Thoughts Woven
Open Stories and Hidden Treasures
An new exhibit of collage and mixed media works from June 15 through July 20, 2019. Fifteen artists from the Midwest Collage Society interpret impressions, observations, dreams, and secrets through a wide variety of materials and media.
Tradition, myth, science, plants, animals, music, text, and the pure joy of unrestrained mark-making all provide inspiration for the pieces in the show. From figurative compositions to complex abstractions, these artists’ works are created through experimentation, risk-taking, reinvention, and rediscovery.
Rich textures, layers of delicate hand-made papers and salvaged fabrics, washes of concentrated color, organic forms built upon found-object supports – all serve as media, tools and processes, the particular visual language of this experienced group of artists who are ever seeking new directions within their art.
Artists included in the show are:
Tania Blanco, Barbara Pompei Boland, Fabra DiPaolo, Carolyn Dunn, Andrea Fox, Cherylyn Gnadt, Margi Hafer, Chris Jacobson, Carol Kazwick, Laura Lein-Svencner, Joan Lucht, Lavinia Morozan, Jerri Reimann, Nancy L. Staszak, andMargaret Swedzikowski.
Founded in 2003, The Midwest Collage Society includes members from Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin who come from a broad range of backgrounds. All are professional artists; many teach classes and workshops, travel extensively, write constantly.
The MCS artists’ long lists of achievements are marked with honors, awards, solo and group shows – regionally, nationally, and internationally; inclusions in published books; and well-deserved respect for their individual and collective commitment to finding fresh ways to approach the use of papers and combined multiple materials to create fine art.
The fascinating dimension that collage often takes on is that of juxtaposition – content and concept and meaning conveyed through unusual pairings of surfaces and objects, images and media. Collage nearly always implies daring and invention, seeking and allowing accidents, refusing limitations on choices, thriving on the freedom of layering, concealing, revealing and refining as integral parts of the creative process.
Thoughts Woven: Open Stories and Hidden Treasures, curated by Claudia Craemer and Deborah Craemer, is a lively collection of works by dedicated and prolific artists who continue to develop an art form that dates back hundreds of years and, since the early 20th Century, has become more and more diverse, open to all possibilities, and constantly evolving.
Thoughts Woven