Ignition is back with our fifth season of solo projects by Illinois artists! The gallery will be open all day on 4/9 starting at 12pm.
Exhibition runs from 4/2 – 4/30 with gallery hours every Saturday from 12-5pm

Paul Gerard Somers
PAUL GERARD SOMERS is an artist and designer working and living in Chicago, IL. He has exhibited nationally and internationally and his work resides in a few private collections.
I am attracted both mentally and aesthetically to the proving grounds of manhood, the court, the mat, the racetrack, and the field. These grounds are sectioned off in our world as the ritualistic and sacred arenas to partake in battles to the death, places to kill boyhood by becoming a man. I conjure the memory of the nervousness, the smell and loud sounds of clocks and buzzers, the cheering and screaming. I can almost feel the mat, burning skin and the smacking sound of bone on the hardwood gym floor. I remember the excitement of the colors, bright lights, the taste of blood in my mouth, the victory, and the loss. Through the disjointed curatorial groupings of objects, material choices and the finishes applied to them, these memories and experiences reside in my work.

Katie Vota
Dial “S” for Sun
How do we understand the world around us? Our senses tell us so much, but so much is left to science, to wonder. The interaction of color and light is a thing we understand well, as it has been explained for a long time… And yet, here we are, pulling colors from nature, marveling at the rich luminosity of these colors, and I catch myself wondering about the workings of this. Only two hundred years ago we didn’t have synthetic colors— instead we had what we could pull from the ground, from what we grew, from what we could trade for. And now, in 2022, here I am in Chicago where it’s dark 8ms of the year, just marveling at the colors that can be scavenged from my immediate surroundings, as well as colors that remind me of times less cold. Every winter I find myself begging for sunlight, for that warmth on my face. This light, this wonderful warm light, is the only danger these natural colors face. And yet… this weakened, watery, winter light, what dangers does it poses?
This project stems from the knowledge that the colors we see are made of light bounced off objects, and from the knowledge that the very thing that allows us to marvel at these natural colors is the only thing that can destroy them. Consider this a test of sorts, a living stained glass work that will shift and adapt as time passes. Sections will be covered, masked, so that the changes can be tracked. The sun’s light moves and shifts, and will imprint its presence on the cloth via changes in color. The cloth then stands in for the body, accepting the gift of light and its slow, inescapab

Katie Vota is a Chicago-based artist working to create interactive environments and sculptural objects that engage viewers in ideas of play, touch, pleasure, power exchange, and the roll of the active body in shaping identity.
Vota received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (2010, magna cum laude) and a Studio MFA from the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago (2015). She was awarded a US Student Fulbright Grant (’11-’12) to study traditions of Andean Back-strap Weaving and Natural Dyeing in Cusco, Peru, with the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco.

Vota has exhibited in numerous solo and juried exhibitions, at venues including Threewalls (Chicago), The Leroy Neiman Center Gallery (Chicago), Pratt MPW School of Art Gallery (Utica, NY), The Krasl Art Center (St. Joseph, MI), The Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis), and Area 405 (Baltimore).

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Tags: Chicago, Humboldt Park, Ignition project space, Katie Vota, Paul Gerard Somers