Exhibition - Course of Nature

About

The Anderson Center presents Course of Nature, a mixed media group exhibition in the Main Gallery that opens October 9 and runs through November 21, 2020. The Anderson Center stewards nearly 300 acres in the Cannon River Valley as a nature preserve. Four featured artists engage with land, water, and plants as co-creators in their work. They make images of place or use foraged organic materials to create ephemeral works that tread lightly on the land while exploring their relationship within the broader ecosystem.

Course of Nature features artwork by Emily Donovan and former artists in residence David Andree (2017), C. Anthony Huber (2018), and Alyssa Coffin (2019).

David Andree is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores landscape as a subject of flux through painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and sound. David holds a Master of Fine Arts from the State University of New York (SUNY), received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), and currently holds the position of Assistant Professor at the School of Art in Fayetteville, AR where he resides in the Ozarks.

Alyssa Coffin is an interdisciplinary artist from New England. She graduated from Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts, with studies in visual art as well as creative writing. She has traveled widely, including a formative period in Ireland, focusing on environmental interventions and performances. She was recently artist in residence at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Her recent book, Remergence, juxtaposes poetic reflections with her artwork as an exploration of death and creation. She currently resides in Knoxville, TN.

Emily Donovan‘s paintings are created on paper with handmade dyes from natural materials using methods and recipes, centuries old. Her process includes a bit of chemistry, observation of plants and seasonal cycles and research about the origins of color. Time spent outdoors observing, gathering and then creating color allows her a special relationship with landscape and an appreciation of the numerous species which coexist in our ecosystem. Donovan’s work explores the balance between human interaction, environment and the fragility of this symbiotic relationship. The natural color she makes becomes a representation of these discoveries where one can celebrate what the natural world has to offer and age old traditions that are passed from one generation to the next.

C. Anthony Huber utilizes painting, drawing and sculptural processes to examine the tension between erosion and reconstruction. Huber is interested in the conflict between utilitarian materials such as construction detritus and art materials. Based in Iowa City, Huber’s work speaks to our natural human tendency to find patterns, and our predilection to match what we see to what we know. He seeks to define patterns in the compositions that intimate a sense of balance within a process that appears to be haphazard, experimental and physical in nature.

Handicapped accessible and free to the public, the Main Gallery at the Anderson Center is open Wednesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. with extended hours on Thursdays until 7 p.m. This exhibit is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

Featured image by C. Anthony Huber