Photographer and writer Peter Miller traveled more than 30,000 miles on four trips in the Great Plains region, exposed 400 rolls of film and compiled 400 pages of notes and recorded interviews during the last three years. The results of his work can be seen in this traveling exhibit "People of the Great Plains," which will run Sept. 2 to Oct. 15, at the Great Plains Art Collection, 215 Love Library. The Friends of the Center for Great Plains Studies will sponsor an opening reception and panel discussion relating to the exhibition that will take place in the gallery early in September, the time and date will be announced soon.
The exhibit is curated by the Museum of the Great Plains, Lawton, Okla., and will tour to other museums and art centers in the Plains, then nationwide. Miller published a book of his plains photographs also titled People of the Great Plains which won the Image Bank Award for 1536.
Miller, who was born in New York City, grew up in Vermont. After graduating from the University of Toronto, he was a Signal Corps photographer for the U.S. Army, stationed in Paris. While there, he made many street photographs and established his portrait style. Following his return to New York, he worked as a reporter for LIFE Magazine. Upon returning to Vermont, Miller established himself as an independent writer and photographer, eventually publishing four books including Vermont People. He found himself drawn to the Great Plains because of the commonly stated paradox about it: what has become the "breadbasket of America" was at time known as the Great American Desert.
The show consists of 66 black and white photographs that picture the people and landscape in the 10 states of the Great Plains - Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wyoming. Miller has captured in some of his panoramic images the grand scale and sweep of rolling plains and the dramatic atmospheric conditions that transform the appearance of the land. These include views of great wheat fields and ranges for cattle, Kansas sunflowers, and beautiful expanses of grasses or vistas of striking land formations that seem to stretch beyond the camera's view.
This photographer, however, concentrates primarily upon the people with whom he has taken time to get acquainted in the small towns and large rural areas of the region. These include not only farmers and ranchers, but also owners of small businesses, educators, veterans, and cowboys, some of whom are American Indian, or African-American or Latino. He photographs them carefully, usually in their working environments. Whether indoors or outdoors the setting illuminates our understanding of the person(s) and quite often, our understanding of the extremely close relationship between people and the land in this region. Selected photographs underscore not only these peoples' physical and mental strength, tenacity, and determination to be productive in a challenging environment, they also celebrate plains peoples' integrity, satisfaction with life, and understandable pride in their accomplishments. Some viewers of these images have stated that Miller's work communicates a message worth sharing with all Americans, including those living in urban areas.
Miller's photographs do not ignore visual evidence of problems in our region, such as depopulation and the sometimes disastrous effects of unpredictable weather. He has also used his camera to make visual records of new developments and trends in economic and social development, such as successful ventures in small scale organic farming and development of herds of buffalo. The photographer has sought to create a multi-dimensional portrait of the plains that does justice to the diversity of landscapes, peoples, and economic pursuits in the Great Plains.
-Martha Kennedy, curator, Great Plains Art Collection
The College of Fine and Performing Arts and the College of Architecture are sponsoring the "A Festival" on Sept. 26. There are activities planned for three distinct groups:
· Activities for K-6 students will be interactive activities organized in the Sheldon Sculpture Garden. Activities from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. will include dance, theatre, music, visual arts and architecture. There may be as many as 500 K-6 students participating. Transportation will include bus traffic.
· Activities for High School Students will take place mostly indoors. Activities will be held from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. There may be 250 or more high school students participating.
· The 2nd annual "A"lympics. A fun time for UNL students and faculty in the two colleges will happen after the high school and K-6 students leave, after 2:30 p.m. The purpose is to give students and faculty in the two colleges a chance to get to know each other. It will probably take place in the Sculpture Garden.
For more information, contact Ron Bowlin, 472-2997.
The Gallery of the Department of Art and Art History, 102 Richards Hall, will present Dan F. Howard: Valedictory An Exhibition Survey of Art Work, 1982-1994 from Sept. 3-25.
A reception will be from 5 to 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 5.
Part 2: 1995-1997 will be presented from Oct. 10-31 at the Anderson O'Brien Gallery, Omaha.
Part One of this exhibition is funded with the generous support of MEDICI, a Friends Group, in support of the Department of Art and Art History at UNL. During the first three days of the exhibition at UNL, Howard will donate 50 percent of sales to MEDICI.
"This exhibition represents Dan Howard's farewell to the university," said Christin Mamiya, associate professor of art history. "It provides us, his friends and colleagues in the Department of Art and Art History, with an opportunity to pay tribute to a professor and artist who has contributed immensely to the development and artistic strength of the department and whose artistic accomplishments have been recognized nationally. This retrospective exhibition consists of paintings and drawings that were produced by Howard during the past 15 years and is presented in two parts - one in the Gallery of the Department of Art and Art History at UNL including works from 1982-1994, and the other at Anderson O'Brien Gallery in Omaha with works from 1995-1997."
The Sheldon Gallery will present The Hergenrader Collection of Contemporary Art, a selection of 18 works from the collection of Wil J. and Sally Hergenrader of Memphis, Tenn., until Oct. 26.
Wil, a native Lincolnite and 1954 graduate of the University of Nebraska, and Sally have recently made a promised gift of 11 contemporary artworks through the University of Nebraska Foundation to the Sheldon Gallery.
Gallery Curator Dan Siedell said each piece "significantly enhances the scope and quality of the Sheldon Gallery's permanent collection."
In addition to these promised gifts from Hergenrader's "office" collection, the couple has lent seven additional pieces from their "home" collection to the exhibition in order to give the Sheldon's audience a broader view of their substantial collecting activities of the late 1970s and 1980s.
The Hergenraders moved to Memphis in 1972 and there they became actively involved with the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, where they developed their interest in collecting contemporary art.
These 18 works on exhibit from the Hergenrader collection reveal the diversity and eclecticism of the artworld of the 1980s, manifest in the representation of important artists in a variety of media such as photographers Robert Mapplethorpe and Cindy Sherman, painters Jennifer Bartlett, Robert Longo, Ed Paschke, sculptor Scott Burden, and ceramicist Viola Frey.
The Sheldon Gallery presents the nationally touring exhibition, Manuel Neri: A Sculptor's Drawings, organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., through Oct. 26.
Curated by Jack Cowart, chief curator of the Corcoran Gallery, this exhibition is the first comprehensive retrospective of this Hispanic American artist's drawings.
Consisting of 36 major drawings dating from the 1950s to the present, this exhibition offers a unique perspective by way of these expressive works on paper, of Neri's aesthetic production, which has been manifest primarily through sculpture.
Neri's national and international reputation has been hewn through his painted, gouged, carved, hacked plaster female nude figures in a variety of poses that seem not only "contemporary" but a distillation of the classical sculptural tradition, from Athens to Rome.
However, as Cowart argues, Neri's sculpture is his "public" side. But his drawings suggest a "private" side that, although they are less well-known, inform and sustain his sculpture in important ways. Moreover, these gestural figures, sketched and painted with intense color, declare Neri's expressionistic and even "painterly" energy that pervades his sculpture.
In addition to the 36 drawings and three artist's sketchbooks included, the Sheldon Gallery has enhanced the exhibition by adding fourteen examples of Neri's figurative sculpture. Drawn primarily from local private collections, a full range of Neri's sculptural expressions in bronze, ceramic and plaster will complement this vivid and colorful drawing retrospective.
Neri was born of Mexican immigrant parentage in the agricultural community of Sanger in the San Joaquin valley of California. As a young man, influenced by his heritage and strong religious training, he considered studying for the priesthood. However, after serving in the U.S. Army in Korea, he completed his academic studies at the San Francisco Art Institute and California School of Arts and Crafts. Upon graduation, his artistic talent was recognized by his appointment to a coveted teaching position at the University of California at Berkeley. Later, he accepted a professorship in the renowned art department at the University of California at Davis, where he taught sculpture until his retirement in 1990.
Neri, who played a major role in the evolution of Bay Area figurative art, "remains," as Cowart asserts, "the central sculptor in what was otherwise a painters' movement. His drawings display an extraordinary draftsmanship, an energetic style, and a great sense of color. These works on paper offer a painterly equivalent to the work of David Park, Richard Diebenkorn, Nathan Oliveira, and Joan Brown, among others in the Bay Area."
Currently, Neri divides his time annually between his two studios, one located in a former Congregational church east of San Francisco in Benicia, Calif., and the other in Carrara, Italy, where he works primarily in marble.
Neri is represented in the Sheldon Gallery's collection by two important examples, Rosa Negra #1, a painted bronze figure of c. 1982-83, and Odalisque II, a marble torso of 1989, currency placed in the outdoor sculpture garden.
The exhibition, Manuel Neri: A Sculptor's Drawings, is
accompanied
by a fully-illustrated, soft-bound catalogue by the same title with a
foreword
and essay by Cowart, produced by the Corcoran Gallery of Art. This
catalogue
will be available for sale in the Sheldon Gift Shop. A more extensive
publication,
Manuel Neri: Early work 1953-1978, has also been published in
association
with The Corcoran Gallery of Art by Hudson Hills Press in New York, to
coincide
with the exhibition tour. This publication includes text by Price
Amerson,
John Beardsley, Jack Cowart, Henry Geldzahler and Robert Pincus, and
explores
the development of Neri's vision through decades of exploration into the
nature of structural form and the expressive power of color and
gesture.
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