This faculty exhibition at A+D Gallery is an opportunity for full-time faculty members in the Department of Art and Design at Columbia College Chicago to respond to the college’s campus-wide initiative, Critical Encounters.  The theme for 2008-2009 is Human/Nature.  This exhibition will examine the relationships and tensions between humankind and the natural world.  Human/Nature will consider how factors such as the culture, wealth, geography, and history of societies have influenced humanity’s stewardship, exploitation, understanding, and artistic representations of the natural environment.  Featuring Chicago-based artists working in various media in fine art and design.

Off the Beaten Road will present a 21st century take on the innovative ways of communication and dissemination in American life put forth by the Beats and encapsulated in Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel, On the Road. Through sound, installation, performance, video and fine art, Off the Beaten Road will take the audience on a journey through stories both personal and public, mundane and sublime. Artists include Greg Stimac, Diana Guerrero-Macia, Jeff Gabel, and Dylan Strzynski (image credit), among others.

This exhibition is in conjunction with a campus-wide initiative based on the display of the original On the Road scroll.

Criteria explores the ethics and politics that embody contemporary notions of sustainability.   Through a variety of media that gathers artworks and unconventional design approaches, this exhibition will examine the utopia behind efforts to modify and push late capitalist consumption patterns as well as address the current contradictions between industrial and natural landscapes. Criteria will juxtapose critical and disenchanted views with poetic and symbolic discourses.   Using art as a lens through which our unsustainable systems of production and consumption can be evaluated from an ethical perspective, the work in this exhibition will pierce skepticism and challenge our preconceived notions on environmental and social trends.

This exhibition is intended to be a part of the 2009 Southern Graphics Council conference, a celebration of printmaking.  While both Hammond (image credit) and Chagoya are known primarily as painters, their work in all media reflects printmakers’ predilection for appropriation, adaptation, juxtaposition, and pastiche.  Both artists draw upon the modes of thinking and working inherent in printmaking as well as its history of social and political commentary.

Pougialis Fine Art award is a yearly competition that offers promising Fine Art students an opportunity to study as an apprentice with a senior artist of national and international standing for one semester, a cash award, and an exhibition in the A+D Gallery.

Columbia College Chicago’s BFA Fine Art Exhibition has been a tradition since 2001, and represents Fine Art students’ completion of the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, and the culmination of their hard work within the Art + Design Department’s BFA program. Featuring 34 artists working in a variety of media this exhibition is curated by graduating seniors in the Art History concentration.
image: Amanda Kaliski

Midwestern BLAB focuses on the work of 5 artists from the Midwest who have been featured in the pages of BLAB! Edited by Monte Beauchamp BLAB! is an annual anthology that collects the freshest and most unique in cutting-edge comics, illustration, and graphic design. Its contributors come together from all corners of the contemporary art world to push the boundaries of visual culture. Featuring the work of Don Colley, Tom Huck, Teresa James, CJ Pyle, and Fred Stonehouse who share more than simple geography. Their work taps into a dark narrative, that is both savage and beautiful, to present a magical vision of a gothic Midwest.