With a Capital P: Selections by Six Painters

The title With a Capital P is a reference to an approach that doesn’t always use paint or brush. Curated by six distinguished local painters Leslie Baum, Magalie Guérin, José Lerma, Nancy Mladenoff, Suellen Rocca, and Kay Rosen, the group exhibition consists of six rooms, each using different criteria to interpret artistic approaches and a wide-ranging conversation about process and media by artists based in the Midwest and beyond. Artists whose work will be exhibited include Zoë Charlton, Mel Cook, Julie Doucet, Mari Eastman, Paul Erschen, Susan Frankel, Carrie Gundersdorf, Dan Gunn, Portia Hein, Sophie von Hellermann, Marie Herwald Hermann, Jim Hodges, Carol Jackson, James Kao, Brian Kapernekas, Ella Kruglyanskaya, Nazafarin Lotfi, Christy Matson, Tim Nickodemus, Melissa Oresky, Christina Ramberg, Clare Rojas, Lisa Sanditz, Olivia Schreiner, Arlene Shechet, Carolyn Swiszcz, Frank Trankina, Michelle Wasson, Kevin Wolff, Scott Wolniak, and more. Works by each of the artist-curators is included in their gallery as well. 

With a Capital P Artists/Curators 

• Leslie Baum, whose contributions are the result of an ongoing plein air painting project, curated an exhibition including twelve other painters with interests in abstraction and landscape. Their pieces are hung salon style and joined by Baum’s work, which contains light washes and patches of color describing the feeling of a specific time and place.
• Magalie Guérin, whose painting process includes constantly revisiting and building compositions, chose six artists whose work in sculpture complement some of her own shape-oriented painting process and sensibilities. She states, “Oil paint is sculptural in its application; it is not a far stretch to think about sculpture when painting.”
• José Lerma, known for works that are part art history and part personal mythology, invited numerous artists to make work on paper napkins, inspired by an installation piece from Elmhurst Art Museum’s collection by Jim Hodges. In this section of the exhibition, the ordinary material of paper napkins has been transformed through the artists’ works.
• Nancy Mladenoff exhibits several pieces of her own work along with her personal art collection, which she lives with and is inspired by on a daily basis. Mladenoff's recent narrative work explores the vernacular lives of women. In her current series, a frog serves as her personal avatar, providing shared moments of humor, contemplation, and physical activity.
• Suellen Rocca, one of the original members of the Hairy Who, most recently curated The Figure and the Chicago Imagists: Selections from the Elmhurst College Art Collection at the Museum, chose to focus on multiple works by two other artists, Susan Frankel and Frank Trankina. Providing more exhibition space to each artist allowed a larger representation of their work to be shown.
• Kay Rosen’s text-based work reveals content through the formal configuration of words and letters, and their deconstruction. Rosen has dedicated her gallery solely to the work of the artist and teacher Kevin Wolff, who passed away in 2018. She explains, “His humor and wit, tinged with a contrariness, mischievousness, and sabotage, infuses most of his works.”

Image: Leslie Baum, The Shape of the Day: L.B.L.B, 2019.