Kari Maxwell

Kari's website

Kari's Artist Statement:

It started with play. For me, it ends with play too. As a painter, I had completed a large body of work for an exhibit in January of 2008. In an effort to both rest and also feed my need to keep creating, I started collaging. I viewed this as a temporary exercise eventually leading me to a future body of work. What began as a playful, meditative exercise is now an integral part of my daily life. I make an effort to create everyday. Currently, my work seems to be ALL over the board. One might call it random but I choose to call it related (and I may or may not find out how this is the case - ever). Exercising my freedom to create is who I am. Expressing gratitude for creative inspiration is what I do. I started out a beginner and found out I am always a beginner (at everything) and hope to keep it that way. With this mentality, joy visits me everyday. Once I choose to produce, joy is squelched and the true being of who I am in unable to create it's voice. Being able to create has taught me that soul is so much more important than agenda, and joy can be discovered through truth.

Kari is represented by galleries in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Montana. For more information about upcoming events and other work, please contact Kari at karimaxwell@mac.com

Julia Babb

Julia's website


Julia's Artist Statement:

I am on a search and create mission! I have been exploring and working in the artistic forms of movement, calligraphy, and photography. My abstract photographic work centers on layering the reflective, distorting, and transparent qualities of glass and light. My Physicalligraphy concept involves making very large, "me-sized" letters (holding a very large sponge in my hands as the 'nib', I am then the 'pen') to much smaller letters, layered over one another, or aligned so that the meaning of the text changes or becomes, in fact, meaningless. I have also discovered that there is a corollary grace in the movement of making large letters to the movements of Tai Chi, and I want to move in such a way that also suggests that I myself am calligraphic—an ink mark on the world, a message in my own right.
I enjoy finding ways to pull photography off the wall, getting it out into the middle of the room where it can be engaged with, both physically and conceptually. I am pushing movement by combining it with these historically more static forms, and pushing both photography and calligraphy by blurring the distinction between text and images. I am pushing all three forms by finding ways to digitize them. I just discovered Chroma Key paint for instance with its videographic capacity to provide a ground for embedded images. I am curious if it works while wet, and how that might change the appearance of the letters or images. I also want to use conductive fabric, to which LEDs can be sewn in letter shapes, and then messages or meaning can be controlled remotely.
I am currently investigating questions regarding the left brain/right brain dichotomy, the movement and growth of language, living the question of dualism while inhabiting the middle, spiritual healing, paradoxical thinking, and change. At the moment, I am reading three books which are representative of the directions I am taking in my work and in my development as an artist: Pema Chodron's Comfortable With Uncertainty, in which she proposes that we align ourselves with change instead of resisting it; Stuart Heller's The Dance of Becoming: Living Life as a Martial Art, which explores movement as a path to wholeness; and Derm Barrett's The Paradox Process, a book that addresses creative problem solving through oppositional, juxtapositional and integrational thinking.

Contact Julia at juba423@gmail.com

Kat Corrigan

Kat's website


Kat's Artist Statement:

I am very interested in contrast lately, and in the difficulty of painting the spaces between spaces. My paintings are a means of communication, my attempts at revealing my view of the world to other people so there can be a measure of understanding between us. There is a clear truth in animals that I have always preferred over human conversation. I can often be naive about social structures, preferring the clear and open dialogue to the confusion and doublespeak of most media transmissions.
I love painting the edges of things- trees, telephone poles, dog's back legs.... I use these every day visuals as my means of expression. My paintings are very sculptural; I am using color more boldly and am able to define something in the forms that I struggled with in the past. I greatly enjoy the intensity of the colors set against the black canvas, the vibrancy of the common-place.

Contact Kat at katjojo@hotmail.com

Cami Applequist

Cami's website


Cami's Artist Statement:

"You only see what you look at….to look is an act of choice."
John Berger

My work is about seeing. It is about choosing to look in order to see. It is about the potential to recognize the reality that surrounds us in its entirety rather than accepting the limited reality that others would like us to believe is the whole of what is. We are bombarded with images that we look at because others make that choice for us in their magazines and newspapers, on their billboards and websites, in their stores and even in schools. What we are looking at often doesn’t provide us with an opportunity to make or understand our own reality nor can it help us to know ourselves and the world. By deciding to travel this world choosing to look at what really is I have been able to notice realities beyond the limited reality we are conditioned to see. When I catch a glimpse of a tree through pink glass I see a new tree: one that resides in a pink sky. When I see a shadow of a toy dancing on the counter I see a reality where toys dance. The destruction and mess of a fallen tree give way to an image of the complex beauty that resides within. A flower becomes a home for light. A reflection off of a car tells the story of a flying cow. I work at capturing images of the new realities I find for myself and bringing them to the viewer without digital manipulation. The final image is just as I saw it. I enjoy sharing the images with others because the images themselves gain new meaning and new stories from each person who chooses to look. It is my hope that the lives of the images will continue to grow and that their own realities will expand. My goal is to capture and share images that will act as stepping stones for viewers to begin a new way of looking: a way of looking that will offer them the ability to see what their own true reality is.

Contact Cami at CamiApplequist@aol.com

Claudia Poser

Oracle, terra cotta, 8.5' x 12', commission installed at the Westin Galleria, Edina, MN, 2008

Claudia's website

Claudia's Artist Statement:

I love to play with shape, color, and pattern, but most of all I love to play with clay. I’m motivated by those moments of fusion with the material when time and judgment drop away and there is only touch and the beguiling chocolate color of wet terra cotta. As an artist educated in science, the technical aspects of glazing and firing attract me as well – I enjoy working at the interface between art and technology.

The tension between order and emotion, the rational and the organic, intrigues me. My most recent body of work began as a series of wall pieces and has evolved into a growing progression of pods that relate to each other in groups or in larger installations. I use an abundance of repetitive, organic shapes to explore nature’s instinctive drive toward reproduction, adaptation and survival that thrives in spite of human efforts to impose order.

Contact Claudia at claudiaposer@mac.com

Jean Leuthner

Jean's website

Jean's Artist Statement:

I’m alone on a mountain top or on a lake. I cannot be reached by cell phone and nobody knows exactly where I am in this moment. I’m traveling, or I’ve broken away from the group. There is a connection to this place that I will always remember. I am alone and I can really take it in. It is a beautiful moment of discovery.

My oil paintings come out of this moment, because I am in a place that gets into my blood, my head, and my heart. My subject matter always comes back to nostalgia for a time or place, whether a landscape or a moment in history. It stems from a deep connection to my family history. I’m currently working on a series of paintings of the north shore. This is a place I have felt a connection to beginning with family trips as a child. My hope is that the viewer will recognize and resonate with this special place.

Contact Jean at jeanleuthner@yahoo.com

Savita Bettaglio

Savita's website

Savita's Artist Statement:

My current work is a visceral exploration of energy. I am intrigued by the possibilities of the human experience. I strive for literal and emotional depth through my technique of layered movement and use of bright colors. I am inspired by Latin art as well as the magic of tribal symbols

My paintings are born during meditation and when a particular shape or color appears I paint with those shapes and colors and soon the creative process forms my work.

Art making is an evolving practice of faith and staying present in the moment. I see painting as a journey in turning the eye inward. My paintings are abstract and yet very personal narrations that have grown out of my desire to discover, deepen, and enliven. My hope is that my work will welcome you into the elements of Self.

Contact Savita at savita@espiralart.com