This week’s Wow at the Woodson

Join museum educator Catie Anderson for stories and conversation about “Above the Fold” artworks and multifold design applications.

Team USA Snow Sculptors – Mike Martino, Tom Queoff, and Mike Sponholtz – inspired by Kevin Box’s and Michael G. LaFosse’s sculpture, work wintertime wonders during their 30th year creating snow sculptures at the Woodson Art Museum.

Saturday and Sunday, January 18 & 19

“Above the Fold” artist Jiangmei Wu’s large-scale, origami-inspired artworks are informed by the artist’s research in engineering, mathematics, technology, and the arts. Jiangmei shares her enthusiasm for spatial design in her role as assistant professor of Interior Design at the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design at Indiana University, Bloomington. During her visit, Jiangmei leads a studio workshop for teens and adults and a public presentation on her areas of creative, interdisciplinary research.

During this two-part workshop, artist and founder of Folded Light Art + Design Jiangmei Wu guides teens and adults through the process of folding repeated paper patterns to create structural forms that will serve as hanging light pendants. Total fee: $85 for members; $120 for non-members; includes all materials

and Sunday lunch. Call 715-845-7010 to register.

“Above the Fold” artist and Indiana University Interior Design assistant professor Jiangmei Wu’s interdisciplinary approach to art making incorporates geometry, digital design, and sustainable materials to create striking forms in three-dimensional space. Learn how Jiangmei uses math and foldable origami techniques to transform flat sheets of paper into sculptural pendant lights and how she interprets crease patterns to create elegantly engineered public art installations and architectural structures.

Mining the museum’s holdings yields an array of significant and masterful works. Spanning the 18th through 21st centuries and encompassing a range of mediums from watercolor to oil and metal to wood, “Collection Classics” comprises work by John James Audubon, Martin Johnson Heade, Andrew Wyeth, and others along with work by contemporary artists, including Robert Bateman, Tony Angell, James Morgan, and more.

Carved and painted with a keen eye for ornithological details that convey the behavior, personality, and coloration of birds, these decorative wood sculptures often fool the eye, appearing real. From John Scheeler’s pale-colored mourning doves to Ma Hai Feng’s brilliant yellow and green budgerigar, these realistic sculptures seem poised for flight.

The Woodson Art Museum’s inaugural tactile art exhibition debuts with five avian sculptures, available on a “touch table” in the Decorative Arts Gallery. This touchable artwork installation – the first in an ongoing series – provides ready access to original artwork for visitors with low vision or blindness, also encouraging sighted visitors to experience a new way to “see” via the mind’s eye – visualizing artwork though touch.

While an avian theme unites artworks created between 1875 and 2018, the mediums and points of view will surprise and delight.

The Woodson is at 700 N. 12th St., Wausau. Visit lywam.org.