STAR JOURNAL

Landscape artist Tom Uttech and fiber artist Jamie Bertsch are the featured fall artists at ArtStart. The works will be on display through Nov. 3, 2018. An opening reception for the artists will be held Saturday, Sept. 8 from 5-7 p.m. Both artists will give a brief gallery talk, discussing their work.

Merrill native Tom Uttech’s paintings, photographs and prints is part of ArtStart’s fall exhibit.

“Tranquil Ecstasy” is a retrospective of the art of Tom Uttech. In his paintings, photographs and prints, Uttech reflects what he calls, “the symmetry in life.” There are places he feels a spiritual affinity for, places found in an area geologically known as the Canadian Shield, which stretches from central Canada to Newfoundland, and dips into the extreme northern U.S. It is a land of glacial lakes, boreal plants and animals, and few human inhabitants. “When I am there, I feel at home, complete, and invisible. I try to have my paintings contain and communicate that feeling,” Uttech explains.

Uttech, who was born in Merrill, is considered one of America’s finest landscape artists. His enigmatic images, based on the verdant northern woodlands of the Precambrian Shield and the animals that inhabit them, have few parallels in contemporary art. Since the inclusion of his paintings in the 1975 Whitney Biennial, his work has been the subject of more than 35 one-person exhibitions, receiving praise from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian.com, Village Voice, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Art in America.

Work by fiber artist Jamie Lee Bertsch is on display at ArtStart Rhinelander.

Fiber artist Jamie Lee Bertsch will be featured in the second gallery, with her exhibition, “p l e c t ō.” This work is a distillation of Bertsch’s immediate interactions with the note above and the world around; recalling, looking closely, revering, celebrating and paying homage to the beautiful commonplace experience. Observations on labor, passions, pastimes, specific moments in life’s landscape, and evolution through repetition are focuses in the work; but the fiber object is less a result of a process – instead a representation of one. “My work is motivated by an immeasurable reverence for the process of craft, along with the intimacy and immediacy of using my hands as a tool”

Bertsch is an artist and educator, currently teaching at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee Fibers Department. During her studies, she traveled abroad, collaboratively teaching art in Mae Sai, Thailand. Her work has been included in several solo and group exhibitions, including the Lillstreet Gallery in Chicago and the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Gallery hours are Thursday through Saturday, 11a.m. to 5 p.m., or by appointment. ArtStart is located at 68 South Stevens Street, Rhinelander. There is no admission fee and parking is available in the city lot behind McDonald’s. For more information about these exhibitions or other programming, visit the web site artstartrhinelander.org or call 715-362-4328.