NO BARRIER TO ENTRY & VISTAS

Gallery 19 Chicago

and Visual Arts Center of Governors State University

With the first modest signs of spring weather, the beginning of March is marked for me with two exciting exhibitions. 

The first one, "No Barrier to Entry", at Gallery 19 Chicago  shows works on paper by Henrique de Franca, Catherine O'Donnell, Ana Zanic and Alejandrina Herrera. (captioned above, clockwise).

The opening reception is next Friday, March 2nd 6-9pm, with a gallery talk starting at 7pm, where artists will discuss their process and artistic intentions.

Here is what the gallery owner, Dietrich Klevorn, says about this show:

"No Barrier to Entry opens our borders to artists from Brazil, Mexico, Croatia, and Australia for an engaging multi-lateral conversation.  This exhibition is an opportunity to consider the universality of art through the vernacular of pencil and paper. Before Damien Hirst taxidermied sharks, before Jean Claude and Christo wrapped Chicago’s MCA, before Jackson Pollock dripped paint, even before Marcel Duchamp’s readymade urinal, there was pencil and paper for the creation of artistic ideas.  Historically, drawing served as the foundation upon which other skills were built.  Drawing was the initial render, a casting off, a preparatory study, leading to a masterwork in a more highly regarded medium.  Contrary to some opinion, this does not marginalize drawing, this elevates it.  Without that two-dimensional proposition of visual thought, the transition to something more fully conceived might never happen. To express ideas—humble and complex—through line, shading, proportion, and placement, is to master the consummate universal language.  Unlike a readymade urinal, the works on paper of the four artists presented here require no esoteric lecture or didactic to understand it.  Put simply, this exhibition reaffirms the ability of works on paper to awe and inspire."





...and about my work in the show, specifically:

"Ana Zanic departs from black and white representation with watercolor and pigment on paper, creating abstractions which offer just enough information to initiate a narrative in the viewer’s mind.  Her paintings appear, at first, to occupy the entirety of some unknown land, but, then, they beckon you closer, until you are focused on the miniature societies occupying and traversing them. It is this seduction into other worlds that empowers the work. No Barrier to Entry juxtaposes pencil drawings with Zanic’s watercolors because, within the ebb and flow of subdued color, Zanic tells us stories using calligraphic figures every inch as precise as a drawing."

Another March exhibition, "Vistas", at the Visual Arts Center of Governors State University , brings together work of Jane Fulton Alt, Elizabeth Busey, Lelde Kalmite and myself.

About it, the curator, Sherri Denault, says: "This exhibition explores human reason through the observation of nature, which we know deeply; the beloved mystery found in liminal spaces represents destruction and renewal, as we yield to our origins and memories."

"Vistas" runs March 9, 2018, through  April 6, 2018, with the Artist Reception on April 3rd, 4:30-6:30pm.