreign Exchange,

published by the North Dakota Museum of Art in 2010.

Dyan Rey maintains a studio/gallery in downtown Grand Forks.

She has taught in the Art Department at the University of North

Dakota and currently teaches at Northland College, East Grand

Forks, Minnesota.

Dyan Rey’s paintings

are sponsored by the

North Dakota Museum of Art

22

Don Miller, Professor Emeritus at the University of North

Dakota, taught ceramics at UND for forty-two years. When he

retired in 2012, he decided to return to his life as a studio potter.

Little did he expect to find such joy in the studio. He said, I felt

a certain amount of misgivings about working in clay again. My

wife and I have a special needs kid and that takes time. I worried

that I would become our daughter’s full-time mentor whem

retired. With her entry, however, into a small college in

Minneapolis, the Minnesota Life College, I was freed up to spend

time in the studio. I joined Muddy Waters Clay Center, a non-

profit studio for local potters and found great colleagues who

were willing to let me let my past go and move on to new ideas

and work. In the past I moved more slowly. Now I can pick and

choose earlier ideas and work that I want to pursue.

This was a gift they gave me. They were after me to do a show in

the Muddy Waters Gallery. I didn’t at first. For several years, I put

them off. But about a year ago, we set a February 2014 date,

which gave me about a year to get ready for the show. The work

in this auction was included in that show.

I love doing functional work. Part of it is living with and using

functional and utilitarian objects. I find myself going back to

sketches I made years earlier that I never pursued. Baskets were

one, and I think these baskets I am making are lovely.

They speak to a way of enclosing the space but keeping it

transparent. I love the shadows they cast. The positive creating a

negative space, but the image is exciting to me. Like a hug

Lot #26

Don MillerGrand Forks, North Dakota

Untitled Basket, 2013

Stoneware

13 x 13 x 12 inches

Range: $600 – 800

almost. The clay feels like it has taken to the air. Loose, combined

with informal fluting.

At Muddy Waters, I continue to teach four or five classes.

Throughout the UND years my students ranged from rank

beginners to incredible professionals like Memo Guardia.

I don’t need to be in the headlines. I like what I am doing. I like

the quiet peace of my life. I can go into the studio and take some

time, half-days, a day or two, whatever, and I can think about

what I want to do. I believe a regular work cycle provides

opportunities for fresh ideas to emerge.

Miller received his BA at North Dakota State University, his MA

from New Mexico Highlands University, and his MFA from Mills

College. Among the highlights of his career are his cataloging of

UND’s extensive historic pottery collection and his receipt of the

Remele Fellowship in 1995 from the North Dakota Humanities

Council. This support led to the 1999 publication of University of

North Dakota Pottery: the Cable Years (1997). His corresponding

exhibit was held in two locations: the North Dakota Museum of

Art and the Columbia Mall in Grand Forks. The show celebrated

the fiftieth anniversary of the retirement from UND of former

ceramics professor Margaret Kelly Cable.

In 2008, Miller’s book was followed by his North Dakota Clay:

The Cable Years video production, which won first place in the

documentary category at the Midwest Journalism Conference (in

competition with other entries within a six- state region).

23

Adam Kemp: High Water was begun in 1990 and finished

twenty-two years later. Adam occupies the out-of-doors, most

often in the company of Hanna, the special needs child he

cosseted under his wing when she was a little girl. He observes,

builds, walks, swims, and captures what he sees in drawings and

paintings. High Water grew out of his recognition that we on the

Northern Plains are experiencing a changing relationship with

water. It is marked by the abundance of geese that travel along

shorelines in spring. In particular, he noted an area surrounding

the Point Bridge that straddles Grand Forks and East Grand Forks.

Here in the spring, the Red and Red Lake rivers swell into a large

lake where elegant masses of Canada geese set down.

The artist’s paintings are highly biographical. For example, High

Water contains references to the Douglas Gallery, one of the first

downtown Grand Forks galleries established by Deb Cook (Deb

Douglas). Adam volunteered. Embedded in the collage are

photos of his workshop, children (including Hanna) responding

to the Lewis and Clark exhibition mounted by the Museum in

2004, and a page from a Sears Roebuck catalog he found in a

basement where he once lived.

Such themes of water and the philosophy of water management

have occupied Adam for the last couple of years. The work Crane

is one of three in a series that harkens back to the 1997 flood and

the building of the dike to protect the twin cities. He painted on

site as the last section of the dike—behind the Myra Museum—

was constructed. The sand-colored dike is on the left and notable

because it danced around a couple of beautiful old trees, clearly

an attempt by the city to save them. On the right side of the

painting is a tree that didn’t make it. Adam ponders, “Given that

today’s construction is completely intertwined with equipment,

the crane itself is a fantastic structure. I can’t compete with it

sculpturally but I can reference it in my work.”

Lot #27

Adam KempGrand Forks, North Dakota

High Water, 1990 – 2012

Collage with acrylic on paper

26 x 36.75 inches

Range: $1,200 – 1,700

Lot #28

Adam KempGrand Forks, North Dakota

Crane, 2014

Acrylic on paper

24 x 12 inches

Range: $800 – 1,200

Kemp was born in Ugley, Essex, England. He received a BFA from

Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1986. His studies were based in the

rigorous learning of technique and art history. He came to Grand

Forks to cast the sculpture that stands on the northwest corner of

University Park, having studied bronze casting in Italy. He stayed

to earn his MFA from the UND in 1989. Adam continues to

actively work within the regional arts community, generously

showing his work on the streets and in local galleries. His

workshops with teens and children are in great demand

throughout the region, including the weeklong sessions through

the Museum’s Summer Art Camps. He concludes, “I still look at

the landscape around here as a pleasantly surprised outsider.”

24

Albert Belleveau: Rock Hound and Rock a Bye

Birdie are created from red rhyolite stone, which the artist

collected along the shores of Lake Superior near Silver

Bay. The stone displays the volcanic geologic history of the

continental rift region—the earthquakes, silica infiltration

and subsequent erosion, the cleaving and wave tumbling

that produces these marvelous stones used to create

unique sculpture.

Born in Minneapolis in 1959, Al Belleveau started working

with metal in his father’s fabrication shop at the age of five.

At age eleven, he moved to his grandparent’s farm, where

he endlessly roamed the hills and valleys of Minnesota’s

Maple Ridge Township.

Today he lives with his wife in a log house north of

Bemidji, surrounded by the fullness of nature that inspires

many of his works. He says, I have primarily created with

metals in my mature years, but I have always collected

sticks and stones and glued them together to create my

little sculptures—primarily between the ages of seven to

sixteen. After joining the work force as a welder at

seventeen, I often spent my coffee and lunch breaks

welding sculptures at my various places of employment.

Even then I was haunted by the shapes and possibilities of

cast-off materials. The last ten years I’ve worked vigorously

developing Rock Iron Art.

Rock Iron Art is the synthesis of a life-long, love affair that

I have had with two of northern Minnesota’s most plentiful

resources: rocks and metal. I transform them into

sculptural forms to depict humorous life forms, unique

functional furniture, and decorating accouterments.

I collect the wind and wave-softened stones during my

frequent kayaking trips on Lake Superior and I sculpt them

at my Puposky studio. The rocks are selected according to

size and color, then thrust into cages of steel, formed and

tightened under enormous pressure, then welded into my

sculptural vision. The finished sculpture is sandblasted to

even the surfaces and sealed with two coats of lacquer or

left to rust.

The human form shaped from the stuff we often overlook

leads us to the excitement of ‘seeing the new in the

familiar’ as all art is simply “SEEING” better.

All proceeds from the sale of Rock a Bye Birdie are donated to

the Museum by Al Belleveau

Above: Lot #30

Albert BelleveauPuposky, Minnesota

Rock a Bye Birdie, 2014

Stone and steel

9 x 10.5 x 14 inches

Range: $150 – 300

Right: Lot #29

Albert BelleveauPuposky, Minnesota

Rock Hound, 2014

Stone and steel

14 x 12 x 9 inches

Range: $700 – 900

Lot #31

Margaret Wall-RomanaGolden Valley, Minnesota

Other Seasons, 2014

Oil on wood panel

24 x 16 x 2 inches

Range: $1,800 – 2,500

25

Margaret Wall-Romana: I made this piece

specifically for this auction, beginning it while I was Artist-

in-Residence at the North Dakota Museum of Art’s

wonderful McCanna House. One day while standing in

the kitchen, I observed a ruby-throated hummingbird. It

came to the window and lingered outside there for some

time, having confused a red cooking pot (hanging from a

pot-rack close to the window) for a flower. That’s when I

realized that the painting I had been working on might be

“missing” a hummingbird.

Making large paintings is what I do. It’s unusual for me to

make something small that isn’t in the nature of a study for

a larger painting, and even that is a rare occurrence. That’s

what I had set out to do—a kind of study—but the more I

worked on it, the more interested I became in pursuing it

as a painting proper. In the end, I would describe it as a

“large” painting that happens to be very small. It almost

feels like a miniature. The painting is comprised of two

panels, as many of my paintings are, and it went through

all the phases of development that my larger works do. I

flipped and rearranged the panels multiple times while

trying to find the image, and the only real constant, after

its inclusion, was the hummingbird.

For painters like myself who are interested in the history of

the medium, paintings speak to and of each other across

the centuries. If I study Rogier van der Weyden’s painting,

Deposition From the Cross, that I admire (c.1432), it’s not

other depictions of religious devotion I’m inclined to think

of, but the mighty and often bawdy works of Max

Beckmann. Despite the 500 years between them and the

dissimilarity of their narratives, both artists loved the

human figure and made work whose gravitas and formal

ingenuity link them for me. Looking at a Rembrandt,

standing as close as I can and trying to feel what it was like

to place those strokes, I’m liable to begin musing about

Philip Guston. The centuries collapse in the face of shared

sensibilities, and narrative is revealed to be what it has

always been for the great painters: an excuse to make a

painting.

I love what’s involved in painting representationally—the

close observation and concentration required to translate

looking through paint into a record of having seen. But my

first crush as a serious student of painting was Abstract

Expressionism, and for me being a painter is still about that

in-the-moment engagement with the developing image,

with the possibility of upheaval and radical re-envisioning

always near —invited and necessary.

Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Wall-Romana

moved to Minneapolis eight years ago. She holds a BA

from the University of California, Davis, and an MFA from

the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Lot #32

Dave BrittonGrand Forks, North Dakota

The Cribbing (Rosville, ND,

.5 miles east and 4 miles

south of Portland)

June 30, 2013

Digital medium:

Canon 5D Mark II, with

24-105 mm lens.

Printed by Doug Norby

26.5 x 40 inches

Range: $800 – 1,200

26

Dave Britton: The prolific growth of grain elevators

began in the late 1880s and paralleled the settlement of

the prairies. More and more farmers produced ever-larger

crops of grain that needed to be sold, stored and shipped

to market. That need was satisfied by each town’s local

grain elevators.

Grain was ‘elevated’ to the top of the elevators, and then

redirected by gravity to specific bins. The elevator had to

be strong enough to hold the grain’s pressure pushing out

on the elevator’s bin walls. The cribbed-construction wall

design, in which 2” boards were laid flat on top of each

other, provided this strength. 2 x 8 boards were used at the

lower portion of the walls, where the greatest pressure

occurred. As the walls got higher and less wall pressure

existed, 2 x 6s were used, followed by 2 x 4s for the highest

wall sections. These flat 2 x 8, 2 x 6, 2 x 4 walls were

referred to, in the grain trade, as ‘The Cribbing’.

Grain elevators were usually the tallest structures in town

and could be seen for miles. They were reassuring to

travelers, symbolizing the courage and persistence of the

farmers and small town prairie residents. The elevators

were also an informal gathering place for farmers. The

coffee pot at the elevator office was often the catalyst for

bull sessions, good-natured ribbing, or catching up on how

neighbors and their families were doing.

Over the years, the old cribbed elevators lost their

usefulness. Modern grain economics demand high-

capacity, high-throughput elevators, capable of loading

110-car trains in a single day. Most of the old cribbed

elevators have been idled, abandoned or demolished.

They are a proud, albeit disappearing part of the texture of

our prairie heritage—the source of fond memories.

Dave Britton grew up around old grain elevators owned

and operated by his father, Clarence Britton. These North

Dakota elevators were in Keith—six miles east of Devils

Lake—Kempton, Merrifield, and Northwest Mills Elevator

in Grand Forks—a partnership of Clarence, Earl Kurtz, and

Eugene Ellingrud, which was sold to North Dakota Mill

and Elevator in 1953.

For two summers in 1958 and 1959, Britton traveled with

his dad as he sold Swenko barley shakers to elevators in

eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota. During his

high school years, he drove the Merrifield Grain Co. truck,

picking up grain his dad had bought from various elevators

in the same area. He has fond memories of several of these

old elevators, their managers, and their communities.

Britton, who started Britton Transport in 1980 in the

basement of his home in Grand Forks, has photographed

over 1,000 elevator locations on the plains—often when

driving a truck cross-country— some of which no longer

exist. This may well prove to be one of the significant

systematic records of an important architectural archtype

of early twentieth-century America.

27

Madelyn Camrud: Raised on a farm near Grand

Forks, Camrud is tuned to North Dakota weather and its

effects. She draws from her life on the prairie to make her

paintings. This work images lush trees and shrubs,

products of a summer much like this year (2014) with

generous rains and cooler temperatures.

The work has gone through a metamorphosis since its

beginning in 2012. At first called Barriers, the title has

now changed to simply Fences.

My interest in working a painting like this lies mostly in the

sky, she says. The marks cannot be intended. Paint is

applied over a lightly sculpted surface. In each wet layer of

paint, I write loosely with color pencil anything that comes

to mind. A series of quick splashes of house paint (the

same that’s on my kitchen cupboards) with a large brush

Lot #33

Madelyne CamrudGrand Forks, North Dakota

Fences, 2012

Acrylic on panel

24 x 24 inches

Range: $400 – 600

All proceeds from the sale of The Cribbing are donated to the Museum by Dave Britton

partially conceals the writing. A coat of paint becomes

final only if I have managed to allow the necessary

spontaneity and the writing appears half-clouded.

In addition to making art, Camrud has published two full-

length collections of poems, This House Is Filled with

Cracks and Oddly Beautiful, along with a chapbook titled

The Light We Go After. A broadside, Oddly Beautiful, was

published by The North Dakota Museum of Art in 2014.

Camrud received degrees in visual arts and creative

writing at the University of North Dakota. She spent a

decade employed at the North Dakota Museum of Art and

continues to serve in various positions of volunteer work at

the Museum.

All proceeds from the sale of Fences are donated to

the Museum by Madelyne Camrud

Lot #34

Marlon Davidson & Don KnudsonBemidji, Minnesota

Sparkling Waters Two, 2013

Wood, acrylic, vinyl fabric

39 x 70 x 3 inches

Range: $600 – 1,000

Marlon Davidson & Don Knudson are

collaborative artists who have lived in the Bemidji area for

twenty-four years. They have individual art careers but

have been producing collaborative work for about thirty

years. Their art is in private and public venues and they are

represented in collections across the United States and

Europe. Their collaborative wall work, Great Wave, hangs

in the commons area of the University of Denmark. Both

artists were educated at Bemidji State College (Bemidji

State University), and at the Minneapolis School of Art,

(Minneapolis College of Art and Design).

Marlon has had a long history in the area of art education,

as a teacher in the public schools of West St. Paul and later

as a fixed-term instructor at Bemidji State University. Don

worked for some years as a display artist for the Emporium

Department Store in St. Paul. He is also a furniture maker

and sculptor who makes assembled works for the wall as

well as standing objects. The artists have also owned and

operated a bed-and-breakfast, Meadowgrove, in the

Bemidji area but they now devote full time to art

production. They are life partners who have lived together

for fifty-six years.

The artists feel that their primary inspiration derives from

nature. They attempt to combine natural elements with

contemporary design concepts. They both are perpetual

students of art history. They read and listen, they travel and

they look at art. Marlon says, We are a collection of

influences from our mentors, from other artists, and from

the wide world of fine arts. The artist must absorb and then

select, finding a voice that speaks for him or her, hoping to

achieve some universal truth, seeking perfection through a

lifetime.

According to the artists, We are especially grateful to the

Museum, to the director, and to the community which

offer us an opportunity to have our work seen. We have

gained new friends, and have been thrilled by the warm

reception our collaborations have received among area

people. 28

29

Nancy Friese is a painter-printmaker working in

arboretums, national land trusts, and open-air sites. She divides

her time between her home in Rhode Island and her farmstead in

North Dakota, twenty-five miles south of Grand Forks.

In 2007 Laurel Reuter wrote, Maybe he marveled while

watching the heavens as a toddler in Hedalen, Norway.

Maybe his parents directed his attention to the stars as they

sailed back and forth across the Atlantic. We know for sure

that it was in western Dakota Territory that Ben Huset's

interest in the planets turned to fascination and finally to

devotion. This self-taught man went on to become the

Weatherman of the Great Plains. From 1937 into the

1960s his annual Ben Huset's Forecast served as the

farmer's bible.

Huset's granddaughter, the artist Nancy Friese, inherited a

similar passion for the natural world. Her art springs from

astute observation within the landscape fed by her intense

understanding of the forces of weather. Movement,

brilliant color, slashing lines, and inner tensions spill onto

the canvas and paper and then reappear in woodcuts,

drypoints, and aquatints. Weather never exists as a static

entity. In her work, change is imminent, the landscape is

volatile, hiding great storms and massive cloud buildup,

winds, and movement even in moments of calm. The

earth, the plant world, and the sky—each has an equal

presence just as the whole of her picture plane is potently

alive. She works from both the factual and the intuitive and

therein lies her art.

Lot #35

Nancy FrieseCranston, Rhode Island

and Buxton, North Dakota

Among the Trees, 2014

Multi-plate linocut

Printed by Sue Oehme

Oehme Graphics

Steamboat Springs, Colorado

Image 12 x 17.75 inches

Range: $700 – 900

The artist credits the grandfather Weatherman with her

enduring interest in the landscape. For thirty years this has

been her subject. Not the Fauvists, but the grandfather

taught her to see the colors of weather. Reflecting sundogs.

Northern Lights. Rainbows. Fiery sunsets. Heat mirages.

Swirling snow transformed by sunlight into an

impressionist's palette. For only through light and

movement does color exist as a living entity. This is the

underriding truth of Friese's art. Like the grandfather, the

artist immerses herself into the wilderness of weather, into

its untamable energy, into its patterns, and into its beauty,

an element never absent in Friese's art. Unfashionable?

Perhaps. True to human experience? Certainly.

Friese has received numerous grants and fellowships

including National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships,

the  Japan-US Friendship Commission Creative Artist

Fellowship, a Giverny Fellowship, and a Pollock-Krasner

Foundation Grant. She has shown in the United States,

Europe, and China and Japan. Her works are in fifty

corporate and museum collections. She has an MFA from

Yale University School of Art and studied at the University

of California-Berkeley, the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and

Yale University Summer School of Music and Art.

She  teaches at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD)

where she is a Mellon Faculty Fellow in the Prints,

Drawings and  Photographs Department of the RISD

Museum. Nancy has served on the RISD Museum Board of

Governors, and the North Dakota Museum Foundation,

among others.

All proceeds from the sale of Among the Trees are donated to the Museum by Nancy Friese

30

Brittney Anderson: Born in 1993 in Bismarck,

North Dakota, Anderson is currently obtaining her BFA in

Art Education at Minnesota State University Moorhead.

She is specializing in oil painting.

Regarding the work in the Auction, Anderson wrote, I

wanted to focus on the environment, the deterioration of

land. Today, landscapes are being overlooked by society,

going unnoticed and forgotten. By layering, texturing and

scraping oil paint with rice paper and graphite, Cloud

Series No. 2 evokes an almost tactile and vulnerable

quality, bringing back a soft, yet destructive appearance

that nature portrays.

Over the last few years, before moving to the Fargo-

Moorhead area, she was involved in a local artist

cooperative known as BDAC, (Bismarck Downtown Artist

Co-Op). In the cooperative gallery, Bismarck-Mandan

artists assemble exhibitions to sell. The organization also

gives local artists the opportunity to follow the work of

peer artists from the area. Anderson has also taken part in

gallery exhibitions during her first year at MSUM,

especially in the fall 2013 and spring 2014 semesters.

Currently, I am working on a large sculpture for the West

Fargo Spicy Pie, a pizza shop. In the work, I am combining

metal, wire, and painting. After I complete my

undergraduate degree, I have a keen interest to continue

my studies. More recently, I have developed an interest in

the deterioration of nature and the human form. I want to

capture the truth of what I see and how I see it. My goal is

to create paintings that achieve a supple painterly quality

between representation and abstraction, sense and

nonsense. To captivate the viewers, to disturb them.

Lot #36

Brittney AndersonMinneapolis, Minnesota

Cloud Series No. 2, 2012

Oil on canvas

36 x 36 inches

Range: $600 – 800

31

Jessica Christy: Collective experience is an

alternative expression of the human condition. The

assemblage of happenings, idea, memory, thought and

being accumulate in the creation of individuality. The

works in this series speak to this collection by gathering

the mundane and melancholy, the tactile and tempting,

the sordid and verbose. Remnants of the American

existence are archived and labeled with everything from

nostalgia to fact. These associations aim to suggest that

nothing in our lives stands alone, yet is woven into the

fabric of the human condition.

Christy is a native North Dakotan, born to two artists on

the Sanger Art Farm, located at the northern edge of the

Sheyenne River valley.  Raised in the arts, she received her

BA from Valley City State University, and her MFA from the

University of North Dakota. Jessica has shown her work

extensively, both regionally and nationally, winning

numerous awards.  She currently teaches at Minot State

University.

Lot #38

Jessica ChristyMinot, North Dakota

The Melancholy of Becoming America, 2014

Each 8.5 x 6.5 x 2.5 inches

Range: $400 – 500 for all three

John Brummel, a library patron and an Air Force

veteran, moved to Grand Forks in 1997. “I’ve always been

an artist,” Brummel explains. On Saturdays, he rides a city

bus to the Grand Cities Mall, then walks over to use the

library’s public computers, not having one at home.

“Sometimes it’s pretty busy,” he observes, “but usually I

can get a seat.”

Brummel opens Microsoft’s Fresh Paint and begins to draw

on the computer. Half-an-hour later he completes a work,

most often a mechanical wonder—war ships, destroyers,

fighters, German bi-planes, frigates, the Nautilus

submarine, trains and more trains, lighthouses and John

Deere tractors. His compositions are impressionistic,

marked by a playful freedom of line.

Once the drawing is complete, he prints out two copies,

showing them to friends around town or occasionally

mailing one to family back in Missouri. Sometimes he

drops in unannounced at Museum Director Laurel Reuter’s

office, always with a gift drawing in hand.

—Quoted in part from the March 2014

Newsletter, Grand Forks Public Library

Left: Lot #37

John BrummelGrand Forks, North Dakota

Chester Fritz Library 2012

Digital drawing with Microsoft’s Fresh Paint

9 x 14.5 inches

Range: $300 – 400

Lithograph sage petri dish

Collageair freshener, gold dust

LithographNorth Dakota crude oil

Lot #39

Timothy Ray (1943 – 2013)

Forest Light, 1991

Acrylic and paper collage

41 x 31 inches

Range: $1,500 – 1,800

Timothy Ray: On Saturday, February 9, 2013, Tim

Ray died of cancer. Eight days later, the North Dakota

Museum of Art opened a retrospective of his work. The

Sunday afternoon event turned into a memorial on that

fiercely stormy afternoon. Despite roads covered by thick,

torturous sheets of ice, a hundred people turned out, many

having driven the still-open Interstate 29 from Fargo. The

funeral was scheduled the next afternoon. Mr. Ray’s son

failed to arrive for the funeral. Then news came:

In a strange twist of fate worthy of a Greek tragedy, his son,

Sean Ray died on the way to his father’s funeral. He and

his partner died in a car accident during a blizzard along

I-94 east of Moorhead. Tim Ray’s grandson was also

injured in the accident and remains in critical condition.

—Jeff Weispfenning

The North Dakota Museum of Art began working with Mr.

Ray a year before on the comprehensive retrospective of

his artwork. Fargo’s ecce gallery joined the team; the

exhibition would move to Fargo after the Museum

showing. This was the work that Mr. Ray turned his mind

to in the last months of his life, betting against time that he

would be at the Grand Forks opening.

Tragedies haunt institutions just as they haunt humans.

Those stormy days in February 2013 will be remembered

in the history of the Museum for years to come.

The obituary gives the facts: Timothy Ray was born and

raised in Indian Head, Saskatchewan. He studied fine arts

at the University of Manitoba from 1958 to 1961 and in

1966. And in 1963 he received his Interim Collegiate

Teaching Certificate from the University of Manitoba.

Upon receiving his teaching certificate, Ray began

teaching at a high school in Manitoba. In 1967, Ray left

teaching to continue his education at the Emma Lake

Artists’ Workshop under Frank Stella. Ray received his

Masters in Fine Arts at the University of Arkansas in 1969.

Young and full of knowledge, Ray began teaching

university-level art at Pikeville College in Kentucky. In

1970, he moved to Moorhead, where he taught at

Minnesota State University Moorhead until his retirement

in 1996.

Although considered an exceptional teacher, it is his art

that will be remembered by the larger community.

For the work in the Auction, Tim Ray combined the raw

texture of Japanese paper with sections of hard-edged,

reverse-painted acrylic monotypes and named the collage

Forest Light. The monotype’s patterns were built with India

ink and layers of acrylic medium. This contemplative piece

mirrors patterns seen in nature and considers how one

point of view changes his or her perception of space.32

drew constantly. He went on to paint and draw horses,

year after year, never wearying of his subject, never

despairing in his quest to create Contemporary Western

Art. This master painter, while continuing to live the

cowboy life, has found the means to visually enter the

sport. In the process he has led droves of artists into a new

arena called Contemporary Western Art—but most don’t

know that this artist from North Dakota charted their

course years ago.

In 2008, Walter Piehl won the Bush Foundation’s first

Enduring Vision Prize worth $100,000. Earlier, he received

the 2005 North Dakota Governor’s Award for the Arts. The

artis has twice served on the Board of the North Dakota

Council on the Arts, for several years on the Board of

Trustees of the North Dakota Museum of Art, and is on the

founding governing board of the North Dakota Cowboy

Hall of Fame in Medora. In 2013, United Limited Art

Editions (ULAE) created an edition print with Walter for the

benefit of the North Dakota Museum of Art. Only a few

remain from the thirty-print edition, the proceeds of which

were given to the Museum for general operating costs.

Walter Piehl is a painter who makes drawings and

also incorporates drawing into his acrylic paintings. He

does not use drawing to make studies for paintings but as

a primary medium, either embedded into paintings or as

separate works of art. Ultimately, however, Piehl is most

widely known as a painter. His goal is to make his surfaces

dance with subtle variations. Drips, feathered edges,

scumbled paint, and the judicious use of glazes all

contribute to his rich surfaces. His fractured spaces,

transparency, multiple images and their afterimages cause

his works to sing with movement.

The Minotaur in the Auction harks back to an earlier time

when blues and lavenders dominated his paintings. It

came before the artist began to split his space with strong

diagonals as he does today. Thus, Son of Hurt’n is coveted

by collectors wanting to own Piehl’s early as well as late

work, his works on paper as well as canvas.

Unlike most artists, Walter Piehl was quite young when he

decided to make art from his own life. Born into a family

that raised rodeo stock, Walter rode horses as a matter of

course. Likewise, in a household without television, he

Lot #40

Walter PiehlMinot, North Dakota

Son of Hurt’n:

“American Minotaur

Series”

2009 – 2013

Mixed media and

acrylic on paper

19.5 x 27.5 inches

Range: $2,200 – 2,500

33

34

Lot #41

Les SKoropatPelican Rapids, Minnesota

Good Night, 2011

Quad-tone pigment inks on cotton

archival paper

14 x 20 inches framed

Range: $200 – 300

Les SKoropat: Like entering a mirror and

experiencing a different version of the world, my

photographs explore reflections of familiar environments.

This distinctive perspective is presented so that others

might step into my personal looking glass.

A classic automobile can be photographed as a subject; it

also provides reflecting surfaces. While most observers see

the gleaming, restored vehicle, at the same time its

surfaces reflect the viewer’s present surroundings.

Distorted and shaped by the curves and planes of the

surface, the reflected image might also be perceived as

something that could be. The qualities of shape, texture

and color contribute to a synthesis worthy of exhibition

and contemplation.

The photograph in the Auction reflects the power of

personal symbols. The car, a 1950 Chevrolet, is owned by

a retired history teacher. “Goodnight, Irene” was a popular

song in 1950 when he was courting his wife. The car and

the song remind him of a happy time in his life.

According to Skoropat, discovering this song title

juxtaposed with the reflection of the clouds reminded me

of my mother Irene's passing.

Les Skoropat is a Fargo artist, photographer, and graphic

designer whose work has also included modern and tap

dance, music, printmaking, painting, fiber art, combined

media, calligraphy and the book arts.

Born in 1952 on Flag Day in Bismarck, North Dakota, he

first learned about taking photos from his mother, the

unofficial family photographer. She could chronicle an

entire year of family events with twelve pictures taken with

an Ansco 620, which was stored in the kitchen cupboard

with a blue flashbulb in place, ready for the next birthday

or holiday.

Skoropat worked as a school photographer at St. Mary's

Central High in Bismarck, where he developed a fondness

for the simplicity of the black-and-white image, and where

he began his camera collection, which includes his

mother's Ansco and his first camera, a Polaroid Swinger.

The artist has been employed as Art Director for Prairie

Public Broadcasting since 1975. His photographs were

recently displayed at the Minnesota Pelican Rapids Library.

35

Lot #42

Armando RamosValley City, North Dakota

Model 2514, 2014

Slip-cast clay, enamel

31 x 14 x 12 inches

Range: $700 – 900

Armando Ramos has been a generous and vibrant

force in the North Dakota art scene since moving to the state in

2009 to teach at Valley City State University, according to

Museum Director Laurel Reuter. He grew up in Texas but left the

state for college. He completed his undergraduate studies at the

Kansas City Art Institute and graduate studies at Montana State

University. In the years following graduate school he lived and

maintained a studio in San Francisco.

He says, Through portraiture and caricature, I create comically

irreverent images drawn from my jumbled youth. Pop culture,

mass media, religious iconography, and quotidian observations

are civilly canonized as high-relief sculptures, minimalist

interventions, and absurd juxtapositions that question the

largeness of these larger-than-life embodiments. In examining my

own history, I deny the authenticity of the past memories and the

invincibility of adulthood. Instead, I seek to create an existence

of complicated iconography that gives odd relevance to

sculptures and paintings.

Ramos has been an artist in residence at The Richard Cartier

Studios (Napa, California), Vermont Studio Center at Johnson,

and at California State University at Long Beach. He is currently

a Professor of Art at Valley City State University and was awarded

a 2012 Individual Artist Grant from the North Dakota Council on

the Arts.

His work has been exhibited at the Virginia Brier Gallery (San

Francisco), The Oakland Museum (Oakland, California), The

Dairy Art Center (Boulder, Colorado), Elmhurst Art Museum

(Elmhurst, Illinois), Studio Couture (Detroit) and the North

Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks.

36

Lot #43

Brian PaulsenGrand Forks, North Dakota

Untitled Arrangement, 2014

Color pencil

13.5 x 9 inches

Range: $500 – 600

Brian Paulsen:

—Since Brian’s earliest memories, he was always keenly

aware of his living spaces, people’s differences, their

odors. His grandfather was a sign painter and a muralist.

His father was an inventor and builder of houses, cabinets

and boats. Because his studio was in the same space as his

fathers’ wood and tools for many years, he lived with those

smells and noise. His early years became the stocked

cabinet of memories that feeds his art.

—I was raised with geometry all around me especially in

the materials of carpentry, building, repairing, making, and

all those other useful occupations. My grandfather was a

sign painter and a muralist. My father was an inventor and

builder of houses, cabinets, and boats. The realm of

Popular Mechanics—a service magazine founded in 1902

that offers written technical material to the average

American man—schooled my imagination.

—The hard edges are an outgrowth of his sign painting and

graphic design interests, coupled with early copying of

cartoons and illustrations.

—This is an artist who delights in visual games, in word

games, in whimsy. He is well-schooled in the principles

of design, in art history, in color theory and formalism, all

of which he freely puns. The surreal coupling of images

remains, the whimsy and make-believe as well.

—I came to know illustration as practiced by

professionals, a world given form and order through signs

and symbols and hand lettering.

Still today, Paulsen hand letters the exhibition titles on the

walls of the North Dakota Museum of Art—maybe the last

museum in America to be thus graced.

—Quotes from Laurel Reuter, Brian Paulsen,

North Dakota Museum of Art, 2008

Brian Paulsen earned his BA at the University of

Washington in 1963 and his MFA in 1996 from

Washington State University. His teaching career began at

Chico State College in California, continued at the

University of Calgary, and in 1973 moved to the University

of North Dakota where he retired in 2007. Paulsen, one of

North Dakota’s important painters, was named Chester

Fritz Distinguished Professor, UND’s highest honor, in

2007. The North Dakota Museum of Art mounted a solo

exhibition, which resulted in a book about Paulsen’s work

(2008). He has been a visiting artist at dozens of colleges

and universities. His work has been shown in more than

100 juried exhibitions, eighty solo shows, and 200 North

American invitational exhibitions.

37

Lot #44

Todd HebertGrand Forks, North Dakota

Windmill with Glacier, 2012

Color pencil with pastel on paper

12 x 12 inches

Range: $800 – 1,000

Todd Hebert: Windmill with Glacier was one of the

first things I made after returning to North Dakota in 2012.

It resonates with me because it seems to be a reflection of

the moment both globally and locally: a suspension

between a potential future and an understood past.

Born in Valley City in 1972, Todd Hebert spent his early

years in McHenry, North Dakota. His father moved the

family to Dickinson in 1980 to accept the job at Dickinson

High School coaching basketball and teaching social

studies.

Hebert played football, basketball, and baseball. He also

drew and painted and took art classes from Michael Dunn,

a wildlife watercolorist. According to Hebert, Dunn made

watercolors by carefully observing the outdoor world. He

taught me to observe and work with great precision,

something that is still important in my art making.

He was fortunate in high school as well, studying under

teachers such as Lilly Stewart. Next came the University of

North Dakota and painting and drawing instructor Brian

Paulsen, sculptor Pat Luber, and printmaker Ron Schaefer.

The aspiring artist continued to develop his techniques,

especially what seemed to be his innate ability to render

the objects of everyday life. Above all, he saw that Paulsen

and Luber were always working, always making art. Their

work method was important to me. I observed that the

intellectual side of art and the material side of making art

had to be married in order for the art to succeed.

After graduating with a BFA in painting and drawing from

UND, I applied to the Rhode Island School of Design. I

saw that North Dakota artist Nancy Friese was teaching

there and thought I might get in. And he did. He graduated

with his MFA in 1998, the same year he accepted a year-

long fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in

Provincetown, Massachusets. A second invitation followed

from the prestigious Core Residency Program at Houston’s

Glassell School of Art where he spent two years in a

postgraduate residency for art critics and visual artists.

His career took off with invitations to show in solo and

group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. In

2005, Connecticut’s Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art

gave him its prestigious Emerging Artist Award. Today, he is

represented by Devin Borden Gallery in Houston and

Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe Gallery in New York City. His

art, however, stays grounded in the mundane, the ordinary

existence of North Dakotans. According to Los Angeles art

critic David Pagel, writing in the brochure that

accompanied his solo exhibition at the North Dakota

Museum of Art in 2012, Hebert’s art is worlds away from

the elitist esoterica that holds so much contemporary art in

its thrall.

Among the numerous private and public collections that

have acquired his work are the Los Angeles County

Museum of Art; the The Neuberger Berman Collection,

New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego;

and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los

Angeles. Hebert has been an Assistant Professor of Art &

Design at the University of North Dakota since 2012.

Chris Pancoe is a multi-media artist with a profound

interest in clay. He often fires his work using atmospheric firing

techniques such as wood, salt, and soda because of the unique

surface qualities they provide.

When asked about his art, he says, I am influenced by a type of

urban landscape, mostly in the run-down and decaying industrial

edges of Winnipeg. I am fascinated by the areas once occupied

by immigrant workers of busy garment factories, foundries and

steel mills which line the train tracks and the pot-holed service

roads as I meander along.

Within the nooks and crannies of these industrial carcasses is

where I have taken up this urban landscape as subject. I seek to

emulate the rusty, weathered elements and ruins of the

containers, hoppers, water towers, and storage receptacles put to

rest for the elements to reclaim. My intention is to unite sculpture

and utility, and impart a sense of place while bringing the

aesthetic of a weathered, well-used utilitarian object to the home

and bring it back to use for the everyday.

Chris received his Masters of Fine Art at the University of

Lot #45

Chris Pancoe

Winnipeg, Manitoba

Lidded Jar, 2013

Wood-fired stoneware

12.25 x 9.5 x 9.5 inches

Range: $300 – 500

38

Minnesota. He attended a yearlong residency at Pueblo Espanol

in Barcelona, Spain and has taught ceramics in Winnipeg,

Manitoba and Minneapolis and Inver Hills, Minnesota. He has

exhibited his work both nationally and internationally. Currently,

he is the Studio Technician for the Ceramics and Sculpture area

at the University of Manitoba. He lives in the West End

neighborhood of Winnipeg with his daughter Lucie, his dog Sipi,

and his wife Jennie O—an artist also represented in this Auction.

39

Lot #46

Jessica MongeonRice Lake, Wisconsin

Geothermal, 2014

Acrylic, photo transfer on

wood panel

16 x 20 inches

Range: $400 – 600

J ess ica Mongeon: My work exposes and

explores structures that are found in the natural world, as well as

the world of imagination. Rather than depict a specific

landscape, I aggregate my feelings from multiple experiences.

Sketching and journaling as I travel by foot through various types

of terrain, I collect data for my paintings. I approach my

environment as an artist, seeking to communicate experiences

through painting.

The paintings are left structurally open in order to invite multiple

interpretations and places of entry. An otherworldly element is

added as I contort and manipulate the space, intuitively working

in layers. The process of painting mediates and translates spatial

experiences and awareness. Without providing mediation and by

obstructing the act of naming, viewers are free to construct their

own interpretations.

Disorder and the inevitable breaking down of systems are part of

the cyclical properties of nature that lead to growth. My

processes allow for spontaneity and chance to play a role. This

involves laying down fluid acrylic with string, spraying, dripping,

and applying color with wide hake brushes onto an absorbent

panel. An otherworldly element is added as I contort and

manipulate the illusion of space on the painted surface,

intuitively working in layers. The process of painting mediates

and translates spatial experiences and awareness. Pours, drips

and blooms of pigment speak to gravity and help to create an

illusion of deep space or surface tension.

Jessica grew up on a family farm in Rolette, North Dakota. A

recent MFA graduate from Montana State University in Bozeman,

she first completed a BFA from the University of North Dakota.

Her work has been exhibited regionally and nationally, including

a juried exhibition at the Painting Center in New York City, called

“Natural/Constructed Spaces.” In September 2013, Jessica

participated in an Artist Residency at the Anderson Center in Red

Wing, Minnesota. From October through mid-November she

took part in a month long Sam and Adele Golden Foundation

Artist Residency in Columbus, New York, sponsored in part by

the Montana Arts Council. Currently she teaches at the University

of Wisconsin –Barron County.

40

Lot #47

Ned Krouse

Haslette, Michigan

Prairie Butterfly Vase, 2014

Wheel-thrown, slip-decorated and raku-fired

9 x 8 inch diameter

Range: $400 – 500

Ned Krouse: I raku to produce colors that cannot be

achieved in other types of firing. When the clay is leather

hard, I brush on multiple layers of colored slip and carve

designs that reveal the colors underneath. Next, the pieces

are bisque fired and covered with a clear glaze. When the

kiln reaches temperature to melt the glaze, pieces are

removed with tongs and placed in straw which catches fire

and blackens the clay.

Ned Krouse received his MFA in ceramics from Tyler

School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia. He has

been producing slip-decorated raku fired work for over

thirty years. He has taught at numerous colleges and art

centers around the country, including undergraduate and

graduate ceramics and design courses at Indiana

University–Purdue University, Fort Wayne; Minot State

University; and Rochester Institute of Technology.

Krouse’s primary interest in teaching has been community

education, thus, he has been an instructor at the Memorial

Art Gallery in Rochester, New York, and the Ann Arbor

Potters Guild. Since 2002, he has been at the Greater

Lansing Potters Guild in Michigan. He has presented

numerous workshops and demonstrations for colleges,

universities, art centers and public schools throughout the

country. His work is represented by Milward Ferrell Fine

Arts in Madison, Wisconsin; Mostly Clay in Pittsford, New

York; and Button Gallery in Douglas, Michigan.

Krouse says, I built my studio on my property so I can

move easily to landscaping and gardening. I completed

the Michigan Master Gardner Program in 2003 and am

still an avid gardner today. Many of my designs come from

that experience. Also. for years I’ve participated in weekly

figure drawing sessions where I find similarities to working

with colored slips.

Raku Process

Raku ware is a type of Japanese pottery that is traditionally

used in the Japanese Tea Ceremony, most often in the form

of tea bowls. It is usually shaped by hand rather than

thrown. The vessels are fairly porous, which results from

low firing temperatures. The glazes are lead based. Finally,

the pieces are removed from the kiln while still glowing

hot. In the traditional Japanese process, after removal raku

pots are allowed to cool in the open air. The familiar

technique of placing the ware in a container filled with

combustible material, introduced by American Paul

Soldner, is not a traditional Raku practice. Raku

techniques have been modified by contemporary potters

worldwide.

When most potters in the West think of raku firing, they

think of what should technically be referred to as

“American” or “Western” raku: a process in which work is

removed from the kiln at its maximum temperature, thus

exposing it to thermal shock or rapid cooling which is

stressful on the pottery. The pots don’t shatter because they

are made from an open or porus clay body, which acts like

a shock absorber, preventing the body from immediately

exploding when the pot is removed from the kiln.

Subsequently, pots are subjected to post-firing reduction(or smoking) by being placed in containers of combustiblematerials, which blackens clay and causes fracturing orcrazing in the glaze surface.

These crackle glazes are enhanced in the post-firing

smoking as carbon becomes embedded into the cracks in

the glaze. This Western raku-firing process attracts many

potters because of its excitement and unpredictability.

41

Pirjo Berg: The stripes in my paintings are inspired by

Finnish traditional rag rugs and wall hangings, which fill

the floors and walls at the homes in my family. When I was

a child my mother, grandmothers, and aunts were busy

designing and making them. They were always anchored

in beautiful stripes. Even today those striped designs

remind me of my home and childhood.

My paintings are based on color, texture, and shape. The

stripes, repetition, and texture are found not only in the

familiar textiles, but also in geological formations. Over

the years, I have traveled with my geologist husband all

over the world (Nepal, Greenland, Arctic Spitsbergen, Baja

California, Alaska, United States, Southwest Canyon

Lands, Sierra Nevada, and so on) as his field assistant. The

landscape, the sedimentary rocks and layers or beds (as

geologist call them) are elements which have became

familiar to me.

In geological formations, such as canyon walls, I see

familiar striped patterns, but on an enormous scale

representing much longer periods of time. The Core

Sample Series was inspired by my experiences in pristine

nature. I became interested in the possibilities of capturing

the essence of the geological time, a length of time that is

difficult to comprehend. The real core samples collected

by geologists reveal variations in climate, life forms, and

sedimentary composition during geologic history.

My paintings have layers (or beds) of landscapes which are

squeezed by time and “flattened”. Some of the pigments I

use in painting come from the rocks. The way pigments

mix with water imitates the geological processes. In my

Core Sample Series I paint these landscapes flat and then

force them into a cylindrical form. The work in the Auction

is an example. As I am painting stripes, they turn into inner

emotional landscapes. One can recognize the landscape

in them, but they are in motion all the time as if one were

watching a movie, and can slide backward and forward in

time and space.

Born in Helsinki, Finland, and now residing in Grand

Forks, North Dakota, Pirjo Berg completed her MA in

Regional Planning (1991) at the University of Tampere,

Finland; her BFA in Painting (2000) at the School of Art and

Media, Tampere, Finland; and earned the 2005 EDGE–

Program, Artist Trust in Seattle, Washington.

Berg has had solo exhibitions in Washington, North

Dakota, and Helsinki, Finland. In addition to numerous

group exhibits in Finland and the United States, Berg

created a 1997 installation for Finland’s eightieth

independence celebration, Kiasm, in the Contemporary

Art Museum of Finland, Helsinki.

Her work is in public collections in the North Dakota

Museum of Art in Grand Forks; Valley Medical Center in

Renton, Washington; Sacred Heart Medical Center in

Springfield, Oregon; Max-Hotel in Seattle, Washington;

and the Labor Museum in Tampere, Finland.

Berg has completed residencies at the Vermont Studio

Center in Johnson (2013); McCanna House, North

Dakota Museum of Art (2013); at Willapa Bay Air,

Oysterville, Washington (2014); and in Berlin, Germany

(2014).

Lot #48

Pirjo BergGrand Forks, North Dakota

Beds #3, Core Sample Series

Watercolor, ink and gouache

on Yupo watercolor paper

Sealed with Krylon UV

Resistant clear protective coat

24 x 48 inches

Range: $700 – 1,100

Pirjo Berg’s painting is sponsored by

Dakota Harvest

42

Lot #49

Jessica Matson-FlutoHorace, North Dakota

Detachment, 2012

Oil on canvas

14 x 11 inches

Range: $400 – 500

Jessica Matson-Fluto: The work in the Auction,

Detachment, is from a body of work that represents the essence

of the human figure which is created primarily from my

subconscious mind. These figures are developed by internal

dialogues. A particular thought or emotion will impact choices of

brushwork and color palette. Through this process, composition

will begin to take form, often in a more abstracted manner. At

times, such ruminations may form into a figure in my mind

specifically to express an emotional quality in the painting. The

end results, however, may be a figure of a completely different

body type, position, or gender. Creating, struggling, destructing,

and reworking are a constant in this process.

Detachment was created while I was pregnant with my identical

twins. After having surgery for Twin to Twin Transfusion

Syndrome, I was placed on bed rest for four-and-a-half months.

During this period, I had copious amounts of time to think about

my unborn children and the surgery which helped correct their

sharing of unequal amounts of nutrients and blood. Detachment

represents a monochromatic silhouette of twins. This piece

alludes to the disconnect between the mother and the twins, and

the Twins from each other. Like the Twins, the landscape has

become abstract as well.

Jessica Matson-Fluto was born in Spokane, Washington in 1980.

She received her BFA from Minnesota State University Moorhead

in 2006 and her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine

Arts in 2008. Matson-Fluto currently teaches at Minnesota State

University Moorhead and makes work in her studio in Horace,

North Dakota. She exhibits regionally and is included in public

and private collections throughout the United States. Matson-

Fluto also continues her education by partaking in workshops

and master classes with various artists nationwide. She lives in

Horace with her husband and twin sons.

43

Lot #50

Tim SchoutenWinnipeg, Manitoba

Pay list – Treaty 4 (Boy Born), 2012

Oil, dry pigment, beeswax, microcrystalline wax,

dammar resin on canvas

9 x 12 inches

Range: $450 – 600

Tim Schouten has been engaged in The Treaty Suites

project for over ten years. This body of work examines the

eleven “numbered treaties” which were signed between

the Government of Canada and First Nations in Central

Canada between 1871 and 1956.

Schouten's perspective is that of a non-Aboriginal treaty

participant descended from Scottish, Belgian, and Dutch

settlers in the Red River region of Manitoba.

Most of the paintings in this project are based on

photographs that Schouten has taken at the exact physical

locations of the signings of each of the eleven treaties. This

particular work however, Pay list – Treaty 4 (Boy Born), is

one of six small text paintings that were made after

Schouten discovered a copy of an early hand-written

“annuity pay list” for the Fort Qu’Appelle Band of Indians

who for some reason had received Treaty Annuity

payments at Fort Walsh that particular year. The list

included notations on the number of people in each family

receiving payment, and changes in the family since

payments were made the previous year. In this family, it

was noted that there had been a “boy born” during the

previous year and thus the family would receive an

additional $5 for the new member.

The works in this series reflect on the ways in which the

treaty making process, the written treaty itself and related

documents, created the reserve (reservation) system that

we know today. The work asks us to look at the ways in

which the treaty process has defined land divisions,

ownership rights and set the terms which have led to all of

the social and economic inequities that we are all too

familiar with today.

Schouten’s process in creating this work involved

scanning, enlarging and cropping the original document,

and then making a stencil of words, including all of the ink

smears and splotches from the quill pen used to record the

annuity. The canvas was then painted with varied

pigmented wax layers up to a thickness of about one-

eighth inch. Using a stencil, the words are then transferred

to the wax, the lettering carved out with a sharp tool, the

excavation filled with molten-pigmented wax. Once

cooled, the surface worked with scraping tools and irons

to achieve the finished effect.

A Canadian artist based in Winnipeg, he studied at Art

Sake Inc. in Toronto from 1978-1980. He is also a curator,

writer, and art educator. He has exhibited his work across

Canada and in the United States, and his paintings reside

in private and public art collections including the

collections of the Winnipeg Art Gallery, North Dakota

Museum of Art and Cankdeska Cikana Community

College in Fort Totten on the Spirit Lake Reservation.

Schouten was one of six artists commissioned by the North

Dakota Museum of Art to work with the people of North

Dakota’s Spirit Lake Reservation to create a body of

artwork about contemporary life on the Reservation. An

exhibition from the first year was shown at the Robert

Rauschenberg Foundation Project Space in New York’s

prestigious Chelsea Art District in June 2013, followed by

shows at Fort Totten on Spirit Lake, and finally the North

Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks. Prior to this

collaboration, Schouten received a $20,000 commission

from the Museum to begin painting on Spirit Lake (funded

by the National Endowment for the Arts).

44

Lot #51

Lisa YorkGaithersburg, Maryland

Wood Shelf with Cups, 2014

Oak shelf with ceramic cups

Shelf 29 x 16 x 12 inches

Range: $400 – 800

Lisa York is a ceramic artist from the Washington, D.C.

area. She is also delves into wood, glass and book making. She

received her BA in 2008 from Houghton College, a Master’s

Certificate in the Ceramic Arts in 2010 from Hood College in

Fredericks Maryland, and a MFA in 2014 from the University of

North Dakota. She has worked internationally with ceramic co-

ops in Tanzania and Guatemala. Lisa York has also been a

resident artist at the Sanbao Ceramic Art Institute, Jingdezhen,

China, and at the International Ceramics Studio, Kecskemet,

Hungary. She has shown nationally and internationally in China,

Canada, Russia, and Hungary. She is currently an instructor,

ceramic technician, and gallery director at Hood College.

I was exposed to indigenous textiles and ceramics through

international travel, which increased my appreciation of raw,

simplified forms. In my own work, I record similar shapes,

patterns, and ideas I find interesting by drawing on the surface of

the vessel. I leave some ceramic pieces unadorned. Others I

decorate with lines and abstracted flowers, which contribute to

an overall sense of earthiness. My ceramics are organic and

individualistic, with rims that wobble and surfaces that are

asymmetrical. These qualities reinforce the ideas of landscape,

and expand the possibilities of how the pieces are seen and

experienced.

The utilitarian pieces not only promote social gathering, but are

also meant to become cherished objects. The work invites the

user to touch and interact, to feel the materials. She is driven by

her own curiosity about materials and by the challenge of

working with surface, form and function. From the malleability of

clay, to the rigidity of wood, these materials contrast and

complement each other, both in their material characteristics and

human interactions with the finished pieces. Bold lines, circle

designs, and the varied surface of the ceramic vessels invite the

viewer to enjoy the cup, bowl, or plate from every angle.

45

Lot #52

Shawn O’ConnorMinot, Maine

Large Vase, 2014

Stoneware

24 x 18 inch diameter

Range: $900 – 1,400

Shawn O’Connor: My desire is to create useful

objects for service in the home. Growing up, my home life

was strongly focused around the family. Family dinners

were important and rarely missed. My extended family

often gathered for social events such as birthdays and

holidays which always revolved around food. I would like

to extend this sense of comfort and warmth through my

work to others who use it.

Firing with wood also came with my upbringing. I was

raised in a rural Maine home that was heated with a wood

stove during the cold winter months. This meant that the

fire was constantly being fed in order to heat the house.

This required a lot of work and attentiveness to the fire.

Preparing wood for the winter required many days of

hauling, splitting, and stacking. From an early age, I found

the physical labor, the rhythm, and the sense of

accomplishment enjoyable.

My artwork is tailored for the process of wood firing.

During the making, I leave the surfaces of the work quiet

and relatively unmarked to allow the flame to create the

modulated surface that I desire. As a child in Maine, I

became interested in worn river rocks, the erosion of land,

the old weathered farmhouse and the rich colors of leaves

as they change in the Fall. These are all records of time,

change and decay, much like the surface of my work

produced in the wood kiln.

The pieces are marked by the flame, colored by the kiln

atmosphere, christened by ash deposit, and freckled by

erupting impurities. No two pieces are exactly the same,

as the path of the flame records distinct marks on each

piece. The wood-fired surface resembles the way wind and

water erode rock and earth. The flame moves through the

kiln wrapping in and around the work, leaving a mark

dependant on what is next to, touching above or below

that particular piece. The path of the flame can be

controlled when stacking the kiln. Care is spent on each

piece as it is loaded, as this will dictate the way the flame

moves over and marks the surface of the piece.

Shawn O’Connor was born and raised in Minot, Maine

and completed his BFA at the University of Southern

Maine in 2005. After undergraduate studies, O’Connor

became a resident and staff member at Watershed Center

for Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine. He also completed

a six-week residency at the Robert M. MacNamara

Foundation on Westport Island, Maine. In May 2010,

Shawn received his MFA in Ceramics from Syracuse

University. The main focus of his research in graduate

school revolved around wood firing. While at Syracuse,

Shawn designed and constructed a train-style wood kiln.

He published his first article about his kiln in Log Book, an

international journal devoted to wood firing. O’Connor

completed a year long artist-in-residence at Arrowmont

School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee in 2011.

In 2012. he traveled to China as a visiting artist for

West Virginia University. Most recently, O’Connor was a

visiting artist and adjunct professor at the University of

North Dakota.

Kelly Thompson’s recent works in charcoal follow the

aesthetic for which he is most known in his paintings: dramatic

and sweeping depictions of North Dakota landscapes with strong

horizon lines as focal points, dividing his pieces into earth and

sky. This moody new piece shows a fast-moving storm front

blowing across a newly-planted spring field. Both the fertile soil

and the brightening sky hint of hope and better things to come.

Kelly says, Working in charcoal, an artist is challenged to rely

more heavily on composition, form, contrast and texture in the

absence of color. It’s a technique I have cultivated over the years

as a long-time graphic designer with an emphasis in logo design,

where minimalism and editing to essential elements is

paramount. My artwork is never detail-oriented. My preference

is to relate to all things—life and art—in broader strokes.

From Grand Forks, Kelly Thompson resides there and in Bemidji,

Minnesota. He is a local entrepreneur and purveyor of coffee,

screen printing, and real estate. A graduate of the University of

North Dakota, he is the father of three and a member of the

Board of Trustees of the North Dakota Museum of Art. 46

Mariah Masilko: Room With A View is based on a

photograph taken in 2008 on the fourth floor of Weston

State Hospital, a now-abandoned mental institution in

Weston, West Virginia. The asylum was built on the

teachings of Dr. Thomas Kirkbride, an advocate for the

humane treatment of mental illness in the mid 1800s, who

thought the architecture and landscaping could have

curative properties. Every patient deserved a window, so

the light could help with their recovery. The resulting

buildings had long, tiered wards on either side of a central

administration building. Unfortunately, despite good

intentions, many of the patients spent the rest of their lives

institutionalized, particularly women who could only be

released by a male relative.

This scene struck me, because here’s this tiny window

with nothing to see outside but more and more windows,

each one with some other soul behind it, each person in

their own tiny room, with only this to see day after day.

When patients lived here, the plaster would probably not

have been crumbling, and there wouldn’t have been

cracks in the windows. But underneath it all, there always

have been, and unfortunately may always be, cracks and

crumbling spots in the treatment of the mentally ill.

Born and raised in Grand Forks, North Dakota, Mariah

went on to study architecture for a short time at the

University of Oklahoma, then transferred to the University

of Minnesota where she earned her BA in Studio Arts in

1997. She currently lives in St. Paul with her family.

Lot #53

Mariah MasilkoSt. Paul, Minnesota

Room With a View, 2013

Watercolor,

9.5 x 11 inches

Range: $250 – 400

47

Ryan Stander: Land matters. This simple, two-word

sentence sums up much of my artistic practice. As a play on

words, it suggests both the importance of land but also the

particular physical manifestations of it. For years, I have been

drawn to ideas and imagery of the landscape and its cultural

formation. In essence, humanity shapes the land to fit its needs,

and, in turn, the landscape reinforces humanity’s basic beliefs.

This complex social relationship between people and the land

flourishes in both individual and corporate memory, imagination,

and identities. My own photographic work then ranges from

objective topographical surveys to the more romantic ideals

often tied to landscape.

This particular piece is a toned, digital print of an unpaved

parking lot in Minot. A streetlamp casts its light in a shape that

mirrors the neighboring tree and highlights the recent movement

of heavy machinery in the area. The light also makes clear the

boundary cut between the partially cultivated dirt before it

recedes in grassy darkness up the hill behind it.

Originally from the farmlands of northwest Iowa, Ryan is a fairly

recent transplant to central North Dakota. He has alternated his

education between art and religion. An MFA from the University

of North Dakota, an MA in Theology from Sioux Falls Seminary,

South Dakota, and a BA in Art from Northwestern College,

Orange, Iowa. Drawing upon his theological background, the

themes of memory, identity, and place often rise to the fore in his

work. His artistic practice mirror his interdisciplinary education,

spanning photography, printmaking, and book arts. 

His work has been exhibited internationally in South Africa,

Central and South America; nationally in New York, New Jersey

and Texas; and across the Upper-Midwest. Stander is in his third

year as  an Assistant Professor of Art at Minot State University

where he teaches photography and directs Flat Tail Press, a small

art publishing endeavor.

Note: The work is a deep golden brown that comes alive when

seen up close but which is impossible to photograph, according

to Museum Director, Laurel Reuter.

Lot #55

Ryan StanderMinot, North Dakota

Untitled, 2014

Photograph

11.75 x 12 inches

Range: $250 – 400

Left, Lot #54

Kelly ThompsonGrand Forks, North Dakota

Cloud Break Over Field, 2014

Charcoal on paper

76 x 38 inches

Range: $1,100 – 1,300

48

Jay Pfeifer’s art is defined more by his materials and his long

familiarity with them than by any preconceived themes or

designs. From the building sites and construction zones of his

everyday work life, he gathers the raw components—lath, sand,

joint compound, roofing paper, even coffee grounds and motor

oil—to meld and transform into the rich forms and vistas of his

“paintings,” the term he prefers.

It should be noted that the image in the catalog doesn’t come

close to the actual work, which it is painted on a reflected steel

sheet. As one moves around the piece, the color shifts

continuously.

His methods provide a protean means of addressing the scene. A

fretwork of glazed sand might suggest a distant fence line or, at

second glance, an enormous grid of cropland as seen from the

air. A stroke of rust—residue from a soaking trowel—might be

seen as a dry creek bed, an autumn thicket, or the redness of the

evening sky. Having begun under the economy of thrift, using

only the supplies he could salvage, and thus afford, Pfeifer now

instills in his paintings an economy of statement and purpose, the

golden mean of the accomplished artist. There is warmth here,

and stirrings of loss, of home, of slightly remembered ideals, as if

these primal textures and earthen tones might portend the

presence of some broader landscape, the shared memory of

some larger world.

In this, Pfeifer partakes of the creation of myth—from water to

wine, from lead to purest ore—common to the wider range of

painters and sculptors. The singular alchemy of a Pfeifer work is

how his roughest of scavengings, the sticks and the pastes, the

scraps of the waste, have been so effectively recast as an artifact

—as an art—of an idyllic, iconic realm.

Raised in the bread-basket country of Buffalo, North Dakota,

Pfeifer now resides in nearby Fargo, in the heart of the Red River

Valley, 10,000 square miles of bountiful, flat-as-a-tabletop

farmland. After earning an associate’s degree in commercial art

from Consumers River College in Sacramento, California in

1982, Pfeifer spent the next decade attending schools in

California and Utah, and working for contractors throughout the

Midwest and western United States.

Pfeifer returned to the Red River Valley in the fall of 1992. “I

never felt connected to a place other than the Red River Valley,”

Pfeifer says of his decision to return. “This is a place that is

psychologically comfortable for me.” His art reflects this comfort.

A 1995 graduate of North Dakota State University with a BS in

Fine Art, Pfeifer works as a foreman for Roers Construction, a

Fargo commercial contractor, and exhibits his art at various

exhibitions and competitions throughout the region.

Lot #56

Jay PfeiferFargo, North Dakota

Scape III, 2014

Steel sheet, polyurethane, and elbow grease

50 x 34 inches

Range: $2,200 – 2,800

Jay Pfeifer’s painting

is sponsored by

Minnesota Public Radio

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Lot #57

Jenny OWinnipeg, Manitoba

Harriet, from the series “Arctic Delirium”

2011

Mixed media

11 x 3.5 x 2 inches

Range: $400 – 600

Jenny O makes dolls, wonderful dolls, haunting dolls.

A truly original, self-determining, mature artist. One asks,

Why dolls?

According to the May 2004 issue of Border Crossing,

Jennie O tells a story that could break a girl’s heart. Sitting

in her studio, surrounded by fragments of fabric, numerous

pairs of scissors, paintings and dolls, and framed by a

canopy of fetching lingerie that hangs from a makeshift

clothes line, she explains why she makes the art she does.

I guess the doll thing stems from when my parents split up.

I had a million dolls and we had a garage sale and I sold

every one of them. It was a rash decision, and I suppose

I’m trying to make up for the ones I sold.

Jenny O is a self-taught, interdisciplinary artist from

Winnipeg, Manitoba. Best known for her sculptural

narratives, Jennie O aims to draw her viewers into a

subversive yet honest world of biographical experience,

myth and fairytale.

The mixed-media sculptural dolls that she creates are

independent characters of different realms, which connect

to form a broader mythological narrative that alludes to a

specific dream, event or life experience. Beginning with

herself as the protagonist of each endless dream-like story,

she becomes surrounded by family, friends, and foes in the

forms of animal/human, fruit/human or inanimate

object/human hybrids. Tongue-in-cheek at first glance, her

dolls invite the viewer to explore deeper and critically

respond to gender and social roles, the human vs. the

animal, the environment, politics and/or identity.

She holds a BA with a major in Anthropology. Despite

Forbes magazine’s declaration that Anthropology is the

number one worst college major, Jennie O uses her

education to inform her practice. She has orchestrated

large and small community art projects in Winnipeg, in

Canadian First Nation Reserves, and in the United States.

When the North Dakota Museum of Art staff first met her,

she was making art with kids at Art City, a Winnipeg inner-

city drop-in center founded by the international artist

Wanda Koop.

She has received many awards and has exhibited locally,

nationally and internationally. And now she and her

husband, Chris Panceo, have a living doll of their own, a

daughter Lucie Rae O’Keefe.

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Lot #58

Yamin GuanAnhui, China

Chinese Opera II, 2013

27.5 x 27.5 inches

Range: $600 – 1,000

Yamin Guan was born in 1959 in Anhui, China,

where he continues to live. He earned his BA in painting

from Anhui Drama Institute in 1981. Many years after he

graduated from college, Guan was hired as a theater set

designer. Later he became a folk art researcher. Both are

resources that feed into his own artworks, which are

included in regional and national shows. Guan also

organizes community exhibitions of folk art, paper cutting,

brush painting, etc. For such professional work he is paid

by the government for seven to eight hours a day, five days

a week.

His paintings draw inspiration from theater art, Chinese

folk art, and paper cutting. He also finds inspiration from

Western art, especially by the impressionists—Monet,

Picasso, Matisse, and the abstract expressionists. His

works have been featured in many significant national

exhibitions across China. He also won numerous awards

in Anhui Fine Art Exhibitions including a Gold Medal in

2001, Excellent Award in 2004, and Third Place 2006.

His paintings have appeared in countless magazines and

are collected by many private and public institutions

throughout China and abroad.

Yamin Guan’s younger brother is Zhimin Guan who lives

in Fargo and teaches at the University of Minnesota

Moorhead. Every Summer, when Zhimin travels to China,

he gets together Yamin Guan, to discuss art, attend

regional artist residencies, and offer art workshops in many

cities, especially in northeast China.

Zhimin and Yamin Guans’

paintings are sponsored by

JLG Architects

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Lot #59

Zhimin GuanFargo, North Dakota

Tide of the Divine III, 2014

Acrylic, ink and watercolor on

mounted paper

38 x 45 inches image

46.5 x 53 inches framed

Range: $1,800 – 2,500

Zhimin Guan: For the last few years, I have been

experimenting with creating landscape paintings on

various surfaces and scales. My intention has been to

blend traditional landscape painting with expressionism,

conceptualism, and the aesthetics of Oriental philosophy.

Most summers I return to China. In the summer of 2012, I

participated as an artist-in-residence in Xichang City near

the southwest corner of China, between Yunan and

Sichuan provinces, the Lugu Lake areas. I had never been

there before. This region, 9,800 feet above sea level, is

covered by a series of huge mountains (about 900 square

miles of forests and mountains). One must drive ten hours

to reach another city about 300 miles away on circling

mountain roads. It is very beautiful, breath-taking, and

seems dangerous when riding on the charter bus. There

were thirty-five artists from China and the United States

painting every day. It was co-organized by Dantang

Museum in Xichang and Blue Roof Gallery in Sichuan

Province. Temperatures were 50-65 degrees. For me it was

the greatest learning, painting, and travelling experience

ever.

Inspired by that residency, Guan created twenty large-

scale, abstract paintings in various media. These paintings

draw upon his deep respect and affinity for Chinese

calligraphy and abstract expressionism. They also reveal

the influence Chinese landscape painting has on him.

With a minimalistic use of brush strokes, Guan suggests

the spiritual presence of mountains, water, and sky.

Zhimin Guan was born in China in 1962. He started to

paint when he was nine years old, influenced by his father,

Chintian Guan, a traditional Chinese calligrapher and ink

painter. Guan received rigorous training in calligraphy and

traditional ink painting before he was fifteen years old. At

the same time, he developed a strong interest in the

Chinese philosophy of Taoism and ancient Chinese poetry.

During his BFA studies at Fuyang Teachers College in

China, he concentrated on oil painting and again received

intensive training in drawing and painting in the Western

classical style. From 1985 to 1994, he taught painting,

drawing, and design at Dalian Institute of Industrial Design

in Dalian, China. Then in the spring of 1995, Guan moved

to the United States. Since 1998, he has been a professor

of art and design at Minnesota State University Moorhead;

visiting professor at China Dalian University of

Technology, School of Art and Architecture, Anhui Normal

University; School of Art in Wuhu, Anhui Province; and

the Dalian International Institute of Art and Design, among

others. He exhibits widely throughout the United States,

especially in Upper Midwest, and in China.

The proceeds from the

sale of Tide of the Divine III

are donated to the Museum

by Zhimin Guan.

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Lot #60

Greg EdmondsonSt. Louis, Missouri

Mastodon, 2013

Pencil and gouache on paper

11 x 23 inches framed

Range: $600 – 1,000

Greg Edmondson received his MFA from

Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and his BFA

from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he

originally enrolled to study biology and philosophy. His

change of focus transitioned his life from the library and

the laboratory to the studio, but these two initial interests

have remained intact.

His current work takes biological nexus as a launching

point from which to explore the patterns and codes that

run throughout the natural world. Based in simple systems

of organic growth, (repetition, sequence and dispersal),

these works can be viewed as both schematic and

topographical. His drawings themselves are the products

of generative processes, as they toggle and shift between

microscopic and macroscopic perspectives. This exposes

our relationship to both an incalculable substrate and an

inconceivable expanse, illustrating our connection with

the invisible, he says.

Edmondson’s art has been shown widely throughout the

United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. He

holds both Fulbright and DAAD fellowships to Germany,

and has received numerous artist residency grants

including ArtPark, Kunst Haus Munich, Black Mountain

College, Colorado College, Virginia Center for the Creative

Arts, Santa Fe Art Institute, and STARCO.

His most recent solo projects include Broken Line, a 14 x

48 foot billboard installed in St. Louis and Detroit (2013),

and “DIS-ORGANISM,” an exhibition of objects, drawings

and video at Wayne State University in Detroit (2013). This

spring, Greg will spend two months at the Osage Arts

Community in Belle, Missouri.

Greg Edmondson’s painting

is sponsored by

Plains Chiropractic & Acupuncture P.C.

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Photograph by Matthew Borgerson

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Autumn Art Auction

is held in memory of

Long-time Museum Supporters

Robert Lewis

and Ellen McKinnon North Dakota Museum of ArtBoard of Trustees

North Dakota Museum of ArtFoundation

Board of Directors

Evan Anderson

Ganya Anderson

Julie Blehm, President

W. Jeremy Davis

Virginia Lee Dunnigan, Secretary

Kristen Eggerling

Susan Farkas

Bruce Gjovig

Darrell Larson, Chairman

Mary Matson

Sally Miskavige, Treasurer

Laurel Reuter

Lynn Raymond

Tammy Sogard

Linda Swanston

Kelly Thompson, Vice President

Lois Wilde

Joshua Wynne

Corinne Alphson, Emerita

Kim Holmes, Emeritus

Douglas McPhail, Emeritus

Gerald Skogley, Emeritus

Anthony Thein, Emeritus

W. Jeremy Davis

Nancy Friese

Bruce Gjovig

Darrell Larson

Laurel Reuter

North Dakota Museum of Art Staff

Matt Anderson

Guillermo Guardia

Sungyee Joh

Danielle Masters

Todd Pate

Laurel Reuter, Director

Gregory Vettel

Matthew Wallace, Associate Director

Justin Welsh

Brad Werner

Part-time StaffSara Anderson

Curtis Longtime Sleeping

Sheila Dalgliesh

Erika Gallaway

Nathan Guillemette

Chris Gust

Greg Jones

Kathy Kendle

Wayne Kendle

Leanna Niebeling

Sanghyeon Park

Ben Schreiner

Evan Sprecher

Emily Stenberg

and over fifty volunteersFront Cover: Margaret Wall-Romana, 2014. Oil on wood panel, 24 x 16 x 2 inches

Robert W. Lewis (December 15, 1930 – August 26, 2013)

A u t u m n A r t A u c t i o nV o l u m e 1 6 , 2 0 1 4

N o r t h D a k o t a M u s e u m o f A r t

Ellen McKinnon (September 25, 1915 – May 20, 2014)