wetware /wet'wâr'/ n. [perhaps from the novels of Rudy Rucker or Stanislav Lem] 1. The human nervous system, as opposed to computer hardware or software. 2. Human beings (programmers, operators, administrators) attached to a computer system, as opposed to the system's hardware or software.
"If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." This quotation from 1882 by designer and reformer William Morris sums up the underlying philosophy that a master of the Japanese style of pottery imbued his students with in the 1960s and 1970s.
More than 100 artists' works in ceramics, fibers, glass, metals, wood, and mixed media explore the boundaries between art and craft in a massive exhibit at the Davenport Museum of Art. Defining Craft 1: Collecting for the New Millennium is on display through November 3 and has such luminaries in the art world as Gehry, Chihuly, Lichtenstein, Castle Sherman, and Paley.
One of the things I enjoy about the shows at the MidCoast Fine Arts Gallery in LeClaire's Iowa Welcome Center is the open comment book. People who wander in off the highway, looking for a place to make a potty stop, can find themselves in an art gallery.
David Campbell's large, realistic sculptures overwhelm a space and demand the viewer's attention, while Marguerite Perret's prints delicately await the audience's close inspection. This contrast makes for an excellent show at MidCoast Gallery West on the corner of Second Avenue and 17th Street, just west of the plaza in downtown Rock Island.
In the current two-person show at Quad City Arts, Mary Cullen Lowman's artist statement describes her philosophy quite well: "Mary's primary interest is life, not still life. She finds that most of her work focuses on living friends - four-legged and two.
Steve Maxon's bronze and aluminum sculptures have a hard edge - pun intended - with a huge dose of humor. The bronze cast and iron piece Gone West, for example, has the upper part of a skull wearing a World War I army helmet that a skeleton hand is tipping to the viewer.
Fantastic reality meets realistic fantasy in the two-woman show of Catherine Jones Davies and Dorothy Beach running through May at the Mississippi Valley Welcome Center in LeClaire. While Davies' paintings tackle reality with the style of Expressionism, Beach takes a realistic approach to whimsical subject matter.
The new exhibit Old West, New West: Art of the American Frontier at the Davenport Museum of Art (DMA) offers some 40 painting and sculptures that show the contrast between the way the West was portrayed in art in the late 19th Century and the way it's being represented today.
Even though MidCoast Fine Arts hosted shows for Thomas Lytle in August and Bruce Walters in October, the current exhibition joining the two artists in the Quad City Arts Gallery is well worth the trip to the District of Rock Island.

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