The Billboard Project in Chicago is showing artwork interspersed with advertising. The billboard is located about 1 mile west of the Oasis on I90 as you are heading eastbound on the north side of the highway. I have three close-up images of three of my installations showing. They include Infinite, At Peace and Disintegration. The work will be showing through October 23.

View Billboard Art Project – Chicago in a larger map

The exhibition will be opening on August 19 at 217 North Carpenter Street in Chicago’s West Loop. The reception will be held from 6 pm–9 pm.

I would also like to thank Kim Lesko, Griffin Youngstrum, Ron Peterson and John Cizmar for all of their help in finalizing the installation. Kim assisted by crocheting the top panels for the piece. Griffin was my studio assistant this summer and helped to paint the medium on the leaves. Ron will be assembling the base and top frame for the piece in addition to helping with the install. John will also be helping with the install and has helped with packing the finished panels. Thanks again!

Review: Light and Air/Coalition Gallery

Ethereal can mean delicate, insubstantial, or otherworldly. In “Light and Air” at the Chicago Artists’ Coalition Gallery, each artist’s work reflects upon the different facets “ethereal.” Connie Wolfe’s abstract hand-cut ink-jet prints suspended just inches off the wall appear fragile and delicate like wisps of rising smoke. Robin Dluzen’s paintings of water towers and telephone lines are surprisingly insubstantial despite their subject matter and their materials—mainly caulk and duct tape. Zach Mory’s remarkably intricate graphite drawings describe imagined worlds of exploding stars and ribbons of pattern. Despite the different materials and imagery used by each artist, the stylistic similarities of these works make this show cohesive. Recent group exhibitions at CAC gallery have lacked this level of coherence, but this show is a pleasing exception. The level of detail in Mory’s graphite drawings and the labor intensity of Wolfe’s cut prints contribute greatly to the coherence and quality of the exhibition.

Dluzen, Mory and Wolfe each blur the line between the organic and the industrial by laying curvilinear pattern over rigidly architectural frameworks. The best works by each artist reverse the relationship between these two poles, such as Dluzen’s “Watertower (Chicago) no.2,” a painting of a water tower’s silhouette outlined in goopy-looking off-white caulk on plastic sheeting stretched over an exposed wooden frame. In “Adrian, Michigan,” Dluzen makes a chain link fence appear like a porous, filmy web once drawn in clear caulk on a plastic dropcloth and suspended in the middle of the gallery. A similar tension between the fluid and the solidly architectural exists in Mory’s large graphite drawing “Hive,” which appears from a distance like liquid spilled across the page, but upon closer inspection, geometric patterns emerge in this shimmering puddle of graphite. In Wolfe’s vaporous graphite drawings on vellum, such as “Ghosts,” the curving patterns in her work are juxtaposed against the solidity and framing of the gallery itself. The image and the page not only fade in and out of each other, but also barely separate themselves from the gallery wall. “Light and Air” offers three artists’ perspectives on the ethereal while transforming industrial materials and geometric structures into delicate plumes of pattern. (Regan Golden-McNerney)

Through December 3 at the Coalition Gallery, 2010 West Pierce.

Cast (1)

I have posted three new charcoal drawings. One is called Daybreak and will be entered into the Art Loop Open competition. It measures 45″ x 52″.

The other two drawings are part of a new series called Cast. I have not decided how many will be in this group, but they are all made with charcoal and the paper size is 19″ x 24″.  I hope to exhibit some in the Coalition Gallery sometime in the next year.

• September 6 – October 1, Wynwood Project Space, 2200-A NW 2nd Avenue, Miami, FL, Opening Reception: September 11, 6-10 pm

• September 1-30, The Anchor Graphics Fish Tank, 623 South Wabash, 2nd Floor, Chicago, IL

Flicker

The juror, Karla Hackenmiller, selected 30 prints from the PrintZero Studios Exchange 7. These pieces will also be part of a catalog that will be published. The catalog will be $20, including shipping. More details on that as they come!

My pieces are hand-cut giclee prints and are 10″ x 20″. Each will be displayed with nails of varying distances from the wall and magnets holding the pieces to them so that they will appear to be floating in front of the wall. This will cause some fabulous shadows to appear on the wall from the paper where holes are cut out.

In March, I am taking part in an invitational exhibition at The Miller Art Museum in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. The exhibition is called Printmaking Invitational Exhibition 2010 and runs from March 6 through April 20 with a reception on Saturday, March 6 from 3-4:30. I will exhibit 4 new digital pieces that will incorporate screenprinting and hand-cutting.

Also in March, my new mezzotint, Remembrance, will be part of a portfolio exchange, Mezzotint: The Illuminated Mark. This exchange will include many known mezzotint artists and will be exhibited at the Southern Graphics Council conference in Philadelphia, PA at the Tyler School of Art/Temple University.

Finally, Dialogue, Spectacle, and Fabrications: Art Faculty Exhibition will run from April 6 through May 15 at the H.F. Johnson Gallery of Art, Carthage College, with a reception on April 8 from 4:30-7:30. My installation, Infinite, will be featured in this group exhibition.

As the work is finished and installed, I will post pictures for you to see. Hopefully I will see you at some of the receptions!