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By Ayanna Eckblad

For the first time in six years, the Albert Lea Art Center will display an exhibit with exclusively pieces from their permanent collection. This collection features many different local artists and a variety of different art styles from painting to sculpting.

The center’s arts administrator, Charlene Marley, has been with the Albert Lea Art Center for eight years. She discussed a little of what goes into adding a piece of art to the permanent collection.

“There are certain criteria,” she said.

A special permanent collection committee chooses pieces that have to do with the Art Center, the history of Albert Lea or pieces by especially influential community members and presents them to the Art Center’s board of directors. All mediums of art are accepted, but the collection mainly consists of paintings and drawings.

“The board of directors decided to showcase the permanent collection,” Marley said. “It hasn’t been out since 2018, and so we thought we would celebrate our past.”

Marley said some of the pieces they have on display have been part of the permanent collection as long ago as the 1950s.

Marley has several favorite pieces, but at the top of the list is a painting titled “Grandmother” by local portrait artist Dave Nordahl. He was an Albert Lea artist whose portraits caught the eye of the late singer Michael Jackson. Marley explained Jackson asked Nordahl to be his personal portrait painter.

“You can see the character come out,” Marley said of Nordahl’s work. “You can just see life through [their] eyes.”

Another notable artist with work displayed in the permanent collection is Lloyd Herfindahl, who was one of the people who started the Albert Lea Art Center back in 1959. His work spans a wide range of themes and emotions from lighthearted works like “Women Gossipping” to poignant pieces like “The Great Depression.”

Painter John Lacis has work in the permanent collection and was very well known in Albert Lea during the 1960s and ’70s, said Marley. His work evokes feelings of tranquility through art he painted to remind him of his native country of Latvia.

Local art teacher Merna Sunde will also have work displayed in the permanent collection exhibit. She worked in Forest City as well as the Kiester and Wells area. She died in 2014 and donated her work to the Art Center.

During the permanent collection exhibit, the Albert Lea Art Center will also run an art sale, which will take place in the building’s classroom. When retrieving pieces from the permanent collection, Marley said, the Art Center realized they had a lot of donated art.

There are a variety of pieces available at the art sale and pieces are all $20 or more.

“I would like people to come in and view the exhibit,” Marley said. “I just want people to see the variety of famous artists that have been here in town.”

The permanent collection exhibit and art sale will run until Oct. 12. An open house will be held from 1 to 3 p.m. Sept. 22 at the Art Center, 101 S. Broadway.