In Focus: Midwinter Interlude Exhibit Displays Work By BSU Staff

There are quite a few staff members at Bemidji State University who have talents that stretch beyond the classroom. Every year, they hold the Midwinter Interlude Exhibit to display some of their work.

“The Midwinter Interlude is kind of to give a little bit of brightness in the middle of this midwinter blasé,” says Deb Krueger, the office manager of the Bridgeman School of Technology and Design.

Krueger came up with the idea for the exhibit in 2009 when she discovered there were a lot of artsy people on the BSU campus. It was then brought to the Ramsay Gallery in Bridgeman Hall. The exhibit is now in its 9th year and still going strong.

“We have paintings, woodworking; we have a ceramic tile that was put in re-purposed wood,” says Krueger.

“One of our professors does duck decoys. There are several people who do photography. Myself, I do fabric bowls. It’s kind of a fabric collage thing,” adds DeeDee Narum, a catalog librarian at BSU who helps Krueger collect the art. “The one that we have on New Zealand right now! That’s just a fabulous. That’s a storybook!”

And it definitely tells a story. Father and daughter duo Michael and Mallary Herbert took a spring break trip to New Zealand last March. They had a full “Lord of The Rings” experience and, of course, they documented the entire thing.

“For any ‘Lord of The Rings’ or ‘Hobbit’ fans, we were able to experience the different scenes and settings that you saw in the films themselves, so we took some pictures and placed them side by side with different scenes in the film,” says Mallory.

Michael adds, “It was fun to see the actual Frodo and Bilbo’s home and visit their house and have a little dance around the party tree at night.”

There are 18 artists and five musicians featured in this year’s exhibit. A lot of them say their work started out as more of a hobby that developed into something more.

“I’ve enjoyed making these for my family members and I’ve been doing it for – the tables actually – for about 10 years now,” says Karl Salcheider, a retired BSU basketball coach who makes tables out of wood.

“My drawing here is a minimalist that attempts to catch the essence of objects,” says Bill Joyce, a minimalist artist.

“I do photography and this year, I tried a metal photo, so it’s a photo on metal with the lake, and it’s just shimmery and nice and I really love it,” says Krueger.

Some say the exhibit is a fun way to make a big campus seem a little smaller by bringing you closer to the people you work with.

“It’s a personal thing that we’re putting out there for people to see. Especially for different faculty and staff members, you don’t really get to see the different interests and hobbies that they have,” says Mallary.

“Sometimes, you don’t get across campus to visit with somebody or even get to know somebody, and to know that someone else is a quilter or that somebody else is a painter, it really creates a connection on campus that’s outside of your work dynamic,” says Narum.

The Ramsey Gallery is open seven days a week from 8 in the morning to 10 at night. The Midwinter Interlude exhibit will be up until April 19th.