VAR GALLERY
2ND STREET
2025 Emerging Artists Exhibition
Opening Reception: February 7, 2025 6-9 PM
Var Gallery annually presents its Emerging Artists Exhibition, featuring select artists from both Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and UW Milwaukee. Artists are chosen based on unique vision, socially engaging concepts, innovative techniques, active studio practice, and participation within a broader artistic network. Curator and Gallery owner Josh Hintz speaks on the need to showcase new talent, “Milwaukee's creative culture has been on the rise and thriving. It is increasingly important that we continue to support the emerging artists that are ambitiously doing their part to perpetuate this collective effort through community involvement and engaging work.”
Participating Artists:
Kira Straub
Kira Straub recently graduated from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee earning a BFA in Studio Art with concentrations in Sculpture, Ceramics and Community Art. Within the last year their work has been included in shows at the Trout Museum of Art, Center for Visual Arts Wausau, and the Museum of Wisconsin Art. Their first work of public art was included in Sculpture Milwaukee’s 2023 exhibition Dear, Nature located at the 3rd St. Market Hall in downtown Milwaukee. Straub is currently Assistant Studio Manager at local community art studio Tooth + Nail Milwaukee, where they spend their days arm deep in buckets of clay.
Ellee Spalding
Ellee Spalding is a Milwaukee-based artist that recently completed her BFA at UWM in painting and drawing and ceramics in 2024. She uses an experimental approach to explore control and randomness through both painting and ceramic work. She has also completed her Bachelor of arts degree in psychology.
Spalding’s position as a gallery assistant at Real Tinsel in 2023 offered her insight into curation and the functioning of artist-run spaces. She also has an abundance of experience in community engagement and teaching, most clearly through her residency in 2021 at EastCastle Place in Milwaukee. She occasionally still holds art programming at EastCastle for residents. This year Ellee will continue to build onto her teaching experience through a partnership with MIAD and MKE REC., which aims to bring art to students via after-school programs in Milwaukee Public Schools.
Jayden Ellsworth
Jayden Ellsworth received their B.F.A. from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. Jayden has been involved in several group exhibitions including "Faux Real", "Holocene to Anthropocene" and "Multiplied" at Between Two Galleries. In addition, Jayden's work was displayed at the Mohr Room for Art in 2023. Most recently, Jayden won the MIAD Alumni Thesis Award for their 2024 Thesis, "What's left behind". Currently based in Mount Pleasant, MI, Jayden continues to make found object pieces focusing on materiality and sustainability.
Jade Pergl
Jade Pergl is a painter who lives and works in Milwaukee, WI. She holds a BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. Her work emerges from concepts of femininity, magic, and imagination, which become intertwined with personal narratives and emotions. Pergl’s work relies on the conceptual application of color and form, focusing on hyper-feminine colors and the use of flat negative space.
Kelly Morrissey
Kelly Morrissey (she/her) is a painter and textile artist who captures the contemporary Midwestern lifestyle and female friendship through her beadwork, quilting, and portraiture. Her work is a record of her life through the use of upcycled materials, vibrant surrealism, and scrapbook composition style.
Kelly has exhibited locally at Milwaukee City Hall, Yours Truly Studio, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Small Works Gallery, and the Wisconsin Quilt Museum. She also spent the summer of 2024 assisting Heidi Parkes, the 15th Artist in Residence at the Pfister Hotel.
Caroline Calvano
Caroline Calvano is a sculpture artist based in Milwaukee, WI. Her practice engages with the themes of beauty, adornment, value, function, and the feminine body. Metal sculpture allows her to assert her physical strength and investigate the connection between labor and value. Calvano has exhibited her work at The Jazz Gallery, Frederick Layton Gallery, UWM Union Gallery and Between Two Galleries.