Oak Park Art League, 720 Chicago Ave.
Oak Park Art League, host
Tom Burtonwood, curator
Bernard Williams, artist
The Oak Park Art League will be hosting a meet-and-greet reception for our Terrain artist Bernard Williams and curator Tom Burtonwood at the opening reception of our September gallery exhibition "Rock-Paper-Scissors". The reception is on Friday, September 11th at OPAL's Carriage House gallery - 720 Chicago Avenue, Oak Park. Light refreshments will be served.
The Oak Park Art League is located on Chicago Avenue, 1/4 block east of Oak Park Avenue, on the north side of the street. Street parking is available along Chicago Ave. and Oak Park Ave.
Route 27
2013
Painted plywood, aluminum
6' x 6' x 20'
Bernard Williams’ studio projects investigate the complexities of American history and culture through painting, sculpture, and installation. Within these broad arenas, the work seeks an open-ended dialogue, addressing identity, flattening hierarchies, and questioning who we are collectively. Risk, adventure, conquest, personal status, privilege, and mechanical development are some of the thematic concepts which are pushed into form.
Commissioned in 2013 for the Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, Missouri, Williams’ plywood and aluminum race car is emblazoned with site specific historical references that speak to a multitude of adventures around the Mississippi River and the great risks undertaken by so many including: Early explorers (French and American), traders, boatmen, native people encountering new and dangerous invaders, and various affects from the wildly unpredictable river flows and floods. The car holds the #27, referencing the great Mississippi flood of 1927 and also the year of Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight in his Spirit of St. Louis.
In its new location in the Oak Park Art League garden courtyard for the Terrain Biennial Exhibition, Williams layers-in painted symbols to reflect Oak Park’s celebrated icons, Frank Lloyd Wright and Ernest Hemingway, both risk-takers in their own right.
The Oak Park Art League was founded after World War One, during a time when rapid changes were occurring in the American art world; Picasso, Cezanne, Matisse and other artists of the European avant garde entering the dialogue and visual vocabulary of artists, collectors and museums after the 1913 New York Armory Show and subsequent exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. In response, new art institutions were organized to provide venues for artists to discuss the radical new art forms of these European artists. In Chicago, the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (1915), Arts Club of Chicago (1916) and in 1919 artist, Carl Krafft, and other Chicago area artists began meeting in Krafft’s Oak Park home, which in 1921 would become formally known as The Austin Oak Park and River Forest Art League; renamed to the Oak Park Art League in 1970.
As a place for artist collaboration, the Art League became a mecca for notable regional artists of the time, gathering frequently for lectures and artist demonstrations. Quickly outgrowing Krafft’s home, the League rented Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio in the mid 1920’s and later moved to the 19th Century Women’s Club in the early 1930’s. Burgeoning membership necessitated a search for a permanent home for the Art League and a fundraising campaign ensued. One of the many contributors included Ernest Hemingway’s mother, Grace Hall Hemingway, a member and an accomplished artist. In 1937 the League purchased its current building, a carriage house and stable for the Victorian home that still stands to the west of the Art League. Designed in 1902 by Oak Park architect, Eben Ezra Roberts, the carriage house was converted to the Art League and gallery it is today by Roberts, also a skilled painter and an Art League member. Prior to its use as an Art League, the building was used as a private school and dance studio by the famous choreographer Doris Humphrey. A contemporary of Frank Lloyd Wright, Roberts’ carriage-house-turned-Art League displays similar characteristics as Wright’s first home; a gabled A-frame located just two blocks west on Chicago Avenue.
As one of Illinois’ longest, continually-running non-profit arts organizations, the Oak Park Art League fulfills its mission through its offering of high quality art education to people of all ages and skill levels, programs and guest lectures, artist demonstrations and critiques, plus monthly exhibition opportunities in our art gallery. Located in the center of Oak Park’s Historic District, walking distance from Frank Lloyd Wright’s famed studio and Ernest Hemingway’s birth home, the Oak Park Art League is an important landmark and lends to a tri-part dialogue about the early 20th century regional influences in art, architecture and literature that continue to define Oak Park’s cultural landscape today.
