Art Department Faculty and Staff Art Show Spring 2025 at Gallery 120
On view now through Tuesday, April 15, 2025 • Opening reception in Gallery 120 Thursday, April 3, 2025, at 12:45 p.m.
The Inver Hills Community College Art Department Faculty and Staff Art Show Spring 2025 is showing now through Tuesday, April 15, 2025, at Gallery 120. An opening reception will be held Thursday, April 3, 2025, at 12:45 p.m. in the gallery.
Art shows and exhibitions are hosted at the Gallery 120 brick-and-mortar location in the atrium of the Fine Arts building on the Inver Hills campus in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota.
Artist statements and bios
Rob Kolomyski, Saving Throw, 2024, Oil on canvas, 76×70″
Rob James Kolomyski was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1970. He worked as an automotive engineer at Toyota for 10 years before changing careers to become an art educator. He received a B.F.A. from Eastern Michigan University in 2002 and an M.F.A. from Michigan State University in 2007. He has taught as a visiting professor of drawing and painting at Michigan State University and now works as a professor at Inver Hills Community College in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Most recently, Rob’s work has been selected for inclusion in the 2024 Manifest Gallery Retrospective publication from Manifest press. He has exhibited drawings at the University of North Carolina, Asheville, and in 2023 his work was accepted into the 6th Biennial International Survey of Contemporary Painting at the Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio. His work was featured at the Open Door 15 juried exhibition at the Rosalux gallery in Minneapolis, at the National Juried Exhibition at the First Street Gallery in Chelsea, New York, and in The Retrieval of the Beautiful exhibition at The Painting Center, Chelsea, New York.
Rob’s work was also selected to exhibit at the Fresh Paint Juried Biannual at Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio. His most recent solo show was Liminal at the Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio. Over the last decade, Robert has exhibited at the Soo Visual Arts Center, in Minneapolis; the Brownsville Museum of Fine Arts, Texas; the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts in Taipei, Taiwan; the Da Xiang Art Space in Taichung City, Taiwan; Ever Gold Gallery in San Francisc; The Lexington Art League in Lexington, Kentucky; The Foundry Art Center in St. Louis, Missouri; and Max Fish Gallery in New York City.
Artist Statement
My most recent body of work explores clunky machines composed of various bodies, objects, and spaces derived from personal and public midwestern mythology. I use the complex and layered language of painting to question relationships between these elements. With this work, I hope to evoke the ambiguities, complications, and tensions of contemporary life through tangled compositions that convey psychological states and complex emotions.
Paul Wegner, Office Wall, 2023, Ink jet print, 40”x50”Paul Wegner, Reading Lights in Bedroom, 2023, Ink jet print, 40”x50”
Artist bio
Paul Wegner serves as photography faculty at Inver Hills Community College. Paul recently showed his work in Art Through the Decades at the Benedict and Dorothy Gorecki Gallery in the Benedicta Arts Center on the campus of the College of Saint Benedict (CSB). The exhibition showcased the art of CSB and Saint John’s University (SJU) art majors over the past sixty-plus years.
Paul Wegner
Paul showed photographs from his Amsden Way body of work. He graduated from SJU in 1993 with a B.A. in Art and went on to complete an M.F.A. in Photography in 1998 at the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, California. He started teaching at Inver Hills in September 2005, having previously taught at Napa Valley College and Solano Community College, both schools in California.
Paul received an Artist Initiative Grant for Photography from the Minnesota State Arts Board in 2015 and support from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Next Step Fund in 2014. He has exhibited his work in three solo exhibitions and 24 group exhibitions. He belongs to the Society of Photographic Educators (SPE) and is a member of the Twin Cities-based artist collective FotoMatter.
Paul served as a photo editor and contributing photographer on the book project, Kura: Prophetic Messenger, which was published in 2021 and received the following awards:
16th National Indie Excellence Awards: Best Fine Arts Book
2022 Nautilus Gold Award, Photography and Arts
2022 Midwest Book Awards, Gold Winner, Nonfiction-Arts/Photography/Coffee Table Books
2022 Finalist, Minnesota Book Awards, Emilie Buchwald Award for Nonfiction
Artist statement
I find inspiration in the people and places I care for and am drawn to. These connections are the foundation of my work. They are present from the spark of an idea to a project’s final form. I have strong formal sensibilities. I think about constructing things both visually and physically.
I think about photos when I’m on my bike, when I’m walking the dog, when I’m driving to work. It isn’t just something I do only with a camera in hand. When I’m out in the world shooting photographs, I lose myself in the process. I want everything to resonate with my inner dialog. I take pride in constructing physical components such as prints, books, and frames. Every step in the process should support the work. For me, this is what it means to work mindfully and with care.
Erika Ritzel
Erika Ritzel, One Week After 20 Sessions of Radiation, 2022, Inkjet print
Artist bio
Erika Ritzel received her B.F.A. from Webster University in St. Louis and her M.F.A. from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. A majority of her photographic work deals with space, family, memory, nostalgia, and loss.
She received a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant in 2008, 2013, and 2018. Her work has been exhibited at the Palm Springs Art Museum in California, the Minnesota Museum of American Art in St. Paul, the Minnesota Center for Photography, the Coalition of Photographic Arts in Wisconsin, the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona, the Medium Festival of Photography in California, the Carlisle Photo Festival in England, and at the GuatePhoto Festival in Guatemala City, Guatemala.
Artist statement
On October 14, 2022, something happened that I one hundred percent never expected. I was diagnosed was breast cancer. A month later, I had a lumpectomy on my right breast and began radiation six weeks after that in January for 20 days. It was a shock because I had no family history of cancer, and it was caught on the first mammogram I ever had. The photograph shared is one of the images I made during this time.
Kristin Pavelka
Coming soon…
Artist bio
It comes as no surprise that I make functional pots. Growing up in a family comprised of an inventor, quilter, seamstress, carpenter, and two farmers, a love for food and creative endeavors are in my blood. I choose to make highly decorative functional pottery, combining historical ceramic influences with a modern design sensibility.
I grew up in Cottage Grove, Minnesota, a suburb on the southeast edge of St. Paul, nestled between city and farmland. I earned my B.A. from Carleton College focusing on Studio Arts. In 2004, I completed my M.F.A. at Penn State University, where I developed a love for earthenware.
I returned to Minnesota and received an adjunct teaching position at Hamline University in St. Paul. During my five years of teaching at the university, I spent a summer at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana, a monthlong woodfire residency in Goshogawara, Japan, a two-week residency at Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in Maine, and I received a Jerome Foundation grant.
I left my teaching job in 2009 when my first son, Noah, was born. Oliver arrived two years later. I was awarded a Minnesota State Arts grant in 2010 and a Next Step Fund grant in 2016 and 2024. Currently, I reside in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, where I maintain a studio and garden professionally in the western suburbs.
Artist statement
Coming from a family of farmers on my paternal side and makers on my maternal side, it comes as no surprise that I make art for food. I love food. I find pleasure in growing it in my vegetable garden and fruit orchard, cooking, and eating from my collection carefully crafted pots with family. Like many potters, I share the desire to make mealtime special.
Unlike the botanical inspiration for my drawings, my pots are not delicate. The lip of my pottery swells for visual weight and sturdiness, or perhaps to allow to be tapered for ease of drinking. While the walls are not thick, the foot may be trimmed to a profile that retains weight in the bottom. My handles are both visually pleasing and comfortable to hold. I strive to make a relaxed pot, one that feels good in the hands with a weight balanced in a similar manner to a young puppy. It’s my attention to these details that set my pots apart from commercially made pots and give them a human connection. Using handmade pots engages all five senses, enhancing and creating a memorable experience.
Throughout my professional potting career, a number of influences have lent themselves to my work. Medieval English potters display directness with clay, leaving evidence of the process to be celebrated. Members potters were masters of geometric patterning and whimsical illustration while Iznik potters painted beautiful botanical patterns that grow across the surface. I fell in love with earthenware when I was introduced to the Iranian sgraffito pots circa 1100 A.D. with rich jewel-like glazes flowing beyond the boundary of the scratched surface patterns.
Ultimately, I’d like my pots to lend themselves to the user’s imagination. I enjoy forms, surfaces, and imagery that reference many things, so everyone’s experience with my work may be unique.
Joel Froehle
Joel Froehle, Ocean, 2024, Ceramic and mixed media
Artist bio
Joel Froehle received a B.A. in Studio Art and Biology from St. Olaf College and later earned an M.F.A. in Artisanry – Ceramics from the University of Massachusetts- Dartmouth. Joel is currently an instructor of art at Inver Hills Community College and Minneapolis College. He is a founding member of the Cannon River Clay Tour and has exhibited his work locally and nationally. He creates functional pottery and ceramic sculptures out of his home studio in Northfield, Minnesota.
Artist statement
This piece is from a series of sculptures that began with a box of old family photos my mother gave me. They are snapshots from my early childhood, and they brought me back to that time and place. Looking at the pictures you might assume that everything was normal with our family. They were not.
Using these images as prompts I began the process of trying to understand and answer questions about my childhood, about myself, my family and our relationships. In making this work I was interested in the objects that surround these moments and their potential to act as metaphors, to create context and to conjure memory.
My goal with these sculptures is not a linear retelling of the story surrounding the images. These sculptures are interpretations that combine the past and present, fact and fiction. They rely on surreal associations, abstraction and distortion to create a feeling or mood that hopefully resonates with you the viewer and allows you to bring yourselves and your own experiences to the work.
Scott Seebart
Scott Seebart, Pero, 2021, Oil on linen, 23×24″Scott Seebart, Dunkel, 2021, Oil on linen, 24×23″
Artist bio
Scott Seebart received his B.F.A. from the University of Minnesota, a post-baccalaureate degree from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and his M.F.A. with a minor in Printmaking from the University of Iowa. He has studied painting at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, and at the Scoula della Grafica in Venice, Italy. Seebart has taught at the University of Iowa, University of Missouri at Kansas City, The Kansas City Art Institute and the University of Central Missouri.
Seebart has shown in group and solo exhibitions at the American Museum of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Lo River Arts in Beacon, New York and the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Prince Street Gallery in New York City. He has been a visiting artist at the Mount Gretna School of Art, The International Center for the Arts in Montecastello di Vibio, Italy, and Studio Nong in Nanning, China.
He lives and works in Saint Paul, Minnesota, at Case Edgerton Studios, a 1902 church renovated into an artist space and gallery. Seebart lives with his partner, artist Jessie Fisher, and their five cats.
Jay Jensen
Jay Jensen, Slab Constructed Cups, 2025, Glazed Stoneware
Artist bio
Jay Jensen has lived and worked in River Falls, Wisconsin, for nearly 35 years. He earned his M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. His work is driven by a deep focus on function, form, and surface. With a decade of experience as a graphic designer and a strong interest in printmaking, he has recently incorporated these influences into the surface treatment of his pottery, creating pieces that merge design and craftsmanship.
Wendy Olson
Wendy Olson, Spring, 2024, White stoneware, under glaze and glaze, 19″x11″x11″
Artist bio
Wendy Olson began teaching ceramics at Inver Hills in 2001. She earned an M.F.A. in Ceramics from Kent State University in 2000 and a B.F.A. in Painting from the University of Wisconsin–River Falls in 1996.
Wendy’s previous teaching experience includes serving as an adjunct instructor of Advanced Figure Drawing at UWRF, an adjunct instructor of Three-Dimensional Design and Introduction to Art at North Hennepin Community College, and a teacher of record of Beginning Ceramics at Kent State.
She has showed her work at UWRF, a permanent collection (1996), and the Weisman Art Museum, “Snake Charmer” (2004). Her published work includes a plate image in “500 Plates Platters, and Chargers” (2008), plate images in “Ceramics For Beginners: Surfaces and Firings” (2010), and a feature article in Madison Originals Magazine (2012).
Janell Hammer
Janell Hammer, Icarus Making Trial of Her Wings, 2024, Oil on hardboard and tufted yarn, 18×36″Janell Hammer, Sleeping Ariadne, 2024, Oil on canvas, 24×18″
Artist bio
Janell Hammer is a multidisciplinary artist based in St. Paul, Minnesota. She earned her B.F.A. in Studio Arts and Art History from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Starting with a background in painting, Janell widened her focus to include printmaking and fiber art while pursuing her undergraduate degree. Currently, she works as the 2D CLA and gallery coordinator for Gallery 120 at Inver Hills Community College.
Janell’s work focuses on framing classical themes and motifs through a contemporary and feminine lens. Investigating the intersections of nostalgia and grief associated with going up as a young girl in the early 2000s. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout Minnesota and the Midwest, including the Soeffker Gallery, Paradise Center of the Arts, and the Minnesota State Fair Fine Arts Center. She has also curated exhibitions, most recently, at NE Gallery Factory. While art remains a large passion in her life, she is an unrivaled, self-titled cat lady at heart.
Janell Hammer, Icarus Making Trial of Her Wings, 2024, Oil on hardboard and tufted yarn 18×36″
WHAT: Inver Hills Art Department Faculty and Staff Art Show Spring 2025
WHEN: Now thru Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Opening reception Thursday, April 3, 2025, at 12:45 p.m.
