News

Elmhurst Artists’ Guild Presents

Connie & Steve Nestler: "Nature & Nurture"

August 29 – October 8
Reception: Friday, September 3, 7 – 9pm

The Elmhurst Artists’ Guild (“EAG”) is pleased to announce Nature & Nurture, an exhibition featuring original abstract paintings by Connie Nestler and photographs by Steve Nestler, both EAG members.  

Connie describes her paintings as something she nurtures from conception. “Since it is all abstract, everything comes from within and evolves through the creative process of painting,” Connie explained. That inner evolution is obvious when one compares two paintings in the show, “Circling” and “Ode to F. Gehry.” While both paintings are abstract, they have very different looks, with one significant commonality. “Circling” is light and effervescent, with a series of multicolored circles bubbling across the canvas, while “Ode to F. Gehry” is an explosion of heavy, angular shapes with a skyscraper in the background. Both artworks, however, are very centered, with the geometric shapes seeming to emanate and grow from a center core of the canvas.

Unlike wife Connie’s paintings, Steve's photography primarily features subjects created by nature. Through the lens, he chronicles outdoor scenes from the Jackson Hole area of Wyoming and Grand Teton National Park. His love of the western wilderness and all creatures in it is evident in his exquisite photograph, “Madison Mist,” in which Steve has captured the serenity of a herd of elk browsing along a riverbank in the early morning lavender mist.

The exhibition will be held in the Elmhurst Artists’ Guild Gallery, located in the Elmhurst Art Museum, 150 Cottage Hill Ave., Elmhurst, IL 60126. The exhibition runs from August 29 through October 8, 2010. The artists’ reception, open to the public, will be held Friday, September 3, from 7 to 9 pm. Those who attend can meet the artists and learn more about their work.

Artworks can be viewed and purchased at the reception and during regular museum hours 10am-5pm Tuesday, Thursday, Friday ,Saturday; 10am-8pm Wednesday.  Regular admission is $7 adults, $5 seniors/students, free under 12, free for all visitors at the reception and every Tuesday.

Elmhurst Artists’ Guild Presents

Robert Kameczura: "Contemporary Old Master"

October 10 to November 19
Reception: Friday, October 15, 7 – 9pm

“The next Ed Paschke.  One of Chicago’s finest artists, a master painter and Chicago’s genius of the gicleé print.”—Collector June Spiezer, whose collection of Chicago Art in the Rockford Art Museum is considered the largest of its kind

The Elmhurst Artists’ Guild is pleased to announce “Robert Kameczura: Contemporary Old Master,” an exhibition featuring the epically scaled paintings and prints of Robert Kameczura to be held in the Elmhurst Artists’ Guild Gallery in the Elmhurst Art Museum Building, 150 Cottage Hill Ave., Elmhurst, IL 60126. The exhibition runs from October 10 to November 19, 2010. A reception, open to the public, will be held on Friday, October 15, 2010 from 7 to 9pm, affording those in attendance an opportunity to meet the artist.

Robert Kameczura is an artist and a scholar whose prolific and diverse efforts have had a significant impact on every corner of the Chicago arts scene. Called “one of Chicago’s Renaissance men” for his numerous activities in so many fields, Kameczura has mastered the arts of painting in acrylics and watercolor, drawing, silkscreen, black and white photography, gicleé work and calligraphy. Regardless of the media, his art possesses a Chicago flavor – a strong narrative and symbolist bent which conjures up the illusion of other worlds reaching far beyond what is visible on the canvas.

While some have noted how well Kameczura’s art fits into the late 20th century Chicago tradition, others have recognized that these same qualities link Kameczura to a much older lineage, and he has quite rightly been called a “Contemporary Old Master.” Like the old masters, his art begins with strength in the fundamentals. He is a skilled and painstaking draftsman, lavishing much attention on every detail, as well as a masterful colorist. As part of a line stretching from Renaissance artists such as Albrecht Dürer right up to H.C. Westermann, Kameczura’s art is meticulously crafted, beautiful and significant simply as an object, even without the refining gloss of narrative meaning.

Nevertheless, that omnipresent refining gloss is what defines a work as a Kameczura. As it was with the old masters, a Kameczura painting begins with a story. Penelope and Her Tapestry, for instance, contains all of the familiar narrative elements found in the Odyssey: Penelope and her maids, the suitors, the act of weaving by day and the surreptitious act of unweaving by night. Kameczura goes one level deeper, though, and also depicts the allegorical meanings which prop up the narrative. His work is the complete package, resonating with viewers as art, as object, as story, and as life lesson, and it is the totality of this which makes him deserving of the accolade, “Contemporary Old Master.”

The exhibition can be viewed during the reception and regular museum hours on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 10am to 5 pm, and on Wednesdays from 10 am to 8 pm.  Admission is $7 adults, $5 seniors /students, free under 12, free for all visitors at the reception and every Tuesday. 

About the Elmhurst Artists’ Guild Gallery

The Elmhurst Artists’ Guild Gallery is a not for profit art gallery owned by the Elmhurst Artists’ Guild, featuring original contemporary artworks in a variety of styles and media. Each year it hosts several group shows featuring the artwork of Guild members along with an invitation show for a significant local artist and the annual juried National Art Premiere group show drawing entries from across the country

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