BEMIDJI — Art is always personal, whether intentional or not. Artists Robb Quisling and Jonathan Thunder from Duluth are very open about how personal their latest exhibit “Loaded” is.
Quisling is a printmaker and installation artist and works as an art teacher at Hermantown High School. Thunder is a visual artist and an enrolled member of the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe. Both artists' work centers on human connection and personal experiences.
Thunder and Quisling first connected at recovery meetings, where they discussed a shared experience with alcohol addiction. Their connection and conversation even took place on the racquetball court.
"After a little while, we thought, well, we could make artwork about the things that we talk about. It finds its way into our work anyway," Quisling said on Area Voices on the KAXE Morning Show. "So, then we ended up starting to make a body of work about alcohol and recovery.”
Thunder said the idea was to represent their time not only in recovery and sobriety, but also their connection and friendship as artists. Neither wanted the art to be a public service announcement about the dangers of alcohol. Thunder and Quisling wanted to create art that mimicked their authentic and personal conversations.
One of Thunder’s pieces features birch bark containers with protruding straws.
“I thought it felt very cultural, Minnesotan and Anishinaabe, which is my heritage... I wanted to create an image where it looks like whatever you think is in there, is in there," Thunder said. "That's been a big part of my journey in recovery: to put things in there that I want in there, and take things out that I don't want in there.”
An early form of the exhibit goes back to before the COVID-19 pandemic. They were working on an exhibit about alcohol and Quisling said, “We made work actually and it helped to get us moving along.” Then COVID hit.
Thunder said, “When that exhibit opened, nobody could come into the space. It was at the Wisconsin Superiors Fine Arts building and it was closed to the public. It was a grand opening with 0 attendees.”
Later, they met a friend at a shop who said they had missed the show. “And I said ‘Well, everybody missed that show because nobody could go,'” Thunder said. The friend was interested and wanted to see it if they put the show on again.
Thunder said he looked at Quisling and asked if they should collaborate again, and they decided to go for it. They created a new body of work and even booked the same gallery to showcase the exhibit.
When asked if it was difficult to approach the topic of recovery, Quisling said, “I think that there's a lot of recovery concept in my work anyway, and so to have a better direction helped actually.”
Authenticity in art
One topic that the artists found themselves revisiting was time.
“Addicts have a particular view about time, like who does it belong to? What kind of regrets do you have over lost time? And so those can be really dense," Thunder said. "We pass it back and forth in a way that reinforces the idea that makes it easier.”
“It was funny. At one point we realized in our drinking days, we would kind of obsess about like, 'When are we gonna get to the bar next door?'" Thunder said. "But in this case, it was obsessing about when are we going to get to the studio to make work about alcoholism or the absence of it.”
Thunder finds creating art to be intuitive. He thinks of himself as an ingredient cabinet.
“There's no wrong answer, because it came from me while I was thinking about the content or the topic.”
Thunder also said it can be hard to put so much of himself into an art exhibit for others. Before the first show, they talked about being transparent and upfront about alcoholism and recovery.
“That's something that a lot of people in society don't ever talk about even with their family... because of the stigma, people want to avoid a look of needing to be handled," Thunder said. "So, we had to figure out what that looked like for us.”
For them, making art is always about something. It’s up to the viewers how far they want to go down the rabbit hole. If they have questions, Thunder and Quisling have been open to conversation.
Thunder said he got an email thanking them for a show about addiction. They wrote about how they had been in recovery for 30 years and still remembered the feeling of the first day.
“I think that was sort of what we had hoped, the kind of meaning could come from an exhibit like this, outside of coming forward with our experience," Thunder said. "It seems like a lot of people struggle with anxiety and uncertainty and if they're looking for some sort of experience or strength maybe they'll find some in our show.”
“Loaded” will be at the Watermark Art Center through March 28.
Tell us about upcoming arts events where you live in Northern Minnesota by emailing psa@kaxe.org.
Area Voices is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.
