Community members packed the February 7 opening reception of the “Art from the Inside Out” exhibition at PS1 South, giving me the feel-goods. I saw a woman I used to work with and met her mother; I saw friends and met their grandchild. Artists and their families were there, and it was the most class-diverse art show I’ve attended.
Iowa City Art Exhibits
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At LIAL, queer history is an ever-growing hodgepodge of letters, diaries, doodles, recipes, magazines and ‘GAY ART’
My best friend Valentine will sometimes text me a picture of a page from his old journal. We’ve been friends a long time. Last fall he sent me a page, a beautiful letter — he still writes entries like the poets do, formally — in which he gushes about the sanctity of queerness, of our […]
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Photos: ‘Keith Haring and Iowa City’ exhibition at the Stanley features iconic paintings, local lore
It’s been a month since the exhibition “To My Friends at Horn: Keith Haring and Iowa City” debuted at the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art, but the arrival of Pride Month and the Downtown Summer Gallery Walk are sure to bring new visitors this Friday, June 7. More than a brief escape into […]
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An experts’ guide to Stanley Museum must-sees (besides ‘Mural’)
Sure, Mural represents a breakthrough, American ascendency in the art world. Yeah, yeah, it has its own documentary film. And sure, the new University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art where it’s housed is gorgeous, sexing up Burlington Street like the Voxman before it. But what else should you look for in the Stanley’s collections? […]
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Wild, raw and human: Children of the Clay explore the visceral and delicate in ‘Think Pink!’
Before I entered the current show at Public Space One’s 229 Gilbert gallery, the following cultural references came to mind: my favorite childhood t-shirt, neon pink circa 1991, with fringe across the front; Aerosmith’s “Pink” followed by Janelle Monáe’s “Pynk”; Victoria’s Secret’s athleisure lingerie; and Pepto Bismol disks eaten after a bad egg on a […]
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Fuzzy Daydream is mixed media awash in meaning
In Fuzzy Daydream — an appropriate show to see after the holidays — artists Lydia Diemer, Betsy Hunt and Lindsey Schmitt consider consumption, memory, waste, repurposing and personal identity through textiles. The group offered a virtual artist talk on Jan. 3, and what stood out to me was how much the pandemic loomed in the […]
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Exploring the Great Migration: Axis V installation at PS1 brings past into present
Axis V, on display at Public Space One‘s 229 N Gilbert St location, is a site-specific multimedia work by current Center for Afrofuturist Studies resident Bleue Liverpool, a New York-based interdisciplinary artist. The piece, according to copy provided, “conceptually transfigures the infrastructure of the gallery into a navigational axis line … travers[ing] both intimate geography […]
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Reinhart stuns with bright colors and unexpected patterns
Catherine Reinhart speculates that the quilt blocks at the core of her art are living what she calls their “third life,” imagining that they were originally made to be polyester leisure suits before then being made into the quilt she was gifted and, finally, becoming a part of her work.
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‘Going Home’ to the Ped Mall
Over the next few weeks, as you wind through the labyrinth of fences that define the rat maze within the Ped Mall, be sure to stop at the two pop up spaces (designed by Sanjay Jani of AKAR ARchiTecture) and spend a few moments meditating on the meaning of home as mediated by four local architectural firms.
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Framing synchronicity: Cheryl Jacobsen’s exhibition “Pins, Bones, Gold & Games” opens Friday
Cheryl Jacobsen teaches calligraphy at the renowned University of Iowa Center for the Book, and has assembled artifacts of random finds, collaged to shape, rather than tell, textured stories.
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‘Stranger Reads’ exhibit to feature sci-fi/horror items that inspired ‘Stranger Things’
Stranger Things fans who can bear to pause their Netflix streams are invited to get acquainted with the hit show’s heritage at the University of Iowa Main Library.
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‘EatChewAlive’ art exhibit takes over RADinc. for the month of July
‘EatChewAlive’ is visual artist John Schlue’s debut exhibition in Iowa City — some 14 years after he graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in studio art. The opening reception will be held at RADinc on Sunday, July 2 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., and the exhibition will be up at the downtown storefront gallery until Tuesday, July 25.
