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Body art: Charles City graduate to host first solo exhibit

  • This is one of two pieces now on display at the Waterloo Center for the Arts, available to view until Feb. 11, 2018.

  • This is one of two pieces now on display at the Waterloo Center for the Arts, available to view until Feb. 11, 2018.

  • Roethler creates pieces with torn paper and varied watercolors, arranging shapes that interest her in the final presentation.

  • A watercolor piece by Megan Roethler, a 2016 graduate of Charles City High School.

  • Eight to ten of Megan Roethler's current collection will be on display for her first solo exhibit on Dec. 22, 5-8 p.m. at Schiller Gallery. Contributed photos

By Kate Hayden, khayden@charlescitypress.com

By the time Megan Roethler graduated from Charles City High School in 2016, she had already demonstrated confident portraiture skills that shined in hyperrealism.

Now, her first solo exhibit as a working artist will showcase a whole new side to Roethler’s work.

Schiller Fine Art Gallery & Framing on Main Street will host Roethler’s first gallery reception on Dec. 22, from 5-8 p.m. Eight to ten pieces of Roethler’s paper and watercolour pieces will be on display as Roethler continues her art studies as a sophomore at University of Northern Iowa.

“It’s a series on how I have seen my ideas and knowledge as an artist grow, as well as how my body has changed in getting older as a woman,” Roethler said.

“You think more about concepts” at college, she said. “I changed as I started really thinking more, and putting myself in the shoes of my viewers, rather than just drawing what I see.

“There’s a deeper meaning behind everything I do now, and I think that’s really appealing.”

As a high school student in Charles City, Roethler was known for her detailed portraiture. Her series now is a stark departure from the type of hyperrealism she studied in high school, but her subject pulls the curtain back on what women go through as they grow.

Roethler works with watercolor paint and torn paper, manipulating textures and color depth while laying paper pieces over each other for the final presentation. She also works with pieces of hair, entwining reality in her abstractions.

On any given piece, Roethler layers watercolors over each other on paper. Once dry, she rips all the pieces and picks out interesting shapes and colors to begin arranging the final piece.

“I’ve always wanted to make art like this, but I never really had a good understanding of what I wanted to display, and what meaning I wanted to have behind it,” she said. “The idea was never fully formed enough to do anything with.”

“I’m still learning what it means to be an artist and what I wanted to do with that.”

It’s a technique she developed on her own, but Roethler found some inspiration in artists like Judy Chicago and Frida Kahlo. She has only been working on those designs since this past summer.

“It’s a lot of painting, and it’s not literal. It feels like it’s still just a painting, and I wanted something that feels like more of a process than just putting it on there,” Roethler said.

After Charles City, Roethler plans to exhibit her collection at the UNI student gallery for campus viewing. Roethler has two other pieces that will be on display at the Waterloo Center for the Arts, where she works part-time, as part of the Cedar Valley Biennial Art Exhibit.

Roethler’s pieces will be alongside other student works from UNI, Hawkeye Community College, Wartburg College and Upper Iowa University in the Law/Court Theater Gallery until Feb. 11, 2018.

“It’s something I wish was more openly talked about and accepted in small towns,” Roethler said. “The human body is really hidden, pushed aside, not talked about. But when I went to school and the first week we were drawing nude models, it was like ‘woah, crazy.'”

“I think it’s changed me for the better as an artist and as a person, so I’m really open to the natural state of the human body,” she added. “It’s just a body, it doesn’t have to be sexualized. That’s why people avoid talking about it, I think.”

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