4 Painters & 1 Photographer Exhibit at the Art Coop Gallery in Lincoln Square Mall on November 8th in Urbana, IL. Photo by Alyssa Abay
Art is a celebration of life. It allows you to lose yourself in the strokes of the paintbrush or the details in the photograph. Its seemingly haphazard construction has the ability to reflect an intimate portrait of yourself you didn’t even know existed. It’s brilliant.
And that’s exactly what artists Jess Beyler, Cindy Carlson, Kim Kissinger Marino, Brian Sullivan and Jeff Evans hope to inspire in their exhibit “Brilliance: 4 Painters & 1 Photographer,” displayed at Art Coop, Inc. from November 8 to December 1.
The exhibit represents the artists’ one-year anniversary since meeting at a conference in Champaign. The seminar was sponsored by the nonprofit organization Creative Capital, a New York-based organization dedicated to helping artists realize their visions to publicize their artwork through venture-capitalist principles. The five artists from the Champaign area continued to meet monthly after the conference to discuss their work and the business strategies necessary to get their art out to the public. As a celebration of their one-year anniversary since attending the conference, Beyler, Carlson, Marino, Sullivan and Evans approached Art Coop, Inc. in Urbana to showcase their artwork in a gallery exhibit.
“(The exhibit’s title) ‘Brilliance’ was coined by Cindy Carlson as result of our diverse subject matter,” Evans said, the photographer showcased in the exhibit. “We all have brilliant colors in our work.”
Evans, a former rocket scientist, decided to pursue his childhood love of photography after realizing that his professional career stinted his creative side. His fascination with space and the strange things around him provided the subjects many of his photographs.
“Nowadays, people are so busy yapping on their cell phones or listening to their iPods,” Evans said. “They aren’t really paying attention. That’s what I want to encourage with my photography, (to) encourage people to be more observant and see all the strange, crazy things around them.”
The exhibit features artists using a number of different mediums, from acrylic paint to oils to watercolor to photography. At the heart of his or her work, each artist seeks to answer the eternal question: What is art?
For painter Sullivan, art changes each time it’s looked at. Each person’s individual experiences determine the way the strokes on the canvas affect his or her perception of the work. The story behind each painting is unique to the viewer.
“Most of my pictures you can come back to time and time again, and you’ll see a different thing going on,” Sullivan said. “If I told a simple story, everyone would get it. The surprise would be gone, and nobody would look at it ever again. I think art is more than that. I don’t try to make a picture that means just one thing.”
4 Painters & 1 Photographer Exhibit at the Art Coop Gallery in Lincoln Square Mall on November 8th in Urbana, IL. Photo by Alyssa Abay
For Beyler, art is as much a conversation within one’s self as it is between the artist and the observer. Like dancers, artists must harness and embrace spontaneity in their work. Their ability to listen to the rhythm of their own bodies allow artists to connect with the audience, detailing their hopes and dreams in a way that they cannot articulate to themselves.
“There’s different ways those marks are made,” Beyler said. “Sometimes, I simply ask my body what it wants to do, and I let my inner animal just go. Performers on stage feel the energy of the people they’re performing for. They’re gathering up the dreams and the hopes of the people and giving them back in a language, when even the audience hardly knows how to say what they long for.”
Despite the featured artists’ differing interpretations of the exact definition of art, the exhibit manages to sum up the creative brilliance inherent in each artist to create an array of pieces that appeal to anyone willing to participate in a little self-discovery.
“(The exhibit has) different styles of artwork, different media,” Evans said. “Abstract work, realist paintings, collages and pop art … I think there’s something for everybody.”