Speaker Series

Hazel Belvo has been an exhibiting painter for more than sixty years and has works in many private, public, and museum collections including the Steinway Collection, New York, the Bezalel Museum, Israel, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Weisman Art Museum, and the Minnesota Museum of American Art. She grew up in Southern Ohio, where she was always drawing.

Her bachelor and master’s degrees are from the University of Minnesota. After art school, she went to the New School for Social Research and was then a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Harvard for two years. She was a founding member of the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota, an important feminist art collective, from 1976 to 1986.

She taught at Quaker Schools and Rhode Island School of Design in Rhode Island, and had a studio practice in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She was a teacher and chair of fine arts at St. Paul Academy and Summit School, where she designed and developed the fine art program. In 1989, she became professor and chair of the Division of Fine Arts at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where she is now Professor Emerita. She shares her life and studios in Minneapolis and Grand Marais with artist and philosopher Marcia Casey Cushmore and teaches at the Grand Marais Art Colony. They share a rich life and have traveled widely with their studio in a backpack painting and exploring the world.

She is known for her fifty year exploration of a single tree, Manidoo-giizhikens—the 400-year-old cedar, known as the Spirit Tree—which stands on the Grand Portage Ojibwe Reservation on the shore of Lake Superior. Her most recent body of work, Spirit Tree: Honey Locust is a series of eighteen large-scale paintings, a forest, inspired by Overstory, a book by Richard Powers and is a tribute to a Honey Locust tree that was behind the Metropolitan Museum in New York City and cut down to build an extension to the museum. A selection of these paintings are included in Hazel Belvo: For Love, currently on exhibition at the Minnesota Museum of American Art.

Recently, Hazel Belvo: A Matriarch of Art, a monograph about her life and work, was written by Julie L’Enfant and published by Afton Press.

John Larsen is a business, social and non-profit entrepreneur.

John is a principal and co-founder of Design Forty Five, a residential design firm located in Minneapolis. Working with his business partner Ted, John has designed over 100 new homes, cabins, additions and remodels since 2006. They believe that life along the 45 th parallel requires vigor and intelligence; it demands the best – both from ourselves and the homes in which we thrive.

In addition to his professional practice, John is an active member of his community.  He has served on boards of various organizations and is particularly dedicated to bridging across differences, protecting the environment and securing social justice for all.  John co-founded and led Project 515, a non-profit that had the rare and enviable opportunity to achieve its mission (securing marriage equality in MN) and close its doors in 2014.

Currently, John serves as president of the John Larsen Foundation and as chair of Upstream, a new initiative that leverages Minnesotans’ love for our natural places into greater trust, connection and stewardship.

John and his husband Mike Stewart are empty-nesters now that their foster kids, Rosie and Jacob, have gone on to pursue their doctorates in sociology and botany. They live in south Minneapolis with their chickens “Princess Lay-a,” “Paprikash,” and “Camille.”

Since retiring as a Kindergarten through 8th grade art teacher, Anne continues her work as a practicing artist and community volunteer. Her abstract mixed media works on paper have been part of exhibitions at Artista Bottega, La Pointe Art Center, Unity Church Unitarian, and various juried shows. In addition to a BA in Theatre Arts: Design from the University of Minnesota and a MAEd in Art Education from St. Catherine University, Anne is grateful for the art instruction she has received over the years from a variety of wonderful artists.

Visit Anne's website for more details on her work. 

Sculptor Peter Zelle has worked with glass, clay and steel for over 35 years. 

Peter received his BFA in Sculpture/Glass from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1987. After completing his degree he apprenticed for the sculptor Howard Ben Tre in Providence, RI. Peter then moved back to Minnesota and established Zelle Glass Studio in 1992, a sculpture and production glass blowing studio. Over the course of 15 years Zelle Glass Studio sold functional and decorative glass art in over 100 galleries across the United States. While supporting himself this way, Peter slowly developed his sculptural process and esthetic language without having to compromise his true artistic intentions to make a living. As he matured, so did his art.

In 2007 Peter felt it was time to dedicate himself solely to his fine art and closed the glass blowing part of his studio. 

Since then, Peter’s focus has been on developing and refining his cast glass sculptures. Peter uses glass as a medium to capture and transmit colored light in a sculptural form. He feels colored light has a direct path, both emotionally and spiritually into our minds and bodies. His process begins by carving low clay reliefs. This gives Peter the freedom to conjure and explore form, line, texture and compositions.

During this time Peter has been in numerous Fine Art exhibitions, and completed private commissions and select public art projects.

He cites some of his influences as Arshile Gorky, Paul Klee, Louise Nevelson, Andrew Goldsworthy, George Morrison, and Peter Krasnow, the relative whose 20th century sculptures and paintings were present in Zelle’s boyhood home.

More information on Peter's background and photos of his work can be found on his website.

Walter G. Lehmann is managing partner of the art, entertainment and museum law firm LEHMANN PLC (formerly LEHMANN STROBEL PC). An attorney and business consultant for over thirty years, he has focused on helping individuals, businesses and nonprofit organizations manage their real and intellectual property assets. He has represented independent producers, artists, writers, as well as museums and nonprofit arts and cultural organizations on a wide range of legal and business matters including business organization, financing, intellectual property management, board governance, nonprofit administration, and museum collections management, policies, and ethics. Lehmann’s education includes a Bachelor of Arts in English (Williams College), a Juris Doctor cum laude (Wm. Mitchell College of Law), and a Masters in Museum Studies (George Washington University). He is a frequent contributor to scholarly and industry publications and has participated in countless conferences, workshops, and presentations.

Lehmann has served on the board of directors of numerous nonprofit organizations including the Landis Valley Museum Associates and the North Museum of Natural History and Science, where he also served as interim Curator of Collections, and is a past member of the Walters Art Museum Collections Committee. He is currently on the board of The M (the Minnesota Museum of American Art), where he is Chair of the Governance and Nominating Committee.

Lehmann has taught graduate and undergraduate courses on art and museum law at Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University, Case Western Reserve Law School, University of Miami Law School, and Mitchell Hamline Law School. He is a former member of the faculty of the ABA-CLE Legal Issues in Museum Administration course, and past Chair of the ABA-IPL Copyright Policy Committee. He was a contributor to Rights and Reproductions: The Handbook for Cultural Museums, Second Edition” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018) and is the author of Museum Administration: Law and Practice, Second Edition (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). Lehmann is licensed in Minnesota, Pennsylvania (inactive), Maryland and Ohio. Lehmann is also a graduate of the Comprehensive Appraisal Studies Program and is a candidate for Associate Membership in the Appraisers Association of America.