&nbsp;

From the outset looking at <a href="https://www.theorangeadvisory.com/toa-presents" target="_blank">the show online</a>, I wondered why these two artists chose to work together. The similarities between their works weren&rsquo;t obvious, and I didn&rsquo;t have enough context to peg them as &ldquo;biocurious&rdquo; works. I didn&rsquo;t see any greenery, nor any suggestions of soil or bacteria. With the gallery&rsquo;s sleek strips of LED lighting overhead and the horn of a freight train sounding just outside, perhaps I was distanced from what I perceive to be of the natural world, instead marinated in an industrial, tech-centric one.

Vernon Vanderwood&rsquo;s work is vast. Strokes of charcoal soar and dance spaciously, and segments of pink ribbon are deliberately placed amidst the freestyle lines of charcoal. Miles Mendenhall&#39;s work is articulate and studied. The exacting attention and time required of the work prompted me to squint my eyes. Swirls of pink and purple, flakes of white where the glossy pigment had chipped, a faint image of a spider, commanding words at the center of each piece &mdash;&nbsp;a galaxy of visual information, overwhelming when peered at for more than a moment. And the frames from a distance emerged as almost gaudy in their form and detail. As Miles&nbsp;says, &ldquo;The frames are unclassifiable. You can&#39;t classify these frames as this, that, or the other thing, as futurist, as baroque, they&#39;re just in this weird transmedium space.&rdquo; However, even with one artist&rsquo;s work seeming more expressive and the other&rsquo;s more calculated, after hearing their stories the connection was drawn between their processes and work, and I saw the influence between their ways of thinking and working.&nbsp;

The artists&#39; first collaboration was a show titled MAMA at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/shop.gelo/" target="_blank">Gelo Shop</a>, an experimental boutique for &ldquo;fine arts and fine woods&rdquo; run out of Mendenhall&rsquo;s home in Seward. Both guided by a fascination for the natural world, the two identify as biocurious, a term Vanderwood first adopted as they found themselves&nbsp;working with both reclaimed and raw materials, and utilizing mediums of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCOBY" target="_blank">SCOBY</a>&nbsp;and mycelium. Vanderwood&#39;s focus on natural materials opened Mendenhall&#39;s perception to the bio-curiosity already being tested in his own&nbsp;work with&nbsp;gelatin, which has similar properties to SCOBY. Solid at room temperature and dissolving in hot water, gelatin is a product of extracting protein from living&nbsp;tissue &mdash; often animal bone, skin, and muscle; the formulated hydrogel is what Mendenhall uses as a glue-like substance in his prints.&nbsp;

With how methodical the traditionally French photographic process of carbon printing is, Mendenhall had to master the parameters of the process and now within certain steps has found room to stretch the rules. Adding color and pouring different gelatin colors to create photosensitive paintings, images are then exposed, and the result is transferred to paper. Doing one step and then waiting, then another and waiting some more, he works on the frames in the meantime. Mendenhall experiences a sense of devotion when &ldquo;clocking in to do the repetitive thing,&rdquo; he explains, and accesses a more meditative state while working on the frames, often losing track of time while cutting shape after shape.

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/78d04bf6-36a0-458f-873a-393fec3fc0fa/78d04bf6-36a0-458f-873a-393fec3fc0fa.full.jpg" />Vernon Vanderwood,&nbsp;Brood, 2024. Gelatin, carbon and graphite on paper, 26 x 19&quot;. Edition 1 of 5,&nbsp;published by Gelo Shop. All photos by Mark Schoening, courtesy of TOA Presents, unless otherwise noted.

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Mendenhall and Vanderwood worked together to create the trio of pieces titled Brood XIII, Brood, and Brood XIX. Making a &ldquo;habit of chasing phenomena,&rdquo; Vanderwood witnessed and collected wings from the two broods of cicadas that emerged in Illinois and Indiana this year. Once back in Minneapolis, Mendenhall scanned the cicada wings and printed them as digital negatives. Vanderwood then used the digital negatives as well as the actual wings during the photographic process to block light. Images of Vanderwood&#39;s previous work were also printed as negatives on scraps of previous drawings, and ultimately gelatin was used to attach the paper onto archival board. &ldquo;There are moments where you see the wings serving as a negative and actual cicada bodies serving as that as well,&rdquo; says the artist. Vanderwood&nbsp;then points to a dark smudge on the print, &ldquo;During the process this one got smushed in the scanner, which is kind of echoing the deterioration that happens on the gelatin.&rdquo;&nbsp;

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/1e11f47b-3e55-453d-b28d-5af6df1eb9ec/1e11f47b-3e55-453d-b28d-5af6df1eb9ec.full.jpg" />Miles Mendenhall, detail of&nbsp;frame for&nbsp;RULE LEER, 2024. Gelatin and pigment on paper, poplar,&nbsp;94 x 74&quot;

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Inspired by sonic, fractal elements in nature, Mendenhall makes the individual pieces for the frames in one moment, then intuitively distributes and arranges them from piles of alike shapes.

&ldquo;So would you call this a frame?&quot; I ask, studying&nbsp;the kaleidoscopic fixtures reminiscent of both the wooden play shapes I stacked as a kid as well as crystalline structures like stalagmites and stalactites.

&ldquo;I think of them as containers,&quot; Mendenhall answers. &quot;I think of them as this kind of gateway, as world-building &mdash;&nbsp;they really complete the oddity of the pieces within.&rdquo;&nbsp;Then collecting his thoughts further, &ldquo;The genesis for the frames was to contain and complete a world.&rdquo;&nbsp;

In RULE, Mendenhall homes in on a small collection of images from his &ldquo;icon archive,&rdquo;&nbsp;the pool of photographs he&rsquo;s taken of the natural world. A spider, a mushroom, and a clock can be seen frozen, in a way, in the gelatin prints. Front and center in each work, there are also pairings of bolded words. Pulling out his phone to show me groupings of words arranged in a document, he explains how he practices restricting language to four letter words paired in a grid that share shoulder letters.

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/54c83cbc-0fd6-496a-b5a8-31d8e237e0ef/54c83cbc-0fd6-496a-b5a8-31d8e237e0ef.full.jpg" />Miles Mendenhall,&nbsp;LEER ERAS, 2024. Gelatin and pigment on paper, poplar,&nbsp;33 x 27&quot;.

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&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a way of generating phrases, and you can find ones that have conceptual ramifications.&rdquo; LEER ERAS, for example, is a conversation about time and themes of rise and fall. The two abreast panels in his larger pieces are tipped towards each other as well, subtly simulating the structure of books and texts. Miles attempts to create work that challenges the level of stimulation we interact with on a daily basis. &ldquo;I try to throw everything at you and with this process that I&#39;ve created over the last decade, my goal is for you to take your time&hellip;&nbsp;Dune 2 got me to sit down for three hours in a seat and watch one thing. Although it&#39;s probably a silly, unattainable goal, I just want you to sit and look and wonder.&rdquo;

Invested in the music and performance scene in Minnesota, Vanderwood&#39;s work is heavily influenced by traditional languages of music and movement, especially that of ballet. &ldquo;The rules and language behind ballet were popularized in French aristocracy and courtship,&quot; they explain. &quot;So there&rsquo;s this unspoken body language that I&rsquo;ve then posed as an allegory for moving through spaces outside of dance.&rdquo;&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/87db006e-4c43-478d-a2f3-ac34a143d601/87db006e-4c43-478d-a2f3-ac34a143d601.full.jpg" />Vernon Vanderwood,&nbsp;Untitled, 2024. Charcoal, graphite, and ribbon on paper, 155 x 69 1&frasl;2&quot;

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Once finished with the expressive mark-making of charcoal on paper, Vanderwood illustrates a cryptic score with their additive process of the silk ribbons &mdash;&nbsp;going back into the construction of the piece and editing the language of it in a way. It seems the influence of ballet and the placement of the ribbons build Vanderwood&#39;s own parameters, as Mendenhall alluded&nbsp;to in his own work. Each of their&nbsp;two larger works were bumped up with a piece of bare poplar contributed by Gelo Shop, allowing the framework to become a stage for the work.

One of Vanderwood&#39;s recurring research questions is What is the expanded body?&nbsp;&ldquo;I started using the term expanded body to encompass everything that this vessel is a part of&hellip;So thinking about the expanded body to architecture and the spaces I occupy to the microorganism level of what is occupying me.&rdquo; Identifying as a queer and nonbinary artist, and often utilizing physical biomedia in their artistry, Vanderwood&#39;s&nbsp;work asks where expansiveness ends and containment begins. She asks where the body ends and begins. They ask when to follow the rules, when to bend them, and when to write new ones.&nbsp;◼︎&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/6f3e7626-118c-4743-80cd-b2d420879bac/6f3e7626-118c-4743-80cd-b2d420879bac.full.jpg" />From left: Rob Sherer of The Orange Advisory, Miles Mendenhall, and Vernon Vanderwood. Photo by Cory Eull.

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RULE is on view at <a href="https://www.theorangeadvisory.com/toa-presents" target="_blank">TOA Presents</a> through Thursday, September 5.&nbsp;Gallery hours: Friday, August 30 from 3 &ndash; 6pm; closing reception on Thursday, September 5 from 5:30 &ndash; 8pm. 655 19th Avenue NE, Suite 104, Minneapolis

Vanderwood and Mendenhall will celebrate the close of RULE on Thursday, September 5 with an evening of improvised dance, drawing, and music, organized by Vanderwood and&nbsp;featuring collaborations with Solomon Falls, Vy Nguyen, Ella Kooyer and Ninchai Nok Chiclana.

To see more of Vernon Vanderwood&#39;s work, visit <a href="https://vernonvanderwood1.univer.se" target="_blank">the artist&#39;s website</a> or follow them on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/vernofthewoods/" target="_blank">@vernofthewoods</a>.

To see more of Miles Mendenhall&#39;s work, follow them on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/star.arcs/" target="_blank">@star.arcs</a> or <a href="https://www.instagram.com/shop.gelo/" target="_blank">@shop.gelo</a>.

Banner image by Mark Schoening, courtesy of TOA Presents.

<hr />
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.&nbsp;<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/mocks/mrac-legacy-logos.png" width="778" />

The Orange Advisory and Gelo Shop team up to present RULE, a collaborative show and interface between "biocurious" artists

Collect, Constrain, Contain: Vernon Vanderwood and Miles Mendenhall at TOA Presents

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&quot;Worth a Look&quot; is a series of semi-regular&nbsp;essays&nbsp;about excellent art, interesting ideas, and&nbsp;whatever other cool stuff&nbsp;we find around town. Go see art;&nbsp;<a href="https://ourculturemag.com/2022/02/16/the-beneficial-effect-of-art-on-our-brain/" target="_blank">it&#39;s good for you</a>.

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Banner image: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/juliemermaid77/" target="_blank">Julie Caffey</a>, Mom&#39;s Cashmere #3 (detail). Sewn, hand-quilted, applique with Mom&#39;s cashmere sweaters.

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Full disclosure up top: my work is in this <a href="http://www.mnstatefair.org/competitions/fine-arts/" target="_blank">show</a>, but that&rsquo;s not why I&rsquo;m writing about it. Also, I have several years of history with this show as both a participant and a juror (along with more than one rejection), but that&rsquo;s not the reason either. The reason is that this is one of the biggest and most intense art experiences of the year in the Twin Cities, especially judged by sheer volume alone: 332 works of art, all in one room. You&rsquo;re entering a group exhibition of group exhibitions: the blended tastes of eight jurors selecting work within their own categories, pieced together on the walls and pedestals of the Fine Arts Building like a jigsaw puzzle portrait of Minnesota&nbsp;culture.&nbsp;

The show&rsquo;s greatest strength and weakness are its size: it&rsquo;s a lot to take in. During the Tuesday night preview event, I found myself caught in a certain flow of foot traffic, which actually encouraged a slower reading of each piece in succession &mdash; a welcome antidote to the few glancing seconds typically spent with artworks at a museum. And there really are some pieces worth spending time with; the beauty of the show&rsquo;s breadth is that the list of favorites will invariably change from person to person. Photos, drawings, paintings, sculptures, prints, textiles, there&#39;s something for everyone here, and you may be surprised by what grabs you.&nbsp;Rebecca Yaker&rsquo;s yellow sweater knitted like a legal pad, for instance, was one of the stand-outs for me.

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/5a9f9339-5d44-48b3-a377-ecf32bb103b5/5a9f9339-5d44-48b3-a377-ecf32bb103b5.full.jpg" />Rebecca Yaker, disequilibrium To discory. Wool, knitting. All photos by Russ White, with apologies&nbsp;for glares and shadows.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/c8ef7237-8299-422b-a0f1-3ab42bf7ce27/c8ef7237-8299-422b-a0f1-3ab42bf7ce27.full.jpg" />Nadine Gross, The Blues Are Still Blue. Digital print on fine art paper.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/9a223ab1-73c0-45b3-bbc0-ba94a2aeda84/9a223ab1-73c0-45b3-bbc0-ba94a2aeda84.full.jpg" />Mei Lam So, If Looks Could Kill (detail). Lithograph.

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It will be interesting to spend time with the <a href="https://issuu.com/mnstatefairfinearts/docs/24-fine-arts-catalog?fr=xKAE9_zU1NQ" target="_blank">online catalogue</a>, divided by category, to get a more concise read of each juror&rsquo;s tastes, because that&rsquo;s really what it comes down to. (Also important is what was submitted, and I beseech every eligible artist to apply next year &mdash; the weirder, more cutting edge work the better.) This year&rsquo;s jurors are no slouches themselves, including some local luminaries&nbsp;like&nbsp;Suyao Tian, Terrence Payne, and Tia Keobounpheng, among others. As a juror myself, curating last year&rsquo;s Drawings/Pastel section, I can tell you it&rsquo;s an enjoyable but painstaking task whittling down your picks, and much of it comes down to little more than a whim in deciding what makes the final cut &mdash; invariably lots of solid work has to be rejected. In the end this year, around&nbsp;2,300 artists who submitted work were left out. That&#39;s a rather staggering number, and many of those artists will be showing work at two <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_des_Refusés" target="_blank">Salon des </a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_des_Refusés" target="_blank">Refus&eacute;s</a>-style shows this month as well:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/rejected-2024" target="_blank">Rejected 2024</a>&nbsp;at&nbsp;Burl Community Art Gallery (formerly AZ Gallery) and <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/lone-ranger-dieterich-spahn-and-minnesota-state-fair-reject-show" target="_blank">Minnesota State Fair Reject Show</a> at&nbsp;Douglas Flanders &amp; Associates.

But for one room, 332 is enough, and it&rsquo;s wise to pace yourself during such an undertaking &mdash; and allow plenty of time to see it all &mdash; lest you find yourself skimming through the last half and missing the chance to connect with a real banger, like Lexi Ames&rsquo;s exquisite ballpoint pen drawing of sheepguts. Or Meagan Marsh Pine&rsquo;s stunning Self-Portrait in Camouflage, green-faced with fresh top surgery scars. Or a funny little painting of The Morgans of Omaha by Ron Schempp. Or whatever your own favorites end up being.

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/fadc2e43-66be-4564-9e20-297496366d19/fadc2e43-66be-4564-9e20-297496366d19.full.jpg" />Jo Garrison, Vintage 60&#39;s Dress (Grandma). Acrylic on canvas.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/4b8096b0-97f0-4028-b0a0-e96bccaea0a6/4b8096b0-97f0-4028-b0a0-e96bccaea0a6.full.jpg" />Rachel Collier, Basic Nature (viewed from side). Needle felted wool stretched over canvas.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/0d799270-017f-4413-80ce-9332a53275eb/0d799270-017f-4413-80ce-9332a53275eb.full.jpg" />Meagan Marsh Pine, Self-Portrait in Camouflage. Inkjet print.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/50eb81cb-dbce-4488-8815-210a1eb4f99c/50eb81cb-dbce-4488-8815-210a1eb4f99c.full.jpg" />Ron Schempp, The Morgans of Omaha. Acrylic on wood panel.

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We&rsquo;re trained to think of contemporary art as urban and aloof &mdash; that a venue as pedestrian and accessible as the Minnesota State Fair cannot possibly land an emotional punch on our upturned noses. Who&#39;s to say whether any of the work in this show belongs in the lofty halls of the Whitney or the Guggenheim &mdash; maybe we are a bunch of flyover dullards after all, that deepest of insecurities in the hearts of Midwestern culturati.&nbsp;But some of the darkest, weirdest, and best work I&rsquo;ve ever seen was made in a barn (Lee Bontecou) or out in the country (Andrew Wyeth) or above a garage in &ldquo;greater Minnesota&rdquo; (Jim Denomie). Art is everywhere and for everyone, and what a gift that one of the biggest and broadest shows of the year may also be the only gallery experience that a lot of folks at the Fair get to have. I know next week will be the only time my city ass will have set foot in a barn this year, too, and that&rsquo;s not nothing either.

So go forth, art-lovers, and rub elbows with your countrymen. Listen in on their unfiltered critiques; maybe roll your eyes with joyful disdain at how much you disagree about these pictures. Cluck your tongues at what won ribbons, perhaps, but above all keep an ear out for when, all of a sudden, the word &ldquo;wow&rdquo; slips out beneath your breath. That&rsquo;s your cue to linger an extra moment, before the flow of the crowd sweeps you on and through and back out again onto Cosgrove Street, in search of ridiculous foods and pedestrian wonders. Art&rsquo;s the best, and the State Fair is a close second.&nbsp;◼︎&nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/de60f4bc-36d5-47f5-af0e-0ab6f50f732a/de60f4bc-36d5-47f5-af0e-0ab6f50f732a.full.jpg" />

Jandi Small, Gonna Need A Bigger Peeler, Pa. Oil on canvas.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/2497fdc8-6923-44cd-9a9e-ab1174e0f9b4/2497fdc8-6923-44cd-9a9e-ab1174e0f9b4.full.jpg" />

The 113th <a href="https://www.mnstatefair.org/competitions/fine-arts/" target="_blank">Minnesota State Fair Fine Arts Exhibition</a> is on view August 22 &ndash; September 2, 9am &ndash; 9pm each day of the Fair.

<hr />
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.&nbsp;<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/mocks/mrac-legacy-logos.png" width="778" />

Over three hundred works across eight different categories go on view to the masses this week in a one-of-a-kind, once-in-a-year show

Worth A Look: The Minnesota State Fair Fine Arts Exhibition

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Acclaimed artist Luis Fitch has had artwork displayed worldwide, from Mexico to Dubai, on the hallowed walls of&nbsp;the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum,&nbsp;Mia in Minneapolis, and the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.

But 10 years ago, his plan was only to take his art to the people&nbsp;&mdash; his people&nbsp;&mdash; along Lake Street in Minneapolis, on corrugated cardboard boxes.

Spurred by the 2014 killing of 43 students in Mexico, Fitch &mdash; who was born and raised in Tijuana in the 1970s and early 1980s&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;says he decided to communicate the situation in Mexico, as he saw it, to his own community.&nbsp;&ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t going to wait for art galleries,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I was going out to the streets and doing my own thing. . . The first time I started interacting with my community at this level was when I was giving art for them.&rdquo; The free art boxes started garnering praise on social media, igniting a desire to collect them.

He says he kept his focus &ldquo;always, always on the outdoors,&rdquo; but it was clear he was making progress toward the institutions that so many revere as a marker of having &ldquo;made it&rdquo; &mdash; but who, he says, often keep out the communities they should be serving.

&ldquo;Economically, culturally, morally&nbsp;&mdash; everything, the streets&nbsp;&mdash; have changed. Art is going to need to change, too. Galleries are disappearing. Artists don&rsquo;t know where to exhibit,&rdquo; he says, adding that many legacy institutions aren&rsquo;t investing in local artists, especially artists of color. &ldquo;If you are hungry to show your art, you gotta go to the streets.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/0e0e19a8-46ef-41a3-b897-2aad4ddafd40/0e0e19a8-46ef-41a3-b897-2aad4ddafd40.full.jpg" />Racism Kills,&nbsp;a public art response to the trauma of the murder of George Floyd. Minneapolis, MN, the site of George Floyd&rsquo;s murder and memorial. Curated by John Hock. Image courtesy of <a href="https://luisfitch.com/racism-kills/" target="_blank">luisfitch.com</a>.

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There&rsquo;s been a guiding principal to make that happen as well, he says. &ldquo;All my practice has been about accessibility in all senses of the word. I want [the audience] to understand the message very fast. I see huge art concepts as BS&nbsp;&mdash; I want to communicate in a very straightforward way.&nbsp; And for those collecting my art, I want it to be as inexpensive as possible.&rdquo; That means he sweats the details, including sizing many of his works to fit in $20 IKEA frames.

That&rsquo;s also in part due to his own experience growing up. An artist since he was a teen, he recognizes that had he stayed in Tijuana, he may have been one of the &ldquo;Narco Juniors&rdquo; who was &ldquo;disappeared&rdquo; or left without a viable artistic career path, despite the fact that he learned art and history on the outdoor murals on the walls facing the streets of Tijuana. When he relocated to San Diego, California in 1985, he was just blocks from museums where he could see Picasso and Goya and Warhol &mdash; &ldquo;like a Disneyland to me, it&rsquo;s in my DNA,&rdquo; he marvels&nbsp;&mdash; and he was able to earn his bachelor&rsquo;s degree in fine arts from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California in 1990.

But a commitment to his singular voice and vision&nbsp;&mdash; the voice of his people, reaching Latinx children and families who may otherwise overlook careers in the arts, bridging cultures between the borderland where he was raised and the country where he has since built his life and career&nbsp;&mdash; is likely what landed him many of successes: A prestigious AIGA fellowship, a McKnight Visual Artist fellowship, an appointment from the Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs as Commission Chair of the State Flag and Emblem Redesign, designing four stamps for the United States Postal Service, and to be the first-ever Mexican artist to design Target&rsquo;s D&iacute;a de los Muertos collection. Now, a retrospective exhibit &mdash;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/an-anthological-exhibition-of-mexican-artist-luis-fitch" target="_blank">An Anthological Exhibition of Mexican Artist Luis Fitch</a> at Artistry in Bloomington &mdash; charts that career across a diverse body of works including prints, paintings, ceramics, and photos.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/0df78338-5381-4545-a858-4fb32a313316/0df78338-5381-4545-a858-4fb32a313316.full.jpg" /><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/dd9218b0-d45f-412a-9320-e9d1238f6e2a/dd9218b0-d45f-412a-9320-e9d1238f6e2a.full.jpg" />An Anthological&nbsp;Exhibition of Mexican Artist Luis Fitch installation details. Photos courtesy of the artist.

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Fitch says he tries to limit his mediums and techniques so that he can easily reproduce his work, yet it still spans a variety: Silkscreens, wheatpaste, stencils, vinyl, and mixed-media with graffiti, acrylics, sand, and oil. After the 2020 murder of George Floyd, a billboard went up, a skull tipped on its side on a bold, colorful background with two words: Racism Kills. &ldquo;You should be able to see it from far away and understand it in two seconds,&rdquo; he says, and while he was talking about a billboard, he approaches much of his artwork in the same way, even and especially when the topics are as complex and crucially important as racism and climate change.

&ldquo;Years and years of understanding illustration, art, digital art, and graphic design&nbsp;&mdash; I&rsquo;ve incorporated them into the world of fine art. To me they are all intermixed, it&rsquo;s just depending on whether you want to turn the volume up or down,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not so concerned about the technique. I&rsquo;m more concerned about the message.&rdquo;&nbsp;And, he says, the work is never meant to push his culture onto another; it&rsquo;s about bridging them and creating a dialogue between them. It&rsquo;s building community.

&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;m a good artist, or rawer, or better than anybody else. I believe in what I do and I wake up every morning and work on it,&rdquo; he says. But, he says, he doesn&rsquo;t do as much talking about art. He makes art. He works to open doors. &ldquo;I invest, and I work, and I show up,&rdquo; he says.

&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/9e25a040-3478-458d-bb79-7fe005bc06af/9e25a040-3478-458d-bb79-7fe005bc06af.full.jpg" />An Anthological&nbsp;Exhibition of Mexican Artist Luis Fitch installation detail. Photo courtesy of the artist.

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The retrospective, he says, is also not about him. It&rsquo;s again about opening up avenues for Latinx youth to see a career in the arts is both viable and valuable. He knows Latinx parents are encouraging their kids to do something that will get them further along than they are. That includes free entry, free workshops to learn the art of papel picado, and free activity books for families and kids to fill out and navigate the exhibit.

&ldquo;I know what I am doing is not revolutionary. It&rsquo;s not Cubism, it is not reinventing anything,&rdquo; he says, which flies in the face of the creative output, recognizable style, and multitude of topics and mediums he&rsquo;s embraced. &ldquo;I am giving hope to my community. That&rsquo;s all I care about. It&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m always looking for.&rdquo;&nbsp;◼︎&nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/201555b0-0743-4032-b7ae-647af459dddd/201555b0-0743-4032-b7ae-647af459dddd.full.jpg" />The Art of Luis Fitch, a 432-page volume cataloguing&nbsp;the past decade of the artist&#39;s work, available through <a href="https://luisfitch.com/book/" target="_blank">luisfitch.com</a>.

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<a href="https://artistrymn.org/exhibitions/2024/luisfitch" target="_blank">An Anthological Exhibition of Mexican Artist Luis Fitch</a> is on view at the Inez Greenberg Gallery at Artistry Theater and Visual Arts in the Bloomington Center for the Arts through&nbsp;September 15. 

Gallery hours:&nbsp;Monday &ndash; Friday,&nbsp;8am &ndash; 10pm; Saturday, 9am &ndash; 10pm;&nbsp;Sunday, 12pm &ndash; 6pm.

Workshops: Saturday, August 10, 10 am &ndash; 2 pm; Friday, August 30, 1-5 pm

To see more of Luis Fitch&#39;s work, visit <a href="http://www.luisfitch.com" target="_blank">luisfitch.com</a> or follow him on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/luisfitch/?hl=en" target="_blank">@luisfitch</a>.

Banner image: &nbsp;An Anthological&nbsp;Exhibition of Mexican Artist Luis Fitch installation detail. Photo courtesy of the artist.

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This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.&nbsp;<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/mocks/mrac-legacy-logos.png" width="778" />

A career retrospective at the Bloomington Center for the Arts displays his desire
for accessibility and dialogue

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