The Grand Forks artist, who also is a poet, has been selected to receive the Mayor’s Choice Artist Award. The public is invited to a reception set for 5-7 p.m. Thursday, May 20, at City Hall, 255 N. Fourth St.
In the exhibit, titled “Because It Is Wild and Beautiful,” 47 of Camrud’s artworks are displayed on the main and second floors of City Hall. Most of the artwork is available for purchase. The entire collection may be viewed online at www.publicartnd.org.
The title of the exhibit is inspired by the writing of Robert Vivian, Camrud said. In his book, “All I Feel is Rivers: Dervish Essays,” the phrase “because it is wild and beautiful” seemed to coalesce with her water-themed poems and became her book’s new title, she said in the artist statement. “Now it spills over to paintings and drawings for this show, new work that began with ‘The River.’ ”
Many of the artworks have some connection to water, since it’s been a recurring presence in her life – first a creek near her childhood home in rural Grand Forks County and later the Red River that flowed by the backyard of her Grand Forks home, overtaking it in the Flood of ‘97.
In this exhibit are pieces with names such as “The Flood,” “Testing the Water,” “The Wave” and “The Rush of Water.”
“I just love how titles come together to tell the story of water,” she said while viewing the exhibit curated by Vickie Arndt, Public Arts Commission gallery director.
In the display, which is open to the public through mid-July, every piece has a story. And whether rendered in oil or acrylic paints or mixed media, on canvas or wood, the art is expressive of the artist’s thoughts and feelings and, in a few pieces, Camrud herself.
“Ink Blot Self Portrait (Happy Accident)” was born from cleaning black paint from a paintbrush. With a swipe of the brush here and a couple of round dots there, the image gives the impression of a child’s face, peering at the viewer with a kind of intent, almost quizzical look.
“There’s a child in all of us, isn’t there?” the artist said, commenting on the work.
In another piece, “The Old Woman and The Sea,” Camrud applied cracked eggshells to the canvas, in a symbolic gesture to convey her experience with skin cancer.
“It’s all about search and discovery, of making new what is old, or to face a large fresh canvas with trust that ‘something will happen’ if you give yourself fully to the process – like when a poem begins to move like music to a good last line,” Camrud said.
As an accomplished poet, she infuses some of the artwork with words – hand-written and typed – sometimes in phrases partially obscured by paint.
Most difficult piece
Probably the most difficult piece in the exhibit to create was “Because There Are Ghosts,” Camrud said. It “took the longest for me to do.”
A visually dominant piece of black tissue paper is calmed and balanced by sheets of pale turquoise tissue paper, all overrun by swaths and “controlled drips” of light-colored paint. The handwriting in this work reveals her “musings” as she worked on it, she said. In Vivian’s writing, the phrase “because there are ghosts” is followed with, “I still have hope.”
Some of the artworks – “What I Should Have Said, But Didn’t,” “What Anger Looks Like” and “She Dreams Her Baby Unborn” – send the viewer on a journey to discern the artist’s intent, but also to explore one’s own reaction.
As such, that may be what contemporary art is meant to do. Camrud agrees with Laurel Reuter, director of the North Dakota Museum of Art. “She would say, ‘Look at a piece. It’s good if it makes you think,’ ” Camrud said. “And you may have a different story.”
As a viewer of art, “one has to look beyond what you’re seeing,” she said, noting that she’ll be pleased “with whatever it is they see or that they learn.”
But she hopes that, as viewers study a piece, “they open their minds with free thinking, as I had to do with the direction I took.”
Above all, though, in creating art, “you have to make it your own -- that’s what every artist craves,” she said. In the end, “it doesn’t matter if anyone likes it or not. It pleases me.”
Artistic pursuits
Mid-career, Camrud earned degrees in visual art and creative writing at UND, but her love of art blossomed much earlier.
At UND, Jackie McElroy-Edwards, an art teacher, encouraged her to put her art on the floor, to accommodate her free style of painting, she said. Most of the artworks in the exhibit at City Hall have been on the floor, she said.
“I think painting should free you,” she said. “And it does.”
Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and she is the author of three books of poetry.
Camrud taught in the UND English Department before joining the North Dakota Museum of Art, where she started its live and silent auction to celebrate regional arts and help them find a market for their art while supporting the museum financially.
Camrud was chosen for the Mayor's Choice Artist Award due to her artistic talent, expressed through paintings and poetry, as well as her lifelong commitment to Grand Forks and the arts, said Kristi Wilfahrt, PAC interim director.
This is Mayor Brandon Bochenski’s first involvement in the selection of the Artist Award recipient. The award, which has been presented for the past 11 years, highlights an artist in the region and recognizes that person’s artistic contributions to a more vibrant arts and cultural community, Wilfahrt said.
A statement from the mayor and his wife, Jenny, reads, “We are proud of the thriving arts community in Grand Forks and couldn’t be happier to continue the tradition of the Mayor’s Choice Reception. Groups like the Public Arts Commission continuously increase the quality of life in our community and are part of what makes this a great place to live.”
Camrud likens the work of an artist to the work of an entrepreneur, both require problem solving and creative thinking to develop something that does not yet exist, she said.
Once, when she was perplexed by a piece she was working on, her friend Jason Restemayer, an interior designer, told her by text, “Madelyne, mess it up,” she said. His comment was “just the release I needed.”
“Art is a little like life. At some point, you have to stop, step back and look – find and admit your mistakes. That’s the hard part,” she said. ”But as long as the surface remains intact there’s possibility for change.”
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Madelyne Camrud honored with Grand Forks Mayor's Choice Artist Award - Grand Forks Herald
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