July 15 – Nov 6, 2022
The theme for this exhibition is a continuation of an exhibition from 2020. Back then, the museum mounted the “2020 Vision: Nebraska’s Top 20” exhibition highlighting the best agrarian artists in the state. Now we continue with a theme to find the best of the best.
Bone Creek Museum has a tremendous focus toward agrarian art. This obsession leads us to discover and advocate for artists that have a special message or unique perspective about land and its tenure.
Assembled here is artwork by four young(ish) artists who have agrarian work as their specific focus. Each has well-formed ideas about the themes of their interest. Each has built a resume of recognition and success.
Coincidently, in this show, each artist has selected pieces that hit close to home, literally. Naomi Friend of Iowa has focused on the roots of her Dutch heritage. Robert Jinkins relentlessly returns to his multi-generational family farm in Wisconsin for inspiration. Andrew Lincoln photographs the vineyards and laborers he has grown up with in Napa Valley, CA. Chad Olsen left the allure of the New York art scene to return to his home state of Nebraska to create abstract landscapes.
Participating Artists:
Andrew Lincoln-
Producing 4% of California’s wine production, the 30 miles long by 5 miles wide Napa Valley was the first American wine region to garner international fame and status. This was kicked off by the 1976 “Judgement of Paris”, where a Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay beat out the greatest Chateaux and Domaines of France in a blind tasting. Interest and investment swelled in this once sleepy agricultural town. Prune orchards and cattle ranches soon gave way to what would become some of the most expensive vineyard land in the world. For many, Napa has become synonymous with grandeur and luxury, as most bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon start at $100+. Investment by corporations and buying sprees by millionaires detract from the simple fact that wine is an agricultural product. It is grown and harvested from the earth, often with painstaking care. Simply put, there is no luxury in waking up at 2AM to work 8 hours harvesting 2+ tons of fruit, it’s hard work. Like many California wine regions, Napa has immensely benefited by the willingness of people from Mexico and Central America to work in the fields. They provide the backbone of the wine industry, where their efforts keep it viable and they are able to help sustain their families back home. Many will work as H-2As, a mobile work system where the employer provides housing and assistance while these individuals work several months in the vineyard.
My name is Andrew Lincoln and I am a lifelong resident of the Napa Valley. My father is a vineyard manager and, when I’m not moonlighting as a photographer, I work as a wine educator for a winery in the Los Carneros region of Napa Valley. Every time I photograph harvest, I am awestruck by the work ethic and openness of these vineyard professionals. I am always concerned with potentially invading someone’s privacy, but more often than not, I get a “pose” for the camera, a friendly wave, a cheeky grin. There’s a warmth and openness that, when coupled with the tautly crisp autumnal air, the nutty tones of freshly disturbed earth combined with the sweet smell of high quality, freshly picked grapes, always leaves me hopeful and invigorated about life.
Chad Michael Olsen is an artist of abstract landscapes that explore textures and color palettes as a way to communicate emotions. When painting, he often finds himself working to capture the atmospheres of nature and the emotions from being in these places. For him, being in nature is a solitary experience—one he can only truly share with others through his paintings. Most recently, Olsen has expanded his use of transparency film materials to include acetate and Dura-Lar. These new materials have allowed Olsen to experiment with scale and composition.
He studied painting at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln under Aaron Holz and Keith Jacobshagen, followed by several years of living and working in New York City. In 2017, he returned to Lincoln, Nebraska, where he maintains a studio.
Robert Jinkins-
Robert Jinkins is an award-winning representational painter and portraitist. His work focuses upon the locus of the family’s 1848 farm. Homesteaded by his forebears before Wisconsin became a state, Jinkins returns obsessively to the farm to record the visages of familiar sites as they evolve with the ravages of time. This unique connection to the land that Jinkins’ ancestors have stewarded for more than five generations contributes to a reverence for a way of life and is evident in his deeply personal graphite drawings and mixed media acrylic paintings. The works are built up using layers of thin loose washes, glazes, scumbles, and obsessive hatching in acrylic mixed media. The accumulation of these layered strata of paint weave together detailed portraits and landscapes. Jinkins’ use of multiple layers enables his work to vibrate with an existential intensity. From beneath this surface of accumulated marks, underdrawings remain barely evident like skeletal structures over which the rest of the painting is stretched.
The exhibition of Jinkins’s creative work has resulted in awards in both national and international juried shows. Highlights include taking the top prize at the Bradley International Biennial Printmaking and Drawing Exhibition, The Octagon All Media competition, as well as the Seven State Biennial. (Juror Bert Seabourn). Jinkins was included in the March 2022 issue of Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine as one of their “Five to Watch”. Jinkins holds his BA in Fine Art from the University of Wisconsin Platteville and an MFA from Iowa State University.
A descendant of Dutch immigrants and raised in a cultural and ethnic Dutch enclave of Iowa, Naomi Friend is a professional artist who has had solo exhibitions in Iowa, California, and Nebraska. She is currently working on multiple bodies of work all rooted in a mixed media and photographic process. In recent years, she has focused on animal migration, historic breeds of animals, and still life in the Dutch tradition.
“As a student, I was encouraged (as all students are) to explore non-traditional methods and media. I discovered the media Cyanotype, an antique photo printing process. Adopted by field biologist Anna Atkins in 1840, it was one of her go-to methods for taking samples in the field. It is the perfect melding of the technological and home-grown, finding balance, just as I hope to in my own life,” said Friend.
She earned a Masters of Fine Art in Integrated Visual Arts at Iowa State University in 2013 and grew up in the community of Sioux Center, Iowa. Her undergraduate degree is from Dordt College where she studied fine art and graphic design. Naomi worked for three years at the Octagon Center for the Arts as the Exhibits Director. Friend has received awards in national juried art exhibits. She exhibits in a variety outdoor public art events including the Des Moines Arts Festival. Naomi operates a small 3 acre farm, Friends Flowers, where she grows flowers for local markets.
