Form+Content Gallery

Karen Searle’s WARM Connections:

I was starting to do some serious fiber art work and was teaching some fiber classes locally and at national conferences when I joined WARM in 1990. I considering being part of the WARM Mentor Program as a protegée when I was asked to be a mentor! I was involved in the WARM Mentor Program from 1991- 2017. In its last 6 years I served as its co director with Tina Nemetz. I thoroughly enjoyed working closely with the artists- both mentors and protegeés, and I cherish the many friendships that ensued.

I also served on the WARM board in the late 1990s. I will always be grateful for many the opportunities provided by WARM to exhibit in its group show venues over the years.

IMAGE: “Self Portrait at 64, Will you still …,” Fiber, wire lace & crochet, 19” diameter, 2011

ARTIST WEBSITE: karensearle.com

Jo-Ann Reske-Kirkman’s WARM Connections:

I was first introduced to Feminist Art while a student at The University of St. Catherine. Following Graduate School at the University of Minnesota, I joined WARM. I needed the connection of like-minded artists and the support that the WARM members offered. The regular meetings invoked a camaraderie of artists seeking similar goals: to be heard, seen and challenged in the art world. WARM offered exhibition opportunities, exciting grants, and assistance with the technical aspects of exhibiting one’s work.

My memorable contribution to WARM is an exhibition I curated and organized with Laura Mayo titled, WARM Guerrillas/ Feminist Visions, at The Grain Belt Building in Minneapolis, March 4, 2016. The Guerrilla Girls attended and all WARM artists were invited to exhibit work.

IMAGE: “From Ce’ide Fields I,” 14”x 8” x 6”, 2024

ARTIST WEBSITE: reskekirkman.com

ARTIST INFORMATION: Casket Arts Building #416, 681 17th Ave NE, Minneapolis, MN 55413

Please join us for a conversation with Rebecca Pavlenko and Jill Waterhouse when they will speak on the Global WARM Scroll Project, followed by a presentation by members of the on-going Second WAVE Collective.

EVENT TIME:
June 18, 6:00pm to 8:00pm, 2026

The Global WARM Scroll Project:
The Global WARM Scroll Project was an international art initiative associated with the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota. The project aimed to bring together women from across the globe to collaborate on a multi-paneled traveling scroll symbolizing unity and addressing shared experiences. It was highlighted at The Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, China in 1995, focusing on recognizing common ground and imagining a way forward through art.

“WARM Connections,” is an exhibition highlighting work by thirty-three artists representing the many affiliate groups connected to WARM / The Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota, the groundbreaking feminist arts collective founded in Minneapolis in the 1970s. The artists in this exhibit represent a sampling of the hundreds of women artists who brought WARM and its values into their personal, professional and artistic lives. Artists in “WARM Connections” represent WARM’s Associate Membership, Founding Members of WAVE Gallery in Lowertown St. Paul, the WARM Mentor/Protegee Program, the WARM Global Scroll Project, Hue & Eye, Second WAVE, and Art to Change the World (ACW).

EXHIBITING ARTISTS:
Lynnette K. Black, Anne Black-Sinak, Elizabeth Blair, Barbra Bloy, Brenna Busse, Francene Christianson, Sara Church, Michele Combs, Gail Diez, Kelly Frankenberg, Mary Holmgren, Susan Huhn-Bowles, Anne Kleinhenz, Barb Kobe, Ann Popadiuk Larson, Brenda Litman, Layl McDill, Marcy Nelson-Garrison, Laurel O’Gorman, Alis Olsen, Pat Owen, Rebecca Pavlenko, Teri Snell Power, Jo-Ann Reske-Kirkman, Ellen Schillace, Karen Searle, Linda Seebauer Hansen, Joan Seifert, Krista Spieler, Jill Stebbins, Emily Talley, Karen Wilcox, Jill Waterhouse

FORM+CONTENT GALLERY
210 2nd Street North
Minneapolis, MN 55401

GALLERY HOURS: Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays 12pm-6pm

[email protected]

612-436-1151

Teri Power’s WARM Connections:

In the 1980’s, good friends introduced me to their friend Gabriele Ellertson. Gabriele encouraged me to apply for the WARM mentor program. It worked! Marty Nash and I were linked for the time of 1984-85. In my career as elementary art teacher I worked with Lynn Jermal and she enriched my understanding of teaching, art and life. Now what? I wanted more. I lived an hour away from the Twin Cities and after retirement, yearned for a connection and to make better work. I had joined WARM and via a newsletter I saw Jantje Visscher offered a class in her studio teaching her newly developed technique called “Cast Intaglio”.

Now a new mentor has appeared before me and I strove to get her to take me on in a modified extended mentoring. This continued for many years. I had always lamented not having a BFA and with Jantje I received one, albeit informally.

From Jantje I learned how to developed my own ideas, how to manifest them and become more confident in my abilities which made me more independent. I am forever grateful to her for this.

So you can see throughout my last 45 years WARM has been the vehicle I was able to lean on and has sustained me throughout its many iterations.

IMAGE: “Overreach,” Cast cattail fiber, black walnut dye, clay pigment, 6.5” x 7.5” diameter, 2021

Rebecca Pavlenko’s WARM Connections:

I volunteered for the WARM board because I believed in its mission and wanted to join with other women to make the art world more equitable. I served as Vice Chair, Chair, organized the Annual Juried Show at MCAD Gallery with Judith Golden as the artist/ juror, served as a mentor in the Mentor/ Protegée Program and contributed to a variety of other programs. I also headed up the Global WARM Scroll project and made a book about it which is now in the Minnesota Historical Society. The Ramsey County Historical Society will house the scroll in their permanent archives. I was WARM’s official representative to the 1995 International Women’s Conference in Beijing, China where the scroll was exhibited. Through WARM I acquired the knowledge to present my art, developed my leadership skills and learned to think big and take risks. I expanded my writing abilities contributing to the WARM journal. I networked and made life-long friends, and was always inspired by the work of the women artist around me. I wouldn’t be the artist I am today without it. The women who started WARM changed not only those of us who took part in it, but the world. Kudos! Email: [email protected].

IMAGE: “Torn Apart,” Photography, 25” x 19”, 2024

ARTIST WEBSITE: rebeccapavlenko.com

Pat Owen’s WARM Connections:

The single most enduring moment of WARM history is, for me, when the Guerrilla Girls made a surprise appearance at the WARM exhibit at the No Name Soap Factory in 2003. We’d all heard of these anonymous female artists championing women’s art, but to have some of them visit in person was an honor.

WARM’s deepest influence has been in my art practice: I have been fortunate to have many strong WARM artists as my teachers, including: Hazel Belvo at the Grand Marais Artists Colony program “Mentored”, Pat Olsen and Elizabeth Erickson as leaders and teachers in the Women’s Art Institute, and Sally Brown in her class, “Drawing for the Truly Terrified,” in the Split Rock Arts program. From each of these WARM artists, I learned that I could claim my part in the often overlooked but magnificent history of women’s art, and that my own work had value.

IMAGE: “Transition #2,” Oil on canvas, 13.25” x 13.25, 2025

ARTIST WEBSITE: patowenart.com

Alis Olsen’s WARM Connections:

I am one of the early WARM Associate Members. In 1983, wishing for more active participation in the art world, a group of those members joined to become WAVE. We found a large ware-house space in Lowertown St. Paul and created a gallery — doing all the carpentry work ourselves! At the time there was much discussion about what kind of organization we should become. There was general agreement that we should be less structured, more open and more supportive for more artists than WARM was able to be. The year that we were in business we showed the work of over a hundred women artists, had artist talks and panel discussions. After the rent was doubled and we were all exhausted, we met and decided to close. We all learned so much from the experience and some of us continued to meet to support one another. The group, now called Second WAVE, still meets monthly with several of the original members as well as new additions.

IMAGE: “Thoreau’s Log,” Wood , wood burned, 5” x 16”x 8”, 2018

Laurel O’Gorman’s WARM Connections:

After receiving my MFA from the University of Minnesota in 1979, I was hired as gallery director of the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery at St. Catherine University from 1980 -1990.

During that time I became well acquainted with the WARM Gallery in Minneapolis. And during that decade my colleagues were willing to support my endeavor to exhibit the works of many of the WARM members.

In addition to the exhibitions that educated our students regarding women in the Twin Cities art scene I taught a gallery class. We would regularly make a trip over to WARM gallery in Minneapolis and students would be allowed to review the slides in their library of WARM members’ work. The final class assignment was to create a potential exhibition on paper that could be installed in the gallery using those examples.

In later years I was mentored through the WARM program by Karen Sontag-Sattel and Marcia Soderman. I had been away from my own work during my teaching years and the program helped guide me back into my own practice. It also allowed me to participate in several exhibitions. (1991, 1994)

In recent years I have been with Second Wave meeting monthly with gifted women of commitment and determination.

WARM has been an inspiration for me and so many others over the years. I am in awe and gratitude to those founding members who showed us the way.

IMAGE: ISOLATION II, watercolor (includes luminescent pigment), colored pencil, metallic) on BFK Rives (torn paper), 17” h x 15”w, 2023