March 28, 2024
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A&E

Art lessons: NIU Art Museum hosts Faculty Biennial Exhibition

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The Northern Illinois University Art Museum is showing off some of its own.

The museum, located in Altgeld Hall, is hosting its Faculty Biennial Exhibition through Feb. 20. It features artwork and research by faculty members in the NIU School of Art and Design.

Biennial exhibitions are common in the art world, used to survey the lay of the land and set a scene for a particular area, said Barbara Jaffee, NIU art history professor.

“I’ve been at NIU for 15 years so I’ve been in about seven of these,” she said.

The exhibit showcases various disciplines including fibers, time arts, visual communication and illustration, painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics, printmaking, metals and jewelry, art history and art education.

Gaff plans to present the topic of her most recent research, focused on the politics surrounding the modern arts, on Tuesday at 5 p.m. in room 315 of Altgeld Hall.

“Modernism – roughly spanning 100 years from about 1860 to 1960 – was a contentious period,” she said. “A lot of traditional arts changed tremendously during those years.”

One thing that has changed in recent years is that world art has become more important, Jaffee said. Her research looks at how that has changed.

“We talk about globalization,” she said. “When so much of the modern focus was on Europe and the United States.”

Helen Gardner, an American art historian, was one of the first to incorporate a more global viewpoint into her work, Jaffee said.

“I want to go back and celebrate what Gardner did,” she said. “Her way of looking at things was completely ignored.”

Jaffee will be one of several professors to give lectures and demonstrations while the Biennial is underway. A full schedule can be found at: www.niu.edu/artmuseum/calendar.

Lee Cido is one of the professors that contributed artwork to the exhibition.

“My work is a kind of social-political commentary,” he said. “I typically construct mixed media sculptures. ... I don’t work exclusively in one material.”

Cido’s recent work – “Bale” – was a project that he had been thinking about for years, he said. The idea struck him on his long commutes from Rockford to DeKalb. The project took six weeks to complete.

“When you get out to the two-lane roads, the one thing I noticed consistently is the hay bales,” he said. “They just intrigued me with the presence and they are the dominant force on the horizon when you drive.”

While “Bale” is his most recent work, the environment and everyday images have been themes in his artistic career, he said.

“I am now glorifying what I consider to be common, everyday objects that we are all confronted with,” he said. “And I glorify them by presenting them in a unique manner. ... There are really no boundaries.”