Bryn Gleason

Bryn Gleason: PASSING  Opening Reception Fri.  Apr 28, 5-8pm

I submerge my body in cool water, inviting the silence to wrap its cold talons around my bones. The weightlessness of my liquid cocoon pulls the tension from my muscles like six million needles passing though my flesh. It’s dark and eerie under the water, but it is also calm.

Sleep paralysis, induced by post traumatic stress disorder, will infect you with a craving for calmness. It instills a longing to wake without exhaustion. A desperation to sleep without fear.

The shadows that haunted my childhood bedside faded with time and practice. And these new demons, waking me from a deep sleep with the barrel of a gun pressed against my forehead, they too shall pass. Though haunting, their recurring presence offers a sign of progress. Each time they stalk my exhausted body they appear slightly fainter than the night before.

This exhibition, much like the spit bite intaglio I practiced as a teen, is a ritual. The ferric chloride that dribbled across my copper plates etched impressions of the freshwater lake that brought me comfort as a child. Like a suture to an open wound, each etching closed a chapter.

And with this new sacrament, I forbid my demons. With every misty drip, each slow intentional breath, I resurrect the stillness I worshiped as a child floating naked in a moonlit lake. I’ve blended their haunting silhouettes into panels of birch, not unlike the dock I stained with water bleeding off my body after leaving demons at the bottom of that lake. With this water and wood, I forced them out of their sleepless terrors. Through this ritual, I reclaimed a space. I now rest calmly on my mattress, and within my mind, where shadows once lurked. And the terror that birthed these shadow demons continues to drift away, leaving me to revel in my undisturbed darkness, finally able to sleep.

 

Opening Reception, Friday, April 28, 5:00-8:00pm

  • Exhibition dates: April 27 – May 20, 2023
  • Gallery hours: Thurs – Fri 2-6pm, Sat – Sun 12-4 pm

 

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Amanda Nadig

Amanda Nadig: PROCLAIM YOUR JOY  Opening Reception Fri.  Apr 28, 5-8pm

“It is important throughout your life to proclaim your joy”   -Mark Eitzel

Artmaking is joy, sharing is joyous. Amanda’s quilted works are a celebration of unconventional fabric combinations and abundance of hand stitching. She finds that sharing her process and her unique approach to making quilts brings her as much joy as she finds in making her work. Quilting has become an act of self care; working in the medium of textiles enables her to fit stitching into free moments throughout her day.

Amanda Nadig is a textile artist who finds inspiration in keeping with and breaking away from traditions in quilting. Her hand quilted compositions explore colors and shapes sourced from secondhand garments and home textiles discovered near her home studio in Chicago, IL. Her two young children and her high school art students have a great influence on her work; she explores balance, embraces chance, and experiments endlessly in her artistic practice.

Opening Reception, Friday, April 28, 5:00-8:00pm

  • Exhibition dates: April 27 – May 20, 2023
  • Gallery hours: Thurs – Fri 2-6pm, Sat – Sun 12-4 pm

 

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OUR CHOICE

OUR CHOICE  Opening Reception Fri.  Apr 28, 5-8pm

Living as the female of the human species has many challenges, from birth onward. There is childhood conditioning which pushes girls to adhere to societal norms. They are encouraged to wear pink and play with dolls. Girls help Mommy with cooking and housework, and sit quietly in the classroom while Frank and Johnny answer the questions asked by the teacher.

These ideas get stronger as girls mature into teenagers. They are taught to defer to men in power situations, dress in a certain way so as not to sexually stimulate men. At the same time young women must adhere as closely as possible to the body shape most desired by men, or risk bullying and ridicule. In short, women are taught that their worth comes from men, how men perceive and value them is what matters most.

Once puberty hits, there is the constant fear of pregnancy by rape or accident or thoughtlessness. The burden is on women to handle birth control and pregnancy, because they bear the children.  All of these pressures are compounded for those in our transgender and nonbinary community.

Access to abortion is necessary because women need the freedom to decide whether or not to carry a child. Men cannot be relied on, and women can’t do it alone. They need the federal government to protect their right to choose what to do if they get pregnant. And the government is not able to secure those rights at this time. This group of artists feels compelled to act now by making artwork that states their feelings on this dangerous assault on women. What we do with our bodies is OUR CHOICE.

Featuring the work of: Rachel Ahava Rosenfeld, Donna Bassin, Marissa Bridge, Noelle Iovino, Dee Mallon, Virginia Mallon, Maggie Rose, Mary Cathryn Roth, Yvonne Shortt, Jonathan Talbot

More than just an art exhibit, OUR CHOICE is a protest against the attack on women’s reproductive rights in the United States of America.

 

Opening Reception, Friday, April 28, 5:00-8:00pm

  • Exhibition dates: April 27 – May 20, 2023
  • Gallery hours: Thurs – Fri 2-6pm, Sat – Sun 12-4 pm

 

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COMING INTO VIEW: NIU MFA Exhibition

COMING INTO VIEW: NIU MFA Exhibition  Opening Reception Fri.  Mar 31, 5-8pm

Coming into View showcases the thesis work of three MFA graduate students who are currently finishing up their final semester at Northern Illinois University. The artists—Rachel Beer, Alex Bridges, and E.A. Stuart— are thrilled to present this exhibition that represents three years of research, exploration, and discovery.

Rachel’s practice combines the lively qualities of monotype and woodblock printing with the delicate mark-making of graphite and lithography. Through her research she navigates a world of concrete while searching for the ruptures where softer ways of living can emerge. In her work she examines how the rigid structures that surround her have become internalized within while also considering how to nurture the cracks that are beginning to form.

Alex’s work investigates the relationship of our accessible conscious mind in conjunction with our unconscious beneath the surface. Combining lithography and collagraph printmaking techniques is her avenue for visualizing a distorted reality. An invitation is made for the viewer to experience the work from a distance, then finding new details once stepping closer. By working intuitively and keeping a balance between conscious decision-making and natural response, there is a collaboration which happens between the work and the artist.

E.A. Stuart’s practice examines how spaces, real or virtual affect how the individual perceives themselves and present that image to the world about them. Furthermore, as time passes and spaces transform, how that public persona is altered to adapt to these changes. Through the construction of brutalist objects, and then using these forms as models for multiple “portrait” paintings, she creates opportunities to examine the relationship between the objects and individuals from different viewpoints.

In each of their practices, these artists are exploring what’s been hidden and bringing these perspectives into view.

 

Opening Reception, Friday, March 31, 5:00-8:00pm

  • Exhibition dates: March 30 – April 22, 2023
  • Gallery hours: Thurs – Fri 2-6pm, Sat – Sun 12-4 pm

 

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Randi Shepard

WEATHERING  Opening Reception Fri.  Dec 2, 5-8pm

Ten years ago a tragedy occurred which changed the course of my sister’s life. So many of us whose lives she touched with her love and generosity are still scrambling to fill the voids created by this loss.

Plans were hijacked, dreams shattered, and futures altered. She can no longer comfort us with her words, offer advice or encouragement, be our advocate, give us self-confidence or validation, accompany us around the world, or cuddle our babies in her arms.

This work is intended to celebrate my sister, who always brought happiness to others, even if only as a brief distraction from their own tragedies. It is an attempt to call out what we take for granted, and acknowledge that which requires appreciation, while there is still time.

 

Opening Reception, Friday, December 2, 5:00-8:00pm

  • Exhibition dates: Nov 26 –  Dec 17, 2022
  • Gallery hours: Thurs – Fri 2-6pm, Sat – Sun 12-4 pm

 

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

Manal Deeb

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Laminated Heart:  Opening Reception Fri.  Dec 3, 5-8pm

my heart broke in silent sound
my tears did not touch the ground

“Laminated Heart” is an internal landscape, directed at no particular audience.  A powerful drive to reproduce oneself. A journey that takes you into replications of self that kept me alive.  A glance into a biding time revealing memories stolen by the time.  A quest for a golden note.  A dare to dissect the inner of the unknown without fear.

 

Opening Reception, Friday, Dec 3, 5:00-8:00pm

  • Exhibition dates: Nov 27 – Dec 18, 2021
  • Gallery hours: Thurs – Fri 2-6pm, Sat – Sun 12-4 pm  

Call for Entries “His-ter’-ee-uh”

A juried exhibition in March 2019 at ARC. Click here for prospectus and application form.

New exhibit at ARC Gallery, March 2019, juried by artist Olive Stefanski. (NEW DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS! —Jan. 26th, 11:55 pm)

With this exhibition, we are calling for art that addresses structural sexism—in particular, women’s emotional realities, and how that emotional reality plays out in a national atmosphere of distrust about women’s stories, women’s rationality and women’s anger.

His-ter’-ee-uh: from the Greek word “hystera”, or womb—an organ that was thought to migrate erratically through a woman’s abdomen, searching for “fragrant smells”, much like “an animal within an animal”. (Aretaeus, Greek physician, 2nd century AD)

While the uterus has become more sedentary over the intervening years, it nevertheless continued to be blamed for women’s irrationality and emotional distress. In the 19th century, a time marked by both physical constraints (corsets) and psychological restrictions (confinement to womanly activities), widespread concerns about female hysteria resulted in numerous cures for misbehaving wombs. A popular treatment for hysteria at the time was clitoral stimulation administered by one’s physician.

Today, in the inevitable backlash to the “MeToo” moment, women once again are distrusted, disdained (and sometimes diagnosed) for an emotionality that threatens the status quo. Women’s bodies continue to be the ground around which much of the conflict revolves. Strangely enough (as we saw in recent Supreme Court hearings) some of the hysteria around these events now seems to also emanate from men, which suggests the need for a new metaphor to explain the cause of women’s rage.

application form and prospectus: https://arcgallery.wufoo.com/forms/ahistereeuha/