Photographs by Michael Farrell and poems by Twyla M. Hansen

For about three years beginning in 2019 I made frequent trips to Otoe County, Nebraska looking for photographs using two large format cameras, a 5”x7” and an 8” x 10”. One nice thing about this county is that it has a lot of minimum maintenance dirt roads. I drove all of them, some many times. Later I asked my friend Twyla Hansen, our former state poet who has roots in rural Nebraska, to look at the pictures and respond with a few poems. She responded beyond my dreams with over 30 heartfelt poems. While these photographs and poems were inspired by rural Otoe County they could have been made in many of our nation’s rural areas. The issues and scenes we find here in the heart of the heartland are also found throughout.

Michael Farrell

A limited edition book with 30 poems and 60 photographs will be available at the gallery for purchase. Unframed prints and poem pairs will also be available for purchase.
Show dates March 2 through April 1, Th -Sat, noon to five or by appointment.

Plus new portrait sessions information…

Do you desire to be awake? Truly awake–tasting and seeing like you never have before?

The exhibition, “Awake, My Soul” is a series of photographs captured by Lexi Fields, Megan Wilberger and Emily Frenzen. “When brainstorming what we wanted this exhibit to be about, we came across a common thread that hit a strong chord in all of our hearts–being truly awake. The awakened sense comes with walking with Jesus through grief, joy, love, pain, wonder, surrender, and truth…”

This collection is full of diverse photos from the walks of these 3 individuals, each accompanied by stories and words expressed from their hearts. The exhibit is inspired by Ephesians 5:14, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

Wayfaring Strangers style portrait sessions in February

Michael Farrell is going to be scheduling new Wayfaring Strangers style portrait sessions through February. These will be at the home studio. Get in touch via email at mfarrell.1st@gmail.com for more information, pricing and to schedule a session. Singles, couples & small groups welcome.

“Keeping Time,” Michael Farrell’s new collection of boxes is on display in January 5-28 at WallSpace-LNK, 1624 S. 17, Lincoln. A First Friday opening reception runs from 5-8 p.m., Friday, January 6. These three dimensional still life assemblages offer meditations on the concept of impermanence, tinged with nostalgia, eroticism or wit. The collection was created over the last several weeks since Farrell’s seventy-fifth birthday.

“Sometimes life events cause one to reconsider everything. The counters reset to zero and you start over again. Many of these boxes had been sitting in an unfinished state in my studio, sometimes over decades, waiting to be paid attention to. Others just sprung to life fresh once I started working this way again,” the artist stated.

With titles like Nymph, Satyr, Herm, Kouros and Jeune Fille these objects remind us of the bittersweet fragility of life, the fruitlessness of ego, and the comedy of the human condition.  This tradition in western art dates back to the foundations of our European culture. But perhaps it is more appreciated in the Japanese idea of “wabi sabi,” the beauty found in the worn out, decayed or broken.

Michael Farrell has been making assembled objects for over five decades. His exhibition spanning his box making career, “Inside the Box”drew large attendance and sales last year at WallSpace-LNK. Noted art critic L. Kent Wolgamott observed Farrell’s “subtly stunning” work “continually reveals new ideas and emotions. That’s a primary function of art.”

“Feels Like Home,” color landscape images by noted Nebraska photographer Jan Christensen, was on exhibit December 1-30 at WallSpace-LNK, 1624 S. 17^th Street, Lincoln.

As a child Jan and her family explored Nebraska’s fields and streams every weekend, rain or shine. Learning how to “see” at a young age set Jan on a creative path that resulted in her being one of the first women to earn Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in the photographic program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a Graduate Diploma in Art Administration from Harvard University School of Business.

Her panoramic photos of Nebraska, the Adirondacks, Maine, & the East Coast were continuously displayed at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography in Rochester, N.Y. for more than seven years. Her writing and marketing efforts for corporate clients helped support her artistic work. Still, she has returned again and again to the Nebraska sandhills, because, as she says, “they feel like home.”

new and recent work from Michael James

“At the height of the pandemic, our personal worlds closed in on themselves in a host of ways. I’d retired from my “day job” only a handful of months earlier, and that retreat, combined with the larger social one forced on us by Covid-19, led me to focus on what was closest at hand. In my basement studio I felt doubly isolated. From its high windows I can catch narrow glimpses of a neighbor’s house, of a bit of sky backlighting the pergola that sits on our outdoor terrace a level up from where one of my worktables is positioned. I hear almost nothing from the outside, though, and feel cocooned and remote and protected…”

Michael James

Past Forward is a collection of twenty-five new and recent works and will be on view in November until the 26th, Thursdays through Saturdays, noon to five pm.

Opening receptions Thursday and Friday, the 3rd and 4th, beginning at 5 pm.