VIVA Gallery’s monthly First Thursday artist reception will be held on June 4 and will feature the paintings of Hannah Heyer. The gallery sponsors the People’s Choice Award at the Driftless Area Art Festival, and Hannah was the winner of the award at last year’s festival. She has provided the art for the festival’s 2015 poster.

Hannah is a self-taught artist who lives and works in rural southeastern Minnesota. Primarily in oil or watercolor, her work is a study of place, time and season.  She loves the place where she lives—as familiar as the back of her hand, yet never the same two days in a row.  Hannah enjoys the challenge of plein air painting, and the way it encourages taking a closer look to more fully take in what might otherwise go unnoticed.  She tries to capture the beauty she sees in the sun shining through the trees, in the mist that rises out of the valleys after a rain, in the clouds that pile in the west, in the simple, everyday blessings, in faces and events subtle and breathtaking.

Hannah’s paintings, along with the works of member artists, will be featured at VIVA’s First Thursday reception on June 4 from 5 to 7 p.m.  The gallery is located at 217 South Main Street in Viroqua.  For more information about this and future First Thursday events, contact the gallery at 608-637-6918 or info@vivagallery.net.

The Rooted Spoon bar will be open during the VIVA open house and VIVA members will provide hors d’oeuvres.   Rooted Spoon regrets that for the first time since they began First Thursday dinners three-and-a-half years ago, they will be unable to provide a dinner on June 4.  Dani Lind and her crew will be catering the Midwest Women's Herbal Conference near Stevens Point (their biggest job ever—four days of meals for 300 attendees).   Rooted Spoon will be back in action for the July First Thursday dinner.