 Image: Rebecca Kautz, Half Life, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 18 inches, 2024
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For Immediate Release Monday, September 8, 2025 Media Contact: Alana Horton, Arts Midwest [email protected] | 612.238.8001 Artist contacts available upon request Wisconsin Artist Wins 2025 Midwest Award for Artists with Disabilities MINNEAPOLIS, MN – Arts Midwest is thrilled to announce that Rebecca Kautz of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin has been named one of nine recipients of the 2025 Midwest Award for Artists with Disabilities, selected from more than 400 submissions across the region. Each of this year’s awardees will receive $3,000 in unrestricted support to advance their artistic practice. Now in its third year, the award celebrates the vision, talent, and contributions of disabled Midwestern visual artists. “These incredible artists are quilting, welding, collaging, and even transforming prosthetics into art pieces,” said John Kaiser, Arts Midwest Grants Manager. “Their work shows just how expansive Midwestern creativity is, and the powerful role disabled artists play in shaping the arts.” About the 2025 Awardees The 2025 Midwest Award for Artists with Disabilities recognizes artists from across the Midwest. This year’s winners are:
Spotlight on Rebecca Kautz “My allegorical work uses psychoanalysis and personal history to explore personal and political narratives surrounding identity, illness, belonging and place. My work is influenced by my rural Midwest upbringing where feelings of estrangement stem from childhood trauma and a dysfunctional family. The repeating element of the Defiant Vermont Castings wood burning stove signals the maladjusted child-self. Installed by my father during the 1970’s energy crisis, the woodstove was the primary source of heat. It is a witness and a central figure in the family room of my childhood home. Ancient societal issues such as predators of the marginal, are depicted as alligators. A melancholic mood hides beneath high-key colors combined with personal imagery and cultural iconography. These candy colors are ‘out of step’ and discordant when used to depict antique, early American décor common in my rural Victorian home. Nostalgia and neurosis are states that grip and obfuscate in equal measure. My goal is to gain a broader audience, expanded exhibition opportunities, and a solo show of new work. My goal is to shine a light on issues of surviving childhood trauma and personal recovery. I speak openly about my lived experience in my work in effort to dispel shame.” About the Award The Midwest Award for Artists with Disabilities was established in 2022 and is supported by the James Edward Scherbarth and Paul Francis Mosley Giving Fund. The award honors the late James Edward Scherbarth, an award-winning visual artist, teacher, and advocate for arts access who believed that creativity lives in everyone and dedicated his career to helping people express themselves through art. Arts Midwest acknowledges both identity first and person first framing of disability identity. When we use the phrase “disabled artists,” we intend to align with the Social Model of Disability understanding that people are disabled by environmental and societal barriers. About Arts Midwest Arts Midwest supports, informs, and celebrates Midwestern creativity. We build community and opportunity across Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin, the Native Nations that share this geography, and beyond. As one of six nonprofit United States Regional Arts Organizations, Arts Midwest works to strengthen local arts and culture efforts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, state agencies, private funders, and many others. Learn more at artsmidwest.org. # # # Alana Horton (she/her) Communications Officer at Arts Midwest Phone 612.238.8001 Web www.artsmidwest.org 3033 Excelsior Boulevard #380 Minneapolis, MN 55416 Arts Midwest supports, informs, and celebrates Midwestern creativity. Learn more. Arts Midwest has implemented a 4-day work week. Please note that our office is closed on Fridays.  Image: Lost Island, acrylic on canvas, 48x36 inches, 2025Exhibition Title: "Beyond O'Keeffe: Contemporary Artists in Wisconsin” Location: Monarch on Main, 110 S. Bristol Street, Sun Prairie, WI 53590 Exhibition Dates: June 9th-July 4th, 2025 Artist Reception: Friday, June 20th , 5-7pm Curator Talk: Friday, June 27th, 7-8pm, Location TBD Curated by Rebecca Kautz, www.rebeccakautz.com Exhibition Statement: Born in Sun Prairie, Wi, Georgia O’Keeffe is celebrated as being one of the great modernist painters of the 20th century. O’Keeffe’s well known abstract botanical paintings secured her a place in art history and her art world fame solidified her cultural significance here in the City of Sun Prairie. “Beyond O’Keeffe” is an exhibition of exceptional, living contemporary artists working in Sun Prairie and neighboring counties of Wisconsin. This survey of artists showcases the diverse, vibrant talent of the contemporary art landscape here in the state of Wisconsin. “Beyond O’Keeffe” is curated and organized by Sun Prairie artist Rebecca Kautz with support provided by event partners ,including; Sun Prairie Chamber of Commerce, Prairie Music & Arts, Monarch on Main, and the Sun Prairie Mural Fest planning committee. Prospectus and Submission information found here: 
 Thanks to everyone who made it out to see my Solo Show, Jumping From Trains at Arts & Literature Lab. Here are some installation images from the exhibition that closed at the end of August 2024. Thank you so much to Paul Krainak with Bad At Sports for the thoughtful writeup about the show. Its wonderful for people to take the time to see the show and especially exciting when they are engaged enough to sit and write a reflection of the experience. Krainak's insights tuned in on several ideas that are in my head when making a painting. Krainak states "Rebecca Kautz’s solo painting show at Madison’s Art Lit Lab combines an idiosyncratic exploration of personal subjects buried in a palpable vernacularism that seems to be composed by the way images are spoken – a sort of soluble concrete poetry. What’s remarkable is how her improvisational figuration, unhinged from the mimetic fatigue still alive from the halcyon days of “Bad Painting,” plays catch with facsimiles across the “Lab’s” enormous galleries." You can read the full blog essay by following the link below.       
Exhibition Statement: Jumping From Trains implies a compulsion to change direction, to abandon a path for a new way. I was awaken at night by the sound of a train passing through town and was immediately transported to my childhood bedroom. This was a common sound heard at night growing up in rural Illinois. Cultural theorist, Bell Hooks describes this same experience of train whistles bringing her back to childhood in her essay titled “Habits of the Heart” in “Belonging: A Culture of place”. Hooks describes being a child awaken in the night by the sound of trains -setting her mind to wonder about all the places she might go as she grew. For me leaving home, jumping on a train in search of somewhere better-somewhere to belong , was all I wanted to do. At 17, I ran away on a one way train to Texas with no return ticket or plan for when I arrived there. Still now I am searching. Incorporating durational site specific performance, painting, and sculptural practices I explore the multiple approaches to reckoning with issues of the heart and mind. Making works in response to mental states, cultural events, activism, or simply to create a lasting sentiment as evidence that I was here. This creative collection rather than a strict singular vision, elevates the process and value of tangents, multiplicity, and exploration. ‘Drawing a blank’ or losing your ‘train of thought’ occurs when thinking is derailed, generally if an obstacle or distraction crosses the mind or eye. Jumping from Trains signals the erratic, potentially hazardous endeavor of switching directions or choosing another path. Hooks ends her essay with “where I began is also where I will end”. When we seemingly lose ourselves in the directions or distance we go, there is a path to return to ourselves.  Images: Top: Awakened By Night Trains, 20x24inches, acrylic on canvas (2024), Image Bottom: Shame Project/Genius Patch:Distress Signal, durational performance(artifact), 2018-2020
 Solo Exhibition “Homes of Strangers” opens Friday May 3rd, at Prairie Arts Center in Princeton, IL. Opening reception will be Friday May 3rd, from 6-8pm.
PAC is located at 24 Park Avenue East, Princeton, IL, 61356. The gallery is open 1-3pm on Saturdays and Sundays throughout the month of May. Homes of Strangers is a collection of new paintings primarily inspired by visits home to Princeton, IL. The frequent visits home to be with family and spend time with aging parents sparked the desire to document this place and time. The historic homes on the blocks seen on walks around my parents’ home become stoic acquaintances whom I have seen for a lifetime but yet they are still like strangers to me. Homes like bodies, enclose whole universes of experience. Despite attempts at empathy, we do not know the lives they have lived. The works utilize observation of people and places known and unknown to the artist. Touching on notions of intimacy as well as the unknowable other represented in the closed doors and windows of the homes of strangers.  Saturday, April 20th from 6-9pm I will be live painting at the Sun Prairie Public Library Love Your Library Gala event. This ticketed after-hours event benefits the Library Expansion and Renovation Project at Sun Prairie Public Library. I will be painting live at the event and the painting will be auctioned off at the end of the evening. Tickets are $60 and available to purchase on the library website: sunlibfoundation.org Pictured is a vintage Rowe Pottery Works ceramic urn that has inspired the painting for the event. Rowe Pottery Works is a functional pottery shop in Cambridge, Wisconsin that has been around since 1975. This lovely green glazed crock will be filled with sun flowers, muted blue-green eucalyptus sprigs, and blush pink tea roses and white lillies. This floral still-life will be painted live at the event on a 16x20 inch canvas. Come watch me paint and support the Sun Prairie Public Library Renovation and Expansion Project! |
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