Lanesboro Arts is thrilled to present the 2025 Early Career Artist Exhibition! This group exhibition showcases a vibrant collection of works from eight up-and-coming artists working across many different mediums. This year’s iteration of the show includes work by John Armendariz, Elea Besse, Leo Fortune, Sarah Hutchison, Soph Munic, Anh Nguyen, Jennifer Plourde, and Emily Quandahl. Each of these artists presents a unique artistic vision and thoughtful creative perspective that will inspire and delight.
This exhibition will run from February 8th to March 30th, 2025. Celebrate the Opening Reception at the Lanesboro Arts Gallery on February 8th! Hear from the artists and get a first look at their work in a joyfully artful evening.
The Early Career Artist Exhibition (formerly Emerging Artist Exhibition) was developed in 2015 to meet the needs of artists with burgeoning new talent; this juried show gives emerging artists an opportunity to display work in a professional gallery setting. Lanesboro Arts is dedicated to supporting the growth of early-career artists as an important function of its mission to serve as a community arts catalyst. Lanesboro Arts Defines an “Emerging Artist” as an individual who has great potential in their artistic practice, but has not yet received major recognition, has not yet been substantially celebrated for their work, and/or has not yet established significant ‘footing’ within their field.
About the Artists:
John Armendariz creates art inspired by wildlife and my connection to nature, blending intricate line work with loose, expressive watercolor to capture emotion and movement. His use of vibrant colors, abstract details, and a simple palette creates a dreamlike quality while keeping the focus on the subject. As a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, John’s work reflects my cultural identity and love for the natural world, aiming to bring awareness to native wildlife and the beauty of the outdoors. Through my art, he hopes to encourage people to slow down, put their phones away, and take time to connect with nature and the world around them.
Elea Besse is a Saint Paul, Minnesota raised artist. She obtained her Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from Whitman College (Walla Walla, WA) in 2023, with a concentration in Ceramic Studies. She also has a minor in Rhetoric, Writing, and Public Discourse from Whitman which she frequently draws upon in her creative practice. Combining themes of memory, time, place, and environmental processes, Elea’s artwork serves as material means for the exploration of these transient concepts. Her creative process lies in a deliberate
embrace of natural and abstracted forms and utilizing decals, everyday objects and elements from nature. In creating ceramic sculptures and hanging objects, she translates introspective experiences and emotional processes into tactile objects. Elea is currently based in the Twin Cities, Minnesota where she gains much of her creative inspiration from the midwestern landscape and her community.
Leo Fortune believes that art has the power to heal the wounds of being alive. Sitting with a painting is like slowing down and connecting to our breathing; both reconnect us to our body, mind and soul. Grounding in our breath, encouraging our nervous system to be in rest and digest, allows us to process our human experience. In their watercolor paintings, Leo uses symbols like trees, fairy doors and spirals to hold space for vulnerability – to be able to turn inward, face and love all of our parts.
At 24, Sarah Hutchison feels as though they are either on the edge of discovering some sort of greatness, or that they are losing it. “When I was young, I really wanted to be famous. I wanted to be a pop star. When you’re 24 you leave your home to go somewhere new and uncharted, it feels like what being a pop star would feel like. And when you’re actually living it and everyday you don’t know a single person and you’re performing day in day out, it’s basically the same thing.” As the high school art teacher for Fillmore Central, Sarah gets to make art, but this time has 40 tweens and teens looking over their shoulder. They’ve found that their student’s curiosity, their interest, even their indifference has found its way into their work. “They’re pop stars, too.” Sarah makes their work out of an abundance of confidence – out of a feeling that one can do anything when on the edge of something.
Soph Munic uses traditional sewing, quilting, and soft sculpture techniques to recontextualize themes of comfort, memory, and gender. They use found fabrics to investigate their relationship to desire and intimacy. By using craft processes that are associated with “women’s work” and domestic labor, Soph is able to quilt objects that recontextualize gendered expectations in a gendered material. When enveloped in a quilt, the textiles behave as “the first house of the body” (Ann Hamilton) while also fracturing the patchwork of the quilt. Through their work, Soph asks, “How does this fractured pattern play with shape to articulate my experience?”
Anh Nguyen creates work that captures a collision of memories and dreams through collaged images. She explores the unconscious, symbolic, and surreal nature of dreams—a fusion of the past, deep yearnings, and imagined scenarios. Through painting, Anh weaves together these visual fragments, reflecting on their
meanings and drawing a cohesive narrative.
Jennifer Plourde discovered expression through painting later in life. “I made a massive shift in my life that was very painful – it was like jumping off a cliff into the unknown. I initially lost almost everyone in my life, but I held on to a deep faith that there was something more. There was a short time of darkness until my life grew beyond what I could have imagined.” Through finding herself, Jennifer opened her eyes to color, detail, love, and a fullness of life that she hadn’t experienced before. It was what inspired her desire to learn how to paint. She is continually growing and learning how to capture her passion for life in paint. Jennifer hopes that her art inspires a sense of freedom and acceptance, and that others catch a glimpse of the world’s mystery and beauty – how the light illuminates the landscape around us, the shifting clouds, shadows, darkness and light.
Emily Quandahl explores the intersection of domestic craft and the societal perceptions of female pleasure. Emily’s art is rooted in personal experiences, utilizing vibrant colors to create atmospheric vignettes inspired by the brain’s chemical reactions during climatic emotional surges. She begins with an intuitive painting method, using diluted acrylics and dyes on raw canvas to form a foundational layer before dismantling the painted canvas by integrating traditional household crafts such as mending, embroidery, and hand-stitched quilting. This process drives Emily to reflect on the expectations of women and the value of their work and time, while simultaneously slowing down to learn and adapt skill sets that are often overlooked. Through visual representation in Emily’s practice of the two categories women’s sexuality are often placed into, the virgin or the whore, she creates a conversational harmony that lends no more value to one side or the other, a dance between these perceptions that enables her to reclaim the narrative of both.
Featured Image: Details from All Shall Pass #2 by Anh Nguyen and Quilt 4 by Emily Quandahl
The 2025 Early Career Artist Exhibition is a part of our on-going Gallery Equitable Systems Reveiw Project. This work is funded in part by Minnesota Humanities Center with money from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund that was created with the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.
The 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.
For more information visit www.lanesboroarts.org, call 507-467-2446 or email gallery@lanesboroarts.org. The exhibition gallery is located at 103 Parkway Avenue North in Lanesboro.