Raven Halfmoon: Flags of Our Mothers
2024-08-30 11:00 - 17:00, 2024-08-31 11:00 - 17:00, 2024-09-01 11:00 - 17:00, 2024-09-04 11:00 - 17:00, 2024-09-05 11:00 - 21:00, 2024-09-06 11:00 - 17:00, 2024-09-07 11:00 - 17:00 (America/Chicago) | 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
2024-08-30 11:00 - 17:00, 2024-08-31 11:00 - 17:00, 2024-09-01 11:00 - 17:00, 2024-09-04 11:00 - 17:00, 2024-09-05 11:00 - 21:00, 2024-09-06 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.

A Balm In Quiet Beat by Jordan Acker Anderson
2024-08-31 09:00 - 17:00, 2024-09-01 09:00 - 17:00, 2024-09-02 09:00 - 17:00, 2024-09-03 09:00 - 17:00, 2024-09-04 09:00 - 17:00, 2024-09-05 09:00 - 17:00, 2024-09-06 09:00 - 17:00, 2024-09-07 09:00 - 17:00 | Lauritzen Gardens, 100 Bancroft Street, Omaha, NE, 68108, United States
August 21 through September 199 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday and Tuesday9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through SundayOn the gallery walls in the visitor and education centerIncluded with paid admission or garden membership. $15 + tax, $9 + tax for ages 3-12, free for ages 2 and under.Jordan Acker Anderson will exhibit new paintings inspired by the Lauritzen Gardens grounds and botanical collection. The work will be representative of the artist’s style in abstract symbolism, repetitive mark making, and vibrant color. Her paintings are visual meditations on our impermanence, awareness of cyclical time, and connection with nature.Artist StatementIn my practice, I respond to our interconnectedness through the act of painting. My compositions are a call and response between states of disruption and integration. I layer and detach from previous studio sessions to create a mindful aesthetic that reflects our impermanence. My imagery develops through intuitive actions and interpretations of observations drawn from daily life. I use compositions as a way to mark time and create symbolic calendars. I structure compositions on bilateral order and relieved symmetry as these connect to embodiment and nature. My works become visual prayers that hold my concern. The process is a meditation in its act, and the result is an accumulation of mark, memory, and symbolism.About the ArtistJordan Acker Anderson received her BFA in 2002 from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and her MFA in 2007 from the University of Iowa. She is the director and a professor of studio art for Mount Mary University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her work has been published in numerous Studio Visit magazines and the Mid America Print Journal. Her works are included in the University of Iowa public collections for the Art & Art History Department and the Hospitals & Clinics. Group exhibition highlights include Being: A Recognition of Self and Other at Rahr-West Art Museum, Manitowoc, Wisc., 2023 Faculty Biennial at Marian Art Gallery, Milwaukee, Wisc., 30x30x30 at Var Gallery, Milwaukee, Wisc., and A Tiny Rivulet in the Distant Forest at ArtStart, Rhinelander, Wisc. She was selected for the 2016 and 2020 Wisconsin Artists Biennial at the Museum of Wisconsin Art. Her work was in Watercolor Wisconsin 2021 at Racine Art Museum’s Wustum Museum. She was selected as an artist-in-residence for the 2024-2025 ARTservancy program with Gallery 224 in Port Washington, Wisc, which pairs art activists and land trust properties to increase access and awareness for conservation efforts.

Posthumous Commentary by Gabriella Quiroz
2024-08-31 09:00 - 20:00, 2024-09-01 09:00 - 20:00, 2024-09-02 09:00 - 20:00, 2024-09-03 09:00 - 20:00, 2024-09-04 09:00 - 20:00, 2024-09-05 09:00 - 20:00, 2024-09-06 09:00 - 20:00, 2024-09-07 09:00 - 20:00 | Lauritzen Gardens, 100 Bancroft Street, Omaha, NE, 68108, United States
August 21 through September 199 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday and Tuesday9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through SundayOn the gallery walls in the visitor and education centerIncluded with paid admission or garden membership. $15 + tax, $9 + tax for ages 3-12, free for ages 2 and under.Gabriella Quiroz is a Nebraska-based artist. Her work has been featured in numerous group showings throughout Omaha and its surrounding areas. Gabi works primarily in oil paints and colored pencils, developing works of symbolic imagery through flora and fauna.www.gabriellaquiroz.com

FERAL FRIENDS
2024-09-06 19:00 - 22:00 | Petshop Gallery, 2725 N 62nd St, Omaha, NE, 68104, United States
FERAL FRIENDS
Opening Reception
First Friday September 6th
7:00 – 10:00PM
Petshop Gallery
“Feral Friends,” curated by Kim Darling and Alex Jochim at Omaha’s fabulous Petshop Gallery, showcases works by over 40 national and international artists and explores the untamed bonds connecting us to the wild world, focusing on the feral nature of dogs.
Inspired by Donna Haraway’s provocative quote, “Run fast, bite hard,” from The Companion Species Manifesto, the exhibition challenges viewers to tap into their innate ferocity. The artworks on display span various mediums, from paintings and sculptures to photography and performance. Through these works, artists explore themes of companionship, survival, and the blurred boundaries between domestication and wildness.
By partnering with “Muddy Paws” dog rescue, the exhibition aims to make a tangible difference in the lives of dogs in need. A portion of the proceeds from the exhibition will go directly to supporting the rescue and rehabilitation efforts of “Muddy Paws,” ensuring that more dogs find loving homes and receive the care they deserve.
Featuring the works of:
Fred Fleisher, Valerie George, Jean-Francios Lebeuf, Tim Mcevoy, Miranda Swanson, Silvia Rey Plata ‘Aiku’, Wendell Smith, Mauricio Herrero, C. Fischer, Luvflies, Raianna Vierkant, Mark Andrew Steffan, Satisfaction Not Guaranteed, Basil Valentine, Tanner Nosal, moldbaby, Glorian Ceren, Michael Scheef, Derek Courtney, JJ Carroll, Kaitlyn Lang, Cindy Verbaeys, Nika Osswald, Edwin Herrera, Kellie Peach, Kirsten Furlong, Noial Randelli, JLB, A. Mundy, Oscar Davis, David Bruggeman, Em Thomas, Trudy Swanson, JP Gurnett, Kelli Smith, Shawnequa Linder and more.
On Display: Sept 6- Oct 30, 2024
