Exhibitions
ArtStart’s exhibitions are unique, professional and exciting—it is our goal to challenge, educate and delight our visitors. ArtStart has exhibited collections from The Museum of Russian Art and Finlandia University Gallery, as well as the work of renowned artists like T.L. Solien, Esther Bubley and others. All exhibitions are selected by our Exhibition Team and range from contemporary art to historical and cultural collections. Artists interested in applying for an exhibition may do so here.
2024 Exhibitions
Free-For-Wall, Community Art Exhibition: "Art for Every Body"
January 18 - February 3
The annual Free-For-Wall gives local artists the opportunity to show their work in a professional gallery setting. ArtStart is proud to serve our community with exhibits like this one.
School District of Rhinelander K-12 Art Exhibition
February 8 - February 24
Celebrate and view artwork created by students in the Rhinelander School District, grades K-12. Student work consists of a variety of media including paintings, drawings, prints, collage, ceramic sculpture, and mixed media. GFWC Rhinelander Woman's Club Student Writing Contest submissions will also be on display.
Spring Season:
March 7 - May 4
Glass Gallery featuring artist: Jessica Christie
Exhibition Title: Part Time Landscape
Exhibition Description: Part Time Landscape is an exploration of environment through the stories of those lost and those born into the artist’s life. Textiles are representative of comfort, domestic expectation, and the intimate weight of grief. The works are comprised of screen print, lithography, and other media on hand-dyed fabric that is sewn together in quilt-like pieces and trailing fabric installations. Seed beads and repetitive imagery are utilized to express self-inflicted cultural guilt while found images and fabric speak to the movement of time despite loss.
Stevens Street Gallery featuring artist: Hannah Bennett
Annual Helen Mears Art Contest
March 16 - April 1
Sponsored by GFWC Rhinelander Woman's Club
Exhibition Description: View Rhinelander submissions to the Helen Mears statewide art competition, a children's art competition held annually by the General Federation of Women's Clubs. The Helen Mears Art Contest is a juried exhibit for public, private, and home-schooled 7th and 8th graders. It began in 1927 by the General Federation of Women's Clubs to encourage artistic talent and recognize the achievements of young student artists.
Summer Season:
May 17 - August 4
Artist: Rachel Breen
Exhibition Title: Textile Politics: A Call to Action
Exhibition Description: In this exhibition Rachel Breen explores used textiles assemblages as calls to political action. These works have been with an interest in helping citizens to express collective power – action that is needed to change the global garment industry, protect our planet and publicly express solidarity with the workers who make our clothes.
Fall Season:
August 16 - October 27
Artist: Mary Burns
Stevens Street Gallery Exhibition: Woven Portraits from Around the World
Water is the source of all life. In many traditional cultures, water is imbued with feminine roles and symbolism. Women are the protectors of water, because women give birth and are seen as the keepers of water. This exhibit celebrates and honors water by portraying women who work with it, protect it and advocate for it. Featured are scientists, water-walkers, teachers, farmers, activists and healers, who all hold deep connections with water. It is our hope that this globally inspired exhibit will help develop and strengthen our own ties with water, and inspire actions to further protect our waters.
Glass Gallery Exhibition Title: Exploring the Intersections of Art and Science: A 2024 Traveling Exhibition
The exhibition will feature the works of six art-science interns and their mentors – six professional artists. Participants of the program have spent the last two summers in the field with scientists at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Lac du Flambeau Tribal Natural Resources, and UW-Madison Trout Lake Station where they were immersed in science and the creation of works of art based on their experiences. The exhibit will also feature contributions from artists associated with our ongoing artist in residencies that takes place during the chillier fall and winter seasons.
Winter Season:
November 7 - January 11
Glass Gallery featuring artist: Andrea Kidd
Exhibition Title: Passing Through Wonderland
My name is Andrea Kidd, and I am an artist based in Wisconsin. I create hyperrealist paintings in oil, acrylic, and charcoal, blending together elements of surrealism and whimsy inspired by Alice in Wonderland. Through my paintings, I aim to create an unsettling yet captivating experience for viewers; that draws them in and transports them to a dreamlike world. Each work is meticulously crafted, combining colors and details from different aspects of reality that together form a hypnotic image. My hyperrealist style brings out the strangeness of ordinary, everyday life - while still maintaining its beauty. I hope to bring joy to viewers, as my paintings remind them of the little moments in life that can often be overlooked.
Stevens Street Gallery featuring artist: Cassandra Smith
Exhibition Title: Untitled
My work is about manipulation and transformation. It is about exploring the ways that I can enhance and change found objects to give them something they didn’t have in their former life. I find my inspiration from objects that exist in the world already. I love the idea of enhancing natural beauty and the task of imposing my aesthetic onto an object or animal. There is a challenge in working with these forms that do not easily lend themselves to being bound by strict patterns. Applying two dimensional patterns onto organic forms is technically difficult and tedious, and I couldn’t be more in love with the process.
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2023 Exhibitions
Free-For-Wall, Community Art Exhibition: "My Hometown"
January 19 - February 4
The annual Free-For-Wall gives local artists the opportunity to show their work in a professional gallery setting. ArtStart is proud to serve our community with exhibits like this one.
School District of Rhinelander K-12 Art Exhibition
February 9 - February 25
Celebrate and view artwork created by students in the Rhinelander School District, grades K-12. Student work consists of a variety of media including paintings, drawings, prints, collage, ceramic sculpture, and mixed media. GFWC Rhinelander Woman's Club Student Writing Contest submissions will also be on display.
Spring Season:
March 10 - May 7
Glass Gallery featuring artist: Wolfgang Ryan
Exhibition Title: All Over The Place, Right Here
Exhibition Description: In his first solo exhibition with ArtStart, Rhinelander native and bricoleur Wolfgang Ryan uses repurposed found objects in unexpected ways to create sculptures that amuse and confound the viewer. Ryan’s art seeks playful conversations with art history, popular culture, literature, mythology, and philosophy, with allusions to history and science. With the objects on display in All Over the Place, Right Here, Ryan tackles everything from skateboarding to the multiverse and a few things in between.
Stevens Street Gallery featuring artist: Emily Donovan
March 16 - April 1
Annual Helen Mears Art Contest
Sponsored by GFWC Rhinelander Woman's Club
Exhibition Description: View Rhinelander submissions to the Helen Mears statewide art competition, a children's art competition held annually by the General Federation of Women's Clubs. The Helen Mears Art Contest is a juried exhibit for public, private, and home-schooled 7th and 8th graders. It began in 1927 by the General Federation of Women's Clubs to encourage artistic talent and recognize the achievements of young student artists.
Summer Season:
May 18 - August 5
Curator: Julie Ryan
Exhibition Title: Until Proven Guilty: Courtroom Sketches and Ephemera from the Collection of Joel Hirschhorn
Exhibition Description:
Considered one of America’s top criminal defense attorneys for over 35 years, Mr. Hirschhorn has stories to tell. One way to tell those stories is through the seemingly archaic but vital process of courtroom sketches that is alive and well in courtrooms across America every day.
Dividing his time between Northern Wisconsin and Miami Florida, Joel Hirschhorn has graciously offered to lend works form his private collection of courtroom sketches that follows both the trajectory of his career and the history of some the biggest criminal cases in American history: including those with ties to Watergate, Columbian drug cartels and a significant case argued in front of the Supreme Court directly addressing the use of cameras in courtrooms.
The exhibition at ArtStart will include court sketches by Shirley Henderson and Betty Wells, (among others) along with supporting ephemera (including a cash counting machine given to him by the above mentioned drug cartel). Supporting texts will be produced by Julie Ryan and Mr. Hirschhorn to accompany the framed works and supporting material. The exhibition will address why courtroom artists still exist: the history, origin and continued importance. That Mr. Hirschhorn actually fought before the Supreme Court for this adds an additional heft to the exhibition. This is a timely and engaging exhibition with direct connections to Rhinelander, the world and how art practices are used in everyday life in sometimes surprising ways.
Fall Season:
August 17 - October 28
Artist: Jim Sherraden
Stevens Street Gallery Exhibition: Hatch Print Posters
Hatch Show Print is one of the oldest letterpress print shops in the country and a Nashville landmark. Since its start 144 years ago, Hatch Show Print has been in continuous operation, producing vibrant advertisements and posters using the same approach to letterpress printing through the decades, leveraging the shop’s wood and metal type alongside hand-carved printing blocks for imagery and graphic elements, to create eye-catching work. As advertisements, the posters and ads were meant to tell you or sell you something, from where to fill up your car’s fuel tank to when the next tent show or live entertainment act was traveling through town, from traveling carnivals to concerts by Grand Ole Opry stars such as Bill Monroe and Minnie Pearl, or other entertainers ranging from Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash to Elvis Presley and Led Zeppelin as well as the great African-American jazz and blues entertainers of the day, including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith.
Today, the staff of eight designer-printers continue to work with handset wood and metal type, hand-carve imagery into printing blocks and combine these traditional methods with twenty-first century design sensibilities to produce posters that are sold at the shows as merchandise for live concerts, or commemorate milestone events such as presidential political debates, museum exhibitions, and more. At Hatch Show Print, the printer is the designer, and the designer is the printer. The work the shop turns out is, indeed, a tonic for the digital age.
Glass Gallery Exhibition Title: Jim Sherraden's New Works
This exhibit features Jim Sherraden’s colorful new work, his woodcuts, paper quilts as well as a new collaborative effort creating ceramic tiles.
Jim is influenced by the rich tradition of pattern and decoration found in artwork ranging from Mediterranean tiles to Southwestern American textiles, from Oriental rugs to his Aunt Vera’s quilts. “I readily cut up my own artwork, printed from the blocks I have carved since the early 80s.” "Paper which 'falls to the floor' is used to create the paper quilts. This has expanded to include compositions both balanced and asymmetrical, and rich in color and contrast."
Since 1984 Jim’s name has been synonymous with Hatch Show Print, the iconic letterpress poster and design shop in Nashville, Tennessee. For his work at Hatch, Sherraden was a recipient of the 2013 Distinguished Artist Award for the state of Tennessee. His art has toured with the Smithsonian and has been shown at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as well as multiple venues both in the United States and abroad.
Winter Season:
November 9 - January 13
Glass Gallery featuring artist: Guzzo Pinc
Exhibition Title: Lion's Lick
Lion's Lick is an exhibition of paintings by Wisconsin based artist Guzzo Pinc. In these works the artist wonders where one thing ends and another begins. Abstraction and representation, positive and negative spaces, flow into each other leaving each area open to possibility. In a decorative play of forms and movement the artist depicts a world in which every part is a microcosm of the whole and the whole is an endless spiritual event.
Stevens Street Gallery featuring artist: Josh Winkler
Exhibition Title: Keeping water on the land
Josh Winkler is a Minnesota artist working primarily with print media and is currently Associate Professor of Printmaking at Minnesota State University. "Direct experience and research feed the content and connections that are important to me as an artist. The environmental and cultural tragedies of the past must engage the high stakes of the present." "I primarily utilize printmaking processes. I love the democratic nature of multiple impressions, the portability of paper, and the rich history of commentary and dissemination."
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2022 Exhibitions
Free-For-Wall, Community Art Exhibition: "Water"
January 20 - February 5
This year's Community Art Exhibition is themed Water to inspire reflection and discussion of the importance and quality of water in our community. The annual Free-For-Wall gives local artists the opportunity to show their work in a professional gallery setting. Over 45 local artists submitted work to be shown in this year’s exhibit with mediums ranging from painting to photography to sculpture. ArtStart is proud to serve our community with exhibits like this one. Visit the galleries now until February 5th for your opportunity to view the seemingly limitless talent of our community members. Galleries are open Thursday through Friday 11am-5pm, Saturdays 11am-2pm and you can always call to schedule a visit, 715-362-4328
School District of Rhinelander K-12 Art Exhibition
February 10 - February 26
Celebrate and view artwork created by students in the Rhinelander School District, grades K-12. Student work consists of a variety of media including paintings, drawings, prints, collage, ceramic sculpture, and mixed media. GFWC Rhinelander Woman's Club Student Writing Contest submissions will also be on display.
Spring Season:
March 10 - May 7
Stevens Street Gallery featuring artist: Jes Zange
Exhibition Title: Point A to Point B
Exhibition Description: Jes Zange's latest exhibition comprises a study of her fiber and painting journey. Trained as a painter, Jes desired a way to combine her love of fiber with her expressive painting style. This collection of work encapsulates her growth in the process of executing her vision.
Glass Gallery featuring artist: Rosy Petri
Summer Season:
May 19 - August 6
Curator: Debra Ketchum Jircik
Exhibition Title: Living Blues, Japan to the Midwest
Exhibition Description: A collection of national and internationally recognized traditional Japanese Indigo Dye artists filling both the Stevens Street and Glass Gallery spaces. Follow Living Blues Indigo on Instagram.
Fall Season:
August 18 - October 29
Curator: Gabriela Marvan
Exhibition Title: Cercano
"Cercano" (in Spanish) means closer to, or way to say together. When a person is closer to you, like a family member or a closer friends, we call that person a cercano or cercana. That word can refer to a closer distance, but also to be closer even though we are not in the same space. The Mexican Folk Art Collective is a project that started when COVID hit the world. It is a small group of artists from different towns in Mexico and Mexican artists living in the USA.
Glass Gallery featuring artist: Karen Kunc
Exhibition Title: Creative Destruction, the Woodcut Prints of Karen Kunc
An exhibition that features the reduction woodcut prints of Karen Kunc, from Lincoln, Nebraska. She uses multiple blocks that are each carved then printed onto paper, then carved and printed again up to 8-10 stages, in an evolutionary process. Using selective inking and transparent-to-opaque ink qualities the prints are brilliantly colorful nature-based abstractions that reveal metaphoric meanings.
Winter Season:
November 10 - January 14
Glass Gallery featuring: Nesting Dolls From Around the World
From the collection of The Museum of Russian Art, Minneapolis, MN
Stevens Street Gallery featuring artist: Louise Engelbrecht
Exhibition Title: Remembering Louise Engelbrecht
A memorial exhibition to celebrate the life of Northwoods artists Louise Engelbrecht.