“Threads, Folds & Rabbit Holes” exhibit opens with reception Sept. 5

“Threads, Folds & Rabbit Holes,” an art exhibit by award-winning artist Kristy Deetz, will be on display Sept. 5 to Oct. 3 in Ripon College’s Caestecker Gallery of Art in the C.J. Rodman Center for the Arts.

Deetz will host an artist talk Friday, Sept. 5, at 6 p.m. in Demmer Recital Hall with a reception following at 6:45 p.m. in Caestecker Gallery.

“‘Threads, Folds & Rabbit Holes’ is a traveling art show crossing boundaries of the arts, sciences and humanities,” Deetz said. “It features paintings from my ‘Holidays Unfolding’ and ‘Through the Veil’ series.”

In the two series, protagonists Rabbit and Kitty Boy take the viewer on many adventures through the artwork.

The “Holidays Unfolding” series explores the historical use of decorative fabrics and still life art. Deetz aims to blend painting, textiles and digital technology while preserving the depth of traditional hand-made art.

“The paintings examine the contradictory feelings that accompany loss or nostalgia and, as a result, become meditations on life’s transience,” Deetz said. “The series’ surreal imagery also comments on pressing issues in contemporary politics, culture and mores associated with American holidays.”

The fabric shown in the “Through the Veil” series is painted to create an illusion, acting as a threshold that places Rabbit and Kitty Boy in different, often opposite, spaces and meanings. Deetz said the paintings use “dark humor, visual puns, symbols and metaphors, moments of silence, art historical allusions, cultural collisions and spiritual conundrums to play with style and pictorial/formal construction.”

“In the series, the Rabbit or environment may be stretched or manipulated through Photoshop to create a sense of instability, heightened emotion or a digital sifting,” Deetz said. “The paintings good-humoredly deconstruct imagery from pop, outsider and high culture to create new ‘spaces’ of meaning.”

Deetz is an emerita professor at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and was an assistant professor in the art department at Ripon College from 1993 to 1994. She taught Drawing I, Painting I and Image and Media at Ripon.

A significant exhibition history in national and international venues highlights her experience. She co-curated the traveling exhibition FABRICation with artist Reni Gower.

As a visiting artist, she has conducted numerous workshops at institutions like Haystack and Penland. She received the 2011 Founders Award for Excellence in Scholarship from UWGB, the SECAC 2016 Award for Excellence in Teaching (formerly the Southeastern College Art Conference) and a Silver Award from the Graphis Design Annual in 2015.

Her work has been featured in Encaustic Art in the Twenty-First Century, Encaustic Art—The Complete Guide to Creating Fine Art with Wax and Full-Range Color Painting for the Beginner. She recently served as the Erasmus visiting lecturer at the University of Kassel, Germany, and as artist-in-residence at Burren College of Art in Ireland. To learn more about Deetz, visit her website.

The Caestecker Gallery of Art is open Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 2-5 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 2-6 p.m. Admission is free and open to the public.