Gallery Closing

Dear friends,

I find it necessary to inform you that due to major changes in the neighborhood, as well as with the gallery’s building, I decided to move to a new location in the near future. I will let you know as soon as everything is finalized, the process may take a few months. In the meantime, I will be available through email only for any of questions, requests, or comments.

info@josefglimergallery.com or glimergallery@aol.com

I hope you understand my position and I look forward to continue our special relationship. Thank you for your support in the past, present, and looking forward towards working together in the future.

Please note that as of April 29^th, 2016 the gallery will be closed and there will be no phone connection.

Best wishes,

Josef Glimer

Behind the Picture: El Lepero by Teodulo Romulo

Teodulo Romulo
El Lepero, 1981
77 x 93cm, hand-colored Mixograf

As artists and craftspeople grow more ambitious, their satisfaction with traditional processes can wane and desires to push further away from creative boundaries begin to manifest.

In the late 1970s, Mexican master artist Rufino Tomayo was asked by Luis Remba, a commercial printmaker in Mexico City, to contribute original art. Tomayo agreed, but refused to work within the bounds of traditional two-dimensional printing–he demanded more texture and dimension. Remba, originally a mechanical engineer, set about to create a machine that would allow Tomayo to print in a way that would accommodate. The end process is now termed a “Mixograf”–a mixture of graphic processes.

A Mixograf is a unique printing process in that the artist works on a beeswax plate. Cutting, drawing, and carving out the wax into a mold. The image from which would not be reversed, as with etching or lithography. To accommodate the high relief and textural nuances of the mold, a special hand-made 100% cotton paper slab is used for printing the final product. The thick paper also allows for the absorption of pigment, giving it a soft watercolor saturation.

Romulo plays with this new technique, joining Tomayo and other major Latin American artists, at the Mixografic Workshop (1979-1986). Figures, inspired by ancient Toltec and Zapotec tribal art, are etched into the surface and hand-painted.

The detail below shows the depth the artist is able to achieve with the thick cotton paper. 

 

Here, Romulo demonstrates the smaller details of the etching.

 

Playful, primitivistic iconography–characteristic of Romulo’s style–in the bird-like forms.

 

A personal note about Ellen

I remember meeting Ellen DeLoach the first day I started working at the Josef Glimer Gallery in July of this year. She and her husband had driven all the way from Atlanta, GA with a car full of paintings, drawings, and encaustics. We brought every piece up to the gallery, unwrapped them and discussed each one at length. Through the process, we all became more intrigued by her approach to art as a therapeutic expression of her difficult emotions.

However, the tumultuous paintings contrasted with her bright, energetically warm personality. She shared each piece enthusiastically and we were equally excited to be exhibiting her work. Her paintings attracted praise and meditative contemplation from collectors, students, and artists fascinated by her technique and colors only found in her native Georgia.

We loved working with her and being able to give volume to her voice. We are deeply saddened by the loss of a beautiful, vibrant soul who had so much more art to share with the world. Our condolences and thoughts go out to her family, friends, and everyone she touched with her charm and big heart.

 

Erin Doherty- Gallery Assistant

 

A Bold Return to Form for Chicago Artist Lee Tracy

When I was a young adult I longed to be free like a tumbleweed. The tiny shrub doesn’t grow upright, it grows crooked as it follows the sun. With age that tumbleweed becomes unhitched from earth. It begins to wander by rolling and hovering above the land on currents of air. Wind creates a course filled with both speed and stillness.

-Lee Tracy, Held Up

Lee Tracy, Tumbleweed on Fence, 54 x 48″, oil on canvas

In her projects, Lee Tracy embraces the energy of the terrestrial—using her hands to dig into the red clay of the New Mexico desert, ’cleansing’ symbolic shrouds in crystal lake waters in Maine, or spending days collaborating with the Onon River in Mongolia.  But these large installations are only part of her prolific media-spanning, socially-driven work over the past decade.

Lee Tracy, Blind Spots, 54 x 54″, oil on canvas

As an artist, she leaves no medium untouched– she explores painting, writing, drawing, installation and sculpture. In her oil paintings she plays with the vital lyricism of color, form, & texture creating large pieces with tremendous presence. Often playing off nature, the environment, philosophical ideas, and deep personal experiences, her works feel at once emotionally vivid and alive; projecting her voice through magnificent hues and an expressive brush.

Lee Tracy, Be, 70 x 80, oil on canvas

The upcoming exhibition hosted by the Josef Glimer Gallery and The Arts Palette, Memories from the Future, will feature Lee Tracy‘s paintings accompanied by a theatrical reading of the artist’s diary by Sheila Willis and music by cellist Lilianna Wosko.

Opening reception is Thursday, September 10th 6:00pm-9:00pm at Josef Glimer Gallery.

Reading begins at 7:30pm.

Hope to see you there!

Broke Loose and Free 48 x48, oil on canvas

To learn more about Lee Tracy, please visit http://www.leetracy.com or to inquire about the artist’s work at Josef Glimer Gallery, call 773-787-4640 or email info@josefglimergallery.com.

New Work by Atlanta Artist Ellen DeLoach

Ellen DeLoach, Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield, 2012, 22 x 30,” mixed media on paper

The American South is a land of strained history and ever-healing wounds. Artist Ellen DeLoach, a Georgia native, seeks to extract the spiritual essence of place, unearthing soil rich in both turmoil and triumph.

Mixed media works like Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield feel at once violent and graceful. In her Nesting series, DeLoach has removed the idea of a horizon line altogether, leaving raw, emotive color and texture. Though she works in a variety of materials including oil, fiber, collage and encaustic, her process is most deeply rooted in drawing. Energetic contour lines, both 2-D and 3-D, wind in and out of the artist’s thickly-layered compositions.

Ellen DeLoach, Nesting 1, 2015, 18 x 23,” oil, wax, and mixed media on canvas

DeLoach’s figurative pieces complement rather than contradict her landscapes, turning ideas of destruction, scarring, and forgiveness inward to the female form. Layers of melted, carved wax suggest both plowed soil and torn flesh. Loosely inspired by the Biblical story of Ruth, DeLoach’s women exude both physical and spiritual resilience.

Ellen DeLoach, Movement 7, 2014, 24 x 18,” mixed media with hot wax

For the last five years, DeLoach has flourished under the tutelage of Abstract Expressionist painter and Guggenheim fellow Michael David. David writes of the “fierce beauty” of DeLoach’s work, “…she creates a history, a record of loss, triumph and redemption.”

To inquire about Ellen DeLoach’s work at Josef Glimer Gallery, call 773-787-4640 or email info@josefglimergallery.com.

Behind the Picture: Grandmother with Child by Francisco Zúñiga

Francisco Zuniga (b. Costa Rica 1912-1988), Grandmother with Child, 1976

This crayon, charcoal and pastel drawing by Francisco Zúñiga was acquired by Josef Glimer Gallery from a private collection several years ago. While Zúñiga may be best known for his more stylized stone sculptures, Grandmother with Child is one of many similarly classical drawings that he produced during his lifetime.

Zúñiga was born in Guadalupe, Barrio de San José, Costa Rica on December 27, 1912. He was interested in Renaissance art and anatomy from an early age, and by fifteen, he was working as an assistant in his father’s studio of religious sculpture. He enrolled briefly in the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Mexico before pursuing art on his own, drawing inspiration from both pre-Hispanic tradition and more modern movements like German Expressionism. His work began gaining recognition by the 1930s, and in 1935, his sculpture La Maternidad won first place in the Latin American sculpture competition the Salón de Escultura en Costa Rica.

The artist traveled to Mexico City where was mentored by painter Manuel Rodriguez Lozano. He went on to become a key faculty member of La Esmeralda, the National School of Painting and Sculpture in Mexico City, where he taught for the next three decades.

Zúñiga’s forms reflect both the iconic reverence of religious sculptures and the monumental style of pre-Hispanic art. He was strongly drawn to the human figure, and many of his sculptures and drawings depict Mexico’s indigenous peoples. He associated indigenous women with the infinite cycle of nature, and held the role of mother as particularly sacred. He explained in a 1987 admittance speech to the Academy of Arts of Mexico,

“Maybe my world is that of the feminine indigenous representation, and of poses which are related to the old cultures of Middle America, that is an emotional and prevailing motive from which I reaffirm precisely a certain irrational aspect, psychological values; the heritage. I relate all that symbolically to the geological, the terrestrial of original, even more, to the erotic. Hence, the exaggeration of breasts, the stomachs, the hips. In that sense, nature is inexhaustible, since life grows and dies.”

Over the course of his career, Zúñiga traveled to San Francisco, New York City, Spain, Austria, and France, and created over thirty-five public sculptures including several hero monuments in Mexico and a group of sculptures called Tres generaciones in Sendai, Japan. His works are found in numerous permanent collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., and the San Antonio Museum of Art.

Press for The Chicago Angels Project

“…I like that ‘The Chicago Angels Project’ is straight-forward enough to be an uncluttered memorial.” —Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune

“You can feel their spirits lifting off the wall.” —Exhibition co-organizer Laurie Glenn, in an interview with WDCB Public Radio

“There’s something compelling about seeing the violence done to young people through the eyes of their peers.” —Sue Ontiveros, Chicago Sun-Times

Image by Nancy Stone, Chicago Tribune. (L to R) Christopher Love, 18, Briana Johnson, 17, Jameale Pickett, 17, Allan Green, 19, Sharrod Hill, 17 and DeAngel Groves, 15, holding up some of the artwork created by Uplift Community High School students.

The Chicago Angels Project Opening Reception

Almost a hundred faces grace the walls of Josef Glimer Gallery as part of The Chicago Angels Project, The Forgotten: Chicago Youth Lost to Gun Violence (2011/13), an exhibition exploring the devastation of gun violence in Chicago. The brightly colored linoleum block prints are by former and current students of Laura Mullkoff, an art teacher in Uptown’s Uplift Community High School. Each image memorializes a minor lost to gun violence from 2011-2013.

Set-up meant hanging 84 of these prints along the gallery’s largest wall. The result is heartwrenching for its sheer numbers but hopeful in its vibrance, at once an observance of death and a celebration of life.

The exhibit also features pieces by local and international artists Susan Aurinko, Iwona Biedermann, David Gista, Doug Fogelson, Jean-Marc Giboux, Chris Hefner, Layne Jackson, Teresa James, Marvin Tate and Lee Tracy.

Lee Tracy, Hate Ruins Everything, 2012, 27.5″ x 20,” Archival ink print on cotton rag paper, Edition of 5.

Marvin Tate, Schoolyard of Broken Dreams, 2014, 16” x 19.5” x 4,” Boxed assemblage with found objects & LED light.

Chicago Angels Project co-organizer Laurie Glenn originally met Mullkoff at a performance of The Gospel of Lovingkindness, a play examining the loss and forgiveness surrounding a teen gang slaying. Mullkoff had been working with her classes on the memorial prints since 2011, displaying them on her school’s walls to spark dialog amongst staff and students about the prevalence of violence in their community. Glenn, who runs the arts and policy salon ThinkArt, was inspired to help expand the project. Tiphanie Spencer, director of the member-based arts club The Arts Palette, soon joined the team as a collaborator.

Chicago Angels Project co-organizer Laurie Glenn discussing the exhibition

At the opening, Glenn, Spencer and Mullkoff spoke of art’s power to start movements and their hope that violence prevention becomes a priority for Chicago’s policy-makers. The evening was then turned over to Uplift student artists, who sprinkled the evening with the stories behind their prints and several stunning spoken-word performances. Click here for video of an awesome group number by Jacoby Green, Monty Williams, Jameale Pickett and Devail Wills.

A spoken word performance by Uplift Community High School students at the Chicago Angels Project opening reception

“Linoleum block prints are the perfect medium to represent these lost children,” commented gallery owner Josef Glimer on both the despair and hope that the exhibit conveys. “When you cut into a linoleum block, you’re destroying it. But in that destruction something beautiful is created.”

The Chicago Angels Project will be on display until the end of February at Josef Glimer Gallery, 207 W. Superior in Chicago.

The Chicago Angels Project at Josef Glimer Gallery

We’re currently making preparations to host the Chicago Angels Project, an exhibition highlighting youth from Chicago who lost to their lives to violence. The show, organized in collaboration with ThinkArt and The Arts Palette, will feature work by professional artists and students of Uplift Community High School. Uplift students will also perform spoken-word poetry at the February 12 opening reception.

A portion of all sales will go to three anti-violence nonprofits: Alternative Schools Network, CeaseFire, and the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence.

The Chicago Angels Project will open at Josef Glimer Gallery on February 12, 5:30-9pm. We look forward to supporting these talented students and worthwhile organizations! Click here for full invitation and RSVP information.

Uplift Community High School Students’ series of mosaic linoleum relief prints represent the spirits of youth claimed to violence on the streets of Chicago.

Ellen Holtzblatt in the Chicago Sun-Times

Our current exhibition, Ellen Holtzblatt: From Birth to Memory, received a special write-up in the Chicago Sun-Times! Critic Hedy Weiss describes Holtzblatt’s paintings as “stormy,” a perfect example of Glimer’s tastes toward “the subtly narrative.”

The exhibit was also included in The Sun-Times Mix— Cool Things to Do Dec. 12-14.