Founded in October of 2011 by artist Sabina Ott, Terrain is a public exhibition space in Oak Park, IL. Terrain is dedicated to featuring interventions into the conventional landscape of a front yard by emerging as well as established artists who have been invited to create a site – specific work. Artists are chosen for their interest in artworks that challenge the space between public and private, decoration and function, figure and ground. Terrain differs from many other alternative art platforms in that the artworks are accessible and visible 24 hours a day, year round. Situated in Oak Park, a liberal multicultural village, Terrain is directly across from Longfellow Elementary School and across from Longfellow Park near Ridgeland and Jackson Avenues. Visitors, neighbors, school children, teachers and their parents are exposed to challenging contemporary art, offering the experience of discovery and surprise to the community. Terrain exhibits work that expands, both, the audience of an artwork and the function of a suburban front yard.

The Biennial will open on September 15th with a Block Party that will run from 1pm till 10PM. The site-specific installations will be on view until October 19th. The biennial will utilize front yards of the surrounding homes on Highland Ave. Exhibiting artists include:

Alberto Aguilar
Stephanie Barber
Tom Burtonwood
Robert Gero
Karolina Gnatowski and Dan Gunn: Gunnatowski
Ames Hawkins
Alexandra Noe
Megan T. Noe
Judy Rushin

Block Party Events:

Terrain artist Claire Ashley will produce an event featuring her inflatable sculptures. Elizabeth Rexford’s The Harmonia Quartet, will play, and Ryan of 737 Highland, will curate a music program of neighborhood performers. Paul Hertz will be performing the interactive “Ignotus the Mage.” There will be a plethora of activities for the whole family, such as book binding, surrealist chalk drawing events, and a chance for all to participate in creating a street long surrealist poem imagined by Stephanie Barber. Ellen Butler, Terrain neighbor, will exhibit her paintings and Officer Friendly, Ryan Todd’s band from 700 Highland Ave, will play as well! The Taco Bernardo Food Truck will be in Oak Park serving dinner from 5:30 – 8:00PM, in addition to the potluck of an assortment of treats provided by neighbors of Terrain! Dinner will be accompanied by the DJ styles of Rae Chardonnay. Then Terrain artist and Director of Aspect Ratio Gallery, Jefferson Godard, will wrap up the day with a curated video program that will be shown from dusk until 10PM.

Artist Bios:

Alberto Aguilar was born in Chicago Illinois in 1974, the city in which he currently resides. He has three brothers and one sister. In 1976 his parents opened the first Mexican grocery store in Cicero Illinois which they named La Grande. In 1997 upon receiving his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) he married Sonia Leticia Guillen. Together they have four children, half of which are girls. Four years later Alberto received his MFA also from SAIC. Currently he is an instructor of studio art at Harold Washington College- one of the City Colleges of Chicago. There he coordinates Pedestrian Project an initiative devoted to making art accessible to people of all walks of life. Aguilar’s current practice merges his various life roles and attempts to capture fleeting moments, personal discoveries, and his interaction with others using whatever medium is at hand. On the rainy day of March 18, 2013 at 1:46 pm he sat in his minivan drinking English breakfast tea, editing this bio by adding this final line. http://albertoaguilar.org/

Claire Ashley is from Edinburgh, Scotland. Her work has been shown in such venues as The Museum of Contemporary Art, The Hyde Park Art Center and The Chicago Cultural Center in Chicago, IL; nationally at Art Santa Fe; and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions in Los Angeles, CA; and internationally at The Highland Institute for Contemporary Art in Inverness, Scotland among others. She currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Ashley creates objects that engage in intellectual play, testing the boundaries and expectations of modernist painting. http://claireashley.com/

Stephanie Barber, having produced and shown work in many media such as music, performance and text, is best known as an experimental filmmaker, video artist and writer whose films include catalog, dogs, total power:dead dead dead, shipfilm “dwarfs the sea” “the inversion, transcription, evening track and attractor”, “flower, the boy, the librarian”, “BUST CHANCE”, “the visit and the play” and many other short films and videos. She is currently the resident artist at the Mt. Royal School of Interdisciplinary Art at Maryland Institute of Contemporary Art in Baltimore, MD. http://www.stephaniebarber.com/

Tom Burtonwood, born Manchester, UK, is an artist and educator living and working in Chicago, IL. He teaches at Columbia College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Burtonwood is a founding member of “The 3D Printer Experience” a hybrid makerspace / retail store in Chicago. His work has been exhibited at Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn; Front Room Gallery, Brooklyn; Fountain Art Fair, Miami; The Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago; Systema Gallery, Osaka, Japan; La Luz de Jesus, Los Angeles; Aqua Art Miami, Miami Beach; and the Evanston Art Center, Evanston. Burtonwood has demonstrated 3D printing and scanning at Expo Chicago, Chicago Ideas Week, the Southside Hub of Production, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Green Exchange with Dabble, Fluevog Shoes and What It Is Gallery. In 2012 he participated in the Makerbot MET#3D Hackathon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Burtonwood also co-founded Improbable Objects, a project to 3D print artists editions and multiples. http://tomburtonwood.com/

Ellen Butler graduated from Northeastern University in Chicago and began her adventures in teaching in the Chicago Public Schools. Upon retirement she pursued her love of painting and
created a series of beautiful works that have been juried into several local exhibitions. Her paintings will be on display during the opening of the Biennial in her front yard on Highland Ave.

Robert Gero is an artist living and working in New York, whose art resides at the intersection of art, philosophy and architecture. His most recent work explores the theoretical and physical possibilities of temporal structures. These are structures in which the interiors are continuously expanding, folding and unfolding while the exteriors remain stable. Robert Gero holds an MFA in fine art and a PhD in Philosophy. His work has been featured in numerous shows including The Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, Holly Solomon Gallery, New York, Artist Space, New York, The 45th Venice Biennale, Venice, 92nd St Y-Makor Gallery, New York, The McDonough Museum of Art, Youngstown, UICA, Grand Rapids, He is a member of the New York artist collaborative Archicule. http://www.robertgero.com

Jefferson Godard received his MA in Architecture, and teaches architecture at Columbia College Chicago. His passion for video art has led him to collecting and curating video exhibitions internationally. Godard has opened one of the first commercial galleries in Chicago dedicated to video art: Aspect Ratio. http://jeffersongodard.com/

Gunnatowsk iis the collaborative art practice of Karolina Gnatowski and Dan Gunn. Karolina Gnatowski received her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. Dan Gunn also received his MFA in Painting and Drawing from SAIC in 2007. Gunnatowski makes site-specific interactive installations of hard and soft sculpture. The installations often reference the social use of the site humorously mixing functional, aesthetic and social categories. Gunnatowski has exhibited in their own home, transforming each room into a fully immersive environment titled “Territory”. “Territory” also invited visitors to spend the night and write about their experiences for a companion publication. http://dangunn.com/gunnatowski.html

Ames Hawkins, an Associate Professor at Columbia College Chicago, is a trans-genre writer and art activist whose most recent publications appear in Interdisciplinary Humanities, Polari, Water~Stone Review, and Resilience: Stories, Poems, Essays, Words for GLBT Teens. Her essay, “Optickal Allusion,” was selected by Robert Atwan as a notable essay of 2011. In 2006, she was the inaugural Faculty Fellow for Critical Encounters, the collaborative art activism initiative at the college, and has since been integrally involved with international art activist projects such as The Cradle Project and One Million Bones. Hawkins also loves to get the written word off the page and onto the stage and has engaged in drag/queer/story performance in Chicago with 2nd Story, Gender Fusions, Northern Lights, and The Chicago Kings.

Paul Hertz is an independent artist and curator who teaches new media art history and studio courses at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has worked with computers for nearly thirty years. His curatorial work includes “Imaging by Numbers” at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum, Northwestern University, 2008, a chronological survey of algorithmic art that established a significant digital print collection. In his art, he delights in code sourcery, intermedia, glitching and social interfaces. His work has been exhibited in many international media festivals and symposia. http://paulhertz.net/

Alexandra Noe who recently completed her BFA in Studio Art at Columbia College Chicago. Noe has participated in various group shows including “30/30” at One Strange Bird, Chicago IL and two of the “Annual Hokin Honors” Exhibitions at C33 Gallery, Chicago IL. Her gallery space, Goose n’ Goose Gallery, Oak Park, IL. Will open this coming fall. Noe currently lives in Oak Park, IL and runs her studio practice in Chicago, IL. http://www.alexandranoe.com/

Megan T. Noe, received her BFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago in 2013 and has exhibited most recently at New Capital, Chicago Art Department and Roxaboxen Exhibitions in Chicago. Her photographs and sculptures capture the mutability of objects and the transience of time. www.megtnoe.com.

Elizabeth Rexford, in addition to being a member of Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest, plays the violin in The Harmonia Quartet, which is made up of Rexford, along with Melody (Violin), Sandra Korelc (Viola) and Valerie Meineki (Cello). http://symphonyoprf.com/performances.php,

Judy Rushin’s work explores relationships between people and spatial environments through painting, sculpture, and installation. Rushin’s work has appeared across the US and in Korea including the Art and Literature Laboratory, Cambridge, MA; Prospect 1-Satellite at Trumpet. New Orleans, LA; ThreeWalls, Chicago, IL; Co-Lab Projects, Austin, TX and the The Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL. She lives and works in Tallahassee, FL. http://swallowawindchime.com/

For additional information contact: Sabina Ott, Director, at sabina_ott@yahoo.com
or Assistant Director Chelsea Middendorf at chelsea.middendorf@gmail.com

Official Website

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Tags: block party, DJ, family friendly, Oak Park, performance, site specific, video