2020s Exhibitions
Previous University Gallery Exhibitions
2025
Margaret Crowley: Hazard
Open January 14 through February 26, 2025
Hazard premieres new paintings and sculptures addressing the industries and textures of “health, wellness, and pain management” by Chicago-based artist and Illinois State University alum Margaret Crowley. She explores the effects of manual labor and how the repetition of overuse mirrors the repetition of repair. The exhibition title alludes to occupational hazards and serves as a warning.
Crowley frequently references family labor histories, whether her father’s background as a welder or the decades her mother worked as a hairstylist. Following nearly a year of accompanying her mother to physical therapy appointments meant to aid in her recovery from an occupational injury, Crowley began translating those experiences into gouache-on-silk paintings. Rather than depicting a figure or scenes of the clinic, the artist explores, in her words, the “particularities of repeated visits to a space.” Examples include the ubiquitous timers that keep track of the bodies’ necessary movements toward healing, a cheerful row of pet-portrait snapshots that adorn the wall, the radio that provides constant background noise and rhythms for the staff and clients, a therapist’s informative badge with decorative elements added to its lanyard, and every tiny detail of the anti-fatigue floor mats that aid in prolonged standing. Multiple works were inspired by the therapists’ mobile carts that overflow with tools used to manipulate and heal, often via close, precise encounters between two bodies. Meanwhile, her newest work takes the form of an exercise strap, which is often used in the appointments for stretching and increasing flexibility. In Crowley’s version, the strap is 4-5 times the typical length, made of silk, populated by small paintings, and draped through the exhibition space.
Crowley uses her mother’s MRI scans to introduce the exhibition. She sees them as “containers for decades of work, relationships, and repetition.” She continues, “The MRI feels like a prompt, or an origin point, for the whole project.” Throughout her work, Crowley asks why we subject our bodies to these stresses, particularly in the name of a “work ethic,” and what tolls they take on us individually and collectively.
This exhibition is the center point of multiple programs. Margaret Crowley will have a public discussion with artist Karen Reimer. Crowley will also conduct studio visits with ISU students. University Galleries’ staff is leading art-making workshops for ISU students, K-12 students, and community members. Sensory-friendly times and scavenger hunts are available. Virtual and in-person curator-led tours are available by appointment. Field trip reimbursements are available for K-12 schools and community organizations.
Margaret Crowley: Hazard is organized by Kendra Paitz, University Galleries’ director and chief curator. This exhibition and programming are supported by University Galleries’ grant from the Illinois Arts Council. Workshops and field trip reimbursements are supported by the Lori Baum and Aaron Henkelman University Galleries Community Fund.
Biography
Margaret Crowley (b. 1987, Ottawa, Illinois) is a Chicago-based artist. Her work has been exhibited at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago; Devening Projects, Chicago; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Chicago Artists Coalition; Cue Foundation, New York City; and Área: Lugar de Proyectos, Caguas, Puerto Rico. Crowley has received the Jarislowsky Foundation’s Emerging Artist Award, which included a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Banff, Canada. She has also been awarded multiple individual artist grants from the Illinois Arts Council and a residency at Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists. NewCity Chicago named her one of Chicago’s 10 Breakout Artists of 2023. Crowley is the co-director of Produce Model Gallery, Chicago. She received her M.F.A. from University of Chicago, M.A. from Eastern Illinois University, and B.S. from Illinois State University.
Resources
Press
Some Aspects of Five Works of Art
Open January 14 through February 26, 2025
The five lithographs in Some Aspects (two of which appear twice) were selected from the permanent collection of University Galleries. These works were chosen and arranged to demonstrate how different contexts focus our attention on different elements of an image. Artists include Julia Fish, Jacques Lowe, Buzz Spector, and Mark Tobey.
Any image is liable to be looked at a million ways and more. Take Buzz Spector's lithograph Dutch Mills, which is included in the exhibition. The print shows three versions of an identical scene of a windmill arranged side by side and abutting each other. Their dimensions and what they depict are identical, but each scene is drawn with a slightly different degree of finish, making each one more or less abstract than the others. Seen one way, Spector’s print is a side-by-side sequence of three pictures of windmills; viewed differently, it becomes a field of black lines and inky blots on gray. This is the most basic way in which images contain multitudes: representations are always a blend of references to the real world and literal marks on a surface.
"I see that it has not changed, and yet I see it differently," wrote the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein about this human ability to pull multiple meanings from any one image. Wittgenstein called this "noticing an aspect." When we notice an aspect, we are taking a visual experience we have had and processing it in new ways — forging in our minds new relationships between this experience and others we've had, which in turn brings about new elements of the object we're experiencing that we can focus on.
This exhibition presents three pairings of artworks from the collection of University Galleries, each of which encourages viewers to notice different "aspects" of what is paired. Two works are presented twice. When Dutch Mills is placed alongside Jacque Lowe’s photograph of a farm boy carrying buckets, one’s focus is drawn to the subject matter of Spector’s print — the drudgery and mechanics of country life, for instance — rather than to the particular ways the artist has gone about making his representation. However, alongside Julia Fish’s abstract, fragmentary GroundCover lithograph, Dutch Mills seems a very different picture: more so than the shack and windmills, the erratic lines and shifting densities of black that form the scene are emphasized.
It can be unsettling to recognize that the things we see are fundamentally ambiguous, capable of taking on an enormous range of meanings. In a sense, a good work of art is one that opens itself up to this contingency but ultimately fends it off. Art is valuable because of its infinity of possible "aspects," but it convinces its audience of its value once everything but one’s experience with a work has washed away.
Some Aspects is organized by Troy Sherman, Curator at University Galleries.
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Andy Slater: Paintings & Sculptures
Open January 14 through March 26, 2025
This exhibition features Chicago-based artist Andy Slater’s sound works and three-dimensional objects that mimic the presentation and appearance of traditional artistic formats but engage senses other than vision. Meant to be touched or heard rather than seen, these “paintings and sculptures” trouble the ocularcentrism that is at the core of the “visual” arts. For Slater, who is blind, this is more than just a conceptual gesture or a political statement (though it is those things, too): it is an attempt to invite people to have artistic experiences that are analogous to his own.
Slater has observed that when institutions attempt to make their artworks accessible to visually impaired people, the alternatives they present frequently do a poor job of approximating the original works. Audio descriptions of paintings, for instance, often focus on descriptive terms or traits that are irrelevant to blind people. Handling either a scaled model of a sculpture or a hunk of the material it is made of hardly gets one halfway towards what it is like to look at it. The problem is not that a description is not a painting, or that a model is not a sculpture. Instead, the problem is that descriptions, models, and other accessible options are essentially new works of art that need to translate the original into a different sensory register. Museums and galleries seldom achieve this.
The works in Paintings & Sculptures are inspired by accessible alternatives and the ways they often fail. Slater has created alt-text descriptions and sculptural models that are their own originals, not translations of other visual artworks. His Invisible Ink series, which features heavily in this exhibition, comprises textual accounts of paintings that do not physically exist. Intended to be listened to rather than seen, these “paintings” encourage their audience to mentally construct images of “visual” objects that only exist as sound. Likewise, the proper way to engage the small bronzes which Slater presents alongside these sound works is not through the sense of sight, but rather touch. Meant to be handled and appreciated solely for their tactile complexity, these artworks broaden the notion of sculpture as either a visual or spatial medium by proposing the aesthetic significance of touch and touch alone.
Andy Slater: Paintings & Sculptures is the center point of multiple educational programs. Slater will give a public lecture and meet with students and classes at ISU. University Galleries is collaborating with the Wonsook Kim School of Art’s Visiting Artist Program for his public lecture and class visits. University Galleries’ staff will lead art-making workshops for ISU students, families, K-12 students, and community members. Free virtual and in-person curator-led tours are available by appointment for the duration of the exhibition.
Paintings & Sculptures is organized by Troy Sherman, Curator at University Galleries. The exhibition and programming are supported by University Galleries’ grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Harold K. Sage Foundation, and the Illinois State University Foundation Fund. Workshops and field trip reimbursements are supported by the Lori Baum and Aaron Henkelman University Galleries Community Fund.
Biography
Andy Slater (b. 1975, Milford, Connecticut) is a blind Chicago-based media artist, writer, performer, and disability advocate/”loudmouth.” Slater holds a Masters in Sound Arts and Industries from Northwestern University and a B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a 2024 3Arts Next Level Awardee, 2022-2023 Leonardo Crip Tech Incubator fellow, 2022 United States Artists fellow, and 2018 3Arts/Bodies of Work fellow. The founder of the Society of Visually Impaired Sound Artists and the director of the Sound as Sight accessible field-recording project, Slater has exhibited and performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, California; Transmediale Festival, Berlin, Germany; Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne, Australia; Critical Distance, Toronto, Canada; Experimental Sound Studios, Chicago, Illinois; the Art Institute of Chicago; Flux Factory, New York, New York; and the Momenta Dance Company, Oak Park, Illinois.
Resources
- Accessible Texts and Audio
- K-6 Educator Handout
- 7-12 Educator Handout
- Scavenger Hunt
- Alt-Text Inspired Zine Workshop
Press
2025 MFA Thesis Exhibitions
Open March 10 through March 26, 2025
2025 MFA Thesis Exhibitions features three simultaneous solo exhibitions by Master of Fine Arts students in Illinois State’s Wonsook Kim School of Art: Kitty Davies, Ilse Miller, and Madelyn Turner-Havens.
The exhibitions are the culmination of the students’ research during their three-year program. In addition to writing a thesis and creating their artwork, each student develops their own exhibition plan, installs their work, and writes their accompanying labels. University Galleries’ staff is also helping two of the students organize and lead public workshops inspired by their artwork. University Galleries is thrilled to partner with the Wonsook Kim School of Art to offer graduating MFA students these opportunities for professional development.
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2025 Student Annual
Open April 9 through May 4, 2025
Since 1974, the Student Annual has showcased new artwork produced by students at Illinois State University. This exhibition has offered many students the first opportunity to have their work reviewed by professionals outside the University. Each year, two external arts professionals determine which works are selected for the exhibition and which works receive awards.
The Wonsook Kim School of Art is pleased to present the 2025 Marshall Dulaney Pitcher Award to MFA student Kitty Davies. This award honors outstanding students in the visual arts who demonstrate exceptional artistic talent, dedicated studio practice, and academic excellence. 2025 marks the 55th anniversary of this prestigious award, which was established by the Pitcher family in memory of painting student Marshall Pitcher. University Galleries has traditionally dedicated exhibition space within the Student Annual to winners of the Marshall Dulaney Pitcher Award.
Jurors
This year’s design juror is Heather Snyder Quinn. This year's studio juror is Selina Trepp.
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A Conversation Between: A Call-and-Response Exhibition (curated by Teen Art Group)
Open May 17 through July 25, 2025
A Conversation Between... is organized by Bloomington High School students who are members of University Galleries’ Teen Art Group: Elyahna Miller, Miette Smith-Golwitzer, Clien Kitchens, and Sharini Menon. The students developed the concept, theme, checklist, and layout of the exhibition. Hoping to chart layers of influence among artists, the Teen Art Group has selected five artworks from University Galleries’ permanent collection to serve as the basis of the exhibition. These include a mixed-media drawing by Alan R. Atkins (M.F.A. ’24); a collaged painting by Erin Hayden (B.F.A., B.S. ‘13); a lithograph by Wonsook Kim (B.A. ‘75, M.A. ’76, M.F.A. ’78, honorary doctorate of arts ’19); and photographs by Jade Nguy ễ n (M.F.A. ’24) and Rafael Soldi.
The Teen Art Group invites artists of all ages to respond to, or to be in conversation with, the selected works rather than copying them. Artists may respond to the materials, content, imagery, and/or processes. University Galleries will hold a series of all-ages art-making workshops, during which participants can view the selected artworks and create their own. Materials will be provided. Artworks created during the workshops can be included in the exhibition along with the pieces that served as their inspiration. The exhibition will continue to build throughout its duration.
For artists interested in participating in the exhibition, images of each of the collection works can be seen here. Please send an email to Gallery@IllinoisState.edu to complete a loan form. Artwork with a completed loan form can be delivered or mailed to the gallery through July 1, 2025 during regular operating hours for inclusion in the exhibition. Shipping costs must be covered by the artist. Please ship to:
University Galleries of Illinois State University
Attn: A Conversation Between
Campus Box 7150
Normal, IL 61790-7150
(If shipping via UPS, you may need to include “2016 Warehouse Road” in the address.)
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Repetitions
Open May 17 through July 25, 2025
The 23 artworks in Repetitions were selected from the permanent collection of University Galleries. With dates ranging from the 19th century to the early 21st, these paintings, prints, photographs, textiles, and sculptures each depict repetitions or were created through repetitious processes. Taken altogether, they present an opportunity to consider the ways art can be a tool for identifying difference within sameness and sameness within difference. Artists include Edith Altman, Dmitri Baltermants, Ilse Bing, John Clem Clarke, Alan Cohen, Adam Farcus (B.F.A. 2006), Leonard Freed, John Himmelfarb, Ken Holder, Jasper Johns, Fay Lee (B.F.A. 1986), Jacques Lowe, Sister Meg Majewski, Rodney Ripps, Brandon Siscoe (B.F.A. 2012), Jack Solomon, and Joan Sterrenburg. Also included are works by unknown Panamanian and Tibetan artists.
A repetition is a form or an object that has been exactly reproduced. It is the same thing twice (or more). A repetition is also an action done over and over: some movement, a certain flourish repeated. Repetitions are flocks of birds and the chores we do; they are patterns and habits; they can be irksome or comforting. But strictly speaking, repetitions do not exist. The second occurrence of a thing is always a new thing, distinct in substance from the first no matter how close they are in appearance. Repetition is an impossibility that nevertheless seems to happen all the time. This contradiction has fascinated artists for as long as there has been art.
Some of the earliest known artworks are repetitions: in the Cueva de las Manos in Patagonia, prehistoric humans spent centuries layering stencil upon stencil of their palmprints on the walls of a cave. As though they were frightened by the realization that an image of a hand is different from the hand itself, the artists repeated their failed attempt at repetition until the failure seemed absurd. Such a back-and-forth between terror of repetition and indulgence in it has recurred in many artistic traditions. For instance, Islamic artists have long deployed repetition in the form of complex patterns to symbolize divine principles without representing the divine, which is unrepresentable.
In some cases, the repetitions on view in this exhibition are strict and regular, like the artists were trying to cast order upon something unwieldy. In others, they appear chaotic: sloppy gestures or proliferating masses that bring into relief the differences between iterating forms.
In Jasper Johns’ lithograph Corpse and Mirror, terse black and gray diagonals build up to a grid of diamond and triangular forms. There is repetition not only in the profusion of similar marks and the similar shapes they create, but also in the left-right symmetrical organization of the print overall (hence the titular “mirror”). However, in the top right corner there is a haze of gray overlaying the design. This haze could be external to the image (like a fog breathed onto the “mirror” of the lithograph’s surface) or it could be seeping up from out of it (it is the same color as the gray that makes up half of the grid beneath). Either way, it interrupts one’s appreciation of the regularity that characterizes the rest of the design, and it pushes one to notice other ways in which repetition is not quite able to sustain itself throughout this print. Some lines are thicker or shorter than other lines, for instance. In some places the gray seems dominant, in other places the black. Plenty of marks that are present on the right side of the print are missing on the left, and vice versa. Repetition figures as something that cannot keep from collapsing in on itself, an ideal that manifests as a system of missteps and feints.
Repetitions is organized by Troy Sherman, Curator at University Galleries.
Resources
Jen Bervin: Shift Rotate Reflect
Open August 15 through December 10, 2025
Shift Rotate Reflect is a re-imagining of poet and artist Jen Bervin’s first survey exhibition. Originally on view at University Galleries in Fall 2020 during COVID-19 restrictions and closures, the exhibition featured 23 solo and collaborative works created from 1997 through 2020. Opening five years after the first exhibition, this experiment—re-presenting the anchor projects differently alongside new works—is a direct response to the limitations imposed by the pandemic. Audiences will be able to engage with the material complexities of Bervin’s work, explore the expanded connections among them, and participate in robust public programming.
The exhibition title, Shift Rotate Reflect, was excerpted from Su Hui’s Picture of the Turning Sphere, a five-channel video installation that Bervin collaboratively created with filmmaker Charlotte Lagarde. The words “shift,” “rotate,” and “reflect” have been guideposts for Bervin and exhibition curator Kendra Paitz while envisioning the 2025 exhibition. This iteration of Shift Rotate Reflect features installations, embroideries, prints, artist’s books, and videos created through 2025. The selected works demonstrate the interdisciplinary range of Bervin’s long-term research on topics including legacies of women artists and writers, relationships between text and textiles, and abstractions of language and landscape.
Core projects from the first exhibition include Su Hui’s Picture of the Turning Sphere (2016–2020), a video and textile installation addressing Chinese poet Su Hui and her 4th-century reversible poem, “Xuanji tu”; River (2006–2018), a scale model of the Mississippi River from the geocentric point of view, hand-stitched in silver sequins and spanning 230 curvilinear feet; Silk Poems (2010–2017), which centers around Bervin’s poem for a biosensor written from the perspective of a silkworm and composed in a six-character chain corresponding to the DNA structure of silk; and The Dickinson Composites (2004–ongoing), a series of large-scale embroideries comprising stitched composites of the variant marks American poet Emily Dickinson used in her manuscripts to link alternate words and phrases.
New works featured in Shift Rotate Reflect include eight new quilts in The Dickinson Composites series, a 10-foot silk print of the silkworm cocoon, the video Faire et défaire with an original score by Catherine McRae, and two recent artist’s books The Sea and On Weaving—a video, typed prints, and an annotated copy of Anni Albers’ 1965 book of the same name—which, in Bervin’s words, “references the grid that the typewriter and weaving have in common, as well as the direct relationship between looms and computing.”
This exhibition is the center point of multiple programs and engagements. Jen Bervin will give a public lecture and meet with students on campus. Bervin’s exhibition is a central focus of a Text and Textile seminar in the Wonsook Kim School of Art. Normal Community High School’s Experimental Ensemble is composing original scores inspired by Bervin’s work and performing them within the exhibition. A reading group will be organized by Melissa Johnson (Professor, Art History and Visual Culture) and Kendra Paitz. University Galleries is collaborating with Illinois State University’s Milner Library on a reading list and book display and partnering with Bloomington Public Library on a poetry workshop that will result in a zine. University Galleries’ staff is also leading art-making workshops for ISU students, K-12 students, and community members, as well as organizing pop-up exhibitions. Sensory-friendly times, independent drawing hours, drop-in writing hours, and scavenger hunts are available. Curator-led tours are available by appointment. Field trip reimbursements for tours and workshops are available for K-12 schools and community organizations.
A 192-page monograph accompanies the exhibition. Published in 2022, between both exhibitions, the book features poet and playwright Claudia Rankine’s conversation with Bervin, Jennifer Yee’s interview with Bervin and Lagarde, essays by scholar Jayme Collins and curator Kendra Paitz, a facsimile chapter from Bervin’s hand-stitched artist’s book The Desert, a visual index of Bervin’s book projects, and an illustrated biography.
Jen Bervin: Shift Rotate Reflect is curated by Kendra Paitz, University Galleries’ director and chief curator. This exhibition and programming are supported by University Galleries’ grants from the Illinois Arts Council, Alice and Fannie Fell Trust, Harold K. Sage Foundation, and the Illinois State University Foundation Fund. Workshops and field trip reimbursements are supported by the Lori Baum and Aaron Henkelman University Galleries Community Fund. This exhibition would not have been possible without previous support. The 2020 iteration of Shift Rotate Reflect was supported by University Galleries’ grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Illinois Arts Council, Harold K. Sage Foundation, and the Illinois State University Foundation Fund.
Biographies
Jen Bervin’s projects have been exhibited at the Hong Kong University Museum and Art Gallery; Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa; Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne; The Power Plant, Toronto; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts; Tufts University Art Galleries, Medford, Massachusetts; and Morgan Library and Museum, New York, among others. Bervin has authored numerous books and artist’s books including Silk Poems, a New Museum Book of the Year and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson’s Envelope Poems (with Marta Werner and Susan Howe), a Book of the Year selection by The New Yorker. Bervin has received grants, awards, and fellowships from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, Asian Cultural Council, Creative Capital, Foundation for Contemporary Art, SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Banff Centre, Northwestern University, and New York Foundation for the Arts, among others. Her work is featured in 60 collections, including Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Yale University, Brooklyn Museum, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. Bervin’s work is represented by Catharine Clark Gallery, San Franscisco. She is a 2025–2026 Fellow at The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and lives in Connecticut and Marseille, Bouches-de-Rhône in France.
Charlotte Lagarde has made more than 20 films, which have been aired on PBS, HBO, and the Sundance Channel, and exhibited at MASS MoCA. Her many awards include an Academy Award, the PBS Independent Lens Audience Award, and the Ashland Independent Film Festival’s Best Documentary award, as well as fellowships from Sundance, BAVC, and Camargo Foundation. Her project Colonial White was included in the exhibitions The Racial Imaginary Institute: On Whiteness at The Kitchen, New York City, and Great Force at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University as a city-wide participatory project in Richmond, Virginia. Lagarde is the executive director of the Swell Foundation and the COO & co-founder of B.Public. She lives in Connecticut and France.
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2024
Alumni Spectacular
Open January 16 through February 20, 2024
The Alumni Spectacular celebrates University Galleries’ 50th anniversary and the talented alumni who have been such a rich part of our history. An open-call invitation was sent to alumni from the Wonsook Kim School of Art and Creative Technologies program. 182 artists who graduated between 1968 and 2023 are participating. All submitted works are displayed. The result is a vibrant exhibition that fills the entirety of University Galleries with artists’ books, ceramics, collages, drawings, fibers, graphic design, jewelry, paintings, photographs, prints, sculptures, videos, and technology-based works.
Previous iterations of the Alumni Spectacular occurred in 2010 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts and in 2015 to celebrate University Galleries’ new location in Uptown Normal. The exhibition was originally planned to take place again in 2020 but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Alumni Spectacular is the focus of multiple programs. University Galleries’ staff will lead art-making workshops for ISU students, families, K-12 students, and community members. Sensory-friendly hours and scavenger hunts are available. Free virtual and in-person curator-led tours are available by appointment. Workshops and field trip reimbursements are supported by the Lori Baum and Aaron Henkelman University Galleries Community Fund.
Artists
- Dan Addington
- Nicolas Africano
- Stephen J Albair
- Mariam Alcantara
- Les Allen
- Angel Ambrose
- Michael Amis
- Rich Ankeney
- Sheila Asbell Allen
- Japheth Asiedu-Kwarteng
- Veda Rives Aukerman
- Jayme Banzhoff
- George Barreca
- Daniel Berlin
- Richard Boschulte
- Jan Brandt
- Mariko Brown Harkin
- Rosemary (Layendecker) Buffington
- Tamara Burgh
- Frank Bush
- David Buxton
- Cindy Colaw Caldwell
- DeVonn Caldwell
- Jane Camp
- Felicia Cannon
- Amber Carroll
- Sargylana Cherepanova
- Derek W Clem
- Nancy Colbrook
- Bill Conger
- Megan Coonelly
- Maggie Crowley
- Allison Cummings
- Catherine J. Davis
- Jack Davis
- Jacob DeGeal
- Martin DeWitt
- Doug DeWitt
- Ted Diamond
- Michael Dubina
- Daniel DuBravec
- Robert DuGrenier
- Michael A. Dunbar
- Herb Eaton
- Rhea Edge
- Gerard Erley
- Tim Even
- Adam Farcus
- Angie Fassett
- Clair Felde
- Lisa M Fillipponi
- Holly Filsinger
- Rita Finnegan
- Peytin Fitzgerald
- Nicholas Flatley
- Dick Folse
- Mark Sumner Forth
- Brian Frink
- Ari Garcia
- Ben Gardner
- Joann Goetzinger
- Michael Gary Goldberger
- Steve Gossard
- Amber Gravett
- Haley Gray
- Shea Grehan
- Suan Guess-Hanson
- Sam Guymon
- Chris Hagen
- Shahrbanoo Hamzeh
- Rick Harney
- Kasey Hayes
- Gina (Theison) Hechinger
- Barbara Hertel
- Kirsten Heteji
- Rebecca Hodel
- Robert Holcombe
- Sandra Holt
- Kevin Hopkins
- James Huddleston
- L Hugenberg
- Gina Hunt
- Sam Ingram
- Zahra Irannezhad
- Jean Janssen
- Lauren Jenkins
- Douglas C. Johnson
- Whitney Johnson
- Ariele J.
- Mary Jungels Goodyear
- Megan Kathol Bersett
- Wonsook Kim
- Tim Kowalczyk
- Chris Kukla
- Christopher Lackey
- Jeremy Langston
- Bonnie Lauber-Westover
- Kim Laurel
- Emily Lehman
- April Lewis
- David Linneweh
- Lisa Lofgren
- Emma Long-Ingram
- Miriam Loory Krombach
- Garrett Luczak
- Schuyler Maehl
- Camila Marianela
- Ed Martens
- Beth M. House
- Michael "Mac" McAvoy
- Joe McGuire
- Geraldo Migues
- Barbara Miller
- Emily Minton
- Barrymore Moton
- Tess Murphy
- Dann Nardi
- Laura Newman
- Sandra Oglesby
- McLean Oglesby
- Alissa Palmer
- Ryan Paluczak
- Laura Primozic George
- Krista Profitt
- Jim Reckard
- Todd Reed
- Randy Reid
- Beatrix Reinhardt
- Lori Robeau
- Dawn Roe
- Brent Rusk
- Stoney Samsoe
- Reid Sancken
- Nick Satinover
- Gloria Ann Schabb
- Karen Schaschwary Brinker
- Peg Schickedanz
- Patrice Schweitzer Nelson
- Tom Seibert
- Bert Sharpe
- Tricia L. Shaw
- Grace Sheese
- Harry William Sidebotham II
- Lyzz Lundberg Sidebotham
- Brian K Simpson
- Tate Skinner
- Wendi Smith
- Adrienne (Marek) Smith
- Rachel Smith
- Phil Smith
- Meda Rives Smith
- Jeff Smudde
- Colin Snyder
- Hannah Songer
- Carrie Stapleton
- Rick Steinburg
- David Stratton
- Megan Stroech
- Jessica Tackes
- Sarah Tolmie
- Lindsay Trevizo
- Natalie Troyer
- Laney Turner
- Tom Turner
- Dennis Neal Vaughn
- Alánna Veitch
- Marissa and Leica Tonkovic
- Erik Waterkotte
- Dylan Yvonne Welch
- Jacob Wesslowski
- Lesa Westerman
- Chris Wille
- Linda Willis Fisher
- David Wilson
- david a woesthaus
- Amy Wolfe
- Amy Yeager
- Lawrence Zajac
- Micah Zavacky
- Keith Zimmerman
Resources
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Witnesses: James Welling / Chris Welsby
Open March 1 through March 31, 2024
Witnesses comprises recent work by two artists, the photographer James Welling and the filmmaker Chris Welsby. Throughout the exhibition, images of the natural world and of human constructions abandoned within it have been processed or manipulated in ways that disturb a viewer's simple delight in what is being represented. Botanical studies, landscapes, and views of weed-eaten structures are corrupted in these artworks by slight but consuming indications of each artist's method. Borrowing its title from a quote by the 18th-century German playwright Friedrich Schiller, the exhibition deals with the modern problem of a lost oneness with nature, and with the difficulties inherent in trying to regain it.
Schiller wrote in 1795 that artists and “poets are everywhere the guardians of nature.” But where, as in modern life, they “can no longer completely be this, and where they have already experienced within themselves the destructive influence of arbitrary and artificial forms, they will appear as nature’s witnesses.” This exhibition’s 15 works demonstrate how, given our troubled contemporary relationship with nature, abstracting it can be a perverse but necessary means of witnessing nature most ethically.
Welling and Welsby began their respective careers in the early 1970s, the one in California, the other in London. Welling was trained at the California Institute of the Arts at a time when many young artists were beginning to metabolize the lessons of conceptual art from the previous decade and to integrate them with other, less wholly cerebral approaches to artmaking. Welsby, a member of the influential London Film-Makers’ Cooperative in the 1970s, developed as a young artist in the milieu of Structural/Materialist Film, an avant-garde movement that emphasized the reliance of any moving image’s meaning upon the physical stuff with which it was made and presented.
For each artist, a sensitivity for the productive tension between a pure artistic idea and the necessity of transmitting and transmuting it through some medium has been, for decades, predominant in his work. Witnesses shows that the different ways Welling and Welsby emphasize the processes of depiction in their work can be considered at once to effect and to countervail a lost authenticity in humans’ relationship with the natural world.
Witnesses: James Welling / Chris Welsby is organized by Troy Sherman, Curator at University Galleries. This exhibition and programming are supported by University Galleries’ grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
Biographies
James Welling (b. 1951) is a photographer. Since the 1970s, his varied and exploratory practice has melded the challenges of conceptualism with a deep sensitivity for the medium and the history of photography. Associated in the 1980s with the Pictures Generation, his work has been exhibited widely, including in a 2009 exhibition about that movement at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY) and, in 2000, in a career-spanning survey exhibition organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, OH). He was Professor in the Department of Art at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1995 to 2016, and currently teaches at Princeton University in the Visual Art Program. He lives in New York City.
Chris Welsby (b. 1948) is a filmmaker. For more than 50 years, he has been making films, videos, and moving image installations focused on themes of environment and ecology. His work has been shown widely, including in screenings at Light Cone (Paris, France), Doc Films (Chicago, IL), Anthology Film Archives (New York, NY), and the National Film Theatre (London, UK), as well as in exhibitions at the Tate Gallery (London, UK), the Serpentine Gallery (London, UK), the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, France), and the Musée du Louvre (Paris, France). He retired in 2012 from Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University, where he had taught in the School for the Contemporary Arts since 1989. He lives on Gabriola Island, off the coast of British Columbia.
Resources
- Micro-Artmaking Lesson
- K-6 Educator Handout
- 7-12 Educator Handout
- Normal Public Library Reading List
- Exhibition Brochure
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MFA Thesis Exhibitions
Open March 11 through March 28, 2024
The 2024 MFA Thesis Exhibitions feature four simultaneous solo shows by Master of Fine Arts students in Illinois State’s Wonsook Kim School of Art: Alan Atkins, KAELIN (Ian Cooper), Sarah Eckstine, and Jade (Minh Hà) Nguyễn.
The exhibitions are the culmination of the students’ research during their three-year program. In addition to writing a thesis and creating their artwork, each student develops their own exhibition plan, installs their work, and writes their accompanying labels. University Galleries is thrilled to partner with the Wonsook Kim School of Art to offer graduating MFA students this opportunity for professional development.
Resources
- Sarah Eckstine: Love & Rage (Show Card)
- Jade (Minh Hà) Nguyễn: Polyphony (Show Card; Poster; Artist Statement; Gallery Map)
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LGBTQ+ VR Museum
Open March 21 through March 27, 2024
The LGBTQ+ VR Museum is the first virtual reality museum "dedicated to celebrating artifacts, artwork, and stories of LGBTQ+ people." Co-created by Antonia Forster and Thomas Terkildsen, the Museum features personal items and artworks contributed by the LGBTQ+ community to "disrupt historical gatekeeping and erasure of marginalized voices." Each contribution was scanned into a 3D or 2D artwork. Examples include a copy of Giovanni's Room, a novel by James Baldwin; Memorial to a Marriage, artist Particia Cronin's marble monument to marriage equality; and a vibrant pair of high-heeled wedding shoes. Importantly, each item is accompanied by a story told in the voice of the contributor.
The LGBTQ+ VR Museum has received awards from the Tribeca Film Festival (New Voices) and the XRMust Awards (Best Impact/Documentary). It was an official selection for the Open City Documentary Festival, and a finalist for the AIXR VR Awards (VR Social Impact) and Qld XR Festival (Best in VR and Best in Gaming).
This exhibition is co-organized by Kendra Paitz, director and chief curator at University Galleries, and Roy Magnuson, associate professor of Creative Technologies. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with Prairie Pride Coalition and is co-sponsored by AIB Grant – a Multicultural Center Initiative. Thank you to CFA-IT, Technology Solutions, and RCAB (Research Computing Advisory Board) at Illinois State for supporting this project.
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2024 Student Annual
Open April 10 through May 5, 2024
Since 1974, the Student Annual has showcased new artwork produced by students at Illinois State University. This exhibition has offered many students the first opportunity to have their work reviewed by professionals outside the University. Each year, two external arts professionals determine which works are selected for the exhibition and which works receive awards. View a list of 2024 Student Annual awards.
The Wonsook Kim School of Art is pleased to present the 2024 Marshall Dulaney Pitcher Award to MFA student Alan Atkins. This award honors outstanding students in the visual arts who demonstrate exceptional artistic talent, dedicated studio practice, and academic excellence. 2024 marks the 54th anniversary of this prestigious award, which was established by the Pitcher family in memory of painting student Marshall Pitcher. University Galleries has traditionally dedicated exhibition space within the Student Annual to winners of the Marshall Dulaney Pitcher Award, and Atkins is creating a new installation of his recent drawings, collages, videos, and clothing.
Jurors
This year’s design juror is Vinicius Lima, a designer, architect, and design educator. His work has been exhibited at, or featured in, Museum of Architecture and Design, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Design Excellence Brazil; National Museum of China, Beijing; and Center for the Arts at Luther College, Decorah, Iowa, among others. His selected professional projects include the Duarte Dance Works website, Poetry on the Rapid Project, and the Design Plural exhibition catalogue. Lima is an assistant professor of graphic design at Grand Valley State University.
This year's studio juror is Deb Sokolow, a Chicago-based artist and writer. Her work has been exhibited at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; The Drawing Center, New York City; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and University Galleries of Illinois State University, among other institutions. Her work is in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, among others. Sokolow is an associate professor of instruction at Northwestern University.
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Reflection (curated by Teen Art Group)
Open May 20 through July 28, 2024
University Galleries’ Teen Art Group, composed of students from Bloomington High School, developed the concept, theme, checklist, and layout of the exhibition. The Teen Art Group invited regional artists to submit artworks that interpret the theme of reflection. In the selected paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, mixed-media works, and video, reflection suggests the act of looking forward or backward, inward or outward. It also addresses the mirroring of reflective surfaces.
Exhibiting artists include Illinois State University students and alumni; Lexington High School, Bloomington High School, and El Paso Gridley High School students; art educators; and owners of art-related businesses. Artists: Jan Brandt, Milo Cline, Ella Cooper, Mary Doll, Danell Dvorak, Ben Gardner, Jenna Germano, Steve Gossard, Rick Harney, Dante Hernandez, Barbara Hertel, William Hopper, Beth M. House, H.A. Hugenberg, Santino Lamancusa, Emily Lehman, Angeline Manalo, Sharini Menon, Kathryn C. Novotny, Alondra Quezada, Peg Schickedanz, Miette Smith-Golwitzer, Emilee Spicer, Thomas Stone, Montana White, Amy Wolfe, Amy Yeager, and Keith Zimmerman.
Teen Art Group members include Jocelyn Anderson, Angeline Manalo, Ivan Martin, Sharini Menon, Ryleigh O'Dell, Miette Smith-Golwitzer, and Montana White.
The Teen Art Group was founded in 2018 at University Galleries by Kendra Paitz (director and chief curator at University Galleries) in partnership with Monica Estabrook (art teacher at Bloomington High School). The inaugural year was supported by a grant from the Illinois Prairie Community Foundation—Mirza Arts and Culture Fund. Each academic year, Teen Art Group participants engage in professional development activities, take field trips, and curate an exhibition. The 2023–2024 cohort was led by Paitz, Estabrook, and Tanya Scott (curator of education at University Galleries). The group took a field trip to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Cultural Center; participated in meetings and exhibition tours at University Galleries; met with artists Jan Brandt and Rick Harney; and organized this exhibition.
Teen Art Group is supported by University Galleries’ grant from the Illinois Prairie Community Foundation—Mirza Arts and Culture Fund. Additional support is provided by the Lori Baum and Aaron Henkelman University Galleries Community Fund.
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Grounds
Open May 20 through August 6, 2024
The 18 artworks in Grounds were selected from the permanent collection of University Galleries. With dates ranging from the early 18th century to the early 21st, these prints, paintings, photographs, and sculptures inform viewers about the multiple meanings of the term “ground” with respect to works of visual art. Artists include Terry Adkins, Nicolas Africano, Walter Bock, Robert Colescott, Mike Disfarmer, Jeanne Dunning, John Himmelfarb, Tom Hoadley, William Hogarth, Richard Hunt, Suzanne Jackson, Anita Jung, Dennis Kowalski, Henri Matisse, Deborah Muirhead, and Ann Purcell.
Among the most famous quotes by the 17th-century polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is the Latin phrase "nihil est sine ratione." It can be translated several ways. Most commonly, it is rendered as "there is nothing without a reason." This asserts that anything that happens—anything that is—is explicable and with some sort of cause. This principle is known as the principle of sufficient reason and has been in use among philosophers since before Plato's time. An alternative translation connects this philosophical tenet to problems that are central to what artists do, why they do it, and how we experience the things they create. This alternative translation is: "Nothing is without ground."
In artistic terms, "ground" can mean several different things, often all at once. It refers to the aspects of a picture that are subsidiary to its main subject and make up the fictitious space within which that subject appears to exist (that is, background). It refers to the surface on which an image has been made, such as canvas, paper, stone, or wood. It refers to the physical space in which an artwork (especially a three-dimensional one) exists and is encountered by a viewer. In each instance, a "ground" is a thing which some component of an artwork is set against in a way that appears to give that component particular meaning. For any given artwork, multiple grounds coexist and often contradict or compete with one another.
In the etching What Reason Could I Give? by Terry Adkins, for instance, a consuming black constitutes most of the picture’s surface, out of which a skein of ceiling fans and odds and ends seems to be emerging. All at once, this black is a background to the print’s network of nebulous figures, a figure itself against the non-figural white of its border, a flat plane that emphasizes the flatness of the paper on which this image has been printed, and a cipher for broader social meanings that may or may not be germane to our understanding of Adkins’ work of art. In each case, this single formal element serves as the basis for an array of possible associations and ways of looking at Adkins’ print. Paying attention to what such “grounds” are and how they work is crucial for making the experiences we have with works of art coherent and meaningful.
The objects in this exhibition were selected to encourage viewers to pay close attention to some dimension of their form that might, in another context, disappear into the background. Empty space, white paper, raw canvas, and other subordinate formal elements are emphatic makers of meaning in these works. By foregrounding what are traditionally the passive causes of meaning in art, Grounds emphasizes one of art's primary functions: to train our comprehension of the aspects of experience that, though vanishing, make meaning possible in the first place. These aspects are grounds, without which there would be nothing.
Grounds is organized by Troy Sherman, Curator at University Galleries.
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Ilse Bing: Doublings
Open May 20 through July 28, 2024
Born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1899, Ilse Bing was among the most inventive photographers of the 20th century's first half. She spent her most artistically productive decade—the 1930s—in Paris. In the early 1940s she was displaced by the Nazis and moved to New York City, where she continued making and exhibiting photographs. Equally a commercial and a fine art photographer, Bing produced magazine commissions and hazy atmospheric scenes, professional portraits and near-abstract formal studies. While she was never exclusively connected to a particular movement or group, she associated with and was influenced by several: the Bauhaus, New Photography, and Surrealism.
This small exhibition focuses on the artistic technique of "doubling," which Bing adopted from Surrealism. Surrealism was an artistic movement established in Paris in the years following World War I. The movement sought to liberate people's unconscious thoughts and desires from repressive social structures. Inspired by modern psychology, Surrealists developed a host of artistic methods whose aim was to make common objects and experiences seem uncommon. Doubling was one such method. It refers to the act of representing the same object in two or more ways, whether from different angles, in different settings, or in slightly altered forms.
Bing frequently deployed doubling in her work. In House on river (1934), the artist has captured an image of a riparian structure, as well as its reflection, from the river’s opposite shore. Certain aspects of the photograph, like the tree trunk that extends prominently from the photo’s bottom left corner to its top edge, give a sense of solidity. The trunk, slightly angled, anchors the picture, a firm form in the foreground against which the view of the town behind it appears to recede. But undercutting this, almost half the image is made up of something markedly less solid: the rippling river. This distorts the same view the tree seems to frame before throwing it back at the camera’s lens (and therefore the viewer) upside down and slightly abstracted. Not only does the reflected image of the house waver, but it seems nearly to hover in the ambiguous space of the river’s surface. No horizon line or other buildings give it context. The trunk, while parallel to the roof of the original house, bends towards the reflected image at an awkward acute angle. Yet the reflection refers indelibly to the reflected object. Bing seems to ask, “What can we learn about the one that the other on its own can’t show us?”
Such dual depictions remind us of the unimaginable complexity of even the simplest objects, and of the ways we tend to ignore or suppress this complexity in our day-to-day experiences. In addition to House on river, this exhibition contains three pairs of photographs — each pair showing the same object from different perspectives — that demonstrate how photography can be a key to the hidden world of things. While Bing did not intend any of these photographs to be exhibited as pairs, seeing them as such allows us to consider their involvement in her broader modernist project of estranging the subjects of her photographs from any easy notions of what they are or what they mean.
During her lifetime, Bing’s photographs were included in such publications as Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Le monde illustre, and Vu. She has been the subject of exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), and the Fundación Mapfre (Madrid), and her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), and the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), among many others. Bing died in New York City in 1998.
Ilse Bing: Doublings is organized by Troy Sherman, Curator at University Galleries.
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Libby Rothfeld: Selects, 2016-2024
Open August 13 through September 29, 2024
Since the mid-2010s, Libby Rothfeld has been exhibiting her sculptures, photographs, and installations in galleries and artist spaces across the United States and Europe. Selects, her institutional debut, presents work she has made over the past nine years in a variety of mediums: ceramic, photography, drawing, painting, assemblage, and various combinations of these. Demonstrating the heterogeneity of Rothfeld’s approach to making art, the exhibition contains a sprawl of styles and formats, from combinations of found objects to a slideshow of pictures of birds. What connects these nine very different artworks is the way that each one serves as a reminder of the humor and complexity buried within even the blandest, most familiar-seeming things.
Each work in Selects is a collection of quotidian items and images that has been precisely arranged and presented in a befuddling configuration. Some of Rothfeld’s materials are found and unchanged; others are completely fabricated or slightly altered. Felix’s Community (#5), for instance, is a short plinth with a giant numeral projecting up from its base; the wood-framed structure is covered with tile and laminate, and slots all over it contain a bizarre assortment of trash bags, a notepad, plastic bottles, and saltshakers. Walking (Mask and Hat) is a large image of a person shuffling down a sidewalk in heels; they are mostly out of frame and the photo is out of focus, suggesting that it was snapped accidentally (or maybe surreptitiously). A ceramic mask of a pouting primate hangs atop the photo in its bottom right corner, directly to the right of which is a brown hat. The Punisher’s Collections comprises two large, rotating aluminum drums, each with sneakers banging around inside it.
Rothfeld has noted that, whenever such disparate objects are made to coexist on “the same plane, they start to work together, or shift in and out of one another, deconstructing each other’s isolated meanings.” Does the large “5” in Felix’s Community enumerate the bric-a-brac it is looming over? Is the sculpted face in Walking (Mask and Hat) meant to belong to the walker, or to someone in their presence? Is the tumbling of The Punisher’s Collections supposed to accomplish something, or will the shoes just spin pointlessly on and on? These questions—and any others we might be compelled to ask about Rothfeld’s work—are unanswerable. They distract from how, despite their strangeness, the components of Rothfeld’s art often relate to each other in ways that seem structurally balanced and conceptually resolved. “It’s the act of breaking down ‘why this and not that’ that I am interested in,” she has said, “in taking away our subconscious readings in order to really consider the everyday.”
Selects is the center point of multiple educational programs. Libby Rothfeld will give a public lecture and meet with students and classes at ISU. University Galleries’ staff will lead art-making workshops for ISU students, families, K-12 students, and community members. Free virtual and in-person curator-led tours are available by appointment for the duration of the exhibition.
Selects is organized by Troy Sherman, Curator at University Galleries. This exhibition and programming are supported by University Galleries’ grants from the Illinois Arts Council and the Alice and Fannie Fell Trust.
Biography
Libby Rothfeld is an artist. She was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Resources
- K-4 Educator Handout
- K-6 Educator Handout
- 7-12 Educator Handout
- Scavenger Hunt
- Micro-Artmaking Lesson
- Exhibition brochure
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Rafael Soldi: A moon, a peephole, an explosion, or a flashing memory
Open August 13 through September 29, 2024
A moon, a peephole, an explosion, or a flashing memory features photographs, a handwritten text installation, and an EKG made from 2009 through 2023. Informed by the artist’s queer, Peruvian identity, the selected works reflect on the possibilities of language, memory, and imagining. In Soldi’s words, he “probes states of in-betweenness—especially as it occurs across tongues—providing nuanced insight into immigrant identity while also offering a rich metaphor for queer experience.”
The exhibition title is excerpted from one of Soldi’s own texts, which appeared on the cover of his Imagined Futures book. In the text, the artist addresses The Sun Will Set in the Same Place, a photograph featured in this exhibition. Soldi grew up in Peru and moved to the United States as a teenager, first to the east coast and then to the west coast. When he saw the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean in Seattle, 15 years after regularly seeing the same sight as a child in Peru, he was struck by a wave of nostalgia and a desire to reconcile his feelings about his home country. He then made the black-and-white photograph of what appears to be a brilliant, radiating orb. He writes, “I liked the ambiguity of this image too… it’s like being blinded by the sun, or it could be an eclipse or a black hole or a camera shutter or a moon or an explosion or a flashing memory or a peephole.” Special Collections at Milner Library recently acquired Soldi’s Imagined Futures book, and it will be on view in the exhibition.
Imagined Futures comprises 36 tiny, black-and-white self-portraits made in photo booths. Rather than making silly faces with friends or posing for an identification photo, Soldi was repeatedly photographed alone and with his eyes closed. In his words, the project marks his “persistent attempt at acknowledging the grief surrounding the futures abandoned after immigrating from his homeland and the social violence enacted on queer bodies.” Soldi extended the project to other queer, male-identifying, Latinx immigrants for Entre Hermanos. He collaborated with social worker Joel Aguirre to facilitate a conversation about how the participants “perceived their future as young people in their countries of origin,” how that perception may have changed, and how they could “reimagine their futures and pasts today.” Following the discussion, each participant could make their own self-portrait in a photo booth while being guided through a meditation exercise. The resulting photographs are presented in color and at a significantly larger scale than Soldi’s self-portraits.
For mouth to mouth, Soldi explores fluidity between two languages, Spanish and English, one that was slipping away and one that he was learning. The installation features dozens of handwritten words presented in individual frames: poema, problema, home, body, historia, histeria, memoria. Soldi said that the errors and mistranslations “yielded a directory of invented terms, a collection of tiny unintended poems.” Meanwhile Shards—which brings together poetry, astronomy, history, and language—is titled after one of Jay Hopler’s poems. Soldi etched four glass panels with a single word each: mother, boy, soft, and tongue. The words can form a variety of combinations and evoke a range of feelings depending on the background of the viewer. Behind each word is a black-and-white photograph depicting the stars over his mother on the night Soldi was born. The artist visited the observatory in Lima, Peru, to create the images. Marcapasos, an EKG displayed as an artist’s book, demonstrates another form of language. The EKG recorded the electrical activities in Soldi’s heart when he was eleven years old. The artist writes, “I was moved by finding this ‘written record of my own heart as a child, at a time when I was aware of my queerness and my difference but had no language for it.”
This exhibition is the center point of multiple programs. Soldi is delivering a public artist lecture, which will be a part of Illinois State University's Latinx Heritage Month events. University Galleries’ staff is leading art-making workshops for ISU students, K-12 students, and community members. Sensory-friendly times and scavenger hunts are available. Virtual and in-person curator-led tours are available by appointment. Field trip reimbursements are available for K-12 schools and community organizations.
Rafael Soldi: A moon, a peephole, an explosion, or a flashing memory is curated by Kendra Paitz, University Galleries’ director and chief curator. This exhibition and programming are supported by University Galleries’ grants from the Illinois Arts Council and the Alice and Fannie Fell Trust. Programming is co-sponsored by AIB Grant—a Multicultural Center Initiative. Workshops and field trip reimbursements are supported by the Lori Baum and Aaron Henkelman University Galleries Community Fund.
Biography
Rafael Soldi (b. 1987, Lima, Peru) is an artist, curator, and writer based in Seattle. His work has been exhibited at the Frye Art Museum (Seattle); Frost Art Museum (Miami); Griffin Museum of Photography (Winchester, Massachusetts); CLAMP (New York City); The Print Center (Philadelphia); Museo MATE (Lima); Filter Space (Chicago); and Burrard Arts Foundation (Vancouver). His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Tacoma Art Museum; Frye Art Museum; King County Public Art Collection; and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He has been awarded fellowships at MacDowell, Bogliasco Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and PICTURE BERLIN. His work has been reviewed in Artforum, The Seattle Times, The Boston Globe, Photograph Magazine, The Seen, Art Nexus, and PDN. He has completed commercial and editorial assignments for The New York Times, The Guardian, Microsoft, Seattle University, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among others.
Soldi is the co-founder of Strange Fire Collective, a project dedicated to highlighting work made by women, people of color, and queer and trans artists. He is also the co-curator of the High Wall, a yearly outdoor video projection program featuring immigrant artists and artists working on themes of diaspora and borderlands. Soldi received his B.F.A. in Photography and Curatorial Studies from Maryland Institute College of Art.
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Norman W. Long: Calumet in Dub
Open August 16 through September 30, 2024
Calumet in Dub features an audio installation, photographs, and videos by Chicago-based artist and Illinois State University alum Norman W. Long. This project is a modified version of one that Long recently premiered at the Glass Curtain Gallery at Columbia College, Chicago.
Calumet in Dub bridges Long’s backgrounds in art, landscape architecture, and experimental audio with his interests in memory, environmental justice, and American history. Long engaged in a range of ecological and sound-based research about the area surrounding Lake Calumet and the Little Calumet River, near where he lives. The exhibition title acknowledges both the location addressed and the audio technique of dubbing that he employed.
Inspired by viewing a BBC feature about the connection between the Little Calumet River and the Great Migration, he began to investigate, in his words, “how housing, labor, and environmental activism has coalesced in this location” and how “Hazel Johnson, considered the ‘mother of the environmental justice movement,’ diligently brought these issues to light.”
Long made field recordings, photographs, and videos at historical sites along the Calumet River, including the Jan and Aagje Ton Farm, which served as a safe house along the Underground Railroad, and Indian Ridge Marsh, which currently serves as a wildlife habitat for endangered birds. Other locations include the Acme Steel Company, Steelworkers Park, Beaubien Woods, and a pumping station that aerates the river. Long also collected data on regional pollution and demographics from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, Environmental Protection Agency, and U.S. Census Bureau. He translated these data into audio files, which he combined with his field recordings and experimental compositions. The resulting soundscapes for Calumet in Dub include surprising combinations of rippling water, rhythmic beeping, and disembodied singing.
Long describes his practice as centering around “walking, listening, improvising, performing, teaching, field recording, and exploring memory, place, ecology, and race.” Each of these elements will come into play when Long leads a Sound Walk around part of Illinois State University’s campus. He has led multiple walks with the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology as part of the Chicago Park District’s Night Out in the Parks program.
In addition to the Sound Walk, this exhibition is the center point of multiple programs. University Galleries’ staff is leading art-making workshops for ISU students, K-12 students, and community members. Sensory-friendly times are available. Virtual and in-person curator-led tours are available by appointment. Field trip reimbursements are available for K-12 schools and community organizations.
Norman W. Long: Calumet in Dub is organized by Kendra Paitz, University Galleries’ director and chief curator. This exhibition and programming are supported by University Galleries’ grants from the Illinois Arts Council, Harold K. Sage Foundation, and the Illinois State University Foundation Fund. Workshops and field trip reimbursements are supported by the Lori Baum and Aaron Henkelman University Galleries Community Fund.
Biography
Norman W. Long (b. 1973, Chicago) is a sound artist, designer, and composer based in Chicago. His work has been performed and/or exhibited at Yale University’s Center for Collaborative Arts & Media; The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; Chicago Architecture Biennial; Lincoln Park Conservatory (Chicago); High Zero Festival (Baltimore); Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago); Kavi Gupta Gallery (Chicago); Chicago Cultural Center; Exploratorium (San Francisco); Chicago Artists Coalition; and DEMO Projects (Springfield, Illinois), among many others. Long's Re-Membering/Re-Presencing was commissioned by Threewalls as part of Dreaming of a Future, an exhibition curated by Dr. Jeffreen M. Hayes and installed at the Ford Calumet Environmental Center at Big Marsh Park (Chicago). He has released his compositions on labels including Hausu Mountain, Reserve Matinee, LINE, and Room40. Long has been awarded grants and residencies by Camargo Foundation, City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Chicago Artists Coalition, Ragdale, and EMS Elektronmusikstudion (Stockholm), among others. He was the 2011 recipient of the 3Arts Sound Art Award. Long received his Master of Landscape Architecture at Cornell University, Master of Fine Arts at San Francisco Art Institute, and Bachelor of Science in Studio Art at Illinois State University.
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2024 Faculty Biennial
Open October 14 through December 2, 2024
Organized every two years, the Faculty Biennial presents new and recent research by faculty in the Wonsook Kim School of Art and the School of Creative Technologies. The artists participating in the exhibition represent the areas of Art History, Art Teacher Education, Creative Technologies, Graphic Design, and Studio Art.
Faculty Biennial participants: Ladan Bahmani, Saskia Beranek, Edward Breitweiser, Ruth K. Burke, Simone Downie, Jason Dunda, Andreas Fischer, Brian Franklin, Erin Furimsky, Joey Hatch, Kirsten Heteji, Melissa Johnson, Katie Krcmarik, Christopher Lackey, Jin Lee, Jade Nguyen, Melissa Oresky, Morgan Price, Laura Primozic George, Jason Reblando, Veda Rives Aukerman in collaboration with Meda Rives Smith, Nathania Rubin, Tanya Scott, Archana Shekara, Anmol Shrivastava in collaboration with Shirajuddin Ji, Sarah Smelser, Bert Stabler in collaboration with Mo Fizdale, Albion Stafford, and Rick Valentin.
This exhibition is the focus of multiple educational programs. (See below for details.) Free virtual and in-person curator-led tours are available by appointment for the duration of the exhibition. University Galleries’ staff will lead art-making workshops for ISU students, families, and K-12 students. Faculty members will lead a workshop and a panel discussion. The Normal Community High School Experimental Ensemble will visit the exhibition to learn about artworks in the exhibition. Later, they will compose and perform original compositions inspired by selected artwork.
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2023
Avantika Bawa: simplenothingsimplesomething
Open January 17 through March 3, 2023
simplenothingsimplesomething comprises several new works on paper and a large-scale installation. This exhibition is the most recent iteration of Bawa's experiments with construction scaffolds, which began in 2012 and have spanned several formats. Compelled equally by their geometrical elegance and their passive ubiquity in daily life, Bawa has revealed scaffolds to be a surprisingly rich sculptural medium. She has eked novel designs out of their crossbars and rectangles on salt flats in India and fields in Oregon, as well as in gallery interiors across the United States. She has also miniaturized her scaffolds using 3D printers, and used them as matrices to create embossed prints, demonstrating how slight adjustments to a consistent form's scale, color, surroundings, and means of presentation can beget a large range of visual effects. This exhibition, which presents both a new series of relief prints and a network of jet-black scaffolding, shows a progression in Bawa's approach to her signature material.
The relief prints in simplenothingsimplesomething, which Bawa executed during her time at Watershed Print Residency, are continuations of a series of embossings that she included in a 2021 exhibition at the University of Kentucky Art Museum. Like those, these are nearly colorless, the plain white or gray of their paper decorated by faint impressions from a scaffold-derived matrix. In each case, the smooth surface of the paper hums with the textures pressed into it. These prints, however, are both bigger and quieter than the Kentucky embossings: the sheets stand almost ten feet tall and, on each, just a few impressions combine to form commanding images. The prints in this exhibition have turned their predecessors' rhythmic energy into a quiet grace.
The title for this exhibition was adapted from a 2011 interview of the sculptor John McCracken (whose brightly colored leaning planks Bawa cites as an enduring influence). “With many Minimalist [artworks],” he said, “one could be tempted to think [that the work is] merely a simple nothing, but it's really a simple something.” A push and pull between “something” and “nothing” — always executed through the simplest of means — is consistently the source of meaning and power in Bawa's art.
simplenothingsimplesomething is curated by Troy Sherman, Curator at University Galleries. This exhibition is supported by University Galleries’ grants from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, Harold K. Sage Foundation, and the Illinois State University Foundation Fund.
Biography
Avantika Bawa is an artist, curator, and educator based in Portland, Oregon. She often resides in her hometown of New Delhi, India. Bawa has an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India. She has participated in the Skowhegan, MacDowell, Kochi Biennial Foundation, and Djerassi residencies, among others. Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon; Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, Oregon; The Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia; Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center, Atlanta, Georgia; and Disjecta (now Oregon Contemporary), Portland, Oregon. In April 2004, Bawa was part of a team that launched Drain: Journal for Contemporary Art and Culture . In 2014, she was appointed to the board of the Oregon Arts Commission. Bawa is currently Associate Professor of Fine Arts at Washington State University in Vancouver, Washington.
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Anna Von MertensGlass, Metal, Thread: Building Our Observable World
Open January 17 through April 2, 2023
Encompassing astronomy, history, materiality, attention, and labor, Glass, Metal, Thread: Building Our Observable World presents drawings and textiles made by artist Anna Von Mertens from 2015 through 2022. She writes, “I think objects can absorb time, absorb our physical presence. That is why I make detailed drawings; that is why I sew quilts by hand.” The artist’s close observation and meticulous making are evident in the three discreet (yet in dialogue) series on view: Remnants, Measure, and Objects (100 Emojis).
This exhibition premieres Von Mertens’s Remnants drawings, for which she finds inspiration in the formation of precious metals through exploding stars. To acknowledge the chain of cosmic processes, the artist developed her own complex process. First, she gathered gold and silver necklaces and arranged them on light-sensitive paper in swirling forms that recall a nebula or supernova. Then, she exposed them to sunlight to complete the cyanotype process. The three-dimensional tangles of jewelry created both points of contact on the paper, and slippages into shadow, which she scanned and projected onto black paper. She then painstakingly drew the forms with metallic gold and silver pencils. Von Mertens writes, “A necklace might simply act as reminder of someone, the bestower of a gift. These elements are a connection to others. Here, in my drawings, they indicate the connection to all things. These elements came from cosmic events so far from our reality, so physically distant—and yet, here they are; here we are.”
The exhibition includes the entirety of works that comprise Von Mertens’s research on American astronomer Henrietta Leavitt (1868–1921). Leavitt was a Harvard “computer” who studied photographic glass plate negatives of the stars. Her observations and calculations of cycles of brightness in variable stars gave astronomers the first tool to measure the distance to faraway stars. Leavitt’s discovery led to those by other scientists who have become household names, including Edwin Hubble. Von Mertens celebrates Leavitt’s contributions with graphite drawings of some of the original glass plates that Leavitt studied, which the artist accessed through the Harvard College Observatory during the formation of her research-based exhibition at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Von Mertens also used software to determine the position of stars above Leavitt’s birthplace on the day she was born and above the location of her death on the day she died. She hand-stitched the arcing star trails for each date into large black textiles, which are installed with a distance between them to represent Leavitt’s lifespan.
Colored-pencil drawings from Von Mertens’s Objects (100 Emojis) series animate the symbols we view on our phones using patterns that reference traditional quilts. In giving a different kind of attentive awareness to these objects, Von Mertens brings the virtual world into contact with our physical world, a revealing and enriching act.
Glass, Metal, Thread: Building Our Observable World is the center point of multiple educational programs. Anna Von Mertens will give a public artist lecture and meet with students. University Galleries’ staff will lead art-making workshops for ISU students, families, K-12 students, and community members. University Galleries continues collaborating with the Children’s Discovery Museum for Art Around You, a series of exhibition tours and workshops for children ages 7 through 10. Free virtual and in-person curator-led tours are available by appointment for the duration of the exhibition.
Glass, Metal, Thread: Building Our Observable World is organized by Kendra Paitz, University Galleries’ director and chief curator. This exhibition and programming are supported by University Galleries’ grants from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, Harold K. Sage Foundation, and the Illinois State University Foundation Fund.
Biography
Anna Von Mertens’s work has been exhibited at Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College; Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland; and National Museum of Art, Architecture, and Design, Oslo, Norway, among others. Her work is included in the collections of Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.; RISD Museum, Rhode Island School of Design; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley; Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York; and International Quilt Study Center and Museum, Lincoln, Nebraska, among others. Von Mertens has been awarded a Smithsonian Artist Research fellowship, United States Artists fellowship, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award. She received her M.F.A. from California College of the Arts and her B.A. from Brown University. She is based in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
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Wolf's Clothing: Imagism from the Collection
Open January 17 through April 2, 2023
Wolf’s Clothing presents selected works from the permanent collection of University Galleries of Illinois State University. Artists include: Robert Donley, Peter Bodnar, Krys Hendren, Miyoko Ito, Ben Mahmoud, Gladys Nilsson, William Otton, Ed Paschke, Seymour Rosofsky, Barbara Rossi, and Joseph Yoakum.
The few decades following the Second World War saw a flowering of the visual arts — particularly drawing and painting — in and around Chicago. In the 1950s, a group of artists known as the Monster Roster made freaky, psychological pictures inspired by their experiences in the war and the paintings of Jean Dubuffet. The following decade, several artists associated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago exhibited together under the group name the Hairy Who. When they disbanded, their loud graphic style influenced a more diffuse set of artists who came to be known as the Chicago Imagists. Frequently, artists associated with all three of these movements are lumped together under the banner of the latter. “Imagism” has become a label of convenience for anything made in Chicago around 1970 that displays an interest in stylized organic forms, cultural reference, and playful, often perverted, content.
The works in this exhibition demonstrate a range of techniques and approaches used by mid-century Chicagoans. Between Miyoko Ito's lithe, muted compositions and Ed Paschke's wily portraits, for instance, there may seem to be little common ground. What connects their work, as well as that of all the artists in this exhibition, is a coy approach to the relationship between abstraction and representation. Just as there are landscapes latent in Ito's designs, Paschke's figures emerge from skeins of indulgent patterning.
The art critic Roberta Smith once called Paschke “a formalist in wolf's clothing”: the photographic precision of his representations belies the delight they take in tricks of ornamentation, framing, and perspective. Likewise, the works in Wolf's Clothing demonstrate how, circa 1970, Chicago artists thematized the tension between what an image shows and how it does so.
This exhibition is organized by Troy Sherman, Curator at University Galleries.
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MFA Thesis Exhibitions
Open March 9 through April 2, 2023
2023 MFA Thesis Exhibitions features two simultaneous solo exhibitions by Master of Fine Arts students in Illinois State’s Wonsook Kim School of Art: Cooper L. Gibson and Amy Yeager.
The exhibitions are the culmination of the students’ research during their three-year program. In addition to writing a thesis and creating their artwork, each student develops their own exhibition plan, installs their work, and writes their accompanying labels. University Galleries is thrilled to partner with the Wonsook Kim School of Art to offer graduating MFA students this opportunity for professional development.
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2023 Student Annual
Open April 12 through May 7, 2023
Since 1974, the Student Annual has showcased new artwork produced by students at Illinois State University. This exhibition has offered many students the first opportunity to have their work reviewed by professionals outside the University. Each year, two external arts professionals determine which works are selected for the exhibition and which works receive awards.
The Wonsook Kim School of Art is pleased to present the 2023 Marshall Dulaney Pitcher Award to BFA student Draper Matthews. This award honors outstanding students in the visual arts who demonstrate exceptional artistic talent, dedicated studio practice, and academic excellence. 2023 marks the 53rd anniversary of this prestigious award, which was established by the Pitcher family in memory of painting student Marshall Pitcher. University Galleries has traditionally dedicated exhibition space within the Student Annual to winners of the Marshall Dulaney Pitcher Award and a new installation by Matthews will be displayed on the entrance wall.
Jurors
This year's studio juror is Erin Washington, a painter, drawer, sculptor, and installation artist living in Chicago. Washington is a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at Cleve Carney Museum of Art, Glen Ellyn, Illinois; University Galleries of Illinois State University, Normal; Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago; Institute of Contemporary Art, Baltimore; Columbia University, New York; Western Exhibitions, Chicago; and Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, among many others.
This year’s design juror is Aggie Toppins, an Associate Professor of Communication Design and Chair of Design at Washington University in St. Louis. She combines studio practice and critical writing to explore issues in meaning-making, as well as design history and its feedback effect on practice. Her recent writing has been published by Design and Culture, Design Issues, Diseña, and AIGA Eye on Design. Her first book, Thinking Through Graphic Design History, will be released in 2025.
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EMERGENCE (curated by Teen Art Group)
Open June 1 through July 16, 2023
University Galleries’ Teen Art Group, composed of students from Bloomington High School, developed the concept, theme, and layout of EMERGENCE. As the title suggests, this exhibition focuses on the process of “emerging” into the stage of adulthood. The organizers determined that all works should represent the journey out of adolescence and whatever the passing of this threshold means to the artist. They invited students from regional high schools to submit works for the exhibition. Participating artists are students at Bloomington High School, Bloomington; Fieldcrest High School, Minonk; Normal Community High School, Normal; and Washington Community High School, Washington.
Teen Art Group members include Jocelyn Anderson, Khushi Galpalli, Zoe Hernandez, Delilah Higgins, Will Hopper, and Adair Jackson. Exhibiting artists include Kellie Chen, Madison Cummings, Bella Gray, Maggie Grugan, Delilah Higgins, Will Hopper, Aaralyn McCullough, Maya Peterson, Nevaeh Spires, and AJ Westley.
The Teen Art Group was founded in 2018 at University Galleries by Kendra Paitz (director and chief curator) in partnership with Monica Estabrook (Bloomington High School art teacher). The inaugural year was supported by a grant from the Illinois Prairie Community Foundation—Mirza Arts and Culture Fund. Each academic year, participants engage in professional development activities, take field trips, and curate an exhibition. The 2022–2023 cohort was led by Paitz, Estabrook, and Tanya Scott (curator of education). The group took a field trip to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Cultural Center; participated in art-making workshops, meetings, and exhibition tours at University Galleries; met with artist Avantika Bawa within her site-responsive installation at University Galleries; and organized this exhibition.
Teen Art Group is supported by University Galleries’ grant from the Illinois Prairie Community Foundation—Mirza Arts and Culture Fund.
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Phillip Chen: No Ideas but in Things
Open June 5 through August 13, 2023
This exhibition surveys the work of Phillip Chen, a printmaker and painter born in Chicago in 1953. The works included were made between 1982 and 2010. Altogether, they reveal a consistency of thought that has underpinned Chen's art through several major stylistic shifts.
The exhibition's title is drawn from the poem Paterson by William Carlos Williams, and speaks to the unsteady relationship between thoughts, what they are about, and how they are conveyed. Throughout his career, Chen's work has been defined by an oscillation between its philosophical rigor and its commitment to objects in the world. Though deeply conceptual, his approach has always been predicated on the notion that there are “no ideas but in things.”
For his delicate early pictures of improbable landscapes, Chen constructed models of sites he imagined, studying them exhaustively to master the peculiarities of their form and the play of light upon them. In his more recent etchings, photographic images of the various artifacts which the artist has spent decades collecting mingle with hand-drawn illustrations of the same. The result is a network of symbols derived from objects Chen has made or acquired, which extends through every work in this exhibition.
The most recurrent of these symbols is the boat. Partly, this is attributable to the capacity of ships to signify change and instability, but also motion and progress. Partly, it relates to Chen's interest in the passage across the Pacific which his ancestors made from China 165 years ago. In the United States, their alienation from the world they had known initiated a search for cultural meaning akin to Chen's own obsession with the mutable meanings of things. It is less a fidelity to these things, however, than a hounding desire to understand how humans imbue them with meaning that has anchored Chen's image-making for more than 40 years.
In 2022, Chen was selected as the University Galleries Award winner for Beyond the Norm 2022, a juried exhibition organized by Normal Editions Workshop to celebrate the Workshop’s 45th anniversary. Normal Editions is a non-profit print research facility within the Wonsook Kim School of Art at Illinois State University.
Phillip Chen: No Ideas but in Things is curated by Troy Sherman, Curator at University Galleries. The exhibition is supported in part by University Galleries’ grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
Biography
Phillip Chen has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, and his work is in the collections of institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum, New York Public Library, Carnegie Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts. His work has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, and Iowa Arts Council. Chen is the recipient of both the Louis B. Comfort Tiffany Award and Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; in 2018, he received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. He has been nominated for the Queen Sonja Print Award 2018, the largest prize given to an artist working in print media worldwide. Chen received a B.F.A from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has taught at Drake University in Des Moines, IA since 1996.
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All Hearts Beneath the Sun
Open July 24 through September 17, 2023
To celebrate University Galleries’ 50th anniversary, the first exhibition of the 2023-2024 academic year features selected works from the permanent collection. These prints, sculptures, textiles, photographs, paintings, drawings, and a film demonstrate University Galleries’ commitment to supporting students, alumni, and exhibiting artists through acquisitions, exhibitions, programming, partnerships, and publications. The exhibition labels not only feature information about each of the artworks on view, but also stories about each artist’s history with University Galleries.
The exhibition title is excerpted from the title of a lithograph made by artist Bethany Collins at Normal Editions Workshop in conjunction with her solo exhibition at University Galleries; the collaborative project was one of many partnerships between the two university units. All Hearts Beneath the Sun, a phrase quoted by Collins from a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., serves as the exhibition title to acknowledge both a sense of community surrounding University Galleries’ exhibitions and the passage of time indicated by an anniversary.
Artists: Terry Adkins (M.S. 1977), Nicole Arnold (M.F.A. 2022), Japheth Asiedu-Kwarteng (M.F.A. 2022), Bethany Collins, william cordova, Amy Cousins, Jane Dickson, David Driskell, Jeanne Dunning, Fidencio Fifield-Perez, Dianna Frid, Aram Han Sifuentes, Erin Hayden (B.F.A. 2013), Wonsook Kim (B.F.A. 1975, M.A. 1976, M.F.A. 1978, Honorary Doctorate 2019), Tim Kowalczyk (M.F.A. 2011), Jason Lazarus, Nazafarin Lotfi, Cecil McDonald Jr., Melanie Manchot, Camila Marianela (B.F.A. 2019), Miller & Shellabarger (Dutes Miller, B.F.A. 1991; Stan Shellabarger, B.F.A. 1991), Beatrix Reinhardt (M.F.A. 2001), Carrie Schneider, Walter Robinson, Erin Washington, David Wojnarowicz, and Rana Young.
All Hearts Beneath the Sun is the focus of multiple programs. Dianna Frid and Japheth Asiedu-Kwarteng will give public artist lectures and meet with students. University Galleries’ staff will lead art-making workshops for ISU students, families, K-12 students, and community members. Augmented reality experiences, sensory-friendly hours, stroller tours, and scavenger hunts are available. Free virtual and in-person curator-led tours are available by appointment.
All Hearts Beneath the Sun is organized by Kendra Paitz, University Galleries’ director and chief curator. Dianna Frid’s lecture is supported by University Galleries’ grant from the Alice and Fannie Fell Trust. Japheth Asiedu-Kwarteng’s lecture is supported by the Harold K. Sage Foundation, Illinois State University Foundation Fund, and Students’ Independent League in Ceramic Arts (SILICA). Workshops and field trip reimbursements are supported by the Lori Baum and Aaron Henkelman University Galleries Community Fund.
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Kambui Olujimi: The Rock that Cuts the Night in Two
Open September 28 through December 10, 2023
The Rock that Cuts the Night in Two features Olujimi’s expansive and diverse output, including videos, drawings, paintings, photographs, silkscreens, sculptures, installations, and textiles made by the artist from 2005 through 2023. Embedded with a sense of duration and exploration of memory, the exhibition demonstrates Olujimi’s long-term interest in both the construction and deconstruction of mythic spaces, via memories, monuments, and other forms of memorials. In the artist’s words, he “mines the collective psyche as a source of social and political commentary and brings them out of the world of the implicit. Once given gravity, weight, and shape, it becomes possible to reveal their incongruities and illusory nature.”
The exhibition includes work from multiple series, many of which were long-term projects ranging from three to ten years. By presenting these bodies of work simultaneously, it becomes possible to glean the overall weight and significance of Olujimi’s practice over the past two decades. For example, this exhibition traces the evolution of Olujimi’s research related to the history of Depression-era dance marathons in the United States. Lasting for weeks or months at a time, these marathons were described by curator José Carlos Diaz as “acts of performative desperation.” For over a decade, Olujimi has created performances, installations, videos, and long-exposure photographs that explore the underlying implications of these events and examine how dance marathons embody, in his words, “endurance, defiance, and a desire to live beyond the capacities we have internalized.”
Watercolor paintings from Olujimi’s series When Monuments Fall attempt at grappling with the impact of historical monuments worldwide that were created to mythologize and perpetuate global white supremacy. The artist depicts them in various states of revision or removal; for example, a bronze equestrian statue wrapped in ropes and about to be toppled from its pedestal, or a cloth draped over the bust of a Confederate general who was also the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Small-scale ink drawings from Olujimi’s QUARANTINE series capture his reactions in real-time during the COVID-19 pandemic as he processed events such as Minneapolis’s 3rd Precinct on fire following George Floyd’s murder, mailboxes removed during mail-in voting for the 2020 election, and mass burials of unclaimed bodies on New York’s Hart Island. Seen three years after the events took place, the works from QUARANTINE provide an opportunity to reflect further on the urgency, grief, and unresolved questions of that period and the reverberations still felt today.
Sixty ink drawings from Olujimi’s five-year series Walk With Me sensitively memorialize the artist’s mentor and “guardian angel,” Catherine Arline. She was a beloved pillar of the community in the artist’s neighborhood when he was growing up. Begun after her death, Olujimi created the series to honor her memory and legacy and to process his own mourning. We Became Statues, a 22-minute video that includes Olujimi’s interviews with Arline, is featured with other videos created since 2005.
Olujimi’s ability to weave together his personal experiences with global, and even cosmic, trajectories can be seen in Wayward North, a three-year interdisciplinary project rooted in cartography, astronomy, navigation, and storytelling. Olujimi wrote a novella, which he describes as a “mythology” that is “a mix between personal biography and historical as well as current events.” Through twelve monumental textiles, each representing one month of the year, Olujimi explores the constellations of the northern and southern hemisphere. For this exhibition—which is titled for a quote from the novella—three of the twelve textiles are on view at a time, so an entire season is visible at once. They will be switched at even intervals until all four seasons have been exhibited. Each rotation will feature a public reading of Olujimi’s accompanying texts.
This exhibition is the center point of multiple programs in University Galleries’ 50th anniversary celebration. Olujimi is delivering a public artist lecture. Readings and performances are presented by university and high school students. University Galleries’ staff is leading art-making workshops for ISU students, K-12 students, and community members. Sensory-friendly times, scavenger hunts, and AR experiences are available. Virtual and in-person curator-led tours are available by appointment. Field trip reimbursements are available for K-12 schools and community organizations.
Kambui Olujimi: The Rock that Cuts the Night in Two is curated by Kendra Paitz, University Galleries’ director and chief curator. An exhibition catalogue is forthcoming in 2024. This exhibition and programming are supported by University Galleries’ grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council Agency, Alice and Fannie Fell Trust, Harold K. Sage Foundation, and the Illinois State University Foundation Fund. Workshops and field trip reimbursements are supported by the Lori Baum and Aaron Henkelman University Galleries Community Fund.
Biography
Kambui Olujimi is an artist, filmmaker, and writer. His work has been screened or exhibited at Sundance Film Festival; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Kunsthal Rotterdam, Netherlands; Para Site, Hong Kong; and on the screens in New York City’s Times Square. His work was also featured in the 2023 Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates. Olujimi has been awarded residencies from Black Rock Senegal, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and MacDowell. He has received grants, commissions, or fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, NYSCA/NYFA, MTA Arts & Design, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. His work has been reviewed in The New Yorker, Artforum, The New York Times, Art in America, Brooklyn Rail, The Guardian, and CNN. Olujimi was born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. He received his M.F.A. from Columbia University. He is based in New York City.
Resources
- Exhibition Video
- Educator Handout: Grades K-6
- Educator Handout: Grades 7-12
- Memorialization Lesson Plan
- Memory and Commemoration Workshop
- Scavenger Hunt
- Read, Watch, Listen List
- Walk with Me Lesson Plan
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2022
2022 Faculty Biennial
Open January 10 through February 23, 2022
The 2022 Faculty Biennial presents work reflecting creative research by 32 faculty members and staff teaching during the 2021–2022 academic year in the Wonsook Kim School of Art and the Program in Creative Technologies. The artists in the exhibition represent the areas of Studio Art, Graphic Design, Art Education, Art History, and Creative Technologies. Featuring the mediums of ceramics, drawing, game design, glass, graphic design, installation, painting, performance, photography, printmaking, sculpture, textiles, video, and wood, the exhibition will also include artist lectures, workshops, and a performance.
Members of the faculty have exhibited their work nationally and internationally and have received support from such prestigious entities as the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Fulbright Scholar Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Illinois Arts Council Agency, among many others. Participants are: Veda Rives Aukerman in collaboration with Meda Rives Smith, Ladan Bahmani, Saskia Beranek, Judith Briggs, Steve Bryant, Ruth Burke, Kristin Carlson, Tony Crowley, Vitoria Faccin-Herman, Andreas Fischer, Brian Franklin, Laura Primozic George, Melissa Johnson, Gary Justis, Jeremy Langston, Jin Lee, Tyler Lotz, James Mai, John Miller, Melissa Oresky, Morgan Price, Jason Reblando, Randall Reid, Tanya Scott, Sercan Şengün, Archana Shekara, Sarah Smelser, Albert Stabler in collaboration with Simone Fizdale, Albion Stafford, Annie Sungkajun, Michael Wille, and David Wilson.
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MFA Thesis Exhibitions
Open March 8 through April 4, 2022
2022 MFA Thesis Exhibitions features eight simultaneous solo exhibitions by Master of Fine Arts students in Illinois State’s Wonsook Kim School of Art: Nicci Arnold, Japheth Asiedu-Kwarteng, Aca Carle, Sargylana Cherepanova / sargɯlaana cerepanɔba, Peytin Fitzgerald, Priscilla Kar Yee Lo, Emma Oliver, and Richard Oliver Reed.
The exhibitions are the culmination of the students’ research during their three-year program. In addition to writing a thesis and creating their artwork, each student develops their own exhibition plan, installs their work, and writes their accompanying labels. University Galleries is thrilled to partner with the Wonsook Kim School of Art to offer graduating MFA students this opportunity for professional development.
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2022 Student Annual
Open April 14 through May 8, 2022
Since 1974, the Student Annual has showcased new artwork produced by students at Illinois State University. This exhibition has offered many students the first opportunity to have their work reviewed by professionals outside the University.
The Wonsook Kim School of Art is pleased to present the 2022 Marshall Dulaney Pitcher Award to MFA student Japheth Asiedu-Kwarteng. This award honors outstanding students in the visual arts who demonstrate exceptional artistic talent, dedicated studio practice, and academic excellence. 2022 marks the 52nd anniversary of this prestigious award, which was established by the Pitcher family in memory of painting student Marshall Pitcher. University Galleries has traditionally dedicated exhibition space within the Student Annual to winners of the Marshall Dulaney Pitcher Award and works by Asiedu-Kwarteng will be on display at University Galleries.
Judges
This year's studio judge is Tempestt Hazel, a curator, writer, and co-founder of Sixty Inches From Center, a Chicago-based arts publication and archiving initiative that has promoted and preserved the practices of artists across the Midwest since 2010. She's also still smiling about the fact that she was the 2019 recipient of the J.Franklin Jameson Archival Advocacy Award from the Society of American Archivists. You can read her writing, explore her curatorial projects, and learn about her love of archives by visiting her website.
This year's design judge is Lisa Elzey Mercer, a designer, educator, and researcher. Her interests are in developing and executing design interventions that fuel and sustain responsible design for social impact. The developed frameworks and tools are intended to create a space for conversation and knowledge exchange where participants can collaborate in creating new ideas and solutions. This type of methodology is evidenced in her current projects focused on the topics of human trafficking, incarceration, race, and racism. She co-developed the framework Racism Untaught with Terresa Moses, University of Minnesota. Elzey Mercer is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design and Design for Responsible Innovation in the School of Art and Design, College of Fine and Applied Arts (FAA), at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
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In Living Color
Open May 19 through August 10, 2022
Curated by the Teen Art Group at University Galleries, In Living Color features stop-motion animations and videos, mixed-media collages, drawings, paintings, and ceramics by artists Aaron Caldwell, Jess T. Dugan, Fidencio Fifield-Perez, Jin Lee, Melissa Oresky, Rashod Taylor, and Selina Trepp.
The Teen Art Group was founded in 2018 at University Galleries by director and chief curator Kendra Paitz, with support from the Illinois Prairie Community Foundation—Mirza Arts and Culture Fund. Each academic year, students from Bloomington High School participate in professional development activities, take field trips, and curate an exhibition. The 2021–2022 cohort was led by Kendra Paitz; Tanya Scott, University Galleries’ curator of education; and Monica Estabrook, Bloomington High School art teacher. The group visited Melissa Oresky's (professor, Wonsook Kim School of Art) studio, Normal Editions Workshop, and studio classes in the Wonsook Kim School of Art; participated in art-making workshops, meetings, and exhibition tours at University Galleries; curated this exhibition; and developed ideas for educational workshops.
In Living Color presents works by artists the students learned about during the program. First, the students identified issues they were most concerned with, including gender, environment, outer space, portraiture, abstraction, family, and racial issues. Then, the program leaders presented relevant artists for discussion. The group originally planned to select one artist for a solo exhibition, but as they researched the artists and thought about relationships among the works, they decided to invite several artists to participate in a group exhibition. The Teen Art Group selected each of the works, determined the exhibition layout, decided the exhibition title, and conducted an interview with artist Selina Trepp.
This exhibition is organized by the following Teen Art Group participants: Safa Ahmad, Delilah Higgins, Will Hopper, A. Jackson, Carter Shrode, Row Wissmiller, and Emma Zimmerman. This project is supported by University Galleries' grants from the Illinois Prairie Community Foundation—Mirza Arts and Culture Fund, and the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
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Denise Treizman: In Between Living
Open June 3 through July 31, 2022
Through a practice of searching, gleaning, and repurposing, Miami-based Chilean-Israeli artist Denise Treizman critically examines hyper-consumerism while also carefully participating in it and relying on commercial goods. Having lived in many densely populated cities over the years—London, San Francisco, New York City, Haifa, and now Miami—Treizman’s practice has benefited from throwaway culture. She states, “Working both on the street and in the studio, I examine how worthless fragments can be transformed into unexpected art experiences.” The exhibition title, In Between Living, relates to Treizman’s history of salvaging discarded materials from the street—a repeated practice as she moved from one place to the next. The production and waste of excess goods, “invented necessities” as she likes to call them, has been at the foundation of her work since 2010, when she spent her first summer in New York City. Although she questions who needs vibrantly patterned single-use materials, like pink flamingo-printed duct tape or violet bubble wrap, she finds these playful materials irresistible. By incorporating them into her found-object installations and unconventional weavings, she prompts viewers to reflect on the mass-produced society in which we live.
Treizman was originally scheduled to have an exhibition at University Galleries during summer 2020, but it was postponed due to Coronavirus (COVID 19)-related uncertainty and travel restrictions. Shortly before the pandemic started, the artist acquired a loom to make nontraditional weavings, including foam pool noodles, cellophane, duct tape, and LED string lights. This was a pivotal point in her career as health and safety reasons prompted her to re-examine her previous gathering practice. Having access to her own loom also enabled Treizman to deepen her interest in fiber arts, allowing her to explore the “relationship between the ready-made and artist-made.” A selection of these brightly colored, textural, and sometimes luminescent weavings will be on display for this exhibition.
The exhibition will also include installations made in response to University Galleries’ architecture, including 16-foot-tall walls, high ceilings, and gridded wall of windows. These site-specific gestures will incorporate a variety of objects that Treizman has accumulated over a twelve-year period, many of which have been kept in storage since her 2018 departure from New York City. These materials—including deflated yoga balls, packing foam, tinsel, rope, and more recently, her weavings—have been used in previous exhibitions but will now serve as prompts. Nothing is permanent, everything transforms.
A selection of videos will be released throughout this exhibition including an artist interview with footage of Treizman’s installation process at University Galleries, an art-making demonstration, and an exhibition video tour. These virtual programs will be available via University Galleries’ Vimeo following the exhibition opening.
Denise Treizman: In Between Living is organized by Jessica Bingham, former curator at University Galleries. The exhibition and programming are sponsored in part by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
Biography
Denise Treizman’s work has been exhibited at PROTO GOMEZ Gallery, New York, New York; Wave Hill, Bronx, New York; Hybrid Art Festival, Madrid, Spain; Penn State University, Pennsylvania; Latino Arts, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, Illinois; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, New York; and Cuchifritos Gallery/Artist’s Alliance, New York, New York, among others. Treizman has completed residences at Mass MOCA, North Adams, Massachusetts; NARS Foundation International Artists Residency, Brooklyn, New York; Triangle Workshop, Salem, New York; ACRE Residency, Steuben, Michigan; The Elizabeth Foundation Studio Program, New York, New York; Ox-Bow Residency, Saugatuck, Michigan; and Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont, among others. She earned an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and is currently a studio resident at Laundromat Art Space in Miami, Florida.
Resources
- Exhibition Video
- Interview with Denise Treizman
- Educator Handout: K-6
- Educator Handout: 7-12
- Micro-Artmaking Lesson
- Scavenger Hunt
- Title Match Game
- Denise Treizman
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Nazafarin Lotfi: A Garden to Build
Open August 11 through October 16, 2022
A Garden to Build presents new drawings, sculptures, photographs, and prints by Tucson-based artist Nazafarin Lotfi. The artist’s practice is rooted in her experiences of growing up in post-Revolutionary Iran and continuing her education and artistic career as an immigrant in the United States. Lotfi cites the body, the house, the garden, and the nation as “some of the enclosures that define the self and other, inclusion and exclusion, access and belonging.” In her newest works, the artist explores her current location through the lens of garden-making, which, she points out, has a 5,000-year history in her culture.
Lotfi’s Counter-Landscapes—drawings based on the floor plans of historical Iranian gardens—index each shade of green found during close examination of her Arizona yard. Maps of No Return, a series of geometric drawings and collages based on actual gardens, addresses enclosed borders and nation-making. For her photography series All Things That Grow, the artist interacts with papier-mâché “boulders” as her body becomes partially hidden in the Texas landscape. Lotfi’s Traces—large, hollow, papier-mâché sculptures that imagine a body blending into the environment—have subtly painted and drawn surfaces that evoke stone and lichen. Through these and other works, Lotfi addresses boundaries and world-making. She asks, “What does it mean to make art in the brink of collapse. How do we imagine new worlds?”
This exhibition grew from an earlier collaboration. During the 2019-2020 academic year, University Galleries’ Teen Art Group worked with Lotfi on a solo exhibition, which was scheduled to be on view at University Galleries in Summer 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it became an online project featuring Lotfi’s artwork, the Teen Art Group’s recorded interview with the artist, and a conversation between Kantara Souffrant and Lotfi. The full project is available on University Galleries’ website.
A Garden to Build is the focus of multiple educational programs. Nazafarin Lotfi will give a public artist lecture and meet with students. The Experimental Ensemble at Normal Community High School will develop an audio response to the exhibition, which may result in a public performance. University Galleries’ staff will lead art-making workshops for ISU students, families, K-12 students, and community members. University Galleries continues collaborating with the Children’s Discovery Museum for Art Around You, a series of virtual exhibition tours and workshops for children ages 7 through 10. Free virtual and in-person curator-led tours are available by appointment for the duration of the exhibition.
Nazafarin Lotfi: A Garden to Build is curated by Kendra Paitz, University Galleries’ director and chief curator. This exhibition is supported by University Galleries’ grants from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, Alice and Fannie Fell Trust, Harold K. Sage Foundation, and the Illinois State University Foundation Fund.
Biography
Nazafarin Lotfi was born in Mashhad, Iran, and is based in Tucson, Arizona. She is currently the Matakyev Research Fellow at the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University. Her work has been exhibited at Artpace, San Antonio; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix; The Suburban, Milwaukee; Brand New Gallery, Milan; Ana Cristea Gallery, New York City; DUVE Berlin, Berlin; soon.tw, Montreal; Everybody Gallery, Tucson; and The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Artists Coalition, Logan Center at the University of Chicago, Arts Club of Chicago, Regards, Arts Incubator, The Franklin, Goldfinch, Andrew Rafacz Gallery, and Ralph Arnold Gallery, all in Chicago. Lotfi has been awarded artist residencies by the Arts + Public Life and Center for the Study of Race, Politics, & Culture at the University of Chicago, and Artpace International. She has received grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, Phoenix Art Museum, Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona, and the city of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. She received both her MFA and her Post-Baccalaureate certificate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her BA from University of Tehran. Her work is represented by Regards, Chicago.
Resources
- Exhibition Video
- Scavenger Hunt
- K-6 Educator Handout
- 7-12 Educator Handout
- Micro Artmaking Lesson
- Artmaking Demonstration
- Nazafarin Lotfi
Press
Jess T. Dugan: I want you to know my story
Open August 17 through October 16, 2022
I want you to know my story presents recent photographs from St. Louis-based artist Jess T. Dugan’s ongoing Every Breath We Drew series. The artist writes, “My creative practice centers around an exploration of identity – particularly gender and sexuality – through photographic portraiture. Drawing from my experience as a queer, non-binary person, my work is motivated by an existential need to understand and express myself and to connect with others.” The exhibition title is excerpted from a creative text Dugan wrote to accompany these photographs in their newest book, Look at me like you love me, self-described as a “visual poem.” Additional passages from the book are installed throughout the exhibition as a poetic current flowing under the works.
Although Dugan began their Every Breath We Drew series in 2011, this exhibition focuses on photographs made since 2019, particularly those created since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Citing a period of “heightened self-reflection” during the pandemic, Dugan told a PhotoVogue interviewer that they were “thinking about what is lost when we’re not in relationships with other people personally or communally.” Through still lifes, portraits of individuals and couples, and self-portraits, the artist addresses relationships, connection, love, loss, aging, and more. In Red tulips, a white bottle filled with eight unopened flowers sits atop a solitary wooden table. Sunlight from a nearby window rakes across and creates a shadowy ghost of the cut flowers. For Collin at sunset—which was also on view at University Galleries during the summer for the Teen Art Group-curated exhibition, In Living Color —one of Dugan’s frequent collaborators looks directly at the camera while casually reclining in a lush field of violets. Meanwhile, in Self-portrait (mirror), the artist faces a mirror while turned away from the viewer. Their iris-tattooed arms are folded overhead, obscuring part of their reflection. The works share aspects of Dugan’s story while remaining open enough for interpreting collective experiences of connection.
I want you to know my story is the focus of multiple educational programs. Jess T. Dugan will give a public artist lecture and meet with students. University Galleries’ staff will lead professional development workshops for educators and art-making workshops for ISU students, families, K-12 students, and community members. University Galleries continues collaborating with the Children’s Discovery Museum for Art Around You, a series of virtual exhibition tours and workshops for children ages 7 through 10. Free virtual and in-person curator-led tours are available by appointment for the duration of the exhibition. Milner Library has compiled a reading list inspired by Dugan’s work.
Jess T. Dugan: I want you to know my story is organized by Kendra Paitz, University Galleries’ director and chief curator. This exhibition and programming are supported by University Galleries’ grants from the Illinois Arts Council Agency and the Alice and Fannie Fell Trust. Dugan's lecture is co-sponsored by MECCPAC, a Multicultural Center Initiative.
Biography
Jess T. Dugan’s work is included in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; International Center of Photography, New York City; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis; George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York City, among others. Their work has been exhibited at National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; International Center of Photography, New York City; Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; and Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts, among others. Their work is the subject of monographs published by MACK, Kehrer Verlag, and Daylight Books, and has been included in exhibition catalogues published by the Library of Congress, Thames & Hudson, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, University of North Carolina Press, Light Work, and Radius Books.
Dugan has received an ICP Infinity Award, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, and was selected as an LGBT Artist Champion of Change by the White House. Dugan has also done editorial work for The New York Times, ACLU Magazine, Time, The Guardian, and The New York Times Magazine. They are a co-founder of the Strange Fire Collective, which highlights work made by women, people of color, and LGBTQ artists. Dugan received their MFA in Photography from Columbia College, Chicago; MLA in Museum Studies from Harvard University; and BFA in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Dugan’s work is represented by ClampArt, New York City, and Turner Carroll Gallery, Santa Fe.
Resources
- Exhibition Video
- Educator Handout: Grades K-6
- Educator Handout: Grades 7-12
- K-12 Reading List
- Scavenger Hunt
- Read, Watch, Listen
- Jess T. Dugan
Press
Beyond the Norm 2022
Open October 27 through December 18, 2022
In celebration of Normal Editions Workshop’s 45th anniversary, University Galleries will present Beyond the Norm 2022, a juried exhibition featuring 38 prints by 29 artists. Selections were determined by juror Carmon Colangelo, dean of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University, St. Louis.
Exhibiting artists: Miguel A. Aragón, Janet Ballweg, Diana Behl, Larry Bemm, Edward Bernstein, Lisa Bulawsky, Danqi Cai, Sean Caulfield, Phillip Chen, Izzy Cho, Candice Malyn Corgan, Michael Dal Cerro, L J Douglas, Matthew J. Egan, Brian Kelly, K. MacNeil, Emmett Merrill, Heather Muise, Jenene Nagy, Gail D. Panske, Endi Poskovic, Elizabeth Claire Rose, Blake Sanders, Hannah March Sanders, Gregory Santos, Nick Satinover, Tanja Softić, Kelsey Stephenson, and Koichi Yamamoto.
Normal Editions is a non-profit print research facility within the Wonsook Kim School of Art and the Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts at Illinois State University. Normal Editions was founded in 1976 to publish limited-edition fine art prints in a professional print research setting; create new works of art; educate; and expand appreciation of print media. Over the past forty-six years, Normal Editions has worked with over 150 artists with diverse approaches to image making, subject matter, and content to produce works in a variety of printmaking media. Normal Editions focuses on enhancing student experiences as members of a team. The result is an outstanding collaborative experience that goes far beyond the usual classroom. Artists of regional, national, and international reputation explore the expressive possibilities of printmaking media with a team of students, staff, and faculty. Normal Editions has created collaborative print projects with: Phyllis Bramson, Jane Dickson, Hector Duarte, Maritza Dávila, Julia Fish, Mark Forth, John Fraser, Judy Glantzman, Alex Grey, Arturo Herrera, John Himmelfarb, Mark Innerst, Donald Lipski, Dennis Oppenheim, Rudy Pozzatti, Richard Rezac, Kenny Scharf, Kiki Smith, Robert Stackhouse, Ian Weaver, and David Wojnarowicz, among many others. Recent visiting artists include Daniel Baird, Bethany Collins, Amy Cousins, Salvador Jiménez-Flores, Reuben Lorch-Miller, Nazafarin Lotfi, Mark E. Ritchie, Laura Splan, and Jaimie Warren.
A Juror’s Choice Award winner will collaborate with Normal Editions to produce an edition of prints, and a University Galleries’ Award winner will have a future one-person exhibition in University Galleries’ project space.
This exhibition is organized by Normal Editions Workshop. The exhibition and programming are supported in part by grants from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, Harold K. Sage Foundation, and the Illinois State University Foundation Fund.
Resources
Designing Discoveries
Open October 27 through December 18, 2022
n celebration of Design Streak Studio’s 40th anniversary, University Galleries will present a selection of projects created since its founding. Based in the Wonsook Kim School of Art at Illinois State University, Design Streak Studio is a research-based social innovation lab focused on human-centered service design. It strives to facilitate an interdisciplinary environment promoting discovery and experimentation, while engaging in experiential and service learning. Design Streak Studio provides a capstone experience for senior students seeking a bachelor’s degree in graphic design.
Design Streak Studio was established in 1981 by Associate Professor Pam Tannura, who was succeeded by Associate Professor Julie Johnson from 2005 to 2015. Since 2016, Design Streak Studio has been led by Professor and Creative Director Archana Shekara. The studio has collaborated with campus and community partners throughout its history, including Autism McLean, Bloomington-Normal, Illinois; Habitat ReStore, Habitat for Humanity, Bloomington, Illinois; National Center for Urban Education, College of Education, Illinois State University; Normal Public Library, Normal, Illinois; Town of Normal, Illinois; Refuge Food Forest, Normal, Illinois; Labyrinth Made Goods, YWCA, Bloomington, Illinois; City of Atlanta, Illinois; Illinois Art Station, Normal, Illinois; TedX Normal; and Culturally Responsive Campus Community Conference, Illinois State University, among many others. Students currently enrolled in Design Streak Studio are assisting the creative director with selection of projects to design an experience for audiences.
This exhibition is organized by Design Streak Studio. The exhibition and programming are supported by grants from the Harold K. Sage Foundation and the Illinois State University Foundation Fund.
Resources
2021
Caroline Kent: What the stars can't tell us
Open August 11 through December 16, 2021
What the stars can’t tell us presents paintings and sculptures by Chicago-based artist and Illinois State University alumna (and former track athlete) Caroline Kent. This exhibition encompasses two galleries: one featuring large-scale paintings created from 2015 through 2021, and another premiering a site-responsive installation conceived in relationship to the artist’s simultaneous solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Derived from the title of one of Kent’s paintings, the exhibition title references humanity’s long-term reliance on the cosmos for navigation and timekeeping, while addressing how much of the universe remains invisible and unknown. It also alludes to the limitations that exist in conflict with our desire to know anything fully.
Through paintings, sculptures, installations, drawings, performances, and books, Kent uses abstraction to explore how, in her words, “language mediates or becomes a barrier” between people. The artist’s work was influenced, in part, by her time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Romania—from immersing herself in a new language, to being surrounded by houses painted with the chalky pastel hues that now recur in her own paintings—as well as watching films with the closed captioning turned on to appreciate the possibilities of translation. She writes, “I think of these new paintings as formulas or equations situated inside the cosmos; the cosmos here being metaphorical for a kind of space that invites one to comprehend in new ways.”
Kent’s archive of improvisational cut-paper drawings informs her carefully constructed paintings. Hung like tapestries on the wall, the 8- to 9-foot-tall paintings feature choreographies of bold geometric shapes floating into and out of expanses of black canvas. They seem to collapse time and space, with forms evoking ancient architecture, hieroglyphic writing, stylized alphabets, modern sculptures, and futuristic diagrams. For example, in the exhibition’s titular painting, an angular seafoam green form hovers above magenta and lavender archways and is flanked by a parade of canary, tangerine, eggshell, and cobalt forms, while traces of off-kilter ellipses and ghosts of wavy fringe emerge from below the surface. The interplay among these mysterious symbols prompts contemplation about legibility, translation, and temporality. Meanwhile, a new series of small paintings on raw linen functions collectively like a poem, in which the visual language is abbreviated and condensed in its form.
This exhibition is the focus of multiple educational programs. (See below for details.) Free virtual and in-person curator-led tours are available by appointment for the duration of the exhibition. Caroline Kent will lead a gallery walk and deliver an artist lecture. University Galleries’ staff will lead art-making workshops for ISU students, families, and K-12 students. University Galleries continues collaborating with the Children’s Discovery Museum for Art Around You, a series of virtual exhibition tours and workshops for children ages 7 through 10.
Caroline Kent: What the stars can’t tell us is curated by Kendra Paitz, University Galleries’ director and chief curator. This exhibition is supported by University Galleries’ grants from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, Alice and Fannie Fell Trust, Harold K. Sage Foundation, and the Illinois State University Foundation Fund. A publication is forthcoming in 2022.
Biography
Caroline Kent’s work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, among others. Her work has been exhibited at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; California African American Museum, Los Angeles; The Flag Art Foundation, New York; Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Chicago; Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco; and Soap Factory, Minneapolis, among others. Kent has received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant; McKnight Fellowship for Visual Arts; Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; and Jerome Foundation Fellowship. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Artforum, Art News, The Chicago Tribune, The Art Newspaper, Sixty Inches from Center, and Newcity Art. Kent received her M.F.A. from University of Minnesota and her B.S. from Illinois State University. The artist is represented by PATRON Gallery, Chicago; Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles; and Casey Kaplan, New York. Kent lives and works in Chicago.
Resources
- Exhibition Video Tour
- Artmaking Demo Video
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Educator Handout: Grades K-6
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Educator Handout: Grades 7-12
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Micro Artmaking Lessons
- Caroline Kent
Press
T.J. Dedeaux-Norris: Second Line
Open August 4 through December 12, 2021
Split into two parts, this exhibition features over 45 works from multiple series spanning sixteen years by artist, performer, and educator T.J. Dedeaux-Norris. Dedeaux-Norris critiques systems of race, sex, gender, religion, education, healthcare, and class, as well as the complexities of family dynamics and histories. Through their multidisciplinary practice, including painting, fiber, performance, video, and music, Dedeaux-Norris questions how these systems—and the visible and invisible trauma they induce—exploit people of color, women, Queer folx, and the elderly.
The exhibition title refers to New Orleans’s history of funerary celebrations and parades, Dedeaux-Norris’s Mississippi Gulf Coast family, and the jazz funeral for victims of Hurricane Katrina. As author Richard Brent Turner points out in Jazz Religion, the Second Line, and Black New Orleans: After Hurricane Katrina, second lining and jazz funerals are tied to Haitian and West and Central African diasporic religious practices and music traditions. In short, jazz funerals include marching and dancing from the church or funeral parlor to the cemetery alongside family and friends to the music of brass and percussion bands, which is referred to as “first line” or “main line.” Following is the “second line,” which welcomes members of the community and passersby who join in the rhythms of life and death. These traditions, both secular and sacred, have grown independently over generations leading to second line parades for leisure purposes and festivals.
Through their practice, Dedeaux-Norris has reinvented their identity several times, living and making art as Tameka Jenean Norris, Meka Jean, and presently T.J. Dedeaux-Norris—an abbreviation of their assigned name and addition of their mother’s French-Creole maiden name. Each identity will be featured in the exhibition, although not chronologically. Part I of the exhibition indicates the main line and is absent of figures other than a back-lit self-portrait of Tameka and a recent video of T.J. laying that former persona to rest. Collaged fabric paintings from the series Post-Katrina and an installation dedicated to their mother explore Dedeaux-Norris’s grief from not being physically present for their family during the devasting 2005 hurricane. Years later, Dedeaux-Norris became their mother’s primary caretaker—a responsibility that included the role of power of attorney while navigating: a relocation to the Midwest, estate management, and the healthcare system.
Mourning takes on different connotations in Part II of the exhibition as themes of second lining become present. Figures appear in nearly every piece—the joining in celebration of many. Portraits of family members from the series Cut From the Same Cloth highlight the subject’s domestic life; these were created with the intention of reconciling family disconnection after leaving the Gulf Coast to pursue a rap career and their education. Dedeaux-Norris shared with Ronchini Gallery, that, “painting these portraits was a way to reconnect with relatives I had become estranged from.” More recently, Dedeaux-Norris has been exploring what they call “embodied research” as a way to heal their body from fatigue, disease, generational trauma, and immense grief after the passing of their grandmother. Focused on centering their mind and body, this research includes acupuncture, massages, boxing, chiropractic alignments, and spiritual practices. By(e), Tameka, a two-channel 83-minute video premiering in this exhibition, contains recordings from their life over the past nine years, including this process of building physical endurance and strength.
The second rotation of the exhibition will take place during regular gallery hours and will be open to the public. Onsite and virtual curator-led tours are available throughout the exhibition; a video tour will be announced online; and a series of art-making lesson videos created by Tanya Scott, University Galleries’ curator of education, and University Galleries’ student assistants, will be released on the exhibition website. A virtual art-making activity inspired by Dedeaux-Norris’s work will take place in early December in conjunction with World AIDS Day and Day With(out) Art.
T.J. Dedeaux-Norris: Second Line is curated by Jessica Bingham, University Galleries’ curator. The exhibition and programming are sponsored in part by grants from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, Alice and Fannie Fell Trust, Harold K. Sage Foundation, and the Illinois State University Foundation Fund.
Biography
T.J. Dedeaux-Norris’s work has been exhibited at Prospect.3, New Orleans, Louisiana; Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa; 1708 Gallery, Richmond, Virginia; Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, Louisiana; David Shelton Gallery, Houston, Texas; Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami, Florida; Franklin Street Works, Stamford, Connecticut; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Jane Lombard Gallery, New York, New York; Ronchini Gallery, London, UK; and SVA, Chelsea, New York, among others. Dedeaux-Norris has completed residencies at the Fountainhead Artist Residency, Miami, Florida; Grant Wood Fellowship, Iowa City, Iowa; Hermitage Artist Retreat, Sarasota, Florida; Long Road Projects, Jacksonville, Florida; MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire; and Ox-Bow School of Art, Saugatuck, Michigan. They earned their MFA from Yale University and are currently an Assistant Professor in Painting and Drawing at the University of Iowa.
Resources
- Exhibition Images: Part I
- Exhibition Images: Part II
- Exhibition Video Tour
- Educator Handout: Grades 7-12 (Part II)
- Reading, Listening, and Watching List
- Exhibition Checklist: Part I
- Exhibition Checklist: Part II
- T.J. Dedeaux-Norris
Press
Making Our Space: Members of the Peoria Guild of Black Artists
Open June 1 through August 1, 2021
Making Our Space: Members of the Peoria Guild of Black Artists is a group exhibition featuring fourteen members of the ever-expanding Peoria-based artists guild, often referred to as PGOBA. The artist collective was organized in June 2020 following the murder of George Floyd — and in response to nationwide uprisings and the Black Lives Matter movement — to focus on celebrating and uplifting the voices of Black artists in Peoria, Illinois. This exhibition explores Black identity, Black joy, and Black community through painting, drawing, graphic design, illustration, printmaking, photography, video, performance, and poetry.
In addition to the individual works by participating artists, two major collaborations will be featured: Poets of the Peoria Guild of Black Artists and Collective Subconscious. Poets of the Peoria Guild of Black Artists , a spoken-word poetry video featuring PGOBA poets Krystopher Dudley Brown, David L. Jennings, Hannah Offutt, Brenda Pagan, and Rose de Peoria, will be on view in the exhibition and available online. Produced by videographer Kayla Thomas and co-directed by Brown, Jennings, and Thomas, the video is set in Brenda Pagan’s home, the location of many PGOBA meetings. The poets perform a selection of original poems, each within a different room of the 1859 Italianate house. Notebooks, journals, and scraps of paper with preliminary verses will be displayed near the video. Collective Subconscious is a large-scale diptych painting of PGOBA members in various yoga poses while motifs of the cosmos weave in, out, and around the figures, representing the community they made and found with one another. Imagery in the painting stems from PGOBA’s collaboration with Soulside Healing Arts , a non-profit community-based yoga studio that partnered with members to focus on Black wellness.
The exhibition will also premiere Carving Our Space: New Kids on the Block, a year-long remote print collaboration organized by Normal Editions, a non-profit print research facility founded in 1976 within the Wonsook Kim School of Art. Through this project, PGOBA artists—many having never made a print before—partnered with Normal Editions printmakers to create an edition of woodcut prints. Each PGOBA artist carved a woodblock image which was then printed in an edition of identical impressions by the collaborating printer(s). Two exciting Normal Editions milestones were reached during this project: Alexander Martin being the 150th artist to collaborate on a project and Quinton Thomas’s edition being the 300th project in the forty-five years of creating works collaboratively with guest artists.
The portfolio consists of ten prints and one video performance. A series of recorded artist talks, produced in conjunction with this collaboration, will be released online during the exhibition. Participating PGOBA artists are: Kevin J. Bradford, Alexa Cary, Kameron Hoover, Chantell Marlow, Alexander Martin, Erick Minnis, Morgan Mullen, Hannah Offutt, Brenda Pagan, and Quinton Thomas. Normal Editions team members this year include: Veda Rives Aukerman, Interim Director and Master Printer; Morgan Price, Associate Professor of Art; Sarah Smelser, Professor of Art; Nicole Arnold, MFA student; Jess Dowell, BFA student; Peytin Fitzgerald, MFA student; and Erika Shiba, MFA student.
Early Career Black Artists, a virtual panel discussion, will feature founding members of the Peoria Guild of Black Artists: Alexander Martin, Morgan Mullen, and Brenda Pagan. This panel will highlight entrepreneurial endeavors, studio practices, artwork sales, teaching experiences, and community outreach, as well as the motivation for starting the guild. Aaron Caldwell, an artist, educator, and graduate assistant at University Galleries, will moderate this conversation.
Making Our Space: Members of the Peoria Guild of Black Artists is curated by Jessica Bingham, University Galleries’ curator. The exhibition and programming are sponsored in part by grants from the Illinois Arts Council Agency and Alice and Fannie Fell Trust—awarded to both University Galleries and Normal Editions.
Participating Artists
- Kevin J. Bradford
- Krystopher Dudley Brown
- Alexa Cary
- Kameron Hoover
- David L. Jennings
- Chantell Marlow
- Alexander Martin
- Erick Minnis
- Morgan Mullen
- Hannah Offutt
- Brenda Pagan
- Rose de Peoria
- Kayla Thomas
- Quinton Thomas
Resources
- Exhibition Video Tour
- Early Career Black Artists: Panel Discussion with PGOBA
- Poets of the Peoria Guild of Black Artists video
- Normal Editions Collaboration video for PGOBA
- Brenda Pagan: Normal Editions Collaboration
- Reading List
- Normal Editions
Press
NCHS Sociology Responds to The Canary in the Lake
Open June 1 through July 25, 2021
Organized collaboratively by University Galleries and Normal Community High School (NCHS), this exhibition presents artworks created by more than fifty high school sociology students in conjunction with Alice Hargrave: The Canary in the Lake , an exhibition that was on view at University Galleries from March 4 through May 16, 2021. The project team includes Stefen Robinson (sociology and history teacher, NCHS), and the following University Galleries staff members: Kendra Paitz (director and chief curator); Tanya Scott (curator of education); Aaron Caldwell (graduate assistant); and Ari Garcia (gallery assistant).
For The Canary in the Lake, Chicago-based artist Alice Hargrave addressed climate change-related loss of biodiversity and habitats, focusing particularly on birds and lakes. Her exhibition—which included photography, installation, video, audio, and sculpture—premiered The Conference of the Lakes, After Farid Attar, Hargrave’s collaboration with Dr. Catherine O’Reilly, professor of geology at Illinois State University. Hargrave and O'Reilly worked together to collect and revisualize climate-related data from freshwater lakes on all seven continents. Hargrave utilized these data to generate new patterns, which she combined with photographs, references to lake lore, and the surprisingly vast array of lake colors to create 20 self-described “lake portraits.”
Stefen Robinson, Tanya Scott, and Kendra Paitz developed a two-month project centered on Hargrave’s processes and themes. University Galleries staff members met virtually with Robinson’s sociology classes four times to conduct tours of Hargrave’s exhibition, discuss how to research environmental issues, demonstrate ways to find data, teach art-making workshops, brainstorm about students’ projects, discuss how exhibitions are created, and offer professional development about museum careers. Robinson mentored students as they analyzed their selected environmental issues through sociological lenses. Like Hargrave, the students conducted research and incorporated relevant data into their own artworks. University Galleries provided materials kits for the students—including dyes that develop color when exposed to sunlight, natural fabrics, transparency sheets, permanent markers, and safety goggles. The resulting exhibition features the students’ artworks and written project statements.
NCHS Sociology Responds to The Canary in the Lake is supported by the Town of Normal Harmon Arts Grant Program and the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
Resources
Press
2021 Student Annual
Open April 6, 2021
Since 1974, the Student Annual has showcased new artwork produced by students at Illinois State University. This exhibition has offered many students the first opportunity to have their work reviewed by professionals outside the University. Due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, this year's exhibition is presented online with one in-person installation.
The Wonsook Kim School of Art is pleased to present the 2021 Marshall Dulaney Pitcher Award to MFA student Erika Shiba. This award honors outstanding students in the visual arts who demonstrate exceptional artistic talent, dedicated studio practice, and academic excellence. 2021 marks the 51st anniversary of this prestigious award, which was established by the Pitcher family in memory of painting student Marshall Pitcher. University Galleries has traditionally dedicated exhibition space within the Student Annual to winners of the Marshall Dulaney Pitcher Award, and works by Shiba will be on display at University Galleries through May 16. Additional images of her work are included in the online exhibition. To view Shiba’s work at University Galleries, make a free reservation.
Awards are supported by: Barry Blinderman (in memory of Karolee Johnson); Kelsey and Jonathan DeGreef (in honor of Richard D. Finch); Therese and Bob Franklin (in memory of Jen Franklin); Normal Editions Workshop; Program in Creative Technologies; Randy Reid; Silica Ceramics Club; Irving S. and Joan Tick Memorial; University Galleries; Wonsook Kim School of Art; and the following areas within the Wonsook Kim School of Art: Glass and Graphic Design.
Judges
This year's studio judge is Chicago-based artist and educator Cecil McDonald, Jr. His solo exhibition, In the Company of Black , was presented at University Galleries in 2018. Following the exhibition, University Galleries purchased one of McDonald’s photographs for the permanent collection. His work has been exhibited at Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago; Philadelphia African American Museum, Philadelphia; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans; Terrain Exhibitions, Oak Park, Illinois; and Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago. McDonald has received grants, fellowships, and residencies from 3Arts; Artadia; Light Work, Syracuse, New York; Latitude, Chicago; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; and Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Chicago. He has received the Joyce Foundation Midwest Voices & Visions Award and the MAKER Grant | Coney Family Fund Award, which is presented to artists “who demonstrate a commitment to a socially conscious, progressive, and sustainable artist practice and career development.” McDonald’s work is included in the collections of the Willis Tower, Chicago; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland; Bank of America’s LaSalle Bank Photography Collection, Chicago; The Joyce Foundation, Chicago; Prairie Center for the Arts, Peoria, Illinois; and the Chicago Public Library, among others. He received a BA in fashion merchandising and an MFA in photography from Columbia College, Chicago, where he currently teaches photography.
This year’s design judge is Yeohyun Ahn, a Madison-based designer, educator, and researcher, integrating creative coding, digital fabrication, and physical interaction into spatial typography and graphic design. Her interdisciplinary typography project, TYPE + CODE Series, has been featured in the Washington Post, PRINT, New York Times Magazine, Letter Arts Review, Creator’s Project, and Designboom.com, among others. Her work has been published in the books Graphic Design: The Basics; Type on Screen; and Data-Driven Graphic Design, and she has been invited to present research papers by Leonardo, EVA London, and IEEE VIS Arts. She has also presented at ISEA, AIGA, SEGD, Alicante Design Education Forum in Spain, and TypeCon. Her new project, Social Homelessness on US Campuses, is a multidisciplinary art and design project bringing awareness to Asian female faculty in America. She states that having immigrated to America as a designer brings her awareness of social inequity, discrimination, and marginality. She has presented through SIGGRAPH, ARTECH, and IEEE GEM. She received a Graduate Fellowship from Maryland Institute College of Art. She was a freelance graphic artist for the New York Times Magazine, and has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago State University, and Valparaiso University. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design and Interaction Design at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Resources
Alice Hargrave: The Canary in the Lake
Open March 4 through May 16, 2021
The Canary in the Lake presents more than 40 new photographic, video, and audio works by Chicago-based artist Alice Hargrave. The exhibition centers on two new series relating to birds and lakes that continue her exploration of climate change-related loss of biodiversity and habitat. The exhibition title references both new bodies of work and alludes to the “canary in the coal mine,” because freshwater lakes function as sentinels of climate change.
This exhibition premieres The Conference of the Lakes, After Farid Attar, Hargrave’s collaboration with Dr. Catherine O’Reilly, professor of geology at Illinois State University. O’Reilly’s research focuses on freshwater environments, with an interest in how lakes and rivers are impacted by human activities and climate change. The idea for this series began at University Galleries in 2017, following a panel discussion organized for Hargrave’s solo exhibition, Paradise Wavering . As an extension of Hargrave’s works that incorporate the wavelengths of the songs of endangered and extinct bird species, the artist and O’Reilly began collaborating to collect and revisualize climate-related data from freshwater lakes on all seven continents.
Hargrave utilized these data—much of it gathered through connections with GLEON (Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network)—to generate new patterns, which she combined with photographs, references to lake lore, and the surprisingly vast array of lake colors to create 20 self-described "lake portraits.” In the artist's words, "those patterns create an image of something invisible, whether that be experiential or climate shifts that one can’t see.” For example, in Lake Baikal, Russia, warming, zooplankton data are layered into a vintage photograph of the Siberian lake, while Lake Tovel, Italy, clarity and red algae includes histograms of depth of visibility and color sampled from magenta algal blooms. These photographic prints on fabric soar ten feet into the air and are hung in a multi-layered installation to evoke a “conference,” in reference to Farid ud-Din Attar’s 12th-century poem, “The Conference of the Birds.” Hargrave and O’Reilly similarly collaborated for Beyond the Blue, an accompanying installation of photographs pinned to the wall like specimens, and an audio work featuring sounds, voices, stories, and species from many of the lakes.
Hargrave’s other new project, Tracing Audubon—1832 / 2021 (last calls), is on view in an adjacent gallery. Consisting of an audio piece, framed photographs, and a wallpaper installation, the works were inspired by ornithologist and artist John James Audubon’s 1832 trip to the Florida Keys and the Dry Tortugas. During that visit, he observed and painted 22 birds to create his iconic “Birds of the Florida Keys” portfolio. Hargrave similarly completed an artist residency at the Studios at Key West, Florida, and traveled to the Dry Tortugas to re-imagine the original 22 species in that portfolio. Rather than making illustrations of the Roseate Spoonbill, Great Blue Heron, Anhinga, American Flamingo, and Great Egret, she uses images and sound to convey how it feels to search for the birds in their natural settings. She explains, there is “the mystery of finding them hidden in lush foliage,” and through her dense green-tinged landscapes, we experience a degree of that search. Roseate Spoonbill, calls—a pink wallpaper installation spanning 21.5 feet—fills the space with images of the soundwaves created by the bird’s call (rendered in the startlingly bright fuchsia of its own feathers), while a new audio work plays vocalizations of the original 22 avian species interspersed with field recordings of the most invasive species, ourselves.
This exhibition is the focus of multiple educational programs. (See below for details.) Free virtual curator-led tours are available by appointment for the duration of the exhibition. University Galleries continues collaborating with the Children’s Discovery Museum for Art Around You, a series of virtual exhibition tours and workshops for children ages 7 through 10. Kendra Paitz, director and chief curator, and Tanya Scott, curator of education, are collaborating with Stefen Robinson, sociology and history teacher at Normal Community High School, to create a program for sociology students. After learning about Hargrave’s work, the students will work collaboratively to create their own artworks that will be exhibited at University Galleries in the summer. Additionally, Hargrave, O’Reilly, and Paitz will conduct virtual visits with Illinois State University classes.
Alice Hargrave: The Canary in the Lake is curated by Kendra Paitz, University Galleries’ director and chief curator. This exhibition is supported by University Galleries’ grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and Alice and Fannie Fell Trust. The collaborative project with Normal Community High School is supported by the Town of Normal Harmon Arts Grant Program. An exhibition catalogue, which is also supported by a grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, is forthcoming. Hargrave received an Illinois Arts Council Agency Individual Artist Grant for this project.
Biographies
Alice Hargrave’s work has been exhibited at Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Tweed Museum of Art, Duluth, Minnesota; Newspace Center for Photography, Portland, Oregon; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Filter Photo, Chicago; Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago; Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins, Colorado; and Lianzhou Photo Festival, Lianzhou, China; among many others. Her work is included in several collections: Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Willis Tower, Chicago; and the Hyatt corporation. Hargrave has recently been awarded fellowships by the Illinois Arts Council Agency and Ragdale, and residencies by Studios at Key West, Key West, Florida; Trout Lake Station of Limnology, Boulder Junction, Wisconsin; and Open Air at the Flathead Lake Biological Station, Bear Dance, Montana. Her first monograph, Paradise Wavering, was published by Daylight Books in 2016. Hargrave has an M.F.A. from University of Illinois at Chicago and a B.A. from Tulane University. She lives in Chicago, where she teaches at Columbia College.
Dr. Catherine O’Reilly is a professor in the Department of Geography, Geology, and the Environment at Illinois State University. As previously noted, her research focuses on freshwater environments, with an interest in how lakes and rivers are impacted by human activities and climate change. She has been involved in several large-scale collaborative projects through the Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON), as well as through over a decade of research on Lake Tanganyika, East Africa. Her work has been reported in media such as BBC, The New York Times, and National Geographic. O’Reilly is also one of the leaders of Project EDDIE (Environmental Data-Driven Inquiry and Exploration), which provides curricular materials and support for instructors to engage their students using large publicly accessible datasets in the classroom. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona and a B.A. from Carleton College. As part of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, O’Reilly shares the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore and 2000 other scientists.
Resources
- Exhibition Video Tour
- Read, Watch, and Listen by Alice Hargrave
- Art-making Demo: Data Visualizations
- Audio works on SoundCloud
- K-12 Reading List by Caitlin Stewart
- Lesson Plan: Loss of Biodiversity and Habitats - Data Visualization, Grades K-12
- Educator Handout: Grades K-6
- Educator Handout: Grades 7-12
Press
Ashley Jude Jonas: Not Knowing
Open March 4 through May 16, 2021
Not Knowing features recent work by artist, educator, and independent curator Ashley Jude Jonas. Comprised of installation, assemblage, photographs, drawings, and found objects, this exhibition is the most comprehensive for the artist to date. Jonas’s multidisciplinary practice is informed by close looking and domestic spaces, particularly her own experiences in her unconventional childhood home in Key West, Florida, a place filled with odds and ends and eccentric homemaking solutions like decorative rugs covering the yard and holes drilled into the floor to sweep away the dust. Jonas recalls her father’s house as both a hub for creative individuals who helped shape her young mind and a place where she discovered the value of wonder—not unlike her current home, which for six years existed as an alternative exhibition space called The Blue House.
In the months following the coronavirus (COVID-19) stay-at-home orders, Jonas began to re-examine the finite nature of beauty in her surroundings. Through appreciation of delicate objects, fleeting light, and ever-changing reflections, Jonas realized that joy can be experienced even in tumultuous times. She embraces the uncertainty of life by observing intimate moments of interdependence and independence. For example, Death Drawings I, II, and III, a wall installation first exhibited in 2016, references the grief Jonas’s husband faced after the passing of his grandfather. Three large gray painted ovals encompass small fragments of drawings, paintings, photos, and fabric. These collected objects carry the weight of heartache and comfort of holding on to the past.
Watching. Walking. Falling Apart., a 30-foot-long installation comprised of small mirrors, reflects the viewer and surrounding works. To bridge the space between inside and out, the resulting disjointed images are paired with a selection of Polaroid photos that Jonas took while standing at her kitchen window. Created through repeat visits, these photographs reference the ephemerality of nature and address how easily we can overlook subtle changes when we fail to be present. Similarly, Yard Play IV and Yard Play V, a pair of large-scale photographs, resemble windows framing Jonas’s backyard during the summer and autumn months. Vibrant green, red, and blue shapes—placed in the trees by Jonas—interrupt the foliage and leave colorful marks in the landscape. Standing nearby are Holding it. Having it. Safety. and All these window days, two precariously arranged sculptures built with found materials that once served specific purposes, including wooden drawers, tree guards, and spindles. Jonas manipulates, rearranges, and amalgamates these items to create a semblance of balance. As stated by the artist, each object helps “every other thing so we can move carefully and slowly, looking at peculiar connections and think[ing] about chance, change, and how we build space for ourselves and each other."
Ashley Jude Jonas: Not Knowing is organized Jessica Bingham, University Galleries’ curator. The exhibition and programming are sponsored in part by grants from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, the Alice and Fannie Fell Trust, and Faculty Studio Research Funds, CAS: Department of Art and Design, University of Dayton.
Biography
Ashley Jude Jonas’s work has been exhibited at Riffe Gallery, Columbus, Ohio; Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana; Undercurrent, Brooklyn; The Clay Studio, Philadelphia; and The Neon Heater, Findlay, Ohio; among others. From 2014 to 2020, Jonas co-directed and curated at The Blue House, an alternative artist-run space operated within her home. The artist has an M.F.A. from University of Colorado at Boulder and a B.F.A. from University of Florida. She lives in Dayton, Ohio, where she teaches at the University of Dayton.
Resources
- Exhibition Video Tour
- appreciate your patience #1: Zine Tutorial
- Art-making Demo: Mixed-Media Sculpture
- Lesson Plan: Visual Narratives, Grades K-5
- Educator Handout: Grades 7-12
- The Blue House
Press
2021 MFA Biennial
Open January 21 through February 21, 2021
The 2021 MFA Biennial presents the work of fifteen students enrolled in the Wonsook Kim School of Art’s Master of Fine Arts program at Illinois State University. Their artwork dynamically engages the mediums of drawing, ceramics, game design, glass, painting, performance, printmaking, sculpture, textiles, and video. These artists are at various points in a three-year program that is dedicated to helping them “develop a mature body of work by exploring the relationship between active studio practice and rigorous intellectual inquiry.” The MFA Biennial provides students with experience of preparing for and mounting a professional exhibition, seeing their work in conversation with the work of their peers, developing online programs, and documenting their work within University Galleries’ space.
Exhibiting Artists
- Nicole Arnold
- Japheth Asiedu-Kwarteng
- Aca Carle
- Sargylana Cherepanova
- Peytin Fitzgerald
- Cooper Gibson
- Shahrbanoo Hamzeh
- Priscilla Kar Yee Lo
- Andrew Lorenzi
- Spencer Molnar
- Emma Oliver
- Richard Oliver Reed
- Erika Shiba
- Mary Wilhelm
- Amy Yeager.
Resources
Press
2020
An Infinite and Omnivorous Sky
Open January 10 through February 19, 2020
An Infinite and Omnivorous Sky, a group exhibition about the mysteries and militarization of outer space, features twenty-nine works by artists that critically engage in poetic, scientific, and geopolitical views of the cosmos. Although the sea of celestial bodies has incited philosophizing and dreaming throughout time, the sky has also become militarized. It serves as a site of international power struggles and an omniscient point of view for surveillance via countless satellites. Our knowledge is constantly evolving with the generation of new data via Mars and moon rovers, Hubble telescope images, Voyager and New Horizons probes, and the Large Hadron Collider, among others. As the human race faces unprecedented crises due to climate change and related global unrest, the sky may hold the key to our collective survival.
The works in the exhibition prompt dialogue about the need for rigorous scientific exploration, unrestrained artistic practice, and informed political action. For example, Amy Balkin’s The Atmosphere, A Guide is a poster-essay that, in the artist’s words, “depicts various human influences on the sky and their accumulated traces, whether chemical, narrative, spatial, or political.” The thirteen cotton flags in Kambui Olujimi’s installation T-Minus Ø feature photographic collages of failed rocket launches and shuttle attempts, while Kerry Tribe’s video The Last Soviet addresses cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev’s 311 days spent on the Mir space station during the fall of the Soviet Union. Cauleen Smith’s video Space is the Place (A March for Sun Ra) follows a rainy Chicago performance of Afrofuturist composer and musician Sun Ra’s “Space is the Place” by a high school marching band, and Brittany Nelson’s large-scale Bromoil photograph Tracks 1 centers around an image the Opportunity Rover took of its own tracks in the Martian landscape. The series of nine clocks comprising Katie Paterson’s Timepieces (Solar System) tells the time on Earth’s moon and the eight planets in our solar system, while the green embroidered text spelling “THERE IS NO RETURN” in Dianna Frid’s NYT, AUG. 22, 2015, JACOB BEKENSTEIN is excerpted from the physicist and black hole theorist’s obituary in the New York Times.
An Infinite and Omnivorous Sky is curated by University Galleries’ Director and Chief Curator Kendra Paitz. An exhibition catalog is forthcoming in Summer 2020. The exhibition, publication, and programming are supported by grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Illinois Arts Council Agency. Field trip support is provided by a grant from the Town of Normal Harmon Arts Grant Program.
University Galleries is collaborating with the Illinois State University Planetarium and the Children’s Discovery Museum for programming during the exhibition.
All events are free and open to the public.
Participating Artists
- Amy Balkin
- Jen Bervin
- James Bridle
- William Cordova
- Rohini Devasher
- Ala Ebtekar
- Spencer Finch
- Dianna Frid
- Carrie Gundersdorf
- Basim Magdy
- Brittany Nelson
- Demetrius Oliver
- Kambui Olujimi
- Lisa Oppenheim
- Trevor Paglen
- Katie Paterson
- Dario Robleto
- Cauleen Smith
- Kerry Tribe
Resources
Press
2020 Faculty Biennial
Open February 28 through March 22, 2020
The 2020 Faculty Biennial presents work reflecting a diverse range of creative research by 36 faculty members teaching during the 2019–2020 academic year in the Wonsook Kim School of Art and the Program in Creative Technologies (including Creative Technologies-affiliated faculty from the School of Music). The artists in the exhibition represent the areas of Studio Art, Graphic Design, Art Education, Art History, and Creative Technologies. Featuring painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, video, ceramics, textiles, glass, wood, metals, sculpture, graphic design, game design, and virtual reality, the exhibition will also include multiple interactive works.
Members of the faculty have exhibited their work nationally and internationally, and have received support from such prestigious entities as the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Fulbright Scholar Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, Cite Internationale des Arts, and the Illinois Arts Council Agency. Participants are: Ladan Bahmani, McKenzie Bigliazzi, Judith Briggs, Kristin Carlson, Tony Crowley, Andreas Fischer, Brian Franklin, Erin Furimsky, Mariam Graff, Kelly Gross, Kirsten Heteji, Gary Justis, Jin Lee, Taekyeom Lee, Tyler Lotz, Roy Magnuson, James Mai, John Miller, Melissa Oresky, Morgan Price, Laura Primozic George, Jason Reblando, Randy Reid, Veda Rives Aukerman, Jam Rohr, Nathania Rubin, Tanya Scott, Sercan Sengun, Archana Shekara, Sarah Smelser, Matthew Smith, Kantara Souffrant, Albion Stafford, Annie Sungkajun, Devon Ward, and Michael Wille.
All events are free and open to the public.
Resources
- Exhibition Video Tour
- Art-making Demo: Trace Monotype
- Art-making Demo: Accordion Book
- Art-making Demo: Animation Drawing
- Art-making Demo: Man-made vs. Nature Sculpture
- Educational Handout
Press
2020 Student Annual
Open May 5, 2020
University Galleries of Illinois State University is pleased to present the 2020 Student Annual as an online exhibition.
Since 1974, the Student Annual has showcased new artwork produced by students at Illinois State University. This juried exhibition has offered many students the first opportunity to have their work reviewed by professionals outside the University. Due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and University Galleries' resulting temporary closure, this year's exhibition is online. Additionally, instead of a juried exhibition, it is an inclusive open-call exhibition. All current Illinois State University students were eligible to submit up to two artworks, and all submitted works have been included.
Awards are sponsored by: Wonsook Kim School of Art; Program in Creative Technologies; Normal Editions Workshop; Silica Ceramics Club; University Galleries; Barry Blinderman (in memory of Karolee Johnson); Kelsey and Jonathan DeGreef (in honor of Richard D. Finch); Therese and Bob Franklin (in memory of Jen Franklin); Randy Reid; Irving S. Tick Memorial; and the following areas within the Wonsook Kim School of Art: Glass and Graphic Design.
The Wonsook Kim School of Art is pleased to present the 2020 Marshall Dulaney Pitcher Award to BFA student Arianna Garcia. This award honors outstanding students in the visual arts who demonstrate exceptional artistic talent, dedicated studio practice, and academic excellence. 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of this prestigious award, which was established by the Pitcher family in memory of painting student Marshall Pitcher. In previous years, University Galleries has dedicated exhibition space within the Student Annual to winners of the Marshall Dulaney Pitcher Award. Additional works by Garcia are available in the online exhibition.
Judges
This year's studio judge is Edra Soto, an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and curator. Soto’s work has been exhibited at Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Chicago Cultural Center; Crystal Bridges’ The Momentary, Bentonville, Arkansas; and University Galleries of Illinois State University, Normal, among many others. In 2019, she completed a public art commission for Millennium Park in Chicago. Her Screenhouse will be on view in the park for two years. Soto was the inaugural winner of the Foundwork Artist Prize, and she has received fellowships from 3Arts Foundation, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and the Efroymson Family Fund. She has also been awarded residencies at the Rauschenberg Foundation, Headlands Center for the Arts, Project Row Houses, Art Omi, and John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Soto’s work has been included in three exhibitions supported by the MacArthur Foundation’s International Connections Fund—with exchanges between Chicago and: Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Brazil. Soto is the co-director of THE FRANKLIN, an outdoor project space in Chicago, and a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
This year’s design judge is Eric Benson, who worked professionally as a UI/UX designer at Razorfish and Texas Instruments before receiving his MFA in design from the University of Texas at Austin in 2006. His MFA thesis became the internationally recognized and award-winning https://re-nourish.org/. His work with Re-nourish translated into an academic career, and he is currently an Associate Professor of Graphic Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research and teaching at Illinois laid the foundation to create the Fresh Press Agri-Fiber Paper Lab. Fresh Press explores the potential of papermaking to be zero waste, environmentally sustainable, and a catalyst for a thriving local economy. Benson has published and lectured internationally on the importance of sustainable design. His work has also garnered numerous design awards and has been on view at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Museum, New York; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; and Rhode Island School of Design.
Resources
Nazafarin Lotfi: Subtle Time
Open June 1, 2020
University Galleries of Illinois State University is pleased to present Nazafarin Lotfi: Subtle Time as an online exhibition beginning June 1, 2020. This exhibition is organized by the Teen Art Group at University Galleries. While she was a Fall 2019 visiting artist in the Wonsook Kim School of Art, Lotfi presented her work to the Teen Art Group. She has been working remotely with the group and University Galleries’ staff since that time.
Teen Art Group participants in 2019–2020: Brianna Berndt, Jeremiah Berndt, Grace Bingley, Ellie Braun, Katya Cline, Darrell Cope, Joshua Dahmm, Lydia Fisher, Aspen Goss, Kasia Jankowiak, Grace Marcy, Kathryn Novotny, Korynne Russell, Maddison Satterfeal, and Jeremy Swanson.
The Teen Art Group was founded in 2018 at University Galleries by director and chief curator Kendra Paitz, with support from the Illinois Prairie Community Foundation—Mirza Arts and Culture Fund. Each academic year, fifteen students from Bloomington High School participate in professional development activities, take a field trip to Chicago, and curate an exhibition. The 2019–2020 cohort was led by Paitz; Monica Estabrook, Bloomington High School art teacher; and Tanya Scott, University Galleries’ curator of education. The group visited the Art Institute of Chicago and Millennium Park; participated in art-making workshops, meetings, and exhibition tours at University Galleries; attended an artist lecture by Nazafarin Lotfi; curated this exhibition of Lotfi’s work; interviewed the artist ; and developed ideas for educational workshops. Due to the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, the group’s last three meetings were conducted via Zoom and this exhibition transitioned to an online format. The 2019–2020 Teen Art Group was supported by another grant from the Illinois Prairie Community Foundation—Mirza Arts and Culture Fund.
Nazafarin Lotfi: Subtle Time presents twenty recent sculptures, drawings, and photographs, and premieres two performance videos created since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Rooted in her experiences of growing up in post-Revolutionary Iran and continuing her education and artistic practice as an immigrant in the United States, Lotfi’s works address temporal and physical displacement, the ambiguity of borders, and the disruption of expectations placed on individual bodies. She writes, “In all the different work that I do, there is an urgent need to create space, to open up the boundaries and to complicate borders.” For example, her recent paintings are based on her research on stylized forms in Islamic world maps and, in her words, ways to “map psychological landscapes drawn from lived experience.” Meanwhile, the geometric forms in Lotfi’s colored-pencil drawings are derived from the floor plans and architectural details of her own home, as well as those of her family and friends living internationally. Rather than creating representational drawings of specific locations, she addresses memories of space through her process of cutting shapes, combining portions and angles, and collapsing indoor and outdoor distinctions.
Comprised of papier-mâché, found objects, and layered graphite, Lotfi’s sculptures offer surprising relationships between positive and negative space, interior and exterior, lightness and heaviness. They evidence the physical touch of the artist, recall the forms of boulders and other geological formations, and serve as an extension of one’s body in space. Lotfi takes this idea beyond the studio, often carrying the deceptively lightweight sculptures through parks, lifting them near monuments, rolling them through crosswalks, and sitting next to them on bus stop benches, as ways to engage people in public. Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Lotfi has begun making performative videos of her walks through the desert near her Tucson home. In the 10-minute videos, the artist individually walks through the landscape, navigating terrain and wildlife but never encountering another human—the epitome of social distancing. She evidences gaining a deeper understanding of a place, while also providing a portal to a new landscape for so many who are sheltering-in-place in cities worldwide.
Nazafarin Lotfi was born in Mashhad, Iran, and is currently based between Chicago and Tucson, Arizona. She received both her MFA and her Post-Baccalaureate certificate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her BA from University of Tehran. The artist’s work has been exhibited at Brand New Gallery, Milan; Ana Cristea Gallery, New York City; DUVE Berlin, Berlin; soon.tw, Montreal; Everybody Gallery, Tucson, Arizona; and Chicago Artists Coalition, Logan Center at the University of Chicago, Regards, Arts Incubator, The Franklin, Goldfinch, Andrew Rafacz Gallery, and Ralph Arnold Gallery in Chicago. Lotfi has been awarded an artist residency by the Arts + Public Life and Center for the Study of Race, Politics, & Culture at the University of Chicago. She has received grants from the Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona; Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona; and the city of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Her work is represented by Regards, Chicago.
Resources
- Interview Video with Nazafarin Lotfi and the Teen Arts Group
- Interview with Kantara Souffrant and Nazafarin Lotfi
- Art-making Demo
- Educational Handout: Grades 7-12
Press
Selections from the Permanent Collection: Wonsook Kim
Open June 24 through August 3, 2020
University Galleries is still closed to the public but we've installed six light-filled works by alumna Wonsook Kim in our windows. These selections were part of the historic 2019 donation that included the naming of the Wonsook Kim School of Art and the Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts. Learn more about Wonsook Kim and access a video lesson created by University Galleries' curator of education, Tanya Scott.
Resources
Jen Bervin: Shift Rotate Reflect - Selected Works (1997-2020)
Open August 15 through December 13, 2020
Shift Rotate Reflect, the first survey of work by American poet and artist Jen Bervin, will present twenty-three solo and collaborative projects, artist’s books, embroideries, videos, drawings, prints, and a performance created from 1997–2020. The selected works demonstrate the interdisciplinary range of Bervin’s long-term research on topics including legacies of women artists and writers, relationships between text and textiles, and abstractions of language and landscape.
The exhibition will premiere Su Hui’s Picture of the Turning Sphere (2016–2020), a collaboration with filmmaker Charlotte Lagarde. The multi-channel video and textile installation, self-described as a “feminist listening room,” focuses on Chinese poet Su Hui and her 4th-century reversible poem, “Xuanji Tu.” Structured on an astronomical gauge and stitched in five colors, the poem was written in a 29 x 29-character grid and can be read in any direction to yield almost 8,000 possible interpretations. Bervin and Lagarde created a rotation of four projected videos featuring commentary from eight Chinese women: an algorithmic game theorist, calligrapher, art researcher, astrophysicist, artist, novelist, and literary scholars. Bervin and Lagarde also partnered with a contemporary embroidery studio in Suzhou, China, to create two new renderings of the poem using a specialized double-sided silk embroidery technique on translucent silk screens. The finished embroideries and a video projection of the embroidery process are included in the installation.
Three other major projects, in addition to individual works, will be featured in this exhibition: The Dickinson Composites (2004–2008), River (2006–2018), and Silk Poems (2010–2017). For Silk Poems, Bervin partnered with scientists at Tufts University to fabricate a nanoimprinted poem on a silk biosensor. Her silk research spanned thirty international nanotechnology and biomedical labs, textile archives, medical libraries, and sericulture sites. The full project is comprised of the nanoimprinted poem on a microscope for viewing; a video documenting Bervin’s research and process by Charlotte Lagarde; and the Silk Poems book featuring Bervin’s poem written from the perspective of a silkworm and composed in a six-character chain corresponding to the DNA structure of silk. River is a scale model of the Mississippi River from the geocentric point of view, hand-stitched in silver sequins and spanning 230 curvilinear feet. The Dickinson Composites, a series of 6 x 8 feet embroideries, is comprised of stitched composites of the variant marks American poet Emily Dickinson used in her manuscripts to link alternate words and phrases. These marks and the original line breaks were often omitted by editors for print editions, and Bervin describes The Dickinson Composites as being “aligned with mending, restitution, and the deeper gesture that Dickinson’s poems and variant marks make.”
Shift Rotate Reflect is curated by Kendra Paitz, University Galleries’ director and chief curator. This exhibition is supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Illinois Arts Council Agency, Harold K. Sage Foundation and the Illinois State University Foundation Fund. An exhibition catalogue, which is also supported by a grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, is forthcoming in 2021.
Artist Biographies
Jen Bervin’s projects have been exhibited at the Hong Kong University Museum and Art Gallery; Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa; Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne; The Power Plant, Toronto; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts; Tufts University Art Galleries, Medford, Massachusetts; Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; and Morgan Library and Museum, New York, among others. Bervin has authored eleven books and artist’s books. Her Silk Poems was a New Museum Book of the Year and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and her Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson’s Envelope Poems (with Marta Werner and Susan Howe) was a Book of the Year selection by The New Yorker. She has received grants, awards, and fellowships from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, Creative Capital, Foundation for Contemporary Art, SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Banff Centre, and New York Foundation for the Arts, among others. Bervin’s work is included in thirty collections, including Bibliothèque Nationale de France; Yale University; Brooklyn Museum; and the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Charlotte Lagarde has made more than twenty films, which have been aired on PBS, HBO, and the Sundance Channel, and exhibited at MASS MoCA. Her many awards include an Academy Award, the PBS Independent Lens Audience Award, and the Ashland Independent Film Festival’s Best Documentary award, as well as fellowships from Sundance, BAVC, and Camargo Foundation. Her project Colonial White was included in the exhibitions The Racial Imaginary Institute: On Whiteness at The Kitchen, New York City, and Great Force at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University as a city-wide participatory project in Richmond, Virginia. Lagarde serves on the Board of Directors of The Free History Project, and is the executive director of the Swell Foundation, and the COO & co-founder of B.Public.
Bervin and Lagarde are married and live and work in Connecticut near the Long Island Sound.
Resources
- Exhibition Video Tour
- Audio publication by Melissa Johnson on 1:1:Infinity
- Exhibition Checklist
- Reading List by Jen Bervin
- Art-making Demo: Draft Notation
- Art-making Activities: Grades K-6
- Art-making Activities: Grades 7-12
- Educator Handout: Grades K-6
- Educator Handout: Grades 7-12
- Silk Line Lesson Plan: Grades 3-4
