Lower Your Expectations
| Date |
8 a.m.
Thursday, November 12, -
5 p.m. Friday, December 18, 2020 |
| Location | Johnson Gallery - View maps and directions |
| Instructions for Guests | If you have a current Bethel ID: Please visit the gallery any time during open hours, wear a face covering, and follow social distancing best practices. The space limit is 16 people in the gallery at one time. If you are a Bethel community member and would like to bring an off-campus visitor to see the show: Visitors will be asked health screening questions at the gate and will be required to comply by Bethel's mask and social distancing polices while on campus. Visitors can enter the building with a Bethel community member with a current Bethel ID. If you are an Off-Campus Visitor: Please contact m-westmark@bethel.edu to make an appointment 48 hours before you wish to see the exhibition. We will do our best to accommodate your request. |
Event Description
Lower Your Expectations
New works by Ashely Peifer and Laura Wennstrom
Physically On View by Appointment: November 12 - December 18, 2020
Virtually On View: Instagram @bethelgalleries
Lower Your Expectations features the work of two artists who are teaching at Bethel this semester. All of the work in this exhibition was made during the unprecedented year that has been 2020. Using various materials, both artists have invented their own visual languages and color pallets that push the boundaries of dimensionality, craft, and design. Ashely Peifer's painting practice draws from a personal catalogue of shapes that reference collected moments that she pulls from while painting. Each painting reveals itself as she works - with each move she reacts to the color and compositional issues embedded in her process. Laura Wennstrom's textile-based works examine the experience of weathering a global pandemic and quarrantine with young children and a racial reckoning sparked by the murder of George Floyd a few blocks from her home. Her work experiments with textiles from a domestic sphere, stitching, quilting, twisting, layering in a way that communes with her maternal ancestors and is a total departure from any traditional craft.
About the Artists:
Ashely Peifer is an artist and textile designer living in Minneapolis. She has exhibited nationally and internationally including solo shows at Galleria Daniele Agostini in Lugano, Switzerland, Rosalux Gallery in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Burnet Gallery also in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings, the Urban Outfitters blog, Design*Sponge, and Maake Magazine, as well as numerous art blogs and digital magazines. She holds an MFA in Painting from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and a BA in Visual Art from Taylor University in Indiana.
Laura Wennstrom holds an MFA in New Media from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2015). She received her undergraduate degree in Studio Art from North Park University in Chicago in 2009. She has participated in many solo and group exhibitions across the country. Laura is currently an Adjunct Professor at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She teaches art classes to children and adults through the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Laura lives in Minneapolis with her husband and two young children.
Image: Ashely Peifer, from the inside and out series, mixed media on panel, 6"x8", 2020; Laura Wennstrom, Quilt That is Way Too Small To Be Functional fabric, thread, 14 x 18", 2020
by Ashely Peifer (left) and Laura Wennstrom (right)
Questions?
Contact Gallery Director Michelle Westmark Wingard at 651.638.6527 or m-westmark@bethel.edu.