Starting an art collection, starts with local

Featured Artist: Heidi Jeub

Born in Woodstock, Illinois, Heidi Jeub now lives and works in Central Minnesota, with an active studio practice as an abstract painter, founder of the Whit Gallery in downtown St. Cloud, and the owner and operator of a portable studio called the Tiny School of Art & Design, soon to be HEIJEU ARTS. She has a studio art degree (1999) and masters degree (2017 in Arts & Cultural Leadership) from the University of Minnesota. She has been awarded several project grants and awards from regional arts boards (Five Wings Arts Council and Central MN Arts Board), the Minnesota State Arts Board, Forecast Public Art, and has been included in rural-based grants through national funders like Art Place and the National Endowment for the Arts Our Town Grants. She is a 2019 National Arts Strategies and 2021 Creative Community Institute Fellow. She is now an art specialist at Athlos Academy in St. Cloud.

Featured Legacy Artist: Bela Petheo

Bela Petheo was born in Budapest, and received an M.A. in art history in 1956 from the University of Budapest. He escaped Hungary shortly after the Communist takeover in 1957 and immigrated to Vienna. The recipient of a Rockefeller scholarship, Petheo studied at Karl Lueger University and the Academy of Fine Arts, and for a brief time had contact with Oskar Kokoschka’s “School of Seeing.” In 1959 he immigrated to the United States and enrolled at the University of Chicago in 1961. He received his MFA in painting and printmaking in 1963.

The artist Harold Haydon had suggested Petheo to William McNeill as the illustrator of his book, after McNeill had interviewed and rejected five other illustrators. During their initial meeting, McNeill handed Petho a list of the concepts he wished to have illustrated and instructed Petheo to compose a few sketches. The drawing entitled “The Industrial Revolution” earned Petheo the $2000 commission to illustrate The Rise of the West.

In 1966, Petheo joined the art faculty at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. From 1975-1989 he operated a private lithographic workshop. He retired from St. John’s in 1997 to St. Cloud, Minnesota where he lived and maintained his painting studio until his death on May 3rd, 2017.