Alexis Schramel (she/her) is a queer experimental artist practicing across disciplines for exploration within social practice, collaboration, and installation. Alexis grew up rooted in rural farming communities of the Driftless Area along the Mississippi River. Influenced by her environment and living processes, she explores the whimsy and brutality of nature. She connects the bodily boundaries and bio-materials in her process through the thresholds of sensory perception, duration, and reflection. Most recently, Alexis is exploring the ceaseless movement of living processes, like fermentation, reverberating her interest in challenging systems such as colonialism. She approaches her practice through gift-giving systems of reciprocity which is interwoven into non-animalia kingdoms. Her studio/lab investigates duration, microorganisms, and systems of relations that emerge from entanglement.  

Alexis is currently an MFA candidate at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (2023). Alexis holds a BA in both psychology and studio art with high honors from Upper Iowa University. Alexis is a committee member, juror, and youth public art director at Art in the Park in Elkader, Iowa. In addition to directing public projects and workshops for local youth, she also organized Art for a Lifetime projects for residents of long-term care facilities. She has exhibited her work regionally and internationally at galleries such as Waterloo Center for the Arts, Charles H. MacNider Art Museum, Tappan Collective in Leeds, England, and most recently Leica 6x7 Gallery in Warsaw, Poland. ​She has received multiple awards and scholarships most notably Ingleside Women in Fine Arts Scholarship and Baldwin Memorial Award in Art.

Sugar Maple Nature Trail at Wyalusing State Park, Wisconsin. 
Along the north side of the trail there is a large cave/rock shelter, which hosts a waterfall and pool. The shelter was extensively used by Indigenous peoples (Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, Hoocąk (Ho-Chunk), Sauk and Meskwaki) prior to settlement. Unfortunately, almost all of the Indigenous art that was once evident on the walls of the rock cave has been lost to vandalism. As we fight against vandalism of sacred places, local activists  take initiative to protect Indigenous land.