Chicago artist Claire Ashley’s work – forms floating between image and text, concept and corporeality, is also about reconfiguring space. She is recognized by challenging the didacticism and vanity of mainstream sculpture, along with attendant traditions of welding and stone…
While my column is generally about art in the Midwest, this month’s notes on Barry Blinderman’s retirement from Illinois State University speak to a germane link between coastal and inland art. In the 1980s, Barry was the director and co-owner…
I was recently talking to a physician – early 30s, tastefully dressed, well educated beyond medicine, and enthusiastic about culture and his growing art collection. He spoke about philosophers from Michel de Montaigne to Friedrich Nietzsche regarding the nature of…
The biennial Central Time Ceramics exhibition will open March 6 at Heuser and Hartmann Galleries, Bradley University. Show founder and Bradley Ceramics Professor Randy Carlson chose Gail Kendall, emeritus professor, University of Nebraska, whose decorative pottery is widely recognized and…
I met Sarah Smelser nearly 20 years ago when she was hired to be the new head of West Virginia University’s print program. She arrived from Pasadena, California, with her husband Jonathan Higgins, and they settled in quickly and founded…
Bob Emser’s body of public works are at ease in prescribed settings like urban plazas and sculpture gardens. The contours of his work are clear, adaptive and organic. He’s situated his sculpture on concrete and on soil, riffed on constructivist…
Monday, Dec. 4, Chicago sculptor Donna Hapac will open an exhibition at the Hartmann Gallery at Bradley University displaying forms and themes she has explored over the last three decades. I first met Donna in graduate school in the MFA…
Chris Holbrook is a printmaker by discipline and a homespun expressionist. He has formal and conceptual affiliations with the Chicago Imagist School as well as other regional artists known for idiosyncratic narratives infused with a decidedly Midwestern funk and philosophy.…
Unconventional, thought provoking and experimental art forms exist everywhere, and Peoria is no exception. Most of Peoria’s cultural offerings, however, aren’t rigorous investigations of the current state of contemporary art, art history or theory. Unfortunately Central Illinois is risk averse…
Chloe McEldowney is a young artist who has been living in Peoria for just two years. During that time she’s made an impression on the art community, receiving a residency at the Prairie Center of the Arts and contributing a…
