The Iowa City Gallery Walk is back for another year! For over 25 years, this event has taken over downtown and filled your favorite businesses with wonderful works of art. Make an evening of it and grab a bite to eat, shop, and gallery walk in beautiful downtown Iowa City! The 2024 Downtown Summer Gallery Walk is Friday, June 7th from 5:00 – 8:00 p.m. This FREE event is open to everyone to enjoy a self-guided tour of shops, galleries, and other locations that have curated featured artists and pieces of art.

2024 Downtown Summer Gallery Walk Locations, Artists, & Exhibits:

• AKAR –  Shikha Joshi: “Handmade for your Table 
  • Shikha Joshi, a studio potter from Round Rock, Texas, originally from New Delhi, India, draws inspiration from the vibrant hues and varied textures of nature. Rocks, tree bark, and algae are among the elements that fuel her creativity. Despite the limitations of an oxidation kiln, she skillfully translates these organic surfaces into her work.
• Blick Art Materials – Mark Vollenweider: “An Audubon Coloring Book”
  • Sharpie drawings of John James Audubon’s bird paintings, done in the style of a coloring book.
• Glassando – Rose Wambsganss: “Meditative Fine-Line Artwork”
  • Rose produces vibrant yet whimsical black-and-white drawings through the ancient, meditative art of Zentangle. Her intricate fine-line artwork requires 10 to 80 hours to finish.
• Iowa Artisans Gallery – Anna Marie Pavlik & Barbara Weets: “Kismet, Our Fate and Shades of Green”
  • Pavlik’s aim is to explore issues involving nature that include an element of fate. Through intricate printmaking, she addresses her concern for the survival of natural areas and humanity’s relationship to the environment. Weets’ nature paintings use transparent watercolor in a non-traditional style. They’re bright, vivid, and fresh paintings that make you feel good.
• Iowa City Senior Center – Janet Stephan
  • Jan Stephan is a watercolor artist creating semi-abstract, unconventional, honest depictions of local landscapes and occasionally still life. She creates work inspired by the Iowa country she grew up with. The work develops from photographs, real life, and her imagination. Jan enjoys creating work with minimal detail and trusting the viewer’s imagination as well as her own. Jan is a member of the Iowa Watercolor Society.
• Prairie Lights Cafe – Rebecca Clouse: “Muttisse!”
  • From the artist: “When it came time for me to learn more about color, I turned to Matisse and started making watercolor copies of his paintings … I replaced some elements with dogs, … and because they made me smile I started showing them to people, and then Muttisse! happened.” Silent Auction, 60% of proceeds benefit the Iowa City Animal Shelter.

• Public Space One – Jamie Weinfurter: “Building Castles in the Air”
  • Site-specific installations and sculptural reconstructions of domestic objects that discuss the impermanence of memory based on the artist’s own memory loss from a Traumatic Brain Injury, honoring “the little things,” queer homemaking, and safe spaces creating access to the arts.
• Ten Thousand Villages – Travis Kraus
  • Found object sculpture.
• Textiles – Jane Tallman: “An ArtWalk Evening with SunRags Studios”
  • Unique, Handmade, Vintage inspired one-of-a-kind clothing for women.
• The James Theater – Iowa Conservatory Students: “Portraits” 
  • Abstract and Realistic Portraits created by students in Expressive Drawing class at Iowa Conservatory
• United Action for Youth – Group Show: “Yarn Explosion” 
  • The show will be outside of the youth center. Using yarn the outdoor space at the youth center will come alive with color.
• University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art – Keith Haring: “To My Friends at Horn: Keith Haring and Iowa City”
  • This exhibition celebrates Keith Haring’s legacy and honors the many individuals who shaped his visits to Iowa City during the 1980s. It features the mural Haring painted in 1989 for Ernest Horn Elementary School, which is on loan to the Stanley during the school’s renovation. Enjoy snacks, a cash bar, and music performed by Melanie Landsittel in the lobby.
  • The Stanley Museum of Art is giving away free exclusive Keith Haring buttons to the first 10 visitors who get their cards punched at the welcome desk.
• U.S. Bank – Elena Sivan & Agatha Belaya
  • Elena’s work includes watercolor flowers and Agatha’s work relates women and nature.
• Willow & Stock – Jenny Gringer
  • Jenny is a self-taught linocut printmaker based in Iowa City, Iowa. Her work explores political themes, the human condition, and resiliency. Over the years, her work has shifted from weird animals, and street art, to focusing more on text-based work. She enjoys highlighting writers, poets, and fragmented ideas.