artwalk at oakton - Oakton Community College
Transcription
artwalk at oakton - Oakton Community College
A R T WA L K AT OA K TO N 1 ince the founding of Oakton Community College in 1969, the interaction between art and its audience has held an integral value. The College’s first president, Dr. William A. Koehnline, an educator, artist, and art collector, subscribed to the philosophy that “art is a creative response to life,” and envisioned the campus as an environment to enrich and stimulate students, staff, faculty, and the community. The seeds sown by Dr. Koehnline have continued to blossom under the leadership of his successors, Thomas TenHoeve (1984-1995) and Margaret Lee. The first exhibitions at Oakton were installed in the Learning Resource Center at the Des Plaines Campus in 1984. The art gallery was named after Dr. Koehnline, as a tribute to his advocacy for the arts. In 1994, the gallery moved to a newly built space near the College’s main entrance. Renamed in 2005, the Koehnline Museum of Art hosts temporary exhibitions, while its permanent collection is on display in public areas throughout the Des Plaines campus and Ray Hartstein Campus in Skokie. As the size of the collection grows, a rotation plan will be developed. The non-traditional display of paintings and works on paper in the main corridors of campus buildings raises issues of safety and conservation. These concerns are addressed by implementing security measures, monitoring environmental conditions, and filtering light sources. However, the benefit of presenting works of art in public spaces is vividly effective. This immediate encounter between art and viewers provides a source of inspiration, a foundation for developing sensitivity to aesthetics, and tolerance and respect of artistic expression. The exhibitions and permanent collection also serve students enrolling in courses such as art history, museum studies, and the humanities. Oakton’s art collection focuses on modern and contemporary art. The policy of collecting also encourages the acquisition of works created by Illinois and Chicago artists, which currently comprise about 60 percent of the collection. In the 1980s, the College was a subscriber to the Plucked Chicken Press publications. The S 1978 1984 1994 1981 2 reputation of Will Petersen as a master printer encouraged many prominent artists to bring their lithographs to the Plucked Chicken Press for printing. Therefore, prints acquired through this program represent a prime collection of Illinois and Chicago artists. In 1999, seven large-scale sculptures were moved to Oakton from Pier Walk, the annual show of outdoor sculpture at Chicago’s Navy Pier, initiating a long-term loan program that dramatically expanded the sculpture park at the Des Plaines campus. Over the years, state-funded programs like Percent-for-Art and the Illinois Arts Council have assisted in bringing significant sculptures and paintings to the campus. Many other works were funded by Oakton’s Educational Foundation and the Board of Student Affairs. The generosity of private donors and artists remains a great source of growth to Oakton’s art collection, which nearly doubled in size in the first five years of the 21st century. This catalog and guidebook of the art collection at the Des Plaines campus of Oakton Community College includes the Koehnline Museum of Art; the Rolana Tankus Fox Gallery of Prints; the Oakton Sculpture Park; and the paintings, sculptures, and graphics exhibited throughout the building’s main corridors. We look forward to the publication of a companion catalog and guidebook for works on display at the Ray Hartstein Campus in Skokie. I would like to thank Granvil and Marcia Specks, MGS Foundation, and the Board of Student Affairs, for their gracious consideration in the publication of ArtWalk at Oakton. Nathan Harpaz, Manager and Curator, Koehnline Museum of Art 1978: Artist Cynthia Weiss and students painting a mural at the first campus in Morton Grove. 1981: William A. Koehnline’s mixed media Child’s Drawing in Three Dimensions, on display near the Early Childhood Education Center. 1984: The William A. Koehnline Gallery at the College’s Learning Resources Center. 1994: The William A. Koehnline Gallery’s new building. 1999: Sculpture from Pier Walk arrives at the Des Plaines campus. 2001: Students are inspired by Richard Hunt’s exhibition, Wings. 2005: Terrence Karpowicz installing his sculpture, A New Beginning. 1999 2005 2001 3 The order of the artwork in this catalog is by location. Use the map on the inside back cover for orientation. 1 KO E H N L I N E M U S E U M O F A R T 2 RICHARD HUNT (American, b. 1935) Richard Hunt was raised in the Woodlawn neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. He entered the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 1953, and in his senior year studied with the Chilean-born surrealist painter, Roberto Matta (1911-2002), during the artist’s three-week visit to the school. Hunt first gained national recognition when the Museum of Modern Art in New York purchased one of his sculptures. Hunt’s work reflects his belief that artists are free to interpret nature, and his expressionistic sculptures never fully depart from natural sources. Along with the linear forms of Matta, Hunt’s other early influences include the welded metal sculptures of David Smith (1906-1965), Julio Gonzalez (1876-1942), and his colleague Joseph Goto (1920-1994). 2A. Serpentine Regarded as a leading American Winged sculptor with international status, 1981, Bronze, 19 in. H Hunt has demonstrated deep affecGift of Dr. Marvin G. and Helene Jumes, 1981.2 tion for his native city through significant contributions as a teacher at SAIC and the University of Illinois at Chicago in the 1960s; as a role model to generations of apprentices trained at his Lill Street studio; and the creation of more than 30 public works on exhibit throughout the area. Hunt’s work can be found in numerous museum collec2B. Page of Forms 1969, Lithograph, 22 in. x 30 3/4 in., Gift of the Oakton tions in the United States and abroad. He has executed comEducational Foundation and Board of Student Affairs, 1999.12 missions for the city of New York, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Memphis, and Howard University in Washington, D.C. In 2001, the Hunt exhibition, Wings, was presented at Koehnline Gallery. The bronze Serpentine Winged includes representative elements of the artist’s work: mythology and hybrid composition (a complex assembly using several forms). Inspiration for Serpentine Winged came from the ancient Minoan Snake Goddess, who held two snakes in her hands. The snake or serpentine in Hunt’s bronze appears on the bottom, crawling from the ground over the figure’s dress. Pre-historical fertility figurines (“Venuses”) provided inspiration for the upper torso. The head of the figure is a reclining cat, influenced by Bastet, the ancient Egyptian goddess of fertility and love. The hands of Serpentine Winged have become wings, like the victory goddess Nike. The wings symbolize freedom, another element commonly found in Hunt’s work. Serpentine Winged was published by Lakeside Studio in Michigan. 4 T E R R E N C E K A R P OW I C Z 3 (American, b. 1948) Terrence Karpowicz received his MFA from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign in 1975, and his sculptures are included in many public and private collections. He also has participated in a variety of solo and group exhibitions, including the Chicago and Vicinity Show at the Art Institute of Chicago (1974), 33rd Illinois Invitational at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield (1981), Pier Walk at Navy Pier, Chicago (19992001), and Sculpture in Chicago Now at Koehnline Gallery (2001). His many commendations include a Fulbright-Hayes Grant to the United Kingdom (1975), grants from the Illinois Art Council (1980-1990), and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1980, 1982). In addition to sculpting, his various art projects have included repairing and preserving wind and water mills in England (1975-1976), sitting on the board of directors of Chicago’s NAME Gallery (1979-1983), and serving as executive director of 3D-Chicago (1995-2000), which organizes the annual Pier Walk exhibition at Chicago’s Navy Pier. Karpowicz is particularly drawn to tension at the point of contact, or “joint,” between disparate materials. By joining irregular, organic materials (such as wood limbs and granite shards) to machine-tooled geometric shapes of metal, he creates A New Beginning actual or implied kinetic relationships among the elements of the sculpture. 2003, Granite and steel A New Beginning is composed of granite from Milbank, South Dakota, with 113 in. H x 46 in.W x 40 in. D hollow steel rings welded to the ends. A large square of gray granite is used as a On loan from the artist 2005.2 footprint to stabilize the top stone. A shattered globe sits atop the granite column, and appears to be regenerating from within, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. The column of granite, weathered and worn by time, is balanced gracefully on a pedestal of increasingly larger steel rings that recall growth patterns in nature. As in other works by the artist, A New Beginning also may be perceived as a human body embracing hope with outstretched hands. The sculpture previously was on display in Lincoln Park, Chicago (2003) and the Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, Florida (2004). B E N WO I T E N A 4 (American, b. 1942) Ben Woitena was born in San Antonio, Texas, and since 1971 has lived in Houston. He received his BFA degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1964 and his MFA from the University of Southern California at Los Angeles in 1970. Woitena taught fine art at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles; Lubner Dimondstein School of Fine Art, Los Angeles; Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts, Idyllwild, California and Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Woitena has long been professionally committed to the arts in Texas. In 1986, he was appointed artistic supervisor for Around Midnight the replication of the Goddess of Liberty figure for the State 2000, Steel and bronze, 18 ft. H x 283/4 ft. W x 15 ft. D On loan from the artist, 2000.23 of Texas Capitol at Austin. For more than a decade he served as commissioner of the Houston Municipal Art Commission. In 1988, Woitena was commissioned for the Jack Kerouac Commemorative at Lowell, Massachusetts. In preparation, Woitena spent a year doing research on Kerouac. The commemorative park is structured in the form of a mandala, designed to amplify the relationship between quoted texts and the visual images that inspired them. Since 2000, Woitena has participated in the annual outdoor sculpture show at Navy Pier in Chicago. Around Midnight was shown at Pier Walk 2000 and moved to the Oakton Sculpture Park at the end of the exhibition. Consisting of two rival elements—a monumental X shape in black industrial steel and organic green bronze trunks—Around Midnight also reveals a relationship between text and meditative space. The inspiration for this sculpture was a statement by author Henry Miller: “You must create the very world you wish to inhabit—down to the last detail. Time spent in railing against society, laws, this and that, is wasted.” 5 5 JOHN KEARNEY (American, b. 1924) Born in Omaha, Nebraska, John Kearney was trained at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Kearney has been a teacher and mentor to hundreds of young artists who found instruction and studio and exhibition space at his Contemporary Art Workshop in Chicago. The workshop was founded in 1949 by Kearney, Leon Golub (1922-2004), Cosmo Campoli (1922-1996), and Ray Fink (1922-1998). Kearney is well known for using car bumpers to create sculptures. Early efforts were experimental, but he soon developed a tighter, more condensed style, and began welding sections of new chrome bumpers into life-size representations of animals. Camels, frogs, bison, and the artist’s favorite subject, goats, all have found their way into private gardens and public locations throughout the U.S. In 1976, Kearney made 26 goats from car bumpers for a show in Wichita, Kansas. He also has devoted exhibitions to a specific theme, such as endangered species and domestic animals. Among his best-known bumper constructions in the Chicago area is Elephant at Lincoln Park Zoo. White Tail Deer resulted from a sculpture competition by the Oakton Spirit Committee. Deer are common in the woods surrounding Oakton, but Kearney did not create this replica from car bumpers. White Tail Deer is actually a bronze casting with “bumper-style” elements. White Tail Deer 1994, Bronze, 57 in. H Gift from the Board of Student Affairs, 1994.2 6 M I K E B AU R (American, b. 1951) Mike Baur was born in Kansas City, Kansas, and did farm work from a young age. In college he made polyester resin sculptures—all of which were destroyed when a tornado struck campus during his senior year. He then started working in concrete and learned how to reinforce his sculptures with steel. Baur earned his BFA in 1973 from Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, and his MFA from the University of Illinois at Muel Urbana-Champaign in 1976. He has lived in the Chicago area since 1976. 1988, Limestone and steel Baur’s commissioned sculptures are in the collection of the College 12 in. H x 27 in. W x 15 in. D, Gift of the Broido of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, Illinois; Northpoint Marina Collection, Winthrop Family Collection, 2004.11 Harbor, Illinois; Autopistas del Mediterraneo, Barcelona, Spain; Harper College, Palatine, Illinois; Sears/Unibank, Chicago; State of Illinois Building, Chicago; and Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy Collection, Aurora, Illinois. His sculptures also have been included in the Pier Walk sculpture show at Navy Pier, Chicago, and Northshore Sculpture Park in Skokie. Following his 2003 solo exhibition at Sonia Zaks Gallery in Chicago, Alan Artner, art critic for the Chicago Tribune, wrote, “Baur makes magic from steel and concrete.” The process of creating such magic is revealed in Victor Cassidy’s essay in Sculpture magazine (July/August 2001): “Mike Baur sees forms, fixes them in his memory, and builds them into concrete, steel, and stone sculptures. The forms he starts with might be bridge structures he observes while driving, the shapes of concrete barriers on a highway under construction, or a piece of scrap steel.” In the sculpture Muel, the rustic limestone is stressed—almost squeezed—by the industrial steel machine-like element, evoking an ecological struggle between nature and man-made objects. “My work is about form, material, and relationship between forms,” says Baur. “People may see shapes in my sculptures that suggest something in real life, but these resemblances are accidental. My intentions are always formal.” 6 B A R RY T I N S L E Y 7 (American, b. 1942) Barry Tinsley was born in Virginia and attended both the College of William and Mary and the University of Iowa. He was a teacher until 1978 when he moved to Chicago to pursue his art full time. Today, Tinsley’s sculptures are part of many public and corporate art collections, including the Koffler Foundation Collection and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. His work also has been included in the Illinois Arts Council Traveling Exhibition. In 1981, Windgap, commissioned by the Deer Path Art League, was placed in front of the Lake Forest (Illinois) Recreation Center. The following year, Breakwater was erected in a park in Glencoe, Illinois. Jetty, located near the intersection of Devon and Clark Streets in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, was installed as the city’s first Percent-for-Art Program sculpture. This program required Silver Oak that a percentage of the cost of con1983, Stainless steel, 17 ft. H x 40 ft. W x 10 ft. D, Percent-for-Art Program, Illinois Capital struction and renovation of municipal Development Board, 1983.1 buildings be set aside for artwork. For Jetty, Tinsley welded together Cor-Ten steel plates nearly three-quarters of an inch thick to create a variety of forms that were then connected with bolts and small metal plates. These were set in concrete footings, creating a four-ton sculpture measuring nearly 48-feet long, 14-feet high, and 15-feet deep. Silver Oak was funded by the Illinois Capital Development Board through the state’s Percent-for-Art Program. The dramatic polished stainless steel sculpture soars over the campus lake. In the sculpture, organic forms emerge from the ground, rise toward the sky, and descend into the water, creating an interaction of the basic elements: earth, water, and air. Tinsley designed the sculpture to reflect the colors of these basic elements, as well as frame other aspects of the surroundings, including the picturesque peninsula beyond the lake. STEVEN FEREN 8 (American, b. 1951) Cleveland native Steven Feren received his MFA from Rutgers University in 1981 and began teaching in the art department at the University of WisconsinMadison in 1982. Feren’s primary medium is glass, and his work is shown throughout the country, in museums, art centers, universities, schools, and government settings. Transferred to Oakton from Pier Walk 1999 at Chicago’s Navy Pier, Kristallnacht is the artist’s tribute to the human potential to confront oppression with heroism. In November 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Jew studying in Paris, learned that his family and more than 15,000 other Polish Jews had been forcibly transported from Germany to the Polish border. The act so angered Grynszpan that he shot and killed a member of the German Embassy staff in Paris. Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, used this incident to incite Germans in bloody vengeance against the Jews. On the night of November 9, 1938, and into the next day, German police and firefighters stood idly by as Nazi storm troopers, members of the SS, and Hitler Youth retaliated throughout Kristallnacht Germany, Austria, and other Nazi-controlled areas. Nearly 100 Jews were killed 1999, Steel, concrete and glass and hundreds more injured. More than 7,500 businesses were destroyed and 8 ft. H x 8 ft. W x 2 ft. 4 in., D, 267 synagogues burned. This evening of terror is forever known as Kristallnacht, 1999.24 “The Night of Broken Glass.” Kristallnacht presents a figure positioned off-balance on a shining black pedestal, symbolizing sacrifice on an altar. The figure is covered with small, colored fragments of glass engraved with the names of Holocaust victims. On the pedestal is a book made of clear glass, inscribed with the Hebrew word for “Remember.” 7 9 J E R RY P E A R T (American, b. 1948) Jerry Peart, a native of Winslow, Arizona, came to Chicago in 1972, the year he received his MFA from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Attracted by a thriving community of sculptors that included John Henry, Richard Hunt, and Steven J. Urry, Peart decided to stay in Chicago when Urry asked for his help on a project. In 1978, Peart helped found Construct Gallery, which promoted large-scale public sculpture through exhibitions until it closed in 1983. Peart works on a monumental scale, frequently outdoors and often in an urban setting. His large welded and painted sculptures are site specific. The subjects are often figurative and suggest, through the juxtaposition of materials and form, both the industrial and the organic. Peart places his sculptures directly on the ground to eliminate any barrier between the observer and the artwork. People climb, play, or simply rest upon many of his public pieces nationwide. Hoop La La Peart unites geometric and organic forms to create energy and move1982, Welded aluminum ment. Asymmetrical shapes weave complex compositions that shift with 86 in. H x 62 in. W x 84 in. D Funded by the Illinois Arts Council each vantage point. Light bouncing off smooth surfaces enhances the 1982.1 dynamism of a work. Works may be monochromatic, but Peart frequently combines colors to establish a mood and animate a subject. Hoop La La was commissioned by Oakton Community College students. Peart, who taught an art class at Oakton in the 1970s, dedicated this sculpture to a crucial stage of young adults: being in and out of school. Alpha and Omega: Small Sculptures and Models by Jerry Peart was the title of a Koehnline Gallery exhibition in 2003. 10 JA M E S M c N E I L L M E S P L E (American, b. 1948) James McNeill Mesple studied in Chicago at the School of the Art Institute and Northeastern Illinois University, as well as the University of Missouri, Columbia. He developed an interest in classical mythology during summers spent with his Osage grandfather, who shared with the young boy Native American tales of nature and animals. The “battle of the cosmos,” a struggle between good and evil, is a theme that inspires many of Mesple’s paintings. His work reflects man’s quest to obtain spiritual enlightenment and creative freedom, and captures the spirit of Prometheus who, throughout history, has symbolized unyielding strength that resists oppression. Inspired by the artistry of the Middle Ages, Mesple mixes his own pigments to create colors. “Before oil paints, artists mixed crushed stone powder with egg yolk for an elegant finish,” he explains. Called marouflage, this process was used to cover the caskets of mummies in ancient Egypt. Blue Moonlight Blue Moonlight depicts the visages of a man and a woman contained 2004, Egg tempera and oil on canvas 48 in. x 36 in., On loan from the artist within two trees, a chestnut and an oak. Although facing each other, their 2005.1 eyes never really meet, like the characters in Effie Mihopoulos’ poem, Blue Moonlight. The blue moonlight in the painting reveals blue actors on a stage, inspired from this line of the poem: “A blue parrot, a blue parade made up of an actor, a dancer, a musician, and a traveler, moving forward through life.” As their lives evolve (represented by the ripening fig), the parade continues, observed from above by a bird perched on the oak tree’s uppermost branches. 8 AU G S T I N P O R T I L LO 11 (Mexican, b. 1960) Born in Mexico City, Agustin Portillo is recognized throughout the Mexican art community not only for the quality of his work, but also for his passionate commitment to the rights, dignity, and empowerment of the artists and culture of his native country. In 1996, he staged a five-day hunger strike in front of the Palace of Fine Art in Mexico City. Portillo demanded respect and fair treatment for his fellow artists and their work and the victims of governmental abuses, and denounced the corrupt actions of the leaders of Mexico’s art programs and institutions. His most recent pacific act, in A. America - A.32 B. America - R.57 2001, caused him to abandon his country by agreement 2003, Oil on canvas 2003, Oil on canvas with the office of the Mexican president. 60 in. x 48 in., Gift of Granvil 60 in. x 48 in., Gift of Granvil and Marcia Specks, and Marcia Specks, Since then, Portillo has spent most of his time in MGS Foundation, 2003.11 MGS Foundation, 2003.10 Chicago, where he became inspired by the diversity of the city to realize a series of paintings entitled America. Formally inspired by Mexican muralists and expressionism, Portillo looks at a variety of Americans in festive situations, which serve to conceal their collective fears and struggles for survival. Portillo’s paintings are in public collections throughout Mexico and the U.S., including Truman College, Chicago; Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, Chicago; The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago; CU Art Museum, The University of Colorado, Boulder; The Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; The Mexican Museum, San Francisco; and the San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas. CY N T H I A W E I S S a n d M I R I A M S O C O LO F F 12 (American, b. 1953, American, b. 1949) Cynthia Weiss and Miriam Socoloff are both artists and teachers who have received grants to study mosaic techniques in Italy. They previously collaborated on several mosaic projects in the Chicago area, including the North Shore Congregation in Glencoe and the Mayer Kaplan Jewish Community Center in Skokie. Weiss received her MFA in painting from the University Swing Suite of Illinois at Chicago. As a member of the Chicago Public 2002, Venetian glass mosaic, 6 ft. x 14 ft. Gift of Sylvia and Irving Footlik, 2002.2 Art Group, she directed large-scale public art projects that invited community participation. In 1978, Weiss and Oakton students painted a mural inside one of the buildings on Oakton’s original campus in Morton Grove (see page 2). Weiss works as an arts education consultant with the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education in the Chicago Public Schools, helping teachers integrate the arts into their teaching. Her public mosaic work in Chicago includes the fountain in front of Navy Pier; the Chicago Children’s Museum; Rudy Lozano Branch of the Chicago Public Library and various public schools. Miriam Socoloff received her BFA from Northern Illinois University and MA in human administration from Spertus College in Chicago. She also completed post-graduate courses at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Socoloff has taught art over four decades, mostly at inner city high schools. She also has served as curriculum coordinator for Chicago Public Schools/Gallery 37 Advanced Arts Education Program, and for more than a dozen years was the lead artist in the Urban Gateways at Gallery 37 bench and furniture paintings program. Scoloff received the Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1998. Swing Suite was commissioned to highlight the entrance to Oakton’s renovated Performing Arts Center. The artists first laid small Venetian glass pieces on a large board in their studio. At this stage they were assisted by Juan Angel Chavez, Chris Silva, Julia Sowels, and Ginny Sykes. Once the arrangement was completed, a clear tape was affixed to the surface, then cut in sections that were installed directly on the exterior wall. Swing Suite was inspired by Henri Matisse (1869-1954), the 20th century painter who used a brilliant color scale to create images of theater, dance, and music. The flying leaf and circular lines were composed to reflect the spirit and soul of the arts at Oakton. 9 13 B O B BY J O E S C R I B N E R (American, b. 1957) Bobby Joe Scribner earned a BFA from the University of Arizona in 1989, and received his MFA from Northern Illinois University in 1993. Since 1994, he has taught at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, where he developed a figurative sculpture program. Scribner also is an activist who volunteers his skills and time to the community. His projects include a sculpture workshop with behaviorally disordered grade school children in Palatine, Illinois; Art Workshop, Children’s Visit to Home Elderly in Tucson, Arizona; and the Nine Points Alliance, cultural exchange with Oaxaca, Mexico. Scribner has participated in numerous national sculpture exhibitions, including the annual Pier Walk at Navy Pier, Chicago. His works are on display at Hemmens Auditorium, Elgin, Illinois; Powerstation Community Art Center, Hammond, Indiana; Nogales High School, Nogales, Arizona; and in private collections. Is Endless, Is Not was first exhibited at Pier Walk 1999, and later at the Northshore Sculpture Park in Skokie, Illinois. The work belongs to a series of large steel sculptures based on abstractions of the human figure that Scribner constructed over the course of a decade. Is Endless, Is Not 1999, Steel, 15 ft. H x 6ft. W x 5 ft. D On loan from the artist, 2001.16 14 R AY K AT Z (American, b. 1938) Ray Katz produced his first sculpture in 1965, and within two years began exhibiting his work. He received his MFA from Detroit’s Wayne State University in 1968, and since then has taught drawing, sculpture, and design at Oakland Community College in Auburn Hills, Michigan. Katz has won several awards for his works, which are part of many public and private collections. He has used many media, but his passion is metal, because it serves as a metaphor for his formal and philosophical concerns and as a reflection of his life experiences. Katz is committed to large-scale work, so his sculpture is most often installed outdoors. Transcendent is an abstract tribute to the evolutionary and universal processes inherent in life’s journey. Shapes of Transcendent square, circle, grid and rails create a bonded formula 1999, Painted steel, 161/2 ft. H x 141/2 ft. W x 181/2 ft. D that exists by the unique structural combination. On loan from the artist, 1999.13 “Transcendent incorporates ideas of movement from one plane or state of existence to another,” says Katz. “Ideas such as passage, gateways, metamorphosis, and manifestation allude to an evolutionary process we all share. Through the creative process, a hierarchy of construction elements become symbols for these concepts by celebrating each as an event in the form of a sculpture.” 10 G E O R G E C R A M E R 15 (American, 1938-2004) George Cramer received his BS in design in 1968 from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and his MFA two years later from the University of WisconsinMadison, where he continued to teach art for many years until his retirement. His paintings, sculptures, and prints have been displayed nationally in many exhibitions and are included in major public collections. Cramer is one of the pioneers of computer art, having discovered the new medium in 1978. “In my traditional paintings,” he says, “I used to spend days and days layerIndians Dreams ing by hand in order to get the images from different 1990, Lithograph after digital, 283/4 in. x 413/4 in. cultures to interact with each other. But now, suddenly, Gift of the artist, 2000.8 I can take a profile of a face with a camera and merge it electronically with a digitized image from 2000 BC.” For many years Cramer headed the art and 3-D imaging department at the University of Wisconsin. As an educator and leader in the school of visual arts, particularly art and computer technology, Cramer has witnessed over several decades the emergence of a new aesthetic. “I use computer technology because that technology allows me to bring forward the ancient genetic codes into today’s climate of power and change,” he says. “I am making art because I have to. I have seen ‘too much now’ to not care if beauty and kindness are left behind by our developing technical culture.” Cramer has traced his heritage back to Buckingham Palace guards, to the creamers of Alsace-Lorraine, and to the Native American tribe of the Iroquois. Indians Dreams finds the artist gazing into his own roots, and Native American mysticism in particular. The composition consists of authentic artifacts like fabrics and tipi forms, but the fragmentation of elements creates a genetic code. The symbolic dominant color red telegraphs the tragic fate of the artist’s ancestors. J E A N E M c G R A I L 16 (American, b. 1947) Jeane McGrail earned her MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 1972, and in 1986 received her teaching certificate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her solo exhibitions in Chicago took place at Jung Institute (1992) and Truman College (1991). She has participated in many group exhibitions including Space 900 Gallery, Chicago; National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington D.C.; and the Evanston Art Center, Evanston, Illinois. Her B. Mystic 22 A. Mystic 2 works are in the collection of The National 1998-99, Digital print, 13 in. x 10 in. 1998-99, Digital print Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington 2001.11 13 in. x 10 in., 2001.10 D.C.; Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College, Chicago; The University of Chicago; Printmaking Workshop, New York; and the University of Milwaukee. Mystic 2 and Mystic 22 were displayed in the 1999 Koehnline Gallery exhibition, Red. Both prints are part of the artist’s “Anishinaabeg Mokaun” series, which is centered in awareness of the artist’s Ojibwe heritage and combines the technique of the work with the philosophy of healing. “The maple transforms to savage flame-tones igniting with earthly nostalgias,” says McGrail. “This rite unleashes the Mnemosyne [mother of the Muses], mirroring a leaf’s lifetime—dapple gray rains, spring’s sepia mud, twisted crimson buds, quilled, furred, and legged cries, tint of cobalt skies. The maple envelopes posthumous fame, caressing and celebrating retrospective moments while etching its disintegrating morality.” 11 17 J O H N L . S E Y F R I E D (American, b. 1930) In the late 1960s, the Photographic Art and Science Foundation of Des Plaines, Illinois, commissioned John Seyfried to design a sculpture commemorating the pioneers of photography. Seyfried recalls the dilemmas that confronted him in the designing stage: “Who were these men? What challenges did they face? What tools did they use to create so many far-reaching advances? How might these elements be captured in a three-dimensional structure?” To find solutions to these questions, the artist analyzed photography as a synthesis of art and science. He learned the basics of how to properly combine light sensitive paper and film, a silver bromide emulsion, the light-shaping lens, and an illuminating source of light. Each element is included in the sculpture. Microscopic fibers became the model for the basic structure of the work. The tetrahedron design of the silver bromide crystal inspired the arrangement of the structure’s many lenses. The names inscribed on various lenses recPhotography Hall of Fame ognize the accomplishments of photography’s pioneers: Joseph 1968, Mixed media, 13 ft. H x 10 ft. W x 7 ft. D Niepce (1765-1833), Louis Daguerre (1787-1851), Matthew Brady (1823On loan from the International Photography Hall of Fame, 2001.17 1896), George Eastman (1854-1932), and Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946). Light, color, images, and shadows play across multiple lenses, reflecting the rapidly progressing state of the profession and the imagination photography strives to capture. The sculpture was installed outside the Des Plaines office of the Photographic Art and Science Foundation on October 25, 1968. In 2001, the sculpture was transferred to the Oakton Sculpture Park with the sponsorship of Frederick and Jayne Quellmalz. Frederick Quellmalz was secretary of the Photographic Art and Science Foundation when the sculpture was erected in 1968, and served later as chairman of the International Photography Hall of Fame. 18 M A R T I N B A E R (American, 1894-1961) Martin Baer was born in Chicago and attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1910 to 1914. Following graduation, he and his artist brother, George, opened Holbein Studios, later known as the Anarchist Studios. The studio closed in 1921, and Baer went to Munich, Germany, to study at the Academy under Moritz Heymann. Between 1924 and 1940, Baer was based in Paris while taking extended trips to Algeria, Spain, England, Belgium, and Holland. In 1937, he sketched a series of café portraits of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). He settled in Carmel, California, in 1941, became a director of the Carmel Art Association, and developed a strong friendship with photograB. Nude Woman A. Nude Man pher Edward Weston (1886-1958). In 1947, Baer moved to San c. 1910-14, Charcoal drawing c. 1910-14, Charcoal drawing Francisco and opened three studios between 1947 and 1961, the 231/2 in. x 15 in., Gift of Mr. 24 in. x 161/2 in., Gift of Mr. year he died. Herbert and Mrs. Edna von Herbert and Mrs. Edna von Baer’s exhibition record includes Galleries Durand-Ruel Plachecki, 2000.27 Plachecki, 2000.26 (Paris, 1926) and the Art Institute of Chicago (1926), and his works are in many public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Oakland Museum of California; and San Diego Museum of Art. A retrospective entitled A Memorial Exhibition of Paintings by Martin Baer was held in 1963 at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. These charcoal nudes were sketched while Baer was a student at SAIC, and they are academic in nature. Following his European study in the early 1920s, Baer’s style became more expressive. He was inspired by Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), El Greco (1541-1614), Lucas Cranach (1472-1553), and Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980). His early paintings also reveal an interest in primitivism, inspired by a journey to North Africa. 12 JA M E S A . K R AU S S 19 (American, b. 1945) Green Door 1996, Watercolor and acrylic on paper 8 in. x 8 in., 2004.15 James A. Krauss, professor and chair of art at Oakton Community College, was born in Philadelphia and received his BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia. He earned his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with a major in painting and minors in sculpture and printmaking. Krauss was an abstract painter for 30 years, working on very large canvases (see ArtWalk No. 91). In 1995, his focus became extremely small works on paper. Color and expression remain his primary interests, but the use of paper and intimate size has enabled Krauss to infuse his work with more subtle nuances and poetic moods. In 2003, Krauss was involved in a commission for Holy Spirit Community Church in Naperville, Illinois. Krauss created two large-scale paintings in acrylic paint and gold leaf on canvas. Krauss depicted the motifs of Ascension and Trinity using his abstract vocabulary. His work also has been included in numerous group shows and in two one-man shows at Jan Cicero Gallery, Chicago. R O B E R T S TA N L E Y 20 (American, b. 1942) Robert Stanley received his BA from the University of Dayton, Ohio, and his master’s degree from the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. Stanley was a professor of art at Oakton Community College for many years, until his retirement in 2002. He participated nationally in many exhibitions including a 2002 solo exhibition, Bracketed, at Koehnline Gallery. His works are in many private and public collections including Lubeznik Art Center, Michigan City, Indiana; Museum of Modern Art, Chamalières, France; Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago; Unity Foundation of LaPorte County, Indiana; and World Print Council, San Francisco. Stanley’s art is inspired by his surroundings, especially their hidden, ordering motifs. His unique works in acrylics and computer prints reflect influences such as Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Joseph Cornell (1903-1972), Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993), Sally Mann (b. 1951), and Bill Viola (b. 1951), as well as biologist Edward O. Wilson (b. 1929) and physicist Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976). The spaces and dissonances among the figures, dream images, landscapes, studio, and sub-atomic worlds in these works suggest order and enigma. Sin a ma was made while Stanley was working with Michael Sin a ma Rothenstein (1908-1993), a British artist interested in inking real objects 1974, Relief print and engraving for relief prints. The large rectangle at the top and the seats at the 351/2 in. x 221/2 in., 2004.14 bottom are found objects, whose character inspired the idea of two people sitting in a cinema. The large rectangle was a piece of burnt wood, perhaps suggesting the hellish reference. The engraving beneath the large rectangle—the “movie” being shown—is more idealistic, suggesting tensions and conflicts of existence. 13 21 B I L L M O L L (American, b. 1933) Bill Moll received his BS from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1956, and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1971. Since 1989 Moll has taught design, drawing, and painting at Oakton Community College. Moll has participated in many exhibitions in the Midwest and was honored in 1971 and 1973 at the annual exhibition, Thomas’ Foreplay Chicago and Vicinity, at the Art Institute 2001, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 211/2 in. x 46 in., On loan from the artist, 2004.13 of Chicago. Moll has exhibited at the annual faculty shows at Oakton Community College and also had a 2005 solo exhibition at Kohenline Gallery. In Thomas’ Foreplay, Moll applied pop and expressionistic images on a discarded canvas, which was painted during a time when minimalist abstraction was in vogue. Moll explores contradictions through line and thought as the focal point of his creative drive and process. His inspirations include artists such as Erich Heckel (18831970) and James Ensor (1860-1949), as well as Walt Disney (1901-1966) and Clarence Charles Beck (1910-1989). Combining expressionism with pop culture, irrationality, and myth, Moll’s paintings evoke tensions from worlds both real and fantastic. Moll also was inspired by his teacher and later colleague, Seymour Rosofsky (ArtWalk No. 33). Starting in 1978, Moll joined Rosofsky every Friday in his Chicago apartment, and they painted together. This friendship inspired the 2004 exhibition at Koehnline Gallery, Seymour Rosofsky: Fresh Glance, which featured Moll’s collection of Rosofsky paintings and prints. 22 J U DY R O B I N S (American, b. 1942) With her studio located in the heart of the River North gallery district, native Chicagoan Judy Robins has been active in the city’s art community since the early 1980s. An accomplished painter and figure artist, Robins specializes in stone carvings, from small, table-sized pieces to giant outdoor sculptures. Robins studied with master stone carvers at Sem Ghelardini’s Studio in Pietrasanta, Italy. Sem’s was one of the finest Italian marble carving studios in Italy, and the first to take on modern art. Artists from all over the world studied at Sem’s, including Henry Moore (1898-1986), Cesar Baldaccini (1921-1998), and Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988). In the early 1700s, explorers learned that “Che-ca-guo” was a Chippewa word that meant “wild onion,” or “wild garlic.” The Kickapoo and the extinct Mascoutins tribe pronounced it “Chikagou,” meaning powerful, great, mighty, or strong. These names were given to the trading center now known as Chicago, where onion, wild garlic, and skunk grass grew abundantly, and where the strong stench was widely known among visiting Native American tribes. The roots of Che-ca-guo/Wild Onion connect to the artist’s relatives Che-ca-guo/Wild Onion and ancestors. Her maternal great-grandmother was Native American. In 1999, Indiana limestone the early 1920s, her paternal grandfather ran the dance hall at White 10 ft. H x 4 ft. W x 3 ft. D On loan from the artist, 2001.18 Amusement Park on the city’s South Side, and her mother’s grandmother owned three apartment buildings near Graceland Cemetery, Robins’ childhood playground. The sculpture is made of Indiana limestone, the same durable material used in the construction of many famous landmark buildings in Chicago. Che-ca-guo/Wild Onion was on display at Pier Walk 1999, the annual sculpture show at Chicago’s Navy Pier. 14 R A N DA L L J E WA R T 23 (American, b. 1969) Randall Jewart graduated from Boston University School for the Arts in 1992, and six years later was named director of Washington, D.C.’s “It’s Sculpture!” project, which places outdoor sculpture in temporary downtown locations. From 2000 to 2003 he served as a director of the International Sculpture Center in New Jersey. Jewart lives and works in Austin, Texas. Upsidedown Man began life as a caryatid (a pillar that has human form) titled Standing Man. In this early form the figure stood firmly, with head bowed forward under the weight of an inner burden. It was a very moody piece. Then one morning, Jewart read the following passage in Friedrich Nietschze’s Zarathustra: “All good things approach their goal crookedly. Like cats, they arch their backs, they purr inwardly over their approachUpsidedown Man ing happiness: all good things laugh. A man’s stride betrays 1999, Limestone, 9 ft. H x 12 ft. W x 10 ft. D On loan from the artist, 1999.5 whether he has found his own way: behold me walking! But whoever approaches his goal dances. And verily, I have not become a statue: I do not stand there, stiff, stupid, stony, a column; I love to run swiftly. And though there are swamps and thick melancholy on earth, whoever has light feet runs even over mud and dances as on swept ice. Lift up your hearts, my brothers, high, higher! And do not forget your legs either. Lift up your legs, too, you good dancers; and better yet, stand on your heads!” That morning the stiff, stony Standing Man became the humorous, lively Upsidedown Man, a light-hearted monument to the need to invert our minds, our souls, and even our bodies, to be able to laugh at our efforts and intents. E R I C L I N D S E Y 24 (American, b. 1958) Eric Lindsey was born in Belleville, Illinois, and in 1978 earned an associate’s degree in fine art from Belleville Area College. One year later, Lindsey studied at the Art Institute in Kansas City, and in 1981 received a BFA from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Lindsey was attracted to stone sculpture from the beginning of his career. His work in stone carving and industrial stone allowed him to master the unique technique of the medium. Lindsey decided to work with stone (occasionally incorporating pieces of cast metal) because of its long tradition in art, dating back to pre-history, as well as the risks involved in a medium where errors are irreversible. He also was drawn to the lengthy methodical process that begins in the quarry and continues through many studies and, occasionally, models, and ends with the elimination of material from a raw block of stone. Chicago River Landscape Lindsey has participated in many exhibitions including Chicago and 1993, Barry gray granite Vicinity Show, Lill Street Gallery, Chicago (1983); Pier Walk Sculpture 72 in. H x 73 in. W x 36 in. D Exhibition, Navy Pier, Chicago (1996 – 2000); and City of Chicago Art in the On loan from the artist, 2005.3 Park, Wicker Park, Chicago (2002). His sculptures are in public collections such as South West Illinois Colleges, Belleville, Illinois, and Village of Oak Park, Illinois. Lindsey opened his first Chicago studio in 1981, and continues to work in a former west side foundry. At the time Chicago River Landscape was created, Lindsey’s studio was on the bank of the Chicago River. He lived several blocks away, and commuted by bicycle. The composition for Chicago River Landscape was inspired by a lifting bridge, resembling a road that turns up and disappears. The work also pays homage to American sculptor David Smith (1906-1965), specifically his linear metal sculpture, Hudson River Landscape (1951). 15 25 F I S H E R S TO L Z (American, b. 1961) Fisher Stolz, associate professor of art and sculpture at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, received his MFA from the University of Georgia. While an undergraduate, Stolz traveled to Tuscany, Italy, where he began to create sculpture using stone, steel, New Era and bronze, often in combination 2000, Steel, granite and aluminum, 10 ft. H x 20 ft. W x 35 ft. D with one another. His work has On loan from the artist, 2000.21 been exhibited in outdoor venues such as Grounds for Sculpture in New Jersey; Northshore Sculpture Park, Skokie, Illinois; and Navy Pier, Chicago. Outdoor campus exhibitions include Western Michigan University; The University of North Carolina-Asheville; the University of Alabama; and the University of Texas-Tyler. Exhibited at Pier Walk 2000 at Navy Pier, Chicago, New Era is one of a series of sculptures in which Stolz has incorporated a large sphere as a focal point. Placed in context by structural steel beams and arcing elements, the sphere becomes a metaphor for the individual, sometimes in danger, at other times protected. 26 J I M M c C O R M I C K (American, b. 1936) Jim McCormick was born in Chicago and in the 1960s attended the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in art and a master’s degree in painting and printmaking. He joined the faculty of the University of Nevada and taught a variety of art courses, including printmaking, until his retirement in 1992. McCormick has illustrated several books and co-authored Brushwork Diary, published by the University of Nevada Press. He is currently directing the activities of the Nevada Art Research Project at the Nevada Historical Society, documenting the lives of Nevada artists since the mid-19th century. Prints and drawings by McCormick have been featured in many solo exhibitions, including Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Transight Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina; University of Maine, Lithograph, 19 in. x 18 in. Orono; and the Sierra Nevada Museum of Art. McCormick’s works 1989, Gift of Cynthia Archer, 2000.14 also have been part of group exhibitions at the Pratt Graphics Center, New York; San Francisco Museum of Art; Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana; and the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. He has held one-man shows at Stremmel Gallery and the Sierra Arts Foundation, both in Reno, Nevada. In 1971, McCormick met Will Petersen and Cynthia Archer, founders of the Plucked Chicken Press, at Lakeside Studio in Michigan. He created a series of four small black and white lithographs featuring Petersen and Archer working at the stone prints studio. A decade later, McCormick came to the Plucked Chicken Press in Evanston, Illinois, to produce two lithographs with futuristic and technological motifs, Tansight and Six Zones. Six Zones is part of the permanent Plucked Chicken Press exhibition at the Ray Hartstein Campus. 16 B A R B A R A T R U P P 27 (American, b. 1950) Barbara Trupp was born in Nebraska and spent her childhood in Montana. She studied at the Banff Centre School of Fine Arts in Alberta, Canada; the University of Puget Sound; and the University of Michigan. Theban Archeaopteryx Lithographica was printed at the Plucked Chicken Press in Evanston, Illinois. “The stone is the shape of the Rosetta Stone, unlocking language, [a] key to the past,” says Tripp. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you came across a stone, chipped at it, and revealed layer upon layer of visual history, images from sophisticated Egypt back to Paleozoic trilobites? “Lithography stones, quarried from the Jura Mountains of Bavaria, reach us from the Jurassic period of the Mesozoic, bearing fossils of the first birds. The bird fossil looked like it was doing an Egyptian dance, and that reminded me of the wall paintings of the House of Eternity in Thebes. ‘Paint the walls brightly, cheerfully, so that our souls will take the form of birds and fly,’ said Sennefer, the mayor of Thebes, in the tomb of his Theban Archeaopteryx wife Meryet. Lithographica “Fossils and archeological evidence provide proof that others existed 1 1 1985, Lithograph, 36 /2 in. x 24 /2 in. Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation before us, and allow us to see their thoughts. The past is with us. Like 1986.10 Archaeopteryx, Sennefer and Meryet still fly through eternity, though frozen in stone. Above them is the protective eye of Horus. Trilobites represent a breathtaking explosion of Cambrian life forms. Between Archaeopteryx and Egypt, I wanted mammals. Petroglyphs. Human marks. Because my right hand is the trained hand, I drew with my left, childlike. And I drew with a stick, dipped in asphaltum, and a ratty old brush. After all, the Egyptians didn’t use Grumbacher brushes, did they?” A B B OT T PAT T I S O N 28 (American, 1916-1999) Abbott Pattison was born in Chicago and made the city his home for most of his career. A 1937 graduate of Yale University School of Fine Arts, he was an instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1946 to 1952. Pattison also lived and worked in China, Japan, France, and Italy. Bayscape Winter was Pattison’s first color lithograph, published by the Plucked Chicken Press in Evanston, Illinois. This work also is in the collections of the Portland (Maine) Museum of Art; Illinois State Museum, Springfield; and the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, Evanston. An award-winning sculptor, Pattison often worked Bayscape Winter on life-sized marble and stone statues, but most of his 1985, Lithograph, 21 1/2 in. x 261/2 in. works are single castings in bronze. His work has Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation, 1986.5 been exhibited throughout the world and is included in the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.; and the Israel State Museum. Pattison has an estimated 20 sculptures on view in the Chicago area, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, I Have a Dream, at Chicago State University, and Chicago Totem on Randolph Street. Pattison chose a totem to represent his native city because, “like Chicago, it is soaring, living, writhing with an animal force and energy.” 17 29 J O H N H I M M E L FA R B (American, b. 1946) Chicago native John Himmelfarb grew up in a household of artists, surrounded by their art and the countryside that inspired them. Himmelfarb completed his undergraduate studies in liberal arts with a major in architectural sciences at Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1970, he opened the Chicago studio where he continues to work. Himmelfarb has exhibited his work in numerous shows, nationally and internationally. More than 40 institutions include his work in their collections, including The Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum of Art; Musee d’Art Moderne; Physical Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The Baltimore 1983, Lithograph, 22 in. x 301/8 in. Museum of Art; Illinois State Museum, Gift of Dr. William A. and Rev. Phyllis Koehnline, 1985.58 Springfield; Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University; and National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. Himmelfarb’s exhibition Inland Romance was on display at Koehnline Gallery in 2001. Himmelfarb’s work reflects a curious amalgam of postwar expressionism and surrealism. He is influenced by the abstractionism of Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), with an emphasis on overall gesture and mark making, as well as the art brut (naive) expressionism of Jean Dubuffet (ArtWalk No. 79). Himmelfarb has been affected by 20th century art history, yet has managed to move beyond these influences to develop his own powerful and personal voice. Physical, printed at Plucked Chicken Press under master printer Will Petersen, was Himmelfarb’s emotional response to taking his son to the doctor for a check up. The childlike style and use of primary colors is typical of the artist’s work in the 1980s. 30 W I L L P E T E R S E N (American, 1928-1994) Will Petersen was born in Chicago and enjoyed his first artistic experience as a cartoonist for the school newspaper at Steinmetz High School. His prints and paintings are included in more than 140 museum and corporate collections around the world. The classical statues and Japanese motifs of Matter of Aesthetics summarize the philosophy of the artist as a poet, a painter, and a master printmaker. Petersen began printmaking in 1949 at Michigan State University. During military service in Japan, from 1953 to 1954, he became interested in calligraphy and Noh, the classical Japanese performance that combines drama, music, and poetry. Returning to the United States, he joined the Beat Generation and seriously explored Zen Buddhism. (The character Rol Sturlason, in Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums, is based on Petersen.) Returning to Kyoto, Japan, Petersen pursued painting, printmaking, and writing from 1957 to 1965. In 1978, Petersen and Cynthia Archer founded the Plucked Chicken Press, a print shop specializing in lithography, in West Virginia. The operation later moved Matter of Aesthetics to Chicago and then to suburban Evanston. 1982, Lithograph, 36 in. x 261/2 in. Gift of Dr. William A. and Rev. Phyllis Koehnline Plucked Chicken Press did some contract printing for individual 1985.52 artists and galleries, but most of its work consisted of subscription publications. Many of the lithographs in the permanent collection at Oakton, including those on display in the Rolana Tankus Fox Gallery, were published by Plucked Chicken Press. In tribute to Petersen, a permanent exhibition of Plucked Chicken Press publications is on display at Oakton’s Ray Hartstein Campus. 18 JA M E S M c N E I L L M E S P L E 31 (American, b. 1948) See ArtWalk No. 10 Primavera is a surrealistic scene of mythological figures and medieval artifacts. In it, the classical temple meets the skyline of Chicago. Mesple’s works also have been exhibited in Chicago at Artemisia Gallery, Wood Street Gallery, the James R. Thompson Center and Navy Pier. He also participated in the 2004 Koehnline Gallery exhibition, Words and Pictures: Paintings by James Mesple, Poetry by Effie Mihopoulos. Primavera 1991, Lithograph, 353/4 in. x 24 in. Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation 1992.2 C U R T F R A N K E N S T E I N 32 (American, b. 1922) Curt Frankenstein was born in Hanover, Germany, to a Jewish father and a Lutheran mother. During the infamous Kristallnacht raids of 1938, his father was taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Luckily, he was released several months later on the condition that he would immediately leave the country. He boarded a freighter packed with other refugees bound for the international seaport of Shanghai. In 1939, just months before Hitler invaded Poland, the 17-year-old Frankenstein decided to join his father in Shanghai. After the Birth of the Organization Men war, he moved to Chicago to study on scholarc. 1985, Colored etching, 141/2 in. x 213/4 in., 1985.76 ship at the American Academy of Art and later at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Frankenstein admired Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), and the abstract Expressionists, but preferred to tell stories through recognizable pictures in a surrealistic manner. Birth of the Organization Men reflects the artist’s point of view that above all, the contemporary organization wants conformity from its members. Therefore, it breeds the ideal organization men; they look alike, dress alike, and think alike, distinguished only by their Social Security numbers. 19 33 S E Y M O U R R O S O F S K Y (American, 1924-1981) Seymour Rosofsky was born to Jewish immigrants on Chicago’s west side. Following military service he received his BFA in 1949 and MFA in 1951 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Rosofsky’s early work was associated with the group “Monster Roster,” and reflected expressive, gestural renderings of distorted figures. This trend was inspired by the non-Western art that he and his classmates studied at the Field Museum, as well as by German expressionism and personal wartime experience. Rosofsky’s grotesque images also were influenced by early 1950s The Love Fountain exhibitions by Edvard Munch (1863-1944) at The Art Institute of 1967, Lithograph, 173/4 in. x 23 in. Chicago, and Jean Dubuffet (ArtWalk No. 79) at the Arts Club. Gift of Sara Leonard, 2004.16 Rosofsky’s faceless men began surfacing circa 1956, sometimes in hospitals or in wheelchairs, both vulnerable and uncomfortable situations. His interest in structural issues intensified during a 1958 stay in Rome on a Fulbright Fellowship. Lines and grids began to appear in his compositions in a dramatic fashion under the influence of his friend, artist June Leaf (ArtWalk No. 34). In 1962, Rosofsky and his family arrived in Paris after the artist received a Guggenheim Foundation grant. He was introduced by Chicago artist Irving Petlin (b. 1934) to the Surrealist-oriented Galerie du Dragon, which fed his inclination toward the absurd. He then started to develop a personal vocabulary of fantastic, sometimes frightening, figures. Rosofsky taught at Chicago Loop College (now Harold Washington College) from 1964 until his death in 1981. His work was shown in the Chicago and Vicinity shows at The Art Institute from 1950 to 1981, and he was included in Franz Schulze’s book, Fantastic Images (1972). In 1984, the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign organized a retrospective of Rosofsky’s work, which also is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. The exhibition, Seymour Rosofsky: Fresh Glance, was on display at Koehnline Gallery in 2004 (see ArtWalk No. 21). Commissioned by The Art Institute for members of its print and drawing club, The Love Fountain depicts a legless girl sitting on the ground, watching her companion skip rope in a strange room that also is a garden. The “sweetness” of the flowers is altogether perverse. The violence of life, a common theme of Rosofsky’s, is reflected in this sardonically bitter scene. 34 J U N E L E A F (American, b. 1929) June Leaf was born and raised on Chicago’s west side. In 1947, she traveled to Paris where she was introduced to primitive art at the Musée de I’Homme. Returning home two years later, Leaf befriended Leon Golub (1922-2004) and other artists associated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and in 1951 showed her work in the Exhibition Momentum. Leaf became acquainted with artist Seymour Rosofsky (ArtWalk No. 33) in 1952 during a short stint as a model in San Francisco, and became influenced by his work. She taught at the Institute of Design, earning her MA in art education in 1954. She later The Ballroom taught at the SAIC. 1968, Lithograph, 17 in. x 20 in. Leaf’s early paintings and drawings have a very linear quality and Gift of Sara Leonard, 2004.17 somber palette. She combined these figures with abstract space, or architectural references. The figures in later paintings and drawings from the 1950s include matronly women wearing wide-brim hats, and numerous portraits and self-portraits. Leaf’s work was featured in Franz Schulze’s Fantastic Images (1972), and her inclusion in this influential volume connected Leaf to the first generation of Chicago Imagists. In 1960, Leaf settled in New York, where she translated the personal imagery she developed in Chicago to scenes depicting New York urban life, as evidenced in the lithograph, The Ballroom. Her work is in the collections of the Modern Art Museum in New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. 20 W I L L P E T E R S E N 35 (American, 1928-1994) Temple Dance After serving as an education specialist with the U.S. Army in Japan (1953-1954), Will Petersen returned to the United States and became involved with poets of the Beat Generation. He was greatly influenced by their attraction to Zen Buddhism, which heightened his interest in Japanese culture. He returned to Japan in 1957, living in Kyoto and in the outlying village of Yase, at the foot of Mt. Hiei, where he single-handedly built his own bark-roofed studio. He taught English at three universities and later at the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company. Japanese costumes and calligraphy became characteristic elements of Petersen’s work during his time in Japan (see ArtWalk No. 30). His color lithographs, executed on stone and hand printed, were exhibited at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, where he became the first printmaker to receive the prestigious Suda Award. His prints also were selected by the Mainichi Daily News for a “Best of the Year” exhibition. 1990, Lithograph, 261/2 in. x 20 in. Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation 1990.8 C L A E S O L D E N B U R G 36 (American, b. 1929) Born in Sweden, Claes Oldenburg grew up in Chicago and studied at Yale University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He moved to New York in the late 1950s and became involved with dramatic art presentations called “happenings.” The props that he made for these presentations were based on common objects and led to his early hand-sewn, soft canvas sculptures. Oldenburg’s fascination with scale and the changes that take place when objects are enlarged to monumental proportions served as inspiration for the public works he created in London Monument the 1960s. The 25-foot lipstick at Yale University 1966, Signed offset lithograph, 231/2 in. x 343/4 in. Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation, 1985.53 and 45-foot clothespin in Philadelphia are prime examples. In 1977, Oldenburg called upon his memories of Chicago when he was chosen to design a monument for the plaza of the Social Security Administration Building. On an earlier visit to the city, noting the flat terrain, he commented that “the real art here is architecture, or anything that really stands up.” When he returned to inspect the site for the sculpture, he observed tall chimneys and the massive neoclassical columns of the nearby Union Pacific (formerly Northwestern) Railroad Station. The resulting work, a giant baseball bat entitled Batcolumn, combines the artist’s humorous and irreverent attitude toward popular objects with meticulous construction and attention to detail, scale and proportion. Similarly, London Monument is based on a proposed drum set-shaped monument in London’s Battersea Park. 21 37 S A LVA D O R DA L I (Spanish, 1904-1989) Salvador Dali was born in Figueras, Spain, and studied at Madrid’s San Fernando Academy of Art where he was greatly influenced by 17th century Dutch masters, as well as by contemporary painter Joan Miro (ArtWalk No. 81) and Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978). During a 1928 visit to Paris, Miro introduced Dali to members of the Surrealist Group, and Dali returned to Paris the following year to live and work. His first one-man show was held at the Galerie Goemans in 1930, earning him recognition as a leader of the Surrealist Movement. His first New York show was presented at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1932. The Museum of Modern Art presented a large retrospective of his work nearly a decade later. Flowers, like the roses in Apparition, frequently appear in Dali’s paintings and seem to symbolize the mystery of female sexuality. At the same time, as an organic form, flowers are constantly in flux and represent change and growth. The pink floral shape could be an apparition revealing Dali’s erotic obsessions. The nightingale, a romantic bird to most artists, took on sinister interpretations for some surrealists. To the right of the bouquet, a small woman in a flowing gown casts a long shadow, suggesting the low light of sunrise or sunset. This quiet, ethereal quality reinforces the mysterious, illusory aspects of the image. Apparition: The Magic Butterfly and the Flower 1973, Lithograph, 221/2 in. x 17 in. Gift of the National Association for the Exchange of Industrial Resources, 1980.1 38 K AY H O P P O C K (American, 1921-2002) Kay Hoppock was a painter of large-scale, luminous watercolors. Born the youngest of five children in Birmingham, Alabama, Hoppock was an expressive child who used art to channel her energy. After high school, she left Birmingham to study art and fashion design in New York at Parson’s School of Design and the legendary Art Students League. Hoppock started sketching and painting portraits after World War II, but emerged as a watercolor artist after moving to Wilmette, Illinois. She was featured in the July 1986 issue of American Artist magazine, and her honors include a Museum Award from Watercolor USA and a first prize in watercolor from the Watercolor Society of Alabama. Still Life with Pears and Mums In 1988, Hoppock was invited to show at a retrospec- 1990, Lithograph, 181/2 in. x 23 in. Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation, 1990.7 tive celebrating the 75th anniversary of New York’s famous Armory Show. Her works are included in corporate, private, and museum collection nationwide, including the Illinois State Museum, Springfield; the Chicago Botanic Garden; The Portland (Oregon) Art Museum; and the United States Air Force Museum, Washington D.C. In Hoppock’s work, artifacts become art, and crystal, flowers, and ceramics vibrate with a life of their own. Still Life with Pears and Mums demonstrates her mastery of color, composition, and technique. It also includes her signature motifs of flowers and glass. 22 W I L L I A M N E L S O N 39 (American, b. 1942) See ArtWalk No. 97 William Nelson is a lifelong Chicagoan who began studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago at the age of 12, and later received a full scholarship to the school. He was the first artist commissioned by the United States Olympic Committee to produce a series of paintings depicting the Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria, and Summer Games in Montreal, Canada, held in 1965. He also was the first artist to have a private showing in the U.S. Senate Caucus Room, and he was commissioned by Virginia Senator Streetcar John Warner to create the painting, A Bicentennial c. 1970s, Lithograph, 18 in. x 25 in., Gift of Mr. Gerald A. Horwitz 1985.36 History of the United States. In 1980, Nelson studied in southern France and Italy, where he developed a more vivid and colorful style. Proceeds from the sale of his 1984 poster depicting the Chicago Theater helped defray the costs of saving that building. A major exhibition of his work was held in Monte Carlo, Monaco, in 1989. Nelson is represented in numerous collections, including the National Museum of Natural History and the White House in Washington, D.C.; Illinois State Museum, Springfield; Chicago Historical Society; and the Chicago Public Library. A N TO N I TA P I E S 40 (Spanish, b. 1923) Born in Barcelona, Spain, Antoni Tapies is an internationally known painter, lithographer, and sculptor whose work evokes both intellectual and tactile responses. Primarily self-taught, Tapies spent three years in law school before devoting himself to painting. In 1944, he studied briefly at Valls Academy in Barcelona. He lives in a ninth century farmhouse in the Catalan countryside. Originally influenced by Joan Miro (ArtWalk No. 81) and Paul Klee (1879-1940), Tapies turned to abstract art in the early 1950s. With thick, highly textured impasto (Italian for dough), incorporating such material as clay and marble dust, he began creating works devoted to themes he considered important—language, patriotism, mysticism, and the human body. In the 1970s, Tapies began incorporating objects such as buckets and pieces of furniture into his art. Tapies’ first one-man exhibition was in 1950 at Galerias Laietanes in Barcelona. In 1993 he was chosen to represent Spain at Venice Biennale, where he received an award for painting. Tapies had Untitled (#189) participated in three previous Biennales; in 1958 he was given his 1 1968, Lithograph, 29 /2 in. x 22 in. own exhibition room, and was awarded the UNESCO Prize and the Gift of Dr. William A. and Rev. Phyllis Koehnline 1985.91 David E. Bright Prize. His work is part of public collections worldwide, including the Fundacio Antoni Tapies, Barcelona; Museum of Modern Art and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam; and Tate Gallery, London. Untitled (#189) is a black and red lithograph, reflecting Tapies’ style of the late 1960s. Works created during this phase of his career exhibited a graffiti-like quality. Tapies also uses his own initials in the piece, with the “T” in the center being symbolic of a cross. 23 41 D I A N E T H O D O S (American, b. 1962) Diane Thodos is an art critic, painter, and print artist who lives in Evanston, Illinois. She received her BFA from Pittsburgh’s CarnegieMellon University in 1985, and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 1989. Thodos’ works are included in public collections such as The Milwaukee Museum of Art; The Smart Museum at the University of Chicago; and The Hellenic Museum, Chicago. Thodos first encountered printmaking in 1984, when she enrolled B. The Edge A. Storm at Stanley William Hayter’s Studio 17 2002, Etching, 17 in. x 13 in. 2003, Lithograph, 16 in. x 13 in. Gift of Granvil and Marcia Specks MGS Gift of Granvil and Marcia Specks MGS in Paris. Hayter directed his new Foundation, 2003.26 Foundation, 2003.27 student to create an experimental exercise plate that forever changed her perception of abstraction and the concept of spontaneous intuitive energy. “I recognized the importance of the Surrealist ideas of automatism and experimentation, which were imbedded in the point of this exercise,” says Thodos. “I was surprised to find a very similar exercise in automatism was practiced by Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) at Hayter’s studio in New York during the 1940s. The abstract expressionists, especially Pollock, absorbed many of Hayter’s ideas, which had a germinal effect on the development of the movement.” The Edge was created shortly after the destruction of New York’s World Trade Center in 2001. It is an abstract representation of the turbulence and violence that emerged from the tragedy of September 11. The Storm continues this mood to reflect the destructive energy of the subsequent war in Iraq. 42 DA N I E L C H R I S T M A S (American, b. 1951) Daniel Christmas was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and studied painting, photography, and communication arts at York Academy of Art and Design in nearby York. In 1988, Christmas established the Design Alliance Inc., in Chicago, and created award-winning advertising campaigns for clients such as Chicago Board of Trade, IBM, and Mitsubishi. He oversaw two redesigns of The Independent Film and Video Magazine in the 1990s, and provides ongoing art direction for this monthly publication. Christmas is best known for his large photographic murals and dark, sensual, abstract paintings that invite contemplation and discovery. Since 1987 he has exhibited in one-person and groups shows in Chicago, including Endangered Species at Klein Art Works (1988) and Sextablos at the Hyde Park Art Center (1999). In Adagio, printed at Full Court Press, abstract elements—black balloon-shaped human embryos floating in space—create a gracefully slow tempo. Adagio 1991, Lithograph, 251/4 in. x 341/2 in. Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation, 1991.2 24 DAV I D D R I E S B AC H 43 (American, b. 1922) David Driesbach was born in Wausau, Wisconsin, and studied with Mauricio Lasansky at the University of Iowa and with Stanley William Hayter in Paris (see ArtWalk No. 41). His lithographs, etchings, and drawings have been described as “anguished complex writings,” “satirical whimsy,” and “frozen fantasies.” A former professor of art at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Driesbach has had more than 150 solo exhibitions since 1946, including one in 1980 at The Art Institute of Chicago. His lithograph, Opening Night, is included in the Plucked Chicken Press Collection at Oakton’s Ray Hartstein Campus. Of Magician’s Sabbath he writes: “Lighted candles, wine glasses and bottles, top hats and Magician’s Sabbath spectacles—I have this baggage that trails along 1984, Lithograph, 21 in. x 25 in. with me as the years come and go. Horses, dogs, Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation, 1985.71 and birds, rose windows in church spires—a waning moon. These things accompany a story and take on mysterious importance in my work. I find myself fascinated with costuming and with architectural elements such as columns and arches. My actors are without voices behind thermal pane. They maintain eye contact with us. Their facial expressions telegraph how we ought to react to their world and situation.” H A R O L D G R E G O R 44 (American, b. 1929) Born in Detroit, Harold Gregor received a master’s degree from Michigan State University in 1953 and his Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 1960. He is a distinguished professor emeritus at Illinois State University in Normal. Gregor has received many awards, including a fellowship in 1993 from the National Endowment for the Arts. That year he also was awarded the Illinois Academy of Fine Arts Lifetime Achievement Award. His work has been exhibited internationally and is part of public and private collections in the United States and Europe. Heartland VI In the early 1970s, Gregor gained national 1985, Lithograph, 201/2 in. x 271/2 in. prominence within the photorealism movement Gift of Dr. William A. and Rev. Phyllis Koehnline, 1986.12 for creating meticulously detailed paintings of farm structures and the sweeping horizon of the rural Midwest. He also became known for his unusual “flatscape” paintings that combine an aerial perspective with unique color choices. In 1990, Gregor was commissioned to paint two large murals for the Illinois State Library in Springfield. In 1997, he was asked to paint a 38-foot-long panorama for Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center. In 1999, Gregor’s Colorscape XIII was included in the exhibition, Contemporary American Realist Drawings, at The Art Institute of Chicago. Heartland VI was printed at the Plucked Chicken Press in Evanston, Illinois. It presents Gregor’s unusual perspective, which enables the artist to visually eliminate the flatness of the Illinois prairie. Another of Gregor’s works, Illinois Landscape #80, a large oil and acrylic painting, is included in the permanent collection at Oakton’s Ray Hartstein Campus. 25 45 W I N I F R E D G O D F R E Y (American, b. 1944) Winifred Godfrey obtained her MFA degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1970. She continued her studies in printmaking and painting at Mary Crest College in Davenport, Iowa, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of California at Los Angeles. In her dramatic floral canvases, Godfrey magnifies organic forms, and takes the subject beyond its ordinary existence. “What interests me primarily in painting floral forms is the delicate and temporary quality of the blossom,” she says. “Although the canvases are painted realistically, the flower is the starting point for an abstract study of the luminosity and transparency of the individual petal. I try to accomplish this through the magnification of the plant form itself in a tight design, and make a spatial relationship of this form with the rectangle of the canvas.” Godfrey’s works are represented in many collections, including the Illinois State Museum, Springfield; the Mary and Leigh Block Hollyhocks Museum of Art at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois; the 1990, Lithograph, 28 in. x 221/4 in. University of Wisconsin-Madison Memorial Union; and Northern Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation, 1990.1 Illinois University, DeKalb. Several of Godfrey’s lithographs and oil paintings are on display at both Oakton campuses, including Field of Orange Tulips (see ArtWalk No. 85). Hollyhocks is part of her first floral suite published by the Plucked Chicken Press. Godfrey’s traveling exhibition, Mayan Procession, was shown at Koehnline Gallery in 1999 before moving to the Latino Art Forum at the David Rockefeller Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 46 J O E L S M I T H (American, b. 1929) Joel Smith was born in Draper, Utah, and received his MFA from the University of California at Berkeley in 1957. He was member of the art faculty at Western Illinois University, Macomb, from 1971 until his retirement in 1994. Smith began his career as an abstractionist with strong ties to the art of the late 1950s and early 1960s. He uses watercolors to paint natural subjects and oils for large, abstract canvases. “To me, painting is a concentrated battle in which I’m trying to resolve a series of creative problems,” he told American Artist magazine in 1992. Chasm Pressure was Smith’s first lithograph. It was printed at the Plucked Chicken Press in Evanston, Illinois. Smith has exhibited his paintings and graphics at one-man and group shows in the United States and abroad, including the 16th Sao Paulo International Biennale in Brazil. Two exhibitions have been mounted at Western Illinois University, Nature’s Forces: Watercolors by Joel Smith (1994), and Abstract Forces: Oil Painting by Joel Smith (1997). His work is included in significant collections, including of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ontario; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; and Tate Gallery, London. 26 Chasm Pressure 1987, Lithograph, 28 in. x 22 in. Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation and Board of Student Affairs, 1999.27 M A R T Y L ( S U Z A N N E S C H W E I G ) 47 (American, b. 1918) Born in St. Louis, Martyl began painting at the age of 12. She received a degree in liberal arts from Washington University in St. Louis, and has studied drawing with the renowned cartoonist and painter, Boardman Robinson, at the Fine Arts Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Today she resides in the Chicago area. Her lithograph, Island, is included in the Plucked Chicken Press collection at Oakton’s Ray Hartstein Campus. False Doors was published by the Plucked Chicken Press in 1987, two years after Martyl returned from an archeological dig at the Precinct of Mut at Luxor, Egypt. There she viewed royal tombs and became fascinated with the honeycombed corridors designed to deceive grave robbers. The Egyptian expedition resulted in a body of work that was shown in 1986 at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and later at the Oriental Institute of the False Doors University of Chicago. Martyl also has had solo exhibi1987, Lithograph, 221/4 in. x 22 in., Gift of the Oakton Educational tions at The Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum Foundation and Board of Student Affairs, 1999.14 of Art; and Illinois State Museum, Springfield, among other venues. Her work is included in major collections at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and the National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; and Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African-American History. A R T K L E I N M A N 48 (American, b. 1949) Art Kleinman was born in South Carolina and moved to Chicago after earning a BFA in 1971 at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. From 1991 to 1994, Kleinman taught painting at the Evanston Art Center, Evanston, Illinois; in 1993 he was a visiting artist at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since 1980, Kleinman has had solo exhibitions in Chicago and St. Louis, including a 2000 show at the Chicago Cultural Center. He has participated in many group shows, including Figure Eight at the Rockford (Illinois) Art Museum; Drawing in Litho I Chicago Now at Columbia College, Chicago, 1980, Lithograph, 25 in. x 38 in., Gift of Dr. William A. and Rev. Phyllis Koehnline 1985.24 and Koehnline Gallery; Chicago Artists in the European Tradition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and New Horizons in Art at the Chicago Cultural Center. Litho I is a five-color lithograph printed at the Plucked Chicken Press and published by Barbara Balkin Gallery in Chicago. This print is part of a body of work completed by Kleinman over a decade, from the late 1970s through the late 1980s. The underlying structure of these pieces is based on a numerical system relative to the musical scale: seven major elements and two minor intervals, i.e., seven squares and two bars, one-seventh the size of the square. These elements were moved around on a grid to create an infinite number of shapes. Shown as a line drawing followed by a color sketch, Litho I provides a demonstration of the artistic process. 27 49 TO M N A K A S H I M A (American, b. 1941) Born in Seattle, Tom Nakashima’s unique heritage may be the most important influence on his work. Nakashima’s mother was Canadian of German and Irish descent; his father was a second-generation Japanese-American. Over the years, Nakashima harvested ideas from both Asian and Western history, blending these cultures in his work. Nakashima received his MFA from the University of Notre Dame in 1968. In the late 1970s he met Will Petersen in West Virginia. They shared interests in Japanese culture and Buddhism, and Nakashima began writing and illustrating for Petersen’s Plucked Chicken magazine, published in 1978. After Nakashima moved to Washington, D.C., in the early 1980s, he became increasingly aware of the impact of U.S. policies on the world. Issues of power began to surface in a series entitled Standing on Ground Zero, printed by the Plucked Chicken Press. This series revealed Nakashima’s symbolism: the salmon represents death and rebirth in the Japanese culture and the target signals the threat of nuclear disaster. The target motif here contains Nakashima’s home Standing on Ground Zero address in Washington, D.C., just a few blocks from the Capitol. 1983, Lithograph, 407/8 in. x 305/8 in., Highly regarded in the Mid-Atlantic region as an artist, speaker, and Gift of Dr. William A. and Rev. Phyllis Koehnline 1985.25 art professor at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., Nakashima’s work is part of many public collections, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. He has exhibited in numerous shows, including The Decade Show in 1990 at the Museum of Harlem in New York. 50 P H I L I P L I V I N G S TO N (American, b. 1941) Philip Livingston earned his MFA degree in 1965 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is a professor emeritus at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He participated in the 1983 exhibition, Fabrications, organized by Richard Hunt (Art Walk No. 2) at the Chicago Cultural Center. In the early 1960s he was part of the city’s New Horizons in Sculpture shows, as well as the 67th Annual Exhibition of Artists of Chicago and Vicinity at The Art Institute of Chicago. Livingston has sculptures in public collections including Walker Art Center in Wall Between 1998, Painted wood relief, 391/2 in. H x 77 in. W x 71/2 in. D Minneapolis; the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Gift of Lynne Adams and the Illinois Arts Council, 2001.5 and Knoxville Museum of Art. Since 1987, he has exhibited at Sonia Zaks Gallery in Chicago, which in 2001 held the exhibit, Open Book. In 2002, Livingston exhibited Open Book/Intimate Pages at Koehnline Gallery. Wall Between is the first in the Open Book series, which finds the artist returning to wood as a medium, after a decade of working with aluminum (ArtWalk No. 87). This series started unintentionally, following the artist’s experimentation with two symmetric elements that visually resulted in an open book design. Wall Between showcases Livingston’s visual vocabulary—the architectural space, tiled floor, and illusion of perspective. In the back is a photo of the artist’s father. Livingston used personal material in his Open Book series to express relationship between space and time with real figures, as in a novel. “The spontaneous gestures on his sculptures recall the mark left when a book closes on a dribble of jam from the morning’s breakfast,” Stephanie Bowman writes in the catalog to the exhibition, Open Book/Intimate Pages. “The mark is familiar and recognizable because it occurs often; however, Livingston’s immovable, fixed wooden book forms contradict this experience of sense memory. We ‘know’ his pieces don’t open and close, but it is tempting to think that somehow they must have at one time.” 28 F E R N VA L F E R 51 (American, b. 1949) K.V. 1999, Oil on paper, 113/4 in. x 9 in. Gift of the artist, 1999.30 Fern Valfer received her MFA degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1980. She teaches at the School of the Art Institute and Columbia College, and her work has been exhibited extensively in the Chicago area. Valfer received a fellowship from the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, and was recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts for archival projects at the National Museum of American Art and National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. K.V. is part of a series entitled Fragments of Refuge, created after the artist visited the 1993 Anne Frank exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center. One of the photographs in that exhibit showed a burning house of worship located in the hometown of Valfer’s father, near Frankfurt, Germany. K.V., the initials of Valfer’s deceased father, appear in most of the paintings in the series. Also around this time, Valfer was asked to speak to high school students about her family’s escape from Germany during World War II. The speech was difficult and painful, but it made Valfer aware of the relevance of self-exploration. Fragments of Refuge deals with themes of perseverance, struggle, renewal, and the urgent need for inner survival. Another painting from the Fragments of Refuge series is Synthesis (see ArtWalk No. 84). LO R R I G U N N 52 (American, b. 1942) Lorri Gunn received her BFA in 1964 from Indiana’s Valparaiso University and began working as an artist in the early 1970s. For several years she was a leader with the Artemisia Gallery, a women’s cooperative in Chicago. Gunn lives in Chicago and is part of a very creative family; husband Karl Wirsum (ArtWalk No. 89) and son Zachery Wirsum also are professional artists. Gunn’s paintings are charged with color and energy. Ambiguous figures move among shifting hues, in a whimsical manner associated with the Chicago Imagists. Limber Limbs in Limbo and a Trunk, printed at the Full Court Press, was her first lithograph. Limber Limbs in Limbo and a Trunk 1990, Lithograph, 22 in. x 30 in. Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation, 1990.6 29 53 R U Y E L L H O (American, b. 1936) Ruyell Ho was born in Shanghai, China, in 1936, and arrived in the United States in 1955 to study mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley. After earning his bachelor’s degree in 1959, Ho studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, earning a BFA in 1965. He has been included in several exhibitions in the Chicago area, including New Horizons in Art (1975, 1984, 1986); 75th Artists of Chicago & Vicinity Exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago (1974); and 36th Annual Illinois Invitational at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield (1984). Daydreams & Sleepless Nights, created at the Plucked Chicken Press with Will Petersen, was Ho’s second color lithograph. The work is straightforward; lithographic crayon drawn directly on the grained, stone-like surface of the aluminum printing plates. “Painting, to me, is a state of being,” says Ho. “I paint not what I see or think, but what I am. My ambition as an artist goes beyond Daydreams & Sleepless Nights mere paintings. My major concern is the search for an original, 1980, Lithograph, 27 in. x 211/4 in. personal, and self-contained aesthetic system. I hold a strict modGift of Dr. William A. and Rev. Phyllis Koehnline ernist attitude toward my paintings, in that they are art objects in 1986.9 themselves, and only art objects. The images are always well defined, simplified, and devoid of romantic or expressionist mannerism. I value originality and visual power. I want my paintings to have an intense physical presence.” 54 W I L L I A M K E AT I N G (American, b. 1932) William Keating is a native of Chicago. The son of an artist and grandson of an engineer, his work was influenced by both. Keating’s sculptures have been included in many Chicago exhibitions, including the Museum of Science and Industry, University Club, and The Art Institute of Chicago. He was featured in a 1976 documentary produced by Chicago public television station WTTW Channel 11. Keating’s work also is part of many public, corporate, and private collections in Illinois, including the Elmhurst Art Museum; Palatine Public Library; Highland Park Public Library; Loyola Academy, Wilmette; and the Amoco Corporation. Keating’s first career was in advertising, in the metal industry. In 1973, he became a full-time sculptor specializing in hand-formed, welded, metal constructions that present an abstract view of his sense of balance with nature. “I love nature,” says Keating. “It, finally, is my inspiration. A whip of cloud, a bird in flight, the movement of surf, sometimes gentle, often powerful—the form I see in these things speaks to me and demands my interpretation. I love the clean look that can be achieved with polished metal, and the exciting spontaneity of direct metal construction. I see metal as part of nature, coming raw from the earth, then refined by man. I strive to bring it back to nature by treating it as earth, to be managed much as a potter forms his clay.” 30 Search for Attainment 1980, Welded aluminum 108 in. H x 42 in. W x 36 in. D Funded by the Illinois Arts Council and the Oakton Educational Foundation, 1980.2 F R E D J O N E S 55 (American, b. 1940) Fred Jones was born in a small Welsh village and attended Cardiff College of Art and the University of South Wales. In 1965, he received a master’s degree in education from the University of Pittsburgh and in 1971, a MFA from the University of WisconsinMadison. He also studied at Stanley William Hayter’s Studio 17 in Paris and at the Print Sunburst Storm Workshop in London. Jones has 1999, Acrylic on paper, 38 in. x 60 in., Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation, 1999.10 shown widely, including exhibitions at the National Museum of Wales (1961); Illinois State Museum, Springfield (1970, 1980); Madison Art Center, Madison, Wisconsin (1971); and Krannert Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (1980). His works also are part of international collections, including the British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Welsh National Museum, Cardiff; and Illinois State Museum. Jones was included in the exhibition Illinois Landscapes at Koehnline Gallery in 2001. Another painting by Jones, Darksky Storm, is on display at Oakton’s Ray Hartstein Campus. A resident of Macomb, Illinois, since 1968, Jones has long portrayed the various moods of the western Illinois landscape. In Sunburst Storm, Jones shows how he turns the Illinois prairie into an emotional storm inspired by English Romanticism. “Now I work only from memory, imagination, and the experience of perceiving the day-by-day fluctuations of climate and flora,” says Jones. “The subject matter around our prairie farmhouse is amazingly rich. The colors of changing seasons, the shapes of the land forms, the integral structures of the vegetation and the movement of water and air currents represent a constantly changing panoramic tapestry.” C O R E Y P O S T I G L I O N E 56 (American, b. 1942) Artist and teacher Corey Postiglione received a bachelor’s degree in art from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a master’s degree in art history, theory, and criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His works are included in gallery and public exhibitions throughout the Chicago area. Study for Polis II was included in Passages, a 1998 exhibition at Koehnline Gallery. Another painting from this exhibition is The Marriage of Reason and Logic (see ArtWalk No. 92). In 1990, Postiglione joined the faculty at Chicago’s Columbia College as professor of art history and critical theory. The following year he began developing a series of works on paper based on images of a labyrinth, an ancient symbol that suggests a rite of passage. The maze also functions as a metaphor for life. It is this sense of mapping one’s movement through life that affects the content of Postiglione’s work. Study for Polis II 1997, Acrylic on paper, 26 in. x 20 in. Gift of the artist, 1999.29 31 57 J O H N H I M M E L FA R B (American, b. 1946) See ArtWalk No. 29 Since 1993, John Himmelfarb has been working on Inland Romance, a series sequence of paintings that reflect the artist’s romantic attachment to Chicago. Like Carl Sandburg’s poems about “the city of broad shoulders,” Himmelfarb’s artistic vocabulary relates to the “down to earth” elements of the urban environment. The majority of these elements are inspired from industrial forms, such as venting systems from factory roofs, chimneys, elevated structures, cranes, scrap yards, and railroad equipment. Others relate to the rapid rhythm of the city through aerial views that capture the ever-changing patterns of rivers, roads, bridges, and paths. In the introduction to Chicago Stories: Tales of the City, author Stuart Dybek characterizes the Chicago writer as a product of this unique urban environment, with a tendency to romanticize the city. “Chicago is an outlook from the perspective of the country’s third coast, a sweet water inland sea surInland Romance: Second Season rounded by prairie, a locus at 2001, Acrylic on canvas, 11 ft., 4 in. x 29 ft., 10 in., On loan from the artist, 2002.3 the center of America where there’s not much patience with fads or pretension,” writes Dybek. “Finally, at the core of the Chicago tradition there is an insistence on sentiment. Not on sentimentality, but on basic emotion, the complex mix of passion and empathy we term the human heart.” Himmelfarb’s concept for Inland Romance mirrors Dybek’s perception. “The romantic attachment to the region,” says Himmelfarb, “is the reason why I am here, and my paintings reflect where I am creating as well as who I am. The two are connected.” Himmelfarb displayed three monumental paintings, including Second Season, at Koehnline Gallery during the 2001 exhibition, Inland Romance. The power of Chicago echoed in Himmelfarb’s large-scale canvases, and the communicative element was channeled by the artist, who worked on one of the canvases during the course of exhibition. 58 K E I T H K R U E G E R (American, b. 1960) Born in Chicago, Keith Krueger started his higher education at Oakton Community College in 1979, and later studied architecture at the University of Oklahoma. Since the early 1990s, Krueger has exhibited primarily in the Washington, D.C., area where he lives. Working primarily with discarded materials and scavenged objects, Krueger’s constructions evoke a strong sense of history. Krueger’s assemblages are cheerful works comprised of old metal signs, wooden architectural ornaments, oversized letters, and nautical fragments, among other elements. There is something childlike about the artist’s use of primary colors and simple shapes, which allude to happier times. Upon closer inspection, however, the colors are found to Dotti have faded a bit, the paint dirty and chipped. Raw wood is weathered 2000, Mixed media relief gray, and recognizable objects have been broken and reconfigured. 521/2 in. H x 47 in. W x 41/2 in. D On loan from the artist, 2003.39 Separated from their original purpose and placed within a new and more fluid context, the objects take on new meaning. The resultant mood is complex and full of longing for the past, acknowledging the imperfections that can only be seen in hindsight. In Dotti an old Wonder Bread sign, complete with red, yellow, and blue balloons, is included in the composition, including the words “Builds Strong” from the bread’s advertising slogan, “Helps Build Strong Bodies 12 Ways.” Dotti was included in Krueger’s 2003 Koehnline Gallery exhibition, Assemblages. 32 L E O P O L I T I 59 (American, 1908-1996) Mexican Images of Olvera Street Gouaches and books, Gift of Granvil and Marcia Specks, 2003.142003.23, On loan from Glenn and Amy Greenwood, 2004.18 - 2004.24 Leo Politi was born in Fresno, California, and at age six moved with his family to Italy where he studied art. Returning to California in the 1930s, Politi worked in Los Angeles on Olvera Street, and captured the images of Mexican immigrants who settled in this section of the city. He wrote and illustrated his first children’s book, Little Pancho, the story of a young Mexican boy, in 1938. Over his career he wrote and illustrated more than 25 children’s books, and illustrated books for other authors. Oakton’s collection includes 17 gouache drawings done between 1935 and 1945, and illustrated books reflecting the artist’s impressions of Olvera Street. Politi has received many awards including the 1950 Caldecott Medal for his book, Song of the Swallow. Three decades later, the Fresno Public Library was renamed in his honor, and in 1991, Leo Politi Elementary School was dedicated in Los Angeles. T E R R E N C E K A R P OW I C Z 60 (American, b. 1948) See ArtWalk No. 3 Leaving the Nest demonstrates Terrence Karpowicz’s skills in working with the medium of wood. In the 1970s he specialized in woodwork, repairing and preserving wind and water mills in England. The abstract composition, Leaving the Nest, depicts a child transforming to adult through the process of learning, which never happens at a fast, straight pace. Leaving the Nest was included in the 2001 Koehnline Gallery exhibition, Sculpture in Chicago Now. Leaving the Nest 1997, Maple, 62 in. H x 23 in. W x 6 in. D, On loan from the artist, 2001.12 PAT R I C K M I C E L I 61 (American, b. 1952) Patrick Miceli is an urban artist who uses research as a fundamental part of his creative process. The Chicago native collects, documents, and preserves objects in the same manner as a scientist, then displays Belmont El Station the artifacts. Whether working in 1987, Oil on canvas, 4’ x 16’, Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation, 1987.2 photography, painting, or installation art, Miceli’s work reveals an almost obsessive need to document detailed fragments of artifacts from the urban environment. In the 1990s, found objects, such as “premium” toys given away by fast-food restaurants, became part of his installations. A major exhibition, For All Ages, at Koehnline Gallery in 1999, featured 20,000 such giveaway toys. Miceli earned his MFA degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1997. He teaches art at several schools, including Columbia College in Chicago and Oakton Community College. His work has been exhibited at Artemisia Gallery, ARC Gallery, Evanston Art Center, the James R. Thompson Center and the Chicago Cultural Center. The hyper-realistic Belmont El Station is an example of Miceli’s paintings from the 1980s. The colorful composition features dozens of figures standing on a train platform. The people seem alienated from life, and dissolve into the rusty metal sheets and missing bricks of the wall behind them. 33 62 S A L LY S C H O C H (American, b. 1934) Sally Schoch is well known throughout the Chicago area for her weaving. She earned her MFA degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her work has been exhibited at many shows and commissioned by corporations and governmental institutions. The Oakton Community College Educational Foundation commissioned Opus 535 in 1992. “Every community reflects a unique environment or sense of place, especially in its architectural elements,” says Schoch. “Opus 535 is an assemblage of some of the important elements from each of the communities that Oakton Community College serves, captured in a visual Opus 535 impression using the medium 1992, Fiber/weaving, 4 ft. x 12 ft., Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation, 1992.1 of fiber. Architecture and weaving are directly related, sharing the concepts of horizontal and vertical. By translating from the rigidity of hard materials in architecture to the softness of the fiber/weaving materials and process, a redefining and underlining of the human qualities of the community are emphasized. This narrative assemblage brings together a sense of history and community as each viewer recognizes an element with which he or she can identify. Hopefully, the detail, color, or texture of this bas relief and tapestry wall hanging will spark some recognition of a place in your own community.” 63 G E O R G E B U R K (American, b. 1938) Painter and sculptor George Burk was born in Goshen, Indiana, and received his MFA degree from Indiana University in 1963. Since 1984, he has taught art at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. Burk has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the Portland (Maine) Museum of Art; Evansville (Indiana) Museum of Arts and Science; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. His work is included in more than 50 public collections, including the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Burk’s bronzes were published by Lakeside Studio in Michigan. This studio began publishing prints and sculptures in 1969. Another bronze published in 1981 at Lakeside Studio is Richard Hunt’s Serpentine Winged (see ArtWalk No. 2). Burk’s untitled bronzes—one with brown patina, the other green—are semi-abstract compositions in which artifacts are bound together almost like historical archives. A. Untitled 1981, Bronze, 15 in. H x 16 in. W x 11 in. D Gift of Dr. Frederick P. and Rebecca A. Nause 1982.4 B. Untitled 1981, Bronze, 91/2 in. H x 181/2 W x 8 in. D Gift of Dr. Frederick P. and Rebecca A. Nause 1982.5 34 YO N G J O J I 64 (American, b. 1969) Yong Jo Ji enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1997 and later completed his MFA degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has participated in exhibitions locally in Chicago and Wisconsin and internationally in South Korea, Japan, Thailand, and Europe. Jo Ji’s work reveals a struggle between his Korean heritage and current Western environment. He strives to resolve this conflict by taking formal elements, captured from modern American art, and transferring them onto a symbolic vocabulary inspired by Zen and Sumi art. The process of Jo Ji’s painting is similar to that of abstract expressionism. He does no preliminary designs or sketches. This creative process, called automatism, is enhanced by the artist’s use of wax mixed into the paint, creating a medium that dries immediately. Jo Ji’s dominant artistic symbols strongly relate to Joseph Campbell’s assertion that “our way of thinking in the West sees God as the final source or cause of the energies and wonder of the Untitled 2000, Oil and encaustic, 34 in. x 28 in. universe. But in most Oriental thinking, and in primal thinking, also, Gift of the artist, 2000.17 the gods are rather manifestations and purveyors of an energy that is finally impersonal.” Untitled reveals the basic elements of Jo Ji’s work—abstract, Korean calligraphy and layers of transparent paint and wax that create charged energy. The palm of the hand is a multicultural motif representing protection, communication, and the spiritual entity of God. M O R I T Z K E L L E R M A N 65 (American, b. 1958) Moritz Kellerman was born in Nicaragua and received his bachelor’s degree in art history from the University of Washington in 1981. Continuing his education in painting and drawing at Corpus Christi State University, Kellerman participated in a painting workshop conducted by George Bayliss. He later went on to receive his MFA in painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1988. Since 1981, Kellerman has exhibited at a wide range of college campuses, museums, and galleries, in both solo and group shows. He teaches studio art and art history at several institutions, including Oakton Community College. Kellerman’s work explores dilemmas through a meditative and contemplative process. He applies translucent layers of paint to reveal not only his inner self, but also his response to the world. “I have labored intimately with a new body of work that deals with the different stages of one’s soul,” says the artist, “that which is entirely intangible and unknown.” Reverence 2000, Oil on linen, 44 in. x 30 in. Gift of the artist, 2002.10 35 66 J O H N P I T M A N W E B E R (American, b. 1942) John Pitman Weber was the son of a southern Baptist father, a white civil rights activist who fought segregation, and a Russian Jewish mother with roots in labor issues and social justice. This background shaped Weber’s philosophical approach to his artistic work. Today, he is highly regarded internationally as a muralist, painter, and printmaker. Weber studied history and literature at Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, graduating in 1964. He Elements then accepted a Fulbright fellowship to 1968, Oil on canvas (8 panels), 48 in. x 36 in. (each panel), On loan from the artist, 1991.6 study the history of the French Revolution at the Sorbonne in Paris. At the same time, he also enrolled at the National Graduate School of Fine Art in Paris and studied printmaking at Stanley William Hayter’s Studio 17. Upon his return from Paris in 1966, Weber set up residence in Chicago and enrolled at the School of the Art Institute. He earned his MFA degree in 1968. In the early 1970s, Weber was a co-founder and executive of the Chicago Mural Group (today known as the Chicago Public Art Group), a coalition of artists that works with community groups to replace blank urban walls with visual commentaries on cultural and social issues. He is the co-author of Toward a People’s Art, a book that recounts the events of the contemporary mural movement in America. Weber’s exhibition, Glancing Back, was featured at Koehnline Gallery in 2000. Elements was painted in 1968, a very turbulent year. As the Vietnam War intensified, so did antiwar agitation. Student riots and violent demonstrations occurred at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy were both assassinated. Elements features intersecting curved pipes, guns, bullets, flags, bound hands, and work gloves, all symbols from Weber’s formal vocabulary. 67 JA M E S D. B U T L E R (American, b. 1945) James Butler was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Nebraska, Omaha, in 1967. In 1976, he received his MFA from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Butler taught art at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and Illinois State University at Normal, where he co-founded the Normal Editions Workshop. Butler has exhibited nationally in museums and art galleries, including participation in the 1999 exhibition, Contemporary American Realist Drawing, at the Art Institute of Chicago. His works are included in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; The Metropolitan Museum of Curving Meadow Lane 1991, Lithograph, 22 in. x 29 3/4 in., Gift of Gene and Terry Carr, 2001.20 Art, New York; and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Butler favors sweeping, expansive views in his landscape paintings and drawings, views such as he enjoyed as a child atop an Iowa hillside. He uses landscape as a metaphor for the contemporary collective imagination of the nation, drawing the viewers’ attention to the state of our relationship with the environment. He has long explored the changing effects of light, weather, and the seasons on the landscape. Particularly interesting to him is the order man imposes on the land, visible in the geometric patterns of farmland and urban settings. (Excerpted from the exhibition catalog, Views Along the Mississippi River: James D. Butler.) 36 W I N I F R E D G O D F R E Y 68 (American, b. 1944) See ArtWalk No. 45 “I like the feeling of being so lost in the flower itself. When I’m photographing, I get very excited, especially with irises and things that are very transparent. When I’m painting, I try to get the same feeling I had when I was taking the picture. “ —Winifred Godfrey Tulip Chicago Tribune, July 24, 1988 2000, Oil on canvas, 24 in. x 30 in., 2001.8 G E O R G E AT K I N S O N 69 (American, b. 1949) Born in Springfield, Illinois, George Atkinson received his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1976. He has participated in shows nationwide, including the 1999 exhibition, Contemporary American Realist Drawing, at The Art Institute of Chicago. “My involvement with the imagery of the Late Mid-May Morning at the Dairy Science Research Farm, rural Midwest began in 1982,” says Atkinson. South of Hazelwood “Based upon an early fascination with area 1998, Pastel, 20 in. x 50 in., Supported in part by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, 2001.4 magnitude and meteorology, work from that period suppressed any specificity that detracted from my perception of the grand scale and nature of this arena. Thus, the work became not only a representation of the perceptual world but also an unintentional and awkward intercession for the regional mythology of roadside romanticism—the bountiful cornucopia of the heartland, the Puritan work ethic, Manifest Destiny and others. Over the years, with considerably more time spent in the midst of working farms, I slowly began to appreciate the agrarian reality upon which much of this mythology is founded.” Late Mid-May Morning at the Dairy Science Research Farm, South of Hazelwood is part of the artist’s almost obsessive documentation of the disappearing family farm. It is important for Atkinson to capture every detail, and the long title emphasizes the real location and time of the scene. Another pastel painting by Atkinson, After Evening Milking in August at Ron’s Dairy Operation, is on display at Oakton’s Ray Hartstein Campus. P E T E R W. M I C H E L 70 (American, b. 1937) Community Totem 2000, Painted wood and steel, 19 ft. 5 in. H x 8 ft. W x 8 ft. D On loan from the artist, 2000.25 Peter Michel was born in Schenectady, New York. He received his BFA from Oberlin College in Ohio, and a degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. He pursued further studies in sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts School and Rice University in Houston, Texas. He has shown in galleries and museums in New York and throughout the United States. Michel has worked as an architect in Boston, Houston, and New York. In 1986, he moved to upstate New York and began doing computer drawings for Pei Cobb Freed and other New York City architectural firms. Since the early 1990s, much of his work has been cut from plywood or metal using a computer-controlled water jet cutter. “My work is a celebration and exploration of self, relationship, and community,” says Michel. “It explores in symbols the ways in which we are related, connected, and the same (as in our humanity), and the ways in which we are special and unique. It explores the richness of the mind, the ongoing conversations that shape our responses and our being.” Community Totem, originally displayed at Pier Walk 2000 on Chicago’s Navy Pier, celebrates the possibility of relationship and community where love, support, playfulness, and individual self-expression can flourish. 37 71 B E N B OW B U L LO C K (American, b. 1929) After graduating from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, Benbow Bullock learned gas welding at the University of California at San Francisco and metal inert gas welding at the San Francisco Art Institute. Working in steel, silicon bronze, aluminum, and stainless steel, Bullock quickly developed an affinity for the simple elegance of hard edge geometric construction. Tournesol Sauvage!, completed in 1998, was the first of Bullock’s highly burnished silicon bronze and stainless steel endless columns. It was installed in a sculpture park overlooking the historic Susquehanna River in Pittston, Pennsylvania. Bullock followed this with two more silicon bronze columns, Heroic Encounter, in the permanent collection of The Chicago Athenaeum Sculpture Park, and Darwin’s Bulldog, which was installed on Naxos in the Cyclades, for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Greece. In 2001, Bullock’s burnished stainless steel Homage to Brancusi (Constantin Brancusi, 1876-1957) was placed at the entrance of the new Chianti Park in Tuscany, Italy. Red Baron was installed in the Oakton Sculpture Park in 2004. “Conceptually it is an endless column, an endless auger that can project itself out into infinity, if allowed to,” says Bullock. “Conversely, it could project itself into the earth, coming out on the other side of the world, and progress to infinity in that direction. My auger is of a finite length and it folds back on itself at its top, and comes spiraling down on the other side of the auger. This cycling action is continuous, a perpetual motion symbol of eternity.” Red Baron 2004, Powder coated steel 30 ft. H x 9 in. O.D. Gift of the artist, 2004.12 72 D I D I E R N O L E T (American, b. 1953) Born in Paris in 1953, Didier Nolet studied with Pierre Carron (b. 1932) at the École des Beaux Arts. Carron was interested in the poetic realism of Balthus (1908-2001), and that influence is evidenced in Entre Terre et Ciel Nolet’s work. After moving to 1993, Oil on canvas, 5 ft. x 9 ft., Gift of the Educational Foundation and Board of Student Affairs Chicago in 1979, Nolet contin1993.1 ued to paint precise, realistic pictures of figures and interiors. A major turning point occurred in 1981 when Nolet began painting dreamy landscapes—aerial views of an imaginary French countryside dotted by farmhouses or sprinkled with villages nestled in verdant hills and valleys. The subject of Nolet’s landscapes is memory—the memory of a certain kind of light that we know from the photographs of Eugene Atget (1856-1927). It is generally an early morning light that softens and acts as transforming agent. Long shadows creep across these paintings that remind the artist of his childhood and remain a link to his homeland. With their ball-shaped trees and lazy winding rivers, the paintings recall Grant Wood’s Midwestern landscapes. “Ever since the young Frenchman first showed at The Art Institute’s Chicago and Vicinity exhibition in 1980, he has brought a poetry and civility to the local scene,” the Chicago Tribune lauded in 1987. “Nolet’s art, sweet and easy as it sometimes can seem, is nonetheless the real thing. And never is there any pretense, dandyism or slumming.” In 1990, Nolet showed his work in the Chicago Show at the Chicago Cultural Center and The Art Show at the Armory in New York City. After living for a time in Phoenix, Arizona, Nolet returned to Chicago and exhibited Full Circle at Koehnline Gallery in 2002. 38 S A N D R A P E R LOW 73 (American, b. 1940) Twightlight Zone 2002, Oil on linen, 48 in. x 36 in. Gift of the artist, 2003.1 Sandra Perlow grew up on the south side of Chicago. As a child she was interested in drawing, and persuaded her mother to send her to classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Perlow received her BA and MFA at SAIC. She also received a master’s degree in printmaking at the Illinois Institute of Design. For more than 20 years Perlow has been an instructor at Columbia College, Chicago. She has exhibited nationally including solo shows in Chicago at the University Club (1999); Chicago Cultural Center (1988, 1998); Artemisia Gallery (1977); and the Contemporary Art Workshop (1985). Twightlight Zone was included in Perlow’s 2002 exhibition, Swing, at Koehnline Gallery. “In a world often defined by deceptive facades, Sandra Perlow’s idiosyncratic paintings distract the viewer from blind acceptance of the status quo by summoning the corporeal reality of dormant memories,” writes art critic John Brunetti in the exhibition catalog. “Her richly layered compositions of odd, vibrant, mutating shapes emerge from and disappear into vapor, establishing circuitous, unfamiliar paths from which to observe the world.” M A R K PA L M E R I 74 (American, b. 1960) Mark Palmeri received his BFA (1986) and MFA (1989) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A member of the art faculty at Oakton Community College, he has shown at many Chicago area venues, including Artemisia Gallery, Chicago Cultural Center, ARC Gallery, School of the Art Institute of Chicago Gallery, and Koehnline Gallery. “I think living in the world today is very challenging for young people,” says Palmeri. “Think back to 100 years ago. Photography existed, but people were not inundated with images. Today you walk down the street, Water’s Reflections 1977, Acrylic on canvas, 58 in. x 83 in., Gift of the artist, 2003.9 or you are driving in your car, and there are huge buses painted with signs. There is advertising everywhere. You have to move to a more rural area to let your eyes and mind relax, so you can invest some time in visual space.” On Water’s Reflections the artist commented, “It is about the creation of life itself. When I was doing this piece I was thinking about how the planet sort of recycles itself. Before the earth, before the dry rock, there is water—the elemental building block. I was looking at macrocosmic and microcosmic issues and thinking about life on other planets, especially Mars. Under the oceans of Mars there are chemically structured life forms living in water at 700 degrees Fahrenheit, at pressures and depths we can’t begin to consider.” 39 75 R I C H A R D H U N T (American, b. 1935) See ArtWalk No. 2 In 1969, Richard Hunt was the first artist to collaborate with master print artist Will Petersen in the production of lithographs at Lakeside Studio in Michigan. At the Plucked Chicken Press in Chicago and later in Evanston, Petersen printed these three large format lithographs for Hunt. Not Fixed is in the collection of the Portland (Oregon) Museum of Art and the Illinois State Museum, Springfield. Ascending/Descending was included in the Illinois State Museum traveling exhibition, Contemporary Lithography in Chicago. A. Untitled 1974, Lithograph 14 in. x 111/4 in. Lakeside Studio Gift of the Educational Foundation and Board of Student Affairs 1999.15ß B. Over Wisdom Bridge C. Not Fixed D. Ascending/Descending 1986, Lithograph, 401/2 in. x 301/4 in. Plucked Chicken Press Gift of Dr. William A. and Rev. Phyllis Koehnline, 1986.7 1985, Lithograph, 393/4 in. x 301/4 in. Plucked Chicken Press Gift of Dr. William A. and Rev. Phyllis Koehnline, 1986.15 1983, Lithograph, 393/4 in. x 301/4 in. Plucked Chicken Press Gift of Dr. William A. and Rev. Phyllis Koehnline, 1984.2 76 G E O R G E R O UAU LT (French, 1871-1958) Georges Rouault was born in Paris in 1871. His introduction to art began in 1885 with apprenticeships to a stained glass maker and restorer while attending the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs. He attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and later studied painting with Gustave Moreau (1826-1898). At one point, Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and Albert Marquet (1875-1947) were among his fellow students. Rouault’s early paintings were influenced by Rembrandt and Moreau. In 1904, however, the writings of Catholic novelist Leon Dragon Bloy precipitated a religious crisis for Rouault, and his favorite subEtching, 81/2 in. x 117/8 in., Gift of the Oakton jects became prostitutes, clowns, and judges, along with the themes 1928, Educational Foundation, 1985.92 of sin and redemption, especially the suffering of Jesus. In 1905, Rouault exhibited at the Salon d’ Automne with the Fauves, artists characterized by their use of radiant color to create emotional impact. Five years later he held his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Druet in Paris. Rouault’s graphics are mostly expressionistic etchings in black and white. Dragon is part of the series, Les Reincarnations du Pere Ubu. The text was written by Ambroise Vollard, the formost Parisian art dealer of the 20th century, and Rouault contributed 22 etchings and 104 wood engravings. “In his Dragon [Rouault] created one of the most original and penetrating fantasies in modern graphic art— an hallucinatory monster, but real as a noon sweat of fear.” (Excerpted from the catalog of the 1947 exhibition, George Rouault: Paintings and Prints, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.) 40 J O H N N Y F R I E D L A E N D E R 77 (French, 1912-1992) Lobster 1948, Etching, 127/8 in. x 91/4 in., Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation, 1985.61 Born in Pless, Germany, Johnny Friedlaender left for Paris following World War I. He attended the Beaux-Arts Academy of Breslau, studying with Otto Muller (1874-1930) and Carlo Mense (1886-1965). He settled in Paris in 1937 and made the acquaintance of Gaston Diehl (1912-1999), art critic and editor of The Moderns, a treasury of paintings throughout the world. A decade later, working with text from Diehl, he made a dozen etchings for Reves Cosmiques, including Lobster. Friedlaender spent most of World War II in the United States. In addition to being a fine abstract painter, he was considered an important teacher whose etching techniques inspired and influenced many artists and printmakers. His first exhibition was in 1949 at La Hune, Paris. In 1956, he had a show at the Cincinnati Art Museum. In the late 1950s he exhibited at the Cincinnati Art Museum, Berlin’s Staatliches Museum, and represented France at the Venice Biennal. In 1960, the Museum Braunschweig in Germany organized the first retrospective of Friedlaender’s work. Two more retrospectives honored the artist, one in Paris in 1978 and another in Bonn in 1992. His final show was at the Galerie La Hune-Brenner in Paris. F E R N A N D L E G E R 78 (French, 1881-1955) Fernand Leger was born in the Normandy region of France. He studied at the school in Argentan and spent three years as an architect’s apprentice in Caen. Leger found no satisfaction in this career, however, and decided he wanted to become a painter. His works are displayed internationally in the finest art museums. In 1914, during World War I, Leger was mobilized with French troops and sent to the front line, an experience that profoundly affected his concept of art. He became fascinated with mechanization and the working man, his comrades-in-arms, exploring a more uniform and scientific approach. The artist maintained his characteristic geometrical simplicity and starkness, however, adding bits of structure and architectural perspective. Leger’s abstract paintings of the early 1920s, consisting mostly of human and geometric shapes, began to transcend the boundaries of cubism. During this time the artist further developed his use of color while continuing to diffuse form with subtle shading. This technique Femme sur fond jaune creates a visual paradox where stark forms are offset by soft, rounded 1952, Lithograph, 16 in. x 13 in. edges. Leger’s large-scale works of the 1930s and 1940s are among Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation 1985.9 his most energetic and dynamic. Femme sur fond jaune was Leger’s original composition for a centennial album, a portfolio of prints published by Fernand Mourlot (1895-1988), who suggested that Leger produce something more colorful. Mourlot edited Femme sur fond jaune as a separate lithograph, based on the 1930 oil, Femme Au Cordage, created by the artist at a time when compositions of women, painted sculptures, and ropes were quite typical. The figure in this image inspired by surrealism resembles Pablo Picasso’s “inflated women.” 41 79 J E A N D U B U F F E T (French, 1901-1985) Jean Dubuffet stands as one of the most enigmatic, influential, and prolific artists of the 20th century. Born in France in 1901, he left the Academie Julian in Paris in 1918 to study art on his own. After completing military service, traveling, and spending time in his family’s wine business, Dubuffet returned to painting full time in 1942. Before the decade was over he would have his first American show at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. Like many of his generation, Dubuffet was deeply affected by World War II, and sought A. Painted Sculpture B. Ecrits et Lithographies 1968, Lithographic poster, 23 in. x 17 in. 1968, Lithographic poster artistic authenticity not within the confines of Gift of the Oakton Educational 24 in. x 181/2 in., Gift of the Oakton European traditions, but from those groups Foundation, 1985.69 Educational Foundation, 1985.70 marginalized by society—the insane, the imprisoned, and to a limited degree, children. He believed art should be a matter of “permanent revolution,” and this opinion had a profound effect on the anti-formalist movements of post-war Europe and America. A year before his death in 1985, Dubuffet completed the design for Monument with Standing Beast, a sculpture to be placed at the entrance of Chicago’s James R. Thompson Center. The 10-ton white fiberglass work stands nearly three stories tall and is formed of four interrelated elements that suggest a standing animal, a tree, a portal, and an architectural component. The lithographic posters, Ecrits et Lithographies and Painted Sculptures, present Dubuffet’s conceptions for sculpture in general. Dubuffet was the subject of several retrospectives by major museums during his lifetime, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1962); The Art Institute of Chicago (1962); Tate Gallery, London (1966); Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam, (1966); and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1973, 1981). 80 VA S S I LY K A N D I N S K Y (Russian, 1866-1944) Vassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow and from 1886 to 1892, studied law and economics at the University of Moscow. In 1896, he declined an offer to teach in order to study art in Munich with Anton Azbe (1862-1905), and later at the Kunstakademie with Franz von Stuck (1863-1928). In 1902, Kandinsky exhibited for the first time with the Berlin Secession and produced his first woodcuts. In 1911, he published On the Spiritual in Art and began making plans with Franz Marc (1880Two Riders against a Red Background 1916) for Almanach Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider Almanac) which was 1911/1938, Color woodcut, 4 1/8 in. x 61/4 in. published in concert with the Blaue Reiter group’s inaugural exhibition Gift of Dr. William A. and Rev. Phyllis Koehnline 1985.99 in 1912 at Moderne Galerie. During this period Kandinsky created the first edition of Two Riders against a Red Background, using the horse and rider motif as a symbol of his crusade against conventional art. This motif is featured in his many of his paintings and prints of the early 20th century. Some of them, like Two Riders against a Red Background, were inspired by Russian folk paintings, as well as the abstract landscapes with which Kandinsky had earlier experimented in Munich. The horseman also appears in Kandinsky’s On the Spiritual in Art and the Blue Rider Almanac. Two Riders against a Red Background was printed twice by Kandinsky, in 1911 and in 1938. Another edition was printed in 1968, more than 20 years after his death. Kandinsky’s first solo show was held at Der Sturm Gallery in Berlin in 1912. A year later, one of his works was accepted for the Armory Show in New York City. Kandinsky lived in Russia from 1914 to 1921, where he held a position at the People’s Commissariat of Education in Moscow. He began teaching at the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1922, and moved with the Bauhaus to Dessau in 1925. When the Nazis shut down the Bauhaus in 1933, Kandinsky settled in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris. Fifty-seven of his works were confiscated in the Nazis’ infamous 1937 purge of “degenerate art.” Kandinsky died December 13, 1944, in Neuilly. 42 J OA N M I R O 81 (Spanish, 1893-1983) Born the son of a jeweler and watchmaker in Barcelona, Spain, Joan Miro’s earliest landscape paintings are filled with motifs from childhood summers spent on the family farm. Images of dogs, birds, olive trees, and a moon-like sun appear again and again in his works. In the early 1920s, Miro went to Paris to study. There, the young poets and painters of the Surrealist Movement encouraged him to focus on the images of his own fantasy. He developed a very personal language that became increasingly free, expressing his images as linear and geometric shapes with bold colors and freely drawn lines. Later his vocabulary became almost a sign language composed of calligraphic strokes and patches of color. The playful and poetic images in Miro’s art have their origin in memories of Catalonia, his beloved homeland. According to Miro, there are only two ways for a visual artist to reach Peintures Murales Galerie Maeght large numbers of people—with sculpture or murals in public places, and 1961, Lithographic poster, 26 in. x 19 in. posters. His 39-foot sculpture, Miro’s Chicago, at 69 West Washington Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation Street, was constructed from steel-reinforced concrete with brightly colored 1985.46 ceramic tiles. His first poster, created in 1937, showed a Catalan peasant with fist clenched in anger at the Spanish dictator, Franco, and the Fascists. The posters were sold in Paris to fund the Spanish Resistance Movement. This poster was printed from a stencil, but almost all future posters were lithographs. Peintures Murales Galerie Maeght was created for a 1961 exhibition of six mural paintings at the Galerie Maeght in Paris. A L E X A N D E R CA L D E R 82 (American, 1898-1976) Alexander Calder was born in Pennsylvania, the son and grandson of sculptors. He earned world fame for his moving sculptures, which artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) termed “mobiles.” Calder was trained as an engineer but he also studied art. In 1926, while in Paris, he created a set of miniature moving circus animals made of wire and string that enchanted the art community. He made the transition from representational to non-objective forms after a visit to the studio of Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) in 1930. At this time, he began making small stationary sculptures that French artist Jean Arp (1886-1966) called “stabiles.” These became increasingly large and in 1958 culminated in his first monumental stabile, created for UNESCO in Paris. Following this prolonged European residency, Calder and his wife Louisa, lived on a farm in Roxbury, Connecticut, for the rest of his life. They also spent time in New York and maintained a home in Sache, France. Os et Serpen Calder’s death in 1976 coincided with a major retrospective of his work at 1984, Lithograph, 29 in. x 21 in. Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. 1985.29 Calder’s abstract stabile, Flamingo, located in Chicago on Dearborn Street, between Adams Street and Jackson Boulevard, stands on a large rectangular plaza framed by three federal buildings designed by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969). The vitality of Calder’s 53-foot, vermilion-colored, steel sculpture provides a dramatic contrast to the solemn, dark, steel and glass of the grid-like building facades. Another monumental Calder located in Chicago is Universe, on display in the lobby of the Sears Tower. The segments and color composition of this moving wall sculpture resemble the lithograph, Os et Serpent. 43 83 R O B E R T M OT H E R W E L L (American, 1915-1991) Robert Motherwell was born in Aberdeen, Washington. He earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Stanford University in 1932, a master’s degree in philosophy from Harvard University in 1937, and in 1940, another master’s in art history and archaeology from Columbia University, New York. After moving to Greenwich Village to paint full time, Motherwell met abstract artist William Baziotes (1912-1963) and was introduced to many of the city’s abstract expressionists. He created his first collages at the studio of artist Jackson Pollock (1912-1956). Along with Pollack and Baziotes, he was invited to exhibit at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery in New York. For the next 15 years he traveled extensively, taught art, and developed his own style of painting, drawing, and collage. In abstract expressionism, the “act” of painting becomes the “content” of the painting. Through gestural movements, an artist attempts to unleash raw emotions, not paint “pretty pictures.” Motherwell, however, was the only one of the original abstract expressionists to enthusiastically embrace Summertime in Italy with Blue 1965-66, Lithograph, 20 in. x 271/2 in. printmaking. In 1961, he began to make limited edition prints, Gift of April and Ralph Chermak, 1985.40 working with numerous workshops in the U.S. and Europe to create more than 200 editions over the next 30 years. During a summer spent in Italy in 1960, Motherwell began series of paintings, Summertime in Italy. In these landscapes, the form of a triangle is the primary theme, and frequently rises from a horizontal plane in a manner suggestive of an Apennine mountain crest. When viewed from a distance, the triangle can be interpreted as sculpture against an Italian sky. The lithograph, Summertime in Italy with Blue, demonstrates such an interpretation. 84 F E R N VA L F E R (American, b. 1949) See ArtWalk No. 51 In 1998, Fern Valfer’s work entered a new phase. After years of producing darker works influenced by the ordeal of Anne Frank, as well as her own family’s escape from Germany during World War II, the color blue began to infiltrate the color black and lighter, more atmospheric areas gradually began to dominate Valfer’s compositions. While spending time at the Ragdale Foundation’s spacious Meadow Studio, Valfer enjoyed a productive relationship with writers and other visual artists. Synthesis is one of the results of this experience. After the emotional self-exploration of her family’s painful past, Valfer reached a stage of catharsis, which is reflected in the reduction of strokes and the use of a heavenly blue color. 44 Synthesis 1998, Oil on canvas, 66 in. x 90 in., On loan from the artist, 1999.32 W I N I F R E D G O D F R E Y 85 (American, b. 1944) See ArtWalk No. 45 Field of Orange Tulips is a dramatic painting of animated and dynamic orange tulips with a small group of violets emerging beneath them. The study for this commissioned painting is in the collection of the Illinois State Museum, Springfield. Field of Orange Tulips 1985, Oil on canvas, 60 in. x 108 in., Percent-for-Art Program, Illinois Capital Development Board, and the Violet Ross Memorial Fund, 1985.65 F R E D J O N E S 86 (American, b. 1940) See ArtWalk No. 55 Illinois Landscape (detail) 1983, Pen and ink (5 panels), 291/2 in. x 391/2 in. (each panel) Percent-for-Art Program, Illinois Capital Development Board, 1983.2 Illinois Landscape demonstrates the versatility and mastery of Fred Jones. Here he captures airy features of landscape, continuing from one panel to another. Jones uses short lines of ink almost in an impressionistic manner, transforming minimal forms into some degree of abstraction. He depicts the core nature of the Illinois prairie’s flatness and monotonous rhythm. The sketchy ink lines also create an emotional reaction. In viewing the drawing from a distance, the fragments dissolve, and the total image appears to resemble a Rorschach inkblot, part of the familiar psychological test in which the subject is asked to interpret a variety of amorphous shapes. P H I L I P L I V I N G S TO N 87 (American, b. 1941) See ArtWalk No. 50 Love’s Some Time 1987, Aluminum and paint, 65 in. x 65 in. x 9 in. Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation, 1992.3 “Love’s Some Time is one of my relief sculptures made of layered planes of aluminum and paint. I like working on the wall because I can create an interaction between the real space of the sculpture and illusionistic spatial effects. I hope, thus, to engage the viewer physically and imaginatively. My works are spatial versions of experience. I am, therefore, a student of meaningful spaces: streets, rooms, piazzas, horizons. My spatial language is mostly architectural: walls, columns, windows, and doors. I am increasingly interested in light and color. Most of my work is based on the notion that the depiction of a space can represent a state of mind or of spirit. My style is to present material in a way that requires an act of imagination on the part of the viewer. This act completes the art.” —Philip Livingston 45 88 W I L L I A M C O N G E R (American, b. 1937) Born in Dixon, Illinois, William Conger first studied art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and then at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where he received his BFA in 1960. He earned his MFA from the University of Chicago in 1966 and five years later joined the art faculty at De Paul University in Chicago. In 1984 he became a visiting professor at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, and the next year he joined the faculty as professor and chair of the department of art theory and practice. Conger is counted among the group of Chicago artists known as the allusive abstractionists. He was influenced by the abstract style of his teacher, Elaine de Kooning (1920-1989), with whom he studied at the University of New Mexico in the late 1950s. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Conger had developed an abstract style featuring brightly colored, flat shapes against a lighter ground. Later, Conger deepened the colors and further varied the shapes, producing fractured, lively forms that sometimes resemble Levee 1986, Lithograph, 271/2 in. x 221/2 in. a stained glass window. Gift of Dr. William A. and Rev. Phyllis Koehnline, 1986.3 Although he paints in a non-representational manner, Conger anchors his works in everyday experiences and titles that are descriptive, evocative, and metaphoric. Many of his works are based on childhood memories. Levee was the artist’s first published original lithograph, printed at the Plucked Chicken Press in Evanston, Illinois. The title of the work demonstrates Conger’s urban sense of place and awareness of history and the force of nature. 89 K A R L W I R S U M (American, b. 1939) Karl Wirsum was born in Chicago and except for three years spent teaching at Sacramento State University, California, has lived in the city his entire life. Wirsum received a BA degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1961 and began to develop the cartoon-like style for which he would later become known. He also exhibited in such important group shows as The Sunken City Rises (1964) and Phalanx 3 (1965), both at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He is an instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the creator of Plug Bug, a 77-foot-high mural displayed Dune not for Sake on the east wall of the Commonwealth Edison 1990, Lithograph, 22 in. x 30 in. Building at 121 North Dearborn, Chicago. Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation, 1991.1 A turning point in Wirsum’s career was the Hairy Who exhibition in 1966 at the Hyde Park Art Center, where his work appeared with James Falconer, Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, and Suellen Rocca. This group of artists shared a similar style, attitude, and subject matter. They became a dominant force in Chicago art during the 1960s and were later dubbed “imagists” by author Franz Schulze. Wirsum’s painting and sculpture are characterized by an animated and often outrageous treatment of figure. Using vibrant colors, dynamic line, and puns of all sorts, the artist adopts the logic and strategies of popular culture to create a bizarre fantasy world of odd characters and improbable situations. The lithograph, Dune not for Sake, was printed at the Full Court Press in Evanston, Illinois. 46 R U T H D U C K WO R T H 90 (American, b. 1919) Born in Hamburg, Germany, Ruth Duckworth is a ceramic sculptor of international renown. Fleeing the Nazis in 1936, she moved to Liverpool, England, and studied painting, sculpting, and drawing at the Liverpool School of Art. In 1964, Duckworth was invited to teach for one year at Midway Studios at the University of Chicago. She was commissioned by the university to create her first large-scale mural, and continued to teach at the school until 1977. In the early 1960s, Duckworth began working in porcelain, producing small sculptures and large murals. The murals are biomorphic compositions of polished surfaces and rough edges, made by incorporating overlapping slabs of clay that partially conceal other design elements. Earth, Water, and Sky, the University of Chicago commission, was critical to the artist’s transition from the cycles of nature to the forces of weather that would later dominate her work. Duckworth’s first U.S. exhibition was a one-person show in 1965 at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. Later solo Untitled 1983, Lithograph, 22 in. x 16 in., Gift of Dr. William A. exhibitions were held in Chicago galleries and at the Contemporary and Rev. Phyllis Koehnline, 1991.4 Art Center, London (1986). This untitled lithograph of sculptural forms, produced at the Plucked Chicken Press in Chicago, was Duckworth’s first published print. It was included in the traveling exhibition, Contemporary Chicago Lithography, produced by the Illinois State Museum, Springfield. JA M E S A . K R AU S S 91 (American, b. 1945) See ArtWalk No. 19 “In this large abstract painting, my main concerns dealt with composition, in particular, the balance and dynamics of linear movement combined with texture, surface differences, and colorized atmospheric nuances. Elements of expressionism are evident in the liquidity of the linear passages, and to a more subtle degree the droplets of individual color applied both by hand and through atomization. While referencing [the late] Dick Storinger [former Oakton dean of the division of languages, humanities, and the arts], the title was more directly inspired by a color combination offered by Chevrolet in its 1957 models.” —James A. Krauss 57’ Flamingo Heaven 1978, Acrylic on canvas, 10 ft. x 6 ft., Gift of the artist 1982.2 47 92 C O R E Y P O S T I G L I O N E (American, b. 1942) See ArtWalk No. 56 In the The Marriage of Reason and Logic, Corey Postiglione draws inspiration from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, in which the author distinguishes between the terrestrial maze as a pattern to traverse when one feels lost in the world, and the celestial maze, a pattern of planetary movement that makes one aware of one’s creative potential. This intensely colored triptych is a blending of the terrestrial and celestial mazes. In the design, Postiglione merges reason and logic to resolve the maze. The Marriage of Reason and Logic was included in the 1998 Koehnline Gallery exhibition, Passages. The Marriage of Reason and Logic 1997, Acrylic on canvas, 60 in. x 156 in., On loan from the artist, 1999.31 93 J OYC E OW E N S (American, b. 1947) Joyce Owens earned a BFA from Howard University in Washington D.C., in 1970, and her MFA in 1973 from Yale University, where she also won the Helen Winternitz Award in painting. Owens then became a producer for the CBS television station in Philadelphia. Moving to Chicago, she spent eight years at WBBM-TV, primarily as the graphic arts coordinator for news. She left the station in 1982 to concentrate on her young family and her painting. Since 1996 she has taught studio painting and drawing at Chicago State Meditation University. 1993, Acrylic on canvas, 40 in. x 58 in., On loan from the artist, 2000.2 Owens’ work has been exhibited at Howard University, Washington, D.C.; Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia; and the Martin Luther King Complex, Columbus, Ohio, among other venues. Chicago area exhibitions include the Museum of Science and Industry; Spertus Museum of Judaica, Chicago Cultural Center, and Wood Street Gallery. Owens also was included in the 1999 Koehnline Gallery exhibition, Expressions Toward the End of the Millennium. Owens uses unconventional materials and found objects in figurative paintings and constructions that explore the motivations for and responses to race, skin color, and the myths associated with racism. Meditation reflects the artist’s interest in African-American women in society. The figure is surrounded by a dream-like landscape where the body, spirit, and environment are united. The painting’s irregular shape and three-dimensional folds of the canvas are typical motifs for the artist, reflecting an aesthetic that embraces the unexpected. 48 D E S S A K I R K 94 (American, b. 1974) Sculptor Dessa Kirk was born in Titusville, Florida, and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. From her grandfather, an Alaskan gold miner, she learned how to work with the earth using heavy machinery. Early influences on her artistic development were Alaskan sculptor David Felker and Karen Stahlecker, a visiting artist at the Visual Arts Center of Alaska in 1989. Kirk was 15 years old when she helped Stahlecker prepare for a large-scale installation at the Center. Two years later Kirk studied sculpture under the late Ken Gray at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. In 1992 she again worked for Stahlecker, received her GED, and completed a welding certification course at the University of Anchorage Vocational Department. In 1993, Kirk was accepted into the BFA program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. While attending school, she worked and studied for three years with Dan Blue, a local metal Nightingale 1999, Steel, 12 ft. H x 12 ft. W x 7 ft. D art fabricator. During her final year at SAIC, Kirk rented a garage On loan from the artist, 1999.6 and bought an old Cadillac and a 500-piece Sears Craftsman tool set. She took the car apart, piece by piece, and using body parts, including the exhaust manifold and oil pump, created the sculptures Black Lily and Red Lily, which were accepted for Pier Walk 1998 at Navy Pier in Chicago. Pier Walk 1999 featured Nightingale, also part of the Cadillac project. Like the other sculptures in this series, the giant flower represents the figure of a woman in a specific mood. This personification, combined with Cadillac’s generally accepted “luxury” image, makes a unique statement. J I M G A L LU C C I 95 (American, b. 1951) Oracle 1999, Galvanized steel, 16 ft. x 12 ft. x 8 ft. On loan from the artist, 1999.26 Born in Rochester, New York, Jim Gallucci received his MFA from Syracuse University in 1976, and the following year began teaching art at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He left in 1986 to work as a designer for the North Carolina Zoological Park in Ashboro, a position he held for six years. Gallucci operates a studio in Greensboro and was a founder of the Tri-State Sculptors Guild. He has won many public art commissions throughout the country. Architectural forms always have been part of Gallucci’s work, giving him both a literal and a symbolic foundation from which to create sculpture. Gates have been found throughout the history of Western civilization, not only as utilitarian elements but also as symbols in art and literature. This symbolism arises from the paradox of the gate: it may be open or closed, a way of passage or an obstruction, a means of confinement or release. Today the symbol of a gate is used in the description of a computer chip at work, storing and releasing bytes of information. Before its installation at Oakton Community College as a symbol of opportunity and advancement, Oracle was shown at Pier Walk 1999, on Chicago’s Navy Pier. Another Gallucci sculpture, Symphonic Gate, is on display at Oakton’s Ray Hartstein Campus. Other Galluci gate sculptures include Immigrant Gate II at the Northshore Sculpture Park in Skokie, and Whisper Gate at the Exploris Children’s Museum in Raleigh, North Carolina. 49 96 J O H N P I T M A N W E B E R (American, b. 1942) See ArtWalk No. 66 Formally, Untitled demonstrates the influence on Weber by French artist Fernand Leger (ArtWalk No. 78), whose work Weber encountered during his residency in Paris in the mid-1960s. Leger was a late cubist who emphasized structure and size and was enamored with machinery, the urban experience, and human workers. The drainpipe in Untitled, as in Elements (ArtWalk No. 66), is symbolic of human waste and the process of its disposal. Untitled 1970, Oil & acrylic on canvas, 78 in. x 60 in. On loan from the artist, 1991.7 97 W I L L I A M N E L S O N (American, b. 1942) See ArtWalk No. 39 In 1972, the University of South Dakota Museum commissioned William Nelson to paint the sacred Sun Dance Ceremony of the Oglala Sioux at Pine Ridge, South Dakota. Tribal members felt it was important to accurately and respectfully record this historic Native American ritual. Nelson was one of few white men given permission to view the ceremony. The resulting lithographic series, The Sun Dance, is part of the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. The Dancer, from The Sun Dance 1974, Portfolio of 10 lithographs, 173/4 in. x 233/4 in. (each) Gift of Mr. Gerald A. Horwitz, 1985.18.1-10 50 D O N C R O U C H 98 (American, b. 1940) Warshirt with Ledger c. 1980s, Lithograph, 40 in. x 301/4 in. Gift of Dr. William A. and Rev. Phyllis Koehnline 1985.75 Don Crouch was born in Carlsbad, New Mexico, and received a bachelor’s degree from Texas Western College, El Paso, and his MFA from the University of Iowa. Since 1965 he has been a professor of art at Western Illinois University, Macomb. Crouch has participated in more than 125 national and regional juried art competitions, winning 24 purchase prizes and awards. His work is part of many public collections, including the Illinois State Museum, Springfield; National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson Hole, Wyoming; and Cleveland Museum of Art. Growing up near the Mexican-U.S. border, Crouch was able to more easily incorporate new ideas with the old. He studied the work of Carl Rungius (1869-1959), an American artist whose paintings of big game animals have been a major source of inspiration for generations of wildlife artists. His goal, he says, “is to capture the essence of my subjects with an implicit timelessness.” In 2003, Crouch participated in The West is Still Wild: New Art of the West, a biennial exhibition at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, which showcases the work of Native Americans and other contemporary artists who create work about the American West. The lithograph, Warshirt with Ledger, depicting Native American ethnographic artifacts, was printed at the Plucked Chicken Press in Chicago. W I L L P E T E R S E N 99 (American, 1928-1994) See ArtWalk No. 30 Will Petersen, founder of the Plucked Chicken Press, created Cracked Stone/green T while teaching at West Virginia University in Morgantown. Here, as in lithographs printed earlier in Japan, Petersen emphasizes the structure of the stone by shadowing its outlines. Petersen’s motif of cracked stones is characteristic of his A. Cloudswept Solo stone prints from the late 1992, Lithograph, 221/4 in. x 281/2 in. 1960s and early 1970s. The Gift of the Oakton Educational Foundation, 1993.3 center image is an abstraction of a figure dressed in a Japanese kimono, which in later prints evolves into the winged goddess, Victory, or a Japanese Noh dancer. In 1991, the Toronto Symphony invited Petersen to exhibit Cloudswept Solo during the world premiere of The Darkly Splendid Earth: The Lonely Traveller, by composer Murray Schafer. Petersen created the painting while violinist Jacques Israelievitch performed in his studio. After Cloudswept Solo, Petersen produced a series of lithographs on the motif of the “lonely traveler” or “wanderer.” In the 1992 lithograph, Cloudswept Solo, the wanderer becomes Petersen in self portrait, evoking a small B. Cracked Stone/green T figure getting lost in a giant stormy environment. 1972, Lithograph, 291/2 in. x 20 1/2 in., 2001.1 51 100 CY N T H I A A R C H E R (American, b. 1953) Cynthia Archer was born in West Virginia and earned her bachelor’s degree at Goucher College. Her association with the Plucked Chicken Press began in 1977, when she earned her MFA at West Virginia University, Morgantown. She married Will Petersen in 1979. Both of these lithographs were printed at the Plucked Chicken Press. Archer was honored with the John D. Rockefeller Governor’s Merit Award in 1979. In 1980, her lithographs were part of a U.S. State Department traveling exhibition throughout Yugoslavia. That same year her work was included in the exhibition, 30 American Printmakers, at Ohio State University. Editions of her Mentor’s Ivienage were purchased by the National Gallery of Art of New Zealand and the Portland (Maine) Museum of Art. Archer’s works also are included in many collections, including the Illinois State Museum, Springfield; the Museum of Art and Archeology, University of Missouri; Southern Illinois University, Carbondale; and the University of Colorado, Boulder. “As a child I didn’t have a pony,” says Archer. “So, I drew horses. Now I study dressage. The craft of lithography I relate to the discipline of riding. I love antiquity and ancient horse forms. Thus, Greek amphora provides the ambience for steeds’ eyes, blossoms, arrows . . . the ancient and the fragile, juxtaposed with the powerful. My mentors are things and animals, rather than humans. My mentors are doers. I learn by watching.” Petersen’s poem about the lithograph, Lydian Cypher, reveals Archer’s poetic images: Hidden under pink ink which over green becomes grey are names of angels, their colors, their herbs, songs . . . and, again impossible pots, invented vessels, a thousand aeons old, yet, in a moment’s whisper’s breeze, breakable. Fragility contains horse’s power, admits oceans of fish, makes room for underhoof duck’s silly nobility, rhyming cat: a time bordered by carousel’s ephemeral steed, Egypt’s eternal hawk— and a lady, sidesaddly fluttering up. Rabbits? I saw them, too: downtown, Chicago, in weeds, under the El, under cars, parked, and along the river, reflecting the lit for movies massive Merchandise Mart as she walked her Dalmatian, under a moon, slight, considering her mare, at night, out, far out, in the boonies. . . 52 A. Lydian Cypher 1985, Lithograph, 40 in. x 30 in., Gift of Dr. William A. and Rev. Phyllis Koehnline 1985.51 B. Icon Ewe Kant 1984, Lithograph, 40 in. x 30 in. Gift of Dr. William A. and Rev. Phyllis Koehnline 1985.63 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY (Chicago and Illinois Art) 200 Years of Illinois Art, The Bicentennial Exhibit Series. Chicago: Illinois Arts Council, Illinois Bicentennial Commission, 1976. Bach, Ira J. A Guide to Chicago’s Public Sculpture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Chicago Office of Fine Arts Loop Sculpture Guide. Chicago Office of Fine Arts, Department of Cultural Affairs, 1986. Gude, Olivia and Jeff Huebner. Urban Art Chicago: A Guide to Community Murals, Mosaics, and Sculptures. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000. Harpaz, Nathan. Plucked Chicken Press: The Stone Prints of Will Petersen and His Contemporaries. Des Plaines, IL: Oakton Community College, 2001. Knipe, Tony and Peter Davies. Who Chicago?: An Exhibition of Contemporary Imagists. Sunderland, England: Ceolfrith Gallery, Sunderland Arts Centre, 1980. Krantz, Les. The Chicago Art Review: An Illustrated Survey of the City’s Museums, Galleries, and Leading Artists. Chicago: American References, 1989. Riedy, James L. Chicago Sculpture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981. Schulze, Franz. Fantastic Images: Chicago Art Since 1945. Chicago: Follett Publishing Company, 1972. Sundell, Ivy. The Chicago Art Scene. Evanston, IL: Crow Woods Publishing, 1998. Warren, Lynne. Art in Chicago: 1945–1995. Chicago: The Museum of Contemporary Art, 1996. Yood, James. Second Sight: Printmaking in Chicago 1935-1995. Evanston, IL: Mary and Leigh Block Gallery, Northwestern University, 1996. 53 INDEX Numbers represent ArtWalk No., not the page number. Anarchist Studios 18 Archer, Cynthia 26, 30, 100 Armory Show 38, 72, 80 Arp, Jean 82 Art Institute of Chicago 3, 18, 21, 28, 29, 33, 34, 43, 44, 47, 50, 53, 54, 67, 69, 72, 79 Atkinson, George 69 Baer, George 18 Baer, Martin 18 Baldaccini, Cesar 22 Bauhaus 80 Baur, Mike 6 Baziotes, William 83 Beck, Clarence Charles 21 Berlin Secession, 80 Brady, Matthew 17 Brancusi, Constantin 71 Bullock, Benbow 71 Burk, George 63 Butler, James 67 Calder, Alexander 82 Campbell, Joseph 64 Campoli, Cosmo 5 Cezanne, Paul 18 Chicago Imagists 34, 52 Chicago Public Art Group 12, 66 Chirico, Giorgio de 37 Christmas, Daniel 42 Conard, Joseph 92 Conger, William 88 Contemporary Art Workshop 5, 73 Cornell, Joseph 20 Cramer, George 15 Cranach, Lucas 18 Crouch, Don 98 Daguerre, Louis 17 Dali, Salvador 37 Decade Show 49 Der Blaue Reiter 80 Diebenkorn, Richard 20 Disney, Walt 21 Driesbach, David 43 Dubuffet, Jean 29, 33, 79 Duchamp, Marcel 82 Duckworth, Ruth 90 Dybek, Stuart 57 Eastman, George 17 El Greco 18 Ensor, James 21 Feren, Steven 8 Fink, Ray 5 Frankenstein, Curt 32 Full Court Press 38, 42, 52, 89 Galerie Maeght 81 Gallucci, Jim 95 Giacometti, Alberto 33 Godfrey, Winifred 45, 68, 85 Golub, Leon 5, 34 Gonzales, Julio 2 Goto, Joseph 2 Gregor, Harold 44 Guggenheim, Peggy 83 Gunn, Lorri 52 Hairy Who 89 Hayter, Stanley William 41, 43, 55, 66 Heckel, Erich 21 Henry, John 9 Heymann, Moritz 18 Himmelfarb, John 29, 57 Ho, Ruyell 53 Holbein Studios 18 Hoppock, Kay 38 Hunt, Richard 2, 9, 50, 63, 75 Jewart, Randall 23 Jones, Fred 55, 86 Jo Ji, Yong 64 Kandinsky, Wassily 20, 80 Karpowicz, Terrence 3, 60 Katz, Ray 14 Kearney, John 5 Keating, William 54 54 Kellerman, Moritz 65 Kerauac, Jack 4, 30 King, Martin Luther Jr. 2, 28, 66 Kirk, Dessa 94 Klee, Paul 40 Kleinman, Art 48 Kokoschka, Oskar 18 Koonig, Elaine de 88 Krauss, James 19, 91 Kristallnacht 8, 32 Krueger, Keith 58 Lakeside Studio 26, 63, 75 Leaf, June 33, 34 Lindsey, Eric 24 Livingston, Philip 50, 87 Mann, Sally 20 Martyl (Suzanne Schweig) 47 Matta, Roberto 2 McCormick, Jim 26 McGrail, Jeane 16 Mesple, James McNeill 10, 31 Miceli, Patrick 61 Michel, Peter 70 Midway Studios 90 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig 82 Mihopoulos, Effie 10, 31 Miro, Joan 37, 40, 81 Moll, Bill 21 Mondrian, Piet 82 Monster Roster 33 Moore, Henry 22 Motherwell, Robert 83 Munch, Edvard 33 Museum of Modern Art, NY 2, 18, 33, 34, 37, 46, 76, 79 Nakashima, Tom 49 Native American 10, 15, 16, 22, 31, 97, 98 Nelson, William 39, 97 Niepce, Joseph 17 Nietschze, Friedrich 23 Noguchi, Isamu 22 Oldenburg, Claes 36 Owens, Joyce 93 Pattison, Abbott 28 Peart, Jerry 9 Petersen, Will 26, 30, 35, 49, 53, 75, 99, 100 Petlin, Irving 33 Picasso, Pablo 18 Pier Walk 3, 4, 8, 13, 14, 22, 23, 24, 70, 94, 95 Plucked Chicken Press 26, 27, 29, 30, 38, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 53, 75, 88, 89, 98, 99, 100 Politi, Leo 59 Pollock, Jackson 29, 83 Portillo, Agustin 11 Postiglione, Corey 56, 92 Robins, Judy 22 Rosofsky, Seymour 21, 33, 34 Rothenstein, Michael 20 Rungius, Carl 98 Sandburg, Carl 57 Schoch, Sally 62 School of the Art Institute of Chicago 2, 10, 12, 16, 21, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 39, 48, 51, 53, 56, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 73, 74, 88, 89, 94 Scribner, Bobby Joe 13 Sem Ghelardin Studio 22 Seyfried, John 17 Smith, David 2, 24 Smith, Joel 46 Socoloff, Miriam 12 Soutine, Chaim 18 Stanley, Robert 20 Stieglitz, Alfred 17 Stolz, Fisher 25 Studio 17, 41, 55, 66 Tapies, Antoni 40 Thodos, Diane 41 Tinsley, Barry 7 Trupp, Barbara 27 Urry, Steven 9 Valfer, Fern 51, 84 Viola, Bill 20 Weber, Pitman John 66, 96 Weiss, Cynthia 12 Weston, Edward 18 Wirsum, Karl 52, 89 Woitena, Ben 4 55 A R T WA L K M a p C o l o r C o d e ■ Koehnline Museum of Art Temporary exhibitions of modern and contemporary art ■ Business Institute Paintings ■ East Corridor First Floor: Paintings by local artists and graphics by 20th century masters Second Floor: Native American prints ■ Library First Floor: Paintings, drawings, and prints Second Floor: Paintings and sculptures Lower level: Leo Politi Collection ■ Main Lobby Indoor sculptures ■ Performing Arts Center Paintings in the lobby and mosaic outside ■ Rolana Tankus Fox Gallery Prints by 20th century masters and local artists (located on the balcony above Main Lobby) ■ Sculpture Park Large outdoor sculptures ■ Southeast Corridor Paintings and prints by Illinois artists (located near the TenHoeve Center) ■ West Corridor First Floor: Photography and digital art Second Floor: Paintings and drawings