The Loyola Beach Dunes lakefront restoration project captured my interest since its earliest inception over a decade ago. Located in the Rogers Park neighborhood on Chicago's far north side, this six acre lakefront dune habitat has transformed one of the city's public beaches into a native plant oasis that minimizes erosion, stabilizes the shoreline, and engages its visitors with its midwestern plant forms, seasonal color displays, and delightful birds, insects, and animals. 

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Creative research is the backbone of my art making practice. It is the place I turn to when there is limited time, something passes my glance and needs to be captured, or a new combination of idea + material nags to be made visual. There are concepts that pass by as singular expressions and others that have a special kind of energy that want to be explored through iteration -- different takes on the same theme. Process rules the day and practice offers meaningful discoveries.

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Our sketchbook work began this year with the concept of germination, the process of things coming into existence and/or developing into new forms. We explored a variety of approaches to this theme using a 5" x 5" square format and a wide range of drawing, painting, and collage methods and materials. Sketchbook pages were physically altered by tearing holes, ripping off portions, and adding extensions to activate new energy, movement, and growth into the creative process. 

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During the month of December, we worked with the concept of emanations, a thing or issue that spreads out from a source, while viewing videos of natural energies, forms, and phenomena. These include Reindeer Cyclones, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, snowflake designs, ice crystal growing on glass and ice crystals freezing inside bubbles. Each of these subjects were explored on sketchbooks pages using a 5"x 5" square format and a wide range of drawing and painting materials.

 

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During the month of November, the artists in our Envision Program explored the concepts of Constellations and Murmurations in their sketchbooks. These subjects provided engaging opportunities for working with complex environments and natural phenomena while working with a succession of drawn and painted layers. Continue reading

Over the past few months, artists in our Envision program have been researching the subject of Environments in their sketchbooks. They have been exploring the meaning of the word itself and its relationship to the natural world, our built environment, physical space, ecological concerns, future realms, and our material reality.  Continue reading

During the month of July, we explored the physical world in our sketchbooks by observing the built structures and shifting forces of the earth's surface. We focused on the the layers, textures, and patterns seen in areas of strata and erosion and experimented with ways they could be visualized through layered ink and watercolor washes, linear mapping, combining wet and dry media, and by using dry earth pigments. Continue reading

This summer we used our sketchbooks to gain a better understanding of the physical world that surrounds and supports us everyday. During the month of June, we explored the concepts of tracings, filaments, and symbiosis through naturalistic drawing approaches, linear mapping with ink and experimental color, masking tape topography, and printing with natural forms.

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Over the past six months or so, we have been busy creating work for our upcoming Water Worlds exhibition, opening June 10th, 2022 at the Anchor Building Gallery in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. Hosted by artist and marina owner Virginia Carstarphen, the show will be installed in a massive marina structure located on Lake Saint Clair that is usually reserved for boat storage. We are very grateful to Virginia and her husband Todd for providing this exciting opportunity for all of our artists. Continue reading

Here we are closing in on the end of 2021 and once again waiting to see what the new year holds in store for each and all of us. After another year marked by the pandemic, political strife, social upheaval, and environmental disasters, it is sometimes difficult to find positive guideposts to cling on to. We search with guarded optimism, knowing instinctively that they are out there, but somehow they just keep getting harder and harder to see.

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