Heaven Gallery

I

f Vogue is the fashion bible then Diana Vreeland is the high priestess. She preached style as a way of life and the importance of living beautifully, she said “a new dress doesn’t get you anywhere; it’s the life you’re living in the dress.”

The divinely quotable Vreeland was a magazine editor, fashion curator and life enthusiast. She was fashion advisor and lifetime friend to first lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Truman Capote described her “as one of the great Americans who had, more than anyone, improved the level of taste in American women” and former assistant Andre Leon Talley regards her as one of the most important women in his entire life.

Her impeccable appearance and grand manner was bewitching to all who knew her. Diana's was from a world of regalia, custom shoes, and fittings at courtier houses. This was a woman whose elegance extended to having the soles of her shoes polished and her dollar bills pressed.

Today, her signature epigrammatic style, her strong art direction, and attention to detail continues to inspire. At a time when costume was regarded by academics as too frivolous for serious examination, Vreeland said “Fashion is part of the daily air and it changes all the time, with all the events. You can even see the approaching of a revolution in clothes. You can see and feel everything in clothes.” Diana, recalling a Balenciaga show in the early 1960s: “One simply fainted. It was possible to blow up and die.” Although she was known to embellish, mixing truth with fiction, a term she coined as “faction.” The world she created was one of fantasy and splendor.

She wasn't a typical beauty but in the 1930's her style caught the attention of Carmel Snow, the editor and chief of Harpers Bazaar, beginning Vreeland's 26 year tenure at the magazine. She wrote a column, “Why Don’t You…” featuring style and fashion suggestions for the rich. The column was a personal credo: Why don't you be original? By the 60's, Diana would become editor and chief of Vogue, bringing the magazine to the fashion powerhouse it is today. Famous for her memos to models and photographers shooting on location, she directed fashion into fantasy to fill the pages of Vogue. She reigned there for almost a decade until she was fired in 1971, accused of being out of touch and having too expensive of an editorial style. At age 69, Vreeland began the most successful act of her career as a Special Consultant at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum. She curated 15 costume exhibitions including The World of Balenciaga, The 10's The 20's and The 30's, and Hollywood Costume. Her openings attracted celebrities, with lines out the door and turning the MET into a scene out of Studio 54.

“Give'em What They Never Knew They Wanted” tells the inspiring story of Diana Vreeland. Beyond the lacquered exterior and perfectly manicured talons lies the power to channel personal style and own it. The collection reflects Diana's love for Chanel, Balenciaga and Halston in luxury sportswear and exaggerated silhouettes. Presenting articulate clothes with alluring personality, Renovar captures Diana's sense of adventure with wildly chic animal prints, theatrical snuggies and a over-the-top kaftan jumpsuit that thrill to pure madness.

Renovar Fall 2014
8pm
$15

HERE LIES SPACE
April 4th-May 11th

work by Robert Burnier, Aron Gent, Heather Mekkelson, Robert Chase Heishman and Jessica Taylor Caponigro

An excursion longer than the journey. A mudslide over a mountain pass. A road sign blown over by the wind. Something taken, put back, and taken again. A badly worn fragment of carpet. An archipelago.

Aron Gent is an artist, photography printer and art organizer residing in Chicago, IL. He received a degree in photography from Columbia College Chicago. Gent is a co-founder of MDW Fair, Director/Founder of printing/exhibition space DOCUMENT and Board member for the ACRE Residency. His photographic work is built around project-oriented investigations including images of family, familial settings, self, and intimates that are both poignantly quotidian and quietly surreal. Gent’s work is in the collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum and has been exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center, Houston Center for Photography, Chicago Cultural Center and the Kohler Arts Center. His curatorial experience includes Transparent Reflect (2009), an exhibition of nine artists exploring portraiture and self-portraiture, and Hic et Nunc (2008), a survey of new guard photography. He currently teaches photography at the School of the Art Institute and Columbia College Chicago.

Heather Mekkelson lives and works in Chicago. Solo and two-person exhibitions include Now
Slices at 65GRAND, Invisible Apocalypse at Roots & Culture; Heather Mekkelson at +medicine
cabinet; Limited Entry at Old Gold; Debris Field at threewalls; and Out Land at STANDARD (all
Chicago, IL.) Her work has also been in group shows at The Museum of Contemporary
Photography (Chicago, IL), The Figge Art Museum (Davenport, IA), The Poor Farm (Manawa,
WI), Raid Projects (Los Angeles, CA), and Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA). Mekkelson's work has
been written about in Art Journal, Broadsheet, Time Out Chicago, New City, Chicago Tribune,
Artforum.com and others. In 2012 she became an Artadia Award Chicago awardee.

Robert Burnier is an artist and writer who lives and works in Chicago. He is an MFA candidate in Painting and Drawing at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. He is currently represented by Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, and has shown his work in numerous exhibitions in Chicago, New York, Miami and Los Angeles. He writes for Bad at Sports and Chicago Artist Writers, and has lectured at several Chicago area universities.

Born in 1984, Robert Chase Heishman completed his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2008 and his MFA from Northwestern University in 2012. Utilizing photography, sculpture, and video, his artwork explores self-referentiality, conditions of framing, flatness, and the peripheral. He has collaborated with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as a Décor Artist on the work, Split-Sides, provided artwork for Icelandic band Sigur Rós’ album BA BA TI KI DI DO, in addition to exhibiting both nationally and internationally. Heishman's work is held in the collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Walker Art Center. He currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.

Before receiving her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Jessica Taylor Caponigro attended Bryn Mawr College where she earned her BA in the History of Art. She has taught classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Olive Harvey College and currently teaches at Harold Washington College. Caponigro is also the director of Andrew Rafacz Gallery. In addition to solo and group shows in Chicago, her work has been exhibited in Long Beach, Philadelphia, and Rome. Her work is in the permanent collections at California State Long Beach and the Joan Flasch Artists’ Books Collection. More of her work can be seen at www.jtaylorcaponigro.com.

Heaven Gallery and DOCUMENT are pleased to present, Layered and Exposed, a group exhibition with artist’s Elizabeth Atterbury, Scott Cowan, Owen Kydd, Phillip Maisel and Erin Jane Nelson.

Layered and Exposed is a group exhibition exploring collage in contemporary video and photographic practices. The artists in the exhibition vary from studio-based constructions, digitally made collages and visual assemblages made using the camera.

www.wikihow.com/make-a-collage

How to Make a Collage

A collage is a work of art composed of numerous materials, such as paper, newsprint, photographs, ribbons or other objects attached to background support, such as plain paper. A collage can even be made with physical materials or electronic images, attaching them to a digital background. Originating from the French word "coller", meaning "to glue", the collage allows you to experiment with a wide range of materials to achieve amazing end results. This article provides a sample of the many possibilities limited only by your creativity and imagination.

1- Choose a style of collage. By definition, a collage should be made up of several different pieces. Those pieces can be made of all sorts of items, such as paper, yarn, fabric, stamps, magazine cut-outs, plastic, raffia, foil, labels, lids, matchsticks, corks, natural items (bark, leaves, seeds, eggshells, seashells, twigs, etc.), buttons, and so forth. You can either choose one medium such as paper or fabric, or you can make an eclectic mix, such as paper, buttons and foil

2- Choose a suitable backing. While a paper or cardboard backing is the usual choice, the backing can be anything you consider will work well. For example, a backing could be blotting paper, card stock, fabric such as a piece of hessian (burlap), newspaper, old book covers, wood, smooth bark, plastic, etc. If the surface is usable and items can be stuck to it, you can probably use it for making a collage.

3- Hoard the materials for future collages. As you become more proficient at and enthused about making collages, you'll probably start seeing opportunities in all sorts of materials. Be sure to keep a special collage materials box for collecting the pieces in.

Elizabeth Atterbury received her MFA from MassArt in 2011. She has shown her work recently at Bodega (Philadelphia), Tyler School of Art (Philadelphia), The Center for Maine Contemporary Art, and the Chelsea Art Museum (New York, in conjunction with The Collectors Guide, Vol. 2, Humble Arts Foundation). She lives and works in Portland, Maine and is currently a Visiting Lecturer in Art at Bowdoin College.

Scott Cowan lives in LA and is pursuing a masters degree in theology and philosophy. Scott was born in 1986 in Kansas City (he grew up on the Kansas side). His interests include political theology, cultural criticism, philosophy of mind, and investigating the social structures of language. Previously Cowan completed a BA in photography.

Owen Kydd lives and works in Los Angeles. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and a Masters degree from UCLA. His works have been exhibited in soloexhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery and Nicelle Beauchene Galleryin New York, and in group exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Galleryin Vancouver, the Surrey Art Gallery, and the Daegu Biennial in SouthKorea.

Phillip Maisel was born and raised in Chicago. He graduated from McGill University in Montreal with a B.S. in Psychology and from California College of the Arts in San Francisco with an MFA in Visual Arts. He is the only two-time recipient of the Yefim Cherkis Scholarship for Photographic Excellence. His work has been shown in galleries both nationally and internationally and is included in multiple collections. Phillip resides in San Francisco, and he teaches photography at California College of the Arts and The Nueva School.

Erin Jane Nelson is an artist and writer based in Oakland, California. She studied at The Cooper Union School of Art, Malmö Art Academy (Sweden), and Oxbow School (Michigan). Recent Projects include Kantan An Libe Tavleau at Forever & Always (Chicago), Love's Labor's 1 at Important Projects (Oakland), Broon published by Gottlund Verlag (Los Angeles), and www.stilllifelive.com.

Center of the Circle: Sarah Belknap & Joseph Belknap +
Everything You Need Is Already Here: Stacia Yeapanis
Opening Reception: January 17, from 7-11pm
Exhibition Dates: January 17- February 16, 2014

An exhibition of work by Sarah Belknap and Joseph Belknap explores a shared experience with the cosmos, as described by the artists themselves:

“All of us grow up with the sense that there is some personal relationship between us, ourselves, and the universe.”
—Carl Sagan

The first meteorite we physically encountered was at the Hayden Planetarium. It was the Willamette meteorite- steeped in history, controversy and legend. We hugged it and it felt like magic and our hearts were won over and we started making work that looked at the cosmos. In this new body of video, photography and sculpture we try to recreate that magic- we are looking at the moon, meteorites, comets, the myths and romance they produce, and our love of the wild

A solo exhibition by Stacia Yeapanis exploring repetition, desire and impermanence.

Everything You Need Is Already Here (2014) explores the spiritual predicament of desire, the presence of impermanence in everyday life and the possibility of responding to it with wonder and play, as opposed to anxiety. This solo exhibition brings together works from Specimens (2013), a series of pinned, shadowbox collages made of advertising images collected from glossy magazines, with an improvisational sculptural installation assembled on the floor of Heaven Gallery.

Stacia Yeapanis highlights the nature of impermanence in an installation that only lasts the length of the exhibition. One Day to Install (Heaven Gallery, Chicago) (2014) is inspired by the sites and relics of the human pursuit of a spiritual life—shrines and altars, mandalas, rock gardens and cairns, stupas, rosary beads, icons. The thousands of individual components, which will be reconfigured in future installations, are byproducts of the artist’s private meditation practice. The repeated gesture of coiling, winding, rolling easily-accessible materials, which results in an accumulation of empty centers, becomes an embodied metaphor for presence. Yeapanis selects both manufactured goods and collected detritus of her life as an artist, a consumer, a cultural participant and a waitress, because these materials represent an acceptance and engagement with what is, rather than a striving towards what should/could be.

Wild Dream: Re-imagining the Ballet Russes
Renovar Spring 2014

"We are witnesses of the greatest moment of summing up in history, in the name of a new and unknown culture, which will be created by us, and which will also sweep us away"
-Serge Diaghilev

The Ballet Russes was the impresario Serge Diaghilev's wildest dream. He created an art enterprise that manufactured excitement and celebrated modernism. His theatrical spectacles combined traditional narrative with emerging art, enabling him to promote his taste and making him reputable to his collaborators. He was neither a composer or artist, yet he managed to assert an unprecedented influence on art in the early 20th century.

Serge Diaghilev started his career as an art exhibitor, curating a show of 4000 works in St. Petersburg. He later was part of a collective that created the art journal Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) and held art lectures and discussions. Later he applied his curatorial eye to the ballet, in association with the migration of artists and nobility that fled Russia from the Bolshevik revolution, Diaghilev exported Russian culture and artists to Paris. In 1909 his Ballet Russes was a instant sensation, beginning his legendary collaborations with artists, composers, choreographers and fashion designers. Among his collaborators were Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Joan Miro, Leon Bakst, Sonia Delaunay, Jean Cocteau, Coco Chanel, Vaslav Nijinsky and Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. The Ballet Russes unification of all mediums made it much more than the ballet, with Picasso's cubism applied to set design and Chanel's simplicity to costume, it gained international fame. With glory also came controversy. Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring", inspired by Pagan rituals to spring, met with outrage for it's primitive dance and jolting score that ignited the infamous riot in 1912.

Over a hundred years later the cultural phenomenon of the Ballet Russes continues to intrigue with exhibitions popping up all over the world. Recent exhibitions included, When Art danced with Music at the National Museum in Washington D.C 2013, Elegance in Exile:Between Fashion and Costume, the Diaghilev Era at the Palazzo Moceniza Museum in Venice 2011, Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballet Russes 1909-1929 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London 2010, and Ballet Russes Art of Costume at The National Gallery in Australia 2010, all showcasing the elaborate costumes and visuals from the rich history of The Ballet Russes.

Wild Dream, Renovar's Spring 2014 collection gives in to the daydream of becoming a modern ballerina, inspired by the explosive and kinetic costumes of The Ballet Russes. While maintaining a contemporary context, Renovar pairs sumptuous blasts of color with whimsical styles to recreate spectacle. The costumes are both thrilling and shocking with bold geometry and dripping pearl
accessories.

$15 sugguested donation

Night Without Sleep

work by Jessica Bardsley, Gwynne Johnson, and Ashley Thomas

Oct 18th- 27th

“… a shadow is a simultaneous memory…”

“From the outset, perception belongs to recollection.”

Night Without Sleep presents a world drawn in shadows, revealing the contours of our guiding drives, passionate attachments, and forgotten remains. Gwynne Johnson’s photographs and objects reveal the unconscious of domestic life through the rhythms of celestial and corporal bodies. Ashley Thomas’s noir-palette drawings and collages depict the objects of her fixation larger than life or swimming in darkness, while Jessica Bardsley’s constellation of archival film and photographs activates historical residue to trace the ocean’s haunted past. The artists of Night Without Sleep remake common objects and archival materials according to their memories, perceptions, and desires, illuminating the periphery of the visible, or quietly revealing what goes unseen by day.

PROTEST HEAVEN jazz and improvised music series

FANDIÑO/KIMMEL/STEPHENSON/RIORDAN

Daniel Fandiño - guitar
Jeff Kimmel - bass clarinet
Graham Stephenson - trumpet
Marc Riordan - drums, piano

+

GHOST TREES (Charlotte, NC)

Brent Bagwell - tenor saxophone
Seth Nanaa - drums

http://www.ghost-trees.com/

9pm, donation suggested

Image by Laura Mackin

Heaven Presents "Being a Woman in an all Women Show"
18 women art exhibition

work by:
Marissa lee Benedict
Soo Shin
Sarah Weber
Bea Fremderman
Jessica Taylor Caponigro
Laura Mackin
Chelsea Culp
Ann Chen
Betsy O'Brien
Meg Duguid
Samantha Bittman
Robin Kang
Emily Green
Caroline Carlsmith
Kristina Paabus
Chloe Seibert
Selina Trepp
Ilene Godofsky

I have been accused of secretly wanting to be a man. This comment was made recently during a studio visit with a fellow artist, who saw how uncomfortable and wary I became as she steered our discussion towards gender politics.

I do not harbor the desire to undergo a sex change, but I also do not want to be seen solely as a female artist. It is from this position of defensive resistance in which I find myself "being a woman in an all women show."

There are many ways to experience discrimination in the art world; gender inequality is just one of them. To be defined by one's gender as a female artist is to be limited. A colleague recently brought to my attention the fact that the most reputable galleries here in Chicago all represent far more male artists than female. This inequality is made even worse when one realizes that our city's art schools are enrolling more women than men. An admissions counselor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago informed me that women compose roughly 70% of its student body. A woman can be trained (and pay for that training) as an artist, but it is not the same as her becoming one. "Being a woman in an all women show" is an effort to make up for this blatant discrepancy.

Not all artists consciously implicate their gender while making their work, and yet gender remains a determinant factor in how artworks are curated and disseminated. It seems unfortunate that an all-female exhibition is unusual enough to serve as a curatorial platform.

With this exhibition, Heaven gallery is pleased to exhibit the work of eighteen artists, who all happen to be women. These are good artists, not good-for-being-female artists. With this exhibition, let us hope that the exceptional work of each artist is seen as expected, and not a surprise.
Sarah Weber

Acre artists present new work

Renovar Spring 2015
Fashion based on moderism.