For Immediate Release

Contact: Barbara Briggie-Smith

Tel: 515.271.0343

E-mail: bbsmith@desmoinesartcenter.org

Des Moines Art Center presents Iowa Artists 2013:

Kathranne Knight, Foss Projects, and Midwest Pressed-

Tim Dooley and Aaron Wilson

See captions below

DES MOINES, IA (April 2013) – Iowa Artists 2013 will consist of three projects. The first presentation, Kathranne Knight, will be on view April 19 through July 28 in the Blank One Gallery. Foss Projects, an independent theatre group that provides free plays in found spaces, will present three performances at the Art Center April 26, 27, and 28. And Midwest Pressed-Tim Dooley and Aaron Wilson, will be on view August 2 – October 13 in the Blank One Gallery. Admission to these exhibitions and performances is FREE, and the Des Moines

Art Center is always FREE. For Art Center hours, log onto www.desmoinesartcenter.org.

Ames, Iowa-based artist Kathranne Knight produces delicately rendered works on

paper that explore the horizon line as both a pictorial device and a psychological space. In

her drawings, the horizon line is made up of multiple lines that refer to the process of their

own making and provide a rhythmic, syncopated texture. Knight considers it the

intersection of two points; not only land and sky or water and sky, but day meeting night in

the form of a sunset. Formally, the images are built through accretion, while conceptually

she looks to the work of Piet Mondrian, Anni Albers, and the films of John Ford for

inspiration. The Art Center exhibition will be comprised of medium- and large-scale

drawings along with one site-specific piece. The exhibition is organized by Gilbert Vicario,

senior curator.

Related Program

Artist Gallery Talk

Friday, April 19 / 6 pm / Blank One Gallery

FREE

Senior Curator Gilbert Vicario will lead an informal gallery talk with artist Kathranne Knight

about this exhibition.

Foss Projects will present a fast and funny version of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost in a different Art Center location Friday and Saturday, April 26 and 27 at 7:30 pm, and

Sunday, April 28, at 2 pm. Performances will take place on the grass roof of the Museum

Services Center, in the Maytag Courtyard, and in Levitt Auditorium. Sets, lights, and sounds

of the production will come from found objects and improvised sources. Led by Matt Foss, a

lecturer in theatre at Iowa State University, Foss Projects uses classical texts such as

Shakespeare and Chekhov, to make quality theatre available to broad audiences. This past

summer, the ensemble presented the play a hamlet to more than 500 people in the alley

behind a Burger King and a coffee shop parking lot in Ames, Iowa; on a loading dock of a

performing arts center, and in a roofless movie theatre in Clarksdale, Mississippi. In 2012,

the Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival named Foss the national

Outstanding Director of a Play and named his production of Six Characters the Outstanding Production of a Play in the Nation. Foss Projects is organized by Jeff Fleming, director.

The third project, Midwest Pressed-Tim Dooley and Aaron Wilson is a

collaborative print project between two Iowa artists and art educators. Working mainly with

screen prints, Dooley and Wilson focus on themed bodies of work that highlight both the

unique and serial nature of printmaking. The works involve intense layering of color and

imagery, often focusing on the faces of pop culture figures and heroes of Modernism to

create their own “monsters” or “zombies.” Displayed from floor to ceiling in a grid-like

format, the viewer experiences the full effect of a large series of related works, while also

seeing the detail and variation of individual prints. This exhibition is organized by Laura

Burkhalter, associate curator.

Captions

Left: Kathranne Knight

In the Grass, 2010 Color pencil on paper

54 x 70 inches

Courtesy of the artist

Center:

“’Claudius and Polonius,’ Foss Projects”

Courtesy of Matt Foss

Right:

Midwest Pressed-Tim Dooley and Aaron Wilson

Modern Zombies, 2012 Screenprint on paper

19 1/2 x 12 1/2 feet

Courtesy of the artists

Des Moines Art Center

Recognized by international art critics as a world-class museum in the heart of the Midwest,

the Des Moines Art Center has amassed an important collection with a major emphasis on

contemporary art. The collection’s overriding principle is a representation of artists from the

19th century to the present, each through a seminal work. This accounts for an impressive

collection that ranges from Edward Hopper’s Automat to Jasper Johns’ Tennyson, Henri Matisse’s Woman in White, Georgia O’Keeffe’s From the Lake No. 1, Francis Bacon’s Study after Velásquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, Bill Viola’s Ascension, and Cecily Brown’s Half-Bind.

The Art Center’s physical complex marries with the collection for a totally integrated

experience. The collection is housed in three major buildings, each designed by a world-

renowned architect - Eliel Saarinen, I. M. Pei, and Richard Meier. With the exception of

special events, admission to the museum is free.

In September 2009, the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park opened in

Des Moines’ Western Gateway Park. Philanthropists John and Mary Pappajohn have provided

funding for and donated 27 sculptures by internationally acclaimed contemporary artists to

the Des Moines Art Center. The collection of sculptures by such artists as Louise Bourgeois,

Deborah Butterfield, Keith Haring, Ellsworth Kelly, Willem de Kooning, Jaume Plensa,

Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, and Mark di Suvero, is the most significant donation of artwork

to the Art Center in a single gift in the museum’s history. The Pappajohn Sculpture Park is a

collaboration of the Pappajohns, the City of Des Moines, the Des Moines Art Center, and

numerous corporate and private donors.

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