On January 21, the Augsburg Art Galleries will open a new exhibition featuring nine local, Black women and femme designers. TO ILLUMINATE ABUNDANCE, curated by Olivia House ’20 and Silent Fox ’18 of 13.4 Collective, explores what it means to live a life full of love, freedom, and light.

TO ILLUMINATE ABUNDANCE brings together nine Black designers at various stages in their careers. House and Fox invited contributing graphic designers to reflect on and illuminate a text, quote, or lyric that helps imagine what it could look like to move forward and towards more; to help envision what life is like when it feels full. The exhibition features work by Ashley Koudou, Kelsi Sharp, Leeya Rose Jackson, Marcia Rowe ’22, Olivia Anizor, Sabrina Peitz, and Terresa Moses, as well as House and Fox.

“This show is meant to express what our world should be: a world in which Black femmes are able to live a life without pain or suffering; a life full of light,” said House.

An opening reception for TO ILLUMINATE ABUNDANCE will take place on Saturday, January 21. The curators and artists of the show will gather for an artist talk on Thursday, February 2 at the Hagfors Center to contextualize their work and their view of the exhibition within a broader landscape of making, community, politics, and futurism. This event is featured as part of The Great Northern festival, happening January 25–February 5 around the Twin Cities metro area. The Great Northern celebrates Minnesota’s cold, creative winters through 10 days of diverse programming that invigorate mind and body.

The exhibition runs through March 24 in Augsburg’s Gage and Christensen galleries.

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The article also examines how Tavera’s own cultural heritage has impacted her work; she has dual-citizenship with the U.S. and Mexico. “Art has the capacity to teach non-Latinos about our Latino culture,” Tavera said. “To create a sense of community for Latinos, and to create places for conversation.”

Tavera’s work will be featured in “Reconfiguring Casta,” an exhibit in Augsburg College’s Christensen Center art gallery from February 29 to March 31. A reception will be held at the gallery on March 2 from 4 to 7 p.m. Additionally, Tavera has curated a collection titled, “Sus Voces: Female Printmakers from Mexico” that will be displayed at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking from February 5 to March 27 with a reception on March 4 from 6:30 to 9 p.m.

Read: Visualizing women’s stories on the Minnesota Women’s Press site for further exhibition and event details.

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By Kacie Lucchini ’14 and Wendi Wheeler ’06

You might have noticed something different in the Christensen Center recently. It’s not the hundreds of feet of nailed to the wall or an empty office space behind the welcome desk. It’s a series of facts and figures in an art installation that may encourage you to think differently about your next candy purchase.

The current show in the Christensen Center student art gallery, The Dark Truth about Chocolate, has something a little different to offer than the usual art installation provides. Augsburg design and graphic design students took part in organizing an art show around the trafficking and child labor in the chocolate industry. Under the direction of professor Chris Houltberg, a new addition to Augsburg faculty this fall, the students were challenged to make an art show that stood for something.

“Design is visual communication,” Houltberg said. “I wanted to take a social issue and let the students create an exhibition knowing the complexity of the issue and challenging them to show the complexities through design.”

Because Houltberg believes a fundamental part of the design process involves research, the students began learning about the chocolate issue by watching a documentary called The Dark Side of Chocolate. Next, they Skype called a leading researcher, which allowed them to ask questions unanswered by the video. Lastly, they did individual research on specific topics.

The group decided on three main goals for the show. First, raise awareness to the issue of child labor and more specifically trafficking in the cocoa industry. Second, ask people to do something in the form of joining the Ten Campaign, an international organization to stop trafficking, or to send a postcard directly to Hershey, the biggest offender in the U.S. Third, offer an alternative in the form of fair trade chocolate. The show was sponsored by Ten Campaign, the national campaign leading the way to stop trafficking and slave labor in the cocoa industry.

Houltberg not only challenged students to be purposeful in their design choices; he also wanted to give them an experience that was close to a real world design situation. As such, students were presented with design standards and could expand on the concepts within the confines of those standards. They were also able to see the project from concept to print and production and to be involved in a constant process of refinement, something Houltberg said is not always possible in an academic situation.

Kacie Lucchini, an art history and media writing major, said she enjoyed seeing the reaction of attendees at the show’s opening reception. “As an artist, watching people realize that the show was about the children who are forced into slave labor all so they can have a Reese’s was a moving experience.

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Each element of the installation communicates details about trafficking and exploitation of children in the cocoa industry, but some messages are more abstract. For example, each piece of candy that is missing a bite approximately represents the wages of the people who produce the cocoa. And there are 18 spheres in the “Illuminated Cocoa Field” portion of the installation [at left] correlating to the 1.8 million children working in the cocoa sector.

Lucchini thinks that the 38 students who worked on the project will definitely make more conscious decisions about their purchases. “I think it’s a lasting memory for some of us,” she said.

Marketing and graphic design major, Joe Vokracka, said that though he knows the show won’t change the minds of everyone who views it, he believes the classes were successful in helping viewers understand where their food comes from. “This show with this subject matter would not have been as successful anywhere else,” he said.

Houltberg is pleased with the results of the students work. “I think they succeeded with the push-pull that happens in an installation like this. The color palette is very pleasing, but when you get up close you see that the subject matter is not. That’s a very good analogy for candy.”

The show ends November 23.

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These seven Minnesota artists, though at different stages in their individual careers and representing a variety of artistic styles, all use the pen, pencil, or brush to delve into issues of cultural identity. Without a title to their show they refuse to be labeled; each asks to be considered on the merits of his or her talent, message, and medium.

Todd Bockley, owner of Bockley Gallery in Minneapolis, has graciously served as curator for this exhibition.

Artist Reception: Friday, January 25, 5:30-7:30 p.m.

Jim Denomie Artist Presentation: Tuesday, January 29, 1:30 p.m.

Adeline Johnson Conference Center, Oren Gateway Center

“By Water and exhibition by Barbara Harman, runs Jan. 11 until Feb. 15.

The artist’s unique combinations of materials, which can include acrylic painting, stenciling, embroidery, trapunto, printmaking, and paper, draws attention to the physicality of her work. But Harman understands her work to be as much about the metaphorical as the physical. Her series is not only about water, but also “is about journeys. It is about regular journeys — moving from one place to another — and metaphorical journeys — moving from one kind of life to another, one way of looking at things to another, one age to another, one role to another.

Artist Reception: Friday, January 25, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.

Artist Gallery Talk: Thursday, February 7, 12:00 p.m.

The Gage Family Art Gallery hours:

Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. – 8 p.m.

Saturday & Sunday, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.

The Christensen Center Art Gallery Hours:

Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. – 8 p.m.

Saturday & Sunday, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.

For more information, visit:

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The Christensen Center exhibition, “Threads of Community,” which in Somali is translated “Dunta Bulshada iskuxirta,” features colorful yarn weavings made by Somali elder women.  These weavers, who are refugees from the war in Somalia, are re-creating an art they learned from their mothers and grandmothers as teenagers. The women were not able to weave during the years spent in camps because they did not have materials.

Augsburg College is collaborating with its Cedar-Riverside neighbor, the East African Women’s Center, to present the selection of twined tapestries from the hands of the Somali weavers.  At the Women’s Center, which has served as the women’s “home away from home” since 2005, they are able to practice their art again. Twined weavings have been used for hundreds of years in Somalia for baskets, bags, rugs, as decorations for homes, and saddles for camels and horses.

All are invited to the community receptions for “Threads of Community” on Friday, Nov. 16 from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Christensen Center Art Gallery and the East African Women’s Center. Free transportation will be available to shuttle visitors between each location. All reception events are free and open to the public.

The Gage Family Art Gallery exhibition, “Journey Toward Healing,” features two artists, a wife and husband, who had separate careers until 1998 when Maley was diagnosed with breast cancer. Maley became her own subject matter as she started a series of small collage works that examine self image, cultural constructions of beauty, and physical and psychological change. Meanwhile, Hand began an intimate series of portraits of Maley on her journey through surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, on her years as a survivor, and, ultimately, on her death in September 2006. Hand’s journey carries on in the face of this loss, sharing the art that connected their lives, confronted their fears, and continues to give him strength and hope.

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