The Star News (Summer 2005)

Art for sale at ArtSoup

by Britt Aamodt

Otsego artist Isobel Stander combines both art and nature in her works. As a potter, she fashions clay, dug out of the earth, into functional wares for the table. As a sculptor, she fuses hand-built or molded ceramic pieces with nature’s own artistry—pinecones, driftwood, stones.
Stander, who exhibits in several Minnesota and Wisconsin galleries, will be among some 30 artists displaying work June 18-19 at ArtSoup, Elk River’s community arts festival.
In between enjoying the fair’s other attractions, festival attendees can stroll among art booths selling, among other things, pottery, leatherwork, painting, woodwork, beaded items and textile art.
Stander, the art booth coordinator for ArtSoup, sees art as integral to the human experience.
“Art addresses your spirit,” she said. “If you’re just hung up on the chores or doing your job, you don’t have anything to nourish your spirit and grow as a person.”
A piece of good art, unlike something shot off an assembly line, said Stander, encourages the viewer to interact with it.
“You wonder what the artist was thinking when the piece was created. Art opens you to new ideas and concepts, and hopefully you come away a better person.”
Stander’s one-of-a-kind ceramic pieces and sculptures are the artist’s attempt to create something unique every time she sits down to work. She strays away from reproduction pottery, when the artist produces hundreds of the same item.
A onetime nature guide, Stander still finds time to venture into the wild. She forages for objects she can later assemble into art.
Twigs, bits of wood, colorful shells, or even things scrounged from a dump, have made their way into Stander’s Mask series. The masks are painted with a primitive design then embedded in a nest of found objects.
Stander names her masks—the Kitchen Goddess or Tlanuwa, “a magical bird woman of the night.” She pens histories and attaches the histories to the masks.
“The sculptures are my flights of fancy,” said Stander, who nevertheless sees art as fulfilling a serious purpose.
“Civilizations are judged by what’s left behind,” she said. “And for the most part, that’s art and architecture. There aren’t too many things that last eons, but art is one.”

Journalist

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