THURSDAY, NOV 6

1. SOFA expo Opening Night

Internationally recognized for outstanding cutting-edge contemporary decorative arts and design, SOFA CHICAGO takes place annually at Navy Pier.

SOFA CHICAGO 2014
November 7-9
Opening Night Preview
Thursday, November 6
Navy Pier Festival Hall

Visit www.sofaexpo.com for tickets and information

FRIDAY, NOV 6

2. Opening Reception, MICHAEL DUBINA and JOSEPH HRONEK

Addington Gallery
704 N Wells St, Chicago, Illinois 60654

Michael Dubina: “Matchbook Vistas”
Oil paintings on matchbook covers, inspired by the Midwestern landscape.
Joseph Hronek: “Realist Apologia”
Intimate conceptual still life paintings

Michael Dubina has been an acclaimed painter of the midwestern landscape for over 20 years. While known for his large scale panoramic works, his newest landscape paintings are rendered in minute, evocative and visionary detail. These jewel-like works embody at once a sense of magic realism and an expansive, romantic expressionism. The images are painted with traditional oil techniques on the inside of matchbook covers, and are floated in over-sized black frames which compliment the physicality of the painted object.

In Dubina’s work one can sense such influences as the atmospheric qualities of 19th century Tonalism, the tranquility of Luminism, and the romantic spiritualism of the Hudson River School. But instead of looking back nostalgically, Dubina brings these qualities into our time, placing his striking attempts to conjure the Sublime on the inside of common everyday restaurant matchbook covers.

Chicago artist Joseph Hronek creates small-scale, hyper-real paintings that comment on ideas about perception, reality and artifice. Hronek’s figurative and “minimalist still-life” paintings draw the viewer close through their intimate associations and extreme level of detail, encouraging a visual re-examination of the quiet and commonplace.

Hronek is known for his fastidious attention to detail, which begins before the painting is actually started. A series of compositional studies on graph paper comprise the first step of a painting’s development, followed by further color and value studies on paper. Once the composition has been fully considered, and color relationships have been worked out, Hronek begins the final process of making the painting. This is also accomplished in stages: an imprimatura layer, followed by subsequent passages of ala-prima painting, scumbling, and glazing. The surface of the paintings are lovingly and carefully crafted into being, and this committed approach breathes a sense of life into the objects and figures depicted in the works.

3. Stag Park//Electrum

The Mission
1431 W Chicago Ave, Chicago, Illinois 60642

THE MISSION is pleased to present Stag Park, an exhibition of recent works by Larassa Kabel. Titled after Louis XV’s hunting lodge turned personal bordello, Kabel exhibits photorealistic, sexually charged portraits of women, custom printed fleece security blankets and photographs of women interacting with these blankets. The show continues through Saturday, December 19, 2015. An exhibition brochure with an essay by Scott J. Hunter, a Chicago-based independent curator, will accompany the show.

THE SUB-MISSION is pleased to announce Electrum , a site-responsive installation by Regina Mamou that scrutinizes the incorporation of pseudo-science into theological practices while disputing the Cartesian duality of the physical and spiritual enshrined in Western culture. Mamou creates a space where spirituality may be located within the body by scientific means, thereby questioning the implications of quantifying the non-material self on an individual’s belief systems. The exhibition continues through Saturday, December 19, 2015.

4. Scenes from Thunder, Perfect Mind

Bridgeport Art Center
1200 W 35th St, Chicago, Illinois 60609

Scenes from the immersive opera by Christopher Preissing, featuring musicians from the Floating Opera Company, Chartreuse and Mocrep. You will see aerial performers as well as grounded ones!

There are TWO shows!
November 6, 8:30 p.m.
November 7, 8:30 p.m.

SATURDAY, NOV 7

5. Ikenobo Ikebana Society FALL SHOW

Japanese Culture Center – 日本文化会館
1016 W Belmont Ave, Chicago, Illinois 60657

The 2015 Ikenobo Ikebana Society fall show will be on the second floor zendo of the Japanese Culture Center. Street parking is available and there is a public lot on Sheffield ½ block from the Center. This is the first show at the Japanese Culture Center and an exciting opportunity.

Scrolls from both the Nakashima Collection and the private collection of the JCC will be on display in addition to Ikebana flower arrangements.

Additionally, an ensō demonstration and sumi-e workshop will demonstrate painting ensō and lead participants in meditation before practicing their own ensō at 12:30 PM on Saturday. The instructor will provide hands-on guidance and discuss a brief history of the ensō (a hand-drawn circle in one uninhibited brushstroke to express a moment when the mind is free to let the body create).

Finally, there will also be a tea ceremony demonstration by Omar Francis Sensei of Chicago Urasenke at 2:00 PM on Saturday.

WORKSHOP & DEMONSTRATION:

‣ Sumi-e: Saturday, November 7th @ 12:30 PM
‣ Tea Ceremony: Saturday, November 7th @ 2:00 PM

6. Undiscovered Species opening night reception

Sidetracked Studio
707 Chicago Ave, Evanston, Illinois 60202

EVANSTON, IL – Sidetracked Studio is proud to present Undiscovered Species, an exhibition featuring doodles, drawings, collages, and paintings that reveal the obsessive and repetitive mania of their makers, all of whom happen to be Chicago-based artists.

Rory Coyne is exhibiting a selection of nature based works that subtly detail the sublime repetition of leaves, trees, and endless skies. Coyne is a founding director at Sidetracked Studio.

Lauren Levato Coyne presents new work in colored pencil on paper and maple panel including her “cluster drawings,” an ongoing series of insect wings that form swarming, irregular,
flower-like shapes. Levato Coyne is a founding director at Sidetracked Studio.

Julie Murphy invents and interprets new species of human/monster/office worker hybrids in her expressive and slightly manic drawings. With ink and markers Murphy transforms manila folders, legal paper, and sundry office materials into her own sort of taxonomic record of her crypto-creatures. Murphy earned a BFA degree in illustration from Art Center College of Design, as well as a BS degree in radio/television/film from Northwestern University which lead to years of diverse work experiences that fueled the desire to escape reality, in addition to supplementing a rainbow of character studies for drawings.

Vito Desalvo presents work from his current series, International People in the Know, which contain his reflections on interpersonal relations in today’s world. He has chosen both fictitious and actual faces of real people in his life. The backgrounds suggest no clue as to place, identity or nature of the conversation. The artist only offers the finality of the implied statement. In some of the faces is a lingering hint of relating the knowing implication of their comments. Others possess only a sense of innocent use of common use phrases. Desalvo has made comments related to these pieces that all serious conversations eventually lead to a confirmed answer form of “no”.

Jordan Scott presents his current series of collaged works inspired by the Jungian theory of the Collective Unconscious coupled with his many years of martial arts training and teaching. The series pays homage to his belief in the interconnectedness of the universe. While Scott uses many materials outside of their typical context his specific material is canceled U.S. postage stamps, typically using thousands of individual stamps to form what appear to be abstracted landscapes and color fields to create a sum greater than its parts. 

7. Scott Wolniak for Trunk Show

(within Brandon Alvendia’s The Great Good Place)

Threewalls
119 N Peoria St, Ste 2C, North Chicago, Illinois 60607

ABOUT SCOTT WOLNIAK
Scott Wolniak is a multi-disciplinary studio artist based in Chicago. He received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and currently teaches at the University of Chicago. Wolniak has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Cultural Center; Hyde Park Art Center, Valerie Carberry Gallery, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, Peres Projects, Andrew Rafacz Gallery, 65Grand, and Judith Racht Gallery, among others. His work has been reviewed in ArtForum, Art in America and Art News, and featured in New American Paintings.

ABOUT BRANDON ALVENDIA
Brandon Alvendia is a Chicago-based artist, curator, writer, publisher and educator. His interdisciplinary practice playfully engages spatial and social architectures to envision temporary utopias, regularly performing and exhibiting around North America in collaboration with various artist-run initiatives. He is the founder of multiple Chicago alternative spaces artLedge (2004-2007), BEN RUSSELL (2009-2011), The Storefront (2010-2014), and art-publishing house Silver Galleon Press (2008-present). Alvendia is a graduate of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA ‘03) and University of Illinois at Chicago (MFA ‘07).

SUNDAY, NOV 8

8. Creatures From the Concrete Reception

Hyde Park Art Center
5020 S Cornell Ave, Chicago, Illinois 60615

Art by: Eve Rivera, Zorzorzor, Monstrochicka, Stef Skills, Zena, Shan, Bel2, Gloe, and Beloved. Join us for an artist talk (2pm) with a reception (3-5pm) to follow….
This is a wall you gotta see in person!
….Graffiti from the streets of Chicago pours into the Hyde Park Art Center in this large-scale assemblage of spray, stencil and wheat-paste. With a focus on their inspirations and social justice issues, nine women working in graffiti and street art come together to display their skills and creations in a multimedia mural on the 2nd floor of the Art Center. The final wall collage will reflect the street from which they come: Streets filled with the imprints, emotion and struggles of the people. Artists include photographer Eve Rivera, photographer and street artist Zorzorzor, illustrator, muralist and yarn bomber MonstroChicka, and muralists/artists/graffiti writers Stef Skills, Zena, Shan, Bel2, Gloe, and Beloved. The collaboration was assembled by Liz Lazdins.