Wriston opens with three-artist exhibit

Mandi Roberts

From Sept. 27 through Nov. 7, three new art exhibits will be featured at the Wriston Art Center. The Leech Gallery will feature Otto Wirsching’s Vom Totentanz. Kevin Giese’s Minnesota Twilight can be seen in the Hoffmaster Gallery, and Laura Vandenburg’s all which way will be on display in the Kohler Gallery.Milwaukee artist Kevin Giese’s work features the picturesque outdoors of Minnesota. While he works with many different mediums, perhaps his most beautiful and elegant style is one that also deals with tragedy. For his lovely relief of birds, Giese saturates the feathers of road kill and other dead birds with watercolor paints and presses them against the paper. This creates a surreal foundation on which he layers more paint. Giese describes his work as “figurative paintings that speak of inner workings.”

On the opening night of exhibition, Laura Vandenburg gave a lecture that explained some of her more enigmatic work. She said her art demonstrates that “We [humans] are a mode of the environment that grew conscious of itself.”

Vandenburg manipulates small tiles and blocks of wood with paint and lacquer and arranges them on the wall. The viewer is encouraged to look for greater meaning in the relationship between the pieces. Vanderburg feels that the viewer completes the work.

Otto Wirsching’s Vom Totentanz (The Death Dance) is part of the Wriston Galleries’ permanent collection. His work is a collection of prints from the World War I. The images explore the way different levels of war-torn German society dealt with death. This collection is a journey into images from the past that still apply today.

The Wriston Galleries’ hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.; Saturday through Sunday, noon-4:00 p.m.; Monday, closed.