Tim Olson of Dubuque installed stained glass panels into a painted backlit frame to create “The Seven Deadly Sins at the Super Seven Motel” (36 x 72 inches). Its companion piece is “The Seven Heavenly Virtues at the Seventh Heaven Academy of Beauty.”
Writer: Michael Morain
Photos: Courtesy of Mainframe Studios
One artist paints with a robot. Another turns heartbeats into music. Others write poetry, produce films, make stained-glass dioramas or photograph honeybees with an electron microscope.
Their interests and creations are as varied as they come, but they all have two things in common: They’re Iowa Artist Fellows, and they plan to show off their work in an exhibit that opens Nov. 7 at Mainframe Studios.
Each year since 2014, the Iowa Arts Council has named five Iowa Artist Fellows — an honor that comes with $10,000, mentorship and professional development to help mid-career artists grow their careers and amplify creativity across the state.
This fall, for the first time, nearly all 60 fellows will gather for a group exhibition, “State of the Arts: Iowa Artist Fellows,” filling all four floors of Mainframe Studios during the First Friday open house and throughout the month. Think of it as a reunion and a greatest-hits showcase rolled into one — but with more textiles, ceramics and 3D-printed sculptures.
“We find pretty adventurous contemporary artists,” said David Schmitz, former administrator of the Iowa Arts Council, a part of the Iowa Economic Development Authority. “We often get feedback from the public: ‘Thank you for doing this.’ Or, ‘I didn’t know we had this many artists in Iowa or artists working in this way.’”
Schmitz credits the program’s creation to the late Bruce Williams, an Iowa Arts Council staffer who researched similar programs nationwide and advocated for them here in Iowa. They’re designed to help artists build their business, develop new opportunities, make connections and take the next leap.
Paul Brooke, a poet and photographer who teaches at Grand View University, said the fellowship “helped tremendously. … It catapulted me forward and allowed me to publish several books in quick succession.”
Others have used the grant funding to buy equipment, hire collaborators and create new work for galleries, museums and festivals in Iowa and beyond.
“It helped me forge connections outside of my network,” said West Des Moines artist Amenda Tate, who designed the painting robot she named Manibus. The motion-activated gizmo co-stars with human dancers in a film Tate produced with local filmmaker Bruce James Bales that has played in film festivals around the world. The fellowship gave her “the confidence to dive deeper,” Tate said. “It felt validating, like being granted permission to go for it.”
Similarly, the Ames-based textile artist Catherine Reinhart said the program’s coaching sessions helped her develop her “collective mending sessions” — a new spin on old-fashioned quilting bees — and host some of them online with participants from Iowa to Ireland to India. “This international shift afforded me countless connections and future collaborations,” she said.
A few of the fellows have moved out of state over the years, but most have stayed. The local playwright Robert John Ford, whose credits include “Caucus: The Musical” and “Six on Six,” about girls basketball, said support from the Iowa Arts Council is the main reason he’s maintained a base here in Iowa, even after training on Broadway and working on both coasts.
“We hope, of course, [the fellows] will maintain a footprint in Iowa, but we’re also cheering them on when they have success elsewhere,” said Schmitz. “All of that enriches Iowa. It makes us a more attractive place for artists, if they see others who are thriving here.”
The fellowship’s impact stretches beyond individual resumes, since the fellows are encouraged to take their work on the road to museums and art centers across the state. “How we bridge those urban and rural divides is so important,” Schmitz said. “That kind of reciprocity creates more ties between communities.”
As sculptor and fellow Ange Altenhofen of Chariton put it, “Finding innovative ways to connect with other people is the most important element in virtually everything we do.”
Here in Des Moines, six fellows currently have studios at Mainframe, including its executive director, Julia Franklin, who is curating the upcoming show. She said the fellowship changed her life “overnight.”
“The power of having others see my artistic value and publicly validate that gave me the courage to go big or go home,” she said. “It launched me into a new orbit of creatives, patrons and art supporters.”
In her role at Mainframe, she has expanded that orbit to include artists from across the state, carving out exhibition space for community arts groups from Creston, Oskaloosa and the North River Arts Council in Warren County.
The upcoming Iowa Artist Fellows show was the logical next step. She’s arranging the show not by medium or theme but instead grouping works in ways that might spark conversations. Visitors can expect to see traditional formats as well as experimental pieces, interactive installations and QR codes linking to performances and films.
For Franklin, the show isn’t about categories or labels. It’s about connections. “Freedom of expression is so critical,” she said. “Art shows up for us when we don’t necessarily have the words. … It starts a conversation, and that’s the whole point.”
Iowa City artist Ali Hval’s “Swipe” incorporates jewelry, hair accessories and a tuft of faux fur. She describes it as “flirtatious and intentionally attention-seeking, crafted to capture viewers with playful materials while anchoring deeper narratives about identity and empowerment.”
Creston artist Kelly Devitt designed the ceramic sculpture “Contained” to loosely suggest a human form. She said it explores “the ways our physical presence can reflect both confidence and self-doubt, touching on the tension between assurance and impostor syndrome.”
“Security Camera” was created by Noah Doely, who teaches photography at the University of Northern Iowa and often uses old techniques to produce fresh results. His series of blue cyanotypes revives a photographic process invented in the 1840s.
Amenda Tate of West Des Moines made this abstract painting with the help of Manibus, her custom-built, motion-activated robot. The painting was created during the filming of “Sapient_2.021,” a short experimental film that commemorates the 100th anniversary of the word “robot.” Its Slavic root, “robota,” means “forced labor.”
Matthew Kluber of Cedar Rapids printed “Drawing Structure (violet/chartreuse)” on a 3D printer. It’s part of a series of geometric sculptures that explore abstraction, color and space.
