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World-traveled stained-glass artist to be featured at CCAC

The stained glass work of Laurie Uhlenhake –Thompson will be featured at the Charles City Art Center in May. The exhibit will kick off with a reception at 5 p.m. on Friday. (Press photo James Grob.)
The stained-glass work of Laurie Uhlenhake–Thompson will be featured at the Charles City Art Center in May. The exhibit will kick off with a reception at 5 p.m. Friday. (Press photo James Grob.)
By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

The upcoming exhibit at the Charles City Art Center happened quite by accident.

‘We’ve never done a stained-glass show here,” said art center Director Jaqueline Davidson. “I really wanted to get one, and we had a stained-glass artist lined up, and he had to back out. There was a family emergency and he just couldn’t do it.”

Davidson said she was begging the cancelled artist on the phone to reschedule, to no avail, and Laurie Uhlenhake–Thompson just happened to be in the art center and overheard the phone conversation.

“I’m a stained-glass artist,” she said to Davidson.

Thompson then showed Davidson some of her work, via photographs on her phone.

“I said, ‘this would be wonderful,’” said Davidson. “I loved her work, I thought it was very innovative.”

By that serendipity, Thompson’s “Stained Art Through Glass” showing will be on display throughout May, and the exhibit kicks off with a reception at 5 p.m. Friday.

“Art has been a lifelong passion of mine since I could hold a crayon,” said Thompson, who grew up near Decorah and married her high school sweetheart. “My life has been filled with color and a keen eye for all things in nature that hold simple beauty.”

Thompson has an Associate of Arts degree in jewelry design, a Bachelor of Science degree in art education and a Masters of Education degree in counseling.

As an art educator, Thompson has taught a variety of art media to students from kindergarten through adult education. She has 32 years of education experience, all over the world.

During her educational career, she has experience as an art educator, a counselor incorporating art therapy, and in administration. She taught in the Denver and Decorah school districts in Iowa, and as an international educator in Guam, Germany and Hawaii.

After returning home with her husband to give birth to her daughter in the United States, she set sail again and taught for 17 years at the Singapore American School in southeast Asia.

“It’s the world’s largest American school, the top school in the world,” she said. “Kids would often go on to Harvard or Stanford or Yale. When our daughter was getting ready to go to college, she thought she was going to go to Berkeley or Boston College or somewhere like that, and we said no, you’re going to Iowa.”

Thompson said she and her husband convinced her reluctant daughter to at least give Iowa a try.

“We told her just two years. You need to come back here where we grew up, so you have an understanding of our background. After two years, you can transfer if you want.”

Her daughter is now in her third year at the University of Iowa, and intends to graduate there.

Thompson and her family returned to the state after 26 years abroad and settled on the family farm, a 40-acre wooded country homestead that overlooks the Turkey River.

While she lived overseas, her family often stayed at the homestead for the summer.

From her designed studio with a 30-foot glass window viewing, she said she enjoys nature’s changing seasons along the river with wildlife, including “eagles, nesting geese, flower and vegetable gardens, a fruit orchard, and a lavender field which caused us to also establish bee hives for light-flavored honey.”

Living internationally has allowed Thompson a diverse cultural perspective as an artist.

“I am open-minded to exploring art options,” she said. “However, personally I prefer creating realistic oil painting and glass art that includes fused, stained-glass, and mosaic sculptural designs.”

For the Charles City Art Gallery exhibit, Thompson chose to complete a variety of glass art designs.

“I often choose to recycle or up-cycle found materials into artistic creations,” she said. “I have incorporated stained-glass design and fuse glass designs, include agate stone slices, and antique glass pieces.”

Since she has returned to Iowa, Thompson has been a volunteer artist for CHOICE Special Needs Employment Services in Decorah. She recently painted the CHOICE logo on entrance wall for the group’s fifth anniversary celebration.

Last June, she was the selected artist to paint a Nordic Fest Fireworks Adirondack chair raffle project in Decorah.

“My painted chair design was ‘Nesting with the Gnomes,” and brought approximately $1,000 toward the raffle project,” Thompson  said.

She said she has been requested to paint another “gnome” Adirondack chair for the 2018 Nordic Fest event.

Thomspon was a selected artist for the Humane Society Northeast Iowa Sculpture Auction in Decorah last August. Her mosaic cat sculpture, entitled “Cats Love Fish,” auctioned for approximately $400 for the charity project.

Thompson is a juried artist for the annual October Northeast Iowa Artist Studio Tour. This will be her third year exhibiting.

She teaches adult education art classes privately and in small groups as requested at her Summerhill Art Studio and Lavender Garden near Calmar. She said visitors are welcome by appointment year around, and private or small group art classes can be arranged in any medium.

She also teaches wine and canvas painting classes, and additional art courses through Northeast Iowa Community College.

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