Finding Ground, H&R Block Artspace

November 17, 2023 - January 26, 2024 


Finding Ground introduces the close observations of six artists – Julie Farstad, Cathleen Faubert, Philip Heying, Mitch Iburg, Cyan Meeks, and Erin Wiersma – who work directly in and with the land to discover the living, shifting ecologies of the diverse and chosen landscapes that engage them.


These rich meditations on place, shaped by the ongoing research of artists whose practices are inspired and informed by a deep connection to the natural world, reflect an expanded ecological consciousness and reveal some of the unique characteristics of their respective ecoregions, including the tallgrass prairie and Flint Hills of the Central Great Plains, the Outer Bluegrass Region of Kentucky, and the Minnesota River Valley.


Traces of labor, collaboration, and the body’s direct engagement with the land are evidenced in photography, video, drawing, installation, sculpture, scent, and sound. Throughout the exhibition, artistic production is dynamically recorded through acts of walking, mark-making, foraging, mapping, and documenting. Through material, sensorial, and pictorial approaches to making, these artists create dynamic portraits of the landscape that bear witness to the transitions of time, light, seasons, lifecycles, weather, and climate change, as well as the land practices used to understand, maintain, and restore the balance of these complex and varied ecosystems.


Informed by the varied ways in which these artists are consciously engaged with the land, Finding Ground invites a more expansive consideration of how we might think about and reimagine the American landscape of today.


Finding Ground is organized by Raechell Smith, Director & Curator, H&R Block Artspace.

Reading the World, Spencer Museum of Art

photo by Ryan Waggoner © Spencer Museum of Art

– JANUARY 7, 2024

Reading the World explores artistic investigations into forces of nature. Together the works displayed prompt viewers to consider their own encounters with the natural world, their ecological and political contexts, and how they become reflected in a wide range of mediums. All of these artworks come from larger bodies of work that demonstrate the artists’ ongoing inquiries into how we understand the world around us.


This exhibition is inspired by a partnership between the Spencer Museum’s Arts Research Integration program and Huixuan Wu, associate professor of aerospace engineering in KU’s School of Engineering. Like the work of the artists in the exhibition, Wu's research addresses natural phenomena that can be difficult to interpret. Reading the World is supported by his Career Award from the National Science Foundation.


Artist discussion with Grossman, Erin Wiersma, Lilly McElroy, and Marie McInerney on December 7, 5:30 – 6:30 pm.


LARRY & BARBARA MARSHALL FAMILY BALCONY, 404
Spencer Museum of Art
1301 Mississippi St.
Lawrence, KS 66045

Showroom 21: Erin Wiersma     GALERIE FENNA WEHLAU

Fenna Wehlau is showing current works by Paul Diestel (*1996) and Ruper Eder (*1968) in her gallery in the exhibition "Paul Diestel, Skulpturen & Rupert Eder, Painting" and in her showroom 21 "Erin Wiersma, Konza Works on Paper" from May 26 to July 28, 2023.


The exhibitions are part of the "Flower Power Festival" in Munich and the Kunstarealfest from July 13 to 16, 2023.

PRAIRIE ARTIST 2022 The Land Institute, Salina, Kansas 
SALINA, KANSAS, USA – September 8, 2022 – After a two-year pandemic hiatus, The Land Institute will host its 42ndperennial Prairie FestivalNew Roots: Growing a movement from the ground down, at its headquarters south of Salina, Kansas, during the last weekend of September 23-25, 2022. The event will feature new voices and perspectives, including Huascar Medina, Poet Laureate of Kansas; Dr. JohnElla Holmes of the Kansas Black Farmers Association; Linda Black Elk, Food Sovereignty Coordinator at United Tribes Technical College; Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation; an exhibition by land artist Erin Wiersma; and a concert by world-renowned musicians Paul Winter and Henrique Eisenmann. Along with great food, art, and music, highlights include the Friday night barn dance, Saturday morning Kernza® pancake breakfast, and Sunday sunrise walk through the ancient Wauhob Prairie. Prairie Festival registration is now open.
EARTHLY OBSERVATORY      School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Galleries

photo: Tony Favarula

AFTER THE BURN     Konza Prairie Drawings GALERIE FENNA WEHLAU

25th February until 22th April 2022

This exhibition is a project of NEUSTART KULTUR, Stifung Kunstfonds. An accompanying catalogue is published.

Center for Humans & Nature

Dragging through the Fire: On Erin Wiersma’s Konza Prairie

By: Colin Edgington

Fire is primordial and eternal. It attracts us and burns us like moths but heats us and gives us life. The core of our planet burns, and the center of our solar system does, too. As the planet heats up, fires become more prominent and more dangerous, reminding us of our beholden existence to Gaia. Their remnants of ash and char point to something volcanic and ancient.

SALINA ART CENTER, 242 S. Santa Fe, Salina - Kansas 

September 11- November 10, 2019

Wiersma’s artistic practice focuses on the body’s capacity to absorb and respond to an environment. The Konza Prairie works on paper are created on location in one of the few remaining protected grasslands in the world. She creates a record of the land, using both bio-char produced from controlled burns and the embossing from the forbs, fauna and rocky terrain as they incise and transforms the paper surface echoing the topography. Pulling, rubbing, dragging, pushing, and lifting -- changed by the elements; wind, temperature, humidity, and landscape itself. She creates with the prairie; it influences her actions into large-scale works, resulting from the varying burn treatments, fire intensities, and vegetative composition from each locale.

featuring Grassland Interview (voices)

The exhibition includes interviews with scientists working in tallgrass prairies, collected by landscape architect Katie Kingery-Page who uses ethnographic interview methods to understand place. Grassland Interview, a series of scientists’ voices, can be heard in the galleries under sound domes. This on-going audio project gathers ecologists’ and land managers’ reflections on two critical aspects of the Konza grassland life-cycle: controlled burns and dormancy of grasses and forbs (wildflowers).

Programming

Friday, Sept. 13, 5-7pm / gallery talk at 6pm | Opening reception

Wednesday, Sept. 18, 12-1pm | Lunch & Learn with Erin Wiersma & Patrick O’Neal |

Sunday, Nov. 10, 2-4pm | Second Sunday with Erin Wiersma & Katie Kingery-Page

GALLERY WEEKEND BERLIN

April 25-28, 2019

Galerie Fenna Wehlau Munich, DE


Rupert Eder, ghosting

Erin Wiersma, large-format drawings by Konza Prairie


Opening reception 25 april 17 - 20 o'clock

26 - 28 april 11am - 6pm

Please contact us by email at info@galerie-wehlau.de

Film Screening: After the Burn

Thursday, February 7, 2019 at 7 PM – 9 PM UTC+01

Galerie Fenna Wehlau

Amalienstraße 24, 80333 Munich, Germany


Die Arbeiten auf Papier der amerikanischen Künstlerin Erin Wiersma entstehen bei Performances im Umfeld von gezielten Abbränden in der Konza-Prärie, Kansas. Ein aktueller Film mit Drohnenaufnahmen zeigt den außergewöhnlichen Entstehungsprozeß der großformatigen Papierarbeiten von Erin Wiersma. Wiederholte Filmaufführung, Künstlergespräch. Eintritt frei, mit der Bitte um Voranmeldung.


AFTER THE BURN

Filming by Evert Nelson

Edited by Katie Kingery-Page & Erin Wiersma

Wester: Works on Paper from the Konza Prairie Mid-America Arts Alliance

(Kansas City, MO) Mid-America Arts Alliance (M-AAA) is pleased to present Wester: Works on Paper from the Konza Prairie by artist Erin Wiersma of Manhattan, Kansas, for First Friday February 1 and March 1 from 6:00– 8:00 p.m. at 2018 Baltimore in Kansas City’s Crossroads Arts District.

Mid-America Arts AllianceWester: Works on Paper from the Konza Prairie

(Kansas City, MO) Mid-America Arts Alliance (M-AAA) is pleased to present Wester: Works on Paper from the Konza Prairie by artist Erin Wiersma of Manhattan, Kansas, for First Friday February 1 and March 1 from 6:00– 8:00 p.m. at 2018 Baltimore in Kansas City’s Crossroads Arts District. https://www.maaa.org/

Galerie Fenna Wehlau (Munich, Germany) 
Poetry | Line  
Opens January 31
includes artists: Carmen Hillers, Dieter Kränzlein, Christine Leins, Erin Wiersma
National Science Foundation LTER Network



National Science Foundation: LTER NETWORK
AFTER THE BURN: Making Art out of Grassland Fires
Jennifer Rhodes, Published April 3, 2018

Two Coats of Paint Residency



Two Coats of Paint Residency: 
December 11 - 17, 2017
Open Studio: Thursday, December 14, 6 – 9pm
Address: 55 Washington Street, #321, Brooklyn NY (DUMBO) 

Robischon, Denver CO

Delighted to be showing at Robischon.

Erin Wiersma : Works from the "Examen" series 
Oct 5 – Nov 4, 2017

In the Viewing Room:

Erin Wiersma
www.robischongallery.com​

Each painting from Kansas artist Erin Wiersma’s “Examen” series is a densely layered composition of overlapping linear marks of hand-mixed pigments and polymer binders. More than its overt layers of painted or drawn lines of minimal palettes, each stratified painting based on a specific date, began as a daily practice; an act of mindfulness as a meditative ritual bordering on performance. Currently the dates are intended to point to a start time, generally placing the works on a timeline which may accurately correlate to the genesis of that painting or instead include dates of events that are important (in ways either small or significant) from both private or collective moments that are embodied in memory. It is this pursuit of the authentic and conscious mark which the artist feels parallels a kind of universal quest. Wiersma states,” In my drawings, I seek to discover a confluence of the spiritual and material. My works are created through a meditative process of tracing, eliminating, finding and forging drawn lines on the surface of the paper. These accumulated marks become intertwined layers and untraceable histories of past, present and future.”  As a temporal consideration, the artist’s single-minded deliberations define time for her as it brings deep space into form through each expressive gesture. At once equally contemplative and dynamic, vibrant translucency and opacity become metaphors for experience; contained, yet expansive within the ongoing continuum of Wiersma’s work.

 

Kentler International Drawing Space


100 Works on Paper Benefit

​May 20, 2017
353 Van Brunt Street, (Red Hook)
Brooklyn, NY ​

Jewish Art Salon

The Jewish Art Salon presents Natural Instincts, an exhibition hosted by the Charter Oak Cultural Center in Hartford, CT.

October 26 – November 18, 2017, Monday-Friday 9:30-5:30

Opening Reception: Thursday, October 26th, 6-8 PM.
Charter Oak Cultural Center, Hartford, CT.
21 Charter Oak Avenue, Hartford, CT 06106

This exhibition will bring together works that embody harmonious multiculturalism and inter- religious unity. In the current age, we focus on what divides, rather than what unites us. Artists are showing works that highlight our common humanity, rather than our differences.

Two Coats of Paint Residency

June 2015

THEORY OF LINE: ERIN WIERSMA @ A.I.R.Gallery in Brooklyn, NY


October 30 - November 29, 2014
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 6, 6-9pm

A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce, The Theory of Line, Erin Wiersma’s solo exhibition of drawings created throughout 2014. The exhibition will be on view from October 30th through November 29th, with an opening reception on November 6th from 6-9pm.

Wiersma’s non-representational drawings are createdthrough a meditative process that seeks confluencebetween the spiritual and material worlds. This meditation emerges, according to artist/writer Sharon Butler, as a natural response to our perception of time as moving at an impossibly rapid pace thanks to the rapidly accelerating rates of IT innovation. Through her drawing practice, Wiersma gets a handle on the reins, slowing time down, “Elegantly capturing time as line.” “In a roiling world that obscures and devours units of time”, Butler continues, “pausing to remember and articulateeven small moments matters all the more.” 

Artist/curator Marsha Levin-Rojer observes that “Wiersma’s creative process is an intense one and it pays o. The works speak well together. When viewed as a whole, there appears, throughout, an underlying web-like framework reminiscent of Virginia Woolf’s ‘moments of being’ -- a glimpse of a greaterwhole, a larger pattern that is sometimes hidden behind ‘the opaque surface of daily life.’”

Wiersma drawings have been exhibited in the United States as well as internationally. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Painting from University of Connecticut, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Messiah College. She is currently working in Manhattan, Kansas as an Assistant Professor at Kansas State University. This is Wiersma’s first solo exhibition at A.I.R. Gallery. 

A.I.R. GALLERY | 111 Front Street, #228 | Brooklyn, NY 11201 | www.airgallery.org | (212) 255 6651 | Wed - Sun 12-6PM

Traced Time @ JSU, Jackson, MS

Solo Exhibition at Johnson Hall Gallery
Jackson State University, Jackson, Mississippi
September 25 - December 5, 2014

Opening Reception: September 25, 2014, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Artist Talk: September 25, 2014 at 2pm in the Dollye M.E. Robinson building Room 166/266

Draw, Drawing, Drawn @ Vita Art Center, Ventura, CA

Awarded Best in Show, Limestone, 5/19/2014
National Juried ExhibitionJuried by Leah Ollman
Exhibition Dates: July 12 - 27, 2014

The "Draw, Drawing, Drawn" exhibition is a celebration of drawing and the continually evolving relationship between observation and invention. Primary, sophisticated, honest, revealing, and fundamental, drawing is a common language that people of all ages use to communicate. The Vita Art presents an exhibit showing a contemporary cross section of what is happening now in drawing.