Lanesboro arts is excited to work in collaboration with Minnesotan Artists in various stages of their career to create this summer’s Gallery Exhibition, “Carrying Each Other,” a group exhibition celebrating creative labor and the many ways artists hold their communities together.

Artists were asked to submit work exploring these visible and invisible forms of support, exchange, and mutual care that shape community life and why it matters to them. The work in this show ranges from quilted textiles and leatherwork, to paintings and photo collages, to interactive work and audio recordings, and much more.

This exhibition features work from Shug Munic, Beth Stahn, Clara Wodny, Marge Buckley, Melissa Wray, Andy Kranz, Julia Meles, Lizzie Christian, Ollie Schminkey, Annabel Higgin-Houser, Isabella Dawis, Mary Bruno, Peter Haakon Thompson, and Kordula Coleman.

What does it mean to Carry Each Other? As we have seen in our state, community care and support can be an active, artful, and defiant connector. Holding space, sharing burdens, bearing witness are all forms of deep care particularly held by artists and culture bearers as carriers of stories, traditions, imagination and memory. The loads carried by artists are shaped by experience: this show seeks to shine a light on the unequal loads and historic inequities placed upon marginalized communities as it celebrates community care. This show also holds space for carrying each other into a shared future.

“Carrying Each Other” prioritizes artists who identify as LGBTQIA +, Two-Spirit, BIPOC, disabled, and/or rurally located artists (including those in southeast Minnesota).

About the Artists

• Andy Kranz explores his experiences growing up on a farm through his surreal iconographic representations of the rural, driftless landscapes.
• Annabel Higgin-Houser creates dreamy scenes of a hopeful future or distant world where humans and all living things can thrive through quilting, applique, and crochet. https://annabelhigginhouser.carrd.co/
• Beth Stahn explores the tension bound up in nostalgia through character-driven, boldly staged photographs shaped by domestic life. https://www.bethstahn.com/
• Clara Wodny’s work develops out of a deep love for humanity and all the differences, quirks, and identities that make us who we are. Her featured piece was made in admiration for the people of Minnesota.
• Isabella Dawis is a Filipina-American storyteller, performer, and musician from Minneapolis, whose work traverses the boundary between known and unknown.
• Julia Meles creates work that evokes a sense of presence and play as a way to understand the body, physicality, and disability. https://www.instagram.com/orangejoolia/
• Kordula Coleman focuses on emotions and subjects that inspire her to appreciate life with all its turns, creating evocative ceramic sculptures like those in her “Ice Watch” series. https://www.kordulacolemansculptures.com/
• Lizzie Christian is the one-woman artist behind Rare Press, a whimsical, uplifting illustration and block printing business based in the Twin Cities. https://rarepressmpls.com/
• Mariah Balajadia is an artist and graphic designer based in Decorah, Iowa who created the show’s poster image as a reflection of who we are when we
  care and support one another.
• Marge Buckley is a painter and playwright who uses dramatic colors and surreal compositions as tools of optimism, asserting that oppressive systems can be transformed in radical ways.
• https://www.margebuckley.net/
• Mary Bruno is a St. Joseph-based Printmaker who believes that handmade things carry energy, that humor and tenderness can live side by side, and that craft is a form of care. https://www.mcbrunopress.com/
• Melissa Wray ponders her connection to hope and curiosity as a rural resident through hand quilting and applique.
• Ollie Schminkey has spent the past decade coaching, mentoring, teaching classes and running workshops for poets. https://www.ollieschminkey.com/
• Peter Haakon Thompson’s primary mediums are participation, interaction, and conversation; his work reimagines spaces and symbols to create opportunities for community engagement. https://www.phtpht.com/
• Shug Munic transforms textile waste to tell fragmented stories of devotion through the mundane and show how transformation can reveal a path towards regeneration. https://www.sophiamunic.com/

This exhibition 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.