Explore online exhibitions featuring ISU art professor

Work by Laura Ahola-Young, professor of painting and drawing, is featured in two virtual art exhibitions accessible to the public: “T W I R L: A Decade of Artist Interviews” and “The 2020 Idaho Triennial.”

“T W I R L” pairs artwork with interviews from interviews with artists. The project hopes to chronicle artists’ practices and lives for a decade. 

The juried exhibition “The 2020 Idaho Triennial” is on virtual display at the Boise Art Museum. The exhibition features the work of contemporary Idaho artists, who recorded segments for audiences to learn about and connect with their works. These segments are paired with images of the corresponding artworks for a guided audio tour that visitors can access from their homes. 

Ahola-Young was one of 23 artists selected for “The 2020 Idaho Triennial,” which is considered one of Idaho’s premiere exhibition opportunities. Artwork can be in any media and must be original and produced in the last three years.

Ahola-Young contributed two mixed media “shag carpet” paintings to the exhibition, inspired by themes of time and climate. In the segment she recorded for the audio guide, the artist muses on the environmental movement taking place in 1970, the year she was born.

“Shag carpeting is the tapestry of my childhood,” she said. “The synthetic plastic cultural indicator is the ground on which I learned to crawl and walk. Each shag painting is a response to this pop art-inspired, over-the-top visual pattern and desire of the generation that is the foundation of my earliest childhood memories.”

The exhibition was slated to display at the Boise Art Museum from March 8 to July 19. But with the museum closed temporarily, visitors can now visit the Boise Art Museum website to explore “The 2020 Idaho Triennial” and other exhibitions.