2017-2018
Note: All receptions are held from 5-7pm, with an artist talk beginning at 6pm.
Faculty Focus: Gina Gibson
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Remains is an exhibition based on found and received materials. Gibson's recent works includes assemblages of bones, stones and other items gathered out of curiosity and admiration. Although the shapes, textures and visual aspects are engaging, these items have meaning beyond their aesthetic qualities. These seemingly random objects come together in an inexplicable harmony, creating a coherent composite image, while usually being quite meaningless individually. Join the Fine Arts Department on for a reception, highlighting this pivotal work by one of its tenured faculty members.
Deborah Mitchell
- , Reception Thursday,
Drawings, Among Other Things, highlights the print based monotypes and mixed media drawings
of artist Deborah Mitchell. Mitchell's work investigates the intersection of color,
abstraction and drawing, moving beyond a straightforward depiction of reality. Deborah
is Associate Professor at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology while also
serving as Director of the Apex Gallery.
Megan Atwood Cherry
- , Reception
Idaho based artist Megan Atwood Cherry, is a painter and a sculptor whose material choices are driven not by loyalty to a single medium, but rather by her need to give tangible form to conceptual content. In her portfolio, oil paintings rub shoulders with wood sculpture, fiber art, drawings, and installations. With a home base in Sandpoint, Idaho, Megan's working life is a balance of studio practice, teaching, and public service. She is an art instructor at North Idaho College and Emerge of Coeur d' Alene. Her work is exhibited both nationally and throughout the Inland Northwest region.
Bob Miller
- , Reception Thursday,
Bob H. Miller has always had an intense interest in science and technology and their application in image making. Miller strives to incorporate the theories and tools of science into his studio practice. The Sum of All Color exhibition highlights Miller's abstract explorations with 3M Reflective Scotchlite vinyl, bring your flashlight for a a unique viewing experience. Most recently Miller’s GlowPopART and Reflecto works have been included in solo exhibitions at both the Dahl and the Washington Pavillon in Sioux Falls, SD.
The Philippines, Through the Lens of Service Learning
- , Reception Thursday,
The International Service Learning Program provides experiential education opportunities for students to address human and community needs. This innovative BHSU program presents a unique opportunity for students to experience structured international opportunities intentionally designed to promote student learning and development. This exhibition features some of the amazing photographs of BHSU students and Photography Professor Jerry Rawlings documenting their recent service trip to the Philippines.
Wingtip Press
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This exhibition highlights the printmaking efforts of artist from across the country and around the world. After cleaning out the flat files and finding dozens of little scraps of printmaking papers jamming up the file drawers, the folks at Wingtip Press in Boise, Idaho realized they probably weren’t alone with the dilemma of what to do with all those too-precious-to-toss leftover paper scraps.
– Summer
Every spring this popular juried exhibition introduces the BHSU campus and Spearfish audiences to the work of art undergraduates. The professionally juried show features pieces from a wide variety of mediums including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, design, and photography. Showcasing student works in such a scale has been a tradition on campus. It is what makes the Annual Student Exhibition an unparalleled, seminal experience for students and the campus community. For many, the show not only marks their professional debut, it also catapults them into artistic careers. Awards are granted to exceptional works for best in show, and respectively for second and third place.
2016-2017
– ; Reception, , 4-6 pm
Steve Babbitt, Michael Baum, Gina Gibson, Dustin Hinson, Erica Merchant, Ann Porter, Jerry Rawlings, J. Desy Schoenewies, Rachel Stiff
The Faculty Focus Exhibition offers a diverse blend of media and methodology, featuring the work of both senior and new faculty members. These individuals represent a group of cultural advocates that are making an impact internationally through their artistic and educational accomplishments.
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Printmaking is frequently a collaborative activity, studios and print shops have played a fundamental role in the development of artists' ideas around print. Contemporary printmakers are a group of enthusiastic and committed individuals who mobilized the entire community around a common interest. The often shared production of printmaking exchanges attracts numerous artists working as collectives, well suited to their ambitions to create a sense of community through collaboration. This exhibition features a collection of prints from a variety of exchanges produced by 9 In Hand Press.
9 IN HAND PRESS is a pre-press graphic design studio concentrating on unique, hand-built graphics, typography and illustration. Dave DiMarchi the founder and operator of 9 In Hand Press is a multi-disciplinary printmaker and artist working in letterpress, papermaking, silkscreen and sculptural forms. DiMarchi received his BFA in Printmaking and Books from the University of Delaware and has continued to teach and study across the New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania area. He maintains a small collaborative studio and art space in Eastern Pennsylvania working closely with artists to master art-making techniques and instruction.
In addition to showing in the Ruddell Gallery at Black Hills State University, the 2016 International Inaugural Print Exchange has been exhibited at the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign and The Print Center of New Jersey, Branchburg, NJ. The Ruddell Gallery would like to express a gracious "Thank You" to 9INHANDPRESS, and those who have lent their support of these exchanges and this exhibition. The Ruddell Gallery and 9INHANDPRESS is focusing efforts to building an annual tradition of this exchange, continuing to connect printmakers from around the world, exploring all the possibilities of printed matter.
Donald F. Montileaux
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"I have made a choice to share, give and show my culture to the world." – Montileaux
Donald F. Montileaux (Yellowbird) is a modern-day storyteller, rekindling the images of the Lakota lifestyle by painting the people as they were. Montileaux regards himself as having a mission: "To portray the Lakota, the Native Americans, in an honest way. To illustrate them as people who hunted buffalo, made love, raised children, cooked meals, and lived.
To describe Montileaux’s work is to reflect back to his forefathers. The surfaces that they used to make images were hides, rock walls and surfaces both smooth and rough, hides both tanned and rawhide. Montileaux uses modern materials, ledger and watercolor papers as well as canvas and animal hides to create his artwork. While utilizing different types of materials to produce and present the finished product to the viewer, Montileaux achieves slightly the same appearance as his forefathers did to create their work.
A world-renowned artist and illustrator, Montileaux is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe. He has received various awards, including induction into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 2014. Along with attending major art exhibitions throughout his artistic career, Montileaux’s art has illustrated the covers of numerous books. His artworks are included in numerous corporate, public and private collections, and he has been featured in galleries across the nation, including: New Mexico, Minnesota, Arizona, Colorado, and South Dakota.
Garric Simonsen
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Artist Garric Simonsen works with alternative materials and inter-disciplinary ideas, including painting, digital print and objects, the evolution of what could be classified as his anti-painter persona. Much of Simonsen’s early work is rooted in abstraction, often filled with graffiti or scribbling, sometimes punctuated with collaged objects and/or drawings. This exhibition draws from Simonsen’s family linage, pulling away from abstraction and focusing on the artifact, the timeless quality of both object and image.
Simonsen is a fourth-generation Washingtonian, artist and musician. His artwork and projects have shown at Bellevue Arts Museum, Jundt Art Museum, Boston Center for the Arts, Platform Gallery (Seattle, WA), Disjecta (Portland, OR), Seattle University, the 2010 Brucennial (NY, NY), University of Wisconsin Madison, Wheaton University (Norton, MA) and Bradley University (Peoria, IL). Reviews and publications of Simonsen’s work are included in; The Stranger, Seattle Weekly and Art Collector Magazine. Simonsen has also guest written for Hyperallergic art blog in Brooklyn, NY.
In addition, Simonsen’s projects have been funded and awarded grants from the Vermont Studio Center, Artist Trust (Seattle, WA) and The James and Janie Washington Foundation (Seattle, WA). Other achievements include 2012 and 2014 nominations for Portland Art Museum’s Contemporary Northwest Art Awards, MFA Scholarship Award (WSU), Art Music Grant (WSU), JUNO Award (TESC), Mark Blakely Award (TESC). Simonsen is currently a tenure track faculty member at Spokane Falls Community College, and holds an MFA from Washington State University and BA from Evergreen State College (Olympia, WA).
William Collins Photography
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William J. Collins (1867-1938) established a photography studio in Rapid City, located then in the South Dakota Territory in 1886. By the time he retired nearly 50 years later, he had taken hundreds, perhaps thousands of photographs of the growing town, surrounding ranches and farmers as well as miners, lumber workers and the Ogallala Sioux. The photographs in this exhibition were printed from Collins’s approximately 1500 original glass plate negatives.
After Collins died the glass plate negatives passed to his daughter, Buella Collins Crockett. The collection changed many times over the years and finally became part of the collection at the Arvada Center in Arvada Colorado. Recently, the collection was given to Black Hills State University.
The images from this collection are not only exquisite examples of the style of photography being practiced well over 100 years ago but are also an extremely interesting record of our local history.
MFA: Now
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All current MFA graduate candidates. MFA: Now ‘current collapse’ is a juried exhibition with the aim of promoting dialogue while highlighting the current art making practices of MFA candidates from across the country. This exhibition is intended to be a reference revealing connections to current graduate students, and the programs they work within, marking a meaningful step further into the art world. The exhibition is intended to celebrate MFA candidates’ exceptional curiosity, creativity, and inventiveness, focused in an area of concentration and contemplation, further situating their work within the larger discourse which characterizes the practice of art today.
– Summer
Every spring this popular juried exhibition introduces the BHSU campus and Spearfish audiences to the work of art undergraduates. The professionally juried show features pieces from a wide variety of mediums including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, design, and photography. Showcasing student works in such a scale has been a tradition on campus. It is what makes the Annual Student Exhibition an unparalleled, seminal experience for students and the campus community. For many, the show not only marks their professional debut, it also catapults them into artistic careers. Awards are granted to exceptional works for best in show, and respectively for second and third place.