Louis Wayne

Luanne Rimel is an artist, curator, instructor, and currently the Director of Education Programs at Craft Alliance Art Center in St. Louis, Missouri. Her work is layered with historical dialog and tactile intrigue through both technique and concept. Rimel prints her original photography on repurposed flour-sack cloths using a wide-format inkjet printer. Detailed sections of the image are created and layered, collaged and hand-stitched onto the cloth, referencing earlier domestic practices of mending and repair, reuse and repurposing. The delicate, repetitive hand quilting across the surface creates shadows and textures and alludes to the marking of time. Her photographic imagery and textile work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including Japan, China and Korea, and is in many private and corporate collections. Rimel’s work is traveling in Quilt National 2013 and was in QN 2011. She has exhibited in 2012, 2013 and 2014 Smithsonian Craft Shows. Her work will also be included in the new book, Art Quilts of the Midwest, published by the University of Iowa Press. Other exhibitions include a solo exhibit at the Missouri Botanical Gardens, St. Louis, Missouri, Art Quilt Elements, Wayne, Pennsylvania, and the Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, Illinois. Rimel received an MFA in Fibers from Southern Illinois University and has taught numerous workshops and classes around the country.

Used to refer to a time rather than an aesthetic, Contemporary art generally describes pieces created after 1970 or being made by living artists anywhere in the world. This immediacy means it encompasses art responding to the present moment through diverse subjects, media and themes. Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, performance, digital art, video and more frequently includes work that is attempting to reshape current ideas about what art can be, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s use of candy to memorialize a lover he lost to AIDS-related complications to Jenny Holzer’s ongoing “Truisms,” a Conceptual series that sees provocative messages printed on billboards, T-shirts, benches and other public places that exist outside of formal exhibitions and the conventional “white cube” of galleries.

Contemporary art has been pushing the boundaries of creative expression for years. Its disruption of the traditional concepts of art are often aiming to engage viewers in complex questions about identity, society and culture. In the latter part of the 20th century, contemporary movements included Land art, in which artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer create large-scale, site-specific sculptures, installations and other works in soil and bodies of water; Sound art, with artists such as Christian Marclay and Susan Philipsz centering art on sonic experiences; and New Media art, in which mass media and digital culture inform the work of artists such as Nam June Paik and Rafaël Rozendaal.

The first decades of the 21st century have seen the growth of Contemporary African art, the revival of figurative painting, the emergence of street art and the rise of NFTs, unique digital artworks that are powered by blockchain technology.

Major Contemporary artists practicing now include Ai Weiwei, Cecily Brown, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

Find a collection of Contemporary prints, photography, paintings, sculptures and other art on 1stDibs.