Current and Upcoming Visitors - Spring 2013
Bill Gross
Born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1955, Bill Gross is the owner/director of 65GRAND gallery in Chicago,
which he founded in 2005. In addition to making and exhibiting his own artwork for over 20 years, he
has focused on exhibiting emerging and mid-career artists from the region, as well as from the rest of
the United States, including several artists who are previous visitors, or have shown their work here
at ISU. Gross’s selective approach has garnered acclaim for the gallery, which to date has received
four reviews in Artforum, most recently in October, 2012. A dedicated supporter of art and artists in
Chicago and beyond, Bill Gross is also an alumnus of Illinois State University, receiving his Master of
Science in Art Degree here in 1982.
- Lecture Tuesday, January 29, 4:00 PM (University Galleries)
Liz Miller
Liz Miller’s large-scale, mixed-media installations and works on paper have been featured in solo and
group exhibitions regionally, nationally, and internationally. One-person exhibitions include venues
such as Redux Contemporary Art Center (Charleston, SC); 1708 Gallery (Richmond, VA); David B.
Smith Gallery (Denver, CO); the MAEP Gallery at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Mercer Union
(Toronto, CAN); and Haas Gallery at Bloomsburg University (Bloomsburg, PA). Recent group
exhibitions include venues such as the Gallery of Contemporary Art at the University of Colorado-
Colorado Springs; the Union Gallery at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Soo Visual Arts Center (Minneapolis); Rochester Art Center (Rochester, MN), and Steinhilber Gallery at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.
Miller’s awards include a 2011-12 McKnight Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists; a 2011 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant; a 2007-08 MCAD/Jerome Foundation Fellowship; Artist Initiative Grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board in 2007, 2009, and 2012; a residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha, NE) in 2007; and a residency at Redux Contemporary Art Center (Charleston, SC) in 2011. Miller’s work has been featured in art ltd, Art in America, The Huffington Post, and Daily Serving, and is included in two books: Nature: Inspiration for Art & Design (Monsa, 2008) and Tactile: High Touch Visuals (Die Gestalten Verlag, 2007). Miller lives and works in Good Thunder, MN. She is Associate Professor of Drawing/Foundations at Minnesota State University-Mankato. Miller received her BFA from the Rhode Island Design and her MFA from the University of Minnesota.
- In Residence - February 18 - March 1.
- Lecture Wednesday, February 20, 7:00 PM (CVA 145)
Spencer Finch
Spencer Finch was born in 1962 and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, Hamilton College in New York, and Doshisha University in Kyoto, and has exhibited internationally. Finch had a major solo exhibition What Time Is It On The Sun? at MASS MoCA, Massachusetts in 2007, which was accompanied by a monograph with essays by Susan Cross and Daniel Birnbaum. Finch was included in the Making Worlds exhibition at the 2009 Venice Biennale. His recent solo exhibition My Business, with the Cloud was at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC in 2010. There is a solo exhibition currently at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design through July 2012.
His recent public projects include an installation for The High Line in New York City, and the Glass Facade Design for The Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore. His work is held in museum collections including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
"[Spencer] Finch carefully records the invisible world, while simultaneously striving to understand what might lie beyond it. Whether he is relying on his own powers of observation or using a colorimeter, a device that reads the average color and temperature of light, the artist employs a scientific method to achieve poetic ends...Contrary to what one might expect, Finch's efforts toward accuracy- the precise measurements he takes under different conditions and at different times of day- resist, in the end, a definitive result or single empirical truth about his subject. Instead, his dogged method reinforces the fleeting, temporal nature of the observed world, illustrating his own version of a theory of relativity. In Finch's universe if you wait a few hours, the sun may very well change a leaden hue into gold. Like the ancient practitioners of the hermetic arts, who saw changes as the most fundamental truth of the universe, the artist doesn't always provide an answer in his investigations. For Finch art can do more; it can "ignite our capacity for wonder." -Excerpt from Susan Cross, What Time Is It On The Sun, pp. 9-17, 2007
- Lecture Tuesday, March 5, 4:00 PM (University Galleries)
Rachel Herman
Rachel Herman is a photographer whose recent work explores the difficult to represent topic of love. In her own words, “My interest in photography grew out of the desire to make the ineffable effable, of making the invisible visible. I am concerned with private negotiations made public, the intimate decisions we make and their outward consequences, transitory states and prolonging the suspension before the changeover to a more solid and nameable known.”
Herman's work has been exhibited nationally, including a recent solo show at Light Work in Syracuse, NY and group shows with Humble Arts (Manual Transmission in New York and the NADA Art Fair in Miami) and Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle. Other exhibitions include the Dolphin Gallery in Kansas City and HungryMan, The Experimental Station and Links Hall in Chicago. She was an Artist-in-Residence at Anderson Ranch and has participated in Review Santa Fe. She is currently an adjunct photography instructor at Columbia College in Chicago and holds an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of Chicago.
While in residence, she will also exhibit her work in University Galleries, Gallery 2.5 from April 16 - May 12. The opening reception is on Tuesday, April 16 from 5:00 - 7:00 PM.
- In Residence - March 25 - May 3.
- Lecture Wednesday, March 27, 7:00 PM (CVA 145)
