Connecting To Our Common Ground
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An Exhibition: September 10 - October 29, 2023
Free, Open to the Public during Open Hours Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods |
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Brushwood Center, in partnership with Hyde Park Art Center and collector, artist, and environmental scientist Patric McCoy, presents an exhibition of artwork celebrating the different ways in which we connect with and are shaped by nature.
Connecting to our Common Ground is a special exhibition in honor of our 2023 Smith Nature Symposium Awardee, Baratunde Thurston. In his PBS show, America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston, Thurston travels the country to uncover our complex relationship with the outdoors. In this exhibition, we explore the ways that artists from different communities experience the natural world. How has nature been an important part of their lives? In what ways has their time outside been impacted by climate change, equity, or access? How has their relationship with nature shaped who they are as people? This exhibition is part of the 40th Annual Smith Nature Symposium Event Series. This year’s theme, Connecting To Our Common Ground, is inspired by honoree Baratunde Thurston and celebrates our 40th anniversary through an inspiring line-up of artists, programs, and change-makers. |
Featured Artists:
Paul Branton, Peter Gray, Ken Hester, Renee Robbins, Sheri Rush, Farah Salem, Preston Lewis Thomas, Julian E. Williams, Jr.
Paul Branton, Peter Gray, Ken Hester, Renee Robbins, Sheri Rush, Farah Salem, Preston Lewis Thomas, Julian E. Williams, Jr.
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Hyde Park Art Center
Hyde Park Art Center is a hub for contemporary arts in Chicago, serving as a gathering and production space for artists and the broader community to cultivate ideas, impact social change, and connect with new networks. The Art Center functions as an amplifier for today and tomorrow’s creative voices, providing the space to cultivate and create new work and connections. |
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Patric McCoy
Patric McCoy is a University of Chicago alumnus and an art collector with over 1,300 works in his Kenwood home. While he graduated from UChicago as a chemistry major and went on to work for the Environmental Protection Agency, he found his passion in art collecting and photography. Not a new discovery, he grew up with an appreciation for art encouraged by his artistic family. In 2003, he co-founded Diasporal Rhythms, an organization of Chicago-based collectors like McCoy who seek to collect contemporary art of living artists of African descent and encourage others to do the same and to engage with these works. |
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Paul Branton
Chicago artist Paul Branton spent most of his life on the city's south side. This unique urban perspective and sensibilities has lead his work. Paul has exhibited work in many galleries in and around the Chicago region and his work hangs in private collections across the country. Outside of visual art, Paul is a notable poet and filmmaker. |
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Peter Gray
I express the inherent aesthetics of science. My extensive travels in France and Asia bring additional influences. The art blends the organic nature of plants and animals with non-objective shapes and forms using found and new components. My artistic mission introduces the public to information in a nontraditional context so they seek additional knowledge. The concepts emanate from multidisciplinary biomedical and artistic training. Each piece is designed to bring the artistic aspects of science into the realm of each person to awaken the inner scientist. |
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Ken Hester
I shoot commercial work for thirty five years back in Chicago where I am originally from. I shot advertising work for different corporations such as food, product, interiors and exteriors. Black and white continues to be my first love which means I rarely shoot color images except when shooting clouds. I have also taught and given seminars over the years in photography. I have had 6 one man photography exhibits over my forty five years in photography and those have always been done in black and white. Its been quite a journey and that journey is not over yet! |
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Renee Robbins
Renee Robbins creates detailed visual environments that consider the complex relationships between humans, nature, and the cosmos. Through painting, she explores the worlds of tiny cells, flowering botanicals, aquatic species, and celestial bodies. Moving between the real and imagined, Robbins’ work brings together microscopic and telescopic viewpoints. She positions hybrid floral/faunal forms within a space that simultaneously evoke the deep sea and the cosmos. By creating associations between things that are seemingly disparate, such as plankton and stars, her work presents a question or sparks a curiosity about the universe. In this way, her images respond to biodiversity and suggest a sense of our place within the natural world and create wonder. |
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Sheri Rush
Sheri Rush (b. 1959, Fort Worth, Texas) is a Chicago-based painter whose work responds to the current world by considering the intersection of identity, landscape, and digital image. Rush's work is process-driven and as much about the tensions between abstraction and representation as it is a reflection on the restorative power of the natural world. Rush holds a BFA from Texas Christian University and an MFA from the University of Chicago. Recent exhibitions include the Rockford Art Museum, Freeport Art Museum, Ralph Arnold Gallery, The Art Center Highland Park, Arc Gallery, Hofheimer Gallery, Mu Gallery, James Baird Gallery in Newfoundland, solo shows at Hyde Park Art Center, Evanston Art Center, and Epiphany Center for the Arts. Recent awards include a fully funded residency to the Pouch Cove Foundation in Newfoundland and a grant from the Illinois Art Council Agency. |
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Farah Salem
Farah Salem is a Kuwaiti-Iraqi Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist and art therapist. Her studio and art therapy practices are bridged by socially engaged artistic and therapeutic practices. In her studio practice, through relational merging and mapping of human and geological bodies, she visions their liberation. By doing so, she examines themes of access, agency, power, the invisibly visible, and the potential erosion of the socio-cultural conditioning that distorts our shared realities. She holds an MA in Art Therapy and Counseling from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Farah’s work has been featured at Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), Expo Chicago Art Fair, American University Museum: Katzen Art Center (Washington DC), United Photo Industries (New York), Bolivia Bienal: Centro Cultural De Santa Cruz, Paris Contemporary Art Fair, Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), and Contemporary Art Platform (Kuwait). She has also completed residencies in Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago Artist Coalition, ACRE and Crossway Foundation. |
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Preston Lewis Thomas
Photographer Current Residence: Chicago, IL Shoot with intent. Every photograph is (should be) a deliberate composition. I’ve often spoken about this to anyone who will listen - perhaps to their dismay. A conversation, not gibberish. A story, even if it’s just one word, and there should be purpose. I shoot both film and digital, and I believe that the discipline of analogue (film) is greater than the anarchy of digital. This is a statement about behavior. One can embrace the discipline of analogue, regardless of the instrument or medium. My influences include the work of Gordon Parks, Richard Avedon, James Van Der Zee, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Norman Lewis, Ansel Adams, my early exposure to Verve album covers, and the lyrics of Joni Mitchell. Past exhibits include: Morning Prayer Lake - A Discussion & Slide Presentation for the Memory and Archive series at Mana Contemporary Chicago | Solo Exhibit - Lens Paintings from Dreamland - selected photographs from Havana, Cuba | Dance Encounters Architecture, symposium and photo exhibit for the Chicago Architecture Biennial. I am a recipient of the DCASE Individual Artist Grant, and a former teaching artist for the Logan Center for the Arts, at the University of Chicago. |
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Julian E. Williams, Jr.
Chicago-based artist Julian Williams received an MFA and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has taught drawing and painting at Columbia College Chicago, Evanston Art Center, Hyde Park Art Center, and in the Chicago Public Schools. Recent exhibitions of his work have been held around Chicago, including UIC, Prairie State College, and Bridgeport Art Center. Williams often teaches the Portrait and Figure in Painting and Drawing class at the Hyde Park Art Center. |
