Regan Golden

Artist Bio

For two decades, Regan Golden's artwork and writing have explored how relationships within nature are constructed and evolve over time. Golden’s artwork has been exhibited in solo and group shows both nationally and internationally, including Gallery 44: Centre for Contemporary Photography in Toronto; Gallery 400 in Chicago; The Cue Foundation in New York City, and The Flaten Art Museum in Northfield, MN. Recent exhibitions include “Green Screen” at Viewpoint Gallery in Saint Paul (March 2025) and “Rose Reverie” at Kolman & Reeb Gallery in Minneapolis (July 2025). 

Public artworks are on view at Dogwood Coffee Company - Northeast Minneapolis & Saint Paul, University of Minnesota–Center for Health Interprofessional Programs and University of Minnesota–College of Biological Sciences Conservatory. Golden’s artist books are in the collections of The Walker Art Center, Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota and the Rolvaag Library at St. Olaf College. 

Regan Golden is an Associate Professor in Fine Arts at The Minneapolis College of Art & Design (MCAD) and also a member of the American Society of Botanical Artists and Saint Paul’s District 12 Land Use Committee. 

Artist Statement

Cumulo Rosa is an invented Latin term meaning “Cloud Rose.” One summer afternoon the plumes of roses at the Lyndale Rose Garden in Minneapolis looked to me just like the billowing clouds gathering over the nearby lake. The Latin word cumulus means “to heap,” “to accumulate,” “to gather into a pile.” This term could apply to roses, clouds, or even collages. Cumulus implies an ever-growing, ever-changing structure: the roses in the garden reaching skyward on their sturdy stems respond to the slightest shift in light or moisture with subtle changes in color. Roses hover between earth and sky.

 Cumulo Rosa “the cloud rose” is an invention, like all descriptions of the natural world, based partially on observation and partially on imagination. This exhibition is not about a particular species of Rose, but what is unknown, leaving space for the imagination and focusing attention onto what assumptions we project onto the rose, rather than its description. A rose could be described as being at “peak bloom,” but that is an aesthetic judgment that varies based on the viewer and also requires prediction of the future, the weather and the effects of time. Who can really know when that peak will be? What day? What hour is the bloom at its fullest? Who will be present to mark that one moment?

 Gardens are speculative spaces: they are planted based on the hope of what they will become. A gardener is always imagining what the garden will look like in the future after more sun, more rain. All gardens require suspension of judgement, acceptance of uncertainty and risk of loss. Ever-changing, a garden is really never finished, always evolving. 

 As an artist, I am present for that moment when the rose is in full bloom, but that also requires an awareness of what comes before and after.  My process as an image-maker is defined by anticipation and speculation, I am always attempting to foresee how elements may cohere at a moment in time.  For this reason, my images are not only about what is pictured, but about making visible the construct that you look through to see what lies beyond. The photographs in the first gallery are like staring up through the leaves of a tree at the summer sky. I believe that changing that framework through which we perceive the world can also change our relationship to nature and within that space of possibility is an opportunity to create a future that is different from the present.