A display of local art greets donors, nonprofit partners and community members when they enter the Community Foundation!

A wall serves as a rotating art display where local artists are invited to exhibit their work, its prominence elevating the importance of local art in the community. Featured artists rotate every few months.

Cristian Andersson

Painter Cristian Andersson’s works are currently featured. He is an Appleton-based painter and performance artist who first studied painting under Mario Castillo at Columbia College in Chicago, and then (after a decade hiatus from art) photography and performance-based work at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. Here is how he describes his work:

“When I am asked what my work is by people not familiar with my paintings, I usually answer with ‘abstract oils, often based on contemporary classical music, dance, or literature.’ And, in some ways, I am immediately uncomfortable with my response.

My unease with my statement comes from the viewpoint that the work is simply a way of visually processing a sense, but instead of making a painting of a scene from careful sight, I am making a painting of music from intense listening. It is much the same analytical process. When I’m creating one of my static soundscapes, I am listening to a composer’s work on repeat — days to weeks on end — associating colors with instrumentation, levels of opacity to correspond with how deep or quiet sounds are placed in the mix, and mark making as a way to describe the texture of sound itself. I attempt to bring in both the feeling of the music and any narrative comments the composer made into the painting. If the music was created for dance, I’ll look at the shapes and movements of the performance and add that in as an element.

In the end, people not familiar with my process have said my work can look like music. And, if that is the case, then the work can no longer be abstract. It is simply the visual representation of a sense that we normally don’t encounter in that way — the sense of perceiving sound.”

If you are an artist interested in displaying your work at the Community Foundation, click here.