Elemental Forces and Other Work. As part of the Minnesota Ballet’s Fall performance, the Rite of Spring and Other Dances, choreographer Laura Goodman has taken on the challenge of interpreting visual art into a new ballet. Basing her choreography on the wave paintings of Karen Owsley Nease, Goodman explores the elemental and generative forces depicted in Nease’s artwork. Goodman’s sensuous and powerful piece is titled "Curl, Uncurl and..."
Joseph Nease Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of a special limited-time exhibition of the Karen Owsley Nease paintings that inspired Goodman’s choreography and also serve as the projected backdrop for the October 19 and 20 performances of the dance piece. These works will be on display the week before the Fall performance, and the week after, October 17 through November 3, with an Artist Talk with Nease and Goodman at 6 pm on October 26 at the gallery - same night as the October Downtown Duluth Arts Walk. In addition, we are be exhibiting related work by gallery artists including Tara Austin, Robert Bingaman and James Brinsfield.
Brief Biographies:
A former professional ballet dancer, Laura Goodman is a ballet instructor and choreographer. Her career began at the Minnesota Ballet as a trainee in 1999-2002. She continued to dance soloist and principal roles at the City Ballet of San Diego; Canyon Concert Ballet in Fort Collins, Colorado; and the Metropolitan Ballet in Minneapolis. In 2003 Laura was a finalist at the New York International Ballet Competition. She first choreographed for the Minnesota Ballet as part of the program Moving Beyond, which premiered her piece Rounding the Apse in 2016. During her career as a ballet dancer she danced the works of such choreographers as Agnes de Mille, George Balanchine, Antony Tudor, and José Limón.
Karen Owsley Nease is a visual artist whose artwork is rooted nature and her connections to it. Her current series of wave paintings come from studying reference photographs made of particular Lake Superior waves coming ashore. Her paintings act as “portraits” of distinct entities, built up through multiple layers of thinly applied glazes of oil paint using a small rag on my finger tip. Gesturally applied, each layer is a response to the one preceding it. Originally from the Kansas City metro area, she has spent much time on and around working farms and rural woodlands since early childhood. Her work is informed through her practices of habitat restoration, watershed protection and environmental philosophy. She earned a BFA in Painting/Printmaking from the Kansas City Art Institute, and two Architectural degrees from the University of Kansas. Her work is in corporate, museum, and private collections.