Previous Exhibition: Nebraska 8 Invitational

January 20 - April 14, 2019

Featuring the work of eight phenomenal artists associated with Nebraska: Mary Zicafoose, Christina Narwicz, Karen Kunc, Jacqueline Kluver, Gail Kendall, Sheila Hicks, Catherine Ferguson, and Wanda Ewing.

Click here to watch the Nebraska 8 Invitational Film

Selected Works

Wanda Ewing

The late Wanda Ewing brought a bold and thought-provoking vision to her artwork throughout her career. Ewing’s diverse work ranged from print media and painting to sculpture and fiber arts. Her art was heavily influenced by folk-art aesthetics and the depiction – or lack thereof – of African-American women in popular culture and art history. Ewing sought to represent the connections between autobiography, community, and history, often with a biting, comical edge. Inspired by images found in popular culture, Ewing’s work addressed such social issues as representation, race, sexuality, and identity using humor as a starting point. Her surprising and sometimes shocking images make viewers look inward and reevaluate their beliefs. The unashamedly provocative quality of her work helped Ewing bring a new life to Omaha’s art scene and paved the way for other women artists to find their voices.

Catherine Ferguson

Catherine Ferguson is best known for her transcendent sculptures and installations, although she is equally adept at drawing and stage design. Her diverse, often idealistic work reflects the transformative nature of perception and introspection. Ferguson deftly incorporates mythical and metaphysical symbols and motifs into her creations. Her goal is to find beauty in what is considered ordinary and to convince the viewer to see beauty there also. The result is multi-faceted art that is positive, uplifting, and boundless.

Sheila Hicks

Sheila Hicks is a pioneering fiber artist who has broken the boundaries between painting and sculpture with her vibrant textile works. Hicks’ interest in fiber work began on a trip to South America in 1957, where she was introduced to the finely crafted fabrics in such places as Chile and Peru. Not restricting herself to the conventional format of textiles, Hicks soon developed a variety of unique sculptural fabric designs. Varying dramatically in size and shape, her creations can be mounted on the wall, spread across the floor, or suspended from the ceiling. Hicks’ use of a traditionally “domestic” or “craft” material for such an unexpected purpose has helped change the perception of the medium.

Gail Kendall

My ceramic works are influenced by European earthenware pottery and porcelain traditions. Early English slipware, Delftware, and Italian majolica are sources I refer to often. Both “peasant” and “palace” pots inspire me. In the former, the casual drips and imperfections excite me. In the latter, it is the elaborate rendering of form and surface that fuels my imagination. I am attached to terracotta and low-fired technologies as symbols of my heritage. I imagine a potter ancestor in Luxembourg or Wiltshire pouring slip on his earthenware platter, decorating it with the details of some local or family event, sprinkling on glaze, and firing it in the simplest manner. My ancestor and I are alike in our interest in enlivening the daily aspects of life: mundane routines and community celebrations. Like him, I hope the plates, platters, bowls, and other service pieces I make add a touch of grace to enhance those domestic routines and rituals.

Jacqueline Kluver

Historically, the creative skills of women were relegated to utilitarian crafts with purposes in the home and community. Within every social class, religion, and culture, these women created beautiful objects that captured the spiritual strength, quiet power, and fierce passion of their creators. I strive to capture that visual chant, unassuming strength, and sense of spirit which lives in the soul of the woman.

Karen Kunc

My idiosyncratic language of biomorphic abstraction inevitably refers to the natural world, our resources, and the evolutionary forces that shape our environment. I hope to make relevant, urgent statements as a response to the threat and benevolence of nature. My artwork is both intensely chromatic and gestural, as I seek to generate a poetic combination of observation, science, and imagination through images that submerge, emerge, and tantalize. In my printworks, one wanders through an imaginary landscape of vortexes, streams, and pools interrupted and accented with boldly colored place markers. My prints are reduction woodcuts, printed in stages and layers, which relates to the content of my explorations. I can’t predict the results of the print and am open to this evolutionary way of working as a mysterious alchemy. Through process and concept, I intend to evoke the timeless sense of life’s ebb and flow and a “sense of place” in our universe and being. The roles of nature in shaping us and nurturing wholeness and being are consistent issues I have addressed through my lifetime of artmaking and are always echoed within my abstract language.

Christina Narwicz

Scientists and artists are, at the very least, distant cousins. Like a scientist, my work is driven by a curiosity that must feel like the kernel that is the first step of scientific exploration. My work has always had a spontaneous and multi-streamed direction. Memory and the natural world are the starting points for my image making. Although my methods are very different, and only a few remotely resemble the “scientific” variety, I am nonetheless continually searching and chasing my own intuitive experiments and theories. My findings fall into the realm of poetry rather than that of the journal scientific. Natural phenomena like the physicality of water or the reciprocal qualities of bees and the honey they make fascinate me with their perfunctory yet abstract qualities. The beginnings are the same as the endings and yet nothing is ever finished. My work is another step in my exploration of collective memory in the context of our place in nature and within ourselves.

Mary Zicafoose

Weaving is my medium, but creating decorative textile art is not my goal. Rather, my intent is best defined by my use of Ikat, the complex technique of resist dyeing and over-dyeing fibers. Using Ikat, which means to “bind” or “tie” in Malaysian, I create contemporary tapestry that pushes the boundaries of this ancient art form to investigate the intricacies of how we, as individuals, are tied to one another. Each densely woven and intricately layered textile reflects the infinite and repetitive ways that cultures, rituals, and collective memories bind us all together. By evolving and transforming timeless motifs and visual language into a contemporary context, I seek to engage my viewers, as well as myself, in dialogues and discussions that reawaken and tie us all to one another.