Daily Pioneer News

PLATTEVILLE - As the fourth annual Heartland Festival brings performers from all around the country to the University of Wisconsin-Platteville Center For the Arts this summer, an accompanying exhibit will have a distinctive local flavor.

The Heartland Artists exhibit continues the great tradition of showcasing artists that live and work in the area. The work of five regional artists will be on display in the Harry and Laura Nohr Art Gallery June 10-July 25.

Kenneth Nelson, a retired chemistry professor who lives on a hobby farm outside of Platteville, will have a number of his metal sculptures on display.

"I think there'll be five or six pieces in the show. I work with fabricated metal-either steel or stainless steel, sometimes polished and sometimes powder coated," Nelson said. "I don't try to deliver any message at all. I just like to make things that are pleasing to my eye, and hopefully pleasing to others as well."

Though Nelson has had exhibits at museums in Chicago and Indiana in addition to a solo exhibit at the UWP gallery two years ago, he doesn't consider himself a professional artist.

"I just fiddle around with the sculpture stuff," he said. "I always had a sort-of latent feeling that I would like to do that. Now that I'm pretty old, I'd figured I'd better do it now or I'd never do it."

Platteville artist Heidi Dyas-McBeth works with various media including found images and objects to create glass mosaics.

"I am drawn to images and themes related to women, as well as my own struggle to make sense of and maintain balance in my life," she said in her artist statement. "I see my art work as icons to the beauty and wisdom found in surprisingly ordinary and familiar images, where ideas and themes emerge as these seemingly unrelated images share the same space."

Other featured artists include Leonard Ross, photography; JoAnne Hauser Warren, watercolors; and Ruthie Vosberg, oils.

The exhibit will debut during the Heartland Festival's opening Gala, beginning at 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, June 9 in Velzy Commons of the Ullsvik Center. Tickets for the Gala are $15 per person and may be purchased through the university box office.

The Harry and Laura Nohr Gallery, located in the Ullsvik Center, is open 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., Monday-Friday, as well as one hour preceding every Heartland Festival performance. Entrance to the exhibit is free of charge. The gallery can be reached at 608-342-1398.