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FeedNew Angles to Her Art
By Elizabeth Millard
Photo by Ginny Herzog
An artist who specializes in architectural imagery, Herzog surrounds herself with photographs of glassy facades, minimalist stairways, steel beams, and concrete foundations. Her St. Louis Park studio looks out over drooping trees and a curving hill, but her drafting table sports a work-in-progress that’s all about sharp lines and precise angles.
Bringing together collage, watercolor, and drawing, Herzog’s works capture the nuances of commercial and residential structures. Though many of her pieces now hang in architecture firms around the nation, as well as in other private and corporate collections, this South Minneapolis native started her career as a model-home interior designer before switching gears to full-time mom.
While living in St. Louis, Mo., in 1975, Herzog began painting watercolors between bouts of chasing after her toddler and awaiting the birth of her second child. As her family transformed, so did her style—she was drawn to abstract images, and then to more geometric shapes. A visit to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry in 1982 provided the epiphany she needed to find a deeper, cohesive theme for her work. She felt something click into place while looking at an exhibit on the Bauhaus school of architecture, an early twentieth-century approach emphasizing clean lines and simple forms.
“It was fascinating, and the images stayed with me,” she says. “The next year, I began experimenting with subject matter in several different series, and I’ve been staying with it ever since.”
Herzog creates both representations of individual projects and collages of numerous architectural elements. For the former, she draws on the distinctive elements of a single structure; for the latter, she may include components—a corrugated metal roof, a refrigerator, a doorway—from many different projects. Because the images are set at multiple angles, each work can be displayed horizontally or vertically. “There’s no ‘right side up’ with my paintings,” she says. “It’s more about a feeling from the overall grouping.”
Herzog’s portfolio includes a representation of a Stillwater home, and she hopes to add to her local work with some of the Twin Cities’ recent loft and condominium projects. “With all the lofts going up, I’d love to do a painting that captures a redevelopment of an old space,” she says.
Elizabeth Millard is a Minneapolis writer.
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