2015/16 Jerome Fellowship Exhibition

MCAD and the Jerome Foundation are pleased to present an exhibition of new work by recipients of the 2015/16 Jerome Foundation Fellowships for Emerging Artists: Star Wallowing Bull from Moorhead, Minnesota, along with Emmett Ramstad, Lindsay Rhyner, Holly Streekstra, and Samual Weinberg, all from the Twin Cities.

Information Panel

Exhibition Catalog

2015/16 Jerome Foundation Fellowships Exhibition Catalog (PDF)

About the Artists

Star Wallowing Bull mines the complex intersection of Native American and American pop culture in the 21st century with his newest acrylic on canvas paintings and vivid colored pencil on paper drawings. Stylistically abstract but figurative, he synthesizes representational with non-representational images to construct narrative works that address the evolving identities, cultural stereotyping, and societal norms that affect contemporary American Indians.

In 2010 Wallowing Bull was awarded a Bush Artist Fellowship, and in 2001 he received the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian Native Artist Fellowship. His art has been exhibited at the C. N. Gorman Museum, University of California, Davis; Plains Art Museum, Fargo, North Dakota; the Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis; and the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC. He is represented by Bockley Gallery in Minneapolis.

Emmett Ramstad's exploration of what he calls “the intimate ordinary” focuses on mundane objects and the highly individualized, personal routines that surround them. By reimagining ritualized gestures into large, participatory and public installations—such as inviting gallery visitors to experience certain bathroom modifications or to talk to one another in public calling booths—he draws attention to issues surrounding privacy, safety, and domesticity.

Ramstad has exhibited artworks throughout the United States as well as in Amsterdam and Istanbul, including solo exhibitions at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and Rochester Art Center in Rochester, Minnesota. He is a recipient of several grants, including an Art and Change grant from the Leeway Foundation, and a Next Step Fund Grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. He holds a BA from Oberlin College, and an MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Holly Streekstra is interested in raising questions regarding our accepted notions and reactions, our choice to suspend disbelief, and our capacity for doubt. Her most recent foray into placing the inquiring mind at the center of the work’s message is the video piece Spectral Response. Recorded in the Hill House in Northfield, Minnesota, the infrared video follows a body’s exploration of a strange and intimate domestic space. More than the architecture, though, Streekstra was attracted to the many personal and generational histories the house potentially holds.

Streekstra has participated in many group exhibitions and residencies in the United States and abroad and has received several awards. In 2013 she was a Fulbright Scholar in Hungary. She holds a BFA from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and an MFA from Louisiana State University.

Lindsay Rhyner plays with palette, composition, textures, shapes, and motifs to create textile collages from found materials. Working organically and intuitively, her tapestries have grown from more modest proportions to floor-to-ceiling wall hangings. All are made by hand, stitch by stitch. Labor intensive and slow, her practice is obstinately analog in an era where the arts increasingly rely on the digital.

Largely a self-taught artist, Rhyner has participated in local group exhibitions at Bockley Gallery and as part of Made Here and has shown her work in solo exhibitions at Soo Local Gallery and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Her work can be seen in in many private collections in Minneapolis.

Samual Weinberg's practice, while rooted in painting, has grown to include not only strange painted episodes where relationships are tentative and time and space disjointed, but also objects that have left representational for actual space. In his most recent work painting, sculpture, merchandise, soap opera script, and video all conspire to create an intricate frenzy symptomatic of a particular zany aesthetic that challenges the interplay between fiction and reality.

Weinberg recently participated in local group exhibitions at Rosalux Gallery and Gallery 13 in Minneapolis and has shown his work in solo shows at Soo Visual Arts Center, Minneapolis, and Thierry Goldberg Gallery’s Project Room in New York City. He received his BFA from University of Wisconsin–Stout.

About the Jerome Foundation Fellowships for Emerging Artists

The Minneapolis College of Art and Design is honored to have been the administrative home for this fellowship program since its inception in 1981.

The 2015/16 Jerome fellows were selected out of a pool of 220 applicants by a panel of arts professionals that included Ken Lum, artist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design; Monica Ramirez-Montagut, director of the Newcomb Art Museum at Tulane University; and Anne Dugan, executive and artistic director of the Duluth Art Institute.

This competitive fellowship provides $12,000 awards to each recipient. In addition, the fellows have the opportunity to meet with visiting critics over the course of the fellowship year and have access to various MCAD facilities.

About the Jerome Foundation

The Jerome Foundation, created by artist and philanthropist Jerome Hill (1905-1972), seeks to contribute to a dynamic and evolving culture by supporting the creation, development, and production of new works by emerging artists. The Foundation makes grants to nonprofit arts organizations and artists in Minnesota and New York City. The focus of the Jerome Foundation is to support emerging professional artists who are the principal creators of new work, and:

• who take risks and embrace challenges
• whose developing voices reveal significant potential
• who are rigorous in their approach to creation and production
• who have some evidence of professional achievement but not a substantial record of accomplishment
• who are not recognized as established artists by other artists, curators, producers, critics, and arts administrators