Looking outside of Chris Hanson and Hendrika Sonnenberg’s art studio, The Inconvenience Store, one would notice the large QR code smack dab at the front of the building, attached to the wall.
It leads to their website, Bucket of Blood. It’s a flashy name for an unassuming art studio, on a side road in Minden, which looks on the outside to be a warehouse.
The artists said their studio is in an “inconvenient location” and has an inconvenient time slot for visitors, hence the name. The art space houses what Hanson and Sonnenberg call their art projects. Hanson and Sonnenberg prefer to be known as the artist in this piece as they want their voices to act as one entity. “It’s all about the work,” said the artist, echoing their sentiment that they want to have the artwork front and centre. The artist has been working together for 30 years, hence their request to be one voice in the media.
June 29 saw the opening of Susan Homer’s paintings and drawings exhibit. Homer’s artwork runs the length of a wall. Paintings of a dead bird on the side of the road and of an owl, which is on the exhibit’s marketing, evoke a sense of bluntness. “She brings in other sorts of topics. There’s beauty. But also, this sort of underneath, this sort of poetic about the subject matter,” the artist said.
Homer was born in Boston and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design and a Master of Fine Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited her paintings and drawings in New York City and in other places. She has drawn and painted birds and flowers for 35 years. Homer said she mostly hopes to create images that bridge subject and material, that express something beyond what can be described in words. She is inspired by the decorative arts, gardening and backyard birding, and by the woods in Maine, and Emily Dickinson, among several other things.
The artist prefers to think of their exhibits as collaborative projects, which allows them to work with creators they have a relationship with.
In terms of collaborating with Homer, the artist said, “we’ve known her for a long time. We studied our Master’s together. Then, we all decided there was a group of us who didn’t want to stay in Chicago, and we all moved to New York City. We always did the studio visits, shared our work together, always having conversations, getting together with wine and talking about art.”
The artist added, “her subject matter is not such a traditional approach to painting birds or flowers. It’s interesting because there’s some things that just make you question what you’re looking at.”
Sonnenberg shows a painting of a dead mouse that Homer’s late dad’s cat killed. “There’s a hidden intensity to her stories, what she paints.”
On being creative in a small town, the artist said it’s the same as being creative in a big town or city. The artist notes there’s more freedom to do what you want. The art studio is located at 3 Booth St. Minden and is open on Saturdays from 3 to 5 p.m. The Susan Homer exhibit will be running for two months.
