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Grand View University regularly invites alumni and fellow artists to display their work in Rasmussen Building Prairie Meadows Gallery. Professor Mary Jones and Professor Aaron Tinder recently reached out to a 2010 alumnus of studio art, Joseph Heuermann, and asked him to create a display of his choosing in the campus gallery. Heuermann subsequently curated the show, Former Punks: An Accumulation Treaty, which is now on display.

Heuermann has collaborated with artists Levi Biel, Justin Thye, Ryan Garves, Brenden Wells and Shawn Reed in the gallery.

Heuermann connected with Biel through online art blogs, and he in turn connected him to friends and fellow UNI graduates Thye and Garves.

Thye and Wells were both active in Artistic Flyers in Iowa City and met Heuermann through similar interests.

Collectively the artists’ unique styles and crafted techniques will create an environment of exploration; their pieces are meant to evoke a resistance to the mundane realms of existence.

“We use the gallery as an education tool, and Joe brings a lot of unique traits that most students haven’t been exposed to,” Tinder said.

Every artist cultivated the inspiration for his work and constructed a concept they want to portray.

Heuermann (featured alongside Biel in the accompanying video) said he is influenced by horror, science-fiction and early Marvel Comics graphics. His illustrations are created with graphite, ink markers, acrylic paint and mixed external media.

“The main body of work is centered around a sci-fi element, centered around minions,” Heuermann said. “They are mundane; it is them existing in their own world.”

Tinder described Heuermann’s work as punk and contemporary cutting-edge.

“It’s good for students to be introduced and exposed to different types of art and artists,” Tinder said.

Biel emphasizes a distaste for society’s expectation of professional artists and the theories placed within the framework of art. To him, art loses context when it is put on display; it is almost seen as sacred rather than the interactive piece the artist hoped for.

“It’s a radical freedom for me to be able to draw,” Biel said. “By avoiding expectation, they don’t have to be anything; they are kind of explaining the inner-most thoughts to myself.”

Biel wanted to provide a communal display in the gallery, which breaks the expectations of presentation.

The display is a glass table with drawings and sketches scattered on top with a shadeless lamppost underneath. He hopes to invite viewers to experience his work in their own way.

Students are welcome to select the pieces and interact with the impressions and to shed the rules of space and touch within a gallery.

He said he hopes his art transfers the idea of releasing the expectation of the professional world.

Biel is a printmaker professionally at Eight Seven Central and uses the machinery for his personal work. He is currently developing a concept around the news story of a Tibetan monk who was found frozen in the mountains during a long period of meditation.

He provided pieces within in the gallery (and shown above) that were made from outlines of orbs, patterns, colors and reflections of the monk in the seated mediation position.

The layers of print are processed through unconscious thoughts, which circulate in his mind and painted with his unaware actions through strokes of meaning.

“I think feeling uninhibited is an important thing to me,” Biel said. “In almost all aspects of life are a lot of rules.”

For those who are intrigued by the artists’ art and concepts, there will be a meet and greet scheduled the last Friday of the exhibit. Their work will be displayed until mid November. The closing reception will be a chance for artists to speak about their work, answer any questions and talk to those interested.

Official dates and times for the reception are soon to come; keep an eye out for signs posted around campus.