Vogt Art Center 17420 67th Ct, Tinley Park, IL 60477
Exhibit Title: THE VISUAL MUSIC IN OUR SOULS
Judge’s
Bio: Claudia Craemer -Artist and art educator, involved with Tall
Grass Arts Association for over 12 years and also with Union Street Gallery for
10 years. Has exhibited and received
honors and awards in many regional shows and has curated or judged nearly 30 exhibits
for Tall Grass, Union Street, The Victorian House Gallery, Prairie State
College's Christopher Gallery, and others.
JUDGING:
(one 1st place, two 2nd place, three 3rd
place, four honorable mentions)
1st
Place (artist) CAROL
WEBER
Title: Bits and Pieces of Us
Comments: Delightful piece, full of information and a
complex mix of images and materials wonderfully arranged.
Lots of “tid bits',
mementos, that suggest through the linear movement within the composition and
the collection of specific objects, a journey, passage, a reflective moment,
harkening back to an earlier shared time.
2nd
Place (artist) NANCY
SAVAIANO ROSENBERG
Title: Finding One's Own Voice
Comments: Beautiful, classy, stately, regal. A powerful piece that doesn't scream.
Fluid and elegant movement
and repetition of shapes, forms, patterns. A refreshing place to linger. A
calming voice to listen to.
2nd
Place (artist) ELAINE RATH
Title: Crescendo
Comments: Bold, operatic; an engineered, carefully crafted
work. A kind of fanfare through precise shapes that rush across the space, that
fill, fold back, explode outward. Visual
sound, blasts and beats as color and form.
3rd
Place (artist) JOAN LUCHT
Title: Ohmm
Comments: Restrained. Strength in subtle edges,
glimpses, impressions, tiny whispered phrases of color peeking through, marking
time. A meditation, prayer, chant. An introvert's poem.
3rd
Place (artist) NANCY
STASZAK
Title: Quartet
Comments: A vibrant and complex grid work, demonstrating
mastery of color
and texture, pattern and
movement. These are the elements that command our attention at first, and also
keep us returning to discover more interesting areas
with repeated viewings.
3rd
Place (artist) JERRI REIMANN
Title: Stream of
Consciousness
Comments: The flow of ideas, energy, confidence,
exuberance, through intense color and surface marks. A landscape of thought and
emotion, fluid and moving within never-static, ever-changing moments.
Honorable
Mention (artist) RACHELLE
BARMANN
Title: Music
of My Soul
Comments: Visual music: meter, rhythm, repetition,
punctuation. A kind of steadiness and resolve. Pristine. Such great care in
selection and placement of hundreds of elements. Attention given to harmony.
Unity. The silent chimes that interrupt the stillness.
Honorable
Mention (artist) ANNETTE
PLETTAU
Title: Kentucky
Farm, Winter
Comments: An actual landscape as well as a lush
collection of papers and textures. Serene and welcoming, drawing us in to a
peaceful hideaway.
Honorable
Mention (artist) CAROL
KAZWICK
Title: Homage
to Kurt
Comments: One of the more orderly, compositionally
strict pieces. Implies a setting of limits and abiding by principles. A very
satisfying work of variations on a theme, repetition of colors and shapes,
concern for filled and empty spaces.
Honorable
Mention (artist) VIRGINIA
GUZIOR
Title: Birdsong
I
Comments: A departure from many of the other works in
the show through its use of surprising fabrics, stitches, applique, the
somewhat oddness of colors and texture choices.
The world within the elaborate frame seems of another time,
where brocade and
harpsichords might be part of the room just beyond the birds.
Overall
Comments on Exhibit:
The Visual Music in Our
Souls Exhibit is a large, diverse, and impressive show of
dozens of approaches to
collage. From images that are created primarily from cut and paste papers and
pictures, to works that incorporate painting, glazing, textural surfaces and
even 3D objects, the range of styles and formats is exciting. The artists
demonstrate experienced handling of media, a sensitivity to color and pattern,
an attention to contrasts between textures and forms.
Many of the works invite us
to keep coming back to explore and enjoy intricate areas of dense detail up
close, and some of the works read as bold statements of color and composition
from far across the room.
So many of the pieces in the
show are worthy of receiving applause and appreciation, and it was extremely
hard to determine levels of honors to be
given. Many more works could
have received an award. The exhibit as a
whole
is full of joyful and
energetic compositions and daring pairings of delicate and powerful, subtle and
assertive visual statements.
It was a pleasure to spend
time studying all the collage pieces, to see new directions appearing in the
works of some familiar artists, as well as to discover
some new artists that are
now part of the group. The MCA is
definitely an
organization that continues
to grow and improve each year. Congratulations on
another great show!
Claudia Craemer
