"A House is Not A Home"

Artists-in-Residence 2012 / 2013

Artists-in-Residence 2012 / 2013 Garrett Baumer

Digital Arts & Photography

Alice Costas Kidstreet

Paige Fetchen Textiles

Heejin Hwang

Metalsmithing & Jewelry

Joanna Pike Ceramics

Gwendolyn Zabicki Painting & Drawing

Erik Zohn Ceramics

The current group of artists-in-residence will bring their year of exploration and investigation to an end in August 2013. Over the past ten years, we have had the pleasure of hosting many artists working in divergent media. Each resident and group of residents brings a new perspective on the art making process and an innovative manner in which they challenge us to reconsider how we understand the world around us. We are asked to look again at what we may think we have understood and to accept, even embrace, materials and ideas that we may previously have ignored or purposefully chosen to disregard. The work created by the 2012-13 resident artists will be exhibited in their closing exhibition, A House is Not a Home.

We are very grateful for each artist and the dynamic energy they have brought to their department, the means in which they have shared their own personal wealth of knowledge, skill, and craft in their particular medium and the many ways they have contributed to the larger community at Lillstreet Art Center.

Garrett Baumer Bio:

Artist Statement:

Garrett Baumer was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1981. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography from the University of Louisville in 2006 and his Master of Fine Arts in photography from Columbia College Chicago in 2012. Shortly after graduating Baumer became the artist in residence in digital arts/photography at Lillstreet Art Center in Chicago, where he is also an instructor. Along with his responsibilities at Lillstreet he is an adjunct faculty member at Harrington College of Design where he teaches photography.

These images are a hybrid of visual elements used in set design and concept art found in filmmaking. By fabricating these scenarios through building 3D sets I am able to integrate the unusual into the ordinary, placing the viewer in unlikely environments. The events occurring in the photographs reference archetypes of alarm and emergency, depicting a transition from a stable to an unstable situation. I believe that space in itself can contain a mythology, as in a set of stories or ideas centered around a place we commonly do not have access to.

I’m exploring how these unobtainable spaces are dramatized, and through this gain mythical status.

Stripping the scene of the action I reduce the environment to its basic formal elements, allowing the materiality of the set to create an enriched atmosphere. When photographing these constructed sets I place the viewer in a strange mental space; caught between the photographic reality of the material and the alternate reality the space creates as a whole.

I find myself constantly trying to find new potential in the materials around me. The items that I use to create these sets are ubiquitous and everyday. Taking the intended use of these objects out of context and transforming them, I create an unexpected visual experience.

LEFT: H18 Archival Inkjet Print 45x30, 2013

Detail of Breach Archival Inkjet Print 45x30, 2013

Alice Costas Bio:

Artist Statement:

Alice Costas is an artist and educator working at the intersection of art, teaching and community-based practice. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, she has facilitated workshops on art, history, image and word, zinemaking and performance poetry in locations ranging from a bus terminal to Harvard University. She holds a B.F.A. in textiles from RISD, and a B.A. in American Studies and Creative writing from Brown University. For three years, she had the pleasure of being an Artist Mentor at New Urban Arts in Providence, Rhode Island; where she got to do things like taking a gaggle of teenagers on a field trip to an abandoned highway. Now, she is excited to be exploring collaborative creation with young people in Chicago as an Artist in Residence at Lillstreet Art Center. She is currently pursuing her Master of Arts in Teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

My current work explores the multiple dimensions of experience taken on when we enter the roles of teacher and student.

I’m interested in looking critically at the complex experiences of learners and teachers, the fluidity of those experiences, and how our personal history of those roles impacts our day-to-day lives.

RIGHT: Detail of Catherine and Her Wheel Mixed Media on Paper 6x9, 2012

As I move between the role of mentor/facilitator and student, into the role of in-school teacher, I’ve been trying to develop methods to remember all of the things I have learned about good teaching and bad teaching in my experience of being educated. Curriculum theorist William Pinar writes about the idea of currere, or examining one’s own educational biography as a means to unpack and better understand our impulses and actions as educators.

This leads to “the reminder” series, a group of small meditative works exploring mediums formerly unfamiliar to me, as a way to commemorate and recall the learning process. This series is designed to generate a visual list of key things I’d

like to keep in mind in my teaching practice.

I’m also interested in community process and leaving room for collaborative making that allows for the voicing of many experiences. In creating collaborative zines derived from lists and questions, I try to look at different understandings of similar experiences, and create a narrative that spans many points of view. Favorite Teacher/Scary Teacher, an invitation to draw one’s scariest and favorite teachers, seeks to give community members an opportunity to reflect on their own experiences in learning and engage in their own quick creative process. Selected finished drawings are embroidered on two sides of the same handkerchief, showing the dual-nature that we all possess as teachers, learners, tricksters, and community members.

Detail of Emily’s Words for Noel Embroidery on Found Fabric 10 x 10, 2012

Paige Fetchen Bio:

Artist Statement:

Paige Fetchen received her BFA in Crafts with a concentration in Fibers from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA. Prior to accepting the Textile Artist in Residence position at Lillstreet Art Center, she worked as a studio assistant for various artists at the Fabric Workshop and Museum located in Philadelphia, PA.

I hate moving. I hate packing up all my belongings and watching them disconnect from the space they once inhabited.

I feel loss for the space.

Objects are usually discarded and their environment is left empty.

I feel the architecture and these domestic things must have grown fond of each other’s presence.

Paige’s work was shown in the 36th Annual Philadelphia Museum of Art: Craft Show, as well as the 8th International Fiber Biennial at the Snyderman-­Works Galleries in Philadelphia, PA. Recently, her work was selected for the 9th International Fiber Biennial, opening March 2014.

Prior to moving to Chicago, I was focused on manufactured objects’ architecture and their inherent relationship to space. Through minor alterations to the forms, they began to manifest new roles within the context they occupied. By removing the centerpiece of a love seat I was exploring the innate space within a functional object versus the viewers understanding of the item after a process of manipulation.

LEFT: Love Seat Wood, Found Object, Fabric 36 x 20 x 36, 2012

Currently I am concentrating on the space that remains after an object has departed; bringing item and location together.

Through this process I anchor the nonexistent and the changed. The work derives from objects defining spaces and spaces defining objects. I am interested in translating the removal of space from those objects as a metaphor for human relationships and our intimate understanding of space through objects.

Detail of Twin Silk Organza, Found Object 75 x 40 x 7, 2012

Heejin Hwang Bio:

Artist Statement:

Heejin Hwang is an art jeweler (originally from South Korea). Heejin graduated with her MFA in art metals from the University of WisconsinMadison in 2012. Heejin holds a BFA degree in Metals from Konkuk University and a MFA degree in Art Metals from Seoul National University in South Korea. Her work has been shown at galleries and museums internationally, including Silver Triennale (Germany), Bellevue Arts Museum, The Society for Cotemporary Craft, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, and Shemer Art Center & Museum. She has lectured at SOFA Chicago in 2012 as one of the SNAG emerging artists represented by Pistachios (Chicago).

My work is about the tension between structure and sensuality. I am interested in framing female identity through the lens of beauty, control, dignity, strength and vulnerability. By building simple structural units into complex sculptural forms, organic shapes give way to fortified architectural systems.

Steel wire is used as basic material, and a continuous line of wire is shaped into interpenetrating forms. As multiple units complete a perfect structure, the whole becomes animated and my jewelry comes to life.

The human body is the perfect context for my three-dimensional forms.

Only when the body ornaments are perfectly installed on the wearer, does an emotional and structural rapport begin. As people imagine building an ideal house of their own, I also imagine building my house of jewelry on the human body.

LEFT: Sensation series Steel, Enamel, Gold Leaf 14 x 32 x 4 (cm), 2013

Sensation series Steel, Enamel 15 x 45 x 3 (cm), 2012

Joanna Pike Bio:

Artist Statement:

Joanna Pike is a ceramic artist who creates objects that express concept through functionality.

Born in Portland, ME, she received her BFA in ceramics from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. After completing her degree she travelled to Medicine Hat, AB to attend Medalta as a full year resident. Most recently she is at Lillstreet Art Center as a ceramic artist in residence, and is using her time to explore news ways of using the ceramic medium, primarily the byproducts of the community studio space.

I create objects that deliver concept through functionality. Humans collect objects that are familiar and reinforce their identity on a subconscious level. I utilize this occurrence to deliver to the user an object that is conventional in its function and recognizable yet challenging in aesthetic. These particular objects are redesigns of those found on shelves in any thrift store across the nation, items that speak to the history of our collective consumption of useful knickknacks.

The materiality of these pieces is of the utmost importance. By using ceramic waste material such as clay and glaze from sink traps, mop buckets, and floor sweepings I am able to mold pieces that emulate the less savory aspects of our material culture such as strip mining and waste disposal. Molds are recovered from the trash or are byproducts of my own material consumption. The result is a functional sculpture that quietly proposes a new way of living.Â

ABOVE: Nut House Stoneware, Sink Sludge, Glaze 7.5 x 5.5 x 6.25, 2013

Milk Jug Cup Various Clays, Glaze 4.75 x 3.5 x 3.5, 2013

Gwendolyn Zabicki Bio:

Artist Statement:

Gwendolyn Zabicki is a painter from Chicago. She grew up in Andersonville and now lives in Logan Square. Gwendolyn earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005 and her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2012.

Her work has shown at Robert Bills Contemporary, Octagon Gallery, Gallery 400, Northern Illinois University, and The Bauhaus­Universität in Weimar, Germany.

Gwendolyn has always been an urban landscape painter, “I love the American painters Maureen Gallace, George Ault, Emmett Kerrigan, and the Ashcan School painters John Sloan and George Luks. My work is made with the ghosts of The Ashcan School always in my mind. I am reminded of a line from a Jerzy Ficowski poem, “I want to be on time, even if I am already too late.” I want to look at and paint things in a way that keeps the past ever fresh and present.”

She is the director of the South Logan Arts Coalition (SLAC), a not-for-profit organization that pairs empty storefronts with artists from the Logan Square neighborhood.

You can learn more about SLAC by visiting: www. southloganarts.org

In 2011 and 2012, Gwendolyn made a series of oil paintings outside at night in her neighborhood of Logan Square. These were quick, small paintings inspired by the Bosnian-American novelist Aleksandar Hemon. He wrote that Chicago “was built not for people to come together, but for them to be safely apart.” He argued that in an attempt to build individual freedom, LEFT: Detail of Night Driving, II Oil on Canvas 20x 24, 2012

privacy, and independence into the urban landscape, the city’s planning and architecture instead reinforce loneliness and isolation. We can see evidence of life happening around us, but feel shut out of the private lives of others.

Gwendolyn’s current paintings explore the shared melancholy produced by life in this kind of city, in which small moments of looking drive home our apartness from one another. The Turkish word hüzün-used throughout Islamic literature--seems to encapsulate precisely Hemon’s sentiment.

Hüzün describes the experience of living among architectural reminders of a city’s past inhabitants, achievements, and ideals. Hüzün is the unspoken medium of these paintings, their inexpressible language.

Zabicki’s paintings take what is briefly glimpsed as its subject, hinting at the lives of others who will remain forever unknown to us.

Detail of Sign Painter Oil on Canvas 20 x 16, 2013

Erik Zohn Bio:

Artist Statement:

Erik Zohn attended Bowling Green State University, focusing in Ceramics. He is currently an Artist in Residence at Lillstreet Art Center in Chicago. Drawing aesthetic inspiration from architecture and design Erik aims to create functional objects that, through their tactile and visual qualities, enhance the experience of use.

Everyday objects of necessity such as pottery are often passed over by their owners when not in service, seen as innocuous components of contemporary commonplace. It is, however, this quietness and humility imbued in functional ceramics that allows each piece to express ideas subtly, enticing the user to develop a relationship with the work. This sort of use-centered interaction, based in serving and decorating the domestic realm, provides a non confrontational arena for a piece to unveil its content, only challenging the user once a familiarity with the piece has been established. Paper mache constructions will eventually deteriorate, falling away to reveal dysfunctional structures.

BELOW: Detail of Flask w/ cups Stoneware, Glaze, Metallic Lustre 9x4x5.5, 2013

Metallic luster will wear and patina becoming a reflection of the owner’s interaction with the piece while exposing less appealing surfaces.

Utilizing the inherent connotations present in my chosen materials I am able to express concerns about the underlying systems that have come to shape our modern world. For all its attributes clay is still regarded as a humble material though for thousands of years this natural aggregate has been used to aide in the advancement of our civilization. The uniquely archival quality of ceramics has ensured the maintenance of important cultural artifacts. Out of their original context these objects become informative markers used to reconstruct our history. By embracing the superficial quality of paper pulp in my work I hope to force the contemporary user to consider the implications of their lifestyle while presenting my own perspective to an unknown future audience.

Asking one to look forward and one to look back.

CityScape Cups Stoneware, Glaze, Metallic Lustre 2013

Mission of the Artists-in-residence program: Bruce Robbins Founder & Chief Executive Officer Eric Tschetter Executive Director Pam Robinson Education Director Metalsmithing & Jewelry Department Head Karen Avery Ceramics Department Head Patrick Micelli Painting & Drawing Department Head Camille Canales Textiles Department Head Chris Schneberger Photography & Digital Media Department Head Melanie Brown Kidstreet Department Head

Lillstreet’s resident artist program provides a unique opportunity for artists to work in collaborative, community based arts center offering resources and instruction in a variety of media. Artists-in-Residence are encouraged to develop their existing bodies of work, explore new processes and concepts, and seek instruction in entirely new media and techniques. The residency works with minimal structure, allowing artists to shape their time at Lillstreet to their own goals. Residents spend some of their time dedicated to working with students in order to enrich the education programs, offering students the opportunity to see and learn from working artists.

We hope that all residents will actively participate in our community, sharing knowledge, prompting new ideas, and building on our enthusiasm for creative expression.

2012 / 2013

Artists-in-Residence Garrett Baumer

Alice Costas

Paige Fetchen

Heejin Hwang

Joanna Pike

Gwendolyn Zabicki

Erik Zohn

Š 2013 Lillstreet Art Center

4401 North Ravenswood Ave Chicago, IL 60640 | 773.769.4226 | lillstreet@lillstreet.com | lillstreet.com