Located on level one of the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center, the Art Gallery features two exhibitions each year, showcasing exhibitions of national and local artists. The gallery enriches, inspires and enlivens UNMC/Nebraska Medicine patients, visitors, employees and community. The intention is to exhibit work that is of the highest artistic quality and reflects a rich diversity of media, creators, cultures and perspectives. Exhibitions support the healing environment of the hospital by providing guests with inspiring images, enhancing the compassionate care that UNMC/Nebraska Medicine provides. Each exhibition has a “Meet the Artist” event and reception for patients, staff and the community. Artist talks provide the opportunity to gain insight about the art and foster personal introspection on the artistic process and its impact on health and wellness.
Current Exhibition
Finding: Works by Linda Fleming
May 3, 2024 to November 3, 2024
Linda Fleming creates places that are as much air as material: places of shadows and light, where the viewer can become a participant by entering the sculpture. The intangibility of flowing gaseous materials, the shape that a sound might take, or a diagram of the wind are starting points made manifest in these constructions. They are molecular and galactic and attempt to coax the intangible into sturdy structures and durable materials that will not easily disintegrate, as much of the work of women has throughout history. Physical sensation and perception are interdependent… the thing that is seen and the thing that is seeing conjure our world.
Born in 1945 in Pittsburgh, PA, Linda Fleming displayed an aptitude for art at a very early age, and her talents earned her a full scholarship to Carnegie Mellon University in 1963. Fleming is primarily a sculptor although drawing is an important component of her work. She works in steel, wood, rubber, felt and paper. Her sculpture can be identified by intricate patterns resembling lace, tendrils of smoke, or webs. Her practice draws from the desert and mountain environments surrounding her studios in Colorado, Nevada and California.
She has exhibited throughout the United States and her works are included in the collections of the International Quilt Study Center at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Berkeley Art Museum, Oakland Museum of California, Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Nevada Museum of Art, and the Laumeier Sculpture Park, and international collections in Moscow, Bagdad, Sydney, London, and Seoul.
Artist Statement:
I began working in three dimensions in 1967 trying to understand the discovery that space is comprised of the same stuff as matter. I found ways to subvert what appeared flat and what appeared dimensional to test their fixed identity.
The Roman Glass drawings were a way for me to learn a culture and industry by studying the marks the glass objects retained of tools and skilled hands. The glass containers were the vessels that contained their history. The dual meaning of the word vessel from container to conveyance.
Drawing was my first conjuring device and has been my constant companion. It has allowed me to dream, depict, investigate, map, study, and free myself from gravity. My wall sculptures employ reflected color, shadows and shifting layers that use the wall as an active component of the forms. The chrome and mirror stainless steel pieces reflect the world as if looking through a keyhole into another parallel existence.