Garry Noland receives Award at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts

2012 Bemis Center Regional Juried ExhibitionMarch 2 - April 7, 2012This March, the Bemis Center Regional Juried Exhibition will return to the bemisUNDERGROUND galleries. The exhibition’s juror, Shannon Stratton, chose 26 artists from over 250 submissions, spanning a diverse range of media, subjects and approaches. Three of the exhibiting artists will be awarded $500 and a 2013 exhibition in the bemisUNDERGROUND.Juror's Award Recipients: Gina Adams, Garry Noland and Lauren MabryJuror's Statement: With around 1000 artworks to choose from, it was challenging to jury the 2012 Bemis Center Regional Juried Exhibition, but as I spent time with the submissions, certain themes and strengths seemed to emerge across career stages and mediums. The final selections reflect a diversity of experience, disciplines, and materiality with an emphasis on certain shared and overlapping themes.  One cannot draw conclusions about a region and its artists from a juried exhibition, but an atmosphere of disquiet emerged in much of the work. Anxiety underlies constrained and precarious forms, tangled marks, impassive landscapes and apprehensive bodies. Meditative patterns reflect on heritage and place. A balance is struck between precariousness and restraint, between weight and breath.  The resulting exhibition is one curator’s response to the work being made (and submitted) in a region. Perhaps it expresses a more widespread, contemporary disquiet that permeates practices outside the Midwest, and outside visual art.About the Juror: Shannon Stratton is an artist, writer and curator from Chicago, Illinois. She is a founder and current Executive and Creative Director of threewalls, a not-for-profit residency and exhibition space in Chicago. In 2010, Chicago’s Newcity Magazine named Stratton one of the top five most vital people in the visual arts and last year the Chicago Tribune named her a “Chicagoan of the Year.”

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts724 South 12th StreetOmaha, NE 68102