Fran Bull - In Flanders Fields (Click Here for an online preview of this exhibit)

About the Artist
Award-winning sculptor, painter and printmaker Fran Bull, has been exhibiting her work worldwide for over 30 years. Her art is included in numerous museum and university collections, ranging from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to the Guilin Museum in China. She makes her art in Brandon, Vermont and Barcelona, Spain.

Bull’s early Photorealistic drawings and paintings brought her international acclaim, but in the mid 1980’s this more identifiable approach burst open. She began to create work that could best be described as elaborate investigations of the unseen.

Today Bull's work seeks to connect ordinary life to larger mythic and historical motifs, themes and narratives.

Upcoming exhibitions include solo exhibitions of recent paintings, sculptural installations and etchings in Vermont and Chicago and group exhibitions of paintings and etchings in New York, Denver, Vermont, New Jersey and Chicago.

For more information visit www.franbull.com

Artist Statement
“My piece ‘In Flanders Fields’: an installation in 9 parts, is one artist’s attempt to add my “silent scream” to the chorus of those for whom war is anathema. It is a meditation on the fact that we—as whole countries, as societies, as small bands linked by shared hatreds and as human beings with our pitifully short lives given the privilege of inhabiting a magnificent planet—continue to engage in warfare mired in the delusion that we are thereby solving our human dilemmas.

The famous poem from World War I, ‘In Flanders Fields’ written in the midst of “seventeen days of Hades” by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, forms the central image from which I draw my inspiration. Dead soldiers lie buried in a field of poppies. Larks fly overhead, singing, oblivious of gunfire. Soon enough the fields will harbor just beneath the surface, an array of human bones. The Lieutenant Colonel imagines the dead speaking. They implore us to “take up our quarrel with the foe” in order that they may sleep for all time. My piece takes issue with the poet, and with his assumption of the rightness of retribution and the implied glory of “winning”. May we come to understand that the unrestrained mortification of human flesh known as War, is a shameful betrayal of who we are and all that we are.” —Fran Bull, Vermont 2010

Her Way With Print:
Printmaking and Experimental Print Works by Six Chicago Artists (Click Here for an online preview of this exhibit)

About the Exibition
"Her Way With Print" is an investigation of printmaking and experimental print works by six Chicago artists features art by Caroline Anderson, Deborah Maris Lader, Kim Laurel, Sarah Nishiura, Mary K. O’Shaughnessy and Megan Sterling.

Each artist embraces both traditional printmaking and furthers their artistic investigations through the common practice of combining printmaking with other media.

Various combined and experimental media include roller and stencil printing with painting (Caroline Anderson), traditional etching with recycled material in sculptural assemblage (Deborah Maris Lader), multiple pass monoprinting on polyester film substrates and installation (Kim Laurel), woodcut reduction printing on paper and on fabric for quilting/fiber arts (Sarah Nishiura), photographic digital manipulation combined with letterpress print (Mary K. O’Shaughnessy) and screen print with monotype (Megan Sterling).

All six of the artists have a fascination with print and use printmaking as a fundamental tool for their personal vision. The participating artists have common associations with Chicago organizations and affiliations: Woman Made Gallery, The Chicago Printmakers Collaborative, and Studio Rose (Ginny Sykes).

Laura Kina - Sugar (Click Here for an online preview of this exhibit)

About the Artist
Laura Kina received her MFA Studio Art from the University of Illinois at Chicago and her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is an Associate Professor of Art, Media, and Design, Director of Asian American Studies, and distinguished Vincent de Paul Professor at DePaul University. Born in Riverside, California to an Okinawan father from Hawai’i and a Spanish-Basque/Anglo mother, Kina was raised in a small Norwegian town in the Pacific Northwest. The artist currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. Her work has shown nationally and internationally, most recently in New Delhi and Mumbai, India, and is represented in Miami, FL by Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts. Her recent solo shows include: A Many-Splendored Thing (Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago, IL 2010), Aloha Dreams and Hapa Soap Operas (Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts, Miami, FL 2007 and 2003), and Loving (Grand Projects, New Haven, CT 2006).

For more information visit www.laurakina.com

About the Work
“Set during Hawai’i’s territorial years, 1900-1959, before statehood, Laura Kina’s SUGAR series recall Kaidan ghost stories and features picture brides turned machete carrying sugar cane plantation field laborers. Her paintings focus on Okinawan immigrants to the big island of Hawaii. Drawing on oral history and family photographs from Nisei (2nd generation) and Sansei (3rd generation) Piihonua, Hawaii community members as well as historic images, Kina’s paintings take us into to a beautiful yet grueling world of manual labor, cane field fires and flumes.

Constance DeMuth Berg - Sculptures (Click Here for an online preview of this exhibit)

About the Work
"I recycle and build from discarded "thrown away" pieces, such as parts of antique furniture, old tools, the banister of an old stairway, wooden molds, etc. Some pieces were discovered on a mountain road in Provence; other shapes caught my eye in flea markets and antique shops. As opposed to the ordinary, practical past use of the wood or metal, I see the forms in a new way. I take them as I find them, and am challenged and disciplined to work within the limitations of their design to assemble a sculpture in which each shape seems to belong to another by coming together (somewhat magically?) into a final harmonious composition.

I believe that it is necessary for both the artist and the viewer to become partners in the enriching experience of "seeing" in a new way,"