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Gallery reception for field guide artist

The Wega Arts Gallery will be showing the work of Justin T. Sipiorski, who has done color fish illustrations for field guides.

A reception will be held at 5 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 9, at the gallery, which is part of the Gerold Opera House in downtown Weyauwega.

The show will be in place through Saturday, May 18, to celebrate the fishing season.

The gallery will be open from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturdays, May 4, 11 and 18.

During the interim months, people may email [email protected] or call 920-867-4888 to make an appointment to visit the gallery.

Sipiorski is a Stevens Point native, who lives in Waupaca with his wife Emily and their two children.

He is a professor of biology and curator of fishes at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

Sipiorski began drawing as a toddler started fishing seriously at age 10.

After high school, he decided to double major in biology and fisheries at the UW-Stevens Point, graduating in 1997.

While at UW-Stevens Point, he continued drawing and won several wildlife art competitions. His formal art training stopped after high school.

Sipiorski designed environmental interpretive signs for nature conservancies throughout the eastern United States.

During the time he was pursuing a Master’s in biology from the University of South Dakota, he drew and designed a logo for the Virginia Tech aquaculture program.

He received his Master’s degree in 2000 and completed his Ph.D. in zoology from Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 2011.

As a Ph.D. student, he illustrated baleen whales for the second edition of “Wild Mammals of North America: Biology, Management and Conservation.”

Soon after, Sipiorski was asked to contribute about 200 color fish illustrations for the second edition of the “Peterson Field Guild to Freshwater Fishes of North America: North of Mexico.”

That work was published in May 2011.

He is currently awaiting the printing of the third book for which he has contributed illustrations – “A Field Guide to the Fishes of Nebraska.”

That book is due out this year, and he contributed all of the illustrations, which is more than 600.

The Feb. 9 reception is on the same night Wega Arts is hosting its Mardi Gras Bash.

It begins at 6 p.m., and Sipiorski is donating some of his pictures for the event’s auction.

Another recently added auction item includes two tickets to “The Lion King” at the Performing Arts Center and dinner at Flanagan’s Wine Review, both located in downtown Appleton.

The Mardi Gras Bash will include a Cajun dinner, beads, masks, games, prizes and the music of “Copper Box.”

Tickets are $25 and available online at wegaarts.org, at the Bookcellar in Waupaca and at the Coffee Klatsch in Weyauwega. The deadline to purchase tickets is Feb. 5.

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