Small City, BIG STUFFBy Ryan C. Christiansen

ou don’t have to get on a plane and fly to a big city to view or purchase good art. In fact, some of the very best can be seen in little old Moorhead, Minn. That’s because Moorhead is host to the annual Red River Watercolor Society National Watermedia Exhibition, which along with the annual Eighth Street Show, make for a bright, colorful summer, indeed.

The RRWS, which serves watermedia artists in the Red River Valley area of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota, is a nonprofit group of artists who express themselves through watercolor and acrylic paintings. The Society was founded in 1989 to promote interest and education in the art form and membership has grown to include over 180 artists.

The Society’s national event, its 19th annual, opens June 17 at the Hjemkomst Center gallery in Moorhead. The exhibition is co-sponsored by the Hjemkomst Historical & Cultural Society and is funded in part by a grant from the North Dakota Council on the Arts. On display will be paintings in watercolor, gouache, cassein, egg tempura, and acrylic, all on paper, by artists from across North America. The show is advertised in national art magazines and is promoted through art associations and societies throughout North America, said Janet Flom, exhibition director. The event attracts entries from hundreds of artists each year, she said.

“There is a lot of competition,” said Donna Kolden, past president for RRWS.

The national event is a juried exhibition, which means an individual judge determines which of the submitted works are to be shown. The judge also selects prizewinners. The exhibition is juried blind, Flom said, which means the judge isn’t told the names of the artists.

This year’s judge is Donna Zagotta from Brighton, Mich., a signature member of the American Watercolor Society, the National Watercolor Society, Watercolor West, and the Midwest Watercolor Society. Zagotta has been a professional artist for more than 20 years, is an experienced juror, and has been an instructor at the University of Michigan School of Art. Zagotta will oversee the awards show Wednesday, June 20, where Gold ($1,000), Silver ($750), Bronze ($500), Excellence ($250), and Merit ($100) awards, along with the Red River Regional Award ($500), will be given. The regional award is for an artist from North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, or Canada. The awards presentation will be at 7:00 p.m. during the opening reception, which runs from 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Flom said the exhibition will include “stunning examples of florals, landscapes, figures, and still life, as well as abstract, non-objective, and experimental pieces with expressive and innovative use of various water media.” Thirty-nine paintings “representing the very best in today’s water media” were selected from all over the country, she said.

“A nationally recognized judge says that these art pieces are representative of the art,” said Donna Chalimonczyk, publications director for RRWS.

The national show has been held at the Hjemkomst Center for several years now, Chalimonczyk said, and “the Hjemkomst bends over backwards for us,” she said.

Entries will be on display in the gallery through Sept. 16.

For Red River Watercolor Society members, the event is an opportunity to earn Signature Status within the society, which means being accepted into the show at least three times in 10 years.

“To achieve signature status is quite an achievement,” said Kolden. “When you see the initials after an artist’s name, it’s like the PhD of painting.”

Members with signature status are allowed to include the acronym RRWS after their names. There are 42 members with signature status within the RRWS, including members in Minnesota, North Dakota, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Missouri, California, Arizona, and South Dakota.

The event has more to offer than just the chance to win an award or to earn signature status, however. During the event Zagotta will teach a five-day watercolor workshop, as well, for enrolled participants.

The workshop is a key event because, according to Flom, the 19-year-old exhibition has its roots in the need to bring a workshop to Fargo-Moorhead.

“It sort of has to do with our mission statement for how this came about in the first place,” Flom said. “When we started, we had 13 charter members, and three of us were traveling to a workshop out of state, and we wondered, ‘How can we get top-quality watermedia art, instructors, and jurors to come to our area?’ It’s difficult for most people in this area to go to New York, California, or Chicago, and so we decided to put together this national exhibition.”

Flom said one of the reasons the national show is important is because “watermedia, in particular, occupies a parallel universe in the art world,” she said. “Historically, watercolor has been a little sister in the giant art world, and there are a lot of reasons for that. It used to be because it was delicate and had to be framed differently, or it was a sketch medium for genteel ladies, and great artists used it as a study medium, but that hasn’t been the case for over 100 years now. The materials today are just as permanent as other art materials.”

And while watermedia is making strides to carve out a niche in the art world, “it is also a hobby medium,” Flom said, “and so if people want to try painting, it’s approachable, and that’s not a bad thing. The more people who want to paint, the better.”

Based on the society’s research, the Minneapolis-St. Paul area have yet to host a national show to-date. “This is the only exhibition of its type in this part of the country, the next nearest shows of similar caliber being out of Chicago, Denver or Seattle,” Flom said. “Roughly 300 artists enter our show from all over the U.S. and Canada each year, and included among them are some of the top names in watercolor media today. This show is a big deal for this region. There is nothing else like it.”

Flom said the RRWS national show is a third-tier competition “with a good reputation for quality entries and credible jurors and instructors,” she said. “The volunteers that put on this show have done it before and they know what to do. They do it and they do it well and we’ve been commended for it. Folks down in The Cities have been trying to put a show like this together for quite a long time and they can’t believe how well we do it.”

It takes ten committees to put on the national show, Flom said, each responsible for different activities, including publicity, fundraising, the opening reception, awards, prizes, and more. Flom said the show receives donations from art suppliers as far away as Wisconsin, Vermont, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Japan.

“A number of local organizations and supporters provide food and beverages for the reception,” Flom said, “and also door prizes, or just plain cash. Because we’re a non-profit organization, some donors have given every year for 20 years.”

Planning for the national show begins “a year in advance at a minimum,” Flom said, due to advertising deadlines with national magazines, but also due to judge and instructor demand. Each fall, the exhibition publishes its prospectus, which is the official call for entries and what is sent out to people who wish to enter the show. As entries pour in, RRWS officials catalog them and put together a DVD, which the judge uses to make selections for the show. “We’ve gone digital,” Flom said, “because that’s how most shows are going.”

The National Show isn’t the only big event for RRWS this summer, however. On June 27-28 and from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. each day, the Society is also hosting its annual 8th Street Show, this year dubbed 8th Street Art at Davy Park due to the fact the event has been moved from its original location on the corner of 8th Street and 13th Avenue South in Fargo to Davy Memorial Riverfront Park at 210 8t Street North in Moorhead. The move became necessary when Shotwell Floral, the host for the show, shut down its business at the Fargo location last July. The corner will now be home to ten condominiums and a parking lot.

“We wanted to keep the identity with the 8th Street Show, and we just happened to find a venue on 8th Street in Moorhead,” said Cathi Koenig, committee head for the event. “The city has been very generous.”

The purpose of the 8th Street event is to provide RRWS artist members, especially new artist members, the opportunity to publicize their art and to conduct a public art exhibition. By displaying their work, artists develop visitor and customer relationships. For art enthusiasts, the event is an opportunity to reap a harvest of art.

“This is one of the Society’s main events and one of the highlights of the year,” Koenig said. “The artists are from the region in Minnesota and North Dakota, and we’re going to have an amazing variety, from metalwork to fine art, fabric art, and pottery. All of it will be high-quality and gorgeous, but very affordable.” All artists in the 8th Street Show are members of the RRWS, Koenig said. The event is scheduled to have 30 booths.

Koenig said the event will include demonstrations in the log cabin, including for calligraphy and Sumi-e, a form of East Asian brush painting, which involves using a brush, ink, ink stone, and paper.

“We’re super-excited about this year’s show,” Koenig said. “There will be a lot of high-quality pieces and it will be in a new location. It should be a lot of fun. A lot of preparation by a lot of people goes into this show. A lot of volunteer hours.”

“Shows make us do our work,” said Chalimonczyk. “If we didn’t have shows and displays, nobody would have to do better.”

And so what do Society members do after hosting both a national exhibition and the 8th Street Art Show all in one summer? “I think we just lie down and die,” Koenig quipped.

That’s not true, of course. Diane Johnson, newsletter editor for RRWS, noted the group also displays their work in the atrium at Essentia Health over the holidays. “It’s a unique display in that it’s all hanging watermedia,” she said.

The Society itself meets at 7:00 p.m. on the second Tuesday of the month during September through May at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Moorhead. Brown-bag painting events are held beforehand from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

But it doesn’t end there. Certain members of the RRWS meet year-round in the lower level of the Hjemkomst Center with a group that formed on Sept. 11, 2001—the September 11. Dubbed The Hjemkomst Artists, the group includes members from RRWS, but also the Fargo-Moorhead Visual Artists and the Cormorant Area Art Club. The group meets from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Thursdays “just to spend time painting together,” Chalimonczyk said. “There are no rules and no dues.” She said the group started with eight or nine artists meeting regularly, but the group has grown to as many as two-dozen. “In that time period, the community has come a long way in the visual arts,” she said.

Chalimonczyk said one of the reasons artists are drawn to the Hjemkomst group is that they can bring in their work to get help from others. “We bring in visual studies to get advice,” she said. “If we get stuck, we ask, ‘What am I going to do?’ We put our art on display for critique. In other places, people might be vicious in their critiques, but we’re constructive. We help each other out and we help people get started. We help each other find venues for displaying and selling our work.”

In addition, Chalimonczyk said, the Hjemkomst Artists help to keep a permanent display of artwork filled at the Hjemkmost Center.

And so it seems that little old Moorhead is not only a place where you can view or purchase good art, but it’s a place where you can make good art, too.