Two artists, one place

The UT Department of Art is featuring two guest artists from Jan. 11 to Feb. 20 at the Center for the Visual Arts.

Holly Branstner has been an artist for over 40 years. She was raised in Detroit, Mich. and graduated from Wayne State University in 1983 with her MFA, according to her website. Her work draws on her years spent in the Detroit area and now Toledo, where she cur-rently resides.

Branstner’s “Black Noise” exhibit works to emphasize the moods of industrial landscape around Detroit’s River Rouge area as well as parts of Toledo. She says these paintings are a reflection of her own life as well as the story they depict about the decay of industrial cit-ies.

Much of her work is located at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the University of Evansville, the University of Dayton, the Crown Equip-ment Corporation and in private collections of individuals.

Branstner has received numerous awards for her work, including three individual artist grants from the Michigan Council for the Arts and a Canaday Award from the Toledo Museum of Art. She has recently served as an artist-in-residence at the University of Dayton, where her work is regularly shown in the exhibition of American art.

Daniel McInnis is a

photographer from Perrysburg, although he is originally from New York. He graduated from Ithaca College’s School of Communica-tions with his BFA in film, photography and visual arts. McInnis has taught as a professor of photogenic practice and history at several different colleges.

His exhibition of photography includes a piece entitled “Heidi and Lily, Ohio, 2014.” It was chosen as a finalist piece for the 2016 Out-win Boochever Portrait Competition at the National Portrait Gallery Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The same work was awarded Third Prize in the 2015 Photo Review competition, judged by Lawrence Miller.

Both artists are well known for their art and have won awards for their work. Branstner’s art will be shown in the main gallery of the CVA until Feb. 14 and McInnis’s photos will be displayed in the Clement Gallery until Feb. 20.