July 2023 Newsletter
Above: Vivian Visser, Bubbling Up (detail), 20232023
Stained cement, high-fire clay, 5' x 8' x 8', located at Big Marsh Park
Cover Image: Peter Krsko, Tree from Within II, 2023,
Wood collected on site, metal plates, screws, 30’ x 35’ x 25’
Welcome to the July Newsletter
You will find:
News from the CSI Committees
Show opportunities
Ongoing Member Exhibitions
Updated Information (Post-publication)
Newsletter Updates
Above: Kokomo Sculpture Walk sculptures by CSI members Ray Katz (left) and John Adduci (right)
This is not a CSI sponsored call but may be of interest to our members.
Call for Kokomo Sculpture Walk
The Kokomo Sculpture Walk is a mile long and winds along trails and waterways through the heart of the city. It’s dotted with a collection of nine large-scale sculptures created by regional and national artists. The juried collection is selected from submissions by artists across the country. The walk includes pieces that are visually interesting and enriching.
The exhibit changes every two years, with a new collection to be installed in 2023. The sculptures are on display along the Industrial Heritage Trail and Kokomo Riverwalk, both paved surfaces.
Deadline to submit: Aug. 8, 2023
Submission fee is $20 for up to 3 pieces
Exhibit dates: September 2023 through August 2025
For more information: Susan Alexander, Greater Kokomo Downtown Association, (765) 457-5301 or salexander@greaterkokomo.com
Call for Entries:
Elemental Impact
Chicago Sculpture International Juried Exhibitions at the Epiphany Center for the Arts
Extended Entry Deadline: September 9, 2023
Show Runs: Nov. 17, 2023 - Jan. 13, 2024
Epiphany Center for the Arts
201 S. Ashland Avenue
Chicago, IL
312-421-4600
Email notification of acceptance: October 15, 2023
Delivery of Accepted Work: Saturday, November 11, 2023, 12-5pm and Tuesday, November 14, 2023, 12am-5pm
Pick-up of work: January 16 – 18, 2024, 11 am to 3 pm
Opening Reception: Friday, November 17, 2023, 6-9pm
This exhibition takes interest in the parts that make up the whole and how a single element can impact the world at large. Much like a single choice in material or form can change an entire piece, each work in a collective can change and impact the whole by proximity.
The works chosen for this exhibition will have a strong sense of material choice and presence that is both able to stand on its own while also engaging with its environment and the works around it in a way that fundamentally changes the experience of the space.
If selected for the exhibition, artists must be a current CSI member orsign-up for membership. An artist statement will be required for the accepted piece.
Find more information here.
News from the Outdoor Exhibitions Committee
Photos from the artist talks. Left: Tree from Within II by Peter Krsko; Right: Bubbling Up by Vivian Visser
Big Marsh Park Sculpture Installations
Big Marsh Park welcomed two new CSI sculpture installations, Bubbling Up by Vivian Visser and Tree from Within II by Peter Krsko. Artists talks (pictured here) were given.
Big Marsh Park is located on Southeast Side of Chicago in the Calumet Area Reserve on the eastern shore of Lake Calumet. Since the late 1800s, the site was an active industrial property for waste and slag dumping from surrounding industrial operations. The Chicago Park District acquired the site in 2011 and it opened as a new 300-acre public park in 2016. Big Marsh Park is the Chicago Park District’s largest natural site. Big Marsh includes a paved bike park, walking paths, dirt trails, jump lines for bikes, and picnicking space, and roughly 45 acres of hemi-marsh is home a vast and increasing variety of native wildlife species, as well as a the new Ford Calumet Environmental Center.
News from the Outdoor Exhibitions Committee
ALMA Art and Interiors
Annual Spring Exhibition
2024 Chicago Sculpture International Juried Exhibition at ALMA Art and Interiors
April 12 - September 1, 2024
3636 S. Iron St, Chicago, IL
Entry Deadline: August 18, 2023
Both Indoor and Outdoor Sculptors are invited to enter up to three works for the Annual Spring Exhibition at ALMA Art and Interiors in Chicago, IL. The exhibition will coincide with Expo Chicago, International Exposition of Contemporary & Modern Art, April 11- 24, 2024 Navy Pier, Chicago, Illinois. Alma Art and Interiors, established 2021, is a contemporary fine art gallery in the historic Bridgeport Arts Corridor featuring over 80 artists in 10,000 sq. ft.
This exhibition will be juried and curated by Kimberly Oliva and Gosia Korsakowski.
If selected for the exhibition, artists must be a current CSI member or sign-up for membership here. An artist statement will be required for the accepted piece.
Calendar:
Entry deadline: August 18, 2023
Email notification of acceptance: September 4, 2023.
Delivery of Accepted Work: Work to be received by March 1, 2024.
Exhibition dates: April 12, 2024 – September 1, 2024.
Opening Reception: Friday, April 12, 2024, 5 to 9 pm with opening weekend, Saturday, April 13, and Sunday, April 14, 12 to 5 pm.
Look HERE for application details.
Color / Form
Chicago Sculpture International Juried Exhibition at the College of Lake County
June 22 - August 9, 2023
Richard T. Wright Community Gallery of Art, CLC, 19351 W. Washington St., Grayslake, IL
Gallery Hours: Mon - Thurs: 8AM - 9PM, Fri: 8AM - 6PM, Sat: 9AM - 3PM, Sun: Closed
No other element impacts aesthetics so directly and urgently as color. Artists who combine color with structure understand the boundless and captivating energy of this synthesis. Using color to evoke a mood is essential in their practice and message. Color/Form’s purpose is to compile creations that celebrate color and form interpreted in three dimensions.
Exhibiting Artists: Mike Baur, Nicole Beck, Michael D. Brown, Kara Cobb Johnson, Deirdre Colgan Jones, Robert Craig, Ei Cullina, Darlys Ewoldt, Lynn Floriano, Victoria Fuller, Shelley Gilchrist, John Hatlestad, Azadeh Hussaini, Yvette Kaiser Smith, Stacee Kalmonovsky, Thom Kapheim, Terry Karpowicz, Youngse Kim, Jill King-Wynn, Fred Klingelhofer, Ginny Krueger, Gina Lee Robbins, Mike Litewski, Nancy Lu Rosenheim, Ellen Lustig, Scott Mossman, Lisa Nelson Raabe, Katherine Nemanich, Janelle O'Malley, Ludvig Peres, Thomas Plum, Marci Rubin, Paul Somers, Diane Tang, Rabia Tayyabi, Michele Thrane, Kyle Triplett, Alexia Trzyna, and Nancy VanKanegan. Curated by Ann Rintz
News from the CSI Project Space
CSI Project Space Exhibit: ALIVE
Exhibit Dates: June 16 - July 28, 2023
Hours: Friday through Sunday, 1 - 6PM or by appointment
What does it mean to be alive and a part of Nature?
All animal and vegetable tissues are made up of a complex collection of cells
endlessly at work generating energy for life. In this sense, there is no life without action.
All these little parts and drops of goodness ignite the living in our world illuminated
by the energy of the sun.
We are not mere observers taking measurements and making plans. We are a
structured and complex stimulus being, emerged within the patterns and cycles of Nature. These connections and patterns along with their cycles are expressed as a whole through the living. This experience of life, however interconnected and reliant upon parts both big and small, is inevitably singularly perceived.
Participating Artists: Sam Abrahamson, Yesenia Arroyo, Janet Austin, Lynn Basa, Nicole Beck, Yeong Choi, Bethany Cordero, David Curry, Victor Edwards, Victoria Fuller, Heidi Jensen, Jill King, Victoria Kowalczyk, Alison Mosher, Julia Paloma, Lori Rozdolsky, Paul Russell, Stephanie Sailer, Olya Salimova, Sorin Sukumaran, Diane Feldpausch Tang, Nancy VanKanegan, Vivian Visser.
Curated by Micki LeMieux
More info HERE.
Above: Installation image from 2022 By Degrees exhibition, work by Christian Stone, Elisabeth Heying, and Olya Salimova.
By Degrees II (2023)
Often an artist’s most groundbreaking work comes from being immersed in a culture of study and intellectual pursuit. Chicago, home to some of the most globally revered academic arts institutions, could be considered a sort of proving ground for tomorrow’s most promising contemporary emerging artists.
Notification by: Monday, July 17, 2023
Exhibition Dates: Saturday, August 5 - Saturday, September 16, 2023
Exhibition Hours: Friday-Saturdays, 1 - 6PM and by appointment
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 5, 2023, 6 - 9PM
Work Drop-Off Date: Sunday, July 29, 2023
Pick-Up/Deinstall Artwork: Sunday, September 17, 2023, 12 - 5PM
News from the Education Committee
There are a few more exciting educational art workshops scheduled for later this year. We look forward to sharing these workshops with our members in the upcoming newsletters.
We are always looking for fun art workshops to share with The Boys and Girls Club at the Lathrop Homes. We are looking for art projects that can be completed in one hour with the children.
If you have an idea for an art workshop, please contact mickilemieux@chicagosculpture.org
News from the Membership Chair
AALANA & BIPOC Inclusion Fellowship Winners 2023/2024
Chicago Sculpture International would like to congratulate five talented artists as our inaugural class of Inclusion Fellowship recipients! A warm welcome to:
Cherylle Booker is an outsider artist who works in ceramic sculpture and painting. Focus is bringing the inner world, emotions, and mental imagery to life through artwork. She is a Project Onward artist since 2018. She has worked with Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art as an artist and guest speaker and helped design the sanctuary doors mural at Epiphany Center for the Arts.
She states: I am inspired by mythology, spiritual traditions, legends, ancient art, and the emotions that we all experience in everyday life. I find it beautiful that we, as artists, can imagine something that doesn’t exist in the physical world and then make it a reality. I work to bring that sense of magic and wonder into the pieces I create, and to give expression to the emotions and states of being that are difficult to put into words. I want people from very different walks of life to be able to connect with what is being expressed through my work, and for those people to be seen and understood.
Hai-Wen Lin received a MDes in Fashion, Body and Garment from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2023 and is currently an artist in residence at The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. They have shown work nationally and internationally from 2015 to the present.
Lin's practice walks the motions of daily life and invites the company of naturally occurring phenomena. It is an act of being present in the world around them. It is an act of reorienting. It is an attempt to attune one’s body to the environment, to unsettle static markers of identity, to offer instead the wind, sun, and sky as constantly shifting relational anchors to gather and situate oneself.
Janhavi Khemka was born in Varanasi, India, and is an interdisciplinary artist in India and Chicago. She has an MFA in print media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago 2022, a BFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Faculty of Visual Art, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India (2015), and an MFA in printmaking from Graphics, Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati University in Santiniketan (2017). She has shown at Comfort Station in Chicago and is an artist in residence at Bodies of Work, University of Illinois Chicago in 2023.
She states: “As a hearing-impaired person for most of my life, I have often found it difficult to express my innermost feelings, impressions, and reactions verbally. At the age of 15, my mother passed away due to cancer. She was my first teacher and my link to communicate with the outside world. She emphasized lip reading, and it barred me from learning sign language. When she passed away, I was left alone and had to learn to negotiate with the world in my own way. Art helped me find meaning in smaller, intimate things, my hands and their connection to the world, my sight, and my sense of touch. I see and can feel the storm in them but can’t hear.
My practice revolves around finding ways to translate my perception of the world. Therefore, most works are rooted in the personal, psychological, and physical. Each work can be compared to a pin dropped on a map of my being: this is where I was hurt when I cut my hand on a piece of metal; this is where I found my way home when I was lost at a carnival; here I made friends, here I found a child who accepted my shortcomings; here I spread my wings or felt the first touch of affection from another body. Most recently, this mapping has extended to installation-based environments with woodcuts, stop motion, performance art, and vibrational materials, I invite the viewer to experience my perception of the world, devoid of aural stimulation.”
Victor Edwards - BFA Sculpture, Spalding University moved to Chicago after graduating with a thirst for experience in sculpture. He interned at Forrest Boone Studios and is a studio monitor at Chicago Industrial Arts and Design Center. He is creating new work at Park West Ceramics and is a member of South Side Hackerspace where he creates 3D modeling projects.
He states: “I find the stories of artists like Richard Hunt and Nick Cave particularly inspiring, artists whose work is inseparable from the rich and influential nature of Black Chicago culture. Chicago is the city I feel the most at home in and this opportunity would undoubtedly be integral in my emerging artist career… As an artist, my goal is to create spaces and figures to nestle into the collective unconscious. For me, living is a complex and overwhelming thing; I have many conflicting opinions about life. I cycle between being in a state of awe and wonder about all living and being detached, in a state of reflection. I am just one person, and I am riddled with hypocrisy and inconsistency.
Yimei (Emair) Zhu - MFA in Studio Arts, Art and Technology Studies from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago 2023, Linz, Austria for the 2021 Festival University Program, BFA in Experimental Art from GAFA in Guangzhou, China 2020.
She states: “For many years, I have been concerned about the disabled community, including people with cerebral palsy, low-vision issues, depression and social phobia. I have also been studying sensory systems in the plant and animal realm that are beyond human capabilities. I see art as a powerful way to confront difficult situations and as an engine that can break down barriers between disciplines. My body of work centers around being an experience-oriented creator who focuses on Art, Disability and Posthuman Bodies. As someone who experiences high Myopia, my current works are based on the low vision community, and I attempt to use various sensory and tactile materials to create an abundance of sensations.”
Save the Date: August 19th, 2023
Chicago Sculpture International Membership Picnic at The Chicago Riverfront (with a rain date of August 20th). More details to follow . . .
Land Acknowledgment
To provide immediate assistance to Native American communities in Chicago, you can send donations to the city’s American Indian Center here.
The City of Chicago, and its surrounding areas, have always been, and always will be, home to numerous Native American communities. As a team dedicated to the uplifting of Indigenous People’s sovereignty everywhere, we recognize that each program and exhibition associated with this project is taking place on the traditional homelands of the Council of Three Fires—the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa—as well as the Menominee, Miami, and Ho-Chunk Nations. Further, we acknowledge that Chicago is home to one of the largest urban Native American communities in the US.
Land acknowledgments are not rhetorical gestures, but rather calls to action. We therefore invite each of our non-Indigenous colleagues to learn more about the forced removal of many of the communities listed above from the state of Illinois and to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into their line of work. We also encourage everyone to ask themselves how they may benefit from the continuation of settler colonialism, militarism, and warfare. Confronting these realities allows us to break down our privileges and adopt anti-colonial practices that can one day help us in creating a more equitable society.
Member News
NASCAR Street Races trophy by Nicole Beck
Read about the NASCAR Street Races trophy created by CSI member Nicole Beck (with help from CSI sponsor Vector Custom Fabricating and a friend who is in CGI design). Congratulations, Nicole!
Link HERE.
Ravinia Steans Music Institute Concert
Kara Cobb Johnson has reserved 10 complimentary tickets to a Ravinia afternoon concert. You can enter the grounds at 1pm and enjoy the outdoor sculptures, then enter Bennett Gordon Hall for a musical daytime dash of piano and strings. July 15th 1pm. Please reach out to Kara at karasusanne@gmail.com between July 6th and July 14th to get the code.
The following are not CSI sponsored projects, but may be of interest to our members.
International Sculpture Center Artist Exhibition
For the first time ever, you can now be a part of potentially three exhibitions - in Sculpture magazine (March/April ’24), on ISC Artsy Online Member Show (Fall ’24) and an in-person exhibition scheduled for 2024 as well. Preferred options for ISC chapter members.
Application deadline is September 15th. Applications will be accepted only from ISC members and chapters for the first month but the offer will be extended to the public after that.
Learn more:
sculpture.org/page/ArtistExhibition for more details
#sculpture #internationalsculpturecenter #sculpturemagazine
#exhibitions
Terrain Biennial 2023
Calling all artists, curators, neighbors, and public art loves!
Open call: April 18 - July 18
Member Bobbi Meier is on the Terrain Biennial team and encourages all to participate! Link HERE.
Photo: 2021 Winner, La Diva I by Ruth Migdal, painted steel, 12' x 4' x 5'
8th Lewis C. Weinberg Biennial Sculpture Competition
Entry Deadline: July 24, 2023
Skokie Northshore Sculpture Park announces its 8th biennial Lewis C. Weinberg Biennial Sculpture Competition and is looking forward to another exciting contest.
- $3,000 Prize
- Expense-paid transportation and installation
- Guest of Honor at the Award Ceremony on site
- 2-year exhibition in SNSP as an honored feature in Section I
For information, application materials, and detailed instructions, please go to our website: www.sculpturepark.org
Skokie Northshore Sculpture Park
McCormick Blvd.
Skokie, IL.
(between Touhy and Dempster Avenues)
For questions and more information:
info@sculpturepark.org
Covid-19 Monument Commission
A monument design contest to commemorate honor, remembrance, and resilience
Submissions must be received by August 31 at midnight.
The winning artist will receive a cash prize of $20,000.
On this day, millions have died from COVID-19 and its variants, or have been infected. For those who have perished, for those who have lost a loved-one, for those who have recovered, and for those who courageously and selflessly served during the darkest and most uncertain days of the pandemic, we announce a competition to design a COVID-19 Monument of Honor, Remembrance, & Resilience sponsored by the Hektoen Institute of Medicine.
This Monument will be a physical sculpture or art installation that addresses and symbolizes the myriad issues and emotions encountered by citizens throughout the world as they navigate this powerful scourge and tragedy of our time. No other event in the past two centuries touched everyone as did the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether by death, illness, grief, or at best, lock-down, the pandemic left no one unscathed. This universal event respected no boundaries and did not discriminate by age, gender, religion, or nationality. As this pandemic excluded no one, our Monument is unequivocally inclusive and will embrace the sentiments of all citizens throughout the world.
Our hope is that we will conquer this virus, and the pandemic will be history—a distant memory. But lest we forget, it is critical that we come together to reflect, and to honor those who continue to fight on the front lines, those brave souls who ensured our survival. They are the nurses, doctors, health care workers, the public service sector employees, airline and banking personnel, those who rang up our groceries and medicines, delivered our packages, prepared our to-go meals, drove our buses, and many more. They all encountered significant risks dealing with an unknown illness. The Monument will honor these individuals and allow those who lost loved ones to mourn and know they are not alone. The monument design contest will bring forth ideas to educate and enlighten with the wisdom and experience we have shared.
Additionally, the Monument will celebrate resilience and victory. The discovery and distribution of the vaccine, engendered by multiple agencies, effectively saved millions of lives. This triumph of science in the COVID-19 vaccine and concomitant testing advances must be lauded and serve as a reminder of hope in the face of intense adversity and obstacles.
About the call FAQ's Submission Guidelines Submission Details
Chicago Sculpture International is partially supported by a CityArts Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events.
While You’re Here…
Have any news to share? Shows, awards, residencies et al.? Send the particulars along to info@chicagosculpture.org, and we'll include them in an upcoming newsletter.
While you're at it, your profile and images on CSI’s website are important. When CSI applies for grants and upcoming shows, images are solely chosen from those you have uploaded to our website. Please take a minute to look over what you have posted and make sure you are presenting the best work. Member Shelley Gilchrist sgilchristart@gmail.com has volunteered to help you if you need it, so feel free to contact her.
