CAVA comes to the Komechak Art Gallery

The Fr. Michael E. Komechak, O.S.B. Art Gallery is pleased to present its latest exhibition for the summer , May 1st – July 30th. The exhibition features a juried member competition of over fifty works of art, in a variety of media and style, by the group formerly known as Senior Artists’ Network(SAN). SAN was formed twenty-five years ago, in Chicago. Its purpose was to showcase the work of elder artists over the age of fifty-five, and present venues for them to display their art. Many of these artists have had long, productive careers in the arts, whereas some are exploring their creative muscles.

The group recently changed its name to the Chicago Alliance for the Visual Arts (CAVA) and is opening up its membership to include younger artists. Patricia O'Malley., former Director of the Renaissance Court Gallery in the Chicago Cultural Center, and SAN co-founder, helped to coordinate the competition. This year's jurors were Teresa Parker, Curator of the Komechak Art Gallery, and Jennifer Scavone, adjunct faculty at Benedictine University.

Works were selected for their vision, excellence of execution and originality.

Artists interested to join should look at their webpage at http://www.wearecava.org/

For more information regarding the art on campus at Benedictine University, see www.ben.edu/artgallery

Colossal Self-Portraits at Ben U

David Marcet's beginning painting classes at Benedictine University are set with an arduous task: to create a colossal self-portrait. Ugh. To see oneself in the mirror may be hard enough, but to draw and then paint a self-portrait that is not only descriptive, but also captures the students' personality is a challenge, indeed. Marcet's classes show they are up to the challenge, and the exhibit of portraits currently shown on the first floor of Kindlon Hall - north side, are some fine paintings.I will post them here for you to see. Some make me chuckle, some make me smile along with the person in the portrait. But they all engage the viewer with their fresh color and scale. Kudos to Marcet and his class. We look forward to seeing what these students will produce in the future.

The Tactile Art of Book-Making by HaiRi Han

The interest in handmade artist books has grown over the years. So much so that there are degree programs in handmade books across the country. Still, when we find someone who makes handmade books with the sensitivity and flare of Ms. HaiRi Han, we marvel at the complexity with which she makes the objects, but we are astounded when we realize she taught herself how to make her beautiful handmade books.

Han is the head of Graphic Arts and Design at Benedictine University, in Lisle, Il. She studied design at Purdue University and came to Benedictine University in 2012. While she teaches graphic design by day, she spends innumerable hours designing and making her books. These delicate and intricately cut pieces are thematically designed; often on the themes about Nature and the changing of seasons. Han is a master at the accordian-style book which stands up and is visible from multiple angles.

The exhibition at Benedictine University's Komechak Art Gallery will run March 7 through April 7, 2016. Han will give a closing reception lecture on her work on Thursday, April 7th, at 4:00 p.m. The lecture is free and open to the public.For more information on this exhibition, contact Komechak Art Gallery at 630-829-6270 or write Curator Teresa Parker at tparker@ben.edu

Alan Leder's Photographs of "El Cemeterio de San Miguel de Allende"

Alan Leder has been a known fixture in the Chicago art scene for over two decades - as an educator, arts administrator and more recently known as an artist - photographer. Leder debuted a series of photographs last fall at Benedictine University. The work was from a series he has been working on for several years where he has gone to the city cemetery in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico to observe and photograph the nichos and other funerary art.

Leder's intention was to photograph these very personal family remembrances of departed loved ones. What he found were wonderfully unique nichos (a literal square box opening in a wall of niches where a person's remains could be placed for burial. They are often plastered over with cement and then ornamented with paintings photographs and carvings, then adorned with flowers and other mementos of the departed.) These artistic touches are endearing, and sometimes boastful of the departed person's personality. One person was a tap dancer and had a pair of shoes cast and placed onto his nicho. Another person had a photographs of a father and son who had been killed placed together. Flowers and other adornments grace these mini-shrines. Sometime using real flowers, but often using fake ones so they would never wither and would always look fresh.

Some of the cemetery pieces are small boxes with glass coverings. There are pictures of the departed within them, along with flowers as seen above, but sometimes they contain toys for a child who has died. The poignancy of these pieces is palpable. Leder has been to the cemeterio several years now, and he sometimes retakes pictures of nichos he took before as the family has come back and attended or updated their adornments. They become a record of attentiveness to their ancestors in a culture that worships their ancestors on All Saints Day and Day of the Dead celebrations all over the country. Leder has chosen this place to document San Miguel's ancestor repository and the folk art traditions associated with death. The series promises to grow as he continues to explore the cemeterios of San Miguel and Mexico.

Clifton Henri's "Cuba City" Comes to Komechak Art Gallery

Clifton Henri, award-winning photographer from Chicago, Illinois, recently exhibited his photographs of Havana at Benedictine University's Komechak Art Gallery from January 18 - February 29, 2016. Henri's take of life of the Havana streets is eye-catching and engaging. His subjects range from youth fighting in a boxing ring,

to a couple of teens sitting on a stoop. Their faces show a look of promise and faith their fates will be different than their forefathers', who have live in constraint under Communism. They dress in more contemporary clothing, and if it weren't for the fact we know they live in Havana, we would expect to see youth like these young men on any street corner in the US.

Henri said he wanted to visit the country for a long time, and when he got the chance early last year, he jumped at it. He said the culture was fascinating, the people warm and friendly, and music, food and atmosphere were life-changing experiences where he will surely go back to take more pictures and explore more of the island nation.

Henri took portraits of the people he met, and their faces are elegantly portrayed in natural lighting, and without artifice in style or composition. They are straightforward and reveal faces full of life.

The artist also took pictures of buildings and areas seemingly long abandoned, but the mystery of an open door and light falling on a set of old chairs in a boxing center, or light dimly illuminating a stairwell, are inviting for their textures and colors and areas we cannot see.

This photographer is presenting to us a world still largely unknown to the outside world. He shows us the day-to-day activities of people on the street, the time capsule of their environment and all of it makes us want to go visit this uniquely wonderful place. Henri's work is up and coming in attention and awards have been accorded him with growing numbers. We will watch this rising star with optimism as he grows and develops.

Prints from Normal Editions Workshop at Benedictine University

Benedictine University is pleased to present a terrific travelling exhibition of original contemporary printmakers from the Normal Editions Workshop(NEW).

NEW is located with the art department at Illinois State University, in Normal, IL, and has operated the NEW print shop for more than twenty-five years. The exhibition features works by local, national and internationally-known artists who have done visiting stints at ISU. Some of the artists in this exhibit are Kiki Smith, Dike Blair, David Wojnarowicz, James D. Butler, Kenny Scharf, Ray George, and Robert Weaver, and Sidney Goodman.

The prints range in style and technical prowess, but the work as a whole is pretty amazing, and they bring to bear that Illinois State University has made itself known as a place to come study and work with visiting artists in its printmaking program.

Veda Rives is the NEW Print Master and Director. She took over in 2013 for long time master printer/artist Richard Finch. For anyone wanting to work with NEW, contact them via Veda Rives at vrives@ilstu.edu, and look up their website for more information on their various exhibition rentals for your venue at http://normaleditions.illinoisstate.edu/

The exhibition is located in Benedictine University's Kindlon Hall, on the 2nd floor atrium gallery. It will run through December 19, 2015. The exhibition is free and open to the public seven days a week. 8 am - 10 pm. For more informaiton other exhibtions at benedictine University, see our website at www.ben.edu/Artgallery

"Perspectives on NOW" by John Pitman Weber

The Fr. Michael E. Komechak, O.S.B., Art Gallery is hosting a powerful exhibition as the opener of its Fall 2015 season. Chicago artist/muralist, John Pitman Weber, presents a commanding tour de force, showing his very rich and deep talents, brings the viewer a wide range of topics for our discussion. Weber is displaying over twenty five prints, drawings and paintings of his observations on our current culture.

Starting off the exhibition is a series of prints on migrants and prisoners. These life-sized woodcuts are beautifully done, and as we walk up to them, we are made to become one of them. Their scale takes us in with the subject. We can raise our hands in submission, or we can hold onto the cold metal barbed wire fencing which confines us in these tight, narrow compositions. They make us uncomfortable. We see the tension on the migrant's face, her large anxious eyes mirror our own and we feel what she is going through. We can understand her unknown and uncertain future.

on Weber's 'barbed wire' series talks about the futility of our country's miriad of bordering and dividing devices used to scare away those who would dare enter the country. Of course this is an issue brought up repeatedly by the GOP and it comes 'round again and again in every presidential election. Weber's take on the subject is both 'thorny' for lack of a better word, and playful. His life-sized scales of the US Border Patrol's choice of razor barbed wire, intermingled with the less threatening use of 'wrapped star' barbed wire one could find along the edge of every farmer's property in the country, is both imposing and mesmerizing.

Weber doesn't define the place where one would really see this monstrously dangerous border device. He lets us look at it up close, and if we dare, we feel we can even reach out to touch it. The drawing of the barbs are truly menacing. Still, Weber has taken us from the literalness of his intertwining barbed wire compositions to make them a lyrical dance of line, or a realistic version of an abstract expressionist painting. Pollock, Kline and Mitchell would be proud.

Another theme of Weber's work is his oil refinery series. Clean, bold linear images of tubular cones and smokestacks. The message seems to be, 'Hey, when are you going to wake up to the fact we are depleting our natural resources?' In one sense it would appear that the oil refineries are no different than a milking machine used to pump breast milk from a mother, or a dairy cow. In both scenarios, the draining of the planet's resources is chronic, unstoppable machine.

Weber's paintings are a group of tapestry-like canvases that harbor small secret compartments. Each compartment tells a tale, like drawers in an old roll-top desk in your grandfather's attic. They each contain, however, a slice of life, a current event, a truth that we know and may not want to see the whole picture, so the artist ingeniously breaks them up into smaller fragments, and we see snippets of the truth. The question we have to ask ourselves, is how much do we want or choose to know? Spies, drones, cameras in the face, boots on the ground, piles of dead bodies, shielding our eyes, watching war flicks in movie theaters and pretending it isn't so. All of these scenarios Weber confronts and presents to us. All of it is real, folks. All of it.

Again, the question we must ask ourselves is how much do we want or need to know? Weber pushes it all in our faces and makes us see what he sees. Now that you have seen the truth, what will you do? Additional writing on Weber's prints can be found at www.thatsinkedup.blogspot.com The exhibition runs August 24 through October 10, 2015. Weber will give a lecture for the public during his reception, on Saturday, September 12, starting at 2:00 p.m. For more information about Weber and his work visit his website at jpweberartist.com Gallery hours are Monday - Friday 11:00 am - 4:00 pm, Saturday 11:00 am - 3:00 pm, and by appt. Please visit the Komechak Art Gallery webpage at www.ben.edu/Artgallery for more information on this exhibition and the gallery's other programs.