Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts

A rare opportunity to visit the studios of current artists-in-residence, Open Studios will take place at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts on Tuesday, November 10 from 5:00 - 8:00 p.m. Featuring current artists-in-residence Christine Gray, Richmond VA; Dawn Gettler, Chicago, IL; Mayumi Amada, Minneapolis, MN; Laur...ie Frick, Austin, TX; Shaun Richards, Raleigh, NC. Free and open to the public.

About the Artists:
Mayumi Amada creates installations out of a wide variety of materials, including, but not limited to discarded plastic bottles, bones, metal, live swimmers, mirrors and rope. She is interested in ancestry, the circular nature of life cycles, and the environment.

Laurie Frick creates large and vibrantly colorful collages. She is interested in patterns, memory, and time. Frick is interested in the way past experiences influence the way the brain processes and interprets images and information.

Dawn Gettler creates temporary installations that respond to the habitual nature of daily life. Her installations consist of common materials, such as sugar and soap, that hold cultural associations. Gettler is interested in finding the beauty in ritual and the act of complacency.

Christine Gray is interested in cultural mythologies, fantastic space and blurring the boundaries of reality. Her paintings, modeled from handmade dioramas, create fictitious and supernatural representations of nature.

Shaun Richard’s large paintings are influenced by his upbringing in the southeastern United States. The landscapes, history, idiosyncrasies and contradictions of this region helped to shape the interests, themes, and content of his work. With much of this recent work he has intentionally degraded the surfaces and images to create a sense of fleeting sentimentality, in the same way our experience of memories can become skewed or fictitious over time.Read More

Participants: Richard Chung, Dana Fritz, Leslie Iwai, Laurie Victor Kay, Amy Morin, Sean Ward and Mary Zicafoose.
Free and open to the public

Join curators Mark Masuoka and Hesse McGraw on a gallery tour and conversation throughout our three auction exhibitions. The tour will offer background and context for the auction,... describe the curatorial process that organizes works by over 200 artists and highlight specific works. Local artists Mary Zicafoose, Leslie Iwai, Laurie Victor Kay, Dana Fritz, Richard Chung, Amy Morin and Sean Ward will join the conversation to provide insight on their pieces and art practice. This is an ideal opportunity to explore the many connections between artists, works and ideas in the exhibitions.

Please note the tour now begins at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 22nd. Beer sponsored by Upstream Brewing Co. and wine sponsored by Quail Distributing.Read More

View all of the auction artwork online at http://www.bcartsales.org/auction.cfm

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The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts warmly invites you to join us in celebrating our 11th Annual Art Auction and Exhibitions. This event, and its three accompanying exhibitions, is our most anticipa...ted of the year. It is our largest annual project – it features the greatest number of local, national and international artists; spans 10,000 square feet; is our most significant fundraiser; and the kaleidoscopic survey of current art draws a vast audience. Most importantly, it is a celebration of, and critical opportunity to support exceptional talent.

For $25 per member or $35 per nonmember, guests receive admission to the SILENT Auction, buffet and open bar. For $50 per member or $60 per non-member, guests receive the benefits above as well as a reservation to the 11th Annual Art Auction Cocktail Party on Thursday, November 12th and VIP reserved seating in the LIVE Auction Gallery on the evening of the auction. Seats are limited in the LIVE Auction Gallery. For those not seated in the LIVE Auction Gallery, live streaming video will be available so that everyone can be part of the action on auction night. NEW this year – LIVE Auction online bidding courtesy of Proxibid.Read More

Since 2001 Jack Rose has pursued his own path in the solo acoustic guitar genre as invented by John Fahey. Like Fahey, Rose draws his inspiration from early rural American musicians like Charley Patton, Skip James and Blind Blake. In addition to those influences he gleans inspiration from Robbie Basho, Ry Cooder, Zia M.... Dagar, La Monte Young and Terry Riley. Jack incorporates all of these elements into his own idiosyncratic style and it is his sound and his alone. Since 2002 he has released 3 critically acclaimed LPs for the Eclipse label, 2 CDs for VHF, and various compilation albums and a live document.

From 1995-2006 Rose was a member of the legendary drone / noise / folk group Pelt. Pelt—along with Tower Recordings, UN, Charalambides—was one of the early groups who forged a new sound that combined free improv, drone and traditional folk music in the early to mid nineties, later coined "weird new america" by The Wire's David Keenan in the early oughts.

Omaha-based artist Simon Joyner’s musical career began during the early 90’s lo-fi explosion which spawned contemporaries like Smog, Lou Barlow, and Will Oldham. Like them, Joyner was quick to avoid being pigeonholed as a lo-fi, 4-track artist. Instead, he recorded some records in studios, others in living rooms and warehouse spaces. Between tours, he released a series of influential records on various independent labels (including his own label, Sing, Eunuchs!) before giving up regular touring to raise a family. Legendary British DJ, John Peel, was an early champion of Joyner’s music and expanded the songwriter’s audience considerably through airplay on his BBC program. But, without regular touring, Joyner remained under the radar — a cult hero whose music is celebrated by a devoted following.

This performance closely follows Joyner's release of Out Into The Snow, his landmark twelfth record, released by Team Love.

Jack Rose Presenting Sponsor: The Betiana and Todd Simon Foundation
Jack Rose Event Sponsors:Upstream Brewing Co., Warren Distribution
A Pre-Conscious Space is sponsored by: Mutual of Omaha, the Betiana and Todd Simon Foundation and Karen and Robert Duncan
Additional A Pre-Conscious Space sponsors include: Council Bluffs Recycling Center, Davis Erection, Dapose, Callyann Casteel, Larry Gawel, Nebraska Arts Council, Rainbow Music Center, Regal Plastic Supply Co., Rybin Plumbing & Heating, Schnackel Engineers, Inc., Tree Amigos, Upstream Brewing Co.
The Bemis Center's exhibition program is presented by: Omaha Steaks
Additional exhibition sponsors include: Clark Creative Group, Nebraska Arts CouncilRead More

Please join us for a public lecture by Richmond, Virginia based artist Michael Jones McKean on his "The Rainbow Project," an artwork proposed for the Bemis Center in 2010.

"The Rainbow Project" offers a simple, though rare visual experience: a rainbow. The project will make temporary rainbows using sunlight and water a...bove the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska. Multiple times per day, for 10 to 20 minutes each, a rainbow, sometimes as large as 200 feet tall and 200 feet wide will appear above the building.

Michael Jones McKean is a former resident at the Bemis Center and current professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. For the past several years, he has conducted ongoing experiments leading to the production of a site-specific project commissioned by the Bemis Center. McKean’s work will amplify the placeless, celebratory, seductive and elusive qualities of the spectacular event of a rainbow. The Bemis Center is excited to produce this project, which could so directly capture broad public imagination and allow the contemporary arts center to have wide-ranging conversations with communities throughout Omaha.

The project will use high-powered jet pumps and custom fountain nozzles mounted to Bemis Center’s roof in downtown Omaha. The nozzles will be linked in timed bursts creating a dense water wall atop the building. A customized rooftop downspout system will allow recycling of the water. Based on atmospheric conditions, vantage point, available sunlight and the changing angle of sun in the sky throughout the day, each rainbow will have a different character and quality. One will be able to see the rainbows from thousands of feet away.

Whether a majestic arch in the sky that appears fleetingly after a short spring shower or a small, homespun rainbow created with a garden hose on a sunny day, a rainbow operates as one of the most egalitarian of visual experiences; one that is by nature temporary, undetermined, and wonderful. Using the most elemental materials, sunlight and water, "The Rainbow Project" exists somewhere between real and representation, actual and artifice.

Although the graphic symbol of a rainbow has been co-opted, politicized, branded and commodified, an actual prismatic rainbow still has an ability to momentarily dislodge us from the everyday. It feels hopeful, yearning, optimistic, ghost-like and meaningful. In this sense the project occupies the small, but charged space between out-of-time retinal phenomena and the ancient continuum of cultural signification represented by the sublime. The outward simplicity of this singular image, a rainbow, belies its subtle complexity courting a multifaceted and hopefully consequential discourse.Read More