Change of Residency

by Michael J. Krainak

Mark Masuoka, former Director and CEO of the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts since 2003, has accepted a similar position at the Akron Art Museum in Akron, Ohio.

Though Masuoka’s professional journey in the visual arts began in Las Vegas, Nevada, he has gradually worked his way eastward via Denver next, then Omaha and now the fifth largest city in Ohio with a metropolitan population of over 700,000, just 30...

Guthrie’s ‘Believe It or Not’

by Michael J. Krainak

Multi-media artist Tim Guthrie is playing with our heads, again.

Guthrie, a Creighton University professor in Graphic Design and New Media, has done this before with two collaborative instillations that messed with one’s mind as well as a certain cultural and socio-political status quo.

First with Nuclear Dichotomies (2007) and next with the truly Extraordinary Rendition (2010), both of which exposed and...

‘Family Portraits’

by Laura Vranes

It may be a surrogate for the absent human figure, but clothing is something that Christina Renfer Vogel has been mastering for years. Yet never better than in her current exhibit at Fred Simon Gallery, Family Portraits, which continues until June 7.  This show seems personal where not only her skills with painting textiles are highlighted, but also we are able to get a glimpse into her mind and thoughts of the...

Go West, Young Man

by Michael J. Krainak

Hesse McGraw, chief curator for the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts since 2008, may be heading for San Francisco, but by all accounts he’s leaving his heart in Omaha.

McGraw has accepted an offer from the San Francisco Art Institute to be its new Vice President for Exhibitions and Public Programs. Though he says he looks forward to what can only be considered a vertical move in his young career for this...

Accidents Happen….

by Mary Day

The recognition of literal and conceptual material, discovered in the happenstance of process informs a new body of work by Omaha based artist Christina Narwicz. Accidentally on Purpose, now on view at Anderson O’Brien Fine Art Old Market through May 26, 2013, explores the objective language and subjective investigation of painting and nature.

The undercurrent resonating throughout the exhibition’s installation...

Double Vision

by Laura Vranes

Some artists confront nature and the everyday world and illustrate it with all its beauty and mystery intact. Others expose it for all its contradictions and obscurity. In either case, appreciation and interpretation are best left to the viewer.

Christian Rothmann, a Berlin artist, offers his audience similar points of view of the natural and the manmade, but never in the same show or medium. Two current...