Nature as Muse flourishes at the Red Cloud Opera House

Eclectic and beautiful, the new exhibit at the Red Cloud Opera House Gallery is one-of-a-kind. Jack Sandeen, Amy Sandeen, and Mary Linnea Vaughan have collaborated to create the art exhibit Nature as Muse.

Vaughan describes the exhibition best in her statement, “It is always a tricky thing showing with other people. Aesthetics and opinions can vary. An artist spends hours in solitude doing their own thing, feeding personal impulses, making private choices, only to be a little startled by the thought of compromising a certain style, much less sharing a wall that wants to be arranged with exacting clarity. In the case of the Sandeens, however, tricky goes south, and fluidity reigns. Whimsy and a sense of humor enter in as well. Who doesn’t like to smile while in the mix or sense familiarity in conversation and in this case, within images.”

The Opera House Gallery hosts over 70 works by the three artists, intermixed, side-by-side. Despite being a ton of art, the pieces line-up content somehow, as if talking to one another like friends who haven’t seen one another in a long while. The long lines of art seem to enliven the large room. If art could talk, the pieces seem to be chatting joyfully with one another in this show, if not gossiping about the quirky state of the world and of their own existence. Vintage attachments on certain pieces, natural wood parts, polished doorknobs, reminiscent of the old world and photographs of contemporary, colorful stones, somehow ring true to the jeweled tone of literary characters like Marian Forrester or Lena Lingard or even Myra Henshawe, trying to rattle nostalgia home.

This exhibit will be on display from now until May 23, 2016. The public is cordially invited to attend an artists’ reception for the trio on April 16 from 4:30 to 6:30 pm. Immediately following the reception will be an acoustic rock & roll concert performed by Omaha music sensation, Matt Whipkey. For more information please call the Red Cloud Opera House at 402-746-2641 or visit www.WillaCather.org. Programming at the Willa Cather Foundation’s Red Cloud Opera House is made possible with support of the Nebraska Arts Council, the Nebraska Cultural Endowment, and the National Endowment for the Arts.