Art on the Verge of Understanding at Kohler Arts Center

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Photo via Lee Emma Running

Lee Emma Running

Lee Emma Running

Like most artists, Lee Emma Running draws from her surroundings for the inspiration and execution of the sculptures and other art forms she creates.  Frequently, the verge of her artistic understanding comes from the “verge” itself, the familiar wild area between roads the properties they pass. The verge, which Running says taken together is the largest contiguous wild landscape in the country, contains wealth of both social and natural phenomenon and is largely unexplored by the millions of people who pass by every day without giving landscape a second thought.

“I spent a lot of time running along rural verges in Iowa,” the Omaha-based artist says. “It’s a no-man’s land where many animals end up as carcasses after being pushed out of their natural homes. Thinking about this wild area opened up a lot of new ideas for me.”

Running, a former staff member for Iowa’s Grinnell College and artist-in-residence for Opera Omaha, is one of this year’s artists-in-residence for Arts/Industry, a program that combines both disciplines co-sponsored by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan and its sponsoring organization plumbing fixture designer/manufacturer Kohler Co. Now in its 50th year, the program brings artists into the manufacturing setting to experience production enable experts from both sides to learn from each other.

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Photo by Brittany Brooke Crow

From ‘Verge’ by Lee Emma Running

From ‘Verge’ by Lee Emma Running

Drawing Lessons

For Running, who started as a papermaker, such lessons are cumulative, drawing from her past and present, as well as her continuing awareness of the verge and the treasures it holds. Bones from roadkill began to transfer her art in ways she hadn’t formerly imagined.

“As artists we are trained observers and good witnesses to life,” she says. “The verge is really a non-space, with a lot of violence in its midst.”

Deer carcasses she saw while running took on an entirely new meaning as she passed by, first counting them and then harvesting their bones for artistic purposes. In fact, the bones helped her start viewing her sculptures from the inside out, starting with the internal framework and building out the finished form from there. This aspect of her work culminated in 2020 at the Pottawattamie Arts, Cultural & Entertainment Center in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The 7,000-square-foot gallery installation that included replication of a full-sized 6-lane highway and eight assembled deer skeletons to explore life and death in the nearby verge.

Inside-Out

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Photo courtesy Lee Emma Running

Opera Coat by Lee Emma Running

Opera Coat by Lee Emma Running

Running’s inside-out studies continued at Opera Omaha, where she learned from the resident costume designers that wardrobe pieces are assembled internally first, with the capacity to adjust to the height and weight of various actors playing various roles. Her work Opera Coat, an enameled cast-iron sculpture of actual garment pieces embellished with copper and bronze on display as part of the JMKAC program reflects that technique. The sculpture highlights the coat’s interior and the structural components that make the piece both beautiful and functional. Her artistic concepts dovetail nicely with the purposes of JMKAC’s Arts/Industry program where form follows function, and sometimes the other way around.

“I think of my work as a catalyst for conversation,” Running says. “What does the viewer see? Art gives us the space and permission to ask that question. I hope that art can give us permission to pause, to look, and to wonder and reflect on it and the world around us.”

Arts/Industry offers looks at the work of different artists-in-residence throughout much of 2025. For more information, visit jmkac.org or visit the Arts Center at 608 New York Ave., Sheboygan.