Jeff Little

Artist's Statement:

"Nature is awesome in its creation. To think that we could improve on what God has created is ridiculous," says Jeff. "I believe that my purpose, as an artist, is to respond to that creation and capture it. The landscape has incredible potential for creating emotional responses. The problem is, minutes after viewing a beautiful sunset or a powerful storm, we quickly move back into our own little world of worries, responsibilities and pleasures. The challenge and joy of painting landscapes is to capture that heightened moment and preserve it."

Jeff grew up in the Midwest and enjoyed playing on his grandparent's farm, fishing in the rivers and playing in the creeks of Illinois. The experiences and memories of these adventures fuel his paintings and especially his figurative work. He finds the subtle beauty of Illinois breathtaking, and will probably never tire of trying to capture it on canvas and paper.

Jeff's paintings are based on actual places that he knows and loves. Despite the truth of real locations, his paintings have a surreal quality to them. "The dictionary defines the word surreal as having the intense, irrational reality of a dream," Jeff says. "A dream is, basically, a lie that people tell themselves. The mind makes up a fantastic story that usually consists of fears, fantasies and half-truths. As an artist, the only stories I can tell are fiction, based on truth. What is fiction but a glorified lie? The challenge, as an artist, is not just to tell a good lie, but to tell an incredible lie. A lie so wonderful that, even if those viewing a piece doubt its authenticity - its truth - they believe it, because it touches something that they, themselves, want to be true."

Herb Eaton

Tracey Frugoli

Born in Chicago, IL, Tracey Frugoli learned about art and drawing at her father's knee. At no point in her life did she ever question that art was the center of her universe. Indeed, her high school career was often spent in the art rooms before school, for two classes a day, for lunch hour, and after school.

Michael McNeil

Artist's Statement:
The primary media in most of my work is acrylic paint. However, I use almost anything else available.  Oils, pencils, chalk, markers, if it works for the effect, it's on the canvas.  It took me three moves to Bloomington from other parts of the country before I saw the beauty here. Now my goal is to process what others might find ordinary into my version of extraordinary.  To see and show beauty where it is not readily apparent.  I paint form life and memory augmented by photos taken as I drive around the countryside.  I try to do several paintings concurrently, all with the same theme and palate.   

Michael J. McNeil completed an Art Major with an emphasis in painting at Southeast Mo. State.  He attended Graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis taking drawing and painting classes.
He has paintings in private collections in California, Arizona, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Louisiana, Texas, & Florida.

Rhea Edge

Vulnerability, survival struggles, displayed strength, and the consequences of environmental degradation are all themes in my work:  beauty and terror embrace in settings where power and victimization toy with the surviving life force.  My recent paintings and prints include forms which combine or hybridize biomorphic creatures and aircraft, with flight as a metaphor for speed in attack or escape.

 

Angel Ambrose

Douglas E. Johnson

Ann Kauffman

Lisa Kesler

Benjamin Gardner

Like a poet who uses two different words to form new meaning, I make relationships of images—the intimate interior of a house and the landscape outside—reaped from familiar surroundings to reveal ideas. These ideas seem to center around absence and presence; more specifically, I consider that meaning comes out of the absence, and makes itself present. The "empty space" between the poet's two words, where words encounter and influence each other while still retaining their distinct identities, is the area of activity. It is that which seems void of physical presence that holds the possibility of meaning.

The conversation between inside and outside (be it physical or psychological) remains the strongest idea behind my work. This metaphor of physical space has the ability to be always present yet fleeting in our daily lives—a "background" loaded with meaning because it reflects who we are and how we live.

Recent imagery has focused on handwritten poems, paintings, books, and other objects used to "escape" in the domestic space. The ephemeral nature of these objects reveals a new "interior" and an additional psychological space.

www.benjaminagardner.com

This quarter's featured artist is local studio art professor Kevin Strandberg.

 Originally from St. Paul Minnesota, he joined the community when he became a professor at Illinois Wesleyan University in 1979.

 Earning his undergraduate degree in the fine arts from the University of Minnesota and a graduate degree in fine arts from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Mr. Strandberg is well equipped to teach courses in sculpture, photography, and most recently kiln-glass.
When not teaching, he focuses on his own work of commercial photography and sculpture. His sculptural pieces are often composed of mixed media fit together such as cast metal, fused glass, wood, and even found objects.

 His enjoyment in puzzling objects together in art is reflected in his hobby of restoring vintage Italian motorcycles.  Childhood memories of traveling and fears inspire Mr. Standberg's work.  For example, a recent series created after September 11th featured sculptures that combined the fear felt during the collapse of the twin towers and from growing up in the tornado belt.

 Currently, Mr. Strandberg is working on a series of photographs and assembling frames to fit the photos combining sculptural ideas with photographic work.   He has yet to incorporate glass in this series in progress, but is brain storming to combine the three different artistic styles he currently works with.

-Shaina Kannady, intern

Artist, Professor and director of the Normal Editions Workshop at Illinois State University