Gallery • 28 Photos

Iya Abdulkarim

“When I learned I was going to have a show with Patty Paulus, I knew that her works were landscape oriented, and that’s when I decided that I would show the lake superior pictures,” Upper School Fine Arts teacher Lina Brooks said. “That is also when I thought that I would combine them with the food pictures.”

The sounds of Lake Superior’s waves crash against the white walls of the Harry M. Drake Gallery which are lined with artwork in the form of photography and large paintings. These are the works of Upper School Fine Arts Teacher Linda Brooks and Lower School Art Teacher Patty Paulus’s current show, New Work.

“When I learned I was going to have a show with Patty Paulus, I knew that her works were landscape oriented, and that’s when I decided that I would show the lake superior pictures,” Brooks said. “That is also when I thought that I would combine them with the food pictures.”

“I have been taking pictures of lake superior for about 20 years. I go up there every summer for a week or so,” Brooks said. She also said that the photos on exhibition are specifically from the previous summer as she used a newer camera that enables her to prints of larger sizes. 

“I am enthralled with the way that the sky and the water changes, and how it is something you could just look at forever and become captivated by it, and that’s what drew me to taking pictures of it,” Brooks said. “It also makes me think about so many people who don’t have access to a landscape like this [which] they can dwell and have the leisure to enjoy and the wonders of our world and of nature.”

“Separately, I have been taking pictures of food for many, many years also because of the way that food can be appealing visually as well as taste good and it is a way to share and be in a community with other people. The food comes from the earth, so it is also representative of the third element of sky, water and earth,” she added. 

Brooks pointed out that some photos include papers from various food organizations, and part of her decision to include food in the exhibition was to express her gratitude. One of these is a group photo of the Class of 2018 after packaging over 15,000 pounds of food at Second Harvest Heartland during the Sophomore Retreat.

“The way I am so privileged to have this really great food at school, at home, when I go out with friends and family… I feel so lucky that I can eat and have access to healthy food,” she said. 

Although Brooks does not have a single favorite piece, she has plenty of details about every food photo, including from who the meal was with and where.

In the other part of the gallery, Paulus’s collection, From Within, includes paintings ranging from the dimensions of a book to that of a mat.

“I felt over the years that my work, over the years, has gotten smaller, [and] people wanting something smaller if they wanted to buy it they could find a place to put it. I thought since I’m retiring this year (this is my sixteenth year at SPA) that I wanted to do some really big paintings,” Paulus said. 

“An artist friend of mine told me… that there was a watercolor artist who passed away and he had donated this really large watercolor paper—300 pound watercolor paper and they were selling it for a very low price over at Art Scraps,” she said, “I went over and got a whole packet of 12 and I thought to myself ‘well, if I have a show coming up, this is what I want to do. I want to work on these large pieces’.”

“I started these large paintings, and I have a studio over in St. Paul, the Dow Building, [so] I found an area on my wall where I could nail them into the wall,” Paulus said. “I worked on them vertically, on the wall, rather than on the floor. I have this abstract landscape feeling to my work.”

Paulus said that the bird-shaped figure on her piece Ascending to the Light was inspired by the shadow of a plant which was cast upon her large watercolor paper. As time passed, the shadow crept across her work, and she decided to use the Joss paper to represent that. 

A similar theme throughout many of Paulus’s pieces are ascending subjects created by Joss paper, some of which are burned on the edges.

“When I started to plan for this show, From Within, I was intrigued with the idea of using Joss paper in every one of my paintings. Over 20 years ago, I was given several packages of this hand-made paper by a family member,” she said. 

“The handmade quality and imperfections were very appealing to me because they each seemed to be an artistic expression,” Paulus said. 

“Since these papers are traditionally used in various Asian religious practices by burning them to ensure that the spirit of the deceased has lots of good things in the afterlife, I burned a few and experimented with including these burned papers in a variety of ways in some of my paintings,” she said. 

“It was always something I added to the painting after I had finished painting with acrylics. At times it became a center of interest, a finishing touch or a vehicle to convey a spiritual expression or personal meaning to the painting,” Paulus added. 

The exhibition will be open through April 29th.