Lia Chavez: “The Revitalized Gaze: Nudity, Molten Bodies, and the Spectatorship of Intimacy”
Lia Chavez is a New York based artist who is a photographer, dancer, and choreographer. Exhibitions of her dreamlike, elegant photographs, videos, and performances include Hillman plus Chavez at Savannah College of Art and Design Atlanta (2010) and at Affirmation Arts in New York (2008), Detournement Venise, Parallel Worlds at the 53rd Venice Biennale, 2009 TINA B. – The Prague

Contemporary Art Festival, the 2009 Armory Show VIP program, Nightcomers at the 10th Istanbul Biennial, and Shot and Go: A Vision of Today’s International Photography at the 52nd Venice Biennale.

Abstract:

Whether pondering mysteries of the night sky or working in my
blackened studio or darkroom, I am interested in the interplay between
light and dark and how together they conspire to author an experience.

Exploring links between the formation of heavenly bodies and earthly
ones, I research – through movement in space – an “aurorean body”
which, like many undulating forms in the heavens, cannot be precisely
measured, categorized, or diagrammed. I work across a wide range of
experimental photographic techniques and alternative processes, at
times fusing analog with digital and old photographic techniques with
new ones. There is one key exception, however: I do not use digital
manipulation to achieve my results.

Opening Reception Friday February 17, 7-10 p.m. / Artist Talk at 7:15 / Free Concert at 8:00 by Ranger and Rit Black & Co /
On view Feb. 17 – March 25

Artist’s Statement
By Joel Sheesley, 2011

I share the sentiment of Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Black Rook in Rainy Weather,” which speaks about “walking wary” of the chance discovery of content or meaning in everyday life.

“…With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content
Of sorts, …”

To me, the patching together of content suggests an arrival at a turning point; a point at which our pervasive tendency toward oblivion is dispelled by an awareness that the status quo, oblivion’s usual way of manifesting itself, is illusory. At this turning point one senses that everything is important. It is important for what it reveals about everything else. We find ourselves in an indeterminate network of relationships that keeps opening up before us.

But here our energies and intellectual powers are taxed. How much of that indeterminacy can one absorb? How soon do we, in exhaustion, begin trading upon trivialities, banal coincidences? The world offers an endless supply of facts. We are pressured to understand how they are important to us.

Which facts relate in ways that bring us insight? Which coincidental meetings are actually important? It is under the pressure to know these things that we feel the whole world groaning. Art is one such sometimes-exquisite groan. In whatever manner or voice, art calls out the relations between things, even subdividing the “thing itself” into its own sets of relationships.

Painting is one avenue in a network of roads that comprise what Art is. To be professional about painting is to know its history and technical detail, to be enmeshed in its limits; to “walk wary” with it in the world, alert to its capacities for patching together a content of sorts.

Judith Raphael is a Chicago artist whose work has been exhibited consistently in Chicago galleries and museums as well as in museums from Boston to Seattle.  She has won numerous awards for her work, including three Illinois Arts Council Grants, an Arts Midwest/National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship, and the Adolph & Clara Obrig Prize at the National Academy Museum’s 179 Annual invitational in 2004.

Douglas Stapleton of the Illinois State Museum, Chicago Gallery, says: “Judith Raphael creates a modern day coming of age story of young women poised on the cusp of adolescence.  In portraits and narrative paintings her subjects confront and compete with one another, posing in attitudes of new self-confidence as they gaze outward with watchful, searching attention.  Classical poses from art history and stances taken from sports pages and magazines suggest both the pressure and playfulness of the “rules” of growing up.  Her girls inhabit a contradictory world: an interior landscape of uncertainty deftly filtered through airy brightness and clarity.”

This exhibition is a series of acrylic paintings by Chicago artist Judith Raphael. Her show, entitled, “On the Fly” focuses on the subject of young girls. Her website statement describes her young subject matter of the last decade as

“mostly girls with their particular discomfort in accepting the cultural paradigm of womanhood.  I adapted aggressive postures to gently mock the macho stance of classical male sculpture.  The Greek warriors and pontificating orators, sexy satyrs and slightly intoxicated gods seemed a perfect attitude for my bumptious girls. Copying these icons with their self-confident stance, worked to give my pre-adolescents the gravity they need to compete with the paradigm of self-conscious girls presented by the media.

With the intensity of girls at play in mind, I have been literally focusing on twelve year olds, photographing them and reinterpreting their personae as they enter the cusp in life where girls hover before entering full-blown adolescence.  My last one-person show on this subject was titled “On the Verge”.  I still borrow from art history but male stances from extreme sports magazines and the newspaper sports page have also become sources.  Sometimes soft background images of girlhood from my generation are used as counterpoint to these active subjects. Playful, but dead serious, I think of my figures as feminine foot soldiers in the process of becoming women in a complex new world.”

We are extremely honored to have Judith’s work in our galleries as Judith has an extensive and highly regarded reputation as an artist with a vast amount of work in collections and past exhibitions, numerous honors and awards, and as a fellow educator, a long history of influence in the world of teaching. Thank you Judith for sharing your work with our department, our college and our community.

Her work will be up through February 29th with a reception being held on February 9th at 4:15pm in Adams Hall.

Congratulations Kai!

If you go to our 2011 Senior Show Page, you will see work from Kai’s Senior exhibition.

from Prof. David Hooker: click here

Lia Chavez: “The Revitalized Gaze: Nudity, Molten Bodies, and the Spectatorship of Intimacy,”  Artists Lecture, Cozette Lecture Hall, Adams Hall, Feb. 2, 4:15. Sponsored by CACE and the Wheaton College Art Department.  

Judith Raphael: “On the Fly,” Hansen Gallery exhibition Jan. 25 – Feb 29, Adams Hall.  Reception Feb. 9, 4:15; Artist’s Talk 4:30, Cozette Lecture Hall, Adams Hall.  Sponsored by CACE and the Wheaton College Art Department.   

Riva Lehrer: “Mirror Shards: Animals & Metaphor,” Artist’s Lecture, Cozette Lecture Hall, Adams Hall, Feb. 16, 4:15.  Sponsored by CACE and the Wheaton College Art Department.

 Lia Chavez: “The Revitalized Gaze: Nudity, Molten Bodies, and the Spectatorship of Intimacy”
Lia Chavez is a New York based artist who is a photographer, dancer, and choreographer. Exhibitions of her dreamlike, elegant photographs, videos, and performances include Hillman plus Chavez at Savannah College of Art and Design Atlanta (2010) and at Affirmation Arts in New York (2008), Detournement Venise, Parallel Worlds at the 53rd Venice Biennale, 2009 TINA B. – The Prague

Contemporary Art Festival, the 2009 Armory Show VIP program, Nightcomers at the 10th Istanbul Biennial, and Shot and Go: A Vision of Today’s International Photography at the 52nd Venice Biennale.

Abstract:

Whether pondering mysteries of the night sky or working in my
blackened studio or darkroom, I am interested in the interplay between
light and dark and how together they conspire to author an experience.

Exploring links between the formation of heavenly bodies and earthly
ones, I research – through movement in space – an “aurorean body”
which, like many undulating forms in the heavens, cannot be precisely
measured, categorized, or diagrammed. I work across a wide range of
experimental photographic techniques and alternative processes, at
times fusing analog with digital and old photographic techniques with
new ones. There is one key exception, however: I do not use digital
manipulation to achieve my results.

Judith Raphael: “On the Fly”
Judith Raphael is a Chicago artist whose work has been exhibited consistently in Chicago galleries and museums as well as in museums from Boston to Seattle.  She has won numerous awards for her work, including three Illinois Arts Council Grants, an Arts Midwest/National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship, and the Adolph & Clara Obrig Prize at the National Academy Museum’s 179 Annual invitational in 2004.

Douglas Stapleton of the Illinois State Museum, Chicago Gallery, says: “Judith Raphael creates a modern day coming of age story of young women poised on the cusp of adolescence.  In portraits and narrative paintings her subjects confront and compete with one another, posing in attitudes of new self-confidence as they gaze outward with watchful, searching attention.  Classical poses from art history and stances taken from sports pages and magazines suggest both the pressure and playfulness of the “rules” of growing up.  Her girls inhabit a contradictory world: an interior landscape of uncertainty deftly filtered through airy brightness and clarity.”

About her own work Raphael says, “I have been obsessed with the human condition. … I have painted men, boys and women as well. At this point the girls are broadly the symbol of my concern and hopes for the future but that feeling is for all children and by extension, the family of man.”

Riva Lehrer: “Mirror Shards: Animals & Metaphor,” Artist’s Lecture, Cozette Lecture Hall, Adams Hall, Feb. 16, 4:15.  Sponsored by CACE and the Wheaton College Art Department.

Riva Lehrer is a Chicago artist whose work is regularly exhibited in Chicago Galleries including the Chicago Cultural Center.  Riva was born with spina bifida and she speaks and writes about her drawing and painting that addresses the disabled human body.

Lehrer’s current work is an exploration of the way that we learn to be empathetic through imagining ourselves as other beings, both animal and human. She will explore the role of animal symbols and concepts in understanding our connection to other beings, and discuss how disability raises specific issues in visual narrative.

Here’s the final break down from Jim Householter, the treasurer for Interfaith Food Pantry, as well as a few photos …

What an awesome site today to see all the bowls and mugs and students and faculty mingling, buying and sharing soup and coffee!

I have a total = $3,665 that was raised, more than double from the first event!!!!!!!!  That will provide food for almost one month for our clients!!!
Again I want to “THANK YOU” for your efforts to coordinate this event and to your students and the other colleges that offered bowls as well!
Our Pantry hours are 9-12pm on Monday and Wednesday and 12-3pm on Tuesday and Thursday and we would love to have you and/or your students join us as volunteers for a shift.
Mary Newman can coordinate a day/time that works on the calendar if you want to contact her in advance.  Our Pantry serves the Warrenville, Winfield, Wheaton, Carol Stream and Glen Ellyn areas and provides about a weeks worth of food including laundry powder, diapers, 2 pounds of meat, bread and fresh vegetables and fruit to over 350 families a month.

A huge huge Thank You to our local Blick Art Materials in Wheaton who generously supported our students and co-sponsored our show with their generous prize donations.

To view this year’s video submissions, including Luke Theobald’s pieces awarded Honorable Mention, please go here.

Photos below are in order of awards as listed above.

Awards will be announced and handed out on Thursday at the reception – 4:15pm. Additionally, our Juror, Cherith Lundin, will be in attendance and will also be in the ‘hot box’ regarding her selection process to help students understand why some works were included and not others, what might be improved and what is done well in many of the pieces exhibited in the gallery. We’ll post the winners here Friday after the announcement.

In the meantime, go to the Hansen Gallery pages to check out some images of the galleries and work.

All of the images were constructed on-site near the Winfield Mounds Forest Preserve with groups of 3-5 students.

Up through the end of the semester – 12/15 in our Student Gallery – go to “Student Gallery” page to see more images

Taking Pictures, Photography and Visual Culture(s), a digital photography
course, integrates elements of art history, photography history, contemporary art,
photography, film, and mass media. Creativity & Design, a basic requirement
taken by all art majors, introduces students to various two and three-dimensional
media as they explore design problems and play with the creative process. Instead
of exams or traditional papers, students demonstrate their learning by creating
images and artworks in response to traditional themes and specific artworks.
A collaborative assignment between the two classes includes a fieldtrip within
small groups to make site-specific earthworks. In preparation, we present ideas
and artworks that include a wide range of possibilities: Earthworks (ie. Robert
Smithson, Richard Long); Performance (ie. Ana Mendieta, Fern Shaffer); Formal
Modernism (Richard Serra, Tony Smith); Photographers who alter the Landscape
(John Pfahl, Andy Goldsworthy); Interventions (Mierle Ukeles, Cave Paintings);
and Community Cooperative projects (Christo and Jean Claude). Instead of the
predictable results from conventional landscape assignments, students consider
new ideas, experimenting in interdisciplinary groups, and often relying on skills
and ingenuity informed by their major discipline, life skills, and ideas. Taken to
a forest that borders a Native American burial mound, many consider the history
and character of the place as well as ecological and environmental concerns.
The photographs documenting the project, become fuel for a whole other
discussion. Our challenge as teachers is to point out the myriad possibilities
inherent in what they have done. We find more meaning in the work than they
do. The work done also filters back into the larger discussion of art, contrasting
‘participatory’ sensibilities with the typical Western paradigm: the Renaissance
convention of perspective, one of mastery, ownership, and control. Through
dialogue, and the consideration of ideals and issues of enchantment and ecology,
students development a greater group communion.