Artist Bill Conger can still remember when, at five years old, he realized his parents would eventually die.
When his son reached that age, Conger decided to mold his own early memories of death and transience into a series of sculptures now on exhibit at the Evanston Art Center, 2603 Sheridan Road.
“Remembrance,” which opened Sunday, features four artists’ selections on themes of life and death, memories and communication. The show will run through Feb. 18 at the center, which is located north of the Evanston lighthouse.
Though the focus of the exhibit is not specifically on Sept. 11, the center’s curator, John Brunetti, notes that the emotions from that day are a lingering presence in the exhibit.
“We didn’t want to do necessarily a Sept. 11 show,” Brunetti said. “But this was sort of an opportunity to touch on an issue that related to that, and yet have sort of a universal aspect to it.”
The pieces range from Conger’s trains popping out of the wall to Deborah Boardman’s interactive collection of serious thoughts and stories about life and death.
Boardman’s pious Catholic upbringing influenced her views on life after death. Her piece “Picturing Death” invites viewers to write in journals that ask questions like, “What meaning does the fact that you are going to die give to your own life?” Viewers can then take the journals with them or leave their answers for later audiences.
“I think of my work as part of my spiritual practice,” Boardman said. “It’s part of how I learn more about myself as a spiritual person, which is something that I don’t know much about. But it’s a learning process.”
Despite the exhibit’s grave subject matter, there is a hint of comedy. Conger’s exhibit features a series of sculpted hats on the floor. In one piece, Conger reverses the hat to reveal a square opening.
“I also thought it was funny that this hat would have this kind of opening, one that wouldn’t fit a human head,” Conger said. “That’s another kind of way to subvert some of the seriousness of it for me.”
Those who have seen his work agree.
“(Conger’s work) is not pretentious, but it is still serious,” said Bob Jones, a recent graduate of the art program at Illinois State University in Normal, Ill.
Michael Cook’s exhibit is a result of contacting other people with the name “Michael Cook” via the Internet. He asked for pictures, then sketched portraits in charcoal. Through this medium, Cook said he explores individuality, as well as the extent to which people are alike.
The drawings differ only slightly to explore “the minutia that makes us individual from one another,” Cook said. “You can’t decipher race or gender, it’s all sort of mixed up — they’re people.”
Alicia Henry contributes with layered multimedia works dealing more directly with cultural forms of mourning and identity. Felt cutouts connected to her childhood memories, such as masks and mathematical symbols, are layered on the floor.
“It’s a very complicated issue regarding one’s culture, one’s ethnicity, one’s economic background, one’s spiritual beliefs,” Brunetti said. “All of these artists deal richly with this issue in a complicated way.”
Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 7 to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m.
