The Evanston Art Center premiered the 2025 installment of its Evanston Art Center Studio Biennial Exhibition on Jan. 18, displaying the works of selected students ranging in age from the youth to the retired.
According to Emma Rose Gudewicz, director of development and exhibitions at EAC, the exhibition features a diverse plethora of work including jewelry, oil paintings, printmaking, pottery, pastel and figure sculpture. The exhibit features the work of adults who take classes at the center as well as work from students in the organization’s Youth Fine Arts program.
Gudewicz said that EAC invites people from all walks of life to enjoy art.
“It is just a place that is so accepting and dedicated to art that it makes you never want to leave,” Gudewicz said.
The exhibition presents an opportunity for EAC students to have their work featured in a gallery setting. For many of these students, the Biennial is their first time formally exhibiting their work.
Kathleen Cool, an arts educator and freelance potter of nine years, is presenting an alternative pottery piece at the gallery for the first time, marking a new step in her artistic journey.
“I was not confident enough to participate before, but I am confident now,” she said.
For the exhibition, Cool produced a bisque-fired avant-garde piece utilizing horse hair from a Raku kiln, a Japanese form of pottery.
After bisque-firing the piece, Cool brought it home and fired it in a homemade kiln, she said.
Cool teaches a Raku class to potters of all skill levels, including one in Chicago, which will begin later this month. Her students range in age from 20 to 60, she said.
Longtime Evanston resident David Moskow is also premiering his work at the gallery after a long history with the organization. He recalled frequenting EAC’s old headquarters on the Evanston lakefront as a child.
A student of the center for nearly ten years, Moskow is presenting a print drawing of a mouse emerging from an analog clock called “Hickory Dickory” in the exhibition. In his spare time, he runs a self-titled business called MoskowFineArts.
For Moskow, the reward lies in the patron’s reception.
“I hope they enjoy my print as much as I enjoyed making it,” Moskow said.
While many EAC students have non-art-related occupations, for Art History Prof. S. Hollis Clayson, work at the center intersects with her professional life. Clayson is an emerita professor at NU and also holds the title of the Bergen Evans Professor Emerita in the Humanities. At the exhibit, she presents an etched recreation of the steel sculpture room at Dia Beacon, a museum in Beacon, New York.
Clayson’s love for printmaking was born over a decade ago, after she was commissioned by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., to write an article accompanying a piece of prints.
“ I was working on prints, and I didn’t know what I was talking about,” Clayson said. “So I thought I’d better find out.”
The exhibit is on display at the Evanston Art Center until Feb. 9.
According to Gudewicz, the center allows student artists to thrive at the intersection of presentation and learning.
“It really is centered around [students] and what they’re learning,” Gudewicz said. “It’s so great to see this little community really thrive.”
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