The Evanston Art Center (EAC) is excited to welcome the public to Horizons.

Artists Annie Briard, Mary Farmilant, Kellie Klein, Renee Robbins, and Nina Weiss bring together vibrant artworks to represent our changing landscape through the Horizons Exhibition. Their work studies the environment around us and their interpretations and relation to the encapsulating surroundings; each piece represents the sensory nature of their experiences. The artists bring a glimpse of nature in their own special lens to the city.

Annie Briard:
Annie Briard (BFA, MFA) is a Canadian artist known for her practice in expanded photography and digital media. Her work challenges how we make sense of the world through visual perception. She explores the intersections between perception paradigms in psychology, neuroscience, and existentialism by creating lens-based and light-focused works. Briard is a Lecturer in photography and media arts at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and is represented in Vancouver by Monica Reyes Gallery.

“Mirage” is an exhibition surveying our sense of wonder towards landscape through immersive photography and light-based works. In these times of climate change and post-travel restrictions, landscape exploration takes on new meaning and importance. “Mirage” presents works that provide new perspectives on what we understand as the “natural” surrounding world and puts into question our visual perception. Through various immersive and pictorial forms utilizing both new and obsolete technologies, the exhibition plunges its audience into an affective experience of the idea of landscape brought back within and includes digitally constructed stereoscopic photographs, subtly changing images, and large-scale video projections.

Mary Farmilant:
Mary Farmilant is a visual artist whose work looks at the ephemeral qualities of space and memory by examining objects and the spaces they occupy. She uses photography, video, textiles, and sound to spark conversation about current social issues. Farmilant received her nursing degree from the University of Brighton, Sussex, England, and worked in neurosurgery before turning to photography. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree, with Honors, and her Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Columbia College Chicago, where she now teaches as an adjunct professor. She lives and works in Chicago, IL.

Natura Consonat is a project that I began after the death of my mother-in-law who lived on the
Lac du Flambeau Reservation in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. This is the home to the Ojibwe
Indian tribe, her people. I returned to the Northwoods to process my thoughts and feelings about
her life, our relationship, and her sudden death. Urban dwellers rarely have the opportunity to bathe in thick forests. This exhibit brings a virtual experience to the city. The official motto for my hometown, Chicago, is “Urbs in Horto” — City in a Garden. These panels are designed to create “Horto in Urbs” – a portable garden that travels to communities lacking access to green environments.

Kellie Klein:
Kellie Klein is a photographic artist living in Northwest Indiana. She received her BA in Photography from Southern Illinois University and her MFA from Columbia College. For the past 30 years, Klein has been creating photographs that blur reality and question perception. She works in digital photography, as well as 19th-century alternative processes. In addition to working in commercial photography as a printer and a stylist, she taught at the College of DuPage and has instructed workshops in 19th-century photographic techniques in colleges and communities throughout the Midwest.

Meditations on Water is a visual study about the universal temperament of water. The photographs investigate the visceral and meditative facets of water, by examining the serene, turbulent, and dynamic characteristics of lakes, rivers, and seas, with much of the work focused on Lake Michigan. Whether a lake, an ocean, or the clouds in the sky, I see water as a natural metaphor for human disposition. I believe water can be as yielding, mighty, or as peaceful as the human mind, and to emphasize these emotional qualities, I often use long exposures and minimalist points of view. Meditations on Water is an ongoing body of work motivated by my personal belief that water can portray a depth of emotions we might not have known existed. The images are intended to convey the restorative power of water, while reminding viewers that water is a natural phenomenon that is as vast, mysterious, and fragile, as life itself.

Renee Robbins:
Renee Robbins is a Chicago-based visual artist who layers biomorphic forms to create detailed otherworldly environments. She has large-scale public mural commissions in Chicago on Lake Michigan in Lincoln Park and the South Loop’s Wabash Arts Corridor. Her paintings came to life as a performance when she collaborated with Still Inspired Dance. Honors include four grants from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs as well as a grant from the Illinois Arts Council. Robbins received her MFA from Michigan State University and has been here since 2007.

I create detailed visual environments that consider the complex relationships between humans, nature, and the cosmos. Through painting, I explore the dynamic world as I travel between tiny and gigantic scales in the unseen universe. Moving between the real and imagined, my work brings together microscopic and telescopic views. I position hybrid flora/fauna within a space that simultaneously evokes the deep sea and the night sky. That includes cells, flowering botanicals, aquatic species, and celestial bodies. By creating associations between things that are seemingly disparate in scale and form, my work brings questions or sparks a curiosity about the universe. This abstract space is luminously populated with dots, circles, and hieroglyphic-like marks. In this way, my images reflect biodiversity and suggest a sense of our place within the natural world by creating wonder.

Nina Weiss:
Nina Weiss has been painting and drawing the landscape for over 40 years. She holds a BFA from the Tyler School of Art and graduate study at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Further study includes pre-college instruction at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Art Students’ League of New York. She taught a combined thirty-six years at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago. Current classes include the Evanston Art Center, the North Shore Art League, and the Chicago Botanic Gardens. Nina teaches workshops throughout the United States; and travels with students every summer to teach her European Landscape Painting & Drawing Workshops. Nina is currently represented by the J. Petter Gallery and SaatchArt.com. Nina’s home and studio are in Evanston, IL.

My paintings delve into the layers; colors; shapes and textures created by the natural landscape. I concentrate on the gestural physicality of painting (line; gesture; color) with less emphasis on the traditional subject matter of landscape painting. The Landscapes I document often represent patchworks of preserved nature. They are small oases of incredible beauty and natural diversity. I travel throughout the Midwest and beyond to document these landscapes; then complete the paintings in my studio.

Horizons will be exhibited in the First Floor Gallery of the Art Center. The opening is free and open to the public on October 6th, 5-8 pm. This exhibition is partially funded by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the EAC’s general membership.

Evanston Art Center, a nonprofit 501 (c)(3) organization, is dedicated to fostering the appreciation and
expression of the arts among diverse audiences. The Art Center offers extensive and innovative
instruction in broad areas of artistic endeavor through classes, exhibitions, interactive arts activities, and community outreach initiatives.

Evanston Art Center is located at 1717 Central Street, Evanston, IL. Evanston Art Center Gallery Hours: 1pm – 6pm, Monday – Friday; 9am – 5pm, Saturday; 9am – 4pm, Sunday. First and second-floor gallery spaces are accessible. Limited free parking is available.

For more information, please visit us online at www.evanstonartcenter.org or contact Emma Rose Gudewicz, Director of Development & Exhibition Manager, at (847) 475-5300 or egudewicz@evanstonartcenter.org.

Visit the Evanston Art Center on Facebook: www.facebook.com/EvanstonArtCenter/, follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/#!/evartcenter, or on Instagram: @EvanstonArtCenter.

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Tags: Evanston, Evanston Art Center, Horizons, Kellie Klein, Mary Farmilant, Nina Weiss, nnie Briard, Renee Robbins