Susanne Nestory has been a resident of Peoria for a little more than a decade. She came from New Jersey as the interim director of Bradley University’s Gallery and Collections and is currently and has been an adjunct professor since…
“When I lived on Lincoln, and then further up north on Damen, I loved taking walks at night on Ravenswood, which then was a deserted industrial strip. It’s now a Hipster haven. Thinking about this may account for my more…
The Community Word is framed by a 1960s style of liberalism –– a sanguine perspective where so-called average and so-called fortunate people have a stake in reciprocal social outcomes. In 2017, I began contributing to the paper’s composite demographic ––…
Early in Michiko Itatani’s career she coaxed viewers into unpredictable formal paths in painting and installation discretely probing relationships between radical pictorial composition and societal and geological boundaries. All of her work coincided with the contemplative legacies of reductivism and…
LJ Douglas’s work began in the eighties in Chicago before there were more than a handful of contemporary galleries on Ontario Street. It was the twilight of the Hairy Who, and the Baby-boomers were surging from the region’s schools of…
With 2018 winding down, I feel obliged to reflect briefly on central contemporary art figures in the Midwest. Art from the middle America differentiates itself from coastal markets via artists such as Ed Paschke, Phyllis Bramson, Kerry James Marshall and…
Before Bill Conger became curator of exhibitions and collections at the Peoria Riverfront Museum, his critical capability was honed at the University Galleries at Illinois State University. He worked with Barry Blinderman for more than a decade, a highly productive…
Over the past year and a half, I’ve written about art that’s formally and conceptually rigorous but advocates for the rural – work that explores the relationship between the intellect and the advancement of places outside the approved borders of…
William Butler is widely known in Central Illinois as director and curator of the Contemporary Art Center in Peoria. The Center has been a longstanding institution for bringing together a diverse, challenging, and entertaining body of artists and musicians. The…
This year’s Peoria Sculpture Walk raises a few questions about public art –– for Peoria and for urban settings in general. It’s perennially challenging for any artwork to hold viewers attention in the turmoil of urban settings –– particularly if…
