Sioux City Journal

Upcoming: You Want a Piece of Me? Exhibition

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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!

A Reminder to Check Out the SCAC's 34th Annual Youth Art Month Exhibition

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The opening reception and awards ceremony of the Sioux City Art Center’s 34th Annual Youth Art Month Exhibition was great! I enjoyed getting to meet some of the artists and seeing their family and friends celebrate their accomplishments. If you’re in the area and haven’t yet checked it out, it is open through April 9, 2023.

Here’s some local press coverage which also highlights my role as the juror:

My juror statement, printed in the show brochure:

It was a pleasure to jury the Sioux City Art Center's 34th Annual Youth Art Month Exhibition. Making artwork is a hallmark of the human experience; it is personal expression through creative risk-taking and problem-solving. Youth arts education has been linked to students' increased civic engagement, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, innovation, interdisciplinary synthesis, and motor skills. As viewers, I hope that - as I did - you see pieces in this show that bring you joy, challenge you, expand your horizons, and teach you something new.

To the artists: thank you for sharing your time and talent! Whether your work made it into this show or not, please continue to create and share your art; every piece has its own voice and power. In fact, the quality of submissions was so high that it was very hard to narrow them down to the pieces I eventually selected for display. I prioritized choosing a diversity of subject matter, art media, and techniques in 2D, relief, and 3D. I'm very excited to see the exhibition professionally installed, and I hope you are too!

Sioux City Journal Feature!

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A screenshot of the beginning of the SCJ feature

I’ve been getting some nice Louisiana press for my summer LSU Vet Med artist residency, and now there’s great local coverage as well - with more in the works! Here’s the Sioux City Journal digital article “Morningside professor participates in first-ever artist residency at LSU vet school” by reporter Dolly Butz, and here’s a PDF of the print version!

Storm Drain Decoration in My Painting I Class!

Timed for Earth Day and in collaboration with the Sioux City Environmental Advisory Board and the Morningside Sustainability Committee, my ART 225 Painting I class took on an extra-credit project to decorate two campus storm drains with goals of raising awareness (what goes into the storm drains comes right back out again without mediation into a local creek that feeds into Bacon Creek which feeds into the Missouri River) and beautification.

The first storm drain we painted on Earth Day itself, and there was a bunch of press interested in documenting it! We had crews from Morningside’s Marketing Department, the city of Sioux City, local ABC News affiliate KCAU 9, and the Sioux City Journal documenting our work, which was pretty fun.

Here’s a group photo of the completed piece, which is directly in front of the Morningside community gardens! The paint we used will hopefully hold up for a while, but when it eventually flakes off, it is biodegradable and should not contribute to the problem of storm drain pollution.

Me and my ART 225 Painting I students who worked on the Morningside Community Garden storm drain site!

A second group of ART 225 Painting I students and I painted a second site which is located across from our new agricultural greenhouse the following Tuesday. The weather was colder than we’d have liked, but we persevered! Note that some chalk blueprints are still visible in the photo but will be rinsed away with the next rain.

Me and my ART 225 Painting I students who worked on the new agricultural greenhouse storm drain site, minus one who had to leave a bit early.