Event Link: https://plainsart.org/exhibitions/?type=current

FEE: Free to attend the museum

MICKEY SMITH: Morphologies to open at Plains Art Museum

MICKEY SMITH: Morphologies travels to Plains Art Museum from Macalester College’s Law Warschaw Gallery in St. Paul, MN. The exhibit will be on view from January 18 to May 25, 2025, in Plains’ Ruth and Seymour Landfield Atrium and Xcel Energy Gallery.

Over the past two decades, Mickey Smith has documented significant cultural shifts in academic and public libraries, primarily across the United States, Aotearoa/New Zealand and the South Pacific. Her photography captures the evolution of libraries, from traditional card catalogs and stacks to digitization and the advent of artificial intelligence, highlighting their role as stewards of knowledge.

The exhibition features Smith’s acclaimed projects VOLUME, Denudation, and As You Will: Carnegie Libraries of the South Pacific alongside new mixed-media installations made from deaccessioned library materials donated to the project by academic libraries. Through this confluence of Smith’s oeuvre, Morphologies explores the dynamic nature of library lifecycles with striking imagery, like her trademark — never lit nor touched — captures of in-situ bound periodicals. Smith’s work considers not only the ways in which books are revered, but how libraries adapt to changes, including repurposing buildings and transitioning from physical books to online resources.

Mickey Smith holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Photography from Minnesota State University Moorhead (1994) and
a Diploma in Jewelry Design from Hungry Creek Art & Craft School in New Zealand (2019). Mickey is an advocate and spokesperson for Harbour HoSpice Auckland. Since 2003, Smith’s work has been included in numerous exhibitions throughout the United States, in New Zealand, China, and Russia. Her works belong to numerous public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art Library, Sheldon Museum of Art, and Weisman Art Museum. She has received grants and awards from the McKnight Foundation, CEC ArtsLink, Americans for the Arts, and Creative New Zealand.

“Seeing this exhibition at the Plains Art Museum feels like a homecoming. As an art student at MSUM, I spent countless hours in the Livingston Lord Library, devouring materials which profoundly shaped my perspective as an artist.”

- Mickey Smith, Artist

“We are thrilled to showcase MICKEY SMITH: Morphologies at Plains Art Museum. This compelling body of work offers a timely exploration on the shifting role of libraries in the digital age. Smith breathes new life into deaccessioned books, inviting contemplation on the preservation of knowledge, the intersection of digital and analog forms of media, and the complexities of information access in today’s world.”

- Danielle Gravon, Chief Curator and Director of Collections and Exhibitions, Plains Art Museum

An accompanying illustrated publication is co-edited by exhibition curator Heather Everhart and Laura Wertheim Joseph, PhD (newly appointed head curator of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum), and includes essays by Everhart + Joseph, Shannon Mattern, PhD (Professor of Media Studies and Art History at the University of Pennsylvania), and Aisling Quigley, PhD (Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Liberal Arts at Macalester College).

The exhibition travels to Lincoln, NE in fall 2025, jointly presented by the Eisentrager-Howard Gallery at the University of Nebraska and Fiendish Plots.

For artist information, artwork details and images, public program details, or purchase information, please contact: Heather Everhart, director & curator, Law Warschaw Gallery / heverhar@macalester.edu

MICKEY SMITH: Morphologies is generously sponsored by Karen & Leslie Desnick and Dual Purpose/Dual Citizen Brewing Company Law Warschaw is an academic gallery, gratefully located on the sovereign Dakhóta land of Mni Sóta Maḳoce.

Plains Art Museum thanks our generous PlainsArt4All members, donors, and Organizational Partners for their support. Additional support provided by The McKnight Foundation; FM Area Foundation; The Arts Partnership with support from the cities of Fargo, Moorhead, and West Fargo; The FUNd at Plains Art Museum; and the North Dakota Council on
the Arts, which receives funds from the North Dakota Legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support provided by Art Bridges Foundation’s Access for All program.

Exhibition Tour Thursday, January 30, 6-6:45 PM, Free

Explore Morphologies, a captivating exhibition that documents the transformation of libraries in the digital age.

Event Link: https://www.therourke.org
FEE: FREE to attend Gallery and Museum

Annette DuBord: It's Never Nothing

Fri Apr 4th - Sun May 25th

Katherine-Kilbourne-Burgum/Gustavian-Gallery-Exhibit

The Rourke Art Gallery + Museum, 521 Main Ave, Moorhead, MN 56560, USA  

This exhibit is presented in part by the generous sponsorship support of Naomi RaMona Schliesman Artistry and Consulting.

About the Artist:

Annette “Nettie” DuBord was born in Fargo, ND. She studied Printmaking at Minnesota State University Moorhead. She has exhibited in a solo show at the Spirit Room Gallery (2005), Upfront Gallery with Cameron Peterson (2008), and the Creative Arts Studio with James Ingberg (2011). She has participated in the Midwestern Invitational Exhibition at The Rourke Art Gallery + Museum from 2003 to present, the 2013 Wabi-Sabi Show at the Spirit Room, the 2014 and 2018 Great Winter Crow Show at the Spirit Room, and the 2014 Equinox Show at the Uptown Art Gallery. She recently had a show called Tough Babies at the Spirit Room. Her work has won awards at the Hawley Art Show (2002, 2004, and 2007) and a Second Place award (2003) at the Hjemkomst Center for the Taste of the Valley Exhibition. She participated in the Norn Show at the Spirit Room in 2017. In 2003 she attended Frogman’s Print Workshop and studied Waterless Lithography from Russ Zerkel. In 2016 she studied Polymer Plate Lithography at Frogman’s with Kathryn and Andrew Polk. She was selected as one of the visual artists for the 2018 Arts Partnership CSA for her piece “Sprout.” In 2017 she was selected to print the Arts Partnership’s Giving Hearts Day Thank You Print.

Artist Statement:

My images deal with everyday feelings and emotions that are a common thread for most individuals. I like to deal with insecurities that are prevalent in my own life. Body image, bad habits, interactions with others, and random thoughts populate my imagery. Humor and whimsy work into my artwork as I prefer to laugh at my foibles. Life has become so serious with the over-bombardment of media and the digital world that I want to share the humor and fun that life can be. Sometimes I just think funny things and they appear on paper. Recently I have become fascinated with non-objective imagery, which I find relaxing and healing. I am having a great time creating these new images and am pleased with the outcome. No message, no meaning. If the viewer sees something in it and it gives them pleasure then we both win.

Event Link: https://www.therourke.org/calendar.html

FEE: FREE and open to public to view.

Chris Mortenson: The Air, thin and eager like this.

Fri Apr 11th - Sun Jun 8th

Main-Gallery-Exhibit

The Rourke Art Gallery + Museum, 521 Main Ave, Moorhead, MN 56560, USA  

Chris Mortenson is a fiscal year 2024 recipient of a Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts
and cultural heritage fund.

This activity is made possible by an allocation from The Longspur Prairie Fund at The Rourke.

The Air, thin and eager like this.

My work is driven by the need to understand my own connections to landscape and the relationships between cultural ideals of place and the use of the photographic imagery, which shapes and sustains how Americans think and talk about landscape. The work is rooted in the notion that, at its best, the photograph is a trace of reality, offering half-truths rather than being an authentic representation of what is inside the frame. Photographs tend to be a primary source of understanding about a place, conjuring ideas of the natural and unnatural, whether or not those representations are apt. The work I make questions the duality between our perceived notions of landscape and the realities of those landscapes, as well as the conflict felt within both natural and human-made landscapes.

The Air, thin and eager like this. is a survey of landscape through hunting and is comprised of both large color landscape photographs and portraits made using the palladium process. The practice of hunting is surrounded with emotions both for and against the killing of animals. It is often pointed to as an issue of sustainability and stewardship for the land as well as a positive economic force for rural communities for those who support it and as a bloodthirsty and unnecessary activity to those who oppose it. As a hunter who both enjoys hunting and dislikes the killing, I understand both of these arguments. This work is not an attempt to litigate those positions. It is an attempt to look at hunting as a method for understanding landscape and the conflicts it poses and what happens to the preconceived notions we have if what we are looking at doesn’t align with those ideas.

About the Artist
Chris Mortenson (b. 1979) is an artist and educator based in Moorhead, MN, where he is currently Associate Professor of Art at Concordia College. He has shown work work nationally and internationally at Coop Gallery in Nashville, TN; The Emergeandsee Media Arts Festival, Berlin, Germany; The Exhibition Hall, Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia; The Saarijärvi Museum, Central Finland; 5&J Gallery, Lubbock, TX; The Black Box Gallery, Portland, OR; and at South x Southeast Photogallery, Molena, GA, among others. He holds a BFA from The University of South Dakota and an MA and MFA from The University of Iowa.