Riverland Community College

In the James Wegner Art Gallery, October's featured artists are both decidedly "on the grid"- with explorations that evoke travel through suburban topography, as well as painterly voyages that build up complex layers and textures using the grid as a formal structure. Together, the works of Jeannine Kitzhaber and Adam McCauley  create an almost dizzying visual dialogue with many delightful surprises.

As a frequent commuter, Jeannine Kitzhaber's paintings and assemblages seek to manifest that experience, a ubiquitous one in the modern age. Rows of houses, painted and/or modeled in wood create patterned constellations that interact with roads, rivers and landscapes. Literally an overview of our shared surroundings, seen from a number of vantage points, Kitzhaber also addresses modes of representation in a continuing series of modifications from the literal to the diagrammatic, from the verbal to the three-dimensional. Kitzhaber has a Master's degree in painting from the University of Minnesota and currently teaches at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls. She has exhibited extensively throughout the metro region and elsewhere.

Adam McCauley's paintings successfully manage to balance the rigidity of the grid with a freewheeling indulgence in color, texture and painterly gesture. Like Kitzhaber, part of his inspiration is the prevalence of the grid in our increasingly urban environment. The works convey specific lights, moods and expressions that can be read as both lyrical and metaphorical. He has received a B.F.A in Studio Arts and an M.A. in Art History both from the University of Wisconsin Superior.  He exhibits his art locally and regionally and has participated in several solo and group exhibitions, primarily in Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. He has received an Emerging Artist and a Career Development Grant from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council.