Elmhurst Art Museum

Elmhurst Art Museum opens an exciting new exhibition on May 15, 2010.  The Search for Form features the work of two remarkable Chicago artists: Eleanor Himmelfarb and Holly Renald Cohn.  It was during the 1980’s that Holly Renald Cohn began formally studying painting with Eleanor Himmelfarb.  The exhibition presents abstract canvases painted by both women during the last few decades.

Embodied in her paintings, and implicit in her teaching, was Himmelfarb’s guiding artistic philosophy.  “Ideas rather than things are the basis of my subject matter.  The manner of presenting an idea is the excitement of painting – the search for form.”

Elmhurst Art Museum is pleased to host the fourth annual Portfolio exhibition for artistic teens.  This exhibition is open to all high school seniors in DuPage, Will, and Kane Counties.

EAM works directly with local high school art teachers who select student art portfolios to be sent to the Museum for judging.  Each submitted portfolio consists of six works created in the same medium.  Up to twenty-five portfolios are selected for the exhibition.  The Museum hosts several educational programs for students including Portfolio 101 and Careers in the Arts Day. 

Please join us for Portfolio's opening reception on Saturday, April 2, 2010 from 1:00 – 3:00 pm.

Highlighting the work of Richard Bresnahan and four of his former apprentices, Stoked: Five Artists of Fire and Clay represents a decade of collaborative effort with the Saint John's Pottery program.  Curated by Dr. Matthew Welsh, Assistant Director and Curator of Japanese and Korean Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the exhibition features not only the work of master potter and artist in residence, Richard Bresnahan, but that of Kevin Flicker, professor and ceramicist at University of Minnesota-Morris; Stephen Earp, ceramicist and writer from Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts; Sam Johnson, professor and ceramicist at College of Saint Benedict/Saint John's University; and Anne Meyer, ceramicist and sculptor from Saint Joseph, Minnesota.  Each artist presents vastly different outlooks and creative approaches that share a common concern for indigenous materials in relationship to the environment.

Melissa Oresky’s SOLO exhibition Tangled Ground highlights the Chicago artist’s most recent collection of abstract landscapes.  Through painted paper, cut canvas, and black and white photographs Oresky creates landscapes that only exist in her own artistic vision.  Oresky begins her compositions with a personal observance of a real landscape.  To these scenes, she adds nonsensical geometric shapes and elements.  Often, these elements are expressive of different scientific theories that Oresky is exploring, such as knot theory, taxonomy, the nervous system, and most prevalent in this work, non theory. 

Influenced by her recent residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute, Oresky explores the sparse landscape of New Mexico in Tangled Ground.  Her horizons and backgrounds are often created simply by shades of color; this simple approach provides the viewer with a reference and a guide to the space.  Scattered throughout these landscapes are rocks, shrubs, and geometric forms.  Oresky plays with perspective and space with these elements, creating a disjointed composition, invoking a style that is both surrealist and cubist.  She likens her placement of these items to debris, “I am interested in the way debris tends to self-organize, and the way tactile and the structural coexist on the ground.” 

Oresky has recent exhibited in solo exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art, 12 x12: New Artists, New Work, the Riverside Art Center, and Ada Gallery.  She is presently an Associate Professor of Art at Illinois State University and a frequent visiting artist lecturer at several Illinois institutions. She received a Masters of Fine Arts at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2000 and a Bachelors of Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996. 

Elmhurst Art Museum will open Glass + Steel the first exhibition in the Struktur:  Architecture & Design series at Elmhurst Art Museum on August 2, 2009.  Glass + Steel will present examples of work from Herman Miller, Knoll, Higgins Glass, Haeger pottery, Isamu Noguchi, Alexander Girard, Paul McCobb, and Russel Wright on loan from many collectors as well as recent acquisitions to the Museum’s collection.  This exhibitions focus will be the translation of the energy and freshness apparent in Mid-20th Century design.