About
The Gallery
Tugboat Gallery Collective is composed of artists Nolan Tredway, Peggy Gomez, Keith Buswell, and Toan Vuong. For over 15 years, Tugboat Gallery Collective has been providing exhibition opportunities for artists in various professional stages. The goal of Tugboat is to exhibit high quality exciting artwork, inside and outside of Nebraska. Together we create a safe-space, which highlights local, exciting, and relevant art every First Friday. We are not a non-profit organization. We are a non-commission gallery that combines all of our efforts completely on a volunteer basis, existing solely on the publics generous donations.
The 240 square-foot gallery was first established in 2005 by Peggy Gomez, Jake Gillespie, and Joey Lynch. Together they sanded the floors, painted the walls, installed the lights, and marketed their first exhibition event. In 2008, they self-renovated a space in the historic Parish building in the heart of Downtown Lincoln. Since that time, several dedicated organizers and interns have helped exhibit more than 500 artists around the midwest. Our gallery has been a haven for emerging, mid-career, and esteemed artists like Keith Jacobshagen and Karen Kunc. It has had a long standing creative relationship with other community collectives such as Live Yes Studios, the South of Downtown Community Development Organization, and UNL. We have collaborated with local businesses and residential homes, around and adjacent to downtown Lincoln, displaying art in windows and on porches offered by small businesses and intercity residents. Despite the temporary closure of the gallery space during the pandemic, we have worked to rethink the way gallery-goers view and interact with art in their city. .
Peggy Gomez (co-captain)
Peggy Gomez is one of the original founders of Tugboat Gallery and the owner of Gomez Art Supply. She has a BFA from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and a MFA from the University of Minnesota – Minneapolis. She taught part-time mostly drawing and a little printmaking at UNL for 10 years.
Peggy likes zeppelins, making collages, walking her dogs Jet and Max – finding treasures along the way, gardening, biking and prides herself on her vegan tres leches cake.
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Keith Buswell (co-captain)
Keith Buswell graduated with a BFA in art University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He works with various printmaking processes such as screen-printing, intaglio and mono printing and dabbles in drawing and multimedia. He currently is a member of Karen Kunc’s Constellation Studios where he creates his prints. His work has been shown in the United States, Egypt, Dubai, France and Italy. Notably, Keith received the Perry Family Award in 2018 and second place in the 40 Under 40 Showcase in Annapolis, MD and third place at the Under Pressure print show in Fort Collins, CO. He is a contributing artist to issue 23 and 28 of The Hand Magazine. He also attended residencies at The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center in Nebraska City, Nebraska and at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Hyattsville, Maryland. Originally from Council Bluffs, Iowa, he currently lives in Lincoln with his husband Brad and his dog Max.
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Nolan Tredway (co-captain)
Found covered in moss near the Korvik River, Nolan was raised in the Great North by a mountain and a burning forest. He learned the art of storytelling from his time among the Volkos, before studying art at the University of Nebraska and Fundacion Ortega y Gasset in Toledo, Spain. He uses modern visual language and classic Renaissance techniques to create his surreal and symbolic worlds in painting, sculpture, puppetry and animation.
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Toan Vuong (co-captain)
Toan Vuong is a multimedia artist who has studied art and language cross-culturally while living in France and Italy. He has collaborated with multiple small businesses in the past to find new and different ways of engaging with the arts in the community. He is currently on the board of Lincoln Arts Council and teaches visual arts at Nebraska Wesleyan University. His belief is that the access of art should belong to everyone of any discipline, any journey, and profession as a teaching tool for life.
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Kyle Choy (Former gallery intern)
“A chunk of space rock flung to earth from the unknown.
Bits of stardust coalesced into a corporeal form.
A troubadour from afar learning how to be human.
Adapting to this strange world through storytelling and art.
Uncertainty and ambiguity incarnate.
A starman looking for a home.”
Lisa Guevara (Former co-creator)
Lisa Guevara received her Bachelors in Fine Art at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2015 and continues to create and live in Lincoln. She is currently employed as a direct support professional at Live Yes Studios where she teaches art classes.
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Katharen Hedges (Former gallery intern)
Katharen Hedges is Tugboat’s gallery intern and a junior in the fine art department at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. Hedges emphasizes in painting and printmaking. In addition to her work as an artist is she is the art director at Parallel Visions in the Parrish Project.
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Phoebe Little (Former gallery intern)
Phoebe Little is an artist, illustrator, and writer living and working in Lincoln, Nebraska. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln in 2016. Her most recent book, Cliterary Journal, is the first in a series of anthologies of feminist comics, essays, drawings, and personal narrative.
Amanda Durig (Current Poster Designer)
Originally from Northeast Ohio, Amanda Durig (she/her) is a visual artist and educator based in Lincoln, Nebraska. She has exhibited work nationally and internationally and is a recipient of the Coleman Printmaking Award. Amanda attended Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio and received a BFA in Graphic Design and Printmaking in 2015. In 2017, she moved to Nebraska to attend graduate school at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and received her MFA in Printmaking in 2020. After graduating, Amanda completed a two-year teaching artist residency at LUX Center for the Arts where she now works as an Education Assistant. Amanda continues to teach in Foundations and Printmaking at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Amanda enjoys propagating and rehabilitating plants for other people, and daydreaming fall walks with her dog, Goose.
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Isaiah Jones (Former poster designer)
Isaiah was raised in the mountains of western North Carolina, where she spent a great deal of time picking up dirt and standing knee deep in rivers. She completed her BFA in printmaking at the Savannah College of Art and Design and is currently pursuing her Masters of Fine Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. During her years in the great states of Georgia and North Carolina, she was an active member of the Atlanta Printmaker’s Studio, a screen technician for a commercial printing company, a studio intern, a master printer’s assistant, a printmaking instructor, and a cry baby. At any time, she may be found walking her dog, working in her studio, or looking longingly into the distance.
Peter Worth (Former poster designer)
Peter is an artist and designer who was raised by hippies in Lincoln, Nebraska. He enjoys humor, crossword puzzles, sparkling water and combining images through collage and printmaking. When he’s not designing posters for Tugboat Gallery, he can be found eating princess beef at Imperial Palace or attempting the next big idea at his day job in advertising.
He’s come to develop a borderline, unhealthy obsession with the printing and duplication process. He dislikes mayonnaise, crusty erasers and people who walk side-by-side four-across on downtown sidewalks.
Heidi Wiren Bartlett (Former gallery intern)
Heidi Wiren Bartlett is a witch. She was born and raised on the Great Plains. Through her hybrid practice she creates installations, sculptures, and ritual performances concerned with the portrayal, oppression, and subversive existence of women and Nature today. As a white woman who was raised by a lesbian, she feels obligated to confront racial and misogynistic injustice. She sees her body as an object of vulnerability and power; she sees Nature and its processes the same way.
Heidi received her BFA from Concordia University in Seward, NE and her MA & MFA in Intermedia and Sculpture from the University of Iowa. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including Galería Jesús Gallardo, Universidad de Guanajuato in Guanajuato, Mexico, The Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, NE, Moberg Gallery in Des Moines, IA, Dfbrl8r in Chicago, IL, and Grace Exhibition Space in Brooklyn, NY. She currently lives and works under starlight in Iowa City, IA.
More about Heidi
Past Publications:
2022 Union for Contemporary Art – Omaha, NE
Receivers of the 2022 UCA Populus Fund
The Journal Star Article “‘Something for everyone’ — Porch-Art-Palooza returns with nearly 40 artists, 30 porches” by Peter Salter
NE Public Media – Friday LIVE: Extra: Porch-Art-Palooza and the Gallery 9 August Show