Dittmar Memorial Gallery, established in 1972, is a student-operated gallery that enlightens and challenges the Northwestern University community with the works of emerging and underrepresented artists from the Chicago area and the Midwest. The staff at Dittmar is dedicated to developing and fostering the Northwestern community’s awareness of the changing attitudes and trends in the art world. We invite artists who work in the cotemporary vein, as well as artists who offer an alternative perspective that hinges on the periphery of the art world. In essence, our goal is to provide well-deserved exposure to those outside or on the margins of the mainstream art world.
Current Exhibits
Consumption
February 9-March 15 | Reception: February 9 6-8PM
Artist Alisa Henriquez’s paintings aim to directly engage prevalent images of consumption drawn from our popular media culture, especially as they relate to gender, beauty, and material desire. She assembles fragments from these sources into complex compositions and ultimately reconfiguring these images, hoping stage an experience that calls into question the messages these media images perpetuate, including the seemingly insatiable appetite for all to be happier, be more beautiful, and live in a more splendidly appointed environment. In this way the artist’s work aims to build a dense spatial network that offers a bounty of images for consumption.
2011 – 2012 Dittmar Gallery Exhibits
Dates
Exhibit
Reception
September 9-29
Wildcat Welcome Week: Faces of NU
September 29 – October 31
Shelley Gilchrist & Alan Emerson Hicks
9/29
November 4 – December 11
Jaime Raybin and Ryan Hogan
11/4
January 4 – February 5
Marci Rubin
1/4
February 9 – March 15
Alisa Henriquez
2/9
March 29 – May 13
Meredith Setser
3/29
May 17 – June 7
Northwestern University Senior Art Show
5/18
June 13 – August 6
Tyanna Buie
———-
How to Submit Your Art
Dittmar Memorial Gallery welcomes submissions through a formal review process. Each May, the submissions committee meets to review submissions and select a season of artists for the following academic year. In your complete submission, include:
At least five images that demonstrate the work you are proposing for a show or past work with a proposal for new work
Work list for the images including title, medium, size, and year
Statement
Resume
Any available contact information
POSTAL MAIL: Dittmar Memorial Gallery | Norris Center | Northwestern University | 1999 Campus Drive Evanston, Illinois 60208
January 4 – February 5 | Reception: January 4 6-8PM | Artist talk: January 23 7PM
Artist Marci Rubin uses sculpture, printmaking, and drawing to investigate states of transformation — metaphorically and literally through process and materials. By working within a set parameter of alteration, reformation, abstraction and transformation, Rubin questions recognizable and subconscious states of being. The works in this exhibition constitute the artist’s interrogation of concepts such as the body’s direct and indirect relationship to our environment, and the impact that media and government have on our bodies.
Check out a Chicago Reader article about “When The Body Speaks” here.
Suspension
November 4 – December 11 | Reception: November 4 6-9 PM
Ryan Hogan and Jaime Raybin are material-driven installation artists working with ambiguous specimen-like forms. Because of similarities in their work, the artists decided to show together. Their exhibition “Suspension” fuses art and biology, and features exclusively self-illuminating work.
Collaboration with One Book One Northwestern : The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for Reception
Shelley Gilchrist and Alan Emerson Hicks
- Exhibit showing: September 29th – October 31st
- Reception: September 29th, 7:00-9:00 PM
In Plastic & Wax: Ad Astra, space and sky thematically link the visually interactive work of Evanston artist Shelley Gilchrist and Chicago sculptor Alan Emerson Hicks. Hicks’ grounded 3-D plastic towers and figures surge up and into space, while Gilchrist’s encaustic-painted shaped abstractions reference earth and sky.
Gilchrist is inspired by the natural environment and works with wood and wax. Through sculpture and performance, Hicks recycles and repurposes the plastic detritus that surrounds us, often using it to create work that references the natural world. Their works have a strong sense of play that is apparent, manifested through the artists’ shared fascination with color, pattern and rhythm. Curves and organic shapes animate the surrounding spaces, and viewers often note a palpable synergy when their works are exhibited together.
Fiber Artwork by Pat Kroth Exhibit open: June 24 through Aug. 11 | Reception: Friday, June 24, 6-8 PM “I create contemporary fiber art with elements of collage, and needlework with an eye toward recycling. Found objects are sometimes embedded in a surface crafted from tiny fiber fragments, sheer overlays and trapped threads. Machine stitching primarily embellishes the surface, with the addition of hand stitching and stapling in some cases. I enjoy the playful ambiguity and richness of surface which invites the viewer to come closer and explore.” - Pat Kroth
April 6 – May 8, 2011 | Reception: April 1, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
“The uniquely diverse and tactile qualities of materials hold such strong fascination for me. I am intrigued by the ephemeral nature of objects and transient processes that occur over the passage of time, resulting phenomenal earthly textures and formations of visual complexities.”
Nnenna Okore works with biodegradable materials that were once used for a different purpose including old newspapers, found paper, ropes, fibers, burlap, dye, coffee, starch and clay. She is interested in the ability of processes such as decay, erosion, deformation and even death to regenerate into new forms. Her paper-making techniques produce fragile forms that allude to the emphemerality of life and her clay pieces mimic the intricacies of topography. She is interested in heightening the perception of textures and organic contours that exist in the environment and reflect a need for preservation and care of the earth.
Tech Noire: The Art of Stephen Flemister and Krista Franklin
February 10 – March 16, 2011 | Reception: February 11, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Tech Noire: The Art of Stephen Flemister & Krista Franklin explores ideas of the black body and identity through digital and futuristic landscapes. Examining the modern self-made identity, Stephen Flemister’s artwork encompasses surveillance culture, the “dark side” of the digital, and the collision of the public and the private spheres. Krista Franklin’s mixed-media work repositions blackness through an Afrofuturistic lens, and plays on science fiction and speculative literature and cinema as well as the iconography of film noir.
January 3 – February 6, 2011 | Reception: January 7, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
When Soo Shin isn’t assembling one of her intricate sculptures or sketching in her Printer’s Row studio, she rummages through Chicago-area junkyards or scouts city streets in search of discarded home building materials and household furnishings. The wood, metal, concrete and sundry materials she salvages and transforms into art are key components of her do-it-yourself (DIY) “interactive functioning sculptures”.
The Korean-born contemporary artist says her interactive sculptures are meant to comfort those who have experienced rejection and loneliness and trigger mirthful memories of childhood.
Her artworks have been exhibited in Seoul, Korea; Berlin, Germany; Chicago and New York. To view her works, visit the artist’s website at www.soooshin.com.
November 5 – December 9, 2010 | Reception: November 5, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Chicago-based artist Licha DeLaPeña creates richly textured and passionately vibrant acrylic on canvas in primary colors, finding inspiration in day to day living in the city’s Logan Square neighborhood in the St. George Artist Court, a block of private artist studios, where she currently resides. Born in October 1972 in Blue Island, Illinois, she began painting in her graduation year from Columbia College Chicago in 1996.
October 1 – November 1, 2010 | Reception: October 1, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Caged Dresses, Floating Kimono are two bodies of work that flow one into the other. Gathering materials generally thought to be failures, unwanted, disregarded or trashed, Patricia Otto rehabilitates these items. Looking at the materials anew, relating each to the other in unique juxtapositions, she recreates a new work and a new form.
Caged Dresses are expressions of the inherent condition of women. Made from unwanted and cut up paintings, Patricia Otto sews the pieces together onto discarded cages reconstructed into dress-like forms. They stand on a pedestal or is it a soapbox? This is her creative attempt to
reform/recycle/redress a woman’s state of being.
Kimono is a body of work of reconstructed discarded paintings, drawings and fabric scraps. All the varying materials were cut up and reconfigured by sewing them together into a new relationship, a new form-a Kimono, with an inside and out, back and front. Her creative purpose is to manifest spirit into body or is it vice versa? Kimono does not sit or stand, it floats.
The creative process in Patricia Otto’s artwork may be seen as a reflection of those in a community who also work to recreate themselves and the things around them in green and affirming ways.
Exhibit Open:June 24 – August 11 Reception:June 25, 6PM to 8PM
Modern Groceries is a series of still life photographs focusing on the way our purchased food is packaged and consumed. By setting common foods in their packaging and labeling direct from the grocery store into traditional nature mort compositions, our most common and necessary items of life – food – are jolted into historical focus. The viewers’ various degrees of knowledge of Dutch still life paintings will be the measure by which the photographs will either found or further the perceived rift between ourselves and nature, and ourselves and our food sources.
These photographs are not merely a critique of our habits; they are also a celebration and exaltation of these common objects. Our excessive packaging and labeling of each fruit and vegetable with name and number will hopefully soon be a habit of the past, and these pieces will then serve as historic documents as the pieces of 17th century Dutch still life genre paintings do today.
Northwestern University’s Art Theory and Practice Department presents a group show
featuring the several undergraduate art majors at the Dittmar Memorial Gallery. The
show will primarily feature installation works, although 2-D media and other forms will
be represented. The senior artists and several of their professors will be present at the
opening to discuss the work.
Artist Bios: Laura Cohen is a senior double major in dance and Art Theory and Practice, who spent last spring at Goldsmiths University of London where she learned to be fashionable. The core of her work involves perceptions of childhood and violence through the simultaneous act of destruction and creation. Her process is to go through massive periods of collecting objects alternating with huge moments of dispersal in which she will place collected items carefully in specific arrangements -often based upon some preset mythology (such as Star Wars or The Lord of The Rings)- and then throw and break things. Witnesses are invited to break things as well, or bring items to be broken. One thing that interests her is the release or sense of satisfaction that comes with smashing a plate or a ukulele and the potential for spontaneity.
Margy LaFreniere is an artist, social change advocate, and aspiring educator. When she makes art, she works mainly in performance. Her work deals with personal reflection on large social structures, focusing on truth, voice, and contradiction.
Jessica Palo is simply an artist; Allan Kaprow could not have said it better. “Young artists of today need no longer say, “I am a painter” or “a poet” or “a dancer.” They are simply “artists.” All of life will be open to them.” When she makes art she uses whatever means necessary to best portray her ideas. There is no knowledge before need. Most of her work
focuses on the idea of essence and its relation to people and the concept of race. She was born in West Africa and raised in Ames, Iowa. Growing up she was never treated indifferently by her peers because of her race or heritage. Their indifferent treatment towards her triggered an interest in the concept of race and the placement it holds in society. Jessica alludes to race in her work only as a means to deny it. There are so many different directions the subject matter can take. She is constantly engaging, moving and evolving her work like many have done before me and will do so after. Jessica will be graduating this June with an Art Theory and Practice degree.
Allison Putnam rides her bike through Chicago absorbing the systems of urban life and synthesizes them with urban plans, maps and objects to make paintings and installations.
Lynn Stransky primarily creates work about gender issues, more specifically the hegemonic ideals of heteronormativity that plague western society. Stransky’s preferred mode of expression is painting, although she dabbles in photography and most recently, in relational
aesthetics work.
Kyle Tidd was born in 1987, two years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Following graduation he will remain in Chicago for one year. He once worked at the Unicorn Café in Evanston, Illinois. His influences include Shinto architecture, the late writings of Franz Kafka, and the Internet. He is left-handed.
Jessica Wiener takes herself very seriously. Her art often comes from a place of childhood fantasy. She pursues the idea of fantasy further in her piece by investigating representation, identity and desire through a journalistic and humorous presentation of personal connections made over the internet.
Max Wilson was born south of the Mason Dixon, but now he lives just across the river from Portland, Oregon, where it’s not as humid in the summer. Recently, he has been focusing on performance and video work, but he still appreciates well-made objects. In June, Max will graduate with dual degrees from the Radio Television and Film department, and the Art Theory and Practice department, after which time he will continue to make work in Chicago while earning a living at some yet to be determined venue. Please direct all job offers to: maxwellwilson2010@u.northwestern.edu.
In Spring Cloud I present a matrix, a filter for light to play through. I use the gallery as a space where perceptions are challenged, an opportunity to experience an environment. It is not a moment of walking into a space to gaze upon an object on a wall. It presents an opportunity to experience an environment, to study the relationship between light and form, between space and viewer. The viewer is required to be active, to participate with the space, to turn one’s head to see a certain angle, to lie on the floor to gain a new vantage point, to move around the space to discover the continuously unfolding patterns and rhythms. Spring Cloud presents an imagined micro view of the cloud structure, crystalline droplets being played upon by light, translated to a macro scale. The light plays with the natural opacity of the velum from which the droplets are constructed, creating layers upon layers of cast shadows. -Mark Rumsey
Exhibit Open: February 12 – March 17, 2010 Opening Reception and Keynote Lecture: Fri., February 12, 6:00 – 8:00pm
Lecture by AfriCOBRA member Dr. Michael Harris Panel Discussion: Wed., February 17, 5:00 – 7:00pm Chicago Black Arts Movement Past, Present and Future: Wed., February 24, 5:00 – 7:00pm
A Poetry Reading by Dr. Haki Madhubuti and Tara Stringfellow (NU, 2008)
In 1968, a group of artists, many of them either from or residing in Chicago, came together to discuss the premise that Black visual art has innate and intrinsic creative components that are characteristic of the culture. They called themselves AfriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists.) The artists who were present at the meeting consisted of painters, printmakers, textile designers, dress designers, photographers and sculptors who felt that their visual expression was definitely affected by the fact that they were Black and that their Blackness contributed a specific quality to their visual expression.
Once the artists concluded that they had specific visual qualities intrinsic to African American culture, the following aesthetic principles were agreed upon: bright colors, the human figure, lost and found line, and the lettering and images which they agreed identified the social, economical and political conditions of African Americans. These AfriCOBRA artists felt that a collective effort was possible under a common philosophy and a common system of aesthetic principles. They all noted that their work had a message: it was not fantasy or art for art’s sake, it was specific and functional by expressing statements about their existence as Black people.
One of the goals of this exhibition is to demonstrate how AfriCOBRA is just one of the many artistic organizations with connections to Chicago that has influenced African American visual artistic production on the national level.
Exhibit Open: January 6 – February 8, 2010Reception: Thursday, January 7, 6:00 – 8:00pm
For the past several years, Luke Tauber has been working on a series of collaborative projects with Chicago-based artists Marc Fischer, John Grod, Jennifer Mannebach, and Kerry Hagy. His particular interests lay in classical composers, deceased family members and Western funeral practices.
In “Beethoven, Bach and the Composers Sleeping in the Coffin,” Tauber has extensively researched the lives, musical works and deaths of the composers Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Schubert and Schumann in order to reconstruct their mausoleums and grave sites. In a variety of media, Tauber depicts the graves of his mother and father in the Evergreen cemetery in Arizona, as well as the grave of Beethoven in Vienna.
The Artist Made Book show is a collection of books created by artists local to the Chicago area. Through a range of materials and content these artist’s works represent the diversity of Chicago’s creative sensibilities and the importance of supporting local communities. The Artists included in the show are:
Anna Timmerman, Alejandro Ayala, Alyson Beaton, Betsy Maria Zacsek, Chris Tyre, Clare Rosean, Jennifer Yorke, Kally Stachura, Mark Rospenda, Plamen Yordanov, Roh Esta, Zach Plague, Eric Bartholomew, Marcia Maltz
This exhibit features Chinese traditional painting, ink painting, folk art, photography and contemporary art by Master Artists in China, and is presented by the US China Peoples Friendship Association-Chicago Chapter as part of the Annual China Festival 2009 (ACF-09), hosted by Northwestern University.
Other ACF-09 events include the Annual China Symposium 2009, Saturday November 14, Norris University Center and the Beijing Performing Arts Gala 2009, Friday-Saturday, December 4-5, in Cahn Auditorium. More information is available at www.uscpfa.org/chicago and www.nbo.northwestern.edu This exhibit is co-sponsored by the Northwestern University Asian and Middle East Studies Program.
Images: Never Ending Love at Peony Pavillion, Blue And White-2, and Butterfly Kite.
“Unearthed” combines the talent of Kristy Deetz and Joseph Pintz. This exhibit celebrates the artistry of objects created from natural sources.
Kristy Deetz’s work is largely autobiographical. She tries to make what is
intangible, such as thoughts, feelings and experiences into objects that are
tangible thorugh her art. Her images interact to form visual metaphors for these intangibles. Kristy carves, burns and paints with encaustic on wooden surfaces. She also includes materials such as beeswax, twigs and other objects that change the surface of her work. A mixture of metaphor
and symbolism, Deetz explores the use of images on both physical and spiritual levels. Kristy Deetz has spent more than 20 years teaching full time and exhibiting her work. She is currently the Associate Professor
of Art (Painting and Drawing) at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay.
Joseph Pintz finds making functional pots a complex and satisfying endeavor.
He draws inspiration from a long tradition of potters who have responded to the
challenge of making pots that connect to our daily lives. Joseph has discovered
that the best examples of these historical pots serve as reminders of the
honesty, vision, passion and substance of their makers. He strives to impact
qualities in his pottery which represents the past and present, to the heart
as well as the intellect. Joseph Pintz, a native of Chicago, graduated in 1996
from Northwestern University. He received an MFA in Ceramics from the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is currently teaches ceramics at Bowling
Green State University . Joseph Pintz is featured in the September, 2009
issue of Ceramics Monthly.
Reception: Thursday, September 24, 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Since its establishment in 1909, the McCormick School of Engineering has sought excellence in achieving its two parallel missions: to produce new knowledge and to engage and educate students. The history of McCormick shows that real-world problem solving has been a hallmark of engineering education at Northwestern for at least a century. McCormick fosters a culture in which innovation is not only encouraged, but expected. It is a culture that still thrives today, driving new initiatives, research discoveries, and superior education. On display in this exhibit are archival photographs and video presentations that document McCormick’s history, while providing insight to current activity.
Exhibit Open: June 24 – August 11
