Camille Silverman: Storyboards for Installations and Assemblages | December 15, 2020 - February 25, 2021

Camille Silverman Storyboard #2

For the first time, Riverside Arts Center presents tandem exhibitions connecting the Riverside Town Hall and Riverside Arts Center’s Freeark Gallery. The exhibition in the Town Hall features Camille Silverman’s “Storyboards for Installations and Assemblages”; studies for “Softening Space” which will be presented in the Freeark Gallery January 14 - February 11, 2021.

Artist Statement

This body of photographic drawings and collages was started after a 2018 visit to the drawing room at the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago. One of the displays was a series of Helen Frankenthaler prints that she continually reworked and added notes to - she had found a valuable tool for variations in the reproduction of an image. The Frankenthaler print series made me think of how this practice could be useful in my thinking and rethinking of my work in assemblages and installations. I too can build a continuous diary of visual language by using repetition to free my mind to unexpected improvisation and experimentation.

Ideas about color, form and content could be easily worked out on a daily basis through a diary of printed collages exploring possible next moves. The images are taken from assemblages of crashed sleds and found materials. This series delves into ideas of fun, risk, perception, and the construct of time. A larger series of paintings, installations and collages will be exhibited at the Riverside Arts Center in the Freeark Gallery January 14 - February 11, 2021. Riverside Arts Center is located at 32 E Quincy Street, Riverside IL,

Artist Bio

Camille Silverman currently lives in Chicago and has happily served as Riverside Arts Center’s Executive Director for 4 years, ending her term in 2020. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2006 and was recently published in Studio Visit Magazine, New American Painting and the online Chicago publication Voyager. Recent exhibits include Prak-sis Gallery in Chicago, M.G. Nelson Gallery in Springfield and the Des Plaines Public Library

Hours

The Village Town Hall is open to walk-in visitors during normal business hours.

click image below to view slideshow

Stacey Smalec: Daydreams of a Restless Mind

January 7, 2020 - March 31, 2020 & extended to July 7, 2020

Stacey studied drawing and painting at Joliet Junior College. She got her love for creating art from her grandmother who was also an artist. After graduating, she found herself feeling disconnected and struggling to create art. After working various jobs for a while, she felt that she was being called to create again. She started taking art classes and found inspiration from fellow artists and the work they made. A few years ago she moved away from the south suburbs to Chicago and has been seeking out opportunities to both create and showcase her work in her new location. She is grateful for the opportunity to share her work in the Town Hall.

She enjoys using bold bright colors to invoke emotion in the viewer. She also likes to use different textures to create more depth. Most of the abstract art she creates by using pieces of different images combined to create a completely new image. Other times she creates the images based on her feelings at the time they are being created. Besides abstract, her favorite subjects are animals, landscapes, and portraits.

Check out Stacey’s website: https://artstaceymakes.com/

Stacey Smalec at her exhibition in the Riverside Town Hall

David Hauptschein | Self-Obsession: Self-Portraits

DAVID HAUPTSCHEIN, SELF-PORTRAIT 11-23-18, ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINT.

On view in the lobby of Riverside Town Hall through mid-December, 2019

“Over the past five years I have created an extensive series of photo-based digital paintings using Photoshop and other related programs. I view myself not as a photographer but as an artist who uses photography. The opportunity to explore uncharted territory is what attracts me to the digital realm. Photoshop is a new art medium, and throughout the history of art, whenever a new medium is invented, it stimulates artists’ imaginations, and they create works that have never been seen or heard before. What if, for example, Jimi Hendrix had come of age before the invention of the electric guitar? There would have been no Jimi Hendrix, at least not the one who revolutionized contemporary music. 

Besides visual art, I have worked for many years as a screenwriter and playwright, and have learned to seek and cherish the unexpected when it comes to my artistic endeavors. In art we trust.”

–David Hauptschein

The medium of all of these works is archival pigment print, and the dimensions are 26″ x 26″ and 15″ x 15″.  

Each of these works is a self-portrait.

For more information about the artist, visit his website at www.hauptschein.com or contact the Riverside Arts Center at 32 E. Quincy Street.

Laurie Redden: Up, Down and Across

Laurie Redden. “Riverside Glazed Garden.” Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 x 1.5 inches.

Laurie Redden began her “Weave Series” more than 15 years ago, as a playful exploration and a break from her traditional, impressionistic artwork. Intrigued by color and shape, she began experimenting with further manipulation of the two by the overlap of like objects. The intersected “bits” evolved into new opportunity for line, shape and color combinations and abstraction.  The “Weave Series” was born.

The weave painting process from initial idea to finished art is a very different cerebral experience from her traditional painting process. The interlacing of the objects becomes a highly compositional challenge, which she pushes even further by adding tension, depth and movement with her color choices. She often flips the canvas as she paints to orchestrate a multi-view orientation, thus engaging the viewer to the final choice of what they see.

Musical Instruments.  The artistic beauty and myriad of geometric parts of musical instruments is a natural choice and was the subject she first explored, years ago. Her life-long passion for music fueled the fascination to compose her 2-D colorful “songs”.

Stained and Leaded Glass.  A more recent weave series, focuses on piecing together the color, shapes and line of historical stained glass into a new painted vision. Many of the windows she references are located in Riverside. There may be 3 to more than 20 different windows represented in a weave painting.

Floral/Fauna. Laurie is an avid gardener and often gets her inspiration for plant compositions from her own yard or other gardens in the neighborhood. “We have no more room to add plants in our yard, so the weaves are an opportunity to create a new plant vignette, on canvas.”

Laurie Redden ( Risley) received her BFA (painting/drawing and graphic design) from Indiana University.  After years of designing in New York and Chicago, and juggling her time between design and painting, she re-dedicated herself to her true passion, painting. Her paintings are in private homes across the United States. Last year, Laurie became the RAW (Riverside Arts Weekend) Spectacle Concept Chair and has been hard at work again, for this year’s “surprise”.  She also gives private art/painting lessons in her studio.

Laurie Redden, “How Does the Glass Garden Grow.” Oil on canvas, 36 x 24 x 1.5 inches.

Laurie Redden, “Crescendo.” Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 x .75 inches.

View more work by Laurie Redden on her website: https://laurieredden.com/

Mark Boge | Landscapes: Different Perspectives

Indiana – On the Road to Williamsburg #12016. Acrylic on canvas. 30″ x 68″.

Mark Boge grew up in Spain and Germany. He then lived in New York and Connecticut prior to attending university in Boston where he studied history. He lived in Europe on several other occasions and now resides in Chicago. An artist for decades, he enjoys exploring and experimenting with various art forms. 

Some of his more recent works include subject matter from his extensive travels. Colorado farmland is seen from 39,000 feet in the air and is interpreted on canvas and in glass paintings. Digital photographs of tropical fish at the Sea Life London Aquarium are intentionally blurred to create a fresh take on “wildlife” photography. Glass sheets connected with stainless steel fasteners become three dimensional constructions that are both paintings and sculptures. 

Regardless of the media or subject matter, Mark displays a natural curiosity that fuels his desire to create an interesting, beautiful and occasionally humorous artwork that he hopes you will enjoy looking at as much as he enjoys creating.

When Mark is not painting or photographing, he enjoys playing his electric guitars, driving vintage German and Italian sports cars and cooking delicious dinners for his wife and daughter.