Landscapes, Orchids, Fossils and Minerals on Display at New Quad City Airport Exhibit
The new Quad City Arts Art at the Airport exhibit (Nov. 4 to Jan. 4, 2021) presents Nancy Lindsay’s landscape paintings, Marcia
A landscape painting by Nancy Lindsay of Stone City, Iowa.
Whitmore’s botanical watercolors and a selection of fossils and minerals from Augustana College’s Fryxell Geology Museum.
Nancy Lindsay, of Stone City, Iowa, discovered the beauty of the Iowa landscape when she moved to Iowa in 1998, when her husband introduced her to all the scenic areas.
An orchid painting by Marcia Whitmore of Coal Valley.
“Palisades, Pleasant Creek, Pinicon, Wapsipinicon and Backbone Parks are some of my favorite places to paint,” Lindsay said in a Quad City Arts release. “As a landscape painter for most of my life, the last few years my paintings have brought me closer into the woods. I have been obsessed with branches, their direction, their movement, their strength, their weakness. The abstract quality of intersecting lines is what I see as I work to build the composition and to the final painting.”
Her paintings can be found in many residential and commercial buildings across the country. She is a member of the Iowa Plein Air Painters.
Marcia Whitmore of Coal Valley is a botanical illustrator with a membership in the American Society of Botanical Artists. Her paintings are of orchids exclusively. Her art has been featured at the Chicago Botanical Center, the Clinton Art League, the Quad City Botanical Center, Studios in the Park, Paso Robles,
A mineral from Augustana College’s Fryxell Geology Museum.
Calif., the Fairchild Botanical Center in Florida, and also many displays at orchid shows.
Her Facebook page is entitled “A Brush with Orchids,” and many of her watercolors are currently appearing in Orchids (the Journal of the American Orchid Society).
Whitmore is a retired teacher/fine arts coordinator. She received a bachelor’s from Augustana College in Rock Island, and master’s from Western Illinois University.
Both artists’ works can be seen at www.quadcityarts.com/art-at-the-airport.html.
Specimens from Augustana’s Fryxell Geology Museum collections were selected for this exhibit to highlight the beauty of the art and science of landscape, and include fossil leaves preserved in volcanic ash, preserved textures in petrified wood, minerals as vivid as the colors on a painter’s palette, and fossilized sea animals that resemble botanical illustrations of lilies.
The Fryxell Geology Museum is one of the largest and finest collections of rocks, minerals, and fossils in the Midwest. Favorite exhibits include a wall of glowing, fluorescent rocks and a complete 22-foot long skeleton of crested and carnivorous Cryolophosaurus, a dinosaur discovered in Antarctica by an Augustana geology professor.
The museum serves as a teaching resource for Augustana students and the public for the understanding of Earth’s history, processes and materials, and promotes earth science awareness through displays, free educational programming, teaching kits loaned free-of-charge to schools and organizations, and community outreach.
Due to Covid-19 precautions, the museum currently is open to the public free-of-charge, by appointment only. To make an appointment, call 309-794-7318 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday-Friday. For more information, visit augustana.edu/fryxellmuseum.
Art at the Airport in Moline’s Quad City International Airport gallery is easy to find. It is just across from the gift shop and restaurant and right before the security checkpoint. The gallery never closes, and you will pay just a dollar for parking.
