The Tusen Takk Foundation and the Dennos Museum Center are pleased to present the pop-up exhibition At the 45th Parallel: 45 Portraits + 4–5 Landscapes featuring work by Tusen Takk’s September artist-in-residence Brenda Zlamany. The event at the Dennos Museum on Tuesday, September 23, 4 to 6PM, will include a short artist talk and an opening reception.

At Tusen Takk, Zlamany painted local subjects as part of the 'Climate in America’ chapter in her ongoing project, The Itinerant Portraitist. While in northern Michigan, Zlamany painted 45 watercolor portraits of residents, symbolic of the 45th parallel that runs through the region, and a cycle of 4 to 5 oil paintings to explore the landscape through elemental and allegorical themes. Together, the portraits and landscapes form a meditation on what it means to live halfway between the equator and the North Pole, where seasonal extremes, shifting climates, and human experience intersect. 

The Itinerant Portraitist is a multi-year global project created by Zlamany in 2011 to explore the positive impacts of painted portraiture. The residency at Tusen Takk continues Zlamany's “Climate in America” chapter after previous iterations in Key West, Sonoma, Denali National Park, and Glacier National Park. For details on the project, visit www.brendazlamany.com, or follow on Instagram @brenda_zlamany and @tusentakkfoundation.

Artist Bio

Brenda Zlamany is a painter who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Since 1982 her work has appeared in dozens of solo exhibitions and numerous group shows in the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East including the National Portrait Gallery, London; the Brooklyn Museum; the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, among others. Her work has been widely reviewed and is held in the collections of the Cincinnati Art Museum, Deutsche Bank, the Neuberger Museum of Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the World Bank, Yale University, and Rockefeller University. Zlamany has collaborated with authors and editors of the New York Times Magazine on several portrait commissions. 

She has completed major institutional commissions for Yale, Rockefeller University, and Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts. She has participated in residencies including Yaddo, MacDowell, the American Academy in Rome, and Denali and Glacier National Parks. Since 2011, her ongoing project The Itinerant Portraitist has produced more than 2,000 portraits and earned recognition for its community-centered and globally engaged approach. Her film "100/100: The Itinerant Portraitist" won Best Documentary Short at the Greenpoint Film Festival. 

Grants she has received include a Fulbright Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, New York Foundation for the Arts Artists' Fellowship in painting, Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant, and Jerome Foundation Fellowship. She received a BA from Wesleyan University. 

To learn more, visit: https://www.brendazlamany.com/