Author: toan.vuongart@gmail.com

Tugboat Gallery Proudly Presents “Cha Cha Cha Cha Cha” featuring 5 badass young women – Nancy Nguyen, Maria Guiza Beltran, Chloe Iossi, Caitlin Hoppe and MiMi Yu opening First Friday December 2nd from 7-10 with DJ ol moanin – closing on December 30th. David Jester, Alyssa Kobza, and Kristen Martincic opening First Friday November 4th from 7-10 – with DJ ol’ monin – closing on December 30th.

All 5 women are recent graduates from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln who all work with inventive 2-dimensional imagery involving still-life, nature, figures and pop culture.

Nancy Nguyen

I create realistic paintings and drawings of still-lifes that contain objects I find personal, nostalgic, symbolic, and intriguing. Using mediums like oil paint, graphite, and charcoal, I create compositions that give these objects value, beauty, and everlasting significance.

These objects come from many sources: my personal belongings, my childhood home, thrift stores, and nature. Personal objects are objects that make up my identity, culture, personality, and important events of my life. Such objects may include trinkets, pins, jewelry, keychains, splints, and more. Objects from my childhood home bring up feelings of nostalgia. Whenever I look back on these objects, I remember all the fun memories I had with my family and friends. Such objects include toys, hair products, and school awards. Objects that I find in thrift stores are intricately designed and mysterious. I like setting them up in compositions that give them hidden symbols and meanings. And finally, objects found in nature. These objects include leaves, branches, broken glass, litter, and more. These objects are intriguing in how they have vastly different textures that seem to mesh really well together.

With my eye for realism and the stimulating need to always challenge myself in painting and drawing, I examine these objects on a personal and in-depth level, in hopes that viewers can see how important, meaningful, and beautiful these objects from many locations can be.

Jingming “Mimi” Yu

Jingming “Mimi” Yu is a Northeastern Chinese-American artist born and based locally in Lincoln, Nebraska, and an undergraduate Sociology student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her work explores the effects and themes of generational trauma and isolation through playful surrealism. Mimi is inspired by the figurative paintings of Zhang Xiaogang and the sketches left by the former home owner of the second house she lived in, hoping to emulate that combination of disconnected distortion and attachment in her art.

Maria Guiza Beltran

Maria Guiza Beltran is an artist and designer born in Guanajuato Mexico who currently resides in Lincoln Nebraska. She received her BA in Fine Art (December 2021) and Graphic Design (May 2022) with a minor in Mathematics at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. Beltran works both traditionally and digitally, focusing on themes about her family, nature, and emotion. Her paintings and drawings are based in realism with a mixture of surrealism. Beltrans work has been exhibited at the Eisentrager-Howard Gallery (2021), the Scholastics Art Awards Exhibition (2017), Doing the Arts Exhibition at Nebraska Wesleyan University (2017), First Friday at Bennett Martin Public Library (2017).

Caitlin Hoppe

My work explores images that are reflections of our world’s past and a vision of what the future could be. I create works on paper of uncanny inventive landscapes using ink, watercolor, and gouache.

Chloe Isossi

“Using intergenerational pop and contemporary culture, my work combines improbable but believable experiences. Blending elements of realism and surrealism in a system of painted collage, I construct atypical but convincing environments that include advertisement and fashion. I incorporate beauty from all eras, often intermingling mid-20th century “Americana” advertisements with contemporary aesthetics. I use subtle humor throughout my paintings and allow it to blend into my artistic influences in order to subvert or enhance the original messaging. I am challenged by the unbelievable and unthinkable, and approach painting in a way that makes it feel routine.”

Tugboat Gallery Proudly Presents “Staying Afloat” featuring David Jester, Alyssa Kobza, and Kristen Martincic opening First Friday November 4th from 7-10 – with DJ ol’ monin – closing on November 29th.

“Staying Afloat” examines the experience of pools through a feminist and queer lens as it relates to vulnerability, memory, and sensuality with works on paper integrating painting and printmaking.

David Jester

David Jester was born in Palm Springs, CA (1960) and raised in San Diego, He has always had a California esthetic. David moved back east to get his BFA from VCU and my MFA from Rutgers at Rutgers. While in grad school his work was focused on queer life, particularly in the time of AIDS. This current series of paintings of men in swimming pools is a world that exist next to and yet a part of the broader world, much like the gay community. David Jester- “For the past 4 years I have been working on a series of paintings that explore Queer identity. I loved swimming growing up, but pools have also always appealed to me in the way they isolate a group of people and become their own community for a moment in time, an “other” world. That is in some ways how I view the gay community, separate yet part of the wider world.”

Alyssa Kobza

Alyssa Kobza is an artist based in Lincoln, Nebraska. She received her BFA with an emphasis in Printmaking in 2021 and completed the Printer Training Program at the Tamarind Institute in 2022. Kobza’s work has been featured in multiple group exhibitions including at Gallery 9 (2019), Tippetts & Eccles Galleries (2021), and Eisentrager-Howard Gallery (2016, 2019, 2020, 2021). Kobza’s work is included in the Thomas P. Coleman print collection at the Sheldon Museum of Art. She participated in the Undergraduate Creative Activities and Research Experience (UCARE) at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln in 2019, 2020, and 2021. Alyssa Kobza- “I create art as a fill-in for language. Many times my chaotic mind is a barrier, and I can’t put words in the right order to convey the emotion happening inside me. Art has become my stand-in for those unsaid words. To me, art is essential for processing emotions through both the act of making and the tangible outcome. My artistic practice is process oriented; I find comfort and a sense of spiritual ritual through the repetitive motions of lithography: graining a stone, counteretching a plate, etching over-and-over, and printing for hours-on-end. These are the times when I feel most grounded in myself, the most at peace with turmoil happening inside and outside of my mind.”

Kristen Martincic

Kristen Martincic is a multidisciplinary artist working at the intersection of printmaking, painting, and sculpture. Her artwork considers the psychological and visceral experience of swimming. Her work has been widely shown in solo & group exhibitions throughout the US as well as in Canada, France, and Egypt. She currently lives & works in Columbia, MO. Kristen Martincic- “Using a hybrid of printmaking, drawing & textiles, I make paper bathing suits & objects associated with water that draw on the sensations of swimming & floating. These impractical suits reference swimwear from the early 20th century when modesty required more of the female figure to be covered. They act as a surrogate for the body and expose vulnerabilities; reflecting shifting personal, cultural, & generational attitudes toward the body.”