RAC IN THE NEWS
News and reviews
RAC was featured on WGN Weekend Break February 23, 2025 at 7am and 8am and again on WGN News at 5pm and 9pm!
WGN Reporter tries her hand on the pottery wheel for the first time with RAC Ceramics Director Shawn Vincent while Mr. Tee works with young artists in Studio Tee. See you at the imagination station!
Riverside Arts Center Hosts Artist Talk With Jay Wolke, by Hector Cervantes, Riverside Brookfield Landmark, Austin Weekly News, Wednesday Journal, and Forest Park Review, February 26, 2025
The Riverside Arts Center hosted a lively artist panel on Feb 9 with photographer Jay Wolke, focusing on his solo exhibit “Building Place: Big Boat Little Pond” curated by Paul D’Amato and Laura Husar Garcia. More
Jay Wolke: Building Place: Big Boat Little Pond, by Barbara Ciurej, Lenscratch. February 22, 2025
Disparities erupt in Jay Wolke’s photographs, like weeds through the cracks of a utopian vision of progress. He invites us—through his spatially rich photographs—to wander and wonder with him, asking what on earth is happening here? Wolke creates a visual grammar for witnessing startling human adaptations to the impositions of the built environment. More
15 Minutes with RAC New Executive Director Ann Filmer, by Mike Ellis, Delaplaine Magazine, February/March 2025
Ann Filmer is the new Executive Director at the Riverside Arts Center (RAC), and brings extensive experience in the arts to her new position. More
New photo exhibit at Riverside Arts Center calls for more than cursory looks, by Gregg Voss, Riverside Brookfield Landmark, December 17, 2024
The image is titled “Quarry Workshop, Carrara, Italy, 2014,” but look closer.
There’s a lot more to be seen.
“This is right up at the top of the mountains where Carrara marble is mined,” Jay Wolke said on a recent Sunday at the Riverside Arts Center, where he casually sat next to the image as local residents and art aficionados browsed nearby. More
Create from Ruins: A Review of Alison Ruttan’s “Falling to Pieces” at Riverside Arts Center, by Vera Scekic, Newcity, November 18, 2024
Motivated by a desire to repurpose materials and push against the traditions of the medium, several contemporary ceramic artists, such as Yee Soo-kyung and Bouke de Vries, are integrating discarded and shattered wares into their sculptures and installations. Chicago artist Alison Ruttan takes things a step further by actively “damaging” her ceramic pieces while they’re in progress to create exquisite and haunting miniature reproductions of buildings in ruin. Ruttan’s project is not concerned with material excess or convention but rather with human nature—more specifically, our species’ propensity for violence, toward other human beings as well as the planet. More
Riverside Arts Center rings in 3 decades: ‘A real accomplishment’, by Delaney Nelson, RB Landmark, October 10, 2023
The beloved center rose from humble roots and is celebrating its successes in a gala Thursday
When Ruth Freeark and Jennifer Taylor set out in 1993 to create what would become the Riverside Arts Center, they were looking to create a community of local artists and a common space for like-minded creatives to collaborate and, put simply, create art.
Thirty years later, the center, which lives on Quincy Street, is still growing and its commitment to community lives on. RAC attracts local artists and community members, along with creatives throughout Illinois. More
Outside the Box: modern and contemporary houses in Riverside, by Lacey Sikora RB Landmark, August 31, 2023
Exhibit draws on talents from several towns.
On Sept. 10, the Riverside Arts Center will kick off a photography exhibition that celebrates a selection of modern and contemporary houses of Riverside. While the event’s roots in the community are deep — guest co-curators Kim Freeark and Michelangelo Sabatino both own homes in Riverside — the exhibition in the RAC’s FlexSpace would not exist without collaborators from Forest Park and Oak Park. More
Riverside Arts Center celebrates 30 years, by Fiona Roach, RB Landmark. May 18, 2023
Established in 1993 by Ruth and Bob Freeark, the Arts Center offers art classes, hosts exhibitions and holds public events for Riverside and the surrounding neighborhoods. Executive Director Liz Chilsen said the Center serves all communities within the Riverside Township, including Lyons and Brookfield. “We have different communities that nest within each other and each of them engages in their own way,” Chilsen said. “It’s kind of an expanding sense of community.” More
Riverside home up for National Register consideration, by Bob Uphues, RB Landmark. June 13, 2023
Benda House would be village’s first ‘modern’ design
A Riverside couple has applied to U.S. Park Service to have their home added to the National Register of Historic Places, and after receiving unanimous support from the Riverside Preservation Commission in May the application will be considered for recommendation by the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council later this month.
If ultimately recommended for placement on the National Register, the Benda House at 211 Southcote Road, now owned by Michelangelo Sabatino and Serge Ambrose, would be the just fourth Riverside structure so designated. More
Family Is Family: A Review of Bobbi Meier’s Imperfect Rituals at Riverside Arts Center, by Vera Scekic, Newcity, February 7, 2023
The recent holidays were a reminder of all the ways family relationships engender strong feelings: joy and pride, of course, but also exasperation, heartache, even disgust.
Stepping inside Bobbi Meier’s exhibit, “Imperfect Rituals,” at the Riverside Arts Center arouses equally potent emotions. More
A Collaborative Chorus: A Review of Matthew Girson’s Plot Structure at Riverside Arts Center, by Ally Fouts, Newcity, December 5, 2022
Matthew Girson’s exhibition, “Plot Structure,” at Riverside Arts Center, combines two disparate bodies of work in an ode to the comprehensive potentials and responsible limitations of painting itself.
Setting the stage for one of the two metaphorical players in this exhibition is “Excavation Installation 3,” living outstretched proudly on the wall in the first room of the gallery. Expansive layers of latex, enamel, acrylic on plaster and mirror rest directly on the surface of the wall. Animated by the light pouring in the adjacent gallery window, the painting is quietly reflective, reminiscent of a blank television screen. More
RAC selling limited-edition prints for 2022 fundraiser, by Bob Uphues, RB Landmark, September 27, 2022
Each artist’s design was made into a set of 20 ink-jet prints on high-quality 11-by-17-inch paper. The first five prints of each print run have been sorted into five separate 11-print portfolios. Prints six through 20 are available for purchase individually.
The artists invited to provide work include Claire Ashley, Aimee Beaubien, Paola Cabal, Bob Faust, Azadeh Gholizadeh, Matthew Girson, Anne Harris, Anna Kunz, Kim Piotrowski, Luis Alvaro Sahagun and Jay Wolke. More
Big Week September 14-21, RB Landmark, September 13, 2022
Riverside Arts Center, 32 E. Quincy St., invites the public to an opening reception on Sept. 18 from 3 to 6 p.m. for its latest Freeark Gallery exhibition “Semblance: Unfolded and Brought to Life,” by Chicago photographers Alice Hargrave and Barbara Diener.
Hargrave incorporates photographic imagery within layered site-specific installations addressing impermanence. Diener challenges the retelling of significant 20th century events, starting in Nazi-era Germany and culminating in the moon landing.
Your Hometown: Get lost in the arts at Riverside Arts Center, WGN Radio July 28, 2022
Liz Chilsen, Executive Director, Riverside Arts Center, joins John Williams to talk about what it’s like running an arts center in Riverside, the two contemporary art galleries at the arts center, how they also host exhibitions from local artists, their outdoor sculpture garden, internationally acclaimed mural artist Collin van der Sluijs painting a new mural on their building, and the amazing and loyal artist community in Riverside.
WGN “Your Hometown” comes to Riverside and Brookfield, WGN July 21, 2022
Tune-in Thursday, July 28 when WGN Radio’s Your Hometown monthly series spotlights Brookfield and Riverside.
The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad led to a construction boom to what was once farmland a distance from the city. This rail line contributed to the development of the two towns featured in this month’s Your Hometown series: Brookfield and Riverside.
Riverside is located nine miles west of downtown and a large part of it is in the Riverside Landscape Architecture District, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970. The village came into being when the Riverside Improvement Company bought land along the Des Plaines River and the rail line and commissioned Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux to design a “charming modern suburban neighborhood”. What Olmsted and Vaux designed in 1869 was the first planned community in the United States with winding streets and plenty of green spaces.
Big Week July 20-27, RB Landmark, July 19, 2022
Riverside Arts Center presents an exhibition featuring the work of Madelyn Roldan and Oakley McCormack in the lobby of the Riverside Township Hall, 27 Riverside Road, through Sept. 29.
Their paintings, drawings and digital art ranges from whimsical to moody, colorful to dark and realistic to fantastical. Both are RBHS grads, local college art students and RAC gallery assistants.
Quarantine Quilt now part of new Field Museum collection. by BOB UPHUES. RB Landmark, May 31, 2022
Permanent new home for Riverside Arts Center’s community project during lockdown.
A piece of pandemic lockdown-era Riverside is headed to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
The Community Quarantine Quilt, a project launched by the Riverside Arts Center during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when many families sheltered in their homes to avoid infection, has been accepted and will be a permanent part of the Field Museum’s new Pandemic Collection, which includes objects, audio, art, photos, multimedia material – even memes — and tells the story of how people here in the Chicago area faced up to the challenges and found creative ways to confront them. “There was a real sense of responsibility to preserve this quilt. We had been looking for a place where it could be preserved and shared and presented as a community gift,” said Liz Chilsen, Executive Director of the Riverside Arts Center, who learned of the Pandemic Collection via an artist friend, Beth Adler, whose own handmade pandemic journal is part of the collection. More
Riverside Arts Center names new Gallery Director, RB Landmark, October 17, 2022
Riverside Arts Center, 32 E. Quincy St., announced Sept. 15 the appointment of Joanne Aono as its Gallery Director.
Aono has served RAC as a member of its exhibitions committee since 2016, helping to curate exhibitions and guide the vision of Freeark Gallery exhibitions. In early 2022, she stepped in to serve as interim gallery director, bringing a wealth of skill and experience to the position, both in the arts and in arts-related administrative positions.
Acclaimed artist to paint mural in downtown Riverside, by Bob Uphues RB Landmark, June 7, 2022
Bold design pitched for west wall of Riverside Arts Center
A Dutch artist whose bold, vibrant murals depicting birds, flora and other themes of the natural world have won acclaim here in the U.S. and internationally has been tapped to paint a mural on the west wall of the Riverside Arts Center, 32 E. Quincy St., in July.
Collin van der Sluijs is perhaps best known in Chicago for his 2016 eight-story tall mural in the South Loop at 1006 S. Michigan Ave., depicting a four-story tall woodpecker amid a tangle of stems and jewel-toned flowers.
(Re)Materializing Dread: An Interview with Mayumi Lake and Stacia Yeapanis, by Annie Raab, Sixty Inches From Center, April 20, 2022
This year, the brightly lit Flex Space at Riverside Arts Center hosted a selection of vibrant sculptures and installations that share more than a thematic braid in The Bigger the Fear and Despair..., showcasing the work of Mayumi Lake and Stacia Yeapanis. Download article
Big Week April 13-20, RB Landmark, April 12, 2022
Riverside Arts Center, 32 E. Quincy St., hosts its Riverside-Brookfield High School Annual Advanced Placement Art Exhibition from April 15 through May 7 in the Freeark Gallery and Sculpture Garden.
The group show includes paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs by students in their sophomore, junior and senior years. An opening reception will be held April 15 from 6 to 8 p.m
BIg Week March 23-30, RB Landmark, March 22, 2022
Riverside Arts Center presents a new photography exhibition, “Love You Bro” featuring the work of Stephanie Graham in the lobby of the Riverside Township Hall, 27 Riverside Road, Riverside, through June 30.
The exhibition explores relationships and how affection is expressed between Black men. Graham is a Chicago artist, photographer and filmmaker addressing themes of social class, subcultures, race and gender.
Top V Weekend Picks (3/17 - 3/23), Bad At Sports, The Visualist. March 17, 2022
4. Stephanie Graham: Love You Bro
Exhibition runs through June 30, 2022 at the Riverside Town Hall, 27 Riverside Road, Riverside, Illinois. Open Monday - Thursday 9am - 4pm and Friday 9am - 3pm.
Pebbles in the Sea: A Review of Unseen Things Are Still There at Riverside Arts Center, by Kerry Cardoza. Newcity March 7, 2022
“Esau McGhee’s sculptural assemblages are some of the first works you encounter in “Unseen Things Are Still There,” a group exhibition curated by Joanne Aono at the Riverside Arts Center. McGhee’s works, made up of collaged layers of screenprints and ink on paper centered in irregularly-shaped frames, cleverly embody this title. Not only are there layers of composition inaccessible to the viewer, the materiality itself is not easily classifiable. . .
A lust for Lustrons. by Bob Uphues. RB Landmark October 15, 2021
Riverside Town Hall exhibit highlights Brookfield photographer Dirk Fletcher’s obsession with quirky mid-century steel homes.
‘Coded: Coated’ examines art’s surfaces, by Michelle Dybal, RB Landmark September 21, 2021
Art can be evocative and probing, and “Coded: Coated,” the latest exhibit at the Freeark Gallery in the Riverside Arts Center (RAC), does this thoroughly and completely, with the work of three artists, guest curated by Jay Wolke. Wolke, the newest member of the RAC board of directors, is an artist too, with his photographic works in the permanent collection at the Art Institute of Chicago; the MOMA and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Wolke is also professor of Photography at Columbia College Chicago. Exhibit curating is another area of expertise and when asked to curate a show at RAC, his idea was to “have an exhibition based on materiality and how that contributes to the way we see objects or understand their meanings.”
RAC’s ‘quarantine quilt’ now on display at town hall. by Michelle Dybal June 8, 2021.
28 individuals and families helped create pandemic-inspired artwork. The squares represent love, nature and gardens, schools, healthcare, artistic expression, family, connections, sheltering, community. They were each assembled from fabric scraps during the pandemic at a time when staying home was the norm, but now are on display, joined together, at Riverside Township Hall. It’s the Community Quarantine Quilt made possible by Riverside Arts Center (RAC) and the creators who put the pieces together.
Big Week: AP Art Expo at RAC. April 13, 2021
Riverside Arts Center presents the Riverside-Brookfield High School Advance Placement Art Exhibition starting April 16 and running through May 15 in the Freeark Gallery. This year’s work was created by students who overcame the unique challenges posed by COVID-19 – learning art skills virtually and sharing explorations of materials, concepts and critiques in a screen’s eye view.
60wrd/min COVID Edition: Kelly Kristin Jones, New City, by Lori Waxman, February 19, 2021
What to do with all those monuments littering city parks and plazas in the form of dead white men, some of them still great, most of them now understood as beholden to racist and sexist ideologies? With a nod to the old-school darkroom technique called dodging, Kelly Kristin Jones holds placards in front of some of the more egregious of these sculptures in order to temporarily erase them in videos and photographs shot from just the right angle. For “in time and paradise,” a fall solo show at the Riverside Arts Center organized to coincide with the one-hundredth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, she built nineteen such tools out of variably sized pictures of the sky, one for each of nineteen women who fought and organized for the rights of all women, not just the wealthy white ladies who were the primary beneficiaries of the ratification. Among those nineteen women were organizers, publishers and journalists, photographers and marchers. In the spirit of the latter, Jones occasionally took those individual cloud sticks out for a walk, to protest Chicago’s many troubling statues and take their rightful (if brief) place atop those grand stone pedestals. —2021-02-05
New group show at RAC - RB Landmark, Tuesday, February 16, 2021
Riverside Arts Center invites you to its newest exhibition, “The Kitchen Sink,” a group show curated by Salim Moore, which runs from Feb. 21 through April 3 in the Freeark Gallery. The exhibition features the work of artists Bimbola Akinbola, Alex Bradley Cohen, Mari Eastman, Cassidy Early, Zehra Khan, Kelly Neibert and Sophie Treppendahl. The show’s title, according to Moore, “connotes something that consists of a hodgepodge, of a variety elements or ingredients. … Following in this same spirit of making do and getting by, we invited a group of artists to present those works that are representative of the kitchen sinks of their own studios.”
60wrd/min COVID Edition: Mayumi Lake, New City, by Lori Waxman February 5, 2021
Art can force us to see the ills to which we are blind, or it can offer transcendence when those ills become unbearable. Everyone needs relief sometimes, and this past spring, while Chicago was under lockdown, Mayumi Lake offered a dose by installing an ancient Japanese disco at the Riverside Arts Center, fully visible from the street. At the center of the small gallery, bathed in colorful LED lights and surrounded by mirror-faced stuffed teddy bears, two of Lake’s “Unison” flower reliefs spun around and around, locked in an otherworldly tango. To make these collages, Lake, who was born in Osaka but has lived in Chicago for years, scans hosoge floral patterns from vintage kimonos, prints, cuts and relayers them in the hundreds, then adds shiny doodads bought in local shops. The result is a sexy fusion of the noble and the flashy, the archaic and the futuristic. Did passersby dance to the silent rhythm of “Radiant Frisson”? I know I would have. — 2021-01-25 10:29 AM
New executive director in place at Riverside Arts Center. Chilsen steps up as Silverman departs to focus on her own work. - RB Landmark, by Bob Uphues. Tuesday, January 12th, 2021.
As 2020 drew to a close, Riverside Arts Center announced a changing of the guard at the top of that nonprofit organization, which is dedicated to exhibiting the work of local and Chicago area artists and fine arts education. Camille Silverman, who has led RAC as its executive director for nearly four years, made her exit to concentrate on her own art. Her replacement is no stranger to the organization. Liz Chilsen, who was hired in November 2019 as director of RAC's FlexSpace Gallery, stepped into the role as executive director on Jan. 1.
RAC preview exhibit at town hall. Camille Silverman. - Big Week: January 6-13, RB Landmark, Tuesday, January 5th, 2021
Riverside Arts Center may be in between shows right now, but you can get a taste of what's in store if you visit the Riverside Township Hall, 27 Riverside Road, for an exhibition called "Storyboards for Installations and Assemblages" by Camille Silverman, the RAC executive director. The exhibition features studies for "Softening Space," Silverman's exhibition in the Riverside Arts Center's Freeark Gallery, which opens to the public on Jan. 14. The show in gallery will run simultaneously with the show at the township hall, a first for RAC.
Bringing art to communities during a pandemic. RAC gallery director leads panel about the importance of fulfilling cultural mission - RB Landmark. by Michelle Dybal. October 6, 2020
"I wanted to have a conversation with leaders from community arts centers about what we're all doing to keep serving our communities during this very challenging time," Chilsen said. "The arts center is the creative hub of the community, and local arts centers are increasingly important. We are part of the local fabric and civic life."
Symbols of Hope: Artists Turn Their Homes Into Galleries with Art-in-Place - NewCity. by Kerry Cardoza. June 12, 2020
Other contributions are simply beautiful, and give in to the increased attention those of us in lockdown are able to pay to our surroundings. John Early has installed a square mirror on two pieces of rebar, angled so that it reflects the sky to passersby. “Towards Luminescence: Radiant Frisson,” by Mayumi Lake, recalls a nightclub, with colorful lights illuminating hanging sculptures and teddy bears with disco-ball faces. Installed at the Riverside Art Center, the piece is viewable from the street and is activated from 5pm to midnight each day.
Riverside Gallery is closed but there’s no stopping Art - Wednesday Journal Artbeat, by Michelle Dybal. June 24th, 2020
Art-based institutions remain closed for now, but that has not stopped Riverside Arts Center (RAC) from bringing what they do to the community. From gallery installations seen from outside to crafters being able to work at home, the door has not been shut on creating and enjoying art or experiencing thought-provoking work.
Gifts in time for Mother's Day are just one of the offerings of the Riverside Arts Center. Riverside Arts Center offers creative gifts, home kits, artist talks, By SUBURBAN LIFE, May 05, 2020
One can create a custom-made fused glass pendant with the help of resident glass artist Shawn Vincent.
"Pick your favorite glass combinations … and Shawn will design your piece, fire it and deliver in time for Mother's Day," a news release stated.
Boredum Buster
RAC has created Boredom Buster Box projects, including separate ceramic ones for adults and for children.
The latest Boredom Buster Box is geared towards adults or can be done with the whole family. The box contains your choice of a pre-made professional piece of bisque ware pottery ready to paint. You just add your creativity and inspiration. Each box supplies everything you need to create a beautiful ceramic piece, the release stated.
Included are one piece of professional bisque ware (your choice), six underglaze paint colors, one paintbrush and idea sheets for painting and decorating. The cost is $50 for members, $55 for nonmembers.
"Work at your own pace. When you're finished, repack in the original box for pickup. Pieces will be fired and returned to you, or available for pickup after shelter-in-place [period] is lifted," the release stated.
Artist talks
RAC's FlexSpace launches virtual artist talks. Deirdre Fox and Yoonshin Park are in conversation with Liz Chilsen. In a series of five short videos, they talk about poetry, curating and site responsive adaptability during the coronavirus pandemic.
Virtual studio visits with RAC - RB Landmark, April 28th, 2020
With its galleries closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Riverside Arts Center has rolled out a new initiative to connect artists with those who appreciate their work. Recently, FlexSpace Director Liz Chilsen posted a pair of talks with artists who have staged recent exhibitions at Riverside Arts Center. One was a virtual studio chat with Andrei Rabodzeenko, whose work was on display in January. In the video, Rabodzeenko talks with Chilsen about his influences, techniques and inspirations. He also reflects on being an artist during the pandemic and how to keep working and stay inspired.
Local groups look to keep you from going stir crazy - RB Landmark, March 20th, 2020
Though closed, the Riverside Arts Center remains dedicated to serving as a pillar for creative expression — and hope — in the community. "We are focused on offering support to this community which has supported us so much for 27 years," says Liz Chilsen, director of the center's FlexSpace Gallery. "It's a time of challenge and also intensive, creative problem solving -- something artists are particularly good at." More
Riverside Arts Center welcomes new gallery directors - RB Landmark, January 21st, 2020
Riverside Arts Center in late November announced the appointment of Liz Chilsen as director of the FlexSpace Gallery and Stephanie Brooks as director of the Freeark Gallery and Sculpture Garden.
The World As She Feels It: A Review of Janice Nowinski at Riverside Arts Center - NewCity, by Chris Miller October 1, 2019
Most of these pieces might well be overlooked if hung near more cheerful or eloquent examples of the European tradition. But grouped by themselves they tell about a passion for paint, pictorial space and one person’s determination to honestly express her creative, solitary life.
Big Week: Riverside Arts Center, closes out its latest exhibition, “While Here,” a solo show of work by painter Kim Piotrowski, Tuesday, January 3, 2019.
Piotrowski will talk about her work as an artist living and working in Riverside for the past 16 years. The work, which occupies both the Freeark Gallery and the FlexSpace Gallery, represents Piotrowski's artistic growth and her personal balancing act as an artists and parent.
Crushing the Patriarchy With One Look: Women Painting Men at Riverside Arts Center, Chicago Tribune. KT Hawbaker, May 25, 2018.
“Women Painting Men,” currently on display at the Riverside Arts Center’s Freeark Gallery and Sculpture Garden, is an example of how contemporary visual artists dig into notions of the female gaze. Featuring the work of six female painters and curated by Gwendolyn Zabicki, the show offers portrayals of masculine imagery that “run from sexual to sympathetic to sentimental.” … artists Karen Azarnia, Mel Cook, Katie Hammond, Jessica Stanfill and Celeste Rapone. Their styles of painting range from devastatingly figurative to kitchy punchlines that needle Picasso in his grave, pointing towards the limitless ways femmes and women have always met each other’s gazes inside of art spaces.
Big Week: Exhibitions by Anna Kunz and Laura Husar Garcia at Riverside Arts Center RB Landmark, May 17-24, 2017
Riverside Arts Center opens two new exhibits this weekend. In the Freeark Gallery, you can see the work of Oak Park artist Anna Kunz and her exhibit "Physical Sunshine." Her paintings are "flowing plains of fabric that transform rooms." Over in the FlexSpace gallery, take in a solo exhibition of photographs by Laura Husar Garcia. The show, titled "Wishes," features photos of patterns made from stones cast into water and the work "stems from a blend of melancholy and yearning, focusing on the past, present and future.
Riverside Arts Center Hires New Executive Director – Riverside Landmark. by Bob Uphues, editor Tuesday April 4, 2017
The woman credited with taking the Western Colorado Center for the Arts "to the next level as a regional center for the arts" has landed at Riverside Arts Center as the organization's new executive director. Camille Silverman, who led the Grand Junction, Colorado, arts organization for eight years started her new job leading Riverside Arts Center on March 1. She's just the second executive director in the organization's history and the first in a decade.
Interview with RAC FlexSpace Solo Artist Kevin Blake in OPP Blog, Other People’s Pixels. by Stacia Yeapanis. March 30, 2017
KEVIN BLAKE’s chaotic surfaces contain abstract marks, figures, graphic line drawings and worked, textured accumulations of paint that might have been applied with a palette knife. Ultimately this multiplicity of rendering styles serves to underline the intertextuality of American cultural myths inherited from print, television and film.
A Show of Lively Contrasts: Review of Judith Brotman and Fraser Taylor at the Riverside Arts Center, New City. by Chris Miller November 7, 2016
RECOMMENDED: Although contemporaries in the 1960s, Henry Moore and Eva Hesse never collaborated on an exhibition. If they had, the stark, gender-related contrast would probably have resembled this current pairing of Fraser Taylor and Judith Brotman. More
New Director Takes Reigns at Riverside Art Center’s Freeark Gallery – Riverside Landmark, Tuesday July 12, 2016
Veteran curator, writer looks to trumpet local arts resource
After years of considering herself an “enthusiastic viewer” of the works displayed at the Riverside Arts Center, Oak Park resident and artist Claudine Ise was ecstatic when she got the news that she would be named the gallery’s newest director of the Freeark Contemporary Art Gallery this spring.
The best of 2015 in Chicago visual art– by Lori Waxman. Chicago Tribune, December, 2015
Taking stock at the end of the year always makes me think of wool stockings and soup. Both of these provide warmth in the cold, and a good best-of list can hope to do the same. Except this one has a few worst-of items too:
More goes unseen than seen, unwritten than written. Sometimes the seen can go unwritten, too. Nine hundred words every two weeks can only cover so much in a city as rich in artists and exhibitions as Chicago.
Shows I loved but didn't write about include Mark Booth's mysterious geometries and unhurried poems at Lula Cafe; Sonja Thomsen's perceptual holiday at the DePaul Museum of Art, where pure optical phenomena made magic just for the wonder of it; Nancy Lu Rosenheim's rosy blobs, spreading like gleeful growths along the walls and under the stairs of the Hyde Park Art Center; and Paola Cabal's subtle paradox at the Riverside Art Center, where she rendered moonlight and shadows permanent.
Fall Art Preview: 10 shows that shouldn’t be missed – Paola Cabal at Riverside Art Center – Lori Waxman, Chicago Tribune, September 2015
"Paola Cabal: Crescent": Blue moons are not just a saying, and they are not at all blue. They are extra full moons that make up for the gap between celestial cycles and the human calendar. Cabal spent the night of July 31 in the Riverside Arts Center recording the light cast by this rare astronomical phenomenon. How does it differ from the shades of other moons, and of the gallery's natural light? Cabal's painterly mastery of subtle shifts in shadow promises illumination. Aug. 30 to Oct. 3, Riverside Arts Center, 32 E. Quincy St., Riverside, Ill., 708-442-6400, www.riversideartscenter.com
Group show on exhibit at Riverside Arts Center – My Suburban Life, April 13, 2015
A diverse group of Hispanic/Latino artists displays works using everyday materials to present varied perspectives exploring the topics of monument and monumentality in the Riverside Arts Center. The show is titled "Material Normal Monumental," and is featured until May 9. The exhibit is curated by Alberto Aguilar, in association with his Crossing Boundaries Residency through Arts + Public Life and Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture. The essay is by J. Gibran Villalobos and Wil Ruggiero.
Organizers note that although grouped through simple common factors, each artist in the exhibition conceptualizes complex individualities about hybridity through their unique contribution to the exhibit. These blended identities are characterized by the particular nuance of being Hispanic/Latino in the United States (currently residing in Chicago), often existing within multiple languages and cultures while trying to make a personal contribution to contemporary art discourse. Participating artists are Alberto Aguilar, Alejandro Figueredo Diaz-Perera, Maria Gaspar, Jorge Lucero, Victoria Martinez, Maddie Reyna, Edra Soto and Rafael E. Vera.
Westward Homes – Atlas Chicago, January 2015
It’s More Than Spectacular To Use The Vernacular! The Phantasmagorical World of Tariq Tamir at the RAC – RB Landmark. by By Kathleen Thometz, Friday June 20, 2014
Many artists work in trash, found objects and recyclables. They often take this stuff and make it into something you can recognize, a person or an object. It's like the artists need to show that trash can become something identifiable. Tariq doesn't seem to worry about that. He takes indistinguishable stuff and works to creating a fantasy form with lovely colors. His work exercises the imagination.
The Water’s Mirror of the Sky: All In at the Riverside Arts Center – Bad at Sports. by Kevin Blake, February 4, 2015
In RAC’s latest offering, “All In”, curator Karen Azarnia has selected a group of painters who display a range of approaches to abstraction. From the cannon that binds them to the execution that separates them, these artists convey their painterly chops while maintaining a singularity whose description is, admittedly, just my reflection in the water. My ideas. Their images. I try to link them here–I try to create metaphors from visual cues to create meaning. I create meaning to locate my interaction with these images within my own experiential dictionary. I am both limited and liberated by the extents of my exposure.
Artist Sabina Ott to speak at Riverside Art Center – planitlife.com, December 4, 2014
Review: Tree House Show at Riverside Arts Center in Riverside– Chicago Tribune. April 25, 2013
Kathleen Thometz takes the idea of micro living to a new level in her Tree House show at the Freeark Gallery. She has filled the gallery and outside sculpture garden with tree houses, forts, houseboats, and mobile homes...and they are all diminutive. Explaining her work, Thometz says, "Everyone needs a place to get away. Even if you can't physically go into your own hut or fort, perhaps you can mentally and emotionally by meditating on one of these tiny homes." Who is her audience? "Everyone will be able to relate to these tree houses. The kids will find them fun and adults nostalgic. My art is always about accessibility to everyone." It is a colorful, fun and thought-provoking exhibit.
The Accessible Pleasures of Excess – hyperallergic.com. by Alicia Eler December 24, 2013
The unwieldy synthetic materials of late capitalism’s throwaway culture are worth their weight in gold spray-painted styrofoam bricks. In her solo exhibition Ornament at the Riverside Arts Center’s Freeark Gallery, curated by Anne Harris, artist Sabina Ott shoves aside the confines of what constitutes acceptable, eco-friendly materiality and throws it all back onto the mirror. … the sculptures give agency back to the viewer. She will inevitably be drawn to the mirrors, and as she gazes into these reflective surfaces like Narcissus or Dorian Gray, she sees herself as part of the sculptures. Integrated into the whole, the viewer becomes a central component in this hyperaestheticized art experience, which is neither beautiful nor sublime.That’s what we encounter in the front gallery; in the back room, a cluster of 10 works by artists in Ott’s community — including Michelle Grabner, Dan Gunn, Matthew Girson, Suzanne Doremus, Anna Kunz, and Phyllis Bramson — offer complementary reflections of both one another and Ott’s works. Either through the color palette or the material choices, we see little slices of Ott, like a mirror that’s been smashed, its shards filling a contained space ripe for contemplation.
Review: Sabina Ott at the Riverside Arts Center, New City. by Chris Miller, December 03, 2013
The exhibition begins outdoors with Sabina Ott’s fountain, a glittery, Styrofoam-encrusted circulating water tank the size of a bathtub, titled “Pleasure for the Poor” (2010). As its title suggests, it would be suitable for the landscape architecture of a place where people must live on impossible dreams. Defying any sense of space, form or proportion, the fountain is as comforting as a giant, melting, multi-flavor ice-cream sundae. That sense of down-scale comfort is projected by the rest of Ott’s pieces in this exhibit—all of them pastel-tinted conglomerations of glass and metal stuck together with sprayed Styrofoam. Absent any visual tension, and with a sweet, then more sweet esthetic, there’s a sense of fun that summons a hilarious party—which is exactly what the artist did, inviting other artist friends and colleagues to participate. Each were asked to contribute something that, like her pieces, is prominently colored white. The variety of responses is fascinating, but mostly they function like the strainer at the bottom of a kitchen sink, catching the random detritus of human experience. Except for the meticulous wooden marquetry of Dan Gunn’s “Fan,” the pieces in the group show seem to have been as casually produced as the piece of white, open-weave fabric that Michelle Grabner glued to a small white panel. In the center of them all, Ott hung an encrusted mirror from the ceiling, like a glittering disco ball, to reflect the work of all her friends. What a party! The one piece that appears to be more than a party favor is Michelle Wasson’s elegant drawing. Rather than the result of a child playing, this piece depicts one, with just a few simple, sinuous red pencil lines. The show, however, is not a child’s birthday party; it’s a professional social event, celebrating the ongoing dominance of Dada in academia, that rebellious but venerable anti-art tradition that is fast approaching it’s one-hundredth anniversary, and still alive today.
Review: J Clayton and Michelle Bolinger/Riverside Arts Center, NewCity. By Chris Miller. November 30, 2012
RECOMMENDED These are really two separate shows: J Clayton in the front gallery and Michelle Bolinger in the smaller project space behind it. But the two abstract painters have so much in common while complementing each other so well, they beg to be considered together. Both of them are painting the good life. There’s no angst, anger, bad memories, self-loathing, or really any drama at all. Nor are there conceptual puzzles for a theory of art to explain. These are visualizations of a pleasant, sufficiently prosperous life in a peaceful country. That’s what most clients expect from architectural design, so this kind of painting is probably an extension of J Clayton’s earlier career in that field. Her large paintings feel less like paint on canvas and more like a symphony of colored light in space.
The results are expand-your-mind psychedelic and the small areas of color resemble the size and shape of pharmaceuticals, so there’s a suggestion of “better living through chemistry.” By contrast, Michelle Bolinger’s smaller paintings seem to be looking at the world, almost like snapshots of a sunny motor trip through Midwestern hills, highways, lakes and estates, though with nothing in sharp focus except for the edges of her paint brush. And while Clayton’s designs move outward from a meditative center, Bolinger’s pull in from the outer edges of experience. Indeed, in one piece, all she paints is an outer frame. Neither one is interested in spontaneous expression, but both are obsessed with making each mark just right, as Clayton executes her pointillism or as Bolinger is sanding and repainting to perfection. Both are crafting comfortable, well made homes for the imagination. Both are also explorers, with each painting a different adventure with every painting, though not an especially dangerous or revelatory one. (Chris Miller)
Review: Candida Alvarez at the Riverside Arts Center, NewCity. by Ella Christoph September 18, 2012
RECOMMENDED At first, it was just as painful to see all these ornate, delicately colored 9×12-inch sheets of vellum pinned to the gallery walls like butterflies as it was to see body piercings in sensitive places. But eventually, it all made sense: this was Candida Alvarez’s invitation to a world of personal experience. It was like visiting the artist in her kitchen as she tells you about her various experiences in Puerto Rico, Ireland and Chicago. It’s just you and her—other people and things are not depicted, even in the wall full of photographs where everything dissolves into patterns. The patterns of her drawings are especially intense, wonderful and obviously relate to the places to which they refer. To her, Puerto Rico, the land of her parents, feels festive and luxuriant; Ireland feels cool and earthy; and Chicago feels at turns stifling, challenging or exciting. Perhaps she’d rather live somewhere else? Besides these places, it’s the distinct areas of color that really seem to be the focus of Alvarez’s attention. Green is the only color that appears in each and every artwork, and it’s how she identifies this series of miniatures made over the past five years. The drawings seem to document a life whose psychedelic self-absorption is confirmed by a video showing the artist in the garden behind the gallery, spinning dizzily in circles until she collapses on the ground. She’s happy with her life, and it feels good to spend some time with her. But this is only one of her many projects, perhaps just a prelude to her upcoming exhibition of ambitious, large-scale paintings that will be on view at the Hyde Park Art Center in December.
Review: Push-Pull/Riverside Arts Center, NewCity June 30, 2012
This group exhibition of paintings “explores the ongoing dialogue between abstraction and representation,” according to its curator. The potential scope for such an exploration is vast, but curiously, most kinds of realistic or observational painting have been left out. Still, the variety included is too great for any of the pieces to communicate with each other, so the gallery feels like a waiting room in a health clinic where each patient is quietly keeping her own problems to herself. Or it is like an MFA show at a large contemporary art school, such as SAIC, from which eight of the twelve artists, including the curator herself, have graduated, mostly within the last decade. As in an art school, mostly what’s being represented here are current strategies for making contemporary art, but there are a few exceptions, where two women have stepped back to earlier narrative forms of Modernism to express how they are enjoying their lives today. The figurative scene by Carly Silverman captures the joy of youth, where the world feels full of energy and possibility. Is that an iPhone in the hands of the very focused young lady in the brilliant red hat? Meanwhile, the expressive chiaroscuro nudes of Kyle Staver glory in the full-blown sensuality of maturity. Lady Godiva has never enjoyed her provocative ride quite so shamelessly and corpulently. Overall the show serves as a snapshot for the art-making of a certain time and place, but only a few pieces draw more than a quick glance to themselves. Hopefully the curator, herself an accomplished painter, will search a bit wider, and focus a bit sharper on her next exhibition.