Exhibitions
Here are some photos of my solo show Biophilia at the Le Mars Arts Center, taken by their executive director Draven Haefs! Note that not all galleries/pieces on display are documented here, but it’s a representative subset. The slideshow includes an image from the reception as well! As a reminder, this show will be up through February 26, 2026 if you want to stop by and see it in person.
Just a reminder that I have a painting on display in the juried group exhibition Local Perspectives at the Sioux City Art Center, but the show ends on February 8th so there are only a couple more weeks to check it out!
The Sioux City Art Center is located at 225 Nebraska Street, Sioux City, Iowa 51101.
Happy New Year! As I posted about once before, I have a solo show at the Le Mars Arts Center - Biophilia opened yesterday, and will run through February 26, 2026. The Le Mars Art Center is located at 200 Central Avenue South, Le Mars, IA 51031. We now have reception info to share as well!
My Biophilia art show reception will be on Thursday, January 15th from 5-7pm.
The art center’s overall business hours are:
Tuesday 01:00 pm - 05:00 pm
Wednesday 01:00 pm - 05:00 pm
Thursday 01:00 pm - 07:00 pm
Friday 01:00 pm - 05:00 pm
Saturday 10:00 am - 04:00 pm
Closed Sundays & Mondays
I have a solo show coming up at the Le Mars Arts Center! Biophilia will run January 2 - February 26, 2026. The Le Mars Art Center is located at 200 Central Avenue South, Le Mars, IA 51031.
Their business hours are:
Tuesday 01:00 pm - 05:00 pm
Wednesday 01:00 pm - 05:00 pm
Thursday 01:00 pm - 07:00 pm
Friday 01:00 pm - 05:00 pm
Saturday 10:00 am - 04:00 pm
Closed Sundays & Mondays
I’ll let you know once we have selected a reception date and time!
Here are some show photos from my Flora, Fauna, Form: Japan solo show up in Eppley Art Gallery at Morningside University through October 17th! My original paintings, ceramics, and Japanese workshop results (including an indigo-dyed blazer, handmade chopsticks, and a kintsugi-repaired dish) are on display alongside professional development research and promotion.
You can click onto any of the thumbnails below to see larger images!
I had a painting, Incursion, juried into the competitive regional group show Local Perspectives at the Sioux City Art Center.
44 artists’ work was selected by curator Christopher Atkins from over 250 submissions by 100 artists.
Local Perspectives is up from October 2, 2025 - February 8, 2026. The opening reception is on Thursday, October 2nd from 5-7pm. The Sioux City Art Center is located at 225 Nebraska Street, Sioux City, Iowa 51101.
I’m excited to see everything that got in at the opening reception!
I’ve had quite a few solo shows this year, and this is the last for 2025: Flora, Fauna, Form: Japan opens in Morningside University’s Eppley Art Gallery on September 17 and runs through October 17. It encompasses the past two years of my studio practice, which have been focused on Japanese ecology and art.
This exhibition is free and open to the public, and will feature my own original artwork along with professional development promotion. The reception will be on Wednesday, October 1st from 3-4pm, and I hope to see you there!
Once again interrupting my Japanese posts to remind you that the invitational You Want a Piece of Me? exhibition which I previously posted about here ends on August 17, 2025, so due to the gallery’s open hours you have two more dates left in which to stop by! I’ll get more into that below, but first, let’s do a deep dive into what I did.
This show asked artists to create art using a jigsaw puzzle, or puzzle pieces, as part of the art - and to leave at least some portion of original puzzle visible. You may recall that last year we did a similar challenge using board games, and here is what I did for that Advance to Gogh show in 2024!
For You Want a Piece of Me?, I needed to recycle puzzles - but I don’t own any, so I stopped by a thrift store and perused their offerings. I ended up buying three puzzles, mostly based on the differing scale of the pieces. I hadn’t decided what to do yet, but I figured owning these puzzles was a good first step. They were, in order of scale: L.O.L.Surprise! Floor Puzzle [large pieces], Milton Bradley lambs puzzle [medium pieces, 1 original piece held in an octopus tentacle], Milton Bradley Big Ben waterfall puzzle [small pieces, 1 original piece held in an octopus tentacle].
I pondered what I wanted to do with them for some time, as I wanted to make something that was still my own but that also satisfied the challenge parameters. I eventually decided I’d make a sort of topography out of the puzzles. This required actually building them, which for the 1000 piece puzzle took far longer than I wanted it to; I ended up building the other two easily but only assembling a few sections of the Milton Bradley Big Ben waterfall puzzle until I had enough connected material to satisfy my needs.
Then I built up a patchwork foundation, purposefully rejecting any edge pieces as I wanted the sculpture to communicate growth potential along its full border. After I glued it together and somewhat leveled its base, I then sculpted an octopus atop it. I formed the octopus out of QCC, clutching a mid-sized puzzle piece in one of its tentacles and a small piece in another. I also added some sand ridges. After curing, I painted the whole sculpture! Here are some progress pictures:
And here’s the finished piece! This is Construct, acrylic, QuickCure Clay, glue, and puzzle pieces, 16x25.67x3.25", 2025.
If you want to see Construct and the other Gallery 103 You Want a Piece of Me? entries in person, you can stop by either tomorrow (Saturday, August 9th) or next Saturday, August 16th between 10am and 1pm. Gallery 103 is located on the ground floor of the Ho-Chunk Centre located at 600 4th St, Sioux City, IA 51101.
My June 2025 show card design for Ikigai, Continuing.
The Arts Itoya residency show and reception was scheduled earlier in June 2025 than it was in June 2024 and I arrived five days late due to my show at Kansai Gaidai, so I only had three works finished for my Arts Itoya show (as well as a work in progress!). I titled my show Ikigai, Continuing 「生き甲斐・再び」, to connect it to my June 2024 Arts Itoya show Ikigai 「生き甲斐」. To the right you can see the show card face which I designed!
The reception was a great time; it was four hours long and quite a few people stopped in to check it out. I had invited a very well-known artist from Takeo, Takeru Niizato, to stop by (and also asked if I could set up a visit to his atelier after our show came down); he was very kind and took the time to attend our reception and scheduled our visit for later that week.
Below are some photos from my show reception!
I’m also excited to share that I’ll have a solo show Terra Traces at Coyote Gallery in Vermillion, South Dakota, from July 17 - August 31, 2025. The reception will be on Saturday, July 19th from 3-5pm. I hope there’s good turnout!
The Vermillion Cultural Association operates the First Dakota Coyote Gallery (colloquially called Coyote Gallery) which is located at 12 E. Main Street, Vermillion, SD 57069. Below is the show poster designed by Vermillion Cultural Association Executive Director Shannon Cole!
I’m interrupting my Japanese posts (which will continue!) to share that the Summer 2025 ArtWalk is on Thursday, July 10, 2025, starting at 5:30pm at the Sioux City Art Center in Sioux City, IA. Visitors can walk from there to Gallery 103, 3Rivers Art Gallery, ArtSUX, and Vangarde Arts. At each venue, visitors will see artworks that follow the theme: You Want a Piece of Me? Over 30 local artists (including me!) have created art using a jigsaw puzzle, or puzzle pieces, as part of the art.
The Sioux City Journal published a cover article titled "Putting It Together" about the event and exhibition on Monday, June 30th with some flattering descriptions and a sneak peek detail of my submission which will be at Gallery 103. To respect the SCJ paywall, I'll just include an image of the part of the article that's about me! (You can click on it to expand the image if you’d like.)
Every location will offer a chance to see our art community's creativity, and snacks and beverages, too. If you want, you will also be able to use your phone and a posted QR code to vote for your favorite artwork! The First Place winner of the People's Choice Award will receive a fine-art wood-crafted jigsaw puzzle from Liberty Puzzles in Boulder Colorado. The Second Place winner will receive a $100 gift certificate to a class at the SCAC.
After the reception is over, I’ll share my piece in its entirety for those of you who can’t make it to the ArtWalk!
I’m so excited to share that my solo show in Yamanashi City’s Nezu Memorial Museum opened today!
The exhibition poster I designed for Living Bridges: Art, Ecology, and Sister City Connections.
As you may already know from previous posts, Yamanashi City is the Japanese sister city of Sioux City; I met their visiting delegation in honor of our 20th year of this sister city relationship at Morningside University in November 2023 and then visited Yamanashi City with Morningside University board member Mia Sudo in July 2024 after my Arts Itoya residency in Takeo-onsen, Japan.
Between then and now, many folks have come together to help celebrate all of these connections and the 20th year of Yamanashi City’s incorporation by having me present a solo art show in Nezu Memorial Museum! This has been a monumental undertaking that could not have been accomplished without the support of many people including Morningside University board member Mia Sudo, the Morningside University administration, Yamanashi City mayor Takagi, Ms. Yokoyama from the Yamanashi City Local Resource Development Division, numerous Yamanashi City Hall staff and Morningside University colleagues.
Living Bridges: Art, Ecology, and Sister City Connections will be on exhibit from April 26 - May 24, 2025, and I will be on site during its final exhibition week!
As you may recall from this post, I was invited to participate in the show Food for People at the University of South Dakota Art Galleries. I attended the closing reception on Friday, March 28th, and it was fun to see all the other artwork on display as well as chat with some of the participants and viewers! Here are a couple of photos I took of the show statement as well as of my own installed artwork. In making these tile paintings, I intentionally have not grouted them into a fixed viewing situation, and I found it interesting how this show’s preparator chose to orient and install them!
My artwork has been juried into the Orange City Arts 2025 Regional Art Show Stewards of Creation, which will be on display April 5 - May 3, 2025. I have one painting and two ceramic vessels in this exhibition; my colleague Shannon Sargent and my student Eli Boyd Harris also each have an artwork in the show as well!
The exhibition is located in the NWC DeWitt Theatre Arts building at 721 Albany Ave SE, Orange City, IA 51041. Viewing hours are Mondays-Saturdays, 9am to 10pm. Cash prizes will be awarded to ‘Best in Show’ and ‘Honorable Mention’ at the closing reception on May 3, 2025!
As you may recall, I attended a month-long residency at Arts Itoya in Takeo-onsen, Japan in June 2024. Bookending my residency, I traveled to other locations in Japan including Sioux City’s sister city, Yamanashi City. I am now very excited to share that thanks to the support of the Yamanashi City Hall and the encouragement and backing of Morningside University board member Mia Sudo, I have been invited to return and have a solo show in Yamanashi City in May 2025 in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Yamanashi City incorporation at the Nezu Memorial Museum Exhibition Building. After that exhibition’s conclusion, the show and I will continue on to Kansai Gaidai University in Hirakata (part of the Kyoto metro). Yamanashi City, Kansai Gaidai University, and Morningside University are all assisting to make these amazing opportunities possible.
I am extremely honored and grateful for the chance to exhibit with both of these institutions! 楽しみです！ベストを尽くす！
I’ve been invited to exhibit an artwork in the upcoming group show Food for People at the University of South Dakota Art Galleries, which “seeks to build community through thoughtful discussion of food.”
The show will run March 4 - April 1, 2025 with a closing reception on Friday, March 28th from 5 - 7pm. The address is: University Art Galleries, 414 East Clark Street, Vermillion, SD 57069.
I have ten ceramic pieces in the upcoming Cultural Corner Art Guild & Gallery’s Pottery, Glass & Jewels Exhibition in Chillicothe, Missouri! My good friend Susan Nelson will also have work on display, so you should really check this show out if you have the opportunity.
The show will run from October 5 - November 15, 2024 with a closing reception on Friday, November 15th from 5-7pm. Here is their website, and their address is 424 Locust St, Chillicothe, MO 64601.
If you’d like, you can vote for my piece Symbolism in the Outta Pocket Exhibition’s People’s Choice Award by clicking here. It’s a simple one-page Google form.
I imagine voting closes on August 23rd as awards are announced that evening, so try to vote by August 22nd!
I was juried into the national ceramics exhibition Outta Pocket by juror Nicholas Geankoplis who serves as the ceramics program director at Kansas State University. This exhibition “highlights creative work using clay or ceramics in an atypical, non-traditional, eclectic or eccentric way.” My included piece is Symbolism, which is an acrylic painting on five partially deglazed 19th century ceramic tiles and tile fragments.
Outta Pocket is on exhibit from July 29 - August 23, 2024 at the Manhattan Arts Center, Philip & Jeune Kirmser Gallery, 1520 Poyntz Ave., Manhattan, KS 66502. There will be three show awards announced at the closing reception on August 23.
