Drawing of a Drawing My Mom Made (Cranesbill)

Reception: Saturday, November 4th, 2-6pm

At Corner, 2912 N Milwaukee Ave

“Drawing of a Drawing My Mom Made (Cranesbill)” is a continuation of my years-long engagement with the botanical illustrations my mother created during her 30-year career as a horticulturalist. In this installation, my mother’s drawing of cranesbill clusters, a flowering plant also known as pelargonium and geranium, has been hand cut in adhesive vinyl --the medium I use most in my day job as a union graphics installer. The all-over pattern of my mother’s cranesbill recalls Warhol’s silkscreened hibiscus blooms, and at the same time imparts a powerful metaphor of its own. A variety of ground cover, cranesbill grows with an interconnected root system, capable of regrowing even after being pulled, via the bits and pieces remaining underground. Through both the cranesbill’s floriography and its personal significance, this installation is an homage to that which binds us, connects us, and keeps us flourishing from below the surface.

"Drawing of a Drawing My Mom Made (Cranesbill)" is curated by EXTRA Projects as a part of the 2023 Terrain Biennial. Thank you to artist Lynn Basa for hosting my installation at her studio space, Corner, at 2912 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago IL 60618.

"Heirloom"
November 4, 2022 - March 3, 2023
West Shore Community College, WSCC Downtown Manistee Education Center, Old Kirke Museum, Ludington Area Center for the Arts (LACA)

Opening Reception: Friday, November 4th, 5-8pm
at Ludington Area Center for the Arts - 107 S Harrison St, Ludington, MI 49431

“Heirloom” is an exhibition of four generations of female labor, members of a family rooted in Manistee and Mason counties for over 100 years. Here, symbols, text and images drawn from the lives of my mother, my grandmother and my great-grandmother are manifested via the materials and processes of the blue collar part of my life as a union apprentice sign painter. Painted banners, cut vinyl decals and drawings on canvas drop cloths tell a family history of horticulture, of cattle and evergreen farming at Rosenow Farms, and of factory work at the Manistee Shoe Manufacturing Company.

Rather than drawing a straight line chronologically through our family history, the works in “Heirloom” are presented more fluidly. As the exhibition’s title suggests, the focus here is rather what remains and sustains over the course of time. Like the unique genes of an heirloom variety of tomatoes, this exhibition parses out the possibilities of what might be present in each woman, what sort of characteristics, values, experiences and ways of seeing the world can be identified as specifically ours. I’ve chosen to highlight this inquiry through our labor history in order to pay homage to those characteristics that are so often dismissed in women: grit, tenacity, ambition, and intelligence.

-Robin Dluzen
2022

The exhibition is a part of West Shore Community College 's Humankind Series. This year's theme is the "future of work" and the curatorial response is centered around the idea of acknowledging female labor as a starting point to look at the future.

The exhibition is presented at five locations throughout Manistee and Mason counties:

• WSCC’s main campus (Gallery and Tech Center), 3000 N Stiles Rd, Scottville, MI 49454

• WSCC’s Manistee downtown education center, 400 River St, Manistee, MI 49660

• Old Kirke Museum, 300 Walnut St, Manistee, MI 49660

• Ludington Area Center for the Arts (LACA), 107 S Harrison St, Ludington, MI 49431

"Materiality" is an eight-person show exploring the use of banal and familiar materials that are made to perform for the artist and the viewer. Within this exhibition, curated by Chicago artist Diana Gabriel, is a diverse collection of objects such as those made from folded paper, automotive paint, cardboard, fiber, and the detritus of construction. Included artists use techniques such as assemblage, collage, and embroidery to create whimsical and often colorful compositions that address the viewer by questioning their notions of inherent material properties, their function, and their value within the creative process.

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Included artists:

Robin Dluzen, Jean Alexander Frater, Rita Grendze, Johanna Moscoso, Melissa Oresky, Todd Reed, Monica Rezman, Jeff Robinson

Curated by: Diana Gabriel

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"Materiality" runs through October 30

Gallery hours are Noon-4 on Sundays

Uncle Freddy’s in Dyer, IN, is pleased to present a site-specific outdoor installation, Look for the Union Label, by Chicago artist Robin Dluzen as part of the Terrain Biennial international public art festival from October 2 – November 15, 2021.

Please join the artist and her hosts, Tom Torluemke and Linda Dorman, for an artist’s reception on Saturday, October, 9, from 1 – 4 p.m.

Robin Dluzen
Look for the Union Label, 2021
reclaimed vinyl on vinyl

Look for the Union Label is an homage to the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. The site-specific piece is composed of cast-off materials from the artist’s union trades job as a Graphics Installer with Sign Painters Local 830. A vinyl fabric from an outfield pad at a Major League Baseball stadium is combined with adhesive outdoor vinyl, depicting the graphics from vintage garment tags of clothes produced by ILGWU tradespeople. The ILGWU was a pivotal force in the history of trade unions in the United States and a union that boasted a majority female membership. Look for the Union Label reflects the artist’s journey as a union trades apprentice; it is an acknowledgement of the many union tradespeople who reside in the neighborhood where it is installed and speaks widely to the resurgence of interest in labor unions to protect our country’s essential and vulnerable workers.

About the Terrain Biennial

Founded in 2011 by artist Sabina Ott, Terrain Exhibitions was created in the spirit of community building through public art at her home in Oak Park. Ott invited over a hundred artists to exhibit site-specific and -responsive artworks on her front lawn. Two years later, Ott created the Terrain Biennial to stage month-long installations, inviting her neighbors and collaborators within her network to host public art at their homes and in their neighborhoods. The Terrain Biennial has produced four editions in 2013, 2015,

2017, and 2019, with each growing from one block in Oak Park to national and international collaborations.

Since 2013, the Terrain Biennial has been a nexus between art practitioners and public audiences from seemingly disparate backgrounds through public art installations. This work has forged connections in substantial and empathetic ways across city borders around the world. This year, the Terrain Biennial aims to find spaces of joy and community essential for collective healing in these times of isolation, public reckonings, and mourning. Sharing much of the same sentiment as yearbook signatures and pen pal letters, this year’s biennial theme is K.I.T. (keep in touch). After more than a year of lockdown, participants are encouraged to consider how their projects serve communities, encourage lived experiences of art, and facilitate deepening friendships and new connections.

The 2021 Terrain Biennial runs from October 2 - November 15, 2021, in the Chicagoland area and satellite locations nationally, including New York and internationally in India. The 2021 Terrain Biennial will feature over 250 artist projects. Terrain Exhibitions offers an interactive online map to help art lovers explore biennial sites and plan in-person visits. The online map provides details on featured projects, their locations, and website information. Visitors can use the map to see what sites are close to one another and plan self-guided walking tours. Alternatively, you can use the map for virtual site visits to the most far-afield installations.

Visit www.terrainexhibitions.org for more information.

SOUTH SHORE ARTS GALLERY

1040 Ridge Road, Munster, Indiana
Monday–Saturday, 10am – 3pm

Curated by Lauren M. Pacheco
June 11-August 28, 2021

Artist Reception: Friday, July 16 from 6-9pm

South Shore Arts presents the summer exhibit, SWELL: A Group Exhibition on Scaffolding, curated by Lauren M. Pacheco. SWELL is unconcerned with boundaries but, rather, attempts to recreate a space within a space. Secondary to the artworks themselves is a conversation in challenging aesthetics and assemblies of what exhibits can and should represent—a new way of thinking to help change the way we see and interact with space, curator, and artist.

Pacheco shares this insight on her curatorial project: “Sculptural installations have the power to confront traditional understandings of art production and material history.  Within South Shore Arts’ expansive gallery, fabric walls show signs of something that has already happened. As a curatorial intervention, this site-specific exhibition intends to connect the usual and unusual, familiar, and unfamiliar by bringing together artwork, and objects.”

 She goes on to say that “the scaffolding system is a timely metaphor for our post-pandemic world. The scaffold, ubiquitous “furniture” seen in urban and rural landscapes, most commonly recognized as construction site infrastructure, provides support or reinforces during building, rebuilding, or preserving.” 

SWELL incorporates 37 Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana artists with individual works that drive discourse and critical art practice. Pacheco emphasizes, “My curatorial vision stresses a necessity to exhibit a diverse representation of living artists in spaces, places and institutions that have histories of exclusionary practices based upon race, geography, and gender. I’m very proud to work with a group of artists and creatives in SWELL that include fourteen black, indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) and fifteen women.” Additionally, the exhibition features creative practitioners who work across disciplines that are peculiar, provocative, and beautiful.

Participating artists include Chad Kouri, Bishal Manandhar, Marcos Raya, Sydnie Jimenez, Rodrigo Lara, Alison Wade, Carlson Garcia Collective, JB Daniel, Kelly Knaga, Robin Dluzen, and others.

Lauren M. Pacheco is a Mexican-American civic practice artist and cultural worker with over fifteen years of arts administration, curation, and project management experience. Many of her projects are interested in space, people, and social impact. Today, Pacheco serves as a resource to policymakers and institutions in the public dialogue about issues that impact artists and creative enterprises. She is an associate faculty lecturer and the director of Arts Programming and Engagement at Indiana University Northwest in the School of the Arts.

Thank you to the exhibit sponsor

SWELL: A Group Exhibition on Scaffolding will run through August 28 in South Shore Arts’ main gallery at The Center of Visual & Performing Arts.  An artist reception will take place on Friday, July 16, from 6-9pm, with donations by Marz Brewery in Chicago. The exhibit is free and open to the public. For more information about the exhibit, visit Southshoreartsonline.org.

Featuring the work of Robin Dluzen

IHM MOTHERHOUSE GALLERY | 610 W. Elm Ave., Monroe, Mich.

For the past 15 years, the content of my work has journeyed along a spectrum, with the natural world at one end, and the structures and imprints of human labors on the other. Initially, this trajectory developed as I mined the Midwestern labor histories of my family, in particular my mother’s career as a horticulturalist and botanical illustrator, and my father’s multifaceted pursuits as an agricultural extension agent, iron foundryman, builder, furniture maker and freight train engineer. In my drawings and sculptures, I combine re-drawings of my mother’s illustrations in charcoal and graphite, and materials like wooden pallets and aluminum ductwork culled from my father’s experiences. However, incorporating my parents’ stories and influences is only scratching the surface of what motivates me; the most profound impact of my upbringing is having been ingrained with a way of looking, noticing, choosing, picking and engaging. In my collage work, such characteristics are their own kind of “mark” — what I choose and how I then contextualize it is as unique as a smudge of charcoal or a stroke of a pencil. My actions of picking and culling are a manifestation of taste and point of view — both things that are molded by where I come from and inherited from my family. —Robin Dluzen

For more information about the exhibit, contact Sharon Venier at 734-240-9754 or email svenier@ihmsisters.org.