My daughter JAMIE ELIZABETH HUDRLIK was interviewed and taped in 2017 for Little Village in IOWA CITY.

Fashion Forward: Jamie Elizabeth Hudrlik of Dirty Birdies Vintage

WATCH VIDEO -- click the link! -- you can come back!

 THE AMERICAN RESCUE ART GRANT / 2021-2022

THANK YOU IOWA ARTS COUNCIL FOR AWARDING ME A GRANT OF $5,000 TO CONTINUE MY PROJECT 

LOST IN THE MIDWEST

“These recovery grants represent a significant investment in Iowa’s creative workforce,” Iowa Arts Council Administrator David Schmitz said. “In addition to the grants awarded directly to artists, many arts organizations received support to hire or bring back artistic personnel, many of whom lost jobs, gigs and income during the pandemic.”

Lost in the Midwest will be exhibited in 2022/2023 (postponed bc of Covid) at the BORZELLO GALLERY, KNOX COLLEGE, Galesburg, IL.

"With an eye for the strange and beautiful, artist Sandra Dyas presents an immersive experience in her latest series of photographs documenting people and places in Lost in the Midwest, a visual diary of contemporary Midwest life embellished with a sense of nostalgia. Dyas looks closely at the Midwest’s cultural landscape and the complexity of living here, with the intent of showing what is present and what is slowly vanishing.

Dyas is an intense observer and often finds that she becomes fully absorbed by her subjects, lost in the places and the lives of the people in the images. Popping colors, timeless details, and sensitive portraits define her best known works in the exhibition. Presented with dozens of new images, Lost in the Midwest continues to grow and evolve over time while maintaining a palpable intimacy and familiarity." 

                                                    (from Dubuque Museum of Art publicity for Lost in the Midwest, 2018)

EARTHLY BEAUTY

SEPTEMBER 14 - DECEMBER 30, 2021

In our Forsberg Riverside Galleries we have Earthly Beauty, a collaborative show featuring works by Sue Coleman and Sandra L. Dyas. 

Earthly Beauty muses on the ordinary and often overlooked aspects of the local environment, beauty that is unpolished and raw, quirky and tangled, sometimes difficult to interpret and codify. Though working in different media, these artists’ interest in what is considered “mundane” or “less than significant” speaks of an aesthetic that is integral to the world we inhabit.

For many years Coleman’s work has focused on drawing and painting within the open-ended theme of landscape, which provides many points of departure and return. Dyas, with camera in hand, has made photographs about her surroundings, capturing and constructing images of both place and people for over thirty years. The duo are Lecturers in Art at Cornell College. Dyas teaches photography, video and performance art. Coleman teaches drawing, 2D studio, and serves as Gallery Coordinator.

WATERLOO CENTER FOR THE ARTS

"EARTHLY BEAUTY", a two-woman show is currently being exhibited at the Waterloo Center for the Arts. Susan Coleman, friend and colleague, fellow artist, and myself are very thrilled to be exhibiting our newest bodies of work -- Earthly Beauty! 

"Earthly Beauty" works by Sue Coleman and Sandra Louise Dyas, muses on the ordinary and often overlooked aspects of the local environment, beauty that is unpolished and raw, quirky and tangled, sometimes difficult to interpret and codify.

Curator Chawne Paige is busy hanging the BEAUTIFUL works of Susan Coleman and Sandy Dyas for our new exhibit “Earthly Beauty” going up in the Forsberg Riverside Gallery!!! More details coming soon.

WCA Registrar Elizabeth Andrews is busy working on a new exhibit in the Forsberg Riverside Galleries!!! More details coming soon

More pictures of the women art movers packing the big truck for a trip to Waterloo Center for the Arts. Sandy Dyas and I have regrouped our work for this venue, September 15 into December.

So exciting to get ‘the band’ back together again! Earthly Beauty: Works by Sandy Dyas and Susan Coleman.

There we are; three women and a truck. No, really four women and a truck -- one of the women is taking the photo! Pictured here are me (Sandy Dyas), Susan Coleman and Elizabeth Andrews -- from left to right. 2021. From Cornell College to Waterloo, Iowa!

 
https://www.instagram.com/p/CTGRZIVF0QV/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

To View the Collection go to Vimeo: Tune In To Green

Artist Highlight: the sixth film in “TUNE in to GREEN – Exhibition Four” is by Sandy Dyas @sandy_dyas_photography of Iowa, with music by Catherine Pancake. This clip is from their collaboration, "Elemental: Edgelands". Here we encounter the beauty of those places where the man-made world is decaying back towards its origin in the natural world. The illusion of our separation is laid bare. The circularity of the human condition obvious and unavoidable. “Ebbing and flowing, time just keeps moving forward. Mother Earth and Father Time – ‘life's eternal rhyme.’” To experience their full video amongst a curated selection of 17 other micro shorts, visit https://vimeo.com/ondemand/tuneintogreen

A video of mine is included in this Collection of Short Films -- Elemental: Edgelands (Catherine Pancake: Sound)

Elemental: Edgelands

Diorama Room, LLC was first imagined as an immersive arts space featuring works by artists whose practice is to explore a dialogue between the human and natural realms. Covid-19 rearranged everyone’s plans, but one thing that is being said often is that people are finding solace by slowing down and spending time outdoors. Therefore, for the time being, our dream of a physical space is on hold, but will exist online as a series of quarterly short film exhibitions called Tune in to Green. 

Humans have a symbiotic relationship with nature because we are part of nature. Now more than ever in our lifetimes, we are seeing the ill effects of our unharmonious disregard for the planet as a living, breathing entity. Our hope is that by offering an outlet for entrants and viewers to become more engaged with the natural world, each will develop a deeper understanding of the non-human-beings living around us. The more connected we are to our surroundings, the more we recognize that making personal changes in an effort to improve the well-being of others, improves our well-being too. We can all think of at least one way to lessen our footprint and become a step closer to creating balance between the realms of society/the manmade and the elemental/organic. Let this be a space where we interweave the surprises of what we do not control, with our own individual mark as artists. 

  See the trailer below for Exhibition Four, ending November 19, 2021. The full exhibition is 80-minutes running time including short films, artist statements, and bios from artists around the world. Featured artists include the following:

Daniela Zahlner – Vienna, Austria; Victória Okubo & Gustavo Maan – São Paulo, Brazil; Eva Klaus – Belgium; Max Schleser & Martin Koszolko – Melbourne, Australia; Jil Guyon & Chris Becker – New York City; Sandra Dyas & Catherine Pancake – Iowa;  Zoran Dragelj – Vancouver, Canada; Enrique Cabrera – Seattle, Washington; Stephanie Reid & Todd Rychener – Austin, Texas; Erika Yeomans – New York City; Alexandra Constantinou – Houston, Texas; Karim Ghonima – Houston, Texas; Deb Todd Wheeler – Boston, Massachusetts; Szabina Péter & Kristóf János Bodnár – Hungary; Lígia Teixeira – Paraná, Brazil; Joanna Decc – Tkoronto, Canada; and Mary Trunk – Altadena, California

 HOMEGROWN STORIES -- THE YEAR OF THE POET

http://homegrownstories.com

This is the second installment of Homegrown Stories’ Year of the Poet. We again asked Melissa Ginsburg for an inspirational poem and, with Apollo, she did not disappoint.

This collection of experimental videos is a curated group of international artists. Our ten video artists have reimagined Apollo’s birth, reign, and demise through music, image, and text.

This is excerpted from Prairie Lights Virtual - Zoom: Melissa Ginsburg in conversation with Alexander Chee - Women's Resource & Action Center | The University of Iowa

"Melissa Ginsburg is the author of the novels The House Uptown and Sunset City, the poetry collection Dear Weather Ghost, and two poetry chapbooks, Arbor and Double Blind. A second poetry collection, Doll Apollo, will be published in 2022 by LSU Press, and the poetry chapbook Apollo is forthcoming in June from Condensery Press. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Guernica, Kenyon Review, Fence, Southwest Review, and other magazines. Originally from Houston, Texas, Melissa studied poetry at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Mississippi. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with two dogs, eleven chickens, and the writer Chris Offutt.”

"red roses for gertrude stein"

My experimental poetry video was selected to be screened publicly at The Culture House in Copenhagen, Denmark this fall, 2021. "red roses for gertrude stein" is an experimental and serendipitous video poem featuring Caroline and Araminta tossing a blue ball back and forth in the air. The Siegling Barn (1863-2016) stands precariously behind them. Two weeks passed after the making of this video. July 30th, 2016 it collapses.

Poetry can be found when looking all around us. This festival focuses on the poetics of nature and environment, and will take place in October at the Cultural House of Islands Brygge, a municipality in Copenhagen. 

"red roses for gertrude stein" on Vimeo

 

NATURE & CULTURE

   PRESS RELEASE

Recipient of Iowa Arts Recovery Grant: 

Iowa invests $7 million in recovery grants for arts, creative and cultural sector December 22, 2020. A total of 267 cultural organizations and 152 artists serving 118 Iowa communities will receive a share of $7 million in grants announced today by the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs. 

As an individual artist and a member of the Iowa Arts Council, I applied and will receive $2500. This money is very appreciated! Thank you Iowa!

Gov. Kim Reynolds allocated the funding, made possible by the Coronavirus, Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, on Dec. 2. The department launched the Iowa Arts & Culture Recovery Program the same day and received more than 550 requests totaling more than $36 million by the Dec. 11 deadline.