Director Ruth De Young Kohler and her staff, led by senior curator Leslie Umberger, have made their way through 1,188 submissions by 438 state artists, and accepted 530 for showing. It' s a daunting task, made more difficult by the fact that the number of eligible counties has been increased this year to eight. There are works from urban and rural settings, industrial and farming environments. Kohler, whose tenure at the arts center spans three decades, is an old hand at fielding such aesthetic hardballs. The print media, films, television and the Internet, she acknowledged, all have conspired to break down the distances that once produced cultural isolation.
Different regions are increasingly alike.
Still, there is a sense of regional imagery in some pieces. And in some media. For example, Kohler said, pottery has retained a regional identity in western Wisconsin and parts of Iowa. Thinking global, creating local Kohler singled out fiber artist Richard Daehnert of Sheboygan County as representing a kind of modern-day regionalism. Underscoring this feeling is the fact that he submitted three pieces, all on different kinds of work gloves.