The Cornelia Arts Building May Open House takes place Friday, May 21, from 6 to 10 pm at 1800 W. Cornelia Avenue. Two floors of art, open studios, a special hallway exhibit and guest artists!
Psychedelic Garden by Basia Krol
Featuring the artwork of over 35 artists and artisans in their own working studios. This May, our Open House features the special exhibit, “Urbs in Horto”– local artists inspired by Chicago, the City in a Garden. A self-curated hallway exhibit showcases artwork by resident CAB artists who have created work using the City of Chicago’s official Latin motto; “Urbs In Horto” or City in a Garden as their thematic inspiration. “Urbs in Horto” will be on view in the first floor hallway through the weekend and by appointment in May.
If you can’t make the Friday night open house, don’t worry – a limited number of artists will also be open Saturday May 22, from 11 am to 3 pm for the “Second Chance Open House”!
Guillermo Carrillo
Nancy Charak
Fire Arts Center
Jason Messinger
Joan Minsky
Judy Schumacher
Alexander von Agoston
Joey Wozniak
Visit the CorneliaArtsBuilding.com for additional names and exhibit details. Artwork is for sale and includes paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography, print making, ceramics, mixed media, apparel, and jewelry. Open House events are a great opportunity to engage with artists in their working studios and view up-and-coming talent as well as more established arts professionals.
Convenient to the CTA – two blocks from Brown Line Addison stop. Free parking is available in front of building and near by.
Submit your image for the May Event POSTER and for use on our website. Anyone who will be open for the May 21st and 22nd open house(s) is encouraged to submit an image for the poster.
Extended Deadline: all images are DUE by Monday, May 9th at 5pm.
Submissions:
Submit ONE .jpg file, minimum 7 inches on longest side, 150 – 350dpi.
Title your file: lastname_mayevent.jpg
Email to info@corneliaartsbuilding.com
Be sure to include YOUR NAME, IMAGE TITLE, MEDIA and DIMENSIONS in the body of your email
“Urbs in Horto” Hallway Show:
If you are participating in the hallway show, I will be making labels for the artworks. Please contact Emily at info@corneliaartsbuilding.com with your NAME, the title of the work to be shown, dimensions, media and price (if any) by May 16th.
Volunteers Needed:
Help spot paint the walls (1st floor hallway) – spot paint, remove extraneous nails/screws
Help hang the work (week of May 16th)
Hang up posters
Distribute postcards
Write a blog post
Marketing/PR – help distribute press-release and submit event online (ArtSlant, CAR, Chicago Reader, MetroMix, Yelp! – etc.)
Photographic techniques for all types of artwork will be discussed!
Have a camera but without a clue when it comes to pixels, file extensions and image size? Take control of your art practice and learn how to photograph your artwork at the next RAWednesday, May 12th, 7:00-9:00 PM, at Lillstreet, 4401 North Ravenswood Avenue.
Presenter Kat Ramsland will share techniques to produce photographs that show your artwork in its best light. This educational seminar is a must for all artists – digital images are now essential to gallery submissions, proposal planning and/or posting images of your work online.
Artists are encouraged to email up to three high resolution .JPG’s to kat@lillstreet.com for a critique during the seminar. Please send your troublesome .JPG images no later than Monday, May 10th if you wish your artwork to be utilized in the how-to discussion.
Artists may bring the original artwork so Kat can demonstrate the best ways to photograph for that individual piece.
RAWednesdays are presented by Ravenswood ArtWalk, a nonprofit arts organization based in Ravenswood Cooridor – always free and open to the public. To RSVP please email: rsvp@ravenswoodartwalk.org. Visit www.ravenswoodartwalk.org for more information.
*Attention CAB Artists* We will be registering for this year’s arts tour through FOTA. Please direct your registration inquiries about the October Ravenswood ArtWalk to Richard Lange or info@corneliaartsbuilding.com. Thanks!
Lucent, 2008. Aluminum bar and fiber optics, 30 x 3 x 3 ft.
Check out Josh Garber’s work and a great article by Kathleen Whitney in the March 2009 issue of Sculpture magazine. Whitney writes, “His results are intelligent, inventive, peculiar, and idiosyncratic, unrelated to the tedious bump, grind, and recycle of popular culture.”
View Mr. Garber’s work in Systems at the Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago through May 7th, 2010. Catch some of his public artworks in Chicago on your way there: “Hope and Renewal,” at the Kimball brownline station and “Episodic,” 23-foot sculpture at the intersection at Grand and Western Avenues in Chicago, IL. Josh Garber’s studio is located at the Cornelia Arts Building.
The Cornelia Arts Building is pleased to announce the winner of our in-house May Event Postcard Contest, Basia Krol.
Psychedelic Garden by Basia Krol
Basia’s painting “Psychedelic Garden” will be featured on our postcard for the May 21st Open House and on view in our self-curated “Urbs in Horto” exhibit during that event. We asked Basia to tell us a little bit about her painting and her experience working at the Cornelia Arts Building:
This particular painting “Psychedelic Garden” was created from longing for Spring and as such was both departure and continuation of my last series of winter landscapes from Montrose Harbor. Nature is a great inspiration for me and a “jumping off” point whenever I feel a little stuck. Every now and then I like to paint a garden painting, which becomes this imaginary but very specific place, using an accumulation of biomorphic forms and colors. One of most challenging tasks (for the artist) is the emancipation from given, natural colors while keeping the visual consistency. In other words: I like the colors psychedelic but the painting still has to make sense.
Field, Ice and Palace - from the Montrose Harbor Series. Paintings by Basia Krol.
“Psychedelic garden” is relative to my other garden paintings in recent years such as Eden1 and Eden2, Eva and Psychedelic Meadow. I’m sure there will be more of them to come. The hot pink underpainting I used for “Psychedelic Garden” is something I use very often in my practice. I (ultimately) paint over it but leave some areas for it shine through. In my Montrose series, I use the underpainting to symbolize the energy building up under the snow in early Spring, increasing the strength of suns rays, and finally, representing the anticipation building up in winter weary Chicagoans. Now, with the Spring finally here I shall indulge in painting blooming trees. But then again: maybe not. I never know: creativity is a moody companion.
About my Studio and the Artists
Shortly after I moved to Chicago, in 2004, I joined the Cornelia Arts Building – thanks to Jason Messinger who was in charge of renting out a big shared space on second floor then. I was at first shy and apprehensive. I came from a rather competitive environment at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw where even friends never shy from a blatant critique of your work. But here, people in the building made me feel very welcomed! Great thanks to Nancy Charak who was my first studio mate, which turned out to be a beginning of a beautiful friendship. This is such a wonderful, friendly and supportive community! Most of my friends are my Cornelia friends. And, we are all pretty much darn good artists.
I love my studio at Cornelia. It has a window through which I can get out on the roof and see the world from my special vantage point. Sometimes I can paint there or make cyan-o-types but mostly I just enjoy myself and watch the sky.
Basia Krol currently teaches a Nature Studies class at the Hyde Park Art Center. She is a member of the Chicago Artists Coalition and its Coalition Gallery – her work is currently on display there.
Upcoming shows: Basia’s “Psychedelic Garden” will be on view in the Urbs in Horto exhibit at the next Cornelia Arts Building Open House, Friday, May 21st. Basia’s studio will also be open for the 9th annual Ravenswood ArtWalk this October 2nd and 3rd.
“Symbols and Sympathies,” by Jason Messinger is now on view through April 18 in the GoggleWorks Cohen Gallery. Recently reviewed in Jason Messinger — toying with symbols and perception by Ron Schira for the Reading Eagle.
Jeremiah Ketner was interviewed in Chicago Gallery News for Artist Insights about “working on a piece inspired by a popular TV show, managing a social networking presence in the art world, & having a laid-back attitude towards his work.”
Beth Kamhi’s work can be seen in “Transitions,” coordinated by The Aurora Public Art Commission. This group show of works focuses on discarded industrial materials from the urban culture and objects found in natural environments. On display through April 30th.
Darrell Roberts’s paintings are visual candy. Lush in color to the point of optical intensity, the works churn and vibrate with tension and release. The surfaces are more sculptural than flat picture plane, with surfaces almost vertiginous in their thickly applied strokes and sharply chiseled irregularities.
Abstract in the purest and most classical sense, they maintain a sense of internal regularity that makes them a visual feast for the eyes. In the tradition of sculpture, their ever-present materiality confronts us. Roberts regulates not only the thickness of the paint, but the granularity of the surface itself. With colors that burn with intensity, and forms that practically beg our fingers to stroke their unbridled surfaces, each piece becomes a micro-landscape of almost hallucinogenic perception. If Darrell Roberts work was a drug, it would be an Schedule I psychedelic. Luckily for us, art is still unregulated by the DEA.
Darrell Roberts studio is in the Cornelia Arts Building, and his work is represented through the McCormick Gallery.
Heather, as a real-life US Cellular customer, works on a Raku vessel.
Congratulations to Heather of Heather Drums on her recent television spot for US Cellular. Heather shared some of her story:
It was just me taking a chance: I saw an audition call posted on a job board last fall, and all I did was write in and tell them my story.
After taking a hit over the summer doing art fairs and not selling much, I was searching for other projects to bring in a bit of cash. They were looking for “real people” who had “interesting and unusual jobs and hobbies.” Across the board, that’s me — the Raku was only a start (there’s the ceramic drum-making, drumming, study trips to Morocco every few years, oh, and don’t forget cave exploring).
What a wild ride. I went and did two screen tests, the second being in front of a panel of 10 people including writers, directors and representatives from US Cellular. A location scout visited the studio, and that was that. We did the filming last September; it took 3.5 hours and they brought a crew of about 40 people, in several RVs & vans. So if I look at all nervous on the commercial, you can understand why!
Originally, I was hoping they would get into the cave exploring (I just thought it would be cool to get paid to go caving!)- but now I’m very glad they chose not only the Raku, but the ceramic drums.
At the end of last year, I decided to leave Raku Vessels sculpture studio behind and venture on to new things. That was a hard decision, because we really did do amazing work together, but that’s just the way things worked out.
Last November, my husband Quentin (also a drum-maker- working in steel) and I moved into a 2-story building in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago. We live upstairs and are currently in the process of setting up our art studios and performance space in the 1,000 square foot storefront.
The timing of the commercial’s release couldn’t have been better. The demand for my work has soared through the roof, and I’m scrambling to get all of my equipment installed so I can get to work! It’s an incredibly good momentum for the start of my new drum-making business, DrumFace. Plus, I got the honor of being a pseudo-Olympian, because it ran during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games- and they just told me it’s going to run during American Idol, too!
Part of the commercial includes the appearance of a phone number on the screen, which people are invited to call (to see if I’m real!- and to promote the fact that all of the USC plans feature free incoming calls). I get just under 300 phone calls a day on that phone, of which I answer about 90 calls. Half of those are hang-ups, so I’m talking to roughly 40 people a day, from all over the country. I don’t get paid to answer it, but the potential of future work keeps me interested in doing it- and I even listen to all the voicemails and try to return calls to people who sound like they’re sincerely interested in knowing more about what I’m doing. I even have a FaceBook fan page for Heather Drums.
The Museum of Contemporary Art presents The Seldoms with Fraser Taylor: Marchland.
March 12-14, 2010
For Marchland, Chicago-based choreographer Carrie Hanson collaborates with visual artist Fraser Taylor to create a new ensemble work about mark-making, endurance, and borders. Hanson, the artistic director of The Seldoms, was inspired by Taylor’s video, CREVICE, a frenetic animation and sound piece that he created by making minute drawings directly onto the surface of clear 16mm film, later capturing the projected film with digital video. Marchland combines video, sculpture, and costume design by Chicago fashion designer Lara Miller with idiosyncratic movement, mimicking the same flickering, erratic, and charged qualities of Taylor’s video.
“I am building two walls, which will be suspended on both sides of the stage and will project horizontally into the auditorium. The purpose is to bridge the gap between performance and audience. The constructions are based on my sculptures, which reflect my interest in such things as decaying architectures. The work occupies an in-between space, somewhere between construction and demolition. The structures will be painted black, unifying the materials used. These walls imply many different types of physical or physiological boundary, but in this case, they divide the public space of the stage from the private backstage area. This is a barrier, which the performers have to bodily navigate in order to move between both spaces. I am collaborating with architect Joel Huffman.” -Fraser Taylor
Fraser Taylor’s studio is located at the Cornelia Arts Building.
Welcome to the Cornelia Arts Building Blog! Members of the Cornelia Arts Building will be invited to post their announcements, news and articles here. More as the website develops…
