RAC Spotlight: Tandem Solo Exhibitions: Stephanie Brooks + Liz Chilsen | December 3, 2021 - January 8, 2022
Closing Reception: Saturday, January 8th, 3-6 PM
Liz Chilsen Artist Talk: Saturday, January 8th, 2 PM, In person and on Zoom at this link
The Riverside Arts Center is pleased to present tandem solo exhibitions by Stephanie Brooks and Liz Chilsen in the Freeark Gallery and Sculpture Garden. This exhibition is part of the Riverside Arts Center’s “RAC Spotlight” Exhibition Series which highlights artists who are a part of the RAC community.
Viewing Hours:
Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays | 1:00 - 5:00 PM
Exhibition continues through January 8, 2022
Proof of vaccination, masks, and social distancing required. The Riverside Arts Center follows Public Health requirements and guidelines for safety during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Stephanie Brooks: Obstacles and Intimacies
Liz Chilsen: Messengers
Liz Chilsen | Messenger (Wildwing), smoke-fired high-fired stoneware on found and altered wooden base.
Stephanie Brooks: Obstacles and Intimacies
Stephanie Brooks is a conceptual artist, writer and curator living in Chicago. She earned her BFA degree from Ohio University and MFA degree from University of Illinois Chicago. She exhibits her work nationally and internationally including exhibits in Atlanta, Chicago, Denmark, Indianapolis, London, Los Angeles, Louisville, San Francisco, New York, Vienna, Phoenix, and Hawaii. She is an Adjunct Professor teaching in the Sculpture Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her publications include Love Is A Certain Kind Of Flower, Green Lantern Press; Poem and Poem Forms, Illinois State University Press; The Virginia Quarterly Review, and Critical Inquiry. Her art is included in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Microsoft Corporation and Philip Morris Corporation, as well as many private collections. Curatorial projects include Humor Us, and Oli Watt, What? At The Riverside Arts Center.
Artist Statement
With the works in this exhibition, I’m interrogating the ways in which intimacy and barriers intersect. Using barricades both literally and metaphorically, I ask viewers to think on what is a barricade and what is intimate in their lives–––how do we navigate and negotiate public and private spaces?
Liz Chilsen: Messengers
Liz Chilsen | Birds of a Feather (Rose). High-fired Stoneware, glaze, on found and altered wood base.
Liz Chilsen is a Chicago-area artist, educator and arts administrator. Her work explores connections between human spirit and physical place. She has exhibited throughout the US and internationally, and her work is held at Detroit Institute of Arts, Wisconsin Historical Society, Nicaragua Cultural Center, the University of Illinois’ Comer Archive, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography among others. She has received awards and honors including an Individual Artist Fellowship from IL Arts Council, an IL Humanities Bicentennial Action Grant, residencies at Ragdale Foundation, Chicago Artists’ Coalition, and The Center program at Hyde Park Art Center. Chilsen holds an MFA in Photography from Columbia College and a Bachelor of Science in Art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is Director of “Lessons of Place”, a photographic study of endangered places funded by Illinois Humanities, and is a Teaching Artist with Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) in Chicago Public Schools. She joined RAC in 2019, first as Director of the FlexSpace and now, as Executive Director.
Artist Statement
These works are part of my ongoing exploration of place, and connection to ancestral time, love and loss. Each piece is a container of mystery and promise. For the smoke-fired pieces, I hold firings at ancestral and family homes, I use fire and light transforming mud into glass. These fires are fueled with things from my collections and surroundings, such as leaves and seeds from my daily walks, lists and notes from my parents and loved ones, newspapers containing family obituaries and biographies, and other precious ephemera. Burning releases life to feed life.