The Ruddell Gallery at Black Hills State University is committed to fostering educational experiences through exhibitions and innovation, by engaging audiences and artists in the exploration of contemporary art relevant to the community, state and region. The Gallery organizes exhibitions and educational programs to offer enjoyment and encourage inquiry, while focusing on building an understanding of art and its role in society through direct engagement with original works of art.
Location
The Ruddell Gallery is located on the third floor of the David B. Miller Yellow Jacket Student Union on the BHSU campus. The gallery is open during regular Student Union hours.
Obscura Materia: Dark Matter and the World Beneath
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Reception , 5:00-7:00PM
Southwest Print Fiesta | Print Works
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Reception , 5:00-7:00PM
Ryan Stander | Hints, Allegations, and Things Left Unsaid
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Reception , 5:00-7:00PM
Annual Student Juried Exhibition
– Summer 2024
Reception , 5:00-7:00PM
RUDDELL SCHEDULE FALL 2022 - SPRING 2023
Allen Morris | Line Work
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Reception, Thursday , 5:30-7 PM
Gary Sczerbaniewicz | The Great Deep
Surf AiR Artist in Residence
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Reception, Friday 5:30-7PM
Artist Talk, 5-5:30PM
Connect Collect | Print Works
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James Zamora | Daily Explorations
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Reception, Thursday , 5:30-7 PM
Annual Student Juried Exhibition
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Reception , 5:00-7 PM
RUDDELL SCHEDULE FALL 2021 - SPRING 2022
J. Jason Lazarus | Resilient: Defining Alaskans through its Landscape
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Paul Breuer | Covid Quilts
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Reception, Tuesday, , 5-6:30PM
Rachel Stiff
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Reception, Thursday, , 5-6:30PM
Bridget Beck
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Reception, Thursday, , 5-6:30PM
Annual Student Juried Exhibition
– Summer 2022
Reception, Thursday, , 5-6:30PM
RUDDELL SCHEDULE FALL 2020 - SPRING 2021
The New NOW:Making Photographs in the Pandemic Age
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How has our newly turbulent world effected artists’ work? Has it forced new projects to start or are individuals able to continue with old ones? Are photographers addressing the pressing issues of the time directly, tangentially or not at all? How does this effect the act of showing work and photographers relationship to the art market and the concepts you are dealing with? What will galleries and shows look like moving forward and how will we interact with them?
Artists were invited to submit photographic works for a multi part exhibition bridging the physical and the virtual, chronicling our collective experience as photographers in this new world of 2020, from the Corona Virus to the Black Lives Matter movement. This exhibition highlights photographers living and working in the greater NW Region [Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, North Dakota and South Dakota] focusing on images made since this country began its lock-down on . Special thanks to Assistant Professor Skott Chandler from the Photography Department for his help in making this exhibition possible.
Artist/Educator Alex Emmons with over 60 artists created a print exchange project dedicated to her mother’s life called For Rosalie: Eggcups and More. This is a celebratory portfolio of art prints created by 60+ artists in remembrance of her mother, Rosalie Emmons.
This collection of prints was created by 68 different artists touch on suggested themes connected to Rosalie’s life from Nature, Landscape, Birds, Human & Animal Migration, Farming & Sustainability, Craft & Feminist Traditions, Material culture (the way objects contain stories), and Loss & Remembering.
Rosalie was born in Panama and resided in a number of places thereafter from Salt Lake City, Utah to Aberdeen, Maryland. She resided the longest in a small village in upstate New York, called Middleburgh, and then until her passing in Tucson, Arizona. She was an avid bird watcher and enjoyed the great outdoors, which she explored via car camping trips throughout her life.
Rosalie had two children, Alex and Amze, she was their first art teacher and definitely the source for both of them becoming artists as adults. Rosalie also was a fiber artist, she knitted, crocheted, embroidered, made 80% of her own clothing, as well as quilted. She had a very large egg cup collection that she found in flea markets, which was the reason for adding that to print exchange title. Rosalie had two, green thumbs and made so many things come to life with little effort. In Tucson, her backyard oasis was defined largely by a goldfish pond surrounded by native plants and in upstate New York she had 2 acre a seasonal garden. All of these factors were influences for the themes that all the participating artists incorporated for creating their prints for this celebratory project.
Matthew Whitehead
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Matthew Whitehead makes paintings, drawings, photographs, and collages based on the subtleties of personal life experience. He often reacts to a specific gallery/studio space, presenting his works alongside found/reclaimed imagery and objects. This format offers no hierarchy between the created work of art and the found object.
Matthew feels that art making is essential to existence and hopes to spend his life facilitating its practice. His dedication motivated him to earn a Bachelors of Art from Flagler College and ultimately a Masters of Fine Art in Painting and Drawing from the University of Florida. He has taught Painting, Drawing, Illustration, Sculpture, and Foundational Arts to students of all ages and is currently teaching a variety of courses at South Dakota School of Mines & Technology.
Paul LaJeunesse received his MFA in painting from Bowling Green State University in 2006, the Elizabeth Greenshields grant in 2006, and a Fulbright grant in 2007 to create a body of paintings in Reykjavik and Siglufjördur, Iceland. Paul has previously taught at Western Oregon University in Monmouth, Oregon and Georgia State University in Atlanta. He has exhibited nationally as well as internationally in Japan and Iceland. Paul has three public murals in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Duluth, Minnesota; and Virginia, Minnesota, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota.
Paul’s current paintings allude to observable orders of both societal structures and the phenomenal world, rendered congruently with reference to the inner psyche and collective unconscious.The paintings do not attempt to depict a scene, but rather to harken to an experience in which there is a transcendence of self, to bring one closer to understanding our relationship to the world. The way marks describe space, light and structure is an allegory for the balance between unity and perceived dichotomies. It is this balance between the singular and the whole that can lead to questions of the nature of perception and reality, objectivity versus subjectivity, and the physical and metaphysical.
Annual Student Juried Exhibition
– Summer 2021
Once again, this popular juried exhibition introduces the Black Hills State University campus and Spearfish audiences to the work of Fine Arts undergraduates. The professionally juried show features pieces from a wide variety of mediums including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, design, and photography. Showcasing student works in such a scale has been a tradition on campus. It is what makes the Annual Student Exhibition an unparalleled, seminal experience for students and the campus community. For many, the show not only marks their professional debut, it also catapults them into artistic careers.
Quintin Owens | Digital Clay: Exploring Terrain Data and Topography
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Reception, Thursday, , 5-7PM
Rachel Stiff | High Gradient
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Reception, Thursday, , 5-7PM
Annual Student Juried Exhibition
– Summer
Reception, Thursday, , 5-7PM
EXHIBITIONS FALL 2018 – SPRING 2019
Altman Studeny & Skott Chandler | Road Work
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The myth of the American frontier has long engaged artists. This exhibition illustrates the complexity of South Dakota, the Black Hills Region and its highway system, suggesting that we may presently see a new kind of visual culture, road-inspired, and conditioned. Road Work highlights two current projects of Black Hills State University Fine Arts Faculty, featuring the photographic works of Professor Skott Chandler and the site-specific project of Professor Altman Studeny.
South Dakota Art Educators Exhibition | Breaking Ground: A Remix of the Local
- , Reception, , 12-2PM
This exhibition offers a diverse blend of media and methodology, featuring the work of art educators and artists from across the region. These individuals represent a group of cultural advocates that are making an impact through their artistic and educational accomplishments. Join the BHSU Fine Arts Faculty in welcoming these individuals as the travel to campus to participate in the 2018 South Dakota Art Educators Conference.
Margie Beth Labadie and Tonya Elk Locklear | Women of the Red Earth
– , Reception, Tuesday , 5-7PM
*Talking circle 1 hour before [4PM], Club Buzz
With a view through the Indigenous lens, these visually striking, illustrated literary works are meant to knock down the stereotypical walls that continue to be the European perception of Native Americans. Margie Beth Labadie’s artwork incorporates many of Tonya Elk Locklear’s Native American objects in ways that entice viewers to come closer to read stories written in poetry and prose.
Charles H. Trapp Jr. |Anomia, a Retrospective
- , Reception, Thursday, , 5-7PM
The work of late Charles H. Trapp Jr is highlighted in this retrospective exhibition. Charles Trapp was educated at the University of Texas and the Rhode Island School of Design. His work was represented by Aeriel Gallery in the Soho District of Manhattan, NY. This former Rapid City resident left behind a body of work which illustrate his profound sense of spacial relationships, contrasting surface texture and appropriated images that imbue these paintings with a socially electric charge.
This exhibition will feature a variety of photographs selected from the Black Hills State University Photo programs extensive permanent collection. These selections exemplify current and past students work, while representing a continually evolving student body moving with the ever-changing world of digital photography and practices within the photographic medium.
The Shatner Show | A Group Exhibition
- , Reception, Thursday, , 5-7PM
This exhibition features works from artists; Michael Baum, Skott Chandler, Seth Harwood, Kathryn Jones, Quintin Owens, Jerry Rawlings, Desy Schoenewies and Altman Studeny. Each artist has created original works responding to Williams Shatner as a cultural icon, focusing on a variety of the actor’s fictional characters and performances from his Hollywood career. The artists have chosen to remain anonymous, embracing the role of the actor much like Shatner himself, whom ultimately became his characters losing the true sense of self. Emotion and imagination. Among the concepts and techniques of method acting are substitutions, “as if”, sense memory and affective memory. Regardless of Shatner’s acting he has carved himself a lucrative niche in Hollywood that has inspired and provoked these artists to respond visually and conceptually to his monumental presence.
Annual Student Juried Exhibition
– Summer
Once again, this popular juried exhibition introduces the Black Hills State University campus and Spearfish audiences to the work of Fine Arts undergraduates. The professionally juried show features pieces from a wide variety of mediums including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, design, and photography. Showcasing student works in such a scale has been a tradition on campus. It is what makes the Annual Student Exhibition an unparalleled, seminal experience for students and the campus community. For many, the show not only marks their professional debut, it also catapults them into artistic careers.
EXHIBITIONS & EVENTS FALL 2017 – SPRING 2018
Faculty Focus: Gina Gibson | REMAINS
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Remains is an exhibition based on found and received materials. Gibson's recent works includes assemblages of bones, stones and other items gathered out of curiosity and admiration. Although the shapes, textures and visual aspects are engaging, these items have meaning beyond their aesthetic qualities. These seeminglyrandom objects come together in an inexplicable harmony, creating a coherent composite image, while usually being quite meaningless individually. Join the Fine Arts Department on for a reception, highlighting this pivotal work by one of its tenured faculty members.
Deborah Mitchell | Drawings, Among Other Things
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Drawings, Among Other Things, highlights the print based monotypes and mixed media drawings of artist Deborah Mitchell. Mitchell's work investigates the intersection of color, abstraction and drawing, moving beyond a straightforward depiction of reality. Deborah is Associate Professor at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology while also serving as Director of the Apex Gallery.
Idaho based artist Megan Atwood Cherry, is a painter and a sculptor whose material choices are driven not by loyalty to a single medium, but rather by her need to give tangible form to conceptual content. In her portfolio, oil paintings rub shoulders with wood sculpture, fiber art, drawings, and installations. With a home base in Sandpoint, Idaho, Megan's working life is a balance of studio practice, teaching, and public service. She is an art instructor at North Idaho College and Emerge of Coeur d' Alene. Her work is exhibited both nationally and throughout the Inland Northwest region.
Bob H. Miller has always had an intense interest in science and technology and their application in image making. Miller strives to incorporate the theories and tools of science into his studio practice. The Sum of All Color exhibition highlights Miller's abstract explorations with 3M Reflective Scotchlite vinyl, bring your flashlight for a a unique viewing experience. Most recently Miller’s GlowPopART and Reflecto works have been included in solo exhibitions at both the Dahl and the Washington Pavillon in Sioux Falls, SD.
Annual Photo Exhibition | The Philippines, Through the Lens of Service Learning
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The International Service Learning Program provides experiential education opportunities for students to address human and community needs. This innovative BHSU program presents a unique opportunity for students to experience structured international opportunities intentionally designed to promote student learning and development. This exhibition features some of the amazing photographs of BHSU students and Photography Professor Jerry Rawlings documenting their recent service trip to the Philippines.
Wingtip Press | Leftovers VII Print Exchange
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This exhibition highlights the printmaking efforts of artist from across the country and around the world. After cleaning out the flat files and finding dozens of little scraps of printmaking papers jamming up the file drawers, the folks at Wingtip Press in Boise, Idaho realized they probably weren’t alone with the dilemma of what to do with all those too-precious-to-toss leftover paper scraps.
Annual Student Juried Exhibition
– Summer
Every spring this popular juried exhibition introduces the BHSU campus and Spearfish audiences to the work of art undergraduates. The professionally juried show features pieces from a wide variety of mediums including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, design, and photography. Showcasing student works in such a scale has been a tradition on campus. It is what makes the Annual Student Exhibition an unparalleled, seminal experience for students and the campus community. For many, the show not only marks their professional debut, it also catapults them into artistic careers. Awards are granted to exceptional works for best in show, and respectively for second and third place.
Note: All receptions are held from 5-7pm, with an artist talk beginning at 6pm.
EXHIBITIONS & EVENTS FALL 2016 – SPRING 2017
FACULTY FOCUS EXHIBITION
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Steve Babbitt, Michael Baum, Gina Gibson, Dustin Hinson, Erica Merchant, Ann Porter, Jerry Rawlings, J. Desy Schoenewies, Rachel Stiff
The Faculty Focus Exhibition offers a diverse blend of media and methodology, featuring the work of both senior and new faculty members. These individuals represent a group of cultural advocates that are making an impact internationally through their artistic and educational accomplishments.
CONTEMPORARY PRINTS: 9 IN HAND PRESS
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Printmaking is frequently a collaborative activity, studios and print shops have played a fundamental role in the development of artists' ideas around print. Contemporary printmakers are a group of enthusiastic and committed individuals who mobilized the entire community around a common interest. The often shared production of printmaking exchanges attracts numerous artists working as collectives, well suited to their ambitions to create a sense of community through collaboration. This exhibition features a collection of prints from a variety of exchanges produced by 9 In Hand Press.
9 IN HAND PRESS is a pre-press graphic design studio concentrating on unique, hand-built graphics, typography and illustration. Dave DiMarchi the founder and operator of 9 In Hand Press is a multi-disciplinary printmaker and artist working in letterpress, papermaking, silkscreen and sculptural forms. DiMarchi received his BFA in Printmaking and Books from the University of Delaware and has continued to teach and study across the New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania area. He maintains a small collaborative studio and art space in Eastern Pennsylvania working closely with artists to master art-making techniques and instruction.
In addition to showing in the Ruddell Gallery at Black Hills State University, the 2016 International Inaugural Print Exchange has been exhibited at the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign and The Print Center of New Jersey, Branchburg, NJ.The Ruddell Gallery would like to express a gracious "Thank You" to 9INHANDPRESS, and those who have lent their support of these exchanges and this exhibition. The Ruddell Gallery and 9INHANDPRESS is focusing efforts to building an annual tradition of this exchange, continuing to connect printmakers from around the world, exploring all the possibilities of printed matter.
DONALD F. MONTILEAUX | STUDENT TO MASTER
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"I have made a choice to share, give and show my culture to the world." – Montileaux
Donald F. Montileaux (Yellowbird) is a modern-day storyteller, rekindling the images of the Lakota lifestyle by painting the people as they were. Montileaux regards himself as having a mission: "To portray the Lakota, the Native Americans, in an honest way. To illustrate them as people who hunted buffalo, made love, raised children, cooked meals, and lived.
To describe Montileaux’s work is to reflect back to his forefathers. The surfaces that they used to make images were hides, rock walls and surfaces both smooth and rough, hides both tanned and rawhide. Montileaux uses modern materials, ledger and watercolor papers as well as canvas and animal hides to create his artwork. While utilizing different types of materials to produce and present the finished product to the viewer, Montileaux achieves slightly the same appearance as his forefathers did to create their work.
A world-renowned artist and illustrator, Montileaux is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe. He has received various awards, including induction into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 2014. Along with attending major art exhibitions throughout his artistic career, Montileaux’s art has illustrated the covers of numerous books. His artworks are included in numerous corporate, public and private collections, and he has been featured in galleries across the nation, including: New Mexico, Minnesota, Arizona, Colorado, and South Dakota.
GARRIC SIMONSEN | THEY LOST, THEY FOUND
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Artist Garric Simonsen works with alternative materials and inter-disciplinary ideas, including painting, digital print and objects, the evolution of what could be classified as his anti-painter persona. Much of Simonsen’s early work is rooted in abstraction, often filled with graffiti or scribbling, sometimes punctuated with collaged objects and/or drawings. This exhibition draws from Simonsen’s family linage, pulling away from abstraction and focusing on the artifact, the timeless quality of both object and image.
Simonsen is a fourth-generation Washingtonian, artist and musician. His artwork and projects have shown at Bellevue Arts Museum, Jundt Art Museum, Boston Center for the Arts, Platform Gallery (Seattle, WA), Disjecta (Portland, OR), Seattle University, the 2010 Brucennial (NY, NY), University of Wisconsin Madison, Wheaton University (Norton, MA) and Bradley University (Peoria, IL). Reviews and publications of Simonsen’s work are included in; The Stranger, Seattle Weekly and Art Collector Magazine. Simonsen has also guest written for Hyperallergic art blog in Brooklyn, NY.
In addition, Simonsen’s projects have been funded and awarded grants from the Vermont Studio Center, Artist Trust (Seattle, WA) and The James and Janie Washington Foundation (Seattle, WA). Other achievements include 2012 and 2014 nominations for Portland Art Museum’s Contemporary Northwest Art Awards, MFA Scholarship Award (WSU), Art Music Grant (WSU), JUNO Award (TESC), Mark Blakely Award (TESC). Simonsen is currently a tenure track faculty member at Spokane Falls Community College, and holds an MFA from Washington State University and BA from Evergreen State College (Olympia, WA).
ANNUAL PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION | WILLIAM COLLINS PHOTOGRAPHY
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William J. Collins (1867-1938) established a photography studio in Rapid City, located then in the South Dakota Territory in 1886. By the time he retired nearly 50 years later, he had taken hundreds, perhaps thousands of photographs of the growing town, surrounding ranches and farmers as well as miners, lumber workers and the Ogallala Sioux. The photographs in this exhibition were printed from Collins’s approximately 1500 original glass plate negatives.
After Collins died the glass plate negatives passed to his daughter, Buella Collins Crockett. The collection changed many times over the years and finally became part of the collection at the Arvada Center in Arvada Colorado. Recently, the collection was given to Black Hills State University.
The images from this collection are not only exquisite examples of the style of photography being practiced well over 100 years ago but are also an extremely interesting record of our local history.
MFA: NOW | ‘CURRENT COLLAPSE’
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All current MFA graduate candidates. MFA: Now ‘current collapse’ is a juried exhibition with the aim of promoting dialogue while highlighting the current art making practices of MFA candidates from across the country. This exhibition is intended to be a reference revealing connections to current graduate students, and the programs they work within, marking a meaningful step further into the art world. The exhibition is intended to celebrate MFA candidates’ exceptional curiosity, creativity, and inventiveness, focused in an area of concentration and contemplation, further situating their work within the larger discourse which characterizes the practice of art today.
ANNUAL STUDENT EXHIBITION
– Summer
Every spring this popular juried exhibition introduces the BHSU campus and Spearfish audiences to the work of art undergraduates. The professionally juried show features pieces from a wide variety of mediums including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, design, and photography. Showcasing student works in such a scale has been a tradition on campus. It is what makes the Annual Student Exhibition an unparalleled, seminal experience for students and the campus community. For many, the show not only marks their professional debut, it also catapults them into artistic careers. Awards are granted to exceptional works for best in show, and respectively for second and third place.
Ruddell Gallery Hours
Monday - Thursday: 7 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Friday: 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Closed on Weekends and Holidays
Summer Hours: Monday - Friday, 7 am to 5 pm.
The exhibitions are free and open to the public. Closed during BHSU breaks and official Holidays. For more information, contact the Student Union Information Center at (605)642- 6062 or gallery director, Michael Baum at (605)642-6706 or email michael.baum@bhsu.edu.
