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Schliesman exhibition at Kaddatz Gallery [UPDATED]
Published 9:09am Thursday, December 13, 2012 Updated 11:12am Thursday, December 13, 2012The space at the Kaddatz Gallery has undergone an amazing transformation, thanks to artist Naomi Schliesman’s new exhibition Form.
Rich, bright colors create energy and pop off the walls. The varied textures of velvet, fleece, wood, and paint draw the viewer into Schliesman’s world.
Schliesman’s installation starts with a skyline: an assemblage of the various places where the artist has worked over the last two years. Most recognizable to Fergus Falls’ viewers would be the RTC tower, which is surrounded by silhouettes of historic buildings from Amsterdam, Edinburgh, and Dundee (Scotland). Schliesman plays with the relationships between natural and manmade materials, rural and urban, and tactile and smooth surfaces. The final component of the work is you, the viewer.
Schliesman is interested in how the viewer interacts with the landscape and architecture present in her work.
The environment she has created is so tactile and welcoming you can’t help but be drawn in.
After graduating from Fergus Falls High School in 1997, Schliesman attended Minnesota State University in Moorhead. She then continued on to receive her Masters degree from UW Madison in 2009. Her work is informed by her family’s background as laborers, including seamstresses and woodworkers. This allowed Schliesman to learn to work with her hands and various tools from an early age.
Currently, Schliesman works at Minnesota State University Moorhead as the gallery director and resides in Fergus Falls where she works with the community in teaching art classes for all ages. In the past two years, Schliesman received a Fellowship from Ragdale and Kimmel Hardening Nelson Center for the Arts, to attend residencies. Schliesman also placed in the Miami University Young Sculptors Competition for William and Dorothy Yeck Award.
She received three grants this fall from the Nelson Family Foundation, Nebraska Arts Council and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment, and the Nebraska City Fine Arts Committee to work with the London based artist Joan Michelson in Nebraska City for the school for the blind. Schliesman continues to show her work nationally and has shown work in New York, Pennsylvania, California, Washington, Ohio, Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Illinois.
The exhibit, Naomi Schliesman: Form, will be on exhibition at the Kaddatz Gallery through Jan. 6.
Interested in a group tour? Contact Gretchen Boyum at 218-998-4405.
