DIRK FLETCHER: PORCELAIN UTOPIA: MID-CENTURY LUSTRON HOMES IN ILLINOIS AND BEYOND

Exhibition at Riverside Town Hall

27 Riverside Road, Riverside, Illinois

Hours: Monday - Friday 8:00 AM - 4:30 PM

In conjunction with the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial

September 9, 2021 – February 24, 2022

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Artist Talk : Sunday, December 12, 3 pm

Riverside Public Library Community Room
This talk is offered in partnership with the Riverside Public Library. Reservations required.

Dirk Fletcher, Rockford, Illinois, 2020

From the artist’s statement: 

“​​It is the end of the 1940s and GIs are returning from the war to find a housing shortage. Industrialist and entrepreneur Carl Strandlund recognized this opportunity and retooled his fledgling porcelain enameled stainless steel gas station and hamburger stand business into a promise for these GIs.  

Just three years after the company’s first house rolled off its Henry Ford style production line, the Lustron Corporation declared bankruptcy. Before shuttering the factory, over 2500 homes had been delivered. According to the Whitehall Historical Society, approximately 1800 homes are still standing today.  

It is the success or failure of this American Dream that intrigues me. Over the last three years, I have photographed over three hundred and fifty Lustron Homes. While only subtle changes determine the model, every home shares the same 2x2 porcelain building blocks, differing only in color. While sharing the same DNA, it is surprising that not a single home looks the same as the next. Regardless of geographic location, one would assume the homes were built in similar socioeconomic regions. A 1200 square foot house is going to be built in a neighborhood of similar homes.   

I have seen impeccably restored homes in the same town as homes that paint a picture of poverty and daily struggles of its occupants. I cannot get out of my head that 70 years ago, kids were playing in these yards and driveways while parents celebrated similar goals, wishes and dreams that come with first time home ownership. 

Now in my 50s, I’ve begun to worry about my family and my legacy. For the first time in my life, I’m cognizant of what I’m leaving behind for my children. Am I leaving a better world for them and their future families?  Have I even tried?  Having a front row seat to what 70 years can do to a community gives me pause to the choices that I have made.”

Dirk Fletcher is an American photographer whose work focuses primarily on the built environment and transportation. He has several long-term projects underway, including the documentation of post-war era porcelain enamel Lustron homes that are located across the country. He holds an MFA in Independent Filmmaking from Governors State University and a BA from Brooks Institute of Photography. In addition to shooting digitally, he is an avid designer, builder and user of 4x5, 8x10 and panoramic film cameras. He grills year-round, shoots a compound bow and lives in Brookfield with his wife and two teenage boys.

His work can be viewed at dirkfletcher.com and @dirkfletcher on Instagram.

Dirk Fletcher, North Olmsted, Ohio, 2018

Dirk Fletcher, Brookfield, Illinois, 2018

Dirk Fletcher, Louisville, Kentucky, 2018

Riverside’s Community Quarantine Quilt | March 15 - July 31, 2021

Riverside Arts Center Community Quarantine Quilt | March 2020 - March 2021

Riverside Arts Center is proud to sponsor this beautiful community quilt, sharing an uplifting perspective on the Coronavirus Pandemic from Riversiders.

The quilt draws together experiences from the Riverside community during 2020’s stay-home period. Initiated by Riversider Bridget Juister, it was inspired by a Black History quilt she’d seen on display earlier at Adler Planetarium. Thanks to material scraps on hand from Calico Corners in Hinsdale, the project was completely free for the community and offered a creative reprieve during a difficult time.

Each quilt square tells its own story, and each artist provided a brief statement sharing their thoughts about what inspired their piece. Collectively, this quilt tells a larger story about community, security, and what is revered in our lives.

Love, joy, and nature come through as overarching themes in the quilt. Homage was paid to healthcare workers, teachers, graduates, and puppies each of which held their own special place in this experience.

The repetitive pattern on the quilt’s backing fabric was chosen to symbolize the hundreds of thousands of lives lost through this crisis. The black border framing the quilt sets a somber remembrance as we begin to look back on this experience.

Juister wove a golden thread between the squares, serving as a symbolic link between diverse communities and individuals within them. The quilt commemorates the belief that when basic human needs are met, peace and joy lie at the core for every human experience.

Riverside Arts Center (RAC) is proud to support this beautiful volunteer effort. The entire process from beginning to end brought forth a feeling of peace and togetherness during what was otherwise a time of isolation and anxiety. These artists created wondrously gentle expressions of optimism and patience, assertions of solidarity and hope, and a bit of fun. Individually and as a whole it is an inspiration.

The Riverside Community Quarantine Quilt will be on display in the lobby of Riverside Town Hall through June, 2021. We hope to find a permanent home for it, where the quilt can be enjoyed by Riversiders in the future.

Click here to download a copy of the Quilt Artists’ statements

(The file will download automatically)

Quilt Detail

Exhibition in Town Hall Lobby

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.