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Sharon Burns Knutson

Sharon Burns-Knutson was born in 1948 in Iowa City, Iowa. She grew up mostly in Cedar Rapids, the only Irish family in a Czech neighborhood, and is the second oldest of five children (a sixth died at age three). Starting at the University of Northern Iowa in chemistry, she later switched to art and received her B.A. in art. After teaching for five years, she went to the University of Iowa and received her M.A. and M.F.A. in painting in 1981.
In 1988, she completed two more years at Iowa in order to be qualified to teach kindergarten. She is married and has two teenaged sons. She teaches grade school art part-time in Iowa City, and loves to run with her dog, Annabelle. She is a painter mostly in oil and gouache. Several galleries carry her work, including Olson-Larsen in Des Moines, Artisans' Gallery in Iowa City, Campbell-Steele in Marion, and Nina Liu in South Carolina.

"Thunder Dances at the Water's Edge"

Susan Coleman
"In this painting I tried to suggest the enthusiasm of my beloved dog Thunder, as he encounter's most things.
He celebrates whatever moment he happens to be in and endeavors to make the best of it.
This is the spirit that carries us forward in trying times, and  allows us to enjoy the good when it comes."

Sue Coleman is a painter who lives and works in Mount Vernon, Iowa. She holds a BFA from Webster College, St. Louis, and MFA from the University of Iowa. Sue has served as Gallery Coordinator for the Art Department at Cornell College since February 2000. She also teaches Drawing and Studio Basics. Her work can be seen at Chait Galleries Downtown, Iowa City, CornerHouse Gallery, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Quad City Arts, Rock Island, Illinois. Sue’s drawings and paintings focus on landscape themes encountered in her immediate environment. She is often accompanied in her artistic adventures, by a three year-old Golden Retriever named Thunder.

Michael Herring

I was born and raised in Iowa and Illinois. I graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2000, where I studied illustration and graphic design. I lived in Brooklyn for 2 years, and I just moved to Iowa City. I do web design and occasional illustration. This site is meant as a showcase for the pen and ink work I draw in my free time.

Shirley Hilton

Shirley Hilton has been writing for most of her life. A native Iowan who studied literature and languages at the University of Iowa, she has worked as a teacher and translator in Mexico, a technical writer, a corporate trainer, a business analyst, and a project manager.

Jim Jacobmeyer

Over the past 35 years of teaching, I've worked with over 5000 students and continue to enjoy the challenges of building relationships in the education and arts communities.  As president of New Bohemia, it has been gratifying to see the growth of the district.  We have a very talented group that continues to advocate for change and improvement.  Our vision is to provide Cedar Rapids with an authentic arts and cultural district that encourages creativity, innovation, and celebrates our diverse cultural heritage.

Gordon Kellenberger

My inspiration comes from what I know best; the earth and architecture of the upper Midwest region offered in an endless variety of changing light, color, and topography.
I tend to simplify my subjects and infuse them with bright and fresh colors. The resulting intensity and richness convey my delight in painting and my desire to express something good about rural America.
My work begins with a sound structure or composition and then becomes a work of contrasts; light against dark, warm against cool, sharp against soft, rough against smooth, organic against geometric... this along with the immediacy and intensity of the pastel medium makes painitng both challenging and enjoyable.
My hope is that the viewer will experience something familiar in a new way!

Robert Kocher

Kocher earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Missouri. After working for the Federal Government he joined the Faculty of Culver-Stocktion College in Canton, Mo., and then joined the Coe faculty in 1955. He retired from active teaching in 1996 and has practiced as the curator of the Coe College Art Collection for about 20 years.

Peter Thompson

Apart from a seven year sojourn in the deep south, Peter Thompson has spent all of his life as a painter and teacher in southeast Iowa. He has been a professor of Art at Coe College for the last fifteen years and currently chairs the Art department. His work can be seen at the Campbell-Steele gallery, and also at the Paramount theater, the History Center, and the University of Iowa College of Law.

Leonardo Torcuato
"I take the freedom of the artist as a social commitment to say of you but also of me of us and of them, in order that in the world we can fit many worlds.

Leonardo Torcuato is a native of Coyoacan, Distrito Federal, the home of many notable Mexican writers, musicians, actors, poets and painters, including Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. The town – like Torcuato’s Art – is stepped in Mexican culture.
In Mexico, Torcuato worked at various times as a film and theater actor, a union leader, and a social activist before launching his art career in the 1990’s. In 2000, he started a workshop on textures with Juarez painter and artist Manuel Piña. He has had one-man art shows at the Museum of Archeology in Juarez, the University of Technology in Juarez, and throughout Mexico and the United States. In 2003, he founded a sculpture group in Juarez and began teaching sculpture at the Municipal Center for the Arts.
Torcuato came to Cedar Rapids in 2005 after his wife, Ana, was assigned to a job at Whirlpool Refrigeration in Amana. Their son, Leonardo Jr. was born in Cedar Rapids that same year.
Since coming to Cedar Rapids, Torcuato has been extremely active in the arts community. He was named the Paul Enlge Center’s first Artist-in-Residence after the June Flood of 2008 destroyed most of his family’s possessions. As an extension of this appointment, Torcuato has painted a mural at the center that is inspired by Paul Engle’s poem, "Song of the Cedar".
His most recently work is being exhibit at the Paul Engle Center and is inspired by the flood which he crated using mud from local parks and the Cedar River.

Stan Weiderspan

Cedar Rapids artist and former Cedar Art Association directior Stan Wiederspan has embarkwd upon a radically new series of paintings: hyper realistic acrylic paintings representing ordinary cardboard boxes. While seemingly mundane, the box nonetehless evokes of many specific associations for the viewer. Dramatically lit, these ordinary objects take on a spiritual feeling.