Past Artists in Residence

Linda Rivera García
2023 Elizabeth Rubendall Artist in Residence

Residency dates: April 4-15, 2023

The Great Plains Art Museum’s 2023 Elizabeth Rubendall Artist in Residence is Linda Rivera García, a Mexican-American Chicana artist, teacher, and storyteller who has been sharing her culture throughout Nebraska for decades. A graduate of Omaha’s College of Saint Mary and a retired children’s librarian, Rivera García is a multifaceted artist who works in painting, sculpture, printmaking, and with traditional Mexican art forms such as papel picado (cut paper) and repujado (metal embossing), among many others. Her solo exhibition featured work that represents the artist’s career to date and was on display March 24–September 22, 2023.

See a video of the process

Download the exhibition guide

Sarah Rowe
2022 Elizabeth Rubendall Artist in Residence

Download the exhibition guide

Residency dates: April 5-16, 2022

The Great Plains Art Museum hosted Omaha-based artist Sarah Rowe as the 2022 Elizabeth Rubendall Artist in Residence. Rowe is a multimedia artist of Lakota and Ponca descent whose work opens cross-cultural dialogues by utilizing methods of painting, casting, fiber arts, performance, and Native American ceremony in unconventional ways. Her work is participatory, a call to action, and re-imagines traditional Native American symbology to fit the narrative of today’s global landscape. A solo exhibition of Rowe’s new and recent artwork was view at the museum from March 4–August 6, 2022.

See a video of the process.

Kirsten Furlong
2020-2021 Elizabeth Rubendall Artist in Residence

Download the exhibition guide

Residency dates: June 1-12, 2021

The Great Plains Art Museum will host Boise-based artist Kirsten Furlong as the 2020-21 Elizabeth Rubendall Artist in Residence. Furlong’s artwork interprets the natural history and current grassland ecology in the Great Plains and beyond through drawings, monotypes, and paintings. Bird species—past and present—insects, animals, and plants are depicted along with mark making inspired by the lines and textures of the prairie.

See Kirsten Furlong in episode 4 of Great Plains Anywhere, a video and podcast series from the Center for Great Plains Studies.

Montana: Prairies to Peaks
2019 Elizabeth Rubendall Artist in Residence Erin Jones Graf

Exhibition: March 1–June 29, 2019

Erin Jones Graf graduated from Montana State University in 2006 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Printmaking and a separate degree in K-12 Art Education. While she is drawn to the manual labor of printmaking and the “chemistry” behind the process, her love has always been painting. The artist’s native Montana is the subject of her exhibition as the 2019 Elizabeth Rubendall Artist in Residence. She states: “I grew up on the edge of the great plains of Montana, on land that nourished four generations of my family before me…. I paint my home, and my home is expansive. From prairies to peaks, I move along the hay fields and hills, painting the grandeur that is Montana.”

Jones Graf is the inaugural artist for the Elizabeth Rubendall Artist-in-Residence Studio and Education Lab donated by Fred and Julie Hoppe, which opened spring 2019.

Henry Payer
2018 Rubendall Artist in Residence

Exhibition: March 2– June 30, 2018

Henry Payer is a Ho-Chunk multidisciplinary artist who works primarily with collage and mixed media. Payer received a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM in 2008. He went on to study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and obtained a MFA in 2013. Payer has exhibited his work at locations such as the Great Plains Art Museum in Lincoln, NE; the Dahl Art Center in Rapid City, SD; All My Relations Gallery in Minneapolis, MN; Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art in Kansas City, MO; and Janus Galleries located in Madison, WI. Payer’s work has also been exhibited at the University of Venice Ca’ Voscari, Palazzo Cosulich and at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, Italy. Payer has spent time as an instructor at the Oscar Howe Summer Art Institute in the summer of 2015 at the University of South Dakota located in Vermillion, SD, and has also taught Native American Art History at the Little Priest Tribal College in Winnebago, NE. Payer has been recognized and awarded honors included having artworks chosen as Best of Show at the annual Northern Plains Indian Art Market in 2014 and 2011, Best of Division: Two Dimensional, 2016 4th Annual Native POP: People of the Plains and was awarded a Chancellor’s Fellowship while attending University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Payer’s narrative compositions are bold and contemporary. His works reference the altered landscape through Indigenous cartographic methods of “picture-writing” with traditional aspects of spatial representation and symbolism combined with European modernist models of cubism, spatial distortion and collage. Each work offers a visual narrative of symbols and appropriated voices from American consumer society that reconfigures history, the landscape or the identity of a portrait. Henry represents the work of a new generation of artists seeking to expand the range and voice of their visual and cultural representation, while attending to forms of tradition.

(Included in Contemporary Indigeneity: Spiritual Borderlands 2016)

Lari R. Gibbons
2017 Rubendall Artist in Residence

Exhibition: March 3 - June 24

An interest in habitat loss and the migration of invasive species led Gibbons to use data sets from research centers as the basis for new patterns in her abstract compositions that connect the exhibition with topics addressed in the Center for Great Plains Studies 2017 symposium, “Flat Places, Deep Identities: Mapping Nebraska and the Great Plains.” Gibbons creates a unique form of “deep mapping” by transforming scientific data into abstracted visual representations. Her interpretations of graphs and charts point to larger patterns and the momentum of change. Gibbons is compelled by evidence of climate change and the cascade of effects on the environment, including rising sea levels, rising temperatures–and perhaps most importantly–the probability of accelerated rates of change over time. Gibbons uses the language of print inform our ideas about the environment and our relationship to the natural world.

Lari Radabaugh Gibbons is a professor at the University of North Texas, where she teaches printmaking and directs the Print Research Institute of North Texas (P.R.I.N.T Press). She earned an MFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a BA from Grinnell College. 

Gibbons professional and studio work encompasses independent and collaborative projects exploring ideas from ecology, environmental philosophy and natural history. She has received numerous grants and awards and her work has been collected and exhibited nationally and internationally.

See a video of Gibbons working with a student workshop

See photos from Gibbons' residency.

B.C. Gilbert
2016 Rubendall Artist in Residence

Flat Land, Flat Water (July 12 - Oct. 29)

Residency dates: Aug. 2-6 & Oct. 11-15, 2016

B.C. Gilbert's work is influenced by experiences of growing up on the High Plains of Texas where ranching is prominent. His work brings into question the iconography of West Texas incorporating cowboys and Indians alongside landscape markers such as water towers. In multi-media constructions that merge unconventional materials such as tooled leather, metal siding, and found objects with painting, Gilbert depicts the West in a manner reminiscent of Pop artists. Most recently, Gilbert began making prints combining Western icons with text. Gilbert’s sculptural paintings and prints present a unique perspective of the contemporary American West.

See a video of Gilbert's student workshop

Gwen Westerman
2015 Rubendall Artist in Residence

We Are Star People: The Art and Poetry of Gwen Westerman (Sept. 1 - Jan. 30)

Residency: Sept. 1-5 and Nov. 11-14, 2015

Recent work by Gwen Westerman, 2014 Contemporary Indigeneity Exhibition Prize winner, features unique quilts and textiles alongside poetry inspired by personal connections to her Dakota family history. Dr. Westerman is a professor of English at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She co-authored MniSota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota, with Bruce White, which won a Minnesota Book Award and has published a collection of poetry written in Dakota and English entitled Follow the Blackbirds.

Westerman’s unique star quilt was inspired by personal connections to her Dakota family history. The warm colors are indicative of the sunsets she viewed while traveling from her home in Mankato, Minnesota, to Lincoln for her residency in 2015.

Read all about and see photos from Westerman's exhibition

Todd A. Williams
2014 Rubendall Artist in Residence

Residency: April 22-27, 2014

Williams created a multi-year project, “Painting the Legacy of Nebraska,”depicting significant historical sites and events in all of Nebraska’s 93 counties in honor of the 150th year of statehood in 2017. For more information on the project and to see the painting 2015 calendar showcasing his initial paintings including Platte River, Hall County, Nebraska, 2014 the work William’s painted as part of his residency go to Nebraska150.org.

Photo album

Video