Freeark GALLERY & sculpture garden exhibitions
Michelle Wasson | Aurea Nova | September 10 - October 21, 2023
The Riverside Arts Center’s Freeark Gallery is pleased to present Aurea Nova, a solo exhibition of paintings by Michelle Wasson, curated by Judith Mullen
Exhibition Dates: September 10 – October 21, 2023
Opening Reception: Sunday, September 10, 2023, 3:00 – 6:00 pm
Join us afterwards for a private happy hour across the street at the Quincy Street Distillery.
Gallery hours: Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays 1:00 – 5:00 pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, October 14, 2023, 2:00 pm
Curated by Judith Mullen
Finding and unlocking shapes and ideas from her unconscious mind, Michelle Wasson continues to push the boundaries of making space in the two-dimensional realm. In Wasson’s latest body of work, born from her form of psychic automatism, gone are obvious painterly strategies—evidence of striving and trickery—to fool the viewer's eye and heart into pictorial engagement. Instead, we as audience, are gifted layered paintings such as “Chimera,” oil on canvas, rendered out of a sense of love, gratitude, and a seamless flow of energy and ultimately, an intimate relationship with shadow; generously woven together with qualities and experiences found in our own humanness and in the natural world.
All of Wasson’s paintings are tenderly painted in oil on canvas where recognizable and unrecognizable forms converge into a mysterious new reality in which we find ourselves transported for a rest, a wander, or an enlightened repose. Quoting a section of Andre Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto, Breton stated “I believe in the future of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.”
- Judith Mullen
Michelle Wasson is an internationally exhibiting artist based in Chicago, IL. Her work has recently been included in exhibitions at Hyde Park Art Center, Elmhurst Art Museum, Galleri Urbane (Dallas, TX), Epiphany Art Center (Chicago), and Brand Library Art Center (Glendale, CA). She is the recipient of several Illinois Arts Council grants and a City of Chicago DCASE grant. Her art has been reviewed in The Chicago Tribune, Bad At Sports, Newcity, and Hyperallergic. She has served as faculty at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago and The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2016 she co-founded the artist run exhibition space Tiger Strikes Asteroid Chicago. Wasson received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, MO.
Judith Mullen’s sculptures, paintings and drawings have been exhibited at venues both nationally and internationally to include Devening Projects, Woldt Gallery London, Linda Warren Projects, The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Krasl Art Museum, Trinity College, Dominican University, Lois Lambert Gallery, Hyde Park Art Center, University of St. Francis, The Green Gallery, Elmhurst Art Museum and Cultivator. Mullen holds her BFA and MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work was chosen as a finalist in the Chicago 2022 Artadia Awards. She is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship and a member of the Viewing Program, NY. Publications of her work can be found in Newcity Art Magazine, Bad at Sports, Progressive Pulse.com, Newcity Art, Hyperallergic and The Chicago Tribune. Mullen’s work can be found in both private and public collections.












The Riverside Arts Center is grateful to the Quincy Street Distillery for their partnership in hosting a private happy hour for Michelle Wasson’s opening reception.
RAC Members’ Exhibition 2023 | July 9 - 29, 2023
2023 RAC Members’ Exhibition
The Riverside Arts Center presents our annual exhibition featuring art by RAC’s talented members, volunteers, clay studio members, staff, board, and adults enrolled in RAC’s classes or workshops from summer 2022-2023. This exhibition will be shown in our Freeark Gallery + Sculpture Garden, while our FlexSpace will display artwork created by RAC students and children of the Riverside Arts Center’s members and school.
Exhibition on view: July 9 – 29, 2023
Opening Reception: July 9, 2023, 3:00 – 6:00 PM
Afterwards, join us for a private happy hour across the street at the Quincy Street Distillery.
Artwork drop off dates:
Thursday, June 29: 1 – 5 PM
Friday, June 30: 1 – 5 PM
Saturday, July 1: 1 – 5 PM
Thursday, July 6: 1 – 5 PM
Artwork pick up dates:
Thursday, August 3: 1 – 5 PM
Friday, August 4: 1 – 5 PM
Saturday, August 5: 1 – 5 PM
Guidelines:
Current members, volunteers, clay studio members, children of, and students enrolled in RAC’s classes or workshops from summer 2022-2023 are eligible.
Each artist is invited to submit one piece, no larger than 30" in width if exhibited inside the gallery. Artwork appropriate for outdoor weather can be submitted for the sculpture garden. Please contact Joanne prior to delivery with details if your work is intended for the sculpture garden.
All hanging art must be framed and/or ready for hanging with wire or sawtooth hanger on back.
3-D work for inside the gallery can be displayed on one of our pedestals or stand on the floor.
Please fill out the exhibition form and include it with your submission.
RAC reserves the right to reject any submission. Reasons could include but are not limited to excessive size, weight, or fragility (risk of damage to artwork on display).
Join or renew your membership and be a part of this showcase of amazing artists.
Questions? Email Gallery Director, Joanne Aono: jaono@riversideartscenter.com
Ryan Burns + Ari Norris | Introspective Dream Assembly | May 18 - June 24, 2023
The Riverside Arts Center’s Freeark Gallery is pleased to present Introspective Dream Assembly, an exhibition of paintings and mixed media art by Ryan Burns and Ari Norris, guest curated by Esau McGhee.
Exhibition Dates: May 18 – June 24, 2023
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 20, 2023, 3:00 – 6:00 pm
Gallery hours: Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays 1:00 – 5:00 pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, June 3, 2023, 2:00 pm
Guest Curated by Esau McGhee
Are we doing Introspective Dream Assembly?? Or I’ve been listening to a lot of Drake lately…?
-Ari Norris
It is fair to speculate that Ari Norris has been listening to a lot of Drake. Quite possibly too much Drake. Drake is now, whether or not Drake is Pop or Hip Hop is debatable. For he is also an Actor, and with every album he deserves an Oscar. Ari is now and the future. Ari will influence. At the same time, he may be overlooked and taken for granted. Ari will not be appreciated. Ari is . . . Doom. Ari creates with a humor and simplicity that approaches…dare I say it? Nah, I’m good, there’s no need to say it. Just know that Ari will freak sh#t. Ari will make fun of you. Heck, Ari will make fun of himself! You will question whether to take him seriously. But don’t sleep! Ari’s on the rise. The real question is whether he’ll rise in front of your eyes or behind the scenes. Ari is masterful. But again, you may not see this. But this isn’t about you it’s about Ari’s work.
At this very moment, I have exactly zero idea as to what Ryan is listening to these days. I’ve asked . . . no answer. I can only speculate that it’s powerful, motivational and to some degree on the fringe. Because the fringe is where the soft spoken, yet direct and super talented Ryan Burns holds court. This is where Ryan has made a niche for himself and Cleaner Gallery. He has consistently provided space for those of us who are on the fringe, the margins, the outside. Ryan will show what he likes and who he likes. Those artists you may know and some you do not know. Ryan creates the same way he operates Cleaner. A bare bones approach that’s efficient and inclusive with zero regard for trends. Operating a gallery can become repetitive. Hang it, open, sell it (if you’re lucky), take it down, patch, paint and repeat. If you’re fortunate, you’ll notice nuanced repetition in Ryan’s artwork. Yes, Ryan makes work. Ryan’s work has a “method” to it. It’s punks, it’s folk rock and it will more than likely always be f###ing independent!
Reciprocity: In a social psychology is a social norm of responding to a positive action with another equally positive action. Reciprocity makes it possible to build continuing relationships and exchanges. With all that being said, reciprocity lubricates the wheels that move our artworld(s). For instance, in my artworld reciprocity is devoid of capitalism. This show does not exist because of works sold, acquired or even the potential of such. It is more about the experience of working with one artist and the desire to experience working with the other. Experiencing their individual and collective thought process and development. Being able to actually “drop a dime” or “an assist.” But where does the Reciprocity actually begin? Seriously though, this is an important Curatorial Question. But then again, I’m not an actual Curator. But we all know the game. “In order to be taken seriously as an artist in Chicago one must teach, write, curate and finally make work.” However, Ryan and I go back. 2013 or maybe 2014 at the now defunct Peanut Gallery. And he’s been providing opportunity for others ever since. But so does Ari and let’s not forget Joanne, a true pass first point guard if there ever was one. The origin story as to why I choose to delve out this assist to Ryan and Ari is quite simple . . . I know good work when I see it. But even above that it’s about the experience.
- Esau McGhee, guest curator
Ryan Burns is an Illinois based artist who received a BFA from the University of Louisville and an MFA from Northern Illinois University. His paintings have been exhibited in numerous group shows at Hyde Park Art Center, Heaven Gallery, and bars and party spots in Chicago. Burns is Director and Founder of Cleaner Gallery + Projects located in Chicago, IL. Since 2016 Cleaner Gallery has hosted 35+ shows and has been reviewed in New City, Visual Arts Source, and Sixty Inches From Center.
@ryanaburns
Originally from Muskegon, MI, Ari Norris is an artist primarily working in sculpture, utilizing a variety of processes and materials. Norris received an MA from Northern Illinois University in 2021, and has exhibited solo shows in Chicago at David Salkin Creative, and the PLAN. Norris has been included in exhibitions West, Wester, Westest 4 at Left Field, Los Osos, CA, Shooting Pool with a Rope, at Baby Blue Gallery, Chicago, IL, the Midwest Sculpture Exhibition in Kokomo, IN, and other locations including Michigan, New York, Florida, Texas, and Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. In both 2021 & 2022, Norris served as Artist-in-Residence at Art Casting of Illinois, in Oregon, IL.
@aristotle_norris
Esau McGhee is a well-exhibited yet reclusive artist/creator who has curated numerous exhibitions. As a former member of Tiger Strikes Asteroid-Chicago, Esau curated solo exhibitions featuring Garry Noland, Allison Reimus and Caroline Kent. His artwork has been reviewed by Newcity Art, Sixty Inches From Center, and Inside Within. He presently resides in Chicago, Illinois.
@esaumcghee
Laura Kina | Over the Rainbow, One More Time | March 26 - May 6, 2023
Over the Rainbow, One More Time, 2022, Acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 36 x 48 inches
The Riverside Arts Center is pleased to present Over the Rainbow, One More Time, a solo exhibition of paintings and mixed media art by Laura Kina in our Freeark Gallery, curated by Gallery Director, Joanne Aono.
Opening Reception: Sunday, March 26, 2023, 3:00-6:00 PM
Afterwards, join us for a private happy hour across the street at the Quincy Street Distillery.
Exhibition Dates: March 26 - May 6, 2023
On View: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, 1:00 - 5:00 PM
Artist Talk: Saturday, April 22, 2023, 2:00 PM
Exhibition Catalogue: Available for purchase at the gallery and online here
Over the Rainbow, One More Time is about starting over. It’s about grief and life in the after. Conceived during the Covid-19 pandemic, in the wake of surviving breast cancer, the end of a 25 yearlong marriage, and coming out as queer, Laura Kina’s art traces her journey and memories through trauma into wellness and the unknown. The exhibition takes its title from a throw away phrase her Zumba instructor Michiko shouted in class one day as she waved her arms in a large arch as the class jumped in unison from side to side while listening to Iz Kamakawiwoʻole’s version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
Detail, Cancer Call and Response, 2023, Acrylic and mixed media on Legion Stonehenge paper, 104 x 82 inches
Laura Kina is a queer mixed-race Okinawan American artist and scholar. She received her BFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MFA in Studio Art from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Kina has exhibited her paintings and mixed-media art nationally and internationally in galleries and museums including the Chicago Cultural Center, India Habitat Centre, India International Centre, Japanese American National Museum, Okinawa Prefectural Art Museum, Rose Art Museum, the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Spertus Museum, and the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience. Kina is an Art Matters Foundation Grantee, and through 3Arts – 3AMP Mentorship artist, a Make a Wave artist, Joan Mitchell Center Fellow, 3AP Project awardee, and Ragdale Fellow.
Laura Kina is a Vincent de Paul Professor at The Art School at DePaul University; curator for the Virtual Asian American Art Museum; a co-founder of the Critical Mixed Studies conference, journal, and association; visual art section editor for Bridge; and serves as a series editor for The University of Washington Press for the Critical Ethnic Studies and Visual Culture book series. She co-edited War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art and Queering Contemporary Asian American Art. In addition, she illustrated an award winning children’s book, Okinawan Princess: Da Legend of Hajichi Tattoos. Kina is a 2022-2023 Public Voices Op-Ed Project Fellow through DePaul University.
Can You See Me, Auntie Laura?, 2022, Acrylic and charcoal on Legion Stonehenge paper mounted on birch panel, 30 x 22 inches
Riverside Brookfield High School Annual Advanced Placement Art Exhibition | February 24 - March 18, 2023
Opening Reception: Friday, February 24, 2023, 5:00 - 7:00 PM
Leyna Delmonico
The Riverside Arts Center’s Freeark Gallery and Riverside Brookfield High School are pleased to present the 13th annual presentation of exceptional artworks made by students enrolled in RBHS’s Advanced Placement Art class. This group exhibition includes paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs by students in their sophomore, junior, and senior years.
The exhibition of artworks is on view for three weeks, from February 24th through March 18th. You are invited to share the creativity of our community’s young artists by joining us for a celebratory reception on the evening of Friday February 24th from 5:00 - 7:00 PM. Pizza from Paisans Pizzeria and light refreshments will be served.
Alex Rios
Ava Connerty
Thank you to our reception sponsor, Brookfield’s Paisans Pizzeria!
Sculpture Garden | Margie Glass Sula: Dwell | November 13, 2022 - March 10, 2023
Opening Reception: Sunday, November 13, 2022, 3:00-6:00 PM
Artist Talk: Saturday, February 11, 2023, 2:00 PM
Exhibition Dates: November 13, 2022 - March 10, 2023
On View: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, 1:00 - 5:00 PM
Curated by Joanne Aono
Autumn Forms, found branches and wire
The Riverside Arts Center is pleased to present Dwell, an outdoor art installation by Margie Glass Sula in our sculpture garden.
When I am among the trees
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks, and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
-- Mary Oliver
The massive old Elm tree that dominated gloriously over the Riverside Arts Center’s sculpture garden succumbed to Dutch Elm disease and had to be cut down this past summer. Once removed, a vast openness was revealed creating a less-private enclosure to those of us accustomed to the old tree’s embrace. Contrary to mourning, the Elm’s absence now floods the area with sunlight, enabling the understory of other trees to grow, thus providing hopeful expectations.
Margie Glass Sula’s installation of sculptures made from fallen tree branches pays homage to trees. She resurrects her materials into large forms intertwined into vessel-like shapes. The formerly outstretched branches are bent and wrapped, cradling open space and forming dwellings for the errant leaves, rain, snow, and creatures that may encounter the sculpture over time. She describes the open weave of the branches as “visual spaces that speak to the ideas of vulnerability and connection.”
The artworks will be installed in the sculpture garden from the fall into the winter seasons, allowing interaction with nature. Glass Sula employs the elements of change and decay into her art, permitting us to witness her sculptures in relation to the environment. As the leaves fall from the trees and the cold of winter draws near, we often think of staying inside, with little interest in nature’s hibernations. Glass Sula’s installation beckons one to notice the interplay between space, form, the environment, and nature, and to “stay awhile.”
—Joanne Aono
Margie Glass Sula is an interdisciplinary artist whose sculptures and paintings are based upon natural processes and materials. Recent solo exhibitions in Illinois include Gretchen Charlton Art Gallery, the Dorothea Thiel Gallery, South Suburban College, Cultivator Art Projects, and Brushwoods Center for the Arts. Her art has been included in group exhibitions, notably at Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, Illinois; Robert Morris State Street Gallery, Chicago, Illinois; Landers Center of Arts, Landers, Wyoming; the Hickory Museum of Art, Hickory, North Carolina; and the Tall Grass Arts Association, Park Forest, Illinois. Glass Sula’s art has been published by the National Women’s Caucus for Art and Koehnline Museum of Art. Her art is held in numerous public and private collections. She received her M.A. from Governors State University in Studio Arts. Currently she is the resident artist for Trailheads Wellness at Standing Tall Reserve, Illinois and an Adjunct Professor of Fine Art at Joliet Junior College.
Bobbi Meier | Imperfect Rituals | January 8 - February 18, 2023
Imperfect Rituals exhibition at the Riverside Arts Center’s Freeark Gallery, 2023, photo by Tom Van Eynde
Opening Reception: Sunday, January 8, 2023, 3:00-6:00 PM
Afterwards, join us for a private happy hour across the street at the Quincy Street Distillery.
Exhibition Dates: January 8 - February 18, 2023
On View: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, 1:00 - 5:00 PM
Artist Talk and Closing Reception: Saturday, February 18, 2023, 2:00 PM
Exhibition Catalogue: Available for purchase at the gallery during the closing and thereafter and online
Curated by Judith Mullen
Read the NewCity review by Vera Scekic here
Sunday Dinners (girly-girl), 2022, Pantyhose, fishnet stockings, fiberfill, thrifted needlepoint, various accoutrement, on stretched canvas, 13.5 x 13.5 inches, photo: Tom Van Eynde
The Riverside Arts Center is pleased to present Imperfect Rituals, a solo exhibition by Bobbi Meier in our Freeark Gallery, curated by Judith Mullen.
He drew a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle and took him in!
—Edwin Markam
Circles, the universal symbol representing notions of totality, wholeness, original perfection, The Self, the infinite, eternity, timelessness. More common everyday usage of ‘the inner circle’ or the family circle helps to bring this experience under the proverbial magnifying glass as a range of emotions in response to daily life events are experienced in close proximity. These expansive inquiries along with the intimate experience of family dinners are at the core of Meier’s body of work, Imperfect Rituals.
Beginning with circular castaway pieces of needlepointed fabric, Meier adorns, stitches, and manipulates each piece, as she remembers emotional experiences encountered during family dinners. Using her “Sunday Dinners” tapestries as a springboard for further inquiry at her Kohler residency, Meier slip-cast organic fabric shapes into porcelain objects, creating wall sculptures that rein in the emotion found in her soft fabric pieces, now replaced with hard edged frames and slick, shiny, surfaces. The interiors of her soft sculptures, once hidden, are now revealed becoming hard and contained. In the final and third iteration of this deep dive into family dynamics, “Centerpieces for Matriarchs”, Meier places broken and abstract organ-like porcelain objects inside circular Kohler vessel sinks, now used as bowls, giving each piece a safe place to dwell. Soft to hard, hard to soft, there is a continual search for balance and perfection, placed inside the metaphorical family circle for safekeeping.
—Judith Mullen
Imperfect Rituals exhibition at the Riverside Arts Center’s Freeark Gallery, 2023, photo by Tom Van Eynde
I create abstract objects as repositories of human emotion. The home-like architecture of the Freeark gallery provides a fitting environment for my installation. On display are repurposed, needlework portraits, sculptural objects of porcelain and fabric, invented tchotchkes, drawings, interrupted domestic furniture, and the muted sounds of family gatherings. I use these materials as a foundation for re-invention of the decor of my childhood home and as a reflection of the labors of my mother and grandmother. The installation is imbued with emotional reactions to the break in personal, social, and political rituals of the past six years.
A litany of human emotions—longing, anger, fear, sadness, humor, frustration, desire, embarrassment, and the experiences that propel these feelings—are on my mind as I produce my work. I am interested in the connection between the meaning that is inherently present in domestic materials and their relationship to body and memory. At my Kohler residency in 2019, I translated the tactility of spandex and pantyhose from soft to hard through the porcelain slip-casting process, which allowed the interior of the soft sculptures to be revealed in a new skin and become two bodies of work: Family Portraits and Centerpieces for Matriarchs. These parallel threads of porcelain objects became a further development of the tapestry portraits: Sunday Dinners. In these series, abstracted forms are stand-ins for family dynamics, feelings and thoughts that lie beneath the surface and are present on the surface. Buttoned-up emotions, secrets, and misunderstandings compete for attention in our search for perfection.
Rituals of daily living shifted dramatically in our life when our daughter and her family of 4 moved in with us in our two-bedroom home during the early days of the pandemic. Two children under age three became the driving force in rituals of bathing, eating, working, exercising and relaxing. Making art was practically non existent. Snippets of alone time became stolen moments to create and listen to the family slowly waking during early morning solitude. This nearly year-long communal living experience is the source for the sound installation Voices in the Sanctuary.
Imperfect Rituals emphasizes our fraught connections in families. What we choose to reveal and what we do not, our perceived flaws, the feelings we hide and the thoughts that remain unspoken. Through aggressive and cathartic manipulation of domestic materials, I am expressing the complexity of lived experiences, the messiness of relationships, and the fragility of our bodies.
—Bobbi Meier
Centerpieces for Matriarchs (Billie), 2019, Vitreous china Kohler Carillon wading pool sink. Slip-Cast porcelain, 9 x 16 inches, photo: courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center
Bobbi Meier is a Chicago-based visual artist. Life’s frustrations, joys, and fears are embedded into her abstract sculptures, drawings, and installations through provocative use of materials including; pantyhose, spandex, porcelain, and found home furnishings. Meier has been awarded residencies at; The John Michael Kohler Arts/Industry Program (Kohler, Wisconsin), The Ragdale Foundation (Lake Forest, IL), The Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, Vermont), Ox-Bow School of Art and Artist's Residency (Saugatuck, Michigan) Anderson Ranch (Aspen, Colorado), and Sanskriti-Kendra, (New Delhi). Her work has been widely exhibited in the U.S. and is in the collection of the Kohler Foundation and John Michael Kohler Art Center and many private collections. She is a co-director of ADDS Donna artist-run space in Chicago. Meier earned her MA in Art Education (2000), and MFA in Fiber and Material Studies (2011), from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
https://www.bobbimeier.com
Judith Mullen’s sculptures, paintings and drawings have been exhibited at venues both nationally and internationally to include Devening Projects, Woldt Gallery London, Linda Warren Projects, The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Krasl Art Museum, Trinity College, Dominican University, Lois Lambert Gallery, Hyde Park Art Center, University of St. Francis, The Green Gallery, Elmhurst Art Museum and Cultivator. Mullen holds her BFA and MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work was chosen as a finalist in the Chicago 2022 Artadia Awards. She is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship and a member of the Viewing Program, NY. Publications of her work can be found in New City Art Magazine, Bad at Sports, Progressive Pulse.com, New City Art, Hyperallergic and The Chicago Tribune. Mullen’s work can be found in both private and public collections.
https://judithmullen.com
Matthew Girson | Plot Structure | November 13 - December 30, 2022
The Riverside Arts Center is pleased to present Plot Structure, a solo exhibition of paintings by Matthew Girson in our Freeark Gallery, curated by Anne Harris.
Opening Reception: Sunday, November 13, 2022, 3:00-6:00 PM
Exhibition Dates: November 13 - December 30, 2022
On View: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, 1:00 - 5:00 PM
Artist Talk: Saturday, December 10, 2022, 2:00 PM
Exhibition Catalogue is available for purchase
Special Edition Catalogue with Signed Limited Edition Print by Matthew Girson
Matthew Girson | Installation view of Plot Structure exhibition at the Riverside Arts Center’s Freeark Gallery, 2022
Reflections on Facts and Fictions
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful‚
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
–Excerpted from Mirror by Sylvia Plath
Matthew Girson’s recent paintings are mirrors. I mean this literally. Actual mirrors are embedded. Silver paints are used. These mimic surfaces ranging from chrome to pewter. The paint is used to depict muted interiors which abut the actual mirrors. These show us the actual interiors we stand in, and our reflected selves, peering into the painting, trying to sort out what we see.
Matthew’s paintings are also mirrors, metaphorically. The illusory sensation of space is the physical depth of a mirror—that fraction of an inch suspended between the surface of the glass and the silvered backing. The images are oddly flat, pressed back at us, impassive and neutral. Every reflected millimeter is equal.
These are also experiential mirrors, capturing many reflective possibilities, from breath-steamed, to satin-finished, to sparklingly clear. But they’re at odds with the traditional expected fiction of painting, that paintings are like windows, not mirrors.
We expect to look through a painting as we do a window. The window pane is the picture plane; the world of the painting exists behind that plane. But Matthew’s painted world slides against that plane. It lives where our world meets its opposite. He paints the moment of reflected flip, the liminal shimmer.
****
The Larry Bookbinder paintings are windows. We look through them and see painterly interpretations of observed objects on surfaces. Described by Matthew, “They are small (and odd?) windows into densely filled, colorful, bright, reflective narrow spaces.” Understood this way, they are part of the tradition of perceptual still-life painting, in conversation with Chardin, Cezanne, and more recent painters like Albert York and Lois Dodd. These artists work interpretively from life, using paint as a sensory thing, each mark a felt response to specific observation.
The Bookbinder paintings can be read this way; however, adding one contextual fact changes everything. Larry Bookbinder, himself, is a metaphor. He is part of a layered story whose characters include both Bookbinder and the paintings. When we know this, these paintings flip from windows to mirrors. They reflect their actual maker, who is obsessed with shifting fact to fiction and back again.
The mirror is his subject, muse and metaphor. It holds both fact and fiction at once. Light bounces off its surface to reflect the world and ourselves, while holding the window’s experience—that we look through it to see another world. This embodies an essential human trait, that we reflect upon our existence through metaphor and story-telling.
—Anne Harris
Larry Bookbinder | Untitled 34, 2022, Oil on canvas, 12 x 16 inches
Somewhere, if not now, then maybe years in the future, a future that we may have yet to dream of, someone may risk his or her life to read us. Somewhere, if not now, then maybe years in the future, we may also save someone’s life (or mind) because they have given us a passport, making us honorary citizens of their culture.
—Edwidge Danticat,
“Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work,” 2010
All artworks are passports. This is especially true for paintings. When we engage them we are invited into the window of when and where they were made. Paintings collapse our time and place into the objects of our attention. Additionally, the paintings we make invite others into our time and place, no matter when or where they happen to engage the work.
Extending Danticat’s logic, paintings are also passportals onto other planes. They are windows where ghosts and other lesser known entities enter and exit. Every painting collapses time and space and invites others artists and audiences, the dead, the living, and the yet-to-be, into the time and space of our witnessing and engaging with the painting. The conversations are endless. Their murmur is always present, if not always immediately audible.
Just as paintings are windows, they are also mirrors although their function as either is never stable. Paintings flip and flit from window to mirror and back again. In the flipping, what we see and don’t see interact. In the flitting, facts and fictions interplay. This is true for the facticity of the materials on one side, and any representational form or illusion on another. But seeing and not seeing and fact and fiction and materiality and illusion are not sets of polar opposites on two-dimensional axes. Rather they constitute an ever-shifting and amorphous platform that grows and shrinks and rolls and tips and sometimes – although only fleetingly – offers grounded stability.
(The sense of stability that Brunelleschi’s pictorial invention delivered was revolutionary. It was both grounding and uplifting. When mixed with the material flexibility of paint and the believability of the spatial illusions it could be used to render the grounding was so sobering. The uplifting quality of the illusions was just as intoxicating and it still is. And it all happens simultaneously. That grounded stability gave Descartes his ability to frame himself as an agent of his own will and intuition. And from there came the modern rendition of a democratic republic, built toward vast and diverse populations of individuals with agency. Freedoms of expression and association were necessary and glorious founding principles.)
Through all of it, paintings locate and dislocate us. They reaffirm who, where, and when we think we are, and invite us into other points of view from other times, locations, and planes. My work gropes for poetry in this grounding and elevating, sobering and intoxicating, and locating and dislocating. I don’t have it all down and the language shifts as much as anything else, but Danticat’s quotation – and the essay from which it was drawn – clarifies so much. And to think, it starts with the idea that a story, an essay, or an artwork, maybe even a painting, could save a life or a mind.
—MG, November 2022
Matthew Girson has been exhibiting his paintings, drawings and other work locally, nationally, and internationally since the mid 1990s. The full breadth of his creative output includes sculpture, sound installations, a perfume, a type-face, and the adaptation of the correspondence between poets Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs into a theatrical production called Dear Poet, All Light. From January 2017 through January 2021 he hosted monthly Murmurs of Democracy performances inviting people to reflect on the successes and failures of our democratic republic. He laments that he’s never written a novel though that has not stopped him from exploring narrative, character development, and setting in his work.
He teaches painting, drawing, and seminars on contemporary art at the Art School at DePaul University in Chicago. He lives, works, and gardens in Oak Park, IL.
The exhibition also includes paintings by Larry Bookbinder. Details about Bookbinder’s life are vague, though we can glean clues about him from his correspondences and poems. The correspondence is divided into a small collection of letters he received in the 1940s while still living in Europe, and other letters that he wrote in the 1960/70s after moving to the U.S. One of the late letters refers to a fictional character he invented named Matthew Girson who says, “Sometimes we wrap ourselves up in the warmth of the stories we’ve inherited. At other times we spin, weave, and create our own stories. And sometimes our stories fray and tear. None of these options are pure and I prefer none over any other.”
https://www.larrybookbinder.net/
Anne Harris's paintings and drawings have been exhibited at venues ranging from Alexandre Gallery, DC Moore Gallery, and Nielsen Gallery to the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institute, The Portland Museum of Art, the California Center for Contemporary Art, and the North Dakota Museum of Art. In addition, her work is in such public collections as The Fogg Museum at Harvard, The Yale University Art Gallery, and The New York Public Library. Grants and awards include a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and an NEA Individual Artists Fellowship.
Harris is an Associate Professor in the Painting and Drawing Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She also is Chair of the Exhibition Committee at the Riverside Arts Center and has curated numerous exhibitions there.
Coinciding with Plot Structure is a three-person exhibition, Continue a Poem in RAC’s FlexSpace, featuring the artists Nicholas Frank, Lauren Fueyo, and Nyeema Morgan, curated by Mathew Girson.
Alice Hargrave and Barbara Diener | Semblance: Unfolded and Brought to Light | September 18 - October 29, 2022
Opening Reception: Sunday, September 18, 2022, 3:00-7:00 PM
Artist Talk: Saturday, October 22, 2022, 2:00 PM
Exhibition Dates: September 18 - October 29, 2022
On View: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, 1:00 - 5:00 PM
Curated by Laura Husar Garcia
Alice Hargrave | Tracing Audubon, Mangroves, Great Egrets, Little Blue Herons, 2020, Pigment print, 35 x 52 inches
The Riverside Arts Center is pleased to present a two-person exhibition by Chicago photographers Alice Hargrave and Barbara Diener in our Freeark Gallery, curated by Laura Husar Garcia.
Semblance: Unfolded and Brought to Light explores new ways of storytelling, combining threads from science, nature, past and present. Hargrave incorporates photographic imagery within layered site-specific installations addressing impermanence: environmental insecurity, habitat loss, and species extinctions. Diener challenges the often dual retelling of significant 20th century events, starting in Nazi-era Germany and culminating in the moon landing. Both artists make the invisible visible through their research-based work that prompts us to reflect.
The Riverside Arts Center will host a reception for the artists on Sunday, September 18th, in conjunction with Filter Photo Festival, all attendees are invited to join for art and light refreshments. Located in the heart of historic Riverside, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the RAC includes the Freeark Gallery + Sculpture Garden, The FlexSpace and a variety of studios. We are a 25 minute train ride from Chicago. The exhibition runs through Saturday, October 29th.
-Laura Husar Garcia, Curator
Barbara Diener | The Huddle, Peenemünde, Germany, 1940/2021, Archival inkjet print, 25 x 33 inches
Alice Hargrave, a photo based artist in Chicago, incorporates sound, video, and photographic imagery within layered site specific installations addressing impermanence: environmental insecurity, habitat loss, and species extinctions. Recently, The Canary in the Lake, exhibition and monograph, revisualizes climate related data from lakes on all seven continents in collaboration with GLEON— Global Lakes Environmental Observation Network.
Hargrave collaborated with The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, to create her project Last Calls, portraits of threatened birds using sound wave patterns of their vocalizations in the wild. Last Calls is widely exhibited, notably in Lianzhou, China and Beacon, NY, winning a 2020 Illinois Arts Council Individual Artist Grant as well as the finalist award in 2019. The bird call patterns are also translated into “Haute Couture” garments by Dovima Paris where profits directly benefit the birds. Paradise Wavering Hargrave’s monograph (Daylight 2016) and extensive solo exhibition traveled to multiple venues across the United States.
Hargrave, is included in several permanent collections such as the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Art Institute of Chicago Artist Book Collection, the Ruttenberg Collection, Nuveen, Willis Tower, Hyatt corp. and many private collections. She has exhibited internationally, been reviewed in journals such as Huffington Post, BBC News, and Artnet, and her research led her to artist residencies in the Florida Keys, Montana, and Northern Wisconsin. Hargrave taught full time at Columbia College Chicago, currently she is doing conservation work and is a climate activist.
https://www.alicehargrave.com/
Barbara Diener (b. Germany) received her Bachelor of Fine Art in Photography from the California College of the Arts and Masters in Fine Art in Photography from Columbia College Chicago.
Her work has been exhibited at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA, Photographic Center Northwest, Seattle, WA, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL, Hyde Park Art Center, Hyde Park, IL, David Weinberg Gallery, Chicago, IL, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM, Invisible Dog Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Pingyao Photo Festival, China, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, Philadelphia, PA, Darkroom Gallery, Essex Junction, VT and Project Basho, Philadelphia, PA among others. Diener’s photographs are part of several private and institutional collections including the New Mexico Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Photography.
Diener has participated in several highly ambitious and competitive artist residency programs, the Fields Project in Oregon, IL, ACRE in Steuben, WI, and HATCH Projects through the Chicago Artist Coalition. She is a winner of Flash Forward 2013, the recipient of a Follett Fellowship at Columbia College Chicago and was awarded the Albert P. Weisman Award in 2012 and 2013. Additionally, Diener received an Individual Artist Grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Events in 2015, 2018, and 2020. In June 2018 Daylight Books published Diener’s first book Phantom Power and she is working a book of her current project The Rocket’s Red Glare.
Barbara Diener is the Collection Manager in the Department of Photography and Media at the Art Institute of Chicago and teaches photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
http://www.barbaradienerphotography.com
Laura Husar Garcia is a photographer, curator and creative director. Her work has been exhibited widely, including The Barcelona Foto Biennial, The Biennial of Fine Art and Documentary Photography in Prague, Fotofever at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, France, The Polish Museum of America in Chicago, Fotofest Biennial in Houston, Texas, Photo Independent in Los Angeles, California, The Rangefinder Gallery in Chicago and Tilt Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona. She will be presenting work at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Massachusetts, with Shootapalooza, in September 2022 and the Fermilab Art Gallery in Batavia, Illinois in October 2022.
Garcia is a past winner of the International Julia Margaret Cameron Photography Award and a Photolucida Critical Mass top 200 finalist. Garcia won a 1st place Community Grant from the Illinois Humanities Council and was a recipient of an artist residency at Riverside Arts Center in 2021.
Her photographs have been published in several books, including “America At Home: A Close-up Look at How We Live”, one of the largest collaborative photography projects in publishing history. Her work has also been published in The New York Times, National Geographic Magazine, Newsweek, Slate Magazine, Suddeutsche Zeitung, Le Monde, and more.
Garcia is also the Creative Director of Three Story Media, which she founded with her husband, Alex Garcia. She serves on the Riverside Arts Center exhibition committee and is also the Vice President of the Board of Directors, and an Advisory Board Member of Fresh Lens Chicago, a free youth photography program in Chicago.
Filter Photo Festival | September 14 - 18, 2022
Sculpture Garden | Darrell Roberts: Endless | July 10 - October 29, 2022
Opening Reception: Sunday, July 10, 2022, 3:00-6:00 PM
Meet Me in the Garden: Community art making, Saturday, August 20, 2022, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Join artist Darrell Roberts and curator Camille Silverman in the Sculpture Garden at Riverside Arts Center for an impromptu community art making session. All ages welcome.
We will draw from nature while incorporating the current installation’s forms and colors inhabiting the outdoor space at Riverside Arts Center.
Bring your favorite art materials, a sketchbook or paper with a drawing board. It will be a playful interaction where participants can work directly into the installation, move works around and create their own compositions.
Artist Talk: Saturday, October 1, 2022, 2:00 PM
In-person and via zoom
Pumpkin Carving and Painting: Saturday, October 8, 2022, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Artists and art enthusiasts, come with your spooky creative ideas and bring your families! Pumpkin painting and carving. All ages welcome. Children under 12 must be accompanied by an adult. Please email Camille Silverman at csilverman@riversideartscenter.com to make a reservation.
Exhibition Dates: July 10 - October 29, 2022
Curated by Camille Silverman
The Riverside Arts Center is pleased to announce the opening of Endless, an outdoor installation by Darrell Roberts in the sculpture garden combining his art with his love of plants, curated by Camille Silverman
.“there are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
- Albert Einstein
Endless brings together Darrell Roberts’ decades-long explorations of material fascination with his delight in the complexity of how he might move his fellow beings through a forever continuum of walking through a garden. Watching how things unfold in time and space is how he moves through his home studio and his Chicago pedestrian lifestyle, making his work more an extension of seeing rather than just a preoccupation with making. It is a way of seeing that is gifted to those who go through life without the dependency of a car, the ability to notice though walking, a taking it all in through the senses, being a part of it all as it reveals itself.
This artistic process began through the daily ritual of collecting scraps and photography studies in and around his old studio in the Roscoe Village area of Chicago. In 2015 he began moving over a hundred living plants into his studio transforming his work space into an area dominated by plants that one would have to hop and climb around to fully understand the working installation. They were both an integral part of the work and a bit of an obstacle to experiencing it. Not only that, but maintaining the living plant system became a part of the whole installation. There of course is an ever present wonder in his built environments, but also the absurdity of the excessive abundance.
His knowledge of coupling plants with his other artworks was fueled by his years of working as a painter and his seasonal employment by various rooftop gardeners and landscapers. It became a natural extension of his studio practice to begin to incorporate what was going on in his daily life as a plant designer into his studio installations. Living forms began moving into his growing sculptures, paintings and installations. Like a creative state with no rules or regulations, curiosity and wonder over took his practice.
The jungle of his studio will be moved into the everchanging environment of the outdoors and incorporate all that lives in these spaces; birds, insects, and whatever wanders in from the Riverside forests. This will be the first large scale outdoor installation of Darrell’s career.
- Camille Silverman, curator
Studies for Endless
Darrell Roberts is best known for his abstractions full of color and texture. His paintings have been exhibited internationally in Spain, China, India and throughout the United States where he is represented by Thomas McCormick Gallery in Chicago. He has received grants from the Dedalus Foundation, George Sugarman Foundation, Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, Tanne Foundation, Artist Relief Grant, DCASE Creative Workers Assistance Grant, and Back to Work City of Chicago Grant
Roberts completed his BFA and MFA at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, holds a BA in Art History from the University of Northern Iowa, participated in the Leon Levy Expedition in Ashkelon, Israel for archaeology, and has participated in artist residencies in Johnson; Vermont, Delhi; India, Kushtia; Bangladesh, Beijing; China and Cadiz, Spain.
https://www.instagram.com/darrellrobertspaintings/
Camille Silverman is an artist and curator living in the Belmont Cragin area of Chicago. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Art Academy. Her paintings and installations have been exhibited in Chicago, New York, Dallas, Denver, as well as internationally. Her art has been featured in Studio Visit Magazine, Chicago Voyager and New American Paintings, Midwest.
Silverman has worked for nonprofits as a curator and executive director at the Western Colorado Center for the Arts in Grand Junction, CO and for the Riverside Arts Center in the greater Chicago area. She has curated and participated as an artist in the international Terrain Biennial Outdoor Exhibitions and in 2021 curated Proposals and Speculations, part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial.
RAC Members’ Exhibition 2022 | July 10 - 30
Kim Piotrowski, Team Player, Mixed Media on Panel, 14 x 11 inches
2022 RAC Members’ Exhibition
The Riverside Arts Center invites you to submit your art to our annual exhibition featuring art by RAC’s talented members and supporters. This exhibition will be shown in our Freeark Gallery while our FlexSpace will display artwork created by kids and students of the Riverside Arts Center’s members and school.
Join or renew your membership and be a part of this showcase of amazing artists.
Exhibition on view: July 10 – July 30, 2022
Artists’ Reception: July 10th, 3:00 - 6:00 PM
Renew your membership today
Artwork drop off dates:
Thursday, June 30: 1 – 5 PM
Friday, July 1: 1 – 5 PM
Saturday, July 2: 1 – 5 PM
Thursday, July 7: 1 - 5 PM
Download the Drop-off Form Here
Artwork pick up dates:
Thursday, August 4: 1 – 5 PM
Friday, August 5: 1 – 5 PM
Saturday, August 6: 1 – 5 PM
Works for sale are subject to a 30% commission to RAC
Guidelines: Each artist is invited to submit one piece, no larger than 30" in width. All work must be framed and/or ready for hanging or display with wire or sawtooth hanger affixed to back. RAC reserves the right to reject any submission. Reasons could include excessive size or weight or fragility (risk of damage to artwork on display) or violating community standards.
Questions? Email Gallery Director, Joanne Aono: jaono@riversideartscenter.com
The Riverside Arts Center follows guidelines from the State of Illinois for safety during the Covid-19 pandemic. Currently masks are optional, and social distancing is requested inside the galleries.
All of RAC'S exhibitions are free and open to the public
Joseph Noderer: The Old Same Place | May 15 - June 25, 2022
Opening Reception: Sunday, May 15, 2022, 3:00-6:00 PM
Artist Talk and Closing Reception: Saturday, June 25, 2022 2:00 PM
In-person and via zoom
Exhibition Dates: May 15 - June 25, 2022
Curated by Judith Mullen
Older Boggy Lite 2019, Oil on linen, 14 x 11 inches
The Riverside Arts Center is pleased to announce the upcoming opening of The Old Same Place, a solo exhibition featuring the paintings of Joseph Noderer in the Freeark Gallery.
“Things aren’t so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe, most experiences are unsayable. They happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures besides our own, small transitory life.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke
For the past eight years Joseph Noderer has painted his newest body of work isolated from the contemporary art scene. After receiving his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he lived in Chicago, Illinois and Austin, Texas before the pull of his familiar childhood landscape found him moving back to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and back to a connection with his roots. It is these roots, connections, typography of the land, memories of time and space, and more that is sensitively rendered in each of the paintings exhibited in The Old Same Place opening May 15, 2022, at the Riverside Art Center, Riverside, Illinois.
Throughout these years Noderer quietly worked from a small bedroom studio, pondering the importance of connection: connection to ourselves, our family, our neighbors, along with our connection to nature, time, and place. Using a limited palette of colors that referenced what he could see from his studio window, on his way to work, or walking in a nearby park, Noderer intuitively constructs snippets of a memory, seamlessly yet ambiguously. It is the tension between the specificity and ambiguity of place that opens up the work to be relatable to a global audience.
- Judith Mullen, curator
Seems to Me, 2021, Oil on linen, 17 x 14 inches
Joseph Noderer is a Pennsylvania based artist who received a BFA from the Tyler School of Art and an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago. His paintings have been exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions at Linda Warren Projects (Chicago) and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Noderer’s group exhibitions include venues in Austin, TX; Chicago, IL; Berlin, Germany; and Amsterdam, Netherlands. His paintings are held in private and public collections including the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS. His art has been featured in New American Paintings, Fresh Paint Magazine, and Newcity Art.
Judith Mullen obtained her BFA and MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago. In addition to residencies at Oxbow in Michigan and CAt’Art in France, she is an Artadia Finalist and Illinois Arts Council Grantee. Her solo exhibitions include Woldt Gallery (London), Lois Lambert Gallery (Santa Monica), and Linda Warren Projects and Devening Projects (Chicago), with numerous group exhibitions. Her paintings and sculpture have been reviewed in Newcity Art, Hyperallergic, Chicago Art Magazine, and the Chicago Tribune. Mullen has served on the Riverside Arts Center’s exhibition committee since 2020.
Riverside Brookfield High School Annual Advanced Placement Art Exhibition | April 15 - May 7, 2022
Opening Reception: Friday, April 15, 2022, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Fabiana Aranibar, Untitled, Acrylic Paint
The Riverside Arts Center’s Freeark Gallery + Sculpture Garden and Riverside Brookfield High School are pleased to present the 12th annual presentation of exceptional artworks made by students enrolled in RBHS’s Advanced Placement Art class. This group exhibition includes paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs by students in their sophomore, junior, and senior years.
The exhibition of artworks is on view for three weeks, from April 15th through May 7th. You are invited to share the creativity of our community’s young artists by joining us for a celebratory reception on the evening of Friday April 15th from 6-8pm. Pizza from Paisans Pizzeria, and light snacks and refreshments will be served.
Alex Rios, Untitled, Digital Art
Fiona Murray, Way to Pray, Photography
Sarah Wood, Tax Gorilla, Layered color canvas paper
Thank you to our reception sponsor, Brookfield’s Paisans Pizzeria!
Unseen Things are Still There: Alexandra Antoine, JB Daniel, Kate Ingold, Esau McGhee, and Elsa Muñoz | February 27 - April 9, 2022
February 27 - April 9, 2022
Opening Reception: Sunday, February 27, 2022, 3:00-6:00 PM
Artist Talk: Saturday, April 2, 2022, 2:00-3:00 PM
Artist Talk In-person and via Zoom
Exhibition Catalogue available for purchase
Curated by Joanne Aono
Read the Exhibition Review by Kerry Cardoza of Newcity
Kate Ingold | Detail, Night Quilt, 2017, tattered, discarded quilt embellished with vegetable-dyed silk embroidery thread, 79 x 65 inches
The Riverside Arts Center is pleased to announce the upcoming opening of Unseen Things are Still There, a group exhibition featuring the art of Alexandra Antoine, JB Daniel, Kate Ingold, Esau McGhee, and Elsa Muñoz. Curated by Interim Gallery Director, Joanne Aono, the exhibtion will be featured in the Freeark Gallery and Sculpture Garden.
STARS AND DANDELIONS
Deep in the blue sky,
like pebbles at the bottom of the sea,
lie the stars unseen in daylight
until night comes.
You can’t see them, but they are there.
Unseen things are still there.
The withered, seedless dandelions
hidden in the cracks of the roof tile
wait silently for spring,
their strong roots unseen.
You can’t see them, but they are there.
Unseen things are still there.
- Misuzu Kaneko
Whether masked by materials, possessing an embedded story, or encased in symbolism and metaphor, the artworks in the exhibition Unseen Things Are Still There contain imagery and concepts that remain, despite concealment or perceived absence.
Alexandra Antoine | Hibiscus, 2021, Screenprint and mixed media on paper, 19 x 12.5 inches,
Alexandra Antoine is an interdisciplinary visual artist and cultural apprentice based in Chicago. Her art is influenced by Haitian culture, traditional artistic practices of the African diaspora, and her interests in portraiture, food, farming and physical labor. She has held solo exhibitions at boundary, Chicago Art Department, and Rootwork Gallery in Chicago. Group exhibitions include Southside Community Art Center, Haitian American Museum, Stony Island Arts Bank, and Acre in Chicago as well as Flux Factory (NY) and Arts in Embassies Program, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Antoine has completed residencies at Spudnik Press, Hyde Park Art Center, and Urban Growers Collective in Chicago in addition to Acre (WI), Ox Bow (MI), and Fabric Workshop and Museum (PA). She received a BFA in Fine Arts and Arts Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
JB Daniel is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist living and working on the south side of Chicago. In addition to his studio work and public art projects, Daniel runs Mosnart, an artist exhibition project space and residency in Pullman. His Chicago area solo exhibitions include Cultivator, NAB Gallery, and Harper College. Daniel’s group exhibitions include Evanston Art Center, Bridgeport Art Center, and Lipa Gallery in Chicago, South Shore Arts (IN), as well as venues in France. His art has been reviewed in The Chicago Tribune, The Art Newspaper, Bad At Sports, DNA Chicago, and was featured on Chicago Tonight. He has received a Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events Individual Artist Grant and was distinguished as a Pullman National Monument Artist in Residence.
Kate Ingold is an artist and poet, living in Pasadena, California. Touching on aspects of loss and repair, her work often begins with “damaged goods” - torn and discarded hand-sewn quilts, broken porcelain figurines, vintage publications, as well as her own photographs. Her solo exhibitions include Brentwood Art Center (CA), Illinois State Museum, Terrain Biennial (IL), in addition to Mana Contemporary and Mosnart in Chicago. Two-person and group exhibitions include USC Fisher Museum of Art (CA), Roy Boyd Gallery, Hofheimer Gallery, Carlos and Dominguez Gallery in Chicago, and The Blockhouse (Cuba). Ingold’s art has been reviewed in Art Ltd Magazine, Forbes, Newcity, and Art Talk Chicago. Her poetry and essays have been published by Poetry Society of America, Journal of Ordinary Thought, and Bad At Sports. Her work is in the permanent collections of the USC Fisher Museum of Art, the Illinois Art Museum, and a number of private collections. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Esau McGhee’s interdisciplinary artistic practice is a critique of image construction found in landscape. Utilizing photography, found objects, collage and sculpture the works physically embody conventional strategies of representation, class and race construction. His Chicago area solo exhibitions include Goldfinch Gallery, Harper College, Elastic Arts, and the Union League of Chicago, as well as the Viewing Station (NY). Group exhibitions include Chicago’s Cleaner, Heaven, and Glass Curtain Galleries, the Chicago Artists Coalition, Jenkins Johnson Projects (NY), Art League Houston (TX), Holsum Gallery (MO), and Eastside International (CA). McGhee has curated numerous exhibitions for Tiger Strikes Asteroid-Chicago, where he served as Director. His art has been reviewed by Newcity Art, Sixty Inches From Center, and Inside Within. He obtained a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Northwestern University.
Elsa Muñoz is a Mexican-American artist born and raised on the south side of Chicago. She credits her interest in both nature and healing to her experience growing up in an underserved and often unsafe community with little access to green spaces. Since receiving her BFA in oil painting from the American Academy of Art in Chicago, Muñoz has had eight solo exhibitions including the National Museum of Mexican Art, the Union League Club of Chicago, SugarCube Gallery (CO), and Zygman Voss and Dubhe Carreno Galleries in Chicago. Group exhibitions include Glow (Chicago), La Luz De Jesus Gallery (CA), Brandt-Roberts Galleries (OH), and Gold Gallery (MA). Her art has been reviewed in Newcity Art, Chicago Reader, Sixty Inches from Center, and CBS News. She is a recipient of the Helen and Tim Meier Foundation For The Arts Achievement Award. Notable collections include the National Museum of Mexican Art (Chicago), North Park University (Chicago), and numerous private collections.
Esau McGhee | Detail, Clouds on the Horizon, 2021/2022, Collage of screenprint and ink on paper, handmade frame of birch, poplar, and purpleheart, 36 x 41 x 2 inches
JB Daniel | Help Each Other, 2021, Corrugated plastic and metal, dimensions variable
Elsa Muñoz | Apparition - Vino Para Hablarme, 2022, Oil on panel, 16 x 16 inches
MUSE: Niki Grangruth and James Kinser | January 16 - February 19, 2022
Opening Reception: Sunday, January 16, 3-6 PM
Artist Talk: Saturday, January 29th, 2-3 PM, In-person and on Zoom
A Bar at the Folies--Bergère (after Manet), 2015, laminated inkjet print, 22 x 40 inches
The Riverside Arts Center is pleased to announce the upcoming opening of Muse, an exhibition of photography and costumes by Niki Grangruth and James Kinser in the Freeark Gallery.
Muse, a collaborative body of work by visual artist Niki Grangruth and multimedia artist James Kinser, explores non-conforming gender identity by reimagining and reinterpreting well-known paintings of female subjects from art history. Through the use of a male subject, gaze, and hand-made costumes, each photograph questions common gender-specific beauty ideals, disrupts the pervasive construct of binary gender identity, and explores gender as a non-linear and ever-changing performative act. These challenges to socially constructed gender norms are juxtaposed with overt references to art history, which grounds the work in the familiar and accessible.
- Niki Grangruth and James Kinser
Costume created for A Bar at the Folies--Bergère (after Manet), 2007/2013
Niki Grangruth and James Kinser have been collaborating and exhibiting together for well over a decade. Their exhibitions include the Griffin Museum of Photography (Cambridge, MA), Center for Fine Art Photography (Fort Collins, CO), Grunwald Gallery, Indiana University (Bloomington, IN), and University of St. Francis Art Gallery (Joliet, IL). They have received alumni residencies from Columbia College Chicago along with top honors from the Kinsey Institute, Cloyde Snook Gallery, and the SohoPhoto Gallery. Their work has been published in Surface Design Journal, Windy City Times, and Chicago Magazine and is included in numerous public and private collections.
Niki Grangruth is an artist primarily working in photography. Grangruth received her B.A. in Studio Art and English from Saint Olaf College in Northfield, MN and her M.F.A. in Photography from Columbia College Chicago.
James Kinser is a Chicago-area multimedia artist. Kinser earned a B.A. in Art Education and Fine Art from Bethany College in Lindsborg, KS and an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Art at Columbia College Chicago.
This project is partially supported by an Individual Artist Program Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, as well as a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, a state agency through federal funds provided by the National Endowment for the Arts
RAC Spotlight: Tandem Solo Exhibitions: Stephanie Brooks + Liz Chilsen | December 3, 2021 - January 8, 2022
Closing Reception: Saturday, January 8th, 3-6 PM
Liz Chilsen Artist Talk: Saturday, January 8th, 2 PM, In person and on Zoom at this link
The Riverside Arts Center is pleased to present tandem solo exhibitions by Stephanie Brooks and Liz Chilsen in the Freeark Gallery and Sculpture Garden. This exhibition is part of the Riverside Arts Center’s “RAC Spotlight” Exhibition Series which highlights artists who are a part of the RAC community.
Viewing Hours:
Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays | 1:00 - 5:00 PM
Exhibition continues through January 8, 2022
Proof of vaccination, masks, and social distancing required. The Riverside Arts Center follows Public Health requirements and guidelines for safety during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Stephanie Brooks: Obstacles and Intimacies
Liz Chilsen: Messengers
Liz Chilsen | Messenger (Wildwing), smoke-fired high-fired stoneware on found and altered wooden base.
Stephanie Brooks: Obstacles and Intimacies
Stephanie Brooks is a conceptual artist, writer and curator living in Chicago. She earned her BFA degree from Ohio University and MFA degree from University of Illinois Chicago. She exhibits her work nationally and internationally including exhibits in Atlanta, Chicago, Denmark, Indianapolis, London, Los Angeles, Louisville, San Francisco, New York, Vienna, Phoenix, and Hawaii. She is an Adjunct Professor teaching in the Sculpture Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her publications include Love Is A Certain Kind Of Flower, Green Lantern Press; Poem and Poem Forms, Illinois State University Press; The Virginia Quarterly Review, and Critical Inquiry. Her art is included in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Microsoft Corporation and Philip Morris Corporation, as well as many private collections. Curatorial projects include Humor Us, and Oli Watt, What? At The Riverside Arts Center.
Artist Statement
With the works in this exhibition, I’m interrogating the ways in which intimacy and barriers intersect. Using barricades both literally and metaphorically, I ask viewers to think on what is a barricade and what is intimate in their lives–––how do we navigate and negotiate public and private spaces?
Liz Chilsen: Messengers
Liz Chilsen | Birds of a Feather (Rose). High-fired Stoneware, glaze, on found and altered wood base.
Liz Chilsen is a Chicago-area artist, educator and arts administrator. Her work explores connections between human spirit and physical place. She has exhibited throughout the US and internationally, and her work is held at Detroit Institute of Arts, Wisconsin Historical Society, Nicaragua Cultural Center, the University of Illinois’ Comer Archive, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography among others. She has received awards and honors including an Individual Artist Fellowship from IL Arts Council, an IL Humanities Bicentennial Action Grant, residencies at Ragdale Foundation, Chicago Artists’ Coalition, and The Center program at Hyde Park Art Center. Chilsen holds an MFA in Photography from Columbia College and a Bachelor of Science in Art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is Director of “Lessons of Place”, a photographic study of endangered places funded by Illinois Humanities, and is a Teaching Artist with Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) in Chicago Public Schools. She joined RAC in 2019, first as Director of the FlexSpace and now, as Executive Director.
Artist Statement
These works are part of my ongoing exploration of place, and connection to ancestral time, love and loss. Each piece is a container of mystery and promise. For the smoke-fired pieces, I hold firings at ancestral and family homes, I use fire and light transforming mud into glass. These fires are fueled with things from my collections and surroundings, such as leaves and seeds from my daily walks, lists and notes from my parents and loved ones, newspapers containing family obituaries and biographies, and other precious ephemera. Burning releases life to feed life.
Rebecca Keller: Portable Memorials and Abject Objects | October 23 - November 27, 2021
Rebecca Keller,
Rebecca Keller, Remember, 2021, Repurposed found artificial flowers, vintage dresser drawer, photographs, foam, paint, 30x18x4 in.
Artist Bio
Rebecca Keller is an artist, writer and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Hyde Park Art Center; the International Waldkunst Biennial; the Estonian National Art Museum, the Portland Art Museum; the International Museum of Surgical Science; the Tartu Art Museum; Elmhurst Art Museum and many other locations. Honors include two Fulbrights, an American Association of Museum International Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Illinois Arts Council.
Rebecca Keller, Forget Not (Detail), 2021, Vintage suitcase, artificial flowers, photographs, wire, foam, paint, 30x22x8 in.
Portable Memorials and Abject Objects/Artist Statement
My work has often focused on the intersection between art, audience, and the wider culture, negotiating the terrain between private meaning-making and public symbolism. This exhibition is derived from my interest in ad-hoc, informal tributes, like congratulatory wreaths and roadside memorials, as well as objects that sit on the border between public declarations and private sentiment---between beauty and kitsch, the comic and the tragic.
Recently our lives seem shaped by a sense of loss—and the near certainty that many more losses—people, places, species, common experiences or values—are to come. These sculptures reflect upon these emotions, and engage nostalgia, aspiration, and empathy. The visual language: flowers, ornate text, wreath and urn forms-are commonly used in commemoration and “momento mori” but the materials are kitschy and degraded. These materials: artificial flowers, scraps of foam, salvaged and thrifted objects, lumpy clay—are potent metaphors. They share, perhaps ironically, a long half-life of environmental and emotional impacts, even as these works participate in a language of temporary commemoration.
Rebecca Keller, Portable Candle Garden 1, 2021, Vintage suitcase, candles, beeswax, repurposed artificial flowers, photos, altered candlesticks, metal, glue, 40x24x12 in.
From the curator, Stephanie Brooks:
Using flowers, wreaths, suitcases and what we think of as transient and disposable, Keller creates complicated objects that suggest acts of self-insertion: what do we carry in a suitcase? What is our baggage? And what do we celebrate or mourn? And how tragic is it that these memorials can be reused?
In these pieces, Keller invites conversation, and uses almost aesthetically embarrassing forms to reveal affect and emotion. She shreds the familiar formats and makes the familiar unfamiliar; the comfortable, uncomfortable. In this exhibition, Keller invites viewers to open up affective, emotional spaces within which we can mourn and celebrate, carry and see one another.
Rebecca Keller, Dr. Seuss Garden, 2021, Wood, plasticine, plastic flowers, paint, varnish, 12x5 in.
Rebecca Keller, Snail, 2020, Foam, plasticine, vintage silver creamer, wax, artificial flowers, 10x4x6 in.
Rebecca Keller, Portable Candle Garden 1 (Detail), 2021, Vintage suitcase, candles, beeswax, repurposed artificial flowers, photos, altered candlesticks, metal, glue, 40x24x12 in.
Terrain Biennial - Julietta Cheung: Consonance | October 2 - November 18, 2021
Consonance (in an alley behind the Riverside Art Center facing the Riverside Metra station platform), 2021–ongoing, Wheat paste poster, 53.5 x 35 in.
In conjunction with the 2021 Terrain Biennial and the Chicago Architecture Biennial
October 2 - November 18, 2021
Consonance is a series of photographic street posters that explores the nature of public speech. Using the graphic forms of the alphabet to inspire prototypes of objects for use in street demonstrations (such as bullhorns, flags, and barriers), the work depicts language as the tools for ongoing collective action.
Julietta Cheung's text-based and language-inspired practice is informed by her experience as a second language user and her background in graphic design. Through textual appropriations, typographic experimentations, reading performances, and sculptural works, Cheung unmakes and remakes familiar cultural forms and narratives to examine their collective fabulations. She is an assistant professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Coded: Coated | Jonathan Castillo, Hannah Givier, Paul Somers | September 9 - October 16, 2021
Panel Discussion with the Curator and Artists: Saturday, October 16th at 2pm
Join us either in person in the RAC Garden OR on Zoom at this link
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82455594599?pwd=TlN4UVN2VlZUSFlQQmdYMWluZzcydz09
Guest Curated by Jay Wolke
“The way we make things impacts the way we perceive them. The power of materials to convey a balance of physical, cultural and personal signifiers determines and amplifies our connections to the built environment. The three artists presented here have deliberately manipulated substance and meaning in ways that interrogate not only subject matter, but also the strategies that influence our perceptions and responses to the artifacts we experience. Coded: Coated functions as an exercise in mystery and discovery, engaging viewers to decipher symbolism as conveyed through provocative applications of material production.” — Jay Wolke
Paul Somers’ art manifests itself in many forms ranging from sculptural objects to video and live performance. His pieces are based on a personal investigation of societal institutions and rituals and the exploration of their influence on our culture. His work evokes memories and feelings of childhood and questions the boundaries of masculinity within contemporary society. Somers wants to closely examine the disregarded and finds beauty in the disenfranchised. Through groupings of objects, material choices and the finishes, his work evokes the excitement of victory and the despair of loss.
Jonathan Castillo | Julia #1, 66” x 90"
Jonathan Castillo’s work is a critique of the American system of higher education, the US financial system and federal government policies that are creating generations of indebted citizens. His work utilizes portraits of those burdened with large amounts of student loans. It is printed on handmade paper, made from shredded US currency at a large scale and is representative of those individual's total student loan debt. The scale and number of prints is a visualization of student loan debt, as well as a personal narrative of individuals who are directly affected by the results of profit driven schools and financial systems.
Hannah Givler, drape plane, 2021, pine veneer , 48x49 in.
Material transformation is foundational to the work of Hannah Givler. With references to the metamorphosis of the naiad Daphne, Givler employs metals, plating, veneers, fibers and weaving to create illusory dissonance that drives the narratives in her work. Her pieces play with surface and misdirection, coded in the production of her artifacts. The overlapping of surfaces and substances makes these once fragile things hold together into cohesive objects that resist designation, suggesting multiple associations and readings.
RAC Members’ Exhibition 2021 | July 8- July 31
2021 Members’ EXHIBITION
Featuring works by:
Joanne Aono, Jeremy Black, Tom Burtonwood, Liz Chilsen, Paul D'Amato, Ella Hane, Anne Harris, Holly Holmes, Laura Husar Garcia, Karyn Zick Miller, Jean Di Monte, Noah Nyenhuis, Kim Piotrowski, Sandra Rangan, Susan T. Schliep, Camille Silverman, Dan Streeting, Shawn Vincent, Serene Wise
We are excited to showcase and celebrate the creations of our talented members and supporters. This exhibition is a highlight of every year, and this year is especially exciting as we gather again to share works in person.
Exhibition on view: JULY 8 – JULY 31, 2021
Members’ celebration & Reception: JULY 10TH
In the Galleries & Garden
With a dance performance by The Seldoms at 3:00
Renew your membership today
GALLERY HOURS
Thursday, Friday, Saturday 1-5 PM
Masks required for un-vaccinated people and for all children under the age of 13.
The Riverside Arts Center follows guidelines from the State of Illinois for safety during the Covid-19 pandemic. Social distancing inside galleries.
All of RAC'S exhibitions, lectures, artist talks and events are free and open to the public
ARTISTS’ WORK PICK-UP DATES:
Saturday, July 31st 5-7 PM
Tuesday, August 3rd 1-6 PM
Download the Drop-off Form Here
GALLERIES ARE OPEN FOR VISITORS
2021 Member’s Exhibition Works
Holly Holmes, It’s a Passageway, Acrylic on Wood
Dan Streeting, Strange Days, Typography, Prints, Acrylic
Tom Burtonwood, Squiggle Donut Number 42, Archival Ink on Bristol Vellum
Kim Piotrowski, Team Player, Mixed Media on Panel
Camille Silverman, Two Places, Acrylic, Watercolor, Ink on wood panel
Joanne Aono, Blue Fields-Immigrant Waters, Graphite + Colored Pencil on hand inscribed paper
Anne Harris, Portrait, Oil on Panel
Laura Husar Garcia, A Hundred Reasons, Archival Pigment Inkjet Print, Mounted on Dibond
Sandra Ragan, We all Live in a Yellow Submarine, Reverse Glass Painting/Mosaic
Ella Hane, Blue, Ceramics
Suan T. Schliep, Clandestine Lilac Essence, Alcohol inks and Markers on Yupo Paper
Karyn Zick Miller, Untitled, Ceramics
Jean Di Monte, Bear Canyon Lake Arizona, Watercolor
Noah Nyenhuis, Self Portrait, Watercolor
Noah Nyenhuis, Cartoon Man, Paint
Noah Nyenhuis, Don’t hug me I’m Scared, Mixed Media
Shawn Vincent, Emerald Clouds, Earthenware, Swarovski Crystals, Amethyst, Gemstones
Liz Chilsen, Still the light: flow, Smoke-fired porcelain
Liz Chilsen, Beelzebub’s grace, Smoke-fired porcelain
Jay Wolke
Paul D’amato, Boy by Pool, Chicago 2005 A.P., Color Photograph Mounted on Aluminum
Jeremy Black, Babylon, Acrylic on Board
Serene Wise, April 2020, Oil on canvas on Panel
Tariq Tamir