Alt. featured artist series: Terri Warpinski
Terri Warpinski
Warpinski is a lens-based mixed media artist and curator living and working in De Pere, WI. She and her husband created newARTSpace, a non-commercial artist-driven exhibition and event space in downtown De Pere.
A BIG thank you to our guest interviewer and blog writer, Miranda Dunlap, for all of here hard work and dedication to spotlighting our featured artists!
We are excited to be hosting our fourth gallery show, ALT. - A Photo Opp Gallery opening on October 16, 2026 at our Photo Opp studio space! See Terri’s work and the work of our three other featured artist on our gallery page.
Community Submissions are open through August 10, 2026!
Thank you to our Gallery Presenting Sponsor:
Q: What does the theme “ALT” mean to you personally or artistically?
A: Most significantly, “ALT” means the reason I got interested in photography in the first place. I was a painter, drawer, and print maker, and I was working on an interdisciplinary course that blended fibers and photography. In 1979, I saw some work by artists Betty Hahn and Robert Rauschenberg. That first got me excited about photography as a practice I might integrate in my art.
It was opening a door to a new way of thinking about photography. Up to that point in time I dismissed it as a truly artistic medium. It felt like it was machine-based, but it was seeing that work, that alternative approach to photography, that made me think of it as a tool I would want to use.
Q: Can you describe your creative process when starting a new piece or photo series?
A: Probably not. I've been seriously working as an artist 50 years out of my 70 years so I can't unravel the rope that my process is to say exactly where it begins.
It's usually conceptually-based, meaning there's something meaningful that I am thinking about that I want to give voice to in a visual way. I will begin exploring different pathways to that. I've got a whole toolbox of ways that I can work. I was a professor of photography for 32 years, and there's not a tool or a way of working that I don't know. Which of those tools I use will depend upon what the project needs. I've been following a visual trail in gathering together images that might speak to the ideas I have. Sometimes I'll realize that it's the wrong way to go, and I'll start over again.
Q: Was there a moment, subject, or experience that pushed you to see things differently?
A: That goes back to the first time I began integrating photography into my practice, I would describe myself as a mixed media artist. I've never thought of myself as a “photographer.”
When I first began integrating photographs within my work, I saw a way in which I was very directly dealing with my real lived experience, my current thoughts and experiences, as opposed to how I had approached painting or drawing or printmaking before that.
Q: What role does risk, imperfection, or breaking convention play in your work?
A: Significant. The quote I have carried with me my entire adult life, that is at the core of my creative practice, is one by the scientist Louis Pasteur, who said, “Chance favors only the prepared mind.”
That means to me that if we are able to look without preconception at things that happen in what we're making, we can see and discover new things, as opposed to looking at them as accidents. Those are opportunities to leap forward, as opposed to being held back.
Q: What do you hope viewers feel, question, or notice when they experience your work?
A: Something. Just anything. To actually literally feel something, as opposed to just looking at something. That's all I want.
If what they came away with was exactly what I brought to the work, well, wouldn't that be wonderful? But I wouldn't expect it. Because nobody has my exact perspective, nobody's walked in my shoes, lived my life, been where I've been, seen what I've seen.
Especially with the work I’ll show for this exhibition, it's all about trying to reignite connection between our natural world around us, to understand that we are a part of that.
Q: What advice would you give to someone considering submitting work to our ALT Gallery?
A: Do it. I can recall the first time I had work in a juried show outside of being a student, and it was a really thrilling and amazing event. I do think artists need to put themselves out there if they really think of themselves as artists. To be an artist is a two-way street. It takes both a maker and a viewer. I think what Photo Opp does is quite amazing. It's an amazing space, a wonderful community of people, so it’s a place to sort of complete that equation.
