Nicholas "Bly" Pope

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Bly Pope is an artist with profound dedication and experience with hyperrealism and the classic fine art traditions. He graduated from Stanford University and received his Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Minnesota, where he has been an Adjunct Professor for over six years, teaching classes in Drawing, Graphic Novel Illustration, and Artistic Interpretation from Vintage Cinema. He has also taught at The Minneapolis College of Art and Design for five years, in Foundation: 2D, and The Interactive Visual Novel.  Pope also taught advanced drawing at The Perpich Center for Arts Education for three years and worked as a substitute teacher for The Blake School, Breck School, and Saint Paul Academy for three years.

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His work has been shown and awarded in numerous exhibitions.  Pope's drawing, “Maryanna,” was selected to be a part of the National Portrait Competition Exhibition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in 2013-2014 and was purchased by the Minneapolis Institute of Art for their permanent collection in 2017.  "Freya Manfred," a 2006 pencil drawing portrait of the artist's mother, took 750 hours to complete and was acquired by the Cafesjian Museum of Fine Art in Armenia.

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Select exhibitions include Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; American Swedish Institute, Minneapolis, MN; Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC; The People’s Gallery, Minneapolis, MN; Larson Gallery, St. Paul, MN; Katherine Nash Gallery, Minneapolis, MN; and Heuser Art Gallery, Bradley University, Peoria, IL.

 

Public collections include The Cafesjian Museum of Fine Art, Armenia and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN.