Submitted Photos These photographs are part of the exhibition “The Great Open: Photographs from North Dakota” by photographers Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb at the Northwest Arts Center, Minot.
“The Great Open: Photographs from North Dakota” is on display at the Walter Piehl Gallery of the Northwest Arts Center through Saturday, September 21.
The culmination of a multi-year project by internationally renowned photographers Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, the exhibition is touring the state as part of the North Dakota Museum of Art’s Rural Arts Initiative.
In 2019, the museum commissioned the artists with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts to create a series of photographs that explore the essence of North Dakota’s landscape, people, and way of life today. The Great Open combines their distinctive photographic styles to create a multi-layered portrait of North Dakota.
In the exhibition, Rebecca Norris Webb takes a poetic and intimate look at the nature of North Dakota. Her work often explores where the natural world and the inner landscape meet in times of change and upheaval, such as with her book and NDMOA exhibition, “My Dakota: An elegy for my brother who died unexpectedly.”
Drawn to the vastness of the mixed-grass prairie and the broken, surreal beauty of the South Dakota Badlands while mourning the loss of her brother, she began this project by taking photographs in the North Dakota Badlands. Norris Webb photographed other North Dakota landscapes marked by loss and memory, including Lincoln Drive Park, once home to some 350 homes lost in the 1997 Red River Flood in Grand Forks, and Fort Totten Historical Site, once an Indian boarding school.
Submitted Photos These photographs are part of the exhibition “The Great Open: Photographs from North Dakota” by photographers Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb at the Northwest Arts Center, Minot.
Alex Webb, who grew up primarily in New England, has photographed in more than 50 countries and 200 cities around the world. Webb takes a more global and often urban approach in North Dakota. During two trips, he photographed in the parks, neighborhoods and flea markets of the state’s more populous cities and towns, including Fargo, Grand Forks, Bismarck, Minot and Williston. He also photographed at various festivals and other events throughout the state, including the Icelandic Festival in Mountain, the Spirit Lake Professional Bull Riders at the Spirit Lake Reservation, the Morton County Fair and Rodeo in New Salem and the Twin Buttes Powwow south of the Missouri River at the Fort Berthold Reservation.
Additional programs are planned while “The Great Opening” is in Minot and includes a public reception, several presentations and workshops. The artists will participate in the public reception on Thursday, September 5th from 6:30-8:00 p.m. at the Walter Piehl Gallery.
The couple will present a selection of their work in two public lectures on Friday, September 6. As part of the Art Seminar Series, they will present “The blind man and the bus” at 12 noon in the newly renovated Hartnett Hall. The seminar will present a mix of projects from the Webbs, some solo, some collaborative.
A social gathering and refreshments precede “The Poetics of Light” at 7 p.m. in the Hartnett Hall Collaboration Space on the second floor. The evening photo viewing and book reading includes five groups of works.
Two photography workshops will be held in Hartnett Hall on Saturday, September 7. Interested community members are asked to contact Minot State Professor Ryan Stander for more information. Space is limited, so registration is required.
Submitted Photos These photographs are part of the exhibition “The Great Open: Photographs from North Dakota” by photographers Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb at the Northwest Arts Center, Minot.
The exhibition can be viewed at the Northwest Arts Center from Tuesday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Saturdays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The center is closed on holidays.
The Walter Piehl Gallery is located in the basement of the Gordon B. Olson Library at Minot State University and has its own entrance on the south side of the library. The exhibition and related events are free and open to the public.
The exhibition is made possible by the North Dakota Museum of Art and the Rural Arts Initiative. It is part of the Rural Arts Initiative and is funded by the State of North Dakota.
Submitted Photos These photographs are part of the exhibition “The Great Open: Photographs from North Dakota” by photographers Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb at the Northwest Arts Center, Minot.
