Threshold Gallery

On view: July 5 - September 30, 2024

John Schulz uses collage, cut-ups, and the resultant unanticipated juxtapositions In his studio practice to open the visual potential of commonplace printed matter. This recent work in woodcut explores mid-century public domain romance, crime, and science fiction comics, fragmenting their graphic elements to liberate them from their original narratives and layering and recombining them to build new forms, often revealing an underlying lyric darkness.

Schulz is currently based in Saint Paul, MN. Originally from Superior, WI, John returned to the Midwest after teaching Printmaking and Drawing for twenty-five years at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has also taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Appalachian State University, Boone NC; Penland School of Craft, NC; and the Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee BE. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Philadelphia Museum of Art; New York Public Library; the Boston Public Library Rare Books and Manuscripts – Artists’ Books; and the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, BE.

Threshold Gallery

On view April 8 - June 28, 2024

Reflected Impressions, Endless Possibilities features the new work by members of Highpoint’s Teaching Artist Learning Community (TALC), including Lynda Acosta, Constanza Carballo, Zamara Cuyún, Boniat Ephrem, Meher Khan, and Whitney Terrill. Th prints in this exhibition draw inspiration from personal teaching philosophies and reflections on participating in TALC.

About TALC: TALC is a paid program for early-career Minnesota-based BIPOC artists interested in growing their teaching and studio practice in printmaking. Over 10 weeks, the cohort met weekly with Nancy Ariza, Highpoint’s Artist Education Programs Manager and Isabel Arevalo, Teen and Adult Programs Intern, for printmaking instruction and discussions on pedagogy and professional practice skills of being a teaching artist in order to develop their own printmaking workshops. Additional engagements included visiting Mia’s Print Study Room to expand their knowledge of contemporary printmakers, and meeting guest artist and educator, Melodee Strong who shared feedback on their teaching philosophy statements and professional advice. This spring the cohort members will be leading their workshops between February and May at Highpoint and offsite at partner organizations.

About the Artists:

Lynda Acosta is a visual artist from Colombia whose artistic work has inspired her to create various workshops to share her knowledge about linocuts and engage in conversations about environmental and social issues. She received the Creative Response Fund 2023 grant for EnVulvArte, a project to create art and a safe space for Latina women to reconnect with their bodies.

Constanza Carballo turns acrylic paintings, murals, linocuts into voice pieces that highlight the marginalized. Inspired by her own bicultural and bilingual upbringing as an immigrant in the south Minneapolis Philips community, Constanza began painting murals at the age of 13 and has since been recognized as a statement maker. She has brought fellow women artists together internationally and locally through community events that bring attention to the inequalities women face in all sectors of society including economic, political, workforce, healthcare, and education.

Zamara Cuyún is a self-taught Guatemalan-American artist and educator based in Minneapolis. As a painter, she grounds her work in Maya history, iconography, and worldview. As a teaching artist, she believes that making art can be a powerful tool for processing and expressing our identities, histories and memories through intergenerational storytelling and maintaining ancestral connection.

Boniat Ephrem is an Oromo-American artist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As she builds her artistic practice, Boniat centers the belief that art allows us to connect to the world, each other, our history, and ourselves in interesting ways. She seeks to investigate, experiment, and playfully create around those nuanced connections. 

Meher Khan is a multimedia artist with training in printmaking, graphic design, and communications. She is a 2024 candidate for the Minneapolis College of Art and Design’s Master of Fine Arts program, and works as a graduate teaching assistant with MCAD faculty. Her current studio practice centers around identity and her second generation American experience.

Whitney Terrill is a multidisciplinary Minnesota-based artist focusing primarily on printmaking, photography, and painting. In her work, she addresses topics important to her, such as environmental justice and African heritage. Whitney also enjoys engaging in public art, especially murals, to raise awareness about environmental justice and to facilitate community meals and engagement for placemaking and placekeeping.  

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

An installation of prints by MEgan Wetzel

Threshold Gallery

On view: January 4 - March 30, 2024

“Has anyone ever asked you to close your eyes and imagine a place that makes you happy? This is my happy place. A white wooden bench in a field of flowers. I hope it makes you, the viewer, happy too.” - Megan Wetzel

Megan’s absorbing printstallation is made up of large, colorful, screenprinted and collaged panels flanking a central black and white lithograph that represent the artists’ happy place. These works are simultaneously stylized/abstracted but also representational. The exhibition will be on view through March.

Threshold Gallery

On view: July 12 - October 5, 2022

This ambitious exhibition (26 individual prints!) showcases both Nancy’s photographic eye and intaglio printmaking aptitude. The subject matter includes familial still lifes, architectural and natural compositions she’s discovered during her travels , and one very picturesque (and familiar) local interior.

Threshold Gallery

On view: April 15 - July 2, 2022

This exhibition features a series of ten black and white prints made by Benjamin Merritt that frame a stark black abstract image within a large white border. With scratchy markmaking and texture, white text overlays the black abstraction, and bleeds out onto the border of the paper. The text on the prints, together, reads:
“pain emerges at the door/ of my tired patience/ overstay my welcome/ hide from pain/ & make jokes/ at its expense/ close my eyes &/ feel right at home/ count the thumps/ til the lock can’t hold”

Threshold Gallery

On view: January 5 - April 2, 2022

Threshold Gallery
On View: October 6, 2021 - January 3, 2022

This exhibition presents presents a suite of polymer photogravure prints made by Beth Dorsey that are based on photographs of venetian blinds and window frames. Features of the photographic images are isolated and used as abstract repetitive elements to create the work. These abstract prints have a graphic quality far removed from their origin.

Threshold Gallery
On View: July 6 - September 30

Nicole Soley utilizes contemporary and traditional printmaking processes to generate dynamic, multi-process prints. By creating cut out, printed, paper objects and inserting them into a printed background space, she synthesizes lived experience and research. Through layering many forms of printmaking and experimenting with paper colors, viewers interact directly with the artwork, interpreting both personal narrative as well as cultural critiques. Her most recent artwork, featured in this exhbition, emboldens the viewer to consider representations of consumption and change in generational values and ideals, while also exploring our impact on our communities and the land.

Nicole Soley is an artist residing in St. Paul, Minnesota. Soley has a Bachelors of Science in Art Education from Minnesota State University, Mankato and has been an Art Educator for four years. While teaching, she has also maintained an active cooperative membership at Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Her experiences in art making have illuminated printmaking as a space of empowerment. 

A series of progressive etchings by Jeremy Lundquist

On View: April 6 - July 1, 2021

Alarm Alarm is a series of progressive etchings that started with the exterior of a building not far from my home. The text on the side of the building says ‘Alarm Products’ in big bold blue letters. The first (and last) etching in this series is simply a remaking of that façade with Alarm stated twice. The repetition of the word alarm mimics an alarm itself. How many times will the alarm repeat before it is heard? How many times before it is heeded?

I continued the repetition of the alarm by seeking out other alarm and security companies across the country via Google Maps that had ‘Alarm’ in their name. In creating this series, my focus was not on the protection of property, as is the goal of these companies. Instead, while I surveyed these buildings and their signage, I was thinking of our collective perception of security.

Throughout this past year and before, there have been so many alarms and actions that are alarming. There are daily warnings in the form of the latest numbers of new COVID cases and deaths. The alarming repetition of injustice as minorities, especially black men, are killed by the very people sworn to protect. The alarm and horror of a mob storming the United States Capitol. These alarms are often not surprising and most have been sounded for years and years.

I hope the collected series of alarms encourages us all to consider what is being ignored while also questioning our relationship to security.

-Jeremy Lundquist

To read a review of Alarm Alarm written by Highpoint Editions artist Carolyn Swiszcz, click here.

An artist book installation by Cathy Ryan
On View: January - March, 2021

This book is about finding a place for reflection and renewal in an urban setting. It chronicles my thoughts and visual discoveries during a year of random visits to the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory in St Paul, a time spent sitting quietly in corners beneath soaring palms or walking slowly along a sheltered path in the Japanese garden.

-Cathy Ryan