James Jankowiak: The Song That Doesn’t End
Outstanding Midwest Artists Series – 2023

South Shore Arts’ 2023 Outstanding Midwest Artist Series features Chicago artist James Jankowiak in The Song That Doesn’t End, a survey of Jankowiak’s work from the past ten years. Curators Linda Dorman and Tom Torluemke have worked closely with the artist, pulling together this exhibition that follows Jankowiak’s career and dedicated exploration of color harmonies and rhythms of shapes through abstraction.

Chicago-born artist and educator James Jankowiak’s current paintings and installations focus on the role of color and familiar form as a means of communication in our day-to-day environment. His emotive abstract paintings and public artworks explore the intersections between color perception, visual rhythm, spirituality, and music.

Artist and art writer Pedro Velez says this of Jankowiak’s work in an excerpt from the catalog essay:

When I look at a James Jankowiak painting, I see music in harmonious color fields. I see the rhythm and the uncontained sonic waves in lines expanding in unison. I see melodies forming electric outlines from within voluminous broad brushstrokes. I see songs hugged by abstract clouds. Music moves our soul, but it can transport us outside our bodies to other realities no matter where we are located at that moment in time when we hear the melody. Jankowiak’s paintings are like songs that carry us to ageless urban plazas with bustling streets and neon lights in cities by lakes, where cloud formations interweave nature with technology and culture.

For the past 20 years, Jankowiak has utilized his painting practice as a vehicle for social engagement with Chicago communities as a teaching artist embedded in Chicago Public Schools. Jankowiak integrates contemporary art into a social and emotional learning model for students and teachers alike, using accessible, collaborative art practices, focusing on the process of making public works in public spaces.

Jankowiak has received several grants and special commissions, including the Union Station Transit Center in the heart of Chicago, The Illinois Holocaust Museum’s Family Youth Center, and The Chicago White Sox. He is currently working with the Department of Cultural and Special Events of the city of Chicago on a new permanent public artwork for the West Town Public Library on the Southwest Side of the city, where he has been a lifetime resident.

The public is invited to a series of free, related programming throughout the exhibition:

Artist Reception: Saturday, November 18, 2:00 – 5:00 p.m.

Art in Focus curator’s talk with Dorman + Torluemke
Monday, November 27 at 10:00 a.m.

Artist Talk
Saturday, January 6, 2023, at 1:00 p.m.

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