Salute

This exhibition highlights Chicago artists from 65 to 88 years old who have been working relentlessly in their field for many years.

What does it mean to sustain an art practice for many years, to delve deeply into a medium (or mediums) and participate in the vibrant, millennia-long conversation with other artists into ‘retirement age’ and beyond? Hofheimer Gallery is honored to present “Salute,” a group exhibition featuring the artwork of six acclaimed artists: Betty Cleeland, William Conger, Donna Hapac, Vera Klement, Eleanor Spiess-Ferris, and Bruce Thorn, in celebration of their contribution and commitment to making art in Chicago. 

Abstract painters Betty Cleeland and William Conger work in exact lines and formal compositions to create work that can be both energetically playful and meditative. Cleeland’s strict patterns evoke the ordered presence of mandalas and other objects of contemplative practice while Conger’s architectural and organic abstractions seem to echo our interactions with Chicago’s robust and massive infrastructure. Fellow abstract painter Bruce Thorn explores the tactile and expressive nature of paint in works that explode with measured movement. His paintings propel shape and color, guiding the viewer through the medium’s inherent energies. 

Donna Hapac’s twisting and curving sculptures, made of reed and linen and wood, evoke the living forms from which her materials have come from: the reaching of trees and other plants toward the sun; the flowing water that sustains them from above and below. Vera Klement’s paintings combine figurative and abstract elements to present what could be called a poetic logic, a logic that haunts not unlike a dream or distant memory. Pushing this poetic logic even further, Eleanor Spiess-Ferris paints in a surrealist, magical style, one that makes real the ‘unreal,’ and connects us to the mythic in surprising and sometimes ineffable ways. 

In this exhibition, we see the expert work that results from a lifetime of practice and dedication. Come and celebrate these six remarkable artists with us during Chicago Artists’ Month, 2018.

– Salute, by Kate Ingold