Images coming soon!

Opening Reception - Friday, December 6th 6-8PM

Exhibition on view December 6th, 2019 through January 18th, 2020

Public welcome!

Bly and Rowan Pope's photorealistic pencil drawings and oil paintings of landscapes, faces, flowers, and natural phenomena are meant to facilitate the viewer’s close inspection through their abundance of discrete fragments of information and their insistence that even the ordinary is worthy of extreme scrutiny. These works embody their belief that the mundane is miraculous, the commonplace is extraordinary, and every diminutive, “miss able” object is alive, singular, and sublime, and must be appreciated with care, reverence, and gratitude. The landscapes in this exhibition are often empty of human presence and celebrate the majesty, enormity, and grandeur of nature, and our humble place within it.

BLY POPE

Bly Pope is an artist with a profound dedication and experience with hyperrealism and the classic fine art traditions. He graduated from Stanford University and received his Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Minnesota, where he has been an Adjunct Professor for over six years, teaching classes in Drawing, Graphic Novel Illustration, and Artistic Interpretation from Vintage Cinema. He has also taught at The Minneapolis College of Art and Design for five years, in Foundation: 2D, and The Interactive Visual Novel.

His drawing, “Maryanna,” was selected to be a part of the National Portrait Competition Exhibition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, 2013-2014 and was purchased by the Minneapolis Institute of Art for their permanent collection in 2017.

Select exhibitions include Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; American Swedish Institute, Minneapolis, MN; Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC; The People’s Gallery, Minneapolis, MN; Larson Gallery, St. Paul, MN; Katherine Nash Gallery, Minneapolis, MN; and Heuser Art Gallery, Bradley University, Peoria, IL.

Public collections include The Cafesjian Museum of Fine Art, Armenia and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN.

Publications include Project Ark by John MacDonald, illustrations by Bly and Rowan Pope; Speak, Mother, Poems by Freya Manfred, Red Dragonfly Press. Illustration by Bly Pope and Rowan Pope; Six Chairs: A Holocaust Survivor’s Story, Written by Rowan Pope, Engage Printing. Illustration for the book; The Blue Dress, Poems by Freya Manfred, Red Dragonfly Press. Cover Illustration; Swimming with a Hundred-Year-Old Snapping Turtle, Poems by Freya Manfred, Red Dragonfly Press. Illustrations by Bly and Rowan Pope; Liminal Magazine, Minneapolis, MN; Cover Painting; Dark Fire, Poems by Bly Pope, Giant Horse Printing. Illustrations by Bly Pope and Rowan Pope; My Only Home, Poems by Freya Manfred, Red Dragonfly Press. Illustrations by Bly Pope and Rowan Pope.

ROWAN POPE

Rowan Pope is an artist whose work explores the human condition by telling visual narratives. Many of his drawings and paintings are inspired by great stories from literature, particularly the surreal work of Franz Kafka. He has worked extensively with genocide and Holocaust survivors, and some of his art derives from the devastating real-life stories told by these survivors. He works in an imaginative style of photorealism called “composite photorealism,” in which he integrates photographs into digital collages and transforms those collages into meticulous drawings.

Rowan graduated from Stanford University and received his Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Minnesota where he has been an Adjunct Professor for seven years, teaching classes in Drawing, Graphic Novel Illustration and Artistic Interpretation from Vintage Cinema. He has also taught design and color theory classes for five years at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. In 2013 he created an illustrated book based on the stories of Holocaust survivor Joe Grosnacht, for which he received a Major Arts Grant from Rimon: The Minnesota Jewish Council.

Select exhibitions include Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts, Fridley, MN; The People’s Gallery, St. Paul, MN; Larson Gallery, St. Paul, MN; Katherine Nash Gallery, Minneapolis, MN; Heuser Art Gallery, Bradley University, Peoria, IL.

Public collections include The Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN.

Publications include Project Ark, Science fiction book by John D. MacDonald. 18 pen illustrations and cover by Bly Pope and Rowan Pope; Speak, Mother, Poems by Freya Manfred, Red Dragonfly Press. Illustration by Bly Pope and Rowan Pope; Raising Twins, Nodin Press. Cover Illustration by Rowan Pope. Six Chairs: A Holocaust Survivor’s Story, Written by Rowan Pope, Engage Printing. Illustration for the book; The Blue Dress, Red Dragonfly Press. Illustrations by Rowan Pope and Bly Pope; Cover Painting; Swimming with a Hundred-Year-Old Snapping Turtle, Poems by Freya Manfred, Red Dragonfly Press, Illustrations by Bly and Rowan Pope; Dark Fire, Poems by Bly Pope, Giant Horse Printing. Illustrations by Bly Pope and Rowan Pope; My Only Home, Poems by Freya Manfred, Red Dragonfly Press. Illustrations by Bly Pope and Rowan Pope.