Jesse Christen

Is your brain frozen from sitting in your room staring at the same stupid shows on TV? Well get off the couch and stilulate your frontal lobes by viewing some exciting visual art.

The South Dakota Art Museum, located at Meday and Harvey Dunn, is feraturing two regional artists – Dan Tackett and Nancyjane Huehl.

Tackett is a practicing physician from Rapid City whose art is medium view and panoramic photography. He uses his digital darkroom to explore the possibilities of black and white and color photography. The images he produces are inkjet prints known as Giclee.

“It is my hope to that I may someday switch from medicine to art for a living, while I still have steady hands, useable vision and the mind to explore,” he says. “Since I have been in private practice in medicine, I have treid to keep my artistic embers alive. Although it has been a challenge to find the time art has remained a critical and satysfying endeavor for me.”

Heul is from Vivian and is known as an artist of the Northern Plains. She paints lanscapes ranging from urban clutter to rural expanses; she attempts to give her viewers a feeling of “journey” with her works.

Her paintings are a reflection of the past while encompassing modern day scenes. She uses bold brush strokes and color to express the painting’s time and place.

“As an artist I have at least two obligations: one is to create; the other is to exhibit the outcome of my creative process to the public,” she says.

For more information contact the South Dakota Art Museum at 688-5423.

If viewing the works of big shot artists in the South Dakota Art Museum isn’t your cup of tea, or you just don’t feel like walking all the way across campus in winter weather, go and check out the senior exhibits at the Ritz Gallery located in Grove Hall.

SDSU art students Melanie Johnson, Andrea Bengston and Joel Kieckhefer all are displaying senior exhibits.

Johnson and Bengston are both senior graphic design majors and are showing computer generated art.

Kieckhefer is a senior visual arts major and will display original paintings, drawings and prints.

A public reception is being held in the Ritz gallery from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Fri., Feb. 20. For more information contact the Visual Arts Department at 688-4103.