Eye to Eye 2026

Banner Image: Installation view of Eye to Eye 2026 at Fresh Eye Gallery. Photo courtesy of Josephine Carson.

◼︎ ◼︎ ◼︎ ◼︎ ◼︎ 

It’s the 12th year of Fresh Eye Gallery’s annual exhibition and the chosen pairs continue to build on its original intention to celebrate artistic collaboration.

The Eye to Eye exhibition series, originally organized by the Midwest Special Services fine arts program, Fresh Eye Arts, began 7 years before opening their brick and mortar in 2021. Since then, Fresh Eye Gallery has become a staple of the South Minneapolis Kingfield neighborhood, focusing on including and promoting artists of all abilities.

Each year’s installation of the annual exhibition has expanded on their mission by pairing artists of varying abilities and backgrounds to find common ground and collaborate creatively for the purpose of the exhibition. Within the doors of Fresh Eye sit a plethora of approaches to this challenge, blending and adopting one another’s techniques, mediums of choice, and visual artistry to create a cohesive final product. The works visualize shared experiences of aligned perspectives, all in all exemplifying that our differences are not what define us.

 

Image: Peter Faecke & CJ Weydert. 1940s Passenger Plane at Altitude. Three color Risograph. Photo courtesy of Josephine Carson.

In Eye to Eye 2026, artists CJ Weydert and Peter Faecke’s diptych-like risograph prints embody this cohesive aesthetic in a unique way. By dividing and conquering the chosen compositions of transportation, in works Diesel Engine en Route and 1940s Passenger Plane at Altitude, the artists each illustrated one of the subjects before swapping to complete the landscape background of the other. This approach resulted in two complimentary prints, visually unified and made from equal contribution.

Positioned centrally sits a turquoise blue pool, resembling a carnival mini game, nostalgic and familiar, with a floating flock of yellow rubber ducks. Inspired by the power of language and regional identity, Jess Bergman Night and Josie Browning’s Duck, Duck, Minneapolis Duck encourages viewer introspection with an interactive element. As members of the local community, making them more or less neighbors, Browning and Bergman found common ground physically and conceptually in their shared identity and mutual experiences as Minnesotans.

Another approach taken by a number of duos is the adoption and combination of each others’ medium of choice. Contrasting in texture and color, The Weight of it All and Everything, All at Once, by Joah Bingert and Mia Finnamore, is a union of Bingert’s use of fiber and Finnamore’s ceramics practice. While fiber and ceramics are both considered traditional crafts, they differ widely in their process of creation, fragility and texture, and often their completed forms. These two artists quite literally intertwine the two by weaving and stitching neon threads and fibers through the intricately sculpted vessels, working in unison rather than opposition.

 

Image: Joah Bingert and Mia Finnamore, Everything, All at Once. Clay, fabric, yarn, thread, roving NFS. Photo courtesy of Josephine Carson.

Most notable to a passerby on the sidewalk, and likely most meaningful to the Fresh Eye community and frequenters, is the inclusion of an acrylic painting, Sally, by Dan Stallsworth. This singular exception to the regular structure of the exhibition is a beautiful and honoring tribute to the late artist and valued member of the Fresh Eye community, who was intended to be half of a pair before his passing earlier this year. His presence in the show serves as a remembrance of his passion for collaborative creativity and of his artistic career that touched so many.

This year's iteration of Eye to Eye illustrates the multitude of approaches that collaborative artistry can take and reminds us all that within our communities exists a wealth of shared experiences and mutual care in a world threatened daily by division.◼︎ 

Eye to Eye is on view at Fresh Eye Gallery, 4238 Nicollet Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55409 up through August 16.