Art is by Bev Jackson Cotter

Bev Jackson Cotter is a member of the Albert Lea Art Center, 226 West Clark Street. The student art show will continue through April 28, Wednesday through Sunday, at the Northbridge Mall.

What is art?

Ignore the dictionary (I can’t believe I said that.). Ignore the thesaurus, your smartphone and even your art teacher. Art cannot be identified in three words or 10. It is everywhere and everyone!

It seems there are no limits — age, ideas, ethnic origins — all are included in the art world and in recent and upcoming programming of the Albert Lea Art Center. How did we get so expansive?

Let me explain.

First of all, the student show at Northbridge Mall includes wonderful artwork from children and young people kindergarten through 12th grade. They are sharing their talents from the fun of painted frogs to the insightful and tragic Holocaust moral, many identical subjects, yet each as original as the personality of the student artist. There are more than 1,000 pieces hanging on the walls, resting on tables and dangling from the ceiling, enough art to put a smile on anyone’s face.

The recent Art Center exhibition “On Both Sides of the Bars” is a collection of original paintings and 3-D pieces by inmates, employees and detainees at the Freeborn County Law Enforcement Center and creative writing topics that define us, all of us, our needs, our dreams and our fears. We are proud to co-sponsor this show and to announce that our law enforcement center is receiving a special award and statewide recognition for this effort.

Our lecture this month covered the art of jewelry making. Patty Tewes explained in a very non-lecturing manner just how much fun this hobby is and how interesting it is to create pieces that are enjoyed by women of all ages.

The next show at the Art Center will share dolls created by 94-year-young Agnes Boss of AlbertLea. She is a delightful, energetic lady from Nebraska who excelled in high school and college, taught country school, worked at an Air Force base as a civilian during World War II, attended business college, met her husband-to-be while working for Fairmont Foods, raised three children, sewed clothing and drapes, painted walls, planted gardens, and then nearing her retirement years, she finally had time to explore fully her interest in art.

She painted, carved wood, made furniture, even carved a medical center logo, and then she began creating dolls. Not from kits — oh, no. She started from scratch, carving wood for bodies and flexible joints, covering wires for hands and fingers, making Sculpey-covered scrunched tinfoil for faces (happy, sad, serious, silly), fabric bodies, arms, legs, heads, and even dried apple faces.

And her dolls didn’t look alike. There are European dolls and American, African and Asian, adult dolls and babies, little boys and little girls. Everyone that she created has its own physical characteristics and personality. Her show will be a must see. The opening reception is May 6.

So what is art? What is creativity?

There was a delightful trail in the snow from my backyard out onto Bancroft Bay. It was made by a pair of Canada geese that decided to wander north one day after a fresh snowfall, and they apparently were not in a hurry or worried about waddling in a straight line. Sometimes their webbed footprints were together and sometimes they ran parallel. It was a twisty, moseying-along type of trail that reminded me of modern art.

I know that some people are tired of winter, of cold weather, snowstorms and icy patches, but I, for one, didn’t want to see that abstract goose trail disappear. It was a delightful display of creativity that melted away when the warm weather came.

How do you define art? I haven’t a clue.