hearing it get dark (for William Faulkner)
Charles Matson Lume
December 10, 2021 – January 30, 2022
Opening reception: Thursday, January 13 from 5:30–7:00 p.m. with remarks from the artist at 6:00 p.m.
Charles Matson Lume is a visual artist and Professor of Art and Interim Associate Dean of the School of Art and Design at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. His site-specific installations are created through the use of directed light on everyday materials (such as holographic stickers, lenses, and colored tapes), arranged to create moments for pause and reflection. This December, Lume worked in the Hearst galleries to create an installation dedicated to themes from The Soundand the Fury by William Faulkner. His work is often inspired by—and dedicated to—writers, poets, and themes found in their work. For this exhibition, Lume worked in the Hearst galleries to create an installation dedicated to William Faulkner, and specifically, themes from The Sound and the Fury.
Lume’s past exhibitions include installations at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland; Babel Kunst, Trondheim, Norway; Hunter College, New York City, NY; and the Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN. He has received fellowships from the Bush Foundation, Jerome Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board, and participated in international artist residencies in Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Ireland. Lume is based in St. Paul, MN.
The Night Sound Considered
December 10, 2021 – January 30, 2022
The Night Sound Considered features a small grouping of artworks from the permanent collection reprised from our 2020 exhibition, The Night Sound, a show that embraced the winter season—its moodiness and call for introspection, as well as its darkness in both palette and subject. Visitors (in person or virtual) are encouraged to explore the themes of the original exhibition through a personal essay written by Robyn Groth, titled “A Stretch of Truth,” inspired by her visit in 2020. Robyn’s illustrated essay is available as a takeaway at the Hearst or it can be found and shared online here.
Pandemic Montages: A Series of Digital Stories by Roy R. Behrens
January 6 – February 20, 2022
Pandemic Montages is a virtual exhibition of sixty full-color digital montages produced by artist and graphic designer Roy R. Behrens. Made during a two-month period in 2021—at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic—each work was made by extracting, altering, and recombining public domain components, such as black and white vintage photographs, typographic fragments, and diagrams. In most cases, components are digitally “colorized,” sometimes using AI (Artificial Intelligence) processes. The resulting pictorial images are deliberately provocative, pesky, and more or less unsettling. By the targeted use of ambiguity, the works (as well as their titles) are intended to trigger each viewer’s interpretive efforts.
Roy R. Behrens is an Emeritus Professor and Distinguished Scholar who taught graphic design, illustration, and design history for 46 years at various universities and art schools, including the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and (since 1990) the University of Northern Iowa. He retired in 2018. For more examples of his work, click here.
Eddie Bowle’s Blues
February 17 – March 27, 2022
Born in 1884, Eddie Bowles learned to play guitar in New Orleans at the birth of jazz and blues. In 1914, he came to Cedar Falls to work as a street paver, and he stayed here for the rest of his life, working in a variety of manual labor jobs and sharing his distinctive style of blues guitar with his many friends. Drawing on recently uncovered recordings, this exhibition celebrates the life and work of one of Cedar Falls’s most unique citizens.
This exhibition was prepared in conjunction with English Senior Seminar students in the UNI Department of Languages & Literatures under the advisement of Professor Jim O’Loughlin. Support for this project is provided by the Cedar Falls Community Foundation’s Saul and Joan Diamond Arts & History Fund, Humanities Iowa, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Our Town: Reclaiming The Narrataive
Guest Curated by Lenore Metrick-Chen
February 17 – March 27, 2022
Public reception on Friday, February 25 from 5:00–6:30 p.m. with remarks by Dr. Metrick-Chen at 5:30 p.m.
Our Town: Reclaiming the Narrative is a traveling exhibition curated by Dr. Lenore Metrick-Chen, professor of art and cultural history at Drake University, who—in collaboration with people from communities across Iowa—created an exhibition to feature stories from the small but vital Black communities that have shaped
our state. Our Town highlights individual choices and agency that have led to civic engagement and community building, resulting in social change and improving the lives of fellow community members.
The exhibition has traveled to many venues across Iowa since 2019, including showings in Fort Dodge, Burlington, and as part of the annual “I’ll Make Me a World” celebration in Des Moines. As the installation moves, it gathers stories (via recorded or filmed interviews), artwork, and ephemera from the lives of local, often unsung, community builders. It offers a sampling of acts of agency and individual bravery and provides a space to add materials that validate those—famous or obscure in the community—whose actions have made a difference. A core element of the exhibition presents visitors with a 45-foot timeline, formed by images and newspaper articles, on the Black Panther Party’s breakfast program for children and its adoption and expansion by CFUM (Children and Family Urban Movement), which continues today. The show, as imagined for the Hearst Center, also offers a “gallery within a gallery” of paired artworks on loan from various regional organizations including the Waterloo Center for the Arts and the UNI Gallery of Art.
Our Town is about individual agency. Agency is created from necessity and
often motivated by frustration. But agency signifies that there is a choice. It pertains to our ability to choose our actions—or non-actions—which is the foundation for all freedom. Our Town: Reclaiming the Narrative and related programs are made possible in part through funding from the Iowa Arts Council’s Cultural Leadership Partners grant, the Berg Fund at the Cedar Falls Community Foundation, and Friends of the Hearst.
Cedar Falls Student Art Exhibition
April 14 – May 15, 2022
Opening reception: Sunday, May 1 from 1:00–4:00 p.m. Sponsored by Friends of the Hearst
See what the kids are up to in this annual student art exhibition! The Hearst Center’s tradition of celebrating students and teachers continues this spring with an exhibition of work created in the art rooms of Cedar Falls Community Schools. Pottery, painting, and works on paper abound!