Join us for Happy Hour + Art at the next Stanley Museum of Art First Friday reception at FilmScene! Stanley First Fridays provide an ideal chance to usher in your weekend, enjoy the work of local artists, and mingle with other art enthusiasts.

Our May First Friday features framed prints, sculpture, and video animation by Mary Claire Becker and sound art by Capel Howorth. In HyperNature, an idealized ecology is exaggerated to the point of parody, clamoring with a cacophony that verges on over-saturated kitsch.

Mary Claire Becker uses printmaking, sculpture, and video animation to explore the fetishization of landscape as “other” in industrialized cultures, particularly in the United States. Her artworks rearrange and re-contextualize human-made depictions of Nature. She was born in Raleigh, North Carolina and in 2012 received her BFA in Printmaking from the UNC Asheville. In May 2019, Mary Claire will receive her MFA in Printmaking from the University of Iowa and her Certificate of Book Arts at the UI Center for the Book. Plans for 2019 include the Barstow Residency at Central Michigan University and a solo exhibition at Utah State University.

Capel Howorth is a musician, sound artist, and music producer in Iowa City. He combines analogue and digital technologies in the hopes of creating an amalgam of texture in soundscape. He is from Oxford, Mississippi and received his B.A. from the University of Mississippi where he studied music theory and composition, as well as introducing an independent focus course for music students hoping to study field recording. He moved to Iowa City in 2017, where he continues to produce music - live and in his studio.

First Fridays are free and open to the public with complimentary popcorn and a cash bar.

Consider becoming a Stanley member! Courtesies include home delivery of the Stanley Museum of Art Magazine and a personalized membership card, which entitles you to free entry to the Figge Art Museum and reciprocal admission to other art museums around the country.

First Fridays for the 2018-2019 season are generously sponsored by John S. & Patricia C. Koza, H. Dee & Myrene R. Hoover, and John R. Menninger.