KVNO

Frida y Diego Community Art Show Opening
2024-05-09 16:00 - 21:00, 2024-05-10 16:00 - 21:00, 2024-05-11 16:00 - 21:00, 2024-05-12 16:00 - 21:00, 2024-05-13 16:00 - 21:00, 2024-05-14 16:00 - 21:00, 2024-05-15 16:00 - 21:00, 2024-05-16 16:00 - 21:00 (America/Chicago) and 5 more dates | Joslyn Castle, 3902 Davenport St, Omaha, NE, 68131, United States
This captivating exhibition seeks to bring another layer of excitement, awareness and engagement to Opera Omaha’s production of the beautiful opera El último sueño de Frida y Diego (The Last Dream of Frida and Diego), a new opera by Gabriela Lena Frank and Nilo Cruz.For this show artists were encouraged to seek inspiration from the opera’s story as well as commemorate the passionate and tumultuous relationship between these two iconic artists, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.Artists from all backgrounds to submited their visual art of any medium influenced by the fascinating love story of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, in a unique opportunity to express their interpretation of the icons’ passionate bond, their artistic endeavors, and their profound influence on each other’s work, the fascinating and beautiful story depicted in The Last Dream of Frida and Diego, and Día de los MuertosThis art show is being produced in collaboration with Opera Omaha, Joslyn Castle, and The Castle and Cathedral Creative District.Frida and DiegoDates: April 12-May 23rdLocation: Carriage House Gallery, Joslyn Castle, Omaha NebraskaOpening Reception: Friday April 12th, 4-9pmClosing Reception: Thursday May 23rd, details TBAA small selection of art from this exhibition will be chosen to be featured at the Orpheum Theater during Opera Omaha’s performances of El último sueño de Frida y Diego.

Arts for ME! : Artist Reception and Exhibition
2024-05-09 17:00 - 19:00 | KANEKO, 1111 Jones St, Omaha, NE, 68102, United States
Please join us as we proudly present, “Arts For ME!”
This is a celebration of our third official year of Adapted Art at Westside
High School, our first official year at Westside Middle School and our first
semester at Millard North Middle School.
This exhibit is made possible through a grant from the Westside Community
Schools Foundation, private donors, the generous support of the KANEKO
Organization, the Nebraska Arts Council, multiple guest artists, and glass
artist Therman Statom.

Arts for ME! Spring Exhibition
2024-05-10 13:00 - 19:00, 2024-05-11 13:00 - 19:00, 2024-05-12 13:00 - 18:00, 2024-05-16 13:00 - 19:00, 2024-05-17 13:00 - 19:00, 2024-05-18 13:00 - 19:00, 2024-05-19 13:00 - 18:00 | KANEKO, 1111 Jones St, Omaha, NE, 68102, United States
The Arts For ME! mission statement is:
WE EXIST TO EMPOWER MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES WITHIN OUR SCHOOL, AND TO INCREASE THE VISIBILITY AND IMPORTANCE OF THEIR WORK
This organization fosters, cultivates, and advocates for adaptive art programs for alternative students and are driven by their passion to share their philosophy and approach to teaching adaptive art. A truly collaborative effort, AFM employs the ideas, guidance, and expertise of educators and artists from around the world.
AFM’s successful methodology is based on (4) tenets: Collaborating, Lesson Planning, Set Up and Cycles, and Support.
Collaborating:
All programming is only made possible through their collaboration with Special Education teachers, occupational therapists, peer educators, guest artists, and public partners.
Lesson Planning:
Founded on Discipline-Based Art Education, each lesson plan starts by focusing on an artist or art movement and is built out from there. Lesson objectives are to develop individually tailored processes so each learner is able to express themselves with the goal to expose students to new artists and provide unique experiences that allow them to make choices within their work.
Set Up and Cycles:
Structure is integral to successful learning. AFM conducts class once a week led by two certified teachers with no more than 8 students per class. The classroom set up is based on the project and mobility needs of each student. Lessons may last 1-4 weeks with a project cycle of 4 years which ensures that a student can take the class for all 4 high school years and always have a new learning experience.
Support:
Participation from peers, nurses, occupational therapists, educational assistants, and special education teachers supports the organization’s operations and helps build friendships and confidence in each learner as well. AFM is dedicated to cultivating that confidence so students learn how to support themselves and feel it is equally important to provide students with independent space to freely express themselves on their own.
For more information on the Arts for Me! program, please visit www.artsforme.org

Digital Photography
2024-05-11 10:00 - 12:00, 2024-05-11 13:00 - 15:00 | Lauritzen Gardens, 100 Bancroft Street, Omaha, NE, 68108, United States
Pre-registration is required. $30, $25 for garden members.

Still Life Photography (2/10/24)
In this class, you will learn how to create beautiful still life images. Discover how to use classic Rembrandt lighting to create a mood and how to arrange and compose different elements in an image. Then you’ll take a deep dive into depth-of-field to achieve the perfect aesthetic.Required: film or DSLR/Mirrorless camera with your choice of lenses (macro and 50mm+ recommended) along with several objects to include in your image like vases, boxes, keepsakes, treasures, etc.The instructor will provide fresh flowers/greenery. A tripod, extra lenses, reflector, speedlights, or off camera lighting are helpful but not required.
Phone Photography (2/10/24) & (3/9/24) & (5/11/24) 10:00 – 12:00
They say the best camera is the one in your hand– your phone! In this class you will learn how to take beautiful pictures with your smartphone. Led by Michele Zephier, you will learn how to focus, compose, and expose images correctly. You will learn about the different adjustment options, how to use filters, and how to take fun, creative images with fresh perspectives.
Introduction to Portrait Photography (3/9/24) 1:00 – 3:00
In this introductory class you will learn how to create stunning portraits in the gardens! Learn the most important rules of portrait photography: posing, lighting, focusing, and framing your subjects for beautiful results. Learn how to use portrait lenses and how to incorporate the tiniest details like catchlights using reflectors and natural light. Portrait lenses are required like the following: 85mm f1.8, or, 50 mm f1.2, 1.4, or 1.8, or a 70-200mm f2.8.
Phone Photography 2 (4/6/24) 10:00 – 12:00

In this class, we will go beyond simply how to take photos and take a deep dive into editing and ways to take your phone photos to the next level! You will learn the tips and tricks of how to create artistic images both before and AFTER you take a photo. You will leave this class with an understanding of how to use the editing tools on your phone for truly stunning images, how to keep your photos organized, and more. Pre-requisite: Phone Photography 1.

Garden Macro Photography (4/6/24) & (5/11/24) 1:00 – 3:00
In this class you will learn the fundamental techniques of macro photography. Learn how to capture stunning extreme close-up images of the garden’s exquisite florals. You will gain knowledge on using specific settings, macro lenses, why manual focus matters, and creative elements to make your photos stand out.Macro lenses are required like the following: 105mm, 100mm, 90mm, 85mm, 55mm, or any other macro lens including zoom macro lenses. A tripod is helpful, but not required.

Emerging Artists Series
2024-05-11 13:00 - 15:00 | Samuel Bak Museum, 2289 S 67th St, Omaha, NE, 68106, United States
Emerging Artists Series is a free workshop led by regional emerging artists that takes place at Samuel Bak Museum: the Learning Center. The workshop will begin with a tour of the current exhibition followed by an art-making session.
Eduardo Gardea is a painter and mixed media artist who focuses on individual perspective and storytelling in his work. He seeks to communicate modern and historic stories of personal and societal struggle and victory. Using a variety of mediums, Gardea summons a collective of ongoing ideas and feelings within the viewer.
Gardea’s interactive workshop will offer participants the opportunity to reconceptualize how they participate and reflect on the creative act. Through movement, writing, and drawing, participants will work on the exchange of memory and discuss their hopes for their future selves. RSVP required. (20 participants max)

Springfest Art & Craft Show
2024-05-18 10:00 - 17:00 | Rockbrook Village, 2800 S 110th Ct, Omaha, NE, 68144, United States
Join us at Springfest and shop over 60 local artists and crafters. Shop handmade goods including jewelry, pottery, glass, wood, photography, paintings and more.

Raven Halfmoon: Flags of Our Mothers
2024-05-18 11:00 - 17:00, 2024-05-19 11:00 - 17:00 | Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, 724 S. 12th Street, Omaha, NE, 68102, United States
Raven Halfmoon’s practice spans torso-scaled and colossal-sized stoneware sculptures, with some soaring up to nine feet and weighing over eight hundred pounds. With inspirations that orbit centuries from ancient Indigenous pottery to Moai statues to Land Art, Halfmoon interrogates the intersection of tradition, history, gender, and personal experience.
Born and raised in Norman, Oklahoma, she learned about ceramics as a teenager from a Caddo elder. Working mainly in portraiture, Halfmoon hand builds each work using a coil method. Her surfaces are expressive and show deep finger impressions and dramatic dripping glazes—a physicality that presences her as both maker and matter. She fuses Caddo pottery traditions (a history of making mostly done by women) with populist gestures—often tagging her work (a reference to Caddo tattooing).
Her palette is specific and matches both the clay bodies she selects and the glazes she fires with—reds (after the Oklahoma soil and the blood of murdered Indigenous women), blacks (referencing the natural clay native to the Red River), and creams. Sometimes she stacks and repeats imagery, creating totemic forms that represent herself and her maternal ancestry while also reinforcing the multiplicities that exist inside all of us. Her works reference stories of the Caddo Nation, specifically her feminist lineage and the power of its complexities.
This exhibition will include a combination of new and borrowed works that vary in size and content from over the last five years. Halfmoon will also be creating some of her largest works to date commissioned by The Aldrich and Bemis Center. The artist’s first museum catalogue will accompany the exhibition.
Raven Halfmoon is curated by Amy Smith-Stewart, Chief Curator at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, and Rachel Adams, Chief Curator and Director of Programming at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.
Raven Halfmoon. E-a’-titi (sister), 2021. Stoneware, glaze. 30 x 26 x 58 inches. Courtesy of the artist. Photography by Alan Koppel.
Learn more about Raven Halfmoon’s work here.
About Flags of Our Mothers
The Caddo Origin Story

About the Artist
Raven Halfmoon (Caddo Nation) is from Norman, Oklahoma. She attended the University of Arkansas where she earned double bachelor’s degrees in ceramics and cultural anthropology. She has garnered an impressive series of awards and accolades, including being named the 2018 Fund the Change recipient from the Activist and Social Justice Arts Organization in Oklahoma, a Burke Prize finalist at the Museum of Arts and Design, in New York, NY, the American Craft Council Emerging Voices Award, and Ceramics Monthly Emerging Artist—all in 2019. She just concluded a two-year residency at Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts in Montana.

Paul Stephen Benjamin: Black of Night
2024-05-18 11:00 - 17:00, 2024-05-19 11:00 - 17:00 | Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, 724 S. 12th Street, Omaha, NE, 68102, United States
Paul Stephen Benjamin’s practice is an ongoing investigation of blackness through concept, thought, and perception. From wordplay with the actual letters that comprise “BLACK,” to utilizing the expanse of shades of black house paint—including as Nightfall, Soot, Ebony Field, and Black Beauty—to posing the question, “If the color black had a sound, what would it be?,” Benjamin calls attention to the color’s deep historical and social resonance. In addition, across his practice, the artist’s work references integral moments in Black history as well as art history.
In Black of Night, Benjamin presents new and recent video installations, paintings, text-based work, and sculpture as conceptual entry points for dialogue around identity, race, and patriotism. By continually “documenting” the color black through his multifaceted practice, he is also deconstructing its meaning—breaking it down to its simplest form and allowing for it to operate as a medium for interpretation and introspection. Focusing on the connotations of the color black in society, culture and language, Benjamin incorporates history, text, imagery and sound from popular culture, in turn discussing the absence and presence of color.

About the Artist
Paul Stephen Benjamin was born in Chicago, IL, and lives and works in Atlanta, GA. He earned his BA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his MFA from Georgia State University in 2013. Recently Benjamin has exhibited at Hammonds House Museum, Atlanta, GA (2023), Blackness at the Montresso Art Foundation, Marrakesh, Morocco, (2023), The Thoma Foundation Art Vault, Santa Fe, NM (2022–2023), and a solo exhibition at the Van Every-Smith Galleries, Davidson College, Davidson, NC (2022).
He has been included in solo and group exhibitions at a variety of institutions and art spaces, including Prospect.5 New Orleans, LA (2021–2022). Gavlak, Los Angeles, CA (2021), The Dirty South at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond VA (2021), David Lusk Gallery, Nashville, TN (2021), Crystal Bridges Museum and the Momentary, Bentonville, AR (2020), The MAC, Belfast, UK (2019), VC Institute for Contemporary Art, Richmond, VA (2019), The Havana Biennial in Matanzas, Cuba (2019), Marianne Boesky Gallery, NY, NY (2019), Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA (2018), Telfair Museum Jepson Center, Savannah, GA (2018), The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY (2017), Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta, GA (2017), High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (2016), among others.
He has received a range of awards and fellowships, including The Hudgens Prize (2019), Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant (2019), Hambidge Distinguished Fellowship (2019), The Southern Art Prize (2018), The State Fellow of Georgia (2018), Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (WAP) Fellow (2017), Artadia Award (2014), Winnie B. Chandler Fellowship, and the Forward Arts Emerging Artists Award.

Omaha Artists Inc Spring Show
2024-05-19 13:00 - 15:00 | Cali Commons, 518 North 40th St, Omaha, NE, 68131, United States
Art Show -Visual Art
Omaha Artists Inc Spring Show
held at Calli Commons, 518 North 40th Street, Omaha, NE (402-513-2321)
—-Show: May 12th – May 31st, 2024
Reception: May 19, 2024 —-1-3 pm
