His solo exhibition “Cartoons & Caricatures” fills The Grand Center for Arts & Culture’s 4 Pillars Gallery in New Ulm until May 29 with roughly 30 original pieces that blend portraiture, cartoon energy and imagination.

“I generally work improvisationally,” Groe said during a recent gallery walkthrough. “I don’t usually come up with an idea to start with. I just start the character, and the character develops from my imagination, mostly through the act of making it itself.”

The show offers a look at decades of his personal visual storytelling. Groe, long rooted in Southern Minnesota, once tried a different path. 

In the late 1980s he moved to Los Angeles hoping to break into independent filmmaking. The effort fell short. 

Craig Groe’s 1995 ink portrait Bucktooth showcases his early cartoon-style line work and exaggerated facial features. The piece, with its bold eyes and geometric accents, reflects the playful yet edgy character studies that define much of his solo exhibition Cartoons & Caricatures. (Photo by Amy Zents)

“I didn’t have a whole lot of success and didn’t really like L.A. a whole lot,” he said. 

He returned to Minnesota, built a stable television career first at TV 6 in Austin and then at KEYC in Mankato, while continuing the creative habits that started when he was four or five years old.

Gallery visitors see a mix of faces and figures that resist simple labels. Groe rejects the term abstract for his work because each piece stays anchored to the human form, no matter how far the features stretch or twist. 

The characters come from imagination, childhood memories and popular culture. 

A large painting of musician Todd Rundgren dates to 1977, when Groe was still in high school. 

In Crazy Heads (2003, ink), Craig Groe presents a cluster of wild, expressive faces that capture raw personality through quick, energetic lines. The drawing highlights his caricature roots and his ability to invent distinctive characters straight from imagination—precisely the spirit celebrated in the current 4 Pillars Gallery show. (Photo by Amy Zents)

“It just seemed so huge,” he recalled. “I thought, ‘Am I going to be able to compose on this thing?'” 

Finished decades later, the piece still shows the bold confidence of that early ambition.

Another canvas, the 1985 “Zoot Suit” work, captures the sharp lines and attitude of classic swing-era style that fascinated him as a young man. 

More recent pieces such as “Pool Boy,” with its bright colors and swimming goggles, show how his approach continues to evolve. Influences from “Johnny Quest” cartoons and George Reeves’ “Superman” television series appear across the gallery walls.

Groe sharpened his speed and accuracy during an early-1980s stint as a kiosk caricature artist inside a Mankato mall. There he learned to create quick “street portraits” in under ten minutes. 

Craig Groe’s vibrant 2016 acrylic painting Pizzaman pulses with color and surreal energy. The towering green-headed figure in a red headdress combines cartoon exaggeration with abstract composition, demonstrating the artist’s improvisational approach and lifelong love of bold, imaginative character creation. (Photo by Amy Zents)

One memory still makes him laugh. A young boy, startled by his own exaggerated features on paper, started crying. Groe handed the boy a pencil and invited him to draw a portrait in return.

“Ok  draw me instead.” Groe said.

“I could just see he’s just taking this evil glee doing this,” Groe said. 

He still keeps that child’s drawing today.

Groe builds or refurbishes all his own frames, often rescuing materials during half-price nights at the Salvation Army. 

“Presentation is everything,” he said. 

He puts as much effort into the carpentry, hardware and final assembly as he does into the painted surfaces. 

The same attention to craft runs through his work as a musician, poet and theater performer.

For 15 years, Groe cared for his mother after her stroke. When she lost her ability to speak, he became her steady companion and advocate. After her passing in late 2019 and the isolation of the pandemic, he turned deeper into music. 

He first learned the viola as a child, choosing it because the violin sounded “a little screechy.” 

He later moved to guitar and spent the COVID years mastering complete songs from start to finish, focusing on breathing, structural shifts and the flow that turns separate sections into a finished performance.

That spirit explains why Groe scheduled his May 14 opening reception at 6:30 p.m. to coincide with The Grand’s Open Mic Night held below the art gallery.

He performs music at 8:30 p.m. that evening, during the last part of open mic night which runs 7-9 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

“I like to hang art and I like to play music,” he said. “To me, the combination of the two is perfect.” 

He chose the open mic crowd over a traditional Friday night reception. Solo exhibitions let him connect directly with audiences. 

“The individual can get kind of swallowed up in group shows,” he said. “I prefer the individual expression of a solo show.”

Now free from the KEYC control room, Groe continues to follow modernist voices such as Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock alongside underground comic artists like Robert Crumb. 

He plans a new comic book project and experiments he calls “multimedias” that weave live poetry, video and painting together in single events.

Groe hopes the exhibition creates connections for different visitors.

Sports fans, art lovers and casual passersby can all find something. He believes faces create an instant link that pure non-representational work sometimes lacks. 

“All of a sudden, there is a whole different relationship that people have from person to person,” he said. “And not only that, but they’re fun and funny to look at.”

Cartoons & Caricatures,” by Craig Groe remains on view at the 4 Pillars Gallery through May 29.

The opening reception is Thursday, May 14 at 6:30 p.m. followed by  a musical performance at 8:30 p.m. during Open Mic Night. More of his work appears at craiggroe.com.