A brightly colored collage of an old golden yellow and orange armchair.

Armchair in Golden Orange Plaid

There is circular black scratchboard with a white into black drawing of a thorny vine intwining the words " All I Remember were the weeds" starting from top and arching to the right. From the bottom left and arching to the top are the words "Stop Focusing on the" both phrases culminate at the word "Weeds". This is mounted on a scrapbook paper white lined garden tools on grey paper. In the center the canvas, scratchboard, and tool paper has been cut in a manner to show broken, sharp edges revealing a collage of several layers of leaves of one, lime green on dark blue, then further in white lines of leaves on pink echoing the scratchboard technique and farthest back small green fernlike leaves on white background. A Pearl is located on bottom edge of the floral collage surrounded by the jagged edges of the torn image. Along the outside of the grey paper creating a boarder  white marker on black canvas are the words "Beauty Before Us. Beauty Behind Us. Beauty Above Us.
Beauty under Our feet. Feel the Beauty All Around Us. See the Beauty Within. We are Beauty. Beauty will sustain us in the Dark Places of Life. Our Home, Our Planet is Beauty. May We care for it ALL!" A boarder of a floral pattern that relates to the center collage frames the work. 

Mind Frame

A display of heart shaped crop art with the word VOTE spelled out in black beans, children's art and another crop art in the shape of the United States with the word WELCOME.  On the top of the heart is a visiting live  woodpecker, getting a snack.  All the art is on a garden trellis.  

Crop art, kid art, woodpecker

Pikachu with his mouth open in surprise made of natural and hand-painted seeds glued on top of the year 2020 made from red and orange hand-painted and torn paper collage. 


Surprised Pikachu 2020

Sixteen half eggshells with artwork inside. Most eggshells have mark making, painting and/or drawings on the inside of the eggshells including fingerprints, geometric shapes, house forms, and text. Others have objects inside including seed forms and a lock of hair.    

Life

Glass mosaic of a raven with a shiny bauble in its beak. This piece is created with many tiny glass pieces of iridescent colors including purples, greens, blues and black.

Shiny

A portrait of a young woman pulling on her hair and thus tearing herself apart, surrounded by fingerprints against a gray background. 

unrecognizable

The image is based on a photograph of my elderly mother.  I've added a textural background with collaged paper and floral fabric elements to the square artwork.  

Mumsy

A collage showing a wolf pup wearing a black tracksuit with white stripes.  He’s standing in front of a white wall painted with bold, colorful stripes.  There are four green stars surrounding him.

Paulie Wolfnuts

Mosaic of a Yellow Finch sitting on top of pink flowers. Made with stained glass and sitting in a wooden frame made from barn wood. 

Spring Returns

Roadside scene on a lovely country road in northern MN as the autumn palette begins to work its magic.

Ode to the Road Series #4

Heronymus

An image of a golden goddess with white bird wings surrounded by white fur, above inset mirror with draped with golden beads.

Holy See

Encaustic painting on wood panel. Layers of translucent encaustic wax infused with oil and powdered pigments with embedded Washi papers and 23.5K gold powder. Black profile edge.

MAGIC

Small bright, red shards of glass are meticulously spaced and arranged around a square-shaped area golden shards of glass, closely clumped up next to each other.

Chaotic Beauty

Preservation of Dumpling invariants, including dough, ground pork, mushrooms, cabbage leaves,  green onions, ground pork, shrimp, ginger, green onions from Chinese New Year party with international students and friends

Frozen Time

A mass produced trash receptacle in the afternoon sun. 

trying to help

A mixed-medium portrait of local drag queen, Mexica Xadows, surrounded by dahlias, Mexico's national flower, which both depicts Mexica's pride in their Mexican culture, and to juxtapose the powerful pose and dress of Mexica. This is part of a series of portraits of local drag queens. 

Portrait of Mexica Xadows

A shadowbox featuring 3 figures who are installing a museum exhibit.

Natural History

A face drawn with color markers over a handwritten letter on lined notebook paper stares out at the viiewer. In the center of the face is a small orange envelope positioned vertically and stamped with an eye diagonally across the page. At the bottom of the envelope is a black and white cut out figure of a  white woman crouching with one hand on the ground, one hand raised near her head. She wears a striped dress.

The Eyes Have It

Black and white photo of snow on rocks taken with a Hassleblad film camera. After developing and printing in the darkroom I drew over the photo with black and white alcohol inks. The ink interacted chemically with the photo to create an abstract image. Shapes are variable, textures and layers are created with shades ranging from white-gray-black with traces of blue and magenta.

My mouth is filled with dirt

A collage of a squid living inside of someone's mouth. Teeth are on the right side, forming a cave entrance while a scrap of map on the left creates a partial frame of the scene.

I'm Dearer to Me, Much More Than Ever I Was

Assemblage of a drawing collage remnant with waxed linen thread knots on a base of thumbprints, castor beans and black eyed peas.

Pattern D

2 abstract wood ducks (male & female) on a log. Image is digitally-built Photoshop collage made up with combination of hand-painted elements, corporate logos & rhinestones. It is printed on blotter paper & the sky is differently sized coins that fit into one grid tab of the blotter paper to produce a psychedelic effect. There is a cartoon speech bubble as well with the phrase "Ugh, stop saying 'back door shrimp."

Beachstep

A scale model of an outdoor sculpture depicting a grove of red pillars and the sky reflected in a series of mirrors located within the field. 

Scale model for The Stand

An abstract rendering of a waterfall, cauldren and river on the North Shore of Lake Superior in Minneasota.

Thermal Pool

A former Big Mouth Billy Bass is transformed into a 3-dimensional false wooden plaque with wood grain made of actual grains (quinoa) and a mounted crappie fish, also made of crops in the distinctive black and yellow pattern of a crappie fish (corn, wild rice, canola, and other seeds and grains). Former bass fins have been replaced with crappie shaped fins. The plaque has an identifying sign just under the fish that is a pun: Croppie. This piece won a blue ribbon at the 2019 Minnesota State Fair in the Seed and Plant Craft Objects category of the Crop Art competition.

Croppie

A stained glass panel featuring a pink heart, the letter J and a dove surrounded by architectural elements

Valentine for Julie

A 3-dimensional star surrounded by red tissue paper poppies. 

Red Poppy Monrovian Star

Envision shapes that include, rectangles, squares and circles. Now, envision them coming all together in a tight square. Feel the heat of Morocco, dry and strong. Sense you are on a corner of a busy city street. Sound is coming from all directions, people are rushing by you, talking, laughing, screams of sirens. You might feel a little tense or excited. This vision of your street corner is placed on a soft pink background,a gentle arm around your shoulder.

Moroccan Heat

This is a collage was from a series on that began with carefully dried daisy petals, which were tricky to work with and glue down onto the Color-aid paper. The background is a an Epson archival inkjet printed digital pattern drawn in Adobe Illustrator. A postage stamp and other papers were chosen to complement the color palette and content, and the text (species name) was typewritten on Rives BFK paper.  

Armchair in Golden Orange Plaid, 2019

Nathan Stromberg