By Eleanor Spiess-Ferris

A Remembrance of Awakened Birds

Exhibit features work by Nancy Mladenoff and
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris

By Nancy Mladenoff

By Eleanor Spiess-Ferris

Carthage's H.F. Johnson Gallery of Art presents "A Remembrance of Awakened Birds: Nancy Mladenoff and Eleanor Spiess-Ferris" Sept. 9-Oct. 16.

An opening reception was held Thursday, Sept. 16.

Nancy Mladenoff is an associate professor of art at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In her work, landscapes become the embodiment of the power of nature. Perched amid the tempest of these elegant yet violent tangles of color and form are delicately rendered birds unencumbered by their surroundings.

Eleanor Spiess-Ferris teaches at the Evanston (Ill.) Art Center. The natural world also influenced Spiess-Ferris' works, imbuing them with a sense of surrealism and symbolism related to her childhood experiences in New Mexico. The significance of the bird has always been important in her work, calling forth exuberance and absurdity in her earlier works, to loss and mourning in her more recent works.

The H.F. Johnson Gallery of Art is located at Carthage, south of A.F. Siebert Chapel. Gallery hours are 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 6-8 p.m. Thursday evening, and 1-4 p.m. Saturday.

For more information, visit www.carthage.edu/artgallery

By Nancy Mladenoff