Call For Entry: THE ENVIRONMENT
Mainframe Studios invites artists to submit work for the May 2025 First Friday exhibition, THE ENVIRONMENT, which explores humankind's relationship, interaction, and impact on the natural world. This exhibition will delve into how we connect with, alter, and imagine our surroundings, as well as the consequences of our choices on the environment.
We welcome works that examine our surroundings through observed, imagined, or idealized views. Submissions may also explore how human existence has shaped or transformed nature, whether through our impact on weather patterns, water sources, migration, sounds, or ecosystems.
The act of capturing and interpreting the environment has a long and storied tradition, from documenting uncharted lands to illustrating the spaces that define our daily lives. From the grandeur of nature to the intimate details of altered landscapes, we seek works in all media that reflect the fragility of the connection between us and our environment.
This exhibition will be curated by Diane Kunzler, an artist whose deep connection to the natural world is informed by her upbringing in rural Iowa. Diane’s work is rooted in a fascination with the intricacies of nature, often focusing on close-cropped, intimate views of the landscape. Diane’s return to abstraction in her recent works continues to explore her foundational interest in the surrounding environment.
Diane holds an MFA from the Art Institute of Boston and has exhibited widely across the Midwest. She is an art educator with a vigorous personal art practice and maintains a studio in the Mainframe Studios building in Des Moines, IA, where she also teaches painting and drawing. She also works and teaches ceramics in her family’s gallery and studio, Kunzler Studios, in Valley Junction, West Des Moines, IA.
Submissions are open to works in any medium that engage with the theme of our environment both the sublime and the altered, the intimate and the expansive.
You can submit your application online here. Please note that we cannot accept submissions after the original deadline. Submissions are due by APRIL 6th at 11:59 PM (CST).
