Artist-in-Residence, January-June 2010

Join Peggy for Chalk Art in the Creative Arts Center!
 
Themes
January - Color - Bring Color to the Kingdom of Winter
February - Line - Dancing on the Edge of Creativity
March - Space - Positively Here & Negatively There
April - Texture - Can You Feel It?
May - Form/Shape - Moving Art off the Wall
June - All Together Now!



About Peggy:
Peggy Reinecke graduated with a BFA from Creighton University, received her Masters of Art Therapy from Vermont College and did post-graduate work at the Boston Museum School. Returning to Omaha, Peggy continued to explore expressive arts. She became a founding member of “The Five Bright Chicks”, a professional storytelling group that developed and told original stories. Reinecke combines traditionally produced art with computer graphics to create hybrid artwork.  Some of these pieces exist in the real world, others only as digital images, animations, or printouts of digital files.  Peggy enjoys exploring the tenuous divisions between the real and the virtual, the artist and the illustrator, images and words, and storytelling in all its many guises.  She and her husband Dean Arkfeld have three children, a dog, one cat, and live under an oak tree.

Artist Statement:
Haunted by critical comments of “Are you an illustrator or an artist?” during my undergraduate training, I often edited my early work to conform to some abstract concept of an absolute Fine Art standard. Now I give myself permission to create what begs to exist, and in my collage work embrace the dual heritage of collage provided by Henri Matisse, artist, and Eric Carle, illustrator.  I find no distinction between the two labels in this day of continuous flow between words, images, personal art and public statements. 

In high school I was threatened with permanent color blindness.  My work focuses on the presence or absence of color because I notice and appreciate color every day of my life. My outdoor chalk paintings celebrate the constantly changing character of life.  Instead of trying to create works of art that will last for thousands of years, I embrace the “temporary” as an aesthetic priority with these works.  Changed and erased by weather, the images only remain as memories in the minds of viewers.

The purpose of my work is meditative and restorative.

My only goal is to share beauty and the process of art.

The museum’s unique Artist-In-Residence program is made possible by a matching grant from the Nebraska Arts Council. Every six months a new local artist joins the museum staff to teach children about their craft. Reinecke's workshops will be held in the Karen Levin Artist-In-Residence Studio in the museum’s Creative Arts Center.