Red Cloud Opera House Hosts Tiny Art Market

Margaret Berry
Margaret Berry is a studio artist in Lincoln, Nebraska, specializing in encaustic, a mixture of hot beeswax and pigment fused with a torch. On the residency roster of the Nebraska Arts Council, she has taught Wax/Cool Art process throughout Nebraska and the United States as well as serving as director of the Arts Council, education director of the Lux Art Center, and the first artist in residence for the Lincoln Marriott Cornhusker Hotel.

"I am in love with the ancient medium of encaustic which I apply hot on wood panel in layers and fuse with a torch. It hardens quickly so I use it intuitively and relish the surprising textures and mixing of colors. It is versatile, sensual and aromatic. It intersects well with other media and allows me to incorporate drawings, photographs and collage materials into my unique artwork."

Jojo Dupré
JoJo Dupré is a multidisciplinary artist based in Willington, Connecticut. She has been drawing and painting since childhood and studied at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, California. Her oil and acrylic paintings focus primarily on lifelike portraits of animals and people, capturing their character and personality through realism and expressive detail, while her emerging illustration practice serves as a playful outlet for quirky, imaginative concepts. By letting these two distinct styles share the stage, she keeps her audience engaged and guessing what she will create next.

"Driven by curiosity across multiple mediums, my creative foundation is rooted in capturing the tiny, realistic details of our world through lifelike portraiture. My illustration practice, however, acts as an alter ego—a space where strict realism steps aside to let my imagination take over. Alternating between these opposing styles simply keeps my creativity moving. Ultimately, I create to disrupt the white noise of everyday life, hoping to catch you off guard with an image that stops you in your tracks, leaves you with a renewed sense of wonder, or simply brightens your day with a bit of unexpected joy.

Jonathan Goodding
Jonathan Goodding lives with his wife Suzanne and their seven children just outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. Trained in painting and printmaking at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Jonathan is drawn to the landscape he grew up in. Through form, color, and energetic mark-making, Jonathan seeks to express the beauty and grandeur that God designed into wide-open Midwestern skies. For regular updates on his process and new work, subscribe to Jonathan’s newsletter at jongoodding.com or follow @jongoodding on Instagram.

Kim Grothen
Kim Grothen is a mostly self-taught artist who lives on a farm near Juniata, Nebraska. She works in various mediums, including watercolor, gouache, acrylics, and alcohol ink. She holds a diploma in Media Arts, concentrated on Graphic Design, and from that also works in digital art. As a member of The Art Connection in Hastings, Nebraska, she has shown in several group art shows. When not in her studio, Kim can be found in her farm office or in her gardens.

"I work with different mediums and choose what to use according to the effect I want to attain. Large-scale or bolder works will be painted with acrylic paint. Working with alcohol ink gives an ethereal effect. I have created digital art primarily for logos and signage. My favorite medium is combing watercolor, gouache, and ink. I love the crispness of the ink lines and the ability to create opaque areas of gouache within the softness of watercolor. Florals, nature, and scenery are my favorite subject matter.

Susan Hart
usan Hart grew up in Gibbon, Nebraska, and currently lives in rural Cozad with her husband, Jim. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in art education from Kearney State College in 1981. Susan taught elementary art for seventeen years in Dawson County rural schools and now conducts artist workshops throughout the state. Recently, she has been involved in teaching and making art with her four grandchildren.

Hart is a member of IMPACT, a juried organization of nationally-recognized artists based in Nebraska. She has participated in both solo and group juried exhibitions, including programs organized by the Nebraska Arts Council such as the Governor’s Residence and the Fred Simon Gallery. Her work has also been accepted into exhibitions by the National Collage Society, the International Society of Experimental Artists, and the 1516 Biennial Exhibition. Hart holds signature membership in the International Society of Experimental Artists and the National Collage Society. Her work appears in private collections as well as permanent collections at Nebraska institutions like the Museum of Nebraska Art in Kearney, Doane College in Crete, York College in York, and the Kimmel Harding Nelsen Center for the Arts in Nebraska City. Susan is an associate member of the Burkholder Project Gallery in Lincoln, Nebraska.

"I have always been intrigued with line, shape, texture, and color.  Using a mix of media within a non-objective/abstract theme allows me to explore those things in the process of creating my paintings. My work uses familiar elements to uncover the unfamiliar.

"I feel that my work is reflective of what I enjoy most—the creative process.  My process involves more than creating a pleasing design.  It includes gluing down my hand-painted papers, incorporating various found items, and applying acrylic paint.  The process is a dynamic journey of layering paint, paper, and texture, each step revealing new dimensions and depth.  The dance of adding and subtracting builds a sense of time, memory, and mystery through historical context, inviting viewers to uncover hidden narratives with each piece.

"I am fascinated with how the viewer relates to my work.  Viewer interactions often reveal unexpected interpretations and insights, which in turn inspire new directions in my art.  These dialogues enrich my creative process and deepen my understanding of the themes I explore.  These interactions not only deepen my understanding of my own work but also inspire new creative directions. It is my objective to fully develop this gift that I have been given."

Rick Houchin
Rick L. Houchin has nearly fifty years of photography experience, primarily as a photojournalist for award-winning Nebraska newspapers, but for the past twenty-five years, he has been an active fine art photographer. Houchin has exhibited work across Nebraska, including Omaha’s Joslyn Art Museum, Hastings College, Seward Civic Center, Minden Opera House, and elsewhere. His most recent show was held at Great Plains Art Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, along with fellow photographer David Lovekin, entitled Presence of Absence. Houchin is a graduate of University of Nebraska at Kearney and Kodak Fine Arts Education Center in Chicago. Houchin is the editor and photographer at the Webster County Sun, a newspaper in south-central Nebraska’s city of Red Cloud. He’s been a photographer since 1976 and is a former Nebraska Writer/Photographer of the Year.

"Photography has been my life, with decades of photojournalism and fine art. I added abstract painting in the past few years in an effort to express other feelings and ideas.

"During my career, I pass through a lot of small towns in the center of the country. Usually on my way elsewhere, I often marvel at the nuances of some of the smallest towns. Other travels have presented different photographs and styles.

"I don’t limit myself to realistic presentations, although sometimes that is the proper method, depending upon the mood or the subject. I photograph and paint, whether anyone ever sees the finished product. I am compelled to create."

Yelena Khanevskaya
Yelena Khanevskaya paints in her Wildcat Hills studio in western Nebraska, where she lives with her partner, Colin Croft. She has been creating art since her childhood in the former Soviet Union. She trained at Oryol Pedagogical University and received a Masters of Art Education. After several stints as a production artist in the post-Soviet era, Khanevskaya met and married a Nebraskan and moved to the Panhandle.

While overcoming the adjustments to a new place and a new culture, Khanevskaya leaned into her art. Now with full creative freedom, she relished the opportunity to create art beyond the confines of the narrow opinions and sometimes harsh criticism of her instructors. Instead, she found a supportive group of local artists and art patrons that helped to jumpstart her full-time art career.

Living in Western Nebraska, the scenery became a natural inspiration for much of Khanevskaya’s art. She claims that the sunsets and sunrises witnessed here are incomparable to most other places she has visited. Western Nebraska’s unusual landscapes, with vast expanses of land and ancient buttes remind her of old American western films she watched in Russia.

Khanevskaya teaches art at Western Nebraska Community College; she has exhibited work on the Brickwalk in Kearney, Nebraska; at Chadron State College; and as part of the Museum of Nebraska Art's Spirit showcase and auction, among many others.

Gwen Lewis
Gwen Glover Lewis was born in Red Cloud, Nebraska, and raised on a farm in nearby Northbranch, Kansas. She is a self-taught artist with a lifelong interest in art. A Cloud County Community College evening course began her art career, which she has continued by studying extensively on her own and taking workshops given by nationally and internationally known artists. She has won numerous awards in juried shows in several states, including Best of Show and Awards of Excellence. Gwen is a member of The Art Connection in Hastings, Nebraska, President of the Red Cloud Area Artists, and a board member of the Association of Nebraska Art Clubs (ANAC). Gwen and her husband raise cattle and crops south of Red Cloud, near the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie, and many of her paintings reflect her love of that landscape. They have raised three children and are now very busy attending grandchildren's wrestling meets and ballgames. She also enjoys camping and nature. Gwen shares a studio, Imagine That Art Studio, with her daughter and fellow artist, Christi Lewis, in Red Cloud.

"I work mainly in the mediums of oil and pastel. My subject matter primarily involves representational landscapes and nature. I have a deep love and appreciation for the prairie, pasture land, rural scenes and wilderness areas, and hope to transfer that feeling to the person viewing my art.

I feel that the mediums of oil and pastel best allow me the freedom to express my vision. I enjoy working in oil because of the depth and richness of the medium. I use a limited palette of white, ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow, alizarin crimson and cadmium red. All colors are mixed from those four pigments. Pastel, on the other hand, provides an immediate palette of a vast color range. My mission as a landscape artist is to make a person stop, look, and appreciate a single moment in time.

The quote I best relate to is: "I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way—things I had no words for," by Georgia O'Keeffe.

David Lovekin
David Lovekin is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Hastings College, in nearby Hastings, Nebraska. His PhD is from the University of Texas at Dallas. He is the author of Technique, Discourse, and Consciousness: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Jacques Ellul and editor with Donald Phillip Verene of Essays in Humanity and Technology. He co-edited a book with David Gill called Political Illusion and Reality (2018). He is co-translator of Jacques Ellul’s The Empire of Non-Sense, a critique of modernist art. Exploring the idea of technology as a problem for the philosophy of culture, his most recent essay is “Looking and Seeing: the Play of Image and Word—the Wager of Art in the Technological Society.” He is the recipient of five National Endowment for the Humanities grants. His photography has been published in numerous books and periodicals; his most recent work appears on covers of Prairie Schooner and in the gallery Modern Arts/ Midwest in Omaha. He paints abstractions in acrylics and currently is doing ink painting in the sumi-e style.

"Echoing photographer Eugene Smith, I attempt to use my cameras, brushes, paint, canvases, and paper to the best of my ability. I began photography seriously in the late 1960s in a friend’s dark room watching images magically appear on blank sheets of paper. The visible and the invisible conjoined. Writing with light. Reality hobnobbing with appearance. Seeming and being were bedfellows. Most of us learn on the grade school playground that reality is at least a matter of perspective. The child whose hat is flung about eats a different lunch than the tormentors. On a more advanced playground we hear nuclear physicists espousing an uncertainty principle that insists that the measured responds to being measured. “Reality” profits from being uncovered as we fling our own hats about as well as those of the tormentors.

"I am a bounty hunter in the spiritual zoo as a photographer where appearances are found in various cages and confines that are self-imposed (if there is a self) or are the results of communal/social intention and attention. As a painter I bend the zoo bars and fling my hat about with improvisational abandon."

Laura Mead
A native of Vermont, Laura moved to Kansas after falling in love with the Flint Hills.  She was formally introduced to meditation in 1986, and after experiencing the benefits became a regular meditator. Over the years, she has been authorized by a number of teachers from different traditions to teach a variety of meditative practices. In addition, she became certified as a meditation instructor in Cultivating Emotional Balance under the instruction of Drs. Alan Wallace, Paul Ekman and Eve Ekman. Laura regularly offers meditation classes nationwide.

As a way of maintaining her own meditative stability and expressing creative energies, she engages in artistic pursuits involving polymer clay and natural fibers. Laura is a self-taught artist.

Marilyn Reynolds
Marilyn Reynolds works in a variety of mediums including pastels, oils, watercolors, acrylics, mixed media, oil & cold wax, and printmaking. She began her art instruction in high school while living in California., with a talented instructor and mentor. Reynolds was employed for 24 years with Central Community College in Hastings, Nebraska, and continued developing her creative expression as a graphic designer and continuing to attend art classes and workshops. Her many awards include: Best of Show in local competitions and the Association of Nebraska Art Clubs (ANAC) conference; two ANAC Awards of Excellence and inclusion in the statewide traveling show; two ANAC Honorable Mentions. Reynolds also received the Nebraska Life Magazine Award for best representational piece of Nebraska, also awarded through ANAC. She was a co-op member of Gallery on Lincoln in Hastings, Nebraska, and also showed at Prairie Winds Art Gallery and Studio 10 in Grand Island, as well as other competitions, exhibitions, and gallery shows.

"I have loved art for as long as I can remember. Being born in the state of Washington and moving to Southern California at an early age, my exposure to nature has always been an inspiration for my art. Whether visiting national parks and forests, the oceans or the desert, I would draw from these natural surroundings inspiration for my art. Living the last 45 years in Nebraska, I have fallen in love with the prairie landscape and the incredible cloud formations which continue to inspire me. The majority of my subject matter is wildlife and the landscapes of Nebraska. I try to communicate with form, movement, color and light the respect and love I have for all of nature."

Amy Springer
Amy Springer is a glass artist originally from New Orleans who calls Red Cloud home. She is drawn to the beauty and versatility of glass, whether giving discarded bottles and other found materials a second life or working with art glass in its many colors, textures, and forms. Her work combines a love of experimentation with an appreciation for the unexpected, exploring how light, color, and form can transform familiar materials into something new. She enjoys discovering what glass can become and creating pieces that are both functional and visually engaging.

Tracy Tucker
Tracy Sanford Tucker grew up on the Great Plains and holds degrees in English, Creative Writing, and Great Plains Studies from Kansas State University and the University of Nebraska. Her writing and photography have been published in Willa Cather Review, Whirlwind, Farm Progress, The Spruce, Martha Stewart, Food Poisoning Bulletin, and more, as well as in book chapters on Willa Cather, Sanora Babb, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. She is the archivist and director of collections and curation at the National Willa Cather Center.

"The first time that I remember making art was with my Grandma Matie. The Grit had printed full-page newsprint outlines of a rooster and a hen, and we glued on dried popcorn, beans, corn, and peas to make a very large chicken assemblage, shellacked and framed and hung with pride above Grandma's overstuffed turquoise rocker. Honestly one of my very favorite things in the whole world. I dabble: photography, needlework, woodworking, sketching, papermaking, you name it. I've always loved watercolor, and like most things I do, my paintings are loose, expressionistic versions of the landscape that is around me—the landscape as a feeling and an idea, instead of as a concrete image."

Cynthia Uden
Cynthia Uden, a distinguished artist from Hastings, Nebraska, has carved a niche for herself with her captivating landscape and urban-themed works. Growing up in the intimate milieu of Hastings, Nebraska, Cynthia was surrounded by the natural beauty that would later inspire her artistic journey. Her formative years were not only spent engaging with the serene landscapes of her hometown, but also exploring cultural horizons during an exchange program to Brazil. This experience broadened her perspective and ignited a passion for art that led her to pursue formal education at Northern Arizona University and Hastings, where she earned a BA in Art.

"A native of Hastings, my family owned a business downtown. The business was moved several times, lastly on 3rd Street. I worked for my dad, eventually quitting to attend college in Lincoln. The artist impression of downtown Hastings is an oil on hardboard. Accustomed to painting on canvas, the artist first photographed the downtown from several angles, deciding on this angle for its depth and contrast of lights and darks. It depicts a clear day in Hastings. The dark turquoise draws the viewers eye to the two-story store front, bathed in light."

Paula Wallace
Artist, author, and illustrator Paula Wallace lives and works in Omaha, Nebraska.  She is a graduate of the University of Iowa and has had a studio in the Hot Shops Art Center since 2004. Her work is found in public and private collections internationally.

Among her many interests, hiking keeps her in touch with the heart of nature, and art in service keeps her in touch with the human heart.  Wallace is especially fond of staff and children at the Munroe Meyer Institute, as well as QLI and the Intercultural Senior Center.