Local artists to showcase paintings, photography, and music at monthly Gallery Walk

Every first Friday of the month, 13 Bloomington art galleries are open late, from 5-8 p.m., as part of the Gallery Walk. This Friday (Aug. 1), gallery features will include paintings, photographs, and music.

Local surrealist photographer Kathryn Coers Rossman is opening her first solo show at the Backspace Gallery, called “National Anthem: Punk Patriotism.” Three years in the making, it features a set of 120 pieces, including mostly a variety of photographs, but also vintage outfits and costumes, restored and hand-watercolored vintage photographs, and antique trinkets and objects.

Portions of the show were first published in 2023 in Polyester Zine, a London-based publication. Her work focuses on contrasting historic and modern elements of the U.S. in order to highlight the changing nature of American culture. “We always have to live in a moment where we are acknowledging our history, but moving forward from it,” she said.

Many pieces feature elements of the Bicentennial celebration—the nation’s 200th birthday. Rossman said she’s asking the question: “What will America look like for the Tricentennial?” That’s why she put traditional costumes from 1976 on contemporary punk models.

She wrote about the show, “In a time when many Americans feel alienated from traditional symbols of patriotism, I wanted to explore what reclaiming those symbols might look like.” Rossman continued, "So I began photographing contemporary individuals—many of them punk, queer, or politically radical—dressed in reinterpretations of those bicentennial costumes. The goal was not to mock the past, but to confront it honestly and reimagine it through a more inclusive lens.”

“Majorettes are a recurring character in my work,” she said. “I like them to be the pep band leader who’s lost her pep, because I feel that way about America now. I want to be like, ‘Yes!’ But, I can’t. I think that’s a really common experience for people right now.”

Rossman’s career in photography came from a unique enterprise. When she and her husband lived in New York City during the Great Recession, she found a creative way to supplement their income to afford rent: She got good at finding little artifacts at Goodwill, pawn shops, and antique stores. She photographed these items to flip and sell on eBay, making a profit. She loved taking those photos so much, she said, “I ended up leaving my PhD program in order to become a full-time photographer.”

Since then, she’s taken to photography to express her ideas and questions about the environment she finds herself in. “I became a mom in 2018, and I think this is the way that I preserve my individual identity,” Rossman said. “A lot of your identity fades into your child, and I think this is literally me reaching outside of myself and being like, ‘I’m still a person.’”

“I’ve been envisioning things in this space for a really long time,” she continued. “And, in a way, I feel like all my mental illnesses are displayed.”

She said that it feels good to finally have her work out for viewing. “All of this was in my head, or in a pile in my basement. And now, having it produced, is so healthy, and so good.”

A few blocks from Rossman’s show is the Juniper Art Gallery on Kirkwood Avenue where owner Jaime Sweany has finished hanging the “Late Summer Exhibit,” which showcases over 30 regional artists.

Sweany said she looks for diversity in styles and mediums when she curates. “It’s always a challenge to hang because each artist is so different,” she told The B Square. “But I seem to have a pretty good natural ability to make it all flow from one artist to the next.”

A unique element of her gallery is that she holds music events a couple of times each month, including during Gallery Walk nights. Tomorrow, setting the audio scene for the gallery reception will be jazz pianist Monika Herzig and her husband and guitarist Peter Kienle. Herzig said that where a traditional sit-down concert allows for interactions with the audience for a designated period of time, Friday evening will be filled with the sounds of people chatting and doors clanking.

Herzig said that she adapts the music she plays to the environment and the artwork around her. In 2022, she participated in a project that brought the work of Indiana impressionist T. C. Steele to musical performances inspired by his art. Herzig said there’s a lot of connection between impressionistic art and jazz—they both capture a moment.

“I am just an avid music lover, and live music is something that’s always been really, really just a thrill for me,” said gallery owner Sweany. “That was just always an ongoing thing, to feature musicians.”

This isn’t new to her—in 2002, she opened the Wandering Turtle Art Gallery, where it featured art and music until the Great Recession took it down. She originally started Juniper in Spencer, Indiana in 2019 before moving back to Bloomington a few years ago.

Featured at Gallery B in Bloomingfoods Near West are works from artists at Stone Belt, Bloomington’s provider of residential, employment, and educational services for those with disabilities. The exhibit is called “Blooming Possibilities.”

Schedules for clients are individualized, art instructor Tiffany Jackson said. In the studio, artists work independently but share their pieces with each other and receive feedback. There are support staff in the studio that facilitate regular check-ins.

Stone Belt client and board member Mikaela Coppedge has a piece at the gallery called “Confident as a Lion.” It’s a watercolor painting of a lion with a pink and blue background. Jackson said Coppedge includes flowers in most of her work: “Botanical, bursting things that represent nature and growth” play an important role in her art, Jackson said.

Coppedge described herself as an abstract and surreal artist, incorporating elements of pop art. She said that watercolors are currently her favorite medium.

Another client, Alissa Sage, is showing a Diego Revera-inspired painting of a street vendor selling flowers. “I thought it was unique, something different,” she said.

Jackson said she enjoyed how Sage’s piece was “very emotional.” She said, “She didn’t just draw the lady selling the flowers—you got a feeling about who she was. You could tell she was a sensitively caring person.” Sage uses a lot of vibrant colors in her artwork.

Artist Don Robinson specializes in abstract art, using patterns and layers of colors to form what Jackson described as a “blanket.” Robinson said his work comes from ideas that come to him naturally. He also finds inspiration in sports and in food.

Client artwork is also featured in a mini-gallery near the entrance at Stone Belt, where pieces are available for sale. Coppedge enjoys selling her work and is approaching 100 sales.

Also featured tomorrow is “Cat and Lady,” a solo show by painter Dama Mora. Her canvasses at the By Hand gallery were inspired by fauvism, which she described as a style focused less on realism and more on raw feeling. Each of her paintings depict a “cat lady.”

“[My art] is for empowering women,” Mora told The B Square. “The cat lady stereotypes—it’s sad, old, alone—and I’m trying to change that narrative. Because usually ‘cat lady’ is ... misogynistic.” Instead, she paints women who she described as powerful, happy, vibrant, and whole. “That’s how I paint her and how I want her to be seen,” she wrote about the show.

Mora started painting full time only a few years ago. In 2020, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After chemotherapy treatment in 2021, she felt as though something sparked in her—like a reset—and she started drawing and doing art more than she did before. That’s when she started working on this topic. She’s had a cat for 20 years—who was always with her, serving as emotional support.

“I felt lonely, in the sense, like, ‘Oh, why me?’ It’s hard having this illness. I may die, you know? It was scary.” And she said her cat was there to support her during that time.

Mora began drawing women when she was a little girl. “My aunt, my grandmother, ... I think I was always drawing women,” she said. “It’s about my experience.” The cat lady in her art is a synthesis of all the women she’s encountered and been inspired by across six states. Now, she feels connected to the women who purchase her art.

While personal, Mora’s art also contains political meaning. “Blue Cat in Orange Room,” for example, is a metaphor for a Democrat in Trump’s America, and a reference to vice president JD Vance’s viral “childless cat ladies” remark. In another painting, “Lady Gaza,” falling buildings can be seen behind the woman. Mora saw videos on social media of civilians seeking help in the Gaza conflict.

These political themes aren’t typically a conscious element for Mora—she often doesn’t realize how events impact her until she finishes a piece. “I think my artwork talks to me late after, when it’s done,” she said. She described her artistic process as intuitive—”just not controlling anything.” She holds on to each piece for at least a couple weeks so it has time to speak to her before selling it.

Today, she paints every day. She said she’s living her dream. “I know it’s not easy for everybody,” she said. “But I’m having [this] opportunity and I want to inspire other women to follow their dreams somehow—to follow happiness, whatever that means for them.”

After cancer, her sense of time has changed: “Life is short for anybody,” she said. “Doesn’t matter the age.” She remembers how scary it felt, and can still feel: “You don’t know how much longer you have. ... It’s scary, still. But that’s why I prefer to choose the joy, and [not] thinking about the worst.”

She compared life to a childhood birthday party. “You are [at] your friend’s birthday party, and then it’s time to go, and you say, ‘No! A few more minutes, I’m still playing!’ I feel that way. Like, I don’t want to go yet. I want to play, you know? I’m so happy. I want to keep doing this. Give me more time. That’s how I feel right now. ... I’m trying to enjoy the party.”

See these artists and more

Friday, Aug. 1, 5-8 p.m.

“National Anthem: Punk Patriotism”
Kathryn Coers Rossman
Backspace Gallery: 112 W 6th St.

“Late Summer Exhibit”
Various regional artists
Live music by Monika Herzig and Peter Kienle (6-7:30 p.m.)
Juniper Art Gallery: 615 W. Kirkwood Ave.

“Blooming Possibilities”
Stone Belt Art Studio
Bloomingfoods Gallery B: 316 W. 6th St.

“Cat and Lady”
Dama Mora
By Hand Gallery: 101 W. Kirkwood Ave. #109

View all locations at the Gallery Walk website.