Art exhibit features couples’ collaborations

By Josiah Jorenby Reporter

 

The Heart to Heart exhibit, which opened on Jan. 13 in the South Dakota Art Museum, will feature a number of collaborative pieces. Each one of these collaborations is special for one big reason: all of the artists happen to be couples. Each of the 10 couples featured at the exhibit have submitted at least one of their own personal works, along with a piece that both of them worked on together.

Jodi Lundgren, curator for the South Dakota Art Museum, came up with the idea for the exhibit. Lundgren and her husband, both artists, became a couple before they started their artistic careers. After they became artists, she realized there were a lot of other artist couples.

According to Lundgren, many of the couples featured in the exhibit are professors or former professors at various universities. “You see a lot of artist couples who end up going on and teaching at the same school,” Lundgren said.

The exhibit displays a wide variety of styles unique to each artist and to each couple.

“There’s a lot of stuff you wouldn’t think of making art with in the show,” Lundgren said.

There is everything from traditional artworks such as photography to more “non-traditional” art, such as a plastic chair tipped upside down in a puddle of pink goo, an artwork made by Kristyn Weaver.

Weaver and her husband Peter Reichardt, a professor at SDSU, also took a mirror and had it sandblasted with the words, “After cold and flu season, we will eat it.”

One couple took all the paths that they had run, overlaid them into some mapping software and erased everything but the paths they had run. Another couple went on a 450-mile bike trip and took photos of the trip and photos of each other for their collaborative artwork.

The exhibit will run until April 26. On Feb. 13 (the day before Valentine’s), there will be an artist’s reception from 4:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., where visitors can meet and chat with the artists. There will also be a Heart to Heart Chocolate Auction where patrons can pay $10 to taste different chocolates donated by local businesses. The money raised will be donated to the museum.