Enjoy a soup dinner at Voices Gallery with Art Gumbo Dubuque and vote on your favorite art proposal!

Happy Birthday to Art Gumbo Dubuque!

Celebrate the 1st birthday of Art Gumbo Dubuque at Voices Gallery on Thursday September 29th starting at 6:00 p.m. For $10 enjoy a bowl of delicious farmers market soup by Green Dubuque plus a chance to vote on your favorite community-oriented art proposal! The Art Gumbo project started at Voices in 2010, and now returns to the venue of its origin with a special one-year celebration that will include a musical guest and cake!

Attendees will peruse art proposals over dinner, then listen to contestants briefly pitch their project ideas. Each diner receives the opportunity to vote on what comes next in the Dubuque art scene! Since its launch in September 2010, the quarterly Art Gumbo dinner has funded 4 innovative proposals, raising a total of $3,500 for art projects that enhance the Dubuque community.

During the previous Art Gumbo dinner held over the summer in Eagle Point Park, four individuals presented proposals and then spoke about their ideas for using the funding. The cash prize was award to artist Katie Duffy to help her develop the installation currently being shown at Voices Gallery. At the upcoming Voices dinner, Katie is required to give a progress report and volunteer during this quarter’s soup dinner.

During this Voices edition of Art Gumbo Dubuque, art groups  and creative collaboratives are eligible to compete for funding. A maximum of $750 will be presented to the artist(s) with the winning concept, with the remaining cash going to the runner up. This is a great opportunity to make a difference in the lives of local artists by giving a financial boost to their artistic goals!

Be sure to attend Thursday night’s soup dinner at the Voices Gallery at 10th and Jackson Streets in Dubuque’s Historic Millwork District. Eat a scrumptious meal in good company while surrounded by lovely and thought-provoking art, in a spacious old historic building that has been transformed from its industrial origins into Dubuque’s edgiest and most successful art exhibit ever!

“Honestly, this is probably one of the best openings we’ve ever been to…”

The following article originally appeared in the September 15-28, 2011 edition of 365ink Magazine, and is reprinted here with the author’s permission.

Voices from the Warehouse District VII:
ReVolt ReEnergize Art in America

by Mike Ironside

“I really want to give you a job right now, but I’m holding off,” Voices co-director Gene Tully told me with a smile. It was completely understandable. It was less than 48 hours before the exhibit opening on Saturday, and the Voices Warehouse Gallery was a beehive of activity as team members and volunteers were hanging art, installing lighting, and making final preparations for the show.

That’s not all that unusual for the Dubuque County Fine Arts Society sponsored Voices exhibit, now in its seventh year in what is now known as the Historic Millwork District. The Wilmac warehouse at 10th and Jackson that has been home to the show is over 100 years old and always requires a great deal of work to clean, light, and generally prepare for the exhibition and reception.

Only this year, Tully, building owner Tim McNamara and the Voices team faced an extra challenge. Because of the overwhelming attendance at past events, the committee in working with City of Dubuque Fire Department officials had concerns about continuing to host the exhibit and massive opening reception in the traditional second floor warehouse gallery space. On top of that, the second floor was not compliant with ADA accessibility codes.

“After doing our art show up on the second floor for six years, it was just decided that because we had a first floor space available that could be made accessible, that it made sense to move it downstairs,” explained McNamara. “So we did and now we can roll a wheelchair or walk right into the gallery space without the use of an elevator.”

The challenge? Once the decision was made to move the entire exhibit to the raw, first-floor warehouse space, the Voices team had just 40 days before the opening to make it happen.

“Since the close of the show last October, we’ve envisioned the exhibition would be held upstairs,” said Voices co-director Geri Shafer. “When we determined that the show would be moving to this space, it was phenomenal the amount of work that we knew would have to happen to be able to prepare this space to get it ready for this opening Saturday night.”

“I was in a car driving to Tahoe (when I heard about the move) and my initial reaction was, ‘Whoa!’” said Voices marketing coordinator and events chair Ali Levasseur. Pondering the challenge she recalled thinking, “‘Okay … it’s a good thing we started organizing last November because we can pull it off.’ Because we had so much front time and planning, I knew we could do it.”

“Actually, my reaction was that this is probably going to put me into labor,” said Voices exhibition coordinator Holly Flood about moving the entire exhibit. “I was nine months pregnant at the time. And it did the next day!” Flood subsequently gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Maggie. “My first reaction was, ‘Oh no. What are we … how is this going to happen?’” said Flood. Continued on “My second reaction, upon seeing the space was, ‘This is going to be even better.’ I knew right away that this was going to be a great space for the show and it really has turned out to be that.”

“I can’t emphasize enough the number of people who’ve been involved in this process who’ve made it possible to do something that seemed almost impossible when we walked through the door,” said Shafer, “but I think collectively, we walked through those front doors and without saying anything to one another, in retrospect we all thought, ‘We can do this.’ There was a silence and I think each one of us could see it happening in this space.”

“It’s an amazing amount of work in 40 days,” said Tully, who estimates he’s put in about 400 hours in that span of time. “It’s just great to see the community pull together and all these people coming down here and throwing down. It gives me chills to think about all the people who have given their time and talent to do this.” He added, “It does take a lot of beer to get this done.”

And getting it done they were. Just two days before the opening, what was a raw warehouse space less than six weeks prior, was looking an awful lot like an art gallery. “Every year in the past, I’ve looked around the Voices Gallery two days before the show and said, ‘we are not ready for an art show,” said McNamara. “This year, we are really close, two days out. This is as far along as we’ve been and to me it looks really good. Most of the art is up. Most of the lights are up. It’s just down to the final details now, so we’re in good shape.”

“I think that this space has actually, in the end, served a great purpose for us,” said Flood. “Upstairs is beautiful. It’s stunning, it’s enormous, but there’s just something about having all of the artwork in one room. I think down here it’s very cohesive. When we walked into this I know that some people were a little nervous, ‘How are we going to do this?’ But honestly, the first thing I thought of was, ‘This will work great.’ It’s such a great space and I think now that all the artwork has come together in here it’s just really brought a whole new life to the Voices show.”

Shafer echoes Flood’s sentiment. “In many ways, and I’m not taking anything away from the second floor, but on the first floor it’s about the art, because when you walk through those front doors that’s what you see immediately,” said Shafer. “Upstairs, we had the east wing and the west wing. Here, you’re just surrounded by the art and that’s what Voices is about.”

The warehouse exhibit also benefits from the new Millwork District streetscape, a major renovation and investment project by the City of Dubuque. “It’s nice. Our front door opens up right onto a brand new sidewalk and street,” McNamara notes. Now, because we’re on the first floor we’re going to set up tables and chairs outside and have live music and be able to enjoy the outdoor space as well, which you couldn’t do when we were on the second floor. It was a gravel alley out there. Now we’ve got historic paving brick and nice sidewalks.” In a sense, the Voices show has come full circle, now benefiting from Millwork District revitalization efforts first inspired by the Voices warehouse exhibit.

Continue reading →

Blackberry Bushes Stringband: pickers, singers, songwriters, strummers, and stompers

Don’t music the high energy folk and old-time bluegrass of the Blackberry Bushes Stringband at Voices Gallery.

• Saturday September 17th | $5 cover
• 8:00 p.m. | Doors open at 7:00 p.m

Learn more and listen to more of their tunes.

Raise Your Voice: Live art hair show and runway exhibition

The following article appeared in the Dubuque Telegraph Herald on Thursday, September 15, 2011 and is reprinted here with permission.

Raise your voice

Voices from the Warehouse has a new edge this year, with a live art hair show and runway exhibition of self-expression

By Sandye Voight

If you think of what goes on in a hair salon as maintenance and a little indulgence, Michele Chillook wants you to think again. She’s organizing what might be Dubuque’s first runway art hair show, during the city’s edgy Voices from the Warehouse District VII.

“It’s a first for a lot of people,” said Chillook, an independent stylist with E’clips Salon. Unlike the hairstyle runway shows in New York or Las Vegas, this one is not product-based or sponsored. Her stage manager, Michelle Blanchard, said the event reminds her of a cross between a runway show and a theatrical production.

“We’ll begin discussing obstacles. I’ve drawn up a way to express these things,” Chillook said of the main theme, Emergence of Spirit: Expression from the Self Within.The show will explore a double-edge “takeout” sub-theme with Styrofoam, as a non-renewable resource and as a box.

“I’m restructuring the box. We live in a box, but we don’t have to. That’s the essence of the show,” said Chillook. “And time is a construct of our minds. I’ll try to show that with special effects. Another theme is labeling and how that can hurt us, how we create this world for ourselves and it’s false.”

The 18 to 20 models will be in costume, much of it vintage clothing, and at least one will be in body paint, but not fully nude. “There’s an element to the show that’s uncomfortable,” Chillook said. “We live in a world that’s uncomfortable.”

Three other Dubuque stylists will work with her that day to create the show:

• Chillook will do five fantastical themes.
• Courtney Elizabeth, an independent stylist at Indulgence, will explore “The Five Languages of Love.”
• Laura Buechele, an independent stylist, will do a native and local theme.
• Sarah Gauley, of Sass, will elaborate on the concept of labeling.
• Liz Noon, who owns Indulgence, will assist.

Chillook said when she was choosing the other participants, she looked at the community of stylists who were seeking a means of expression. “These are platform artists,” she said. “It’s a showcase of people I know.” She said the art community’s Art Gumbo was her inspiration for the hair show project. The quarterly soup supper lets artists present ideas for funding; diners vote on the one to receive donations.

Megan Starr, one of Gumbo’s founders, suggested Chillook apply. “Three dinners later, I formed a hair show and an idea,” Chillook said. “I didn’t win, but I had an opportunity to present something.” Not even Chillook has been to a hair show quite like this. “We’re focusing on the source. Why we’re all here. What we’ve made of it. Voices is the perfect venue,” she said.

Read more about Michele Chilook and Emergence of Spirit.

Seventh Incarnation of Voices

This article originally appeared in the Dubuque Telegraph Herald on Thursday September 1, 2011, and appears here with permission.

Dual Voices

by Sandye Voight

Warehouse art show will have a 9/11 component

Gene Tully got a few ideas for the seventh incarnation of Voices from the Warehouse District, Dubuque’s edgiest art event, during the six weeks he spent in Indonesia this spring. ”There, art is not a privilege or a struggle or an identity,” he said. “It just is part of the culture. You see young kids selling their art and it’s exquisite.”

It made him ponder who is responsible for cultural development in this country. ”This exhibit is about bringing it back home,” he said. ReVolt: ReEnergize Art in America is about re-energizing art at home, in children, in the community and in America, he said in his statement as director of the event.

This is the second year in a row Tully is in charge of Voices. He launched it seven years ago, directing it for the first three years. Geri Shafer was director of the Dubuque Museum of Art in 2005 when Tully presented to the museum board his idea for a large-scale off-site exhibit in the city’s warehouse district.

Shafer, who has a background in metals sculpture, couldn’t have been more thrilled. ”He ran with it,” she said. She helps organize the event, which is no longer a museum project but has taken on a life of its own.

Tully said organizers start planning for the next year immediately after the event closes, “but we still manage to stay in the moment. It gives me energy,” he said, “to make Dubuque an arts destination.”

He credits a committee that includes Holly Flood, Sam Mulgrew, Wendy Rolfe Mulgrew, Paul Opperman, Paula Connors, Ali Levasseur and Jane Tully, as well as Tim McNamara, of Wilmac Properties, owner of the warehouse site.

The exhibit is moving this year from the second-story location to the first floor of the warehouse at 10th and Jackson streets. It had to relocate because of construction. Spahn and Rose recently moved out of the space, which — unlike the previous location — is handicap accessible. Tully called the Historic Millwork District one of Dubuque’s treasures. He’s heard the admiring comments every year from awestruck big-city visitors as they exclaim over the kind of space that would be too expensive for artists in Chicago or Milwaukee.

This year the art show will feature 23 artists in two distinct components. Voices Echo 9/11 will showcase eight Voices alumni artists — including Tully — and two guest artists. ”It’s absolutely stirring. It gives me chills to see the energy that manifests in the art,” he said.

The main part of the exhibition will feature 13 artists from the tri-state area as well as from New York City, Seattle and Miami. Other components to the exhibit include performance art, a readers’ theater project by Fly-By-Night Productions, a 50-hour filmmaking competition, a hair/fashion runway show, and the Fall Into Art gallery tour.

When local groups apply for grants, Shafer said they invariably use Voices as an example of Dubuque as a cultural destination. ”That’s the community I want to live in,” Tully said.