Unexpected Landscapes | Chris Faust
Reception: October 12, 4:30-7:30pm
Exhibition: October 2 - 31, 2026
Gallery Hours: Monday - Thursday 7am - 10pm; Friday 7am - 5pm
About the Exhibition “Unexpected Landscapes”
“I’d like students to think outside the box for landscapes. Unexpected landscapes maybe aren’t so pretty, but I think a photograph should ask a question, address issues - it’s a very important part of photography.” ~ Chris Faust
An iconic Minnesota photographer, Chris Faust’s “Unexpected Landscapes” exhibition encompasses over 40 years of his urban, suburban, natural, industrial, and agricultural landscapes throughout the Midwest and worldwide. Beyond the very traditional photographer ethos for attempts at “pretty” landscapes, Faust strives to shoot his own unique observations and to discover deeper insights into the unexpected moments from the world around us.
This collection gathers many never-before-seen images from a wide range of commissioned projects through his individual explorations. With black and white film, pinhole, macro, panoramic, and specialty cameras, his silver photographic prints reveal an unsurpassed record that documents past places, and poses many questions for our future.
Faces Behind the Mask: Exploring Identity, Perception, and Migration | Lys Akerman-Frank
Reception: November 9, 4:30-7:00pm
Exhibition: November 9 - December 21, 2026
Gallery Hours: Monday - Thursday 7am - 10pm; Friday 7am - 5pm
About the Exhibition “Faces Behind the Mask”
“The exhibition brings together sculpture, video, and participatory installation to examine how identity is shaped by both self-perception and societal perceptions. The work centers on eight collaborators —immigrants and U.S.-born individuals—whose personal stories are gathered through in-depth video interviews.
These conversations explore how they see themselves, how they believe others perceive them, and the “masks” they navigate in daily life.
From these interviews, I am creating eight large-scale, mixed-media masks—each representing a collaborator’s identity, history, and emotional landscape. The exhibition is designed as an immersive and reflective experience. Each mask is displayed on its own pedestal, facing a mirror installed on the gallery wall. Visitors are invited to approach each piece and see their own reflection aligned with the mask, creating a powerful moment of embodiment—“wearing” someone else’s identity while confronting their own.
This project is supported by a 2026 Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board.
Taking Shape | Juliane Shibata
Exhibition: August 14 - September 28, 2026
About the Exhibition “Taking Shape”
The title of this artwork, “Taking Shape”, evokes the activity of molding and forming and speaks to the way a project develops over time. As an artist who works with the earth and my hands, I am interested in how gardens and our built environments are constructed and sculpted. Process, shaping, and the transformation of materials are integral to the practice of both gardening and ceramics. I invite those who encounter the installation to touch, manipulate, and move some of its components, and thus contribute to its evolution as a work of art.
Taking Shape includes over 1500 floral pieces made by over 80 individuals, almost half of whom did not have any prior art or ceramics experience. From February through June, I led three pairs of workshops for community participants. The first workshop centered on people designing a stamp out of clay that visually communicates an element of their heritage. Once these stamps were bisque fired, the participants returned for the second workshop to transfer their designs onto slabs of clay, using cookie cutters shaped like cherry blossoms to create the installation components. In July, I worked with students at Normandale Community College, who added their designs to the components through carving and stamping.
My hope is that this installation will encourage reflection on the nuanced and multifaceted nature of identity, and raise questions about whom art is for, what role it can play in civic life, and what impact every individual can have on the environment around them as they design, shape, and re-shape the artwork. ~ Juliane Shibata
Taking Shape is supported by Carleton College, Forecast Public Art, Normandale Community College, and the Minnesota State Arts Board.
Earth-derived, foraged, re-explored, and re-imagined, the artists' works of UNEARTHED reveal creative journeys and personal discoveries through themes of immigration and memory, materiality and experimentation, harmony and discord, perception and scale, exploration and transplantation.
About Artist, Alonso Sierralta
The concepts and subject matter for my work develop from ideas related to my experience as an immigrant. The work is not meant to be a political commentary, but rather a visual representation of transplantation using organic forms and natural motifs: pods, seeds, bark, mushrooms, roots, etc.
Working with this metaphorical relationship, forms and materials are selected with the intention of creating both harmony and discord. Moving to a new country, learning a new language, giving up what is familiar elicits both optimism and fear. The spreading of seeds, roots, pollen, etc. are the basic inspiration for the sculptural form. Disparate materials are then selected to create a sense of tension and forced metamorphosis.
You may connect with Alonso on his website:
You may connect with Lisa on her website:
Karen's new body of work diverges from her past 2D practices, to now break new ground as she combines image and sculptural creations using thread, fiber, 3D spatial definition, and animation.
About the Artist, Karen Gustafson
You may connect with Karen on her website:
Viriditas in Latin literally means green-ness, but it's about much more than the color green. Metaphorically green-ness is about the idea of growth, spiritual growth and the ability to heal.
About the Artist, Stephanie Hunder
Natural forms speak to us in metaphors – a moth emerging from its cocoon, seeds blown on the wind... Nature holds a place in our most basic understanding of the world and forms the foundation for the language of our thoughts. The subjective, inner world of the mind mimics the objective, outside world – nature, bodies, spaces.
I use printmaking and photography to make a record of actual objects, yet I find the resulting prints expressive, gestural and mysterious. Collaged together, they question pictorial space and natural symbolisms
Participating Schools of the Metro West Conference: Benilde-St. Margaret’s, Bloomington Jefferson, Bloomington Kennedy, Chanhassen, Chaska, New Prague, Orono, Robbinsdale Cooper, St. Louis Park, Waconia
A Virtual Exhibition:
Participating Schools of the South Suburban Conference: Apple Valley, Burnsville, Eastview, Farmington, Lakeville North, Lakeville South, Prior Lake, Rosemount, School of Environmental Studies
About the Exhibition, "SLOW BURN"
A nationally awarded NCECA Emerging Artist, Domonique Venzant investigates the myriad possibilities of clay within the ceramic tradition of early Korean Karatsu, fired in wood kilns. In his work producing wares for the table, and sculpture for the floor, pedestal and wall, Dom hopes to invite the viewer into a conversation regarding the synthesis of American and Asian notions of identity, tradition, and beauty.
The exhibit is free and open to the public. All visitors are asked to honor Normandale and Minnesota State mask mandates, and any changes to building access due to Covid.
About the Artist, Domonique Venzant
My works investigate the myriad possibilities of clay and the ceramic process through a technique and tradition known as Karatsu. With its early historical origins in Korea, I, as an American artist, honor that ancient practice, while also bringing my own aesthetic interpretrations to each piece. The clay documents my every physical interaction, and these marks and forms are then preserved through firing in a wood kiln.
Encompassing both functional and sculptural pursuits, My visual and physical investigation relies heavily on the malleability and totipotence of clay. Through my work producing wares for the table and sculpture for the floor, pedestal, and wall, I hope to invite the viewer into a conversation regarding the synthesis of American and Asian notions of identity, tradition, and beauty.
In 2021 Dominique Venzant was awarded a prestigious NCECA* Emerging Artist Fellowship, an award that strives to recognize consistent achievement in the field of ceramics at an early stage of an artist’s career.
Dom is a Minneapolis Resident, and a Fine Arts Instructor at Riverland Community College in Austin, Minnesota.
You may connect with him on his website:
https://www.symcopotteryworks.com/
* [ NCECA: National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts ]
Domonique Venzant Media
About the Exhibition, "The Abstract Path"
Lending an abstract eye to re-interpret our natural surroundings, painter Dean Trisko’s monumental canvases will enliven the Normandale Fine Arts Gallery for November and December. Dean Trisko explores the rich colors and limitless shapes of the natural world, and then manipulates form and space through abstract nonrepresentational images. ‘The Abstract Path’ reveals a process in which he guides viewers from early observational studies and aesthetic exercises to his dynamic interpretive abstract works.
About Dean Trisko, Abstract Artist
Inspired by nature, my art is based in observation and invigorated by abstraction. My primary interest is to develop work that reflects my sense of wonder and meditation. Through my creative process, I often abstract and simplify to amplify my visual experiences. Art is a dialogue between my internal questions and the delight in the world around me.
Dean Trisko Media
deantrisko.com
Freedom of the Press | Georgia Fort
October 14 - November 12, 2021 | Public Opening Tues. October 19, 4-7pm
About Georgia Fort, Independent Journalist
Finding humanity in the social and political issues of our times, Georgia Fort's photography captures the broad range of poignant emotions and intense human energies focused through national demonstrations for George Floyd, voting rights, the Presidential election and more...
Georgia Fort has been Emmy nominated twice for news journalism. She is a published reporter for CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, and CBS, and an associate producer for PBS Frontline's "American Voices".
Her mission as a storyteller is to change the narrative by amplifying truth, citing diverse sources, and contextualizing social justice issues.
Georgia Fort Media
www.facebook.com/byGeorgiaFort
www.instagram.com/byGeorgiaFort
About the Minneapolis Protest Murals, Memorialize the Movement, and Founder/Executive Director Leesa Kelly
The Normandale Fine Arts Gallery will also feature 2 Minneapolis Protest Murals, provided by the nonprofit organization "Memorialize the Movement."
MTM is an ongoing initiative to collect and preserve the plywood protest art that was created in response to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25th, 2020. Their goal is to create a safe and inclusive permanent space for people to reflect on the events that occurred during the summer of 2020 and ensure that we keep this Civil Rights movement going through this art.
"We need the story told in a way that people will absorb it. But not in a way that makes them feel comfortable, they don't need to feel comfortable. They need to know what's happening."
Leesa Kelly
MTM Media
www.memorializethemovement.com
facebook.com/memorializethemovement
Femme & Fauna | JoAnn Hendricks & Ingrid Restemayer
September 15 - October 8, 2021 | Public Opening Wed. September 15, 5-7:30 pm
About the Works
Jo Ann Hendricks has created vibrant figure drawings, painted in bright, fanciful colors. The figures are fluid and expressive, with over-emphasized angular poses and voluptuous curves. This exaggeration is furthered by bright, impossible coloration.
Printmaker Ingrid Restemayer combines richly detailed etchings and the fiber arts as she re-imagines animal subjects on handmade papers, collaged and punctuated by hand-stitched embroidery.
Artist Websites
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