Minnesota artists showcased at Robbin Gallery exhibit

The idea of plein-air painting usually brings to mind a painter working on a lovely day to capture a sunlit vista. Joshua Cunningham paints outside even in the wintertime, when bits of ice embed themselves into the painting as he works. However, he finds it essential to his process.

"It's a full-on visceral sensory experience," he said. "You're so wired. You're locked in the moment, and you're locked in that place. Nothing is so liberating as a deadline."

Cunningham is one of several artists who received awards at the "Extremely Minnesota" show at the Robbin Gallery in Robbinsdale. The show, which features about 70 Minnesota artists, runs until Dec. 13.

Cunningham, of St. Paul, braved the weather to do a study for his piece "Winter on West Seventh," which received an award of excellence in the show. It depicts a snowy, hazy neighborhood scene in St. Paul with the Schmidt Brewing Co. in the background.

"I like how the atmosphere of the day was affecting the brewery," he said. "What we think of as permanent things, a little bit of temperature, a little bit of moisture, and it's a ghost."

Herb Grika, who taught for 34 years at Minnesota College of Art and Design, who judged the show, commented on the soft coloration and the gray tones in the piece and called it "just beautifully realistic and evocative."

Grika described Cunningham's other painting in the show, "Winter Evening," which received an honorable mention, as akin to "an architectural cutaway." In the foreground of the picture, the railroad tracks, the train, and a line of trees make dark bands, contrasting with the fading light in the sky and the steam from power plants in the upper part of the painting.

Cunningham said he doesn't travel a lot because he has kids, so he often paints scenes close to home. "You embrace what at first feels like an obstacle," he said, "but it becomes a real genuine strength."

The Best of Show award went to Jennifer Palmquist's "Lost and Found I," which honors her Sami-Swedish heritage. (Sami are indigenous people, traditionally reindeer herders, of Scandinavia.) A ladder provides a frame for the piece, with objects occupying the spaces between the ladder's rungs that have strong connections to Minnesota and to her ancestry, she said.

Hanging from the upper rungs are brushes made out of wood from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and carved bone, with bristles of horsehair, wolf, bear and buffalo. Hanging from a rung in the middle is a buffalo pouch with a Sami belt.

Also incorporated into the piece is a postcard, in Swedish, that says, said Palmquist, something to the effect of "there's no place like home," which she framed in pine needles. In another section, she felted bits of wool into organic forms and connected them to birch bark, which she inscribed with Sami symbols that stand for "childbirth," "death," "lifegiver" and "home."

Palmquist, of Eden Prairie, said that when her mother died a couple of years ago, it inspired her to explore her past. "It felt really nurturing," she said. "It really became a gallery of what I consider my lost tribe."

Palmquist said she included the ladder because she wanted to give it an "ascendant quality," which is similar to the process of making art.

"I was just sort of amazed," said Grika, of Palmquist's piece. "I had not seen anything quite like that."

Grika said that he was also impressed with Palmquist's "Lost and Found II," a related piece that he honored with a merit award. The piece is a chair made with materials like reindeer hide and the wool of Gotland sheep, which are native to Sweden. Faint reproductions of family photos printed on silk organza are woven into the chair's back. An antler protrudes from the back of the chair, and a raven's feather dangles from that, referencing an overseer named "Raven" who was in charge of family members in Sweden.

The piece also includes two bullets — representative of a murder-suicide in her ancestral past — and sacred corn kernels that, years ago, she received from an elder. She said the kernels are meant to "surround that whole experience and bless it and let it go."

Grika said he liked that the chair in some ways seemed inviting, with its furry surfaces, and in some ways seemed uninviting, with the antler protruding from the back. It felt to him like "something that would both support us and threaten us."

Palmquist said the piece sometimes triggers others to "look at their own story or their own journey."

Hunting for beauty

Rikki Patton's photo "Fishing Trio at Lake Harriet," a scene of three men fishing from shore framed by trees, also received an award of excellence.

The photo was processed to give it a painterly effect and printed on maple. "You can see the grain," said Patton, of Minneapolis. "It's very subtle, though. I tried to print on substrates that will be appropriate and complimentary to the subject."

She took the photo last June on a walk around Lake Harriet. "I was on the lookout for beautiful things."

She said the subject matter, fishing and lakes, connected strongly to the show's theme.

"When I saw the call for art for that show, I thought it was a perfect match for the theme," she said.

This is the 19th annual "Extremely Minnesota" show at the Robbin Gallery, housed in the historic Robbinsdale library building.

"It's a fun name for a show," said Cunningham. "It's kind of a mini State Fair show. I would say they could call it 'Extremely Diverse' also."

Liz Rolfsmeier is a Twin Cities writer and photographer.