We are pleased to re-introduce to you our alumni residents for Session II. Both AIR’s will be hosting an Open Studio Event on Thursday, July 22 from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm at Farwell House.
Rachel Mindrup – Rachel is an assistant professor of drawing and painting and the Richard L. Deming, MD Endowed Chair in Medical Humanities at Creighton University. She received her BFA from the University of Nebraska – Kearney and then continued with atelier studies at the Art Academy of Los Angeles. She received her MFA from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. Her current painting practice is about the study of the figure and portraiture in art and its relation to medicine, healing, and identity. Her son’s diagnosis has been the motivation behind her series of portraits “Many Faces of Neurofibromatosis (NF)“. She is currently painting someone with NF from all 50 states to bring to Washington D.C. when advocating for federal funding for NF research.
Mindrup’s work has been shown nationally and internationally including the Queens Museum in Queens, NY, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Omaha and Kearney campuses, Georgia Regents University, and Washington University Medical School. Her artwork is held in many private collections including those of Primatologist Jane Goodall and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Lori Elliott-Bartle – As a traveler who prefers driving on meandering backroads to speeding along Interstate highways, Lori’s path into art-making was a winding one. She spent 15 years as a professional journalist and in higher education public relations before she began painting seriously. Art making has been her full-time professional focus since 2008. She has shown artwork in Omaha cooperative and commercial galleries and has had work accepted into regional and national juried shows. Lori was also one of about 50 artists included in the 2017 and 2019 Nebraska Artist Biennials. Her work is in private collections across the United States and in several countries, including China and Norway.
She paints with oils, often mixed with cold wax medium, a combination of beeswax and resin used at room temperature. Blending oils and wax allows her to create paintings that hold depth, complexity, and texture, some of the same qualities about the prairie that she appreciates. Her painting process is physically active. She uses rollers, wide blades, and brushes to apply paint; then she blots, scrapes, and carves with knives and points to reveal underlying colors. These lines and colors convey motion and emotion and remind us of the grasslands. The pieces aren’t meant to be botanically accurate but aim to evoke the vitality and openness of wide meadows filled with flowers and grasses.
When she’s not off exploring or gardening at home, you can usually find Lori at her spacious second-floor studio at Hot Shops Art Center, a former mattress factory in Omaha’s north downtown, where more than 80 artists work in a wide variety of mediums.
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