M. Winston

M Winston is an incarcerated artist within the Wisconsin Department of Corrections system, with two years remaining on his sentence. Winston is 60 years old. He has made drawings and paintings since he was a child in Mississippi. In recent years he began imagining, designing and building miniature houses out of scrap materials he sourced in the prison. 

Most of Winston’s paintings are small scale, no larger than 2 by 2.5 inches, to conform with institutional restrictions. He primarily paints places he dreams of visiting, finding a sense of freedom through his painting practice. The paintings are abstract but allude to landscapes all over the world. In constructing his houses, Winston often re-purposes his paintings to piece together the sides and roofs of the buildings. This fusing of structure, nature, sky, water, and atmosphere generates condensed, idealized renderings of life outside the prison.  

Alita Van Hee

PSG is introducing the work of Alita Van Hee (b. 1978), an Illinois based ceramic artist. The gallery recently included her work in a group exhibition, “Magic Mud,” where her stylistic blend of written language on sculptural ceramic surfaces represented a unique co-mingling of artistic forms. Alita builds multi-sided, expressive figurative compositions as well as abstract pieces. Most employ language that is sourced from her personal writings that have helped her successfully manage symptoms of schizophrenia for 20 years. Van Hee also creates elaborately patterned drawings that often feature portraits of her heroes (largely artists, musicians, writers, and activists) using a distinctive visual language of stripes, dots, and ellipses.  

 Alita Van Hee was born in Lawrence, Kansas, and has lived in California and Texas. Her father was also an artist. She has resided in Chicago since 2021 and works with Project Onward, a facilitated studio for disabled artists.

Dr. Charles Smith

PSG is honored to present the work of Dr. Charles Smith (b. 1940), for the first time. He is a well-known environment builder whose concrete figures first surrounded his home in Aurora, Illinois, and now occupy a site in Hammond, Louisiana. Smith’s life has been dedicated to educating the public about Black history through his remarkable, constantly evolving concrete sculptures.  His “African-American Heritage Museum + Black Veterans’ Archive” is a yard show of hundreds of elaborate figurative sculptures that commemorate public figures. Dr. Smith is one of the country’s most important living artists. A group of 218 sculptures is in the permanent collection of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI and is on permanent display at the museum’s second location, The Preserve, which focuses on art environments. 

Smith is a Marine veteran (Vietnam), a self-taught artist, an ordained minister, a community activist, an educator, archivist, orator, and a ceaseless disseminator of Black histories.

A major exhibition of Dr. Charles Smith’s work was presented by White Columns, NY, in 2022. A  book, The Life and Art of Dr. Charles Smith: An Artist's Memoir,  published by The Art of Dr. Charles Smith, Inc. and edited by Dana Boutin and Lisa Stone, will be available in early March 2025. 

Rosemary Ollison

Rosemary Ollison (b. 1942) is a self-taught artist who lives in Milwaukee, WI. When she was 16 years old she moved to the midwest from a plantation in Arkansas. She began making art in 1994 while healing from an abusive marriage and for the next 30 years has explored numerous media. Most of her work deals thematically with her identity as a Black women and celebrates the power, individuality and mystique of all women. Rosemary collects glass, leather, bracelets, beads, bones and jewelry and repurposes these materials into sculptural works. She has created an art environment in her small apartment with layers of textiles, duct tape sculptures, beaded curtains, leather crazy quilts and inventive drawings. She also designs clothing and writes poetry. Ollison says she creates in dialog with God: “When I am creating I am satisfied, I am free! I no longer just exist, I am alive!” Rosemary Ollison’s first solo institutional exhibition will open in September, 2025 at the Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts, Cedarburg, WI. 

Her work is in the collections of the Milwaukee Art Museum; Museum of Wisconsin Art (West Bend, WI); Lynden Sculpture Garden; Northwestern Mutual Insurance; and the Chipstone Foundation. 

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein

This well-known, multi-faceted artist is from Milwaukee, the location of Portrait Society Gallery. Several years ago, the gallery was fortunate to acquire a small body of work from a neighbor of Eugene and  Marie. These pristine works had been stored in a portfolio for decades. 

From the late 1930s until his death, Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (1910-1983) produced expansive bodies of work in poetry, photography, ceramics, sculpture, painting, and drawing, transforming his home into a self-styled kingdom. He began making vivid and visionary paintings in the 1950s, with subjects ranging from atomic mushroom clouds, to fantastical birds and beasts, and futuristic metropolises. His work is in the collection of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; The Museum of Modern Art, NY; The American Folk Art Museum, NY; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; and others. 

Della Wells

Collage artist Della Wells (b. 1951) has become increasing recognized for her intricate narratives set in a conceptual place called Mamboland. Within this invented world, awareness and emancipation guide the lives of women who speak openly of oppression and cultivate freedom. They amend the inadequacies of the historic record, and cultivate energy and agency over the past and future. Ancestors provide guidance as they peer into the present through windows. The ever present images of chickens symbolize sacrifice. Like her predecessor, Romare Bearden, Wells’ unique style utilizes torn paper from magazines to define billowing skies, domestic scenes, and urban landscapes. 

PSG is excited to present new collages, several collaborative textiles, and a suite of drawings made specifically for the OAF, many from Wells’ ongoing  “Little Colored Girl” series. 

Della Wells' work is included in the collections of the Milwaukee Art Museum, (Milwaukee, WI), The Chazen Museum of Art (Madison, WI), the Museum of Wisconsin Art (West Bend, WI), Intuit Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art (Chicago), University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, the Bunker Artspace, (Palm Beach, FL), the Lumber Room Collection (Portland, OR), and many private collections. 

Recent exhibitions include “Layers: The Art of Contemporary Collage,” Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore;  "Criss Cross: Fiber Art," Portrait Society Gallery of Contemporary Art (2024); Kentuck Art Center (2024);  "Mambo Land" (2024) and "Souls Bloom in This Garden" (2022) Andrew Edlin Gallery, NYC; Cedarburg Museum of Art (2020), Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (2019),  "Her Story, My Dreams: The Images of Della Wells,” Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago (2018); "Another Happy Mambo Day: The Invented Worlds of Della Wells,” Wright Museum, Beloit College, (2017).