Brownstone Newsletter
Aron M Lorber
Brownstone Newsletter, Issue 10, Winter 2022
Brownstone Newsletter, Issue 10, Winter 2022

Art Galleries Exhibit

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SELECTIONS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION (Oct. 14–31) — Virtual Exhibition

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The virtual slideshow above displays the talents of this month’s artists and includes images of the installed exhibition and details of some these works. To view the virtual exhibition in detail, simply click any image above, and then swipe or use the left/right arrows to see the works around it.

Our new exhibition, a selection of 50 works from our always expanding permanent collection, is currently on view until Saturday, October 31. Our last permanent collection show was in February 2018, and since then, we’ve added more than 30 innovative and regionally relevant new works to our collection, and we have also reframed others to make them glorious and exhibition-quality again! Come view your favorite works from our collection recontextualized alongside our new acquisitions until the end of the month.

We invite you to visit the Cultural Center from Wednesday, Oct. 14, to Saturday, Oct. 31, to view Selections from the Permanent Collection in person! Appointment slots are available every Wednesday through Saturday between the hours of 1 PM and 5 PM. Please contact us at (715) 373-5591 or WashburnCulturalCenter@gmail.com to set up an appointment. Please note that this exhibition, our antiques shop and Vinyl Vault, and museum are all currently open to the public by appointment only, and for the continued safety of all, masks are required of all visitors for entry.

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BACKWOODS ARTISTS (Sept. 16–Oct. 10) – Virtual Exhibition

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This virtual slideshow above displays the talents of this month’s artists and includes images of the installed show and details of selections of some these works. To view the virtual exhibition in detail, simply click any image above, and then swipe or use the left/right arrows to see the works around it.

The Washburn Cultural Center is proud to announce the opening of Backwoods Artists, consisting of more than 80 works from 11 artists who have taken classes from local watercolorist Wei Lan Lorber. This group of self-described “backwoods artists” include: Ann Christensen, Donn Christensen, Cheryl Drevlow, Tanya Eitzenhoefer, Jan Enfelt, Aaron Folsom, Margaret Motiff, Marilyn B. Nourse, Merry Nuutinen, Linda Saetre, Nancy Schryer, and Wei Lan Lorber.

Backwoods Artists includes works ranging from watercolor and pastel paintings to collages and mixed media works. The title of this exhibition chosen by these artists is both a proud reference to our region and a tongue-in-cheek nod to most of these artists’ relatively short time creating art. However, "backwoods" is by no means the only way to describe the breadth, creativity, and expressiveness on display in our galleries. Many of these exhibited works were executed in Lorber’s classes, where some artists completed their first paintings and others expanded upon their already existing art practices. Other works created outside of the classroom show how these artists have independently explored and honed their artistic talents. From regional flora to personal portraits, abstracts to architecture, and local birds to exotic sea creatures, these works fill the Cultural Center’s walls with an array of genres, mediums, styles, and color palettes. And when exhibited beside each other, they reveal shared sensibilities, complementary motifs, and interconnected subject matter.

We invite you to visit the Cultural Center from Wednesday, Sept. 16, to Saturday, Oct. 10., to view Backwoods Artists and celebrate this region’s newer local talents! Appointment slots are available every Wednesday through Saturday between the hours of 1 PM and 5 PM. Please contact us at (715) 373-5591 or WashburnCulturalCenter@gmail.com to set up an appointment. Please note that this exhibition, our antiques shop and Vinyl Vault, and museum are all currently open to the public by appointment only, and for the continued safety of all, masks are required of all visitors for entry.

LORBER, LORBER & COTHERMAN Extended through Labor Day!

Due to popular demand, Lorber, Lorber & Cotherman, our current exhibition of paintings, pastels, ceramics and collage has been extended and will now run through Monday, September 7.

Additionally, the Washburn Cultural Center will be open to the public with no appointments necessary during the upcoming three-day holiday weekend (Saturday, Sept. 5, to Monday, Sept. 7, from 1–4 PM). (Masks, as always, are still required for entry.) We encourage you to stop by during your Labor Day Weekend strolls and celebrations to view (or revisit) Lorber, Lorber & Cotherman (August 2020) before this show comes down, browse our newly reorganized antiques shop, or peruse the current collection of albums and guitars in our Vinyl Vault!

If you would like to view the show between August 31 to September 4, we are now taking appointments between 1 PM and 5 PM. Call (715) 373-5591 or email us at WashburnCulturalCenter@gmail.com to make an appointment. If possible, please provide at least 12 hours for us to respond to your request for an appointment date/time.

Wei Lan Lorber's Gestures in Gesso

Wei Lan Lorber enlivens and animates her watercolor paintings through her use of gesso. Gesso is most often used as white primer for acrylic paintings, but when applied as an underpainting for watercolors, it provides an added layer of texture not frequently seen in the medium. Lorber first applies gesso to the entirety of the painting surface with only a vague idea of her subject matter or composition in mind. She works the underpainting in dynamic but random patterns: combs and forks create sections of heavy texture; sponges, soft brushes, and tissue smooth out overly aggressive areas. Finally, she applies watercolors directly to this layer of dried gesso, revealing its previously barely visible marks.In CHESTNUT (undated), viewers can easily see the defined grooves of a comb in both the painting's subject and background. Watercolor pigments pool in these grooves, producing drastic changes in value with a single stroke—an act difficult to achieve without a textured underpainting . These grooves also act as channels which lead colors to bleed unexpectedly into each other, and the raised edges of the gesso itself introduce unplanned shadows which branch across the work's surface. While gesso mutes the tone of watercolors, Lorber’s use of it here serves to animate the painting. The prominent strokes of a comb and fork in gesso often move against her strokes of watercolor paint, but rather than working against each other, these gestural gessoed strokes rather mimic the movement and flow of a horse’s mane or the coarseness of its coat (the act of combing/brushing gesso onto paper itself resembles the act of brushing a horse's hair). These three-dimensional passages remind us of the sculptural qualities not only of the animals’ hair but also of its musculature.Lorber uses gesso in OLD STONE BRIDGE (2018) to suggest the multitude of textures of the stones and bricks that make up the subject’s surface. Randomly placed, deliberately uneven areas of roughness and smoothness convey the textural qualities of the bridge’s stones and bricks, and these marks also help express both the structure’s imposing physicality and the jagged areas of its wear. Splashes of burnt oranges and light grays, and smooth, ungessoed areas in which watercolor flows more freely, further emphasize the bridge’s tactile qualities.

To see more pastel paintings by Lorber, as well as other works by her, Steve Cotherman, and Milt Lorber, we invite you set up an appointment to view Lorber, Lorber & Cotherman. Slots are available every Wednesday through Saturday between the hours of 1 PM and 5 PM throughout the month of August. Please call (715) 373-5591 or send an email to WashburnCulturalCenter@gmail.com to set up an appointment to view this trio of local artist’s surprising and excitingly varied artwork. Please note that this exhibition is open to the public by appointment only, and for the continued safety of all, masks are required of all visitors. While we encourage you to see this exhibition in person, a virtual slideshow featuring photos of the installed show is available to view here.

Milt Lorber's Local Landscapes & Mountain Memories

As a former chemistry professor, Milt Lorber was familiar with having to experiment to arrive at a final desired product, an approach he brought to learning pastels. Though he briefly took a course in the medium a decade ago, Lorber arrived at his highly saturated aesthetic through trial-and-error, using his love of the Northwoods as well as his preference for strong colors to guide him. This aesthetic is fully on display in his landscape pastel works, which frequently use local scenic views as their subject matter.

In Autumn and Birch on Lake Superior, Lorber represents foliage in Impressionistic distinct, short strokes which contrast with the longer, blended strokes he uses to depict water and grass. While he often prefers straightforward compositions, Autumn stands out among his works for its use of perspective in the rows of columnar and his attention to their elongated shadows, which cut diagonally across the image.

While Lorber often works directly from his own photo references, Colorado is unique in that it was created it from a combination of reference photos from the state, as well as his own memories of hiking in the state while he was completing his PhD in Boulder. The mountain rising high behind rolling hills is a composite of the range of Flatirons he saw out his window every day which he has then further exaggerated in height for dramatic effect. Lorber divides his composition into three distinct horizontal passages—the burnt oranges and reds of the bottom foreground stand out against the deep greens of the middleground, and they, in turn, contrast with the crisp blues and bold purple used to render the mountain and skies at the painting’s upper register.

To see more pastel paintings by Lorber, as well as other works by him, Wei Lan Lorber, and Steve Cotherman, we invite you set up an appointment to view Lorber, Lorber & Cotherman. Slots are available every Wednesday through Saturday between the hours of 1 PM and 5 PM throughout the month of August. Please call (715) 373-5591 or send an email to WashburnCulturalCenter@gmail.com to set up an appointment to view this trio of local artist’s surprising and excitingly varied artwork. Please note that this exhibition is open to the public by appointment only, and for the continued safety of all, masks are required of all visitors. While we encourage you to see this exhibition in person, a virtual slideshow featuring photos of the installed show is available to view here.

Meditations in a Pandemic: Steve Cotherman's PANDEMIC SERIES – BARS & STRIPES (2020)

Created while Wisconsin residents were sheltering in place earlier this spring, Steve Cotherman’s Pandemic Series – Bars & Stripes consists of a set of nine collages, four of which have been selected for this post. The creation of each piece begins with a single photograph (often, one of Cotherman’s earlier, representational pencil drawings or pastel paintings, and in one case, a vintage apple corer) which he cuts into equally sized, perfectly linear strips. He then reorders (he might prefer the term “remixes”) these pieces, vertically arranging and affixing them to complete each work.

In some collages (for example, Collage I), viewers may recognize the black and gray outlines, shading, and crosshatching of traditional graphite-on-paper drawings. Other collages (Collage V and Collage VIII) recombine pieces of photographs of Cotherman’s pastel work, introducing bold colors and juxtapositions of gestural and angular lines into the series which amplify the final images’ abstract aesthetic. Collage IX, the most recent piece in this series which he describes as his “steampunk” work, differs from the others in that it was made from his own photograph of a vintage mechanical apple corer. Gear teeth, screwheads, and tightly coiled springs jut toward the viewer or recede into the background, out of focus.

Like Cotherman assembling his collages, viewers of this series must piece together the meaning(s) of these works for themselves. The series’s title puns on the popular nickname for the American flag, an image and object heavy with meanings and symbolisms that has frequently been used by artists both to celebrate this country's successes and illuminate its problems. The flag's “stripes” are clearly referenced in the thin strips that repeat across all nine works. But Cotherman reorients these horizontal stripes, turning them into the striking vertical “bars” of the title and asking us to consider the implications of his use of that word and of his bar-like imagery. The wordplay in the series’s title and the brightly colored aesthetic of these artworks suggest a level of playfulness and humor, but these more serious associations complicate this levity. Cotherman presents viewers with a series of deliberately abstract works that slash, rearrange, and obfuscate his own older artworks. The end result is an often colorful yet ambiguous series made during a period of confusion and uncertainty from our very recent past.

To see all nine works in Cotherman’s Pandemic Series – Bars & Stripes in person, as well as other works by him, Milt Lorber, and Wei Lan Lorber, we invite you set up an appointment to view Lorber, Lorber & Cotherman. Slots are available every Wednesday through Saturday between the hours of 1 PM and 5 PM throughout the month of August. Please call (715) 373-5591 or send an email to WashburnCulturalCenter@gmail.com to set up an appointment to view this trio of local artist’s surprising and excitingly varied artwork. Please note that this exhibition is open to the public by appointment only, and for the continued safety of all, masks are required of all visitors. While we encourage you to see this exhibition in person, a virtual slideshow featuring photos of the installed show is available to view here.

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