Louise Kames printed a leafy image directly onto a prayer book for her series “I Don’t See Anything That’s Not Beautiful.” (Photo: Figge Art Museum)
A few years ago, the Dubuque artist Louise Kames took one of her walks along the Mississippi River bluffs near her home and noticed little piles of sticks along the road. When she asked about them at the nearby convent where she used to live, she learned they were the handiwork of a nun who was slipping into dementia, who gathered sticks as a way to tidy the landscape and calm her mind.
So Kames started photographing the sticks for an art project that evolved into a series she calls “I Don’t See Anything That’s Not Beautiful.” The 2021 Iowa Arts Council fellow and former member of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary compares her artistic process to the rigors of religious devotion. She hopes her latest drawings and woodcut prints of a dying willow tree in her yard will inspire viewers to do some quiet thinking of their own.
The new exhibition opens Nov. 30 and remains through April 6 at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport.
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