UIU to host artist talk December 13

Upper Iowa University will host an artist talk and closing reception Friday, December 13, with Charles City, Iowa, native Russ Nordman. The artist’s “Iowa Combines” exhibit is currently featured at Bing-Davis Memorial Gallery at UIU’s Fayette Campus through December 13.

Nordman received his MFA from the University of Iowa in 1991. After graduate school, he served as an artist-in-residence at the Recology Artist Residency Program at the Sanitary Fill Company in San Francisco. From 1994 to 1996, Nordman became a project manager for artist Bill Viola.

He later returned to Iowa to study Film and Video Production at the University of Iowa. While in Iowa, he partnered with Hans Breder to form a digital-based performance group called “Liminoid Laboratory.” This group performed in a number of places, including Experimental Intermedia in New York and St. Petri Kirche in Dortmund, Germany.

Since 2002, Nordman has been a professor of media arts at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. In his work he transforms observations of the ordinary and the everyday into contemplative and imaginary commentary on the human experience. His work has been exhibited across the country, including the California Museum of Photography, Des Moines Art Center and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.

The “Iowa Combines” exhibit examines machines, architecture, technological devices, and their complex metaphysical relationship with humans.

Nordman will lead the December 13 artist talk at noon, followed by the gallery closing reception. The 2019-20 Bing-Davis Memorial Gallery schedule resumes Monday, January 13, with the featured works of artist Jody Boyer. Bing-Davis Memorial Gallery is located in UIU’s Edgar Fine Arts Hall. The gallery is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.