Midwest Memory: Author Traces Artistic Obsession Across States

Christopher Vondracek drove from Washington, D.C. to Omaha for a book reading. The trip was part of a Midwest tour for his second book, “Redlin or Rodin.” The essays connect his childhood in Minnesota to his adult interest in painter Terry Redlin. He arrived in Omaha to discuss the work with family members at Bookworm Books. His parents, cousin, and his wife’s aunt and uncle attended the informal session.

Vondracek grew up in Minnesota before moving to South Dakota for his journalism degree and later his literature master’s. In 2020, he lived in an 800-square-foot apartment in D.C. with his wife, Carrie. When the pandemic closed his favorite art galleries, he turned to digital archives. He found hundreds of digitized paintings by Redlin online.

“And that tripped a wire for me because I wouldn’t have had access to those paintings had it not been for, you know, digital culture,” Vondracek said. “The technology sort of lifted me into the space where I was all of a sudden recalling events and scenes from my childhood in the ’80s in rural Minnesota that was being wracked by, like, farm foreclosures and the schools were consolidating.”

Redlin is known for colorful, dramatically lit paintings of Midwestern landscapes. The works rarely feature people but include songbirds, pheasants, ducks, and geese. US ART Magazine named Redlin “America’s Most Popular Artist” from 1991 to 1998. His art appears more often on gift shop items than in gallery settings.

Vondracek questioned the “kitschyness” of Redlin’s choices. He sometimes resented the idyllic views of landscapes that national media often stereotyped. “Oftentimes when we are from like a flat place, you know, like Nebraska or southern Minnesota, eastern South Dakota, where it’s not considered beautiful, the gesture, the instinct is that we have to make fun of it,” Vondracek said.

He noted that oil painters find value in flat horizons. “And as Paul Groucho from southwestern Minnesota said, realizes that sublimity or grandeur can be not just high mountain heights, but it can also be like a wide horizon line, or it can be the sky,” he added. The original manuscript was 90,000 words and focused mostly on Redlin. Vondracek shortened the text and shifted the focus to his personal experiences at his editor’s request.