The Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago is a very well known art museum in Grant park, and it is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. I found myself getting lost in it while looking at all the amazing pieces of art. Having never been there, I had a great experience while spending hours there and barely scratching the surface of the museum. I enjoyed a lot of the art and seeing some of the pieces that I had previously only seen in textbooks was amazing.

I had never been to an art exhibition to such scale before so going to this one was a little intimidating, but when I got there I realized that a lot of people just like me were just there to see some great art. For me, being in that environment, I found myself spending less time looking at each piece and more just seeing as many pieces as I could in the time I had there. While I saw a lot more pieces I spent less time to understand them. Knowing that it was my first time going there I knew I wanted to go back and spend more time looking at the many pieces kept there. Some of the more famous pieces there were hard to get a good look at because most of the people there flocked to those pieces to get a good look.

Woman with a Fan
Jean Metzinger
Oil on canvas 1913

Make No Mistake about This
Wolfgang Plager
2008

There were a lot of pieces that I really enjoyed but here are just a few. Woman with a Fan by Jean Metzinger is a great piece that caught my attention right away because of its cubist style. I immediately noticed the multiple perspectives of the woman and the atmosphere of the painting. I spent a little while trying to figure out what exactly was in the painting. I really enjoy this style of painting it grabs my attention and keeps it guessing what the subject in the painting is doing. Make No Mistake about This by Wolfgang Plager is a video piece being projected on the wall by a film reel. Wolfgang hand printed the final statement of a death-row inmate on to a film reel which he then uses pulleys to direct it through a projector which is then projected on the wall. While you can read the statement on the actual film, it is almost impossible to make out any words on the actual wall projection. This caused me to almost stare at it longer and longer to try and make out the words. It wasn't until I got extremely frustrated that I thought to look directly at the film. The final piece, Magnetic Mountain, by Kurt Seligmann is a surrealist oil painting of what seems to be a very geometric mountain broken into pieces with many animal and other figures all on top of it. This piece caught my eye not so much because of the content of the image but rather how it was painted on the canvas. The colors as well as the contrast between the sharp and flowing lines really creates depth.

Magnetic Mountain
Kurt Seligmann

The Art Institute had an amazing variety of artwork all throughout the museum they had work from impressionism all the way to modern contemporary. While I tried to see every section of the museum there wasn’t enough time or energy in me to do so. I will definitely go back the next chance I get.

HOLIDAY TREASURES

McLean County Art Center

The Holiday Treasures exhibition in the McLean county art center was a great experience. The exhibition included a wide variety of art in a  variety of mediums. I had never been to the art center and it was a lot more incognito than I thought it was going to be. It was hiding in some trees next to a store of some kind. While the the exterior of the building wasn’t that eye catching the art inside definitely caught my eye.

There were works ranging from landscapes all the way to a baby chick looking at an egg, sunny side up, asking, “Are you ok?” This exhibition had such a wide range of artists() that at times I was struggling to find a theme of the show (going in thinking it would have some holiday theme), but I felt it showcased the artists’ work very well. There were a few pieces that I enjoyed a little more than the rest. Pieces like Don’t Count Your Chickens by Desiree Swanson who took a very humorous route in her art as well as a technical route that we see in the reflections of the glass sculptures she painted in her piece Birds of a Feather. There was also a number of pieces by Katie Kaelber Davis on wood panels that I thoroughly enjoyed. 1000 Memories-from the Portal was one of my favorite pieces from the exhibition. She uses many different mediums in the piece creating a tent like structure out of very geometric shapes. I also love the contrast the wood color has with the very bright and vibrant colors she chose to use in the actual image.

Holiday treasures was an interesting experience, while it didn’t influence me as much as other exhibitions I have been to it still showcased some create artwork that I enjoyed looking at.

Students of Normal

The Transpace Gallery at Illinois State University in the CVA is always a very simple great environment to view some great student works. It showcased a wide variety of mediums that included sculpture, video, painting, prints, and many more, all created by students at Illinois State. Each piece was created in their own way and you could tell each one was created by a different person with very different mediums and taste. Knowing some of the artists and having been in classes with a few I could really see their style manifest in their work.

Sarah Foote
Nobody Reads Anymore
Mixed media on canvas

Nobody Reads Anymore by Sarah Foote (mixed media on canvas) was a piece that caught my eye right away and after reading the title of the work I quickly came up with some ideas as to what it was trying to be. After a quick google search I found out Sarah seems to have a background in painting and graphic design and as a freshman she, with the help of some other students, made a sculpture of Reggie (Illinois state’s mascot) out of recycled materials, which now sits outside of Vrooman Center on the East side campus. Its interesting that she has a background in painting yet her work, including the piece in this exhibition seems to include a lot of sculpture and grids. I imagine the grid comes from her design background, but she mixes her painting and design very well in this piece by moving around the text from a page in a book to make it almost unreadable. The text also seems to represent caution tape that a police force would put on a doorway to a crime scene. The way it is just sloppily put in a cross shape all across the piece implying that Nobody Reads Anymore. The white “paint” over the text also seems to be censoring the “page”, or implying that people don’t notice, or realize the many things books can do, or how much you can learn from reading a book.

Lyzz Lundberg & Amanda Weygand
Hallway No. 5 : Swallows
Acrylic on archival inkjet print

Hallway No. 5 : Swallows by Lyzz Lundberge & Amanda Weygand (Acrylic on archival inkjet print) is a very bright piece that also caught my eye very quickly due to its bright and high value colors. At first I thought the colors were strips of duct tape placed over the picture with some acrylic mixed in, but the closer I came to the image I realized it was just thicker paint which gave it a little shine. When I look at this piece I see a hallway I walk down everyday. For it to be called “Hallway No. 5” kind of makes me think of it as a maze or one of the many hallways I walk down mindlessly daily. Everyday as a student we walk down all these always, almost unknowingly, as we follow our class schedule each day. I really think this piece is trying to show or represent the fact that as students we can get swallowed up in our schedules, classes, and work that we are kind of just mindlessly walking through hallways endlessly. Hallway No. 1, 2, and 3 on Monday then 4, 5, and 6 on Tuesday and repeat everyday of the week like robots.

Kale Stewart
Untitled
Kilncast glass, concrete
2014

Kale Stewart’s piece of concrete and kilncast glass is a blocky/curved sculpture that reminds me of my childhood yet the edge of adulthood I teeter on now. This piece makes me picture the alphabet blocks that young children or babies play with and stack because of the way each cube is placed on top of each other in this piece. It’s almost exactly like a baby or child would stack blocks. Yet it still makes me think of what a college student is going through: their final years before going out into the actual world and finding a job: no parents, no rules, responsibilities. Each block being right on the edge or the unstable look of the piece makes me think of life after college or life right now right (right before life after college).

Transpace is a great atmosphere to display student art and seems to always display great pieces. The gallery space is always full of great works and different mediums that get me thinking about all kinds of ideas and the people who made them.

Beatrix Reinhardt

Beatrix Reinhardt

"If one wants to, it becomes visible"

Beatrix grew up in Germany and earned her undergraduate at the Freie Universität Berlin and has exhibited her art all over the world. During the lecture Beatrix talked about just a few of her many works like the historic indoor and outdoor spaces, her trip to South Africa to document different battlegrounds, or her documentation of the Kumbh Mela (a mass Hindu pilgrimage).

To begin her lecture she talked briefly about her appreciation for architecture and landscapes. She thinks of it as "a record

First trip to South Africa

of human activity...residue collector..." or that architecture is related to "everydayness". I think by saying this she is trying to point out that buildings are created to accommodate us in our everyday lives and can be standing for hundreds of years or more. A combination of human touch and history can make for some amazing pieces of art that we live in or around in our everyday lives. After developing a growing interest in history of spaces/places she then traveled to South Africa (Kwazulu Natal) to take pictures of the different landscapes of battle grounds. After one unsuccessful trip she thought that nothing was going to come of the project. Until she went back and decided to keep this idea of archiving and keeping a scientific record of each battle in their own piece of work. This again seems to keep the theme of history

Second trip to South Africa

and significance of the battle grounds or just landscape in general. Although it isn’t a building it still has a history and mark on it that will always be there. Which brings me to her next project where she embossed images while in Siberia. Beatrix said that embossing was the best medium to represent Siberia because, “If one wants to, it becomes visible.” Just like the architecture or the battlegrounds in South Africa. Know that she knows the history, if anyone knows the history, it becomes visible to her. She now knows what happened there and changed how she perceives the building/landscape.

Beatrix Reinhardt really interests me because her view of the world. I like to think, to a small degree, that I occasionally think that way as well. I try my best to appreciate the world and all the commodities we take for granted. Her work gives off that vibe and without this lecture I would have never known by just seeing her works.

Beyond the Norm: An International Juried Print Exhibition

http://galleries.illinoisstate.edu/exhibitions/

Beyond the Norm: An International Juried Print Exhibition is a print exhibition organized by N.E.W being showcased in University Galleries at ISU, with three other exhibitions, as well as for other locations (McLean County Arts Center, Jan Brandt Gallery, and Transpace Gallery). It featured over 50 artist from North America personally selected by juror Susan Tallman (critic, author, and art historian at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago). The exhibition includes contemporary printmaking like lithography, intaglio, screen, woodcut, and even video. The exhibition begins as soon as you enter the gallery and wraps all the way around the right side of the building. The prints are all placed in rows while others are hanging above of others. Most of the prints were eye level or a little above eye level. 

Having worked with different types of print making before attending this exhibition I was already interested. I liked seeing all the different types of print and how different but similar each piece was. There were a few in particular that really caught my eye. 

Kristen Powers Nowlin
Designed to Endure : Quick(en) Opportunity
Woodcut
2014

Designed to Endure: Quick(en) Opportunity by Kristen Powers Nowlin at first is a woodcut print of a Detroit street corner but after some research I learned that it is much deeper than that. Most of Kristen's art has to do with race, stereotypes, and the relationships groups of people have with each other. "For the past twenty years, my work has dealt with issues of race and gender... The work challenges the way American culture perceives and judges groups of people, as well as the way groups of people interact with one another. While some pieces intentionally and consciously use stereotypes as a critique of their absurdity, others explore the issues through personal narratives "(kristinnowlin.com/). Kristen's work clearly represents that in every way possible. Designed to Endure: Quick(en) Opportunity seems to be a relation between the "hierarchy" of wealth in Detroit. As I take a closer look at the woodcut it is a representation of the split in community and race. There are small hints like in the bottom right where you can see a cracked/old side walk while on the other side there is a very clean and new side walk (separation of race: Black bottom right while whites are on the top left). There are also bigger showcases of this concept. The police car right next to the run down building compared to the luxury black car waiting outside of the luxury building for the many people grouped outside waiting to be taken somewhere. This piece highlights exactly what Kristen has been doing for the past twenty years. 

Frances AshforthPyrocumulus, Carbon BlackMonotype2014

Pyrocumulus, Carbon Black by Frances Ashforth is a black and white monotype is a print of a pyrocumulus cloud. A pyrocumulous cloud is a cloud formed from intense heating of air (volcanic eruptions, forest fires). Ashforth grew up in New Hampshire on his grandparent's farm, which, he says, "allowed me to cultivate my view and fascination with the horizon line and its relationship between land, water & sky" (http://francesbashforth.com/information/about/). This explains why he made a print of the horizon and how he did it. I can't help but notice how everything in the print seems to blend together. He also talks about how the world moves at an extreme pace and maybe the extreme weather he portrays in this piece reflects that. 

Dana Tosic
Artifact #4
Serigraph
2016

Artifact #4 by Dana Tosic is a Serigraph print of what seems to be an abstract image of hands holding/pulling on something. Dana's work always seems to reflect everyday tasks and the time associated with them as well as in between them. Which is what I believe this piece to be as well. I can't seem to put my hand on exactly what it is suppose to represent but the piece caught my eye and I could look at it for days trying to figure out what exactly it is about. 

Beyond the Norm: An International Juried Print Exhibition was a great exhibition. I enjoyed every piece there, but these three in particular was what caught my eye. Even though each piece was different and came from the hands of a different artist with a different background they all seem to have similar quality in some way other than the medium, but I can't seem to put my finger on it. 

Danny Volk

"Social art"

Danny Volk

made-up w/ Danny Volk 

Danny Volk is a Chicago based artist with a background in theater and acting. He is most known for his show on Youtube made-up w/ Danny Volk, where he goes to different artist studios, asks them about their work and life while they attempt to do Danny's make up. Danny's art is unique in the sense that he works with people in all his projects, but they might not necessarily know that he is doing it or what exactly he is doing. I think of it as "social art". All of his art has a social aspect to it whether its online or in person for example DVNY. Danny decided he would pretend to be some other Danny Volk (who didn't have an Instagram at the time) on Instagram.

Danny Volk - The Gap Project

Danny Volk - The Gap Project "stories"

DVNY was almost a performance in a sense. He played the character of the rich, happy Danny Volk. Danny seemed to say it was all about the documentation and the reactions of the "audience" (the other Danny's friends/followers), but at the same time he really didn't know who his audience was. When he started to become this character, of sorts, he started to gain followers he didn't know (the other Danny's friends and family). All of this just ended up ending in the "audience" figuring out that it wasn't really the Danny they thought it was, which actually is actually hilarious now that I think about it. As funny as that project sounded Danny has also done some projects where he tries to physically interact with people. The Gap project, in simple form, was Danny working on the sales floor at a Gap, but he wanted it to become something that could establish relationships with people. Danny tried his best to create small one on one relationships and reactions from people. He did it any way he thought he could. Danny would even use physical touch to get a reaction out of people or some type of feed back. He would write down his encounters every time he had one and saved each one. The physical touch seems to be a re-occurring theme. In made-up w/ Danny Volk, Danny makes artists put make up on him in their studio while he asks them questions. Its kind of intrusive in a way as if he is trying to get a reaction out of them, "I wanted to defamiliarize their own studio..."

Danny Volk is interesting and refreshing. He seems to take social situations and make them into art. He takes everyday social situations and just by writing them down and analyzing them makes them intriguing. He takes normal everyday chores like applying make up to create a "defamiliarizing" environment. He is just different, but in a good way.  

Catch            

Spray paint on PVC-coated canvas tarpaulin, fan, and nylon rope

2016

University Galleries ISU

In Catch Claire Ashley creates a child like environment where viewers are bombarded with color, shape, form, and comfort. The piece is placed in the center of the large well-lit room with spherical pillow like sculptures hanging in a net of yellow rope. The sculptures, made out of PVC-coated canvas tarpaulin, are bursting out of the holes in the net. Each inflatable is shaped in its own unique way while familiar pastel colors are softly applied to each of them using spray paint.   

Ashley incorporates line into her three dimensional piece in many ways. She uses rope to create a net that holds the piece together, which can be interpreted as motherly support for the structure. She also uses the folds and creases to create lines along the surface of each form within the net making each sculpture seem human in a way. As each crease would represent maybe a fold in skin or stretch marks. An x seems to repeat throughout this piece as well as others in her exhibition. In her piece Bugs, she uses them to represent eyes, while in this piece she places them randomly throughout.  

Using PVC-coated canvas Ashley creates all kinds of figures and shapes, some simple blobs while others seem to have more specific forms. Some even seem human like with skin folds and limbs.  She creates this by creasing the PVC-coated canvas in different areas stiches or patches those areas, which creates different lines and shapes.

Ashley doesn’t seem to incorporate much lighting into this work, but the room was very well lit from the florescent lights above the piece and the large windows to the right as you enter. There is very little shadow in the piece other than the very little inside the pile of sculptures.

Catch is full of high value and a mix of primary and secondary pastel colors. The colors on the piece are all pastel or neon colors. Each color is applied very carefully using spray paint to give the forms a very soft feel, which again makes me think of childhood or an Easter theme.

Speaking of the texture, each form looked as if it was a fluffy pillow with extremely soft fabric. The spray paint was applied almost in a tie-die pattern giving the piece a very mellow and happy look.

Ashley uses the space in a very creative way. Knowing that she couldn’t put every individual piece in the exhibition she decided to put them all into one. As one of the bigger pieces in the exhibition it takes up a large amount of space and not just vertically but horizontally as well. As the center of the room it is clear she wanted most of the attention on this piece out of all the rest. Space is also used inside the piece itself. The net holding all the sculptures is very small compared to the size of the sculptures. So each sculpture is almost bursting out of the net trying to get free.

Ashley’s piece is a great display of design, creativity, and imagery. Catch is a very well balanced piece with soft child like colors and forms. Knowing that Ashley is a mother and she created the child like theme throughout the exhibition I want to conclude that she was trying to create something to do with her motherhood.  A toy box first comes to mind.  The yellow net represents a box full of toys, but I thought more about motherhood and I thought of a metaphorical womb. Some of the sculptures seem to have limbs on the end giving them a life like form. Each sculpture also seems to be trying to break out of the net holding them back. Maybe this represents her hesitation to let her children go, or let them leave the nest if you will.