Northwestern art professor displays work at Washington Pavilion

Two- and three-dimensional work by Emily Stokes, an art professor at Northwestern College, is on display at the Washington Pavilion Visual Arts Center in Sioux Falls, S.D., through Sunday, Dec. 3.

“Cracked Open”—housed in the center’s Contemporary Gallery at 301 S. Main Ave.—presents good-natured satirical images of country life from the viewpoint of someone new to the joys and challenges of rural living. Stokes will give a gallery talk at a reception scheduled for 6 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 1, during the Washington Pavilion’s Free First Friday. The monthly event, held from 5 to 8 p.m., provides free admission for all visitors. Otherwise, admission to the Visual Arts Center is $7 for adults age 18 and older and $5 for seniors age 62 and older. Pavilion members, youth, students with a student ID, and active members of the military with military ID are admitted free.

Stokes’ art uses recurrent iconography, such as tree stumps, shards of ice, cattle trailers and haystacks. She mounts printed imagery onto organically shaped wood pieces or interlocks wooden pieces to form panoramas in which intricate renderings burst through abstracted forms.

A member of Northwestern’s faculty since 2011, Stokes earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in printmaking from Arizona State University and a bachelor’s in studio art and English from Wellesley College. Her work has been featured in juried printmaking and all-media exhibitions in 15 states ranging from New York to Washington and Louisiana to Minnesota. She won the purchase award at the 29th Annual McNeese Works on Paper juried exhibition and was selected for the Council of Independent Colleges Summer Seminar, “Dutch Art, Patrons and Markets,” at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

Stokes has served as a panelist at the Mid-American Print Council and the Southeastern College Art Association conferences. She has lectured as a visiting artist at Owens Community College in Toledo, Ohio; co-juried a student exhibition at Morningside College in Sioux City; and spent a week as a resident artist at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pa. She serves as a member of the Orange City Arts Council and as gallery director at Northwestern College.