Discover the intricate world of Alice Shaddle (1928 – 2017), an artist whose practice centered more than 60 years on paper-based creations in Chicago. Curated by Nicholas C. Lowe and Lisa Stone, working closely with Dana Boutin, Shaddle’s son Charles Baum, and grandson Cain Baum, the exhibition introduces Shaddle’s ingenious, original manipulations of paper; including daring papier maché bas relief sculpture; shadow boxes with haunting visages; enigmatically constructed and layered collaged objects; documentation and remnants from Shaddle’s elaborate, immersive installations with related, large-scale colored pencil drawings; and her meticulously constructed, cut paper mosaic collage compositions. The exhibition will reveal Shaddle’s intensive modes of working and inventive use of materials. Among these is a collection of handcrafted collaged notecards with missives to her closest artist friend, Kathryn Kucera, revealing her sharp sense of humor and evidence of their deep friendship and support for each others’ creative lives.
The exhibition explores Shaddle’s life and work in the context of Chicago’s kaleidoscopic art world from the 1960s into the 2000s, highlighting her association with Artemisia Gallery for many years, her life in the George Blossom House, a residential property in Hyde Park designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, where Shaddle lived for over fifty years. The exhibition will include interactive programming for all ages and a catalog.
Fuller Circles is informed by a three-year research project into the lives and works of Alice Shaddle and artist/curator Don Baum, in which exhaustive images and information on Shaddle’s life and work were gathered and organized. Many artists, scholars, critics, and friends of Alice Shaddle and Don Baum were interviewed. The research project was conducted by Shaddle and Baum’s son, Charlie Baum, and grandson, Cain Baum, with assistance from art historian Susan Weininger. The launch of a major online catalogue raisonné of Shaddle’s and Baum’s work will coincide with the exhibition.
Alice Shaddle (1928 – 2017) was a remarkably gifted and highly original artist who lived and worked in Chicago. She was robustly engaged in the art culture of the city, where she concentrated life and work in Hyde Park. She was well known in her lifetime, particularly in her early to mid-career years in the 1980s. Like many artists, she has slipped from the public’s eye and is most deserving of critical, visual, and art historical attention.
Shaddle was a devoted educator who taught art classes at the HPAC for over 50 years, informing, encouraging, and delighting countless young artists. Shaddle was a founding member and former chair of Artemisia Gallery, a cooperative, alternative Chicago exhibition space that was run by and served women artists from 1973 to 2003. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1954 (the year she married artist Don Baum; the couple divorced in 1970) and her MFA from SAIC in 1972. Shaddle worked in many media, often focusing in a particular mode, meticulously and intensively, resulting in highly resolved bodies of work. She was fearless in her experimentation with media, creating sculpture in a range of types including floor installations, paintings, prints, drawings, reliefs and cut paper mosaics, boxed objects, magazines, and all manner of collages.
As a resident, mother, homemaker, and placemaker, Shaddle was creatively engaged in her life in Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1892 Blossom House on Kenwood Avenue, where she lived for over five decades. She interacted with Wright’s very early Prairie School idiom, responding to its design through specific furnishings, while physically and compositionally engaging its architectural features and elements into her work. She meticulously conserved and championed this significant structure. Shaddle exhibited widely, especially in Chicago and the vicinity. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Illinois State Museum, and in many private collections.
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