Summer Internship Series – Kyra Andresen ’27 (A Peace of My Mind)
By Kyra Andresen ’27
Kyra Andresen ’25 writes interview responses at a studio session with Urban Rural Action in Kenosha, WI
My name is Kyra Andresen, and I am currently a sophomore double-majoring in Art History and Sociology/Anthropology. I spent last summer interning with the artist John Noltner and assisting him with his A Peace of My Mind project. When I found out about this internship in an email from the Lutheran Center, I saw the words “art”, “internship”, and “community” and I was hooked. My classes, work on-campus as a writing tutor, and involvement in student organizations like SGA’s Local Impact Board prepared me for this internship. As a writing tutor, I help students communicate their ideas and advocate for themselves in the same way that I helped John with interviews over the summer. My work on the Local Impact Board helped me develop my interest in community engagement which was fulfilled by my internship.
John Noltner is an artist from the Twin Cities who uses portrait photography and interviews to “bridge divides and encourage dialogue around important issues”. As his intern, I accompanied him on trips throughout the Midwest to churches, conferences, powwows, etc. and assisted with studio sessions and gallery installations. I also worked remotely to create promotional materials and a database of churches and libraries so John can reach out for programming opportunities. It was an amazing opportunity to learn about the behind the scenes of organizing and event planning in relation to art galleries as well as a great way to learn more about the diverse communities of the Midwest. I got to meet a lot of people doing powerful work to uplift their communities and watch as John listened and recorded their stories to share with a larger audience.
John Noltner conducts studio sessions at the Sober Powwow on the Fond Du Lac Reservation in 2024.
John was on campus in October with his Lessons on the Road to Peace exhibit displayed in the Tomson atrium. While he was here I interviewed him about his thoughts on making art for a community/public setting. I’ll let John explain the rest:
Kyra Andresen: So you’ve brought the Lessons on the Road to Peace exhibit here on campus–can you tell me a little bit about that project?
John Noltner: Lessons on the Road to Peace – this is our fifth traveling exhibit for A Peace of My Mind. It is the journal and stories that we encountered on a two and a half year road trip across America, visiting a lot of our tension points in the country and looking for folks who are engaged in similarly challenging social issues while looking for creative solutions to those challenges. The exhibit is made up of about 60 stories. There’s a big portrait of the person, there’s a little biography, a 300 word excerpt from their interview.
I hope Lessons on the Road to Peace encourages people to listen more deeply, to challenge their own expectations.
John Noltner
K: What is one key takeaway you want people to have from this exhibit? From your work as a whole?
J: I hope that they start to see some of the beauty and wisdom that I see around me. I hope that it encourages people to listen more deeply, to challenge their own expectations, and when conversations get difficult, to commit to staying at the table.
John standing with Lessons on the Road to Peace in the Tomson Atrium
The project is richer for including [more diverse] voices in it.
John Noltner
K: A major theme I see in your work is representation, can you speak on that?
J: Yeah, my interest in the world revolves around the belief that there’s beauty and wisdom in all of us. We carry it in different ways, we’ve experienced different things but there’s a light and a beauty and a wisdom in all of it. As I’ve gathered these stories, I’ve tried to draw from a diverse range of experiences. Different ages, different demographics, different life experiences. And that’s a never-ending pursuit, there are different ways you can parse that based on gender, ethnicity, faith, politics, whatever.
I’m constantly looking for voices that I’ve not encountered or that I’ve not been able to include in the project before. Sometimes, I will recognize those gaps or those missing voices on my own and sometimes it’ll be pointed out to me. Early in the process there was an Ojibwe woman who looked at my exhibit and said “hey this is great but there are no voices of indigenous people, do we not matter?” As an artist that smarts a little bit to have that pointed out to you but if you’re trying to be a decent human you can hear that and you can try to be intentional about correcting that omission. It’s a perpetual process of finding new perspectives, hearing different experiences, and recognizing that the project is richer for including those voices in it.
K: How do you choose who you photograph/interview?
J: I’ll just tell you that I travel a lot for this project. This exhibit that’s here on campus is the result of a 93,000 mile road trip. It’s hard from outside of a community to know who to talk to so I usually try to find an advocate or an ally in the community who understands what I’m trying to do and can help direct me to some of their deep networks. Someone who trusts the process, is engaged in their community, and knows who some of the voices are that should be amplified. I’ll lean on that quite a bit and everytime I interview somebody I’ll ask the question “who else do I need to meet?” and the circle grows organically that way.
I have never interviewed somebody and got to the end of the process and said to myself “oh, that’s not interesting”. There’s always something interesting, it’s sometimes not what I expect it will be, sometimes it’s even better than I expect it will be.
Not every venue had 150 feet of wall space to hang exhibits on. I wanted to be in more public spaces like markets, conferences, libraries, city halls, schools, and college campuses like this.
John Noltner
K: What kinds of locations do you bring your traveling exhibits to? Why?
J: The first exhibit I ever produced was a standard gallery exhibit. It was 36 canvas gallery wraps that would hang on a wall and I realized pretty quickly that not every venue had 150 feet of wall space that they could hang exhibits on. I wanted to be in more public spaces like markets, conferences, libraries, city halls, schools, and college campuses like this. Once I realized not everybody had that wall space for a standard exhibit, I started playing around with different methodologies for installing. I came up with this methodology using. They’re called euro banners and they have an aluminum frame, a sturdy base, and a graphic that pulls over the top of it. They are less expensive, they are more durable, they can be washed if someone puts their grubby little fingers on it. It’s a super flexible process to be able to install things in any open space.
We [A Peace of My Mind] started doing public projections as well, just as another way to share the work where maybe there isn’t a physical space to set it up. We’ll find a building or a blank wall in a community and project some of these local stories on the side of that.
K: Who is your ideal audience for these exhibits?
J: I don’t know demographically that I have an ideal audience but my ideal audience is someone I get to engage with for at least an hour. To be able to talk about the methodology of the project, to be able to share a few stories, to give people time with the stories, and then to build a conversation around it. I would define my ideal audience as someone who’s ready to commit a chunk of time to encountering these stories and then willing to have a conversation about them.
K: What’s one dream location to have an exhibit?
J: Oh, dream location! What I would love to do for America’s 250th anniversary which is the summer of 2026 is a whole bunch of stories around the question “what’s your American story?” Then I want to project them on all four sides of the Washington Monument on the National Mall. I don’t think I’ll be able to secure the permits for doing that. I think I could figure out a way I could do it guerilla-style where I have a portable projector and a generator, but I’m pretty sure I would be shut down pretty quickly after starting.
K: Would you consider yourself a public artist? Why or why not?
J: I think so. I have an amorphous definition of who I am and what I am as a working artist. I used to call myself a photographer, and then it shifted to storytelling. I think “public artist” is something I’m leaning into. I’m looking for more and more ways to engage in public venues and to have the art in different public settings.
K: Can you speak on your experience working in Northern Ireland? Your future plans there?
J: I was there in June for a week. I was in the city of Derry, which has a lot of murals. I was in Belfast, which has the peace walls with a lot of art on them. Those are both places for people to vent their frustrations and places for people to share stories of reconciliation and healing. The tone of those narratives has shifted over time. There’s been an intent to shift that narrative and move away from sectarian tension and towards some sort of healing. That being said, there was still a lot of tension evident in those murals. This Lessons on the Road to Peace exhibit was really an American series, but A Peace of my Mind as a whole is starting to lean into international stories. I will be going back to Northern Ireland in February to build some relationships. I’ll be going in June or July of next year for a couple of weeks to do a pilot program. And then hopefully I’ll go again for several months in 2026 to help them create a national archive of oral histories that talk about different ways that they’ve moved through their sectarian violence, some of the healing that’s happened, and some of the work that’s left to be done.
From there, I really hope to explore the ways different societies have moved through tensions: Rwanda to talk about their genocide, South Africa to talk about their apartheid, and eventually Israel and Gaza. I’m not a combat photographer so it’d be hard for me to do what I do there now. All of those places where people are finding creative solutions in really difficult situations to try to create some healing.
There is a particular demographic of person who’s going to walk into a gallery, who’s going to walk into a museum space and I don’t want to miss all those other people.
John Noltner
K: Is there anything else that you want to share? About your work or the idea of public art?
J: I think part of my process has very intentionally moved away from gallery settings. I mean, I still have exhibits in gallery settings and I love those venues and those spaces, but there is a particular demographic of person who’s going to walk into a gallery, who’s going to walk into a museum space and I don’t want to miss all those other people. I think we’ll continue to work in traditional gallery spaces but lean into this notion of moving art into other public spaces and using it to instill a new aesthetic into a space and also to encourage conversations about social issues. I feel like moving outside of the gallery and into these public spaces is a really important way to do that.
As you can probably gather from reading this interview, John’s work is all about fostering love of neighbor through community-based art. This idea of community-based art was really cemented for me when John and I were in Omaha for the “Reclaiming Hope” state-wide conference to end domestic and sexual violence (I wrote an article for John’s blog about this, you can check it out here). At the end of the conference, John shared back the results from the studio sessions. I got to watch people’s reaction to seeing their own portrait and interview displayed. I think I saw people view themselves as they really are: dignified, compassionate, and important. It was then that I decided that whatever I end up doing for my career, I want it to help people feel represented and seen the way John’s work does.
An image from the “Reclaiming Hope” studio sessions
This internship allowed me to explore my vocational call to serve, and learn about, my community through the work done in art institutions. I feel a much deeper connection with the community around me and I learned about how we can make art that is inclusive and accessible to the public. I will carry that with me as I continue to pursue a career in museum work.
You must be logged in to post a comment.