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Nadia Juhnke “Aqueous II”

Life is a constant state of transition. A new exhibit at the Feather & Bone Gallery in Appleton, titled “exterior • anterior • interior,” celebrates this perpetual flux with work by artists Nadia Juhnke of Green Bay, Karla Lauden of Menasha and Devon Minor of Oshkosh. 

The grouping of their work is a visual transition. Juhnke creates layered prints based out of abstraction. The large collaged paintings of Lauden are expressionistic, figurative pieces. Minor also works with figures in her drawings, but with a neoclassic approach. The harmony that their work creates is more complete than how it looks hanging next to one another on the gallery wall, however. Each artist makes a narrative statement on humanity through art.

“The motive for my process has helped me to bridge the gap between my personal life and my artistic life,” Juhnke says. “It has also challenged me to continue to discover my own equilibrium through struggle, work and love to understand my interior life like a citadel.” 

Appleton artist Cristian Andersson curated the exhibit after years of familiarity with the work of the three artists. It is an exhibition that not only highlights the talent of Juhnke, Minor and Lauden, but their willingness to conceptually describe how we often act and react within the transitions of our lives.

“I make art as an attempt to understand a little more about people by focusing on them in their imagined spaces,” Minor says. “Many of the pieces have elements from my personal experience as I have used drawing in the past as a way to bypass heavy reactions and critically evaluate lingering thoughts and feelings from an experience, either good or bad.”

This introspective show is on exhibition at Appleton’s Feather & Bone Gallery inside The Draw through December 14. For more information, visit the show’s Facebook event page.