January 10 - February 11, 2005
First national juried exhibit to feature shoebox-sized art
Where can audiences find "Sleeping Butter" in her bed of glass and porcelain, a souped up pizza cutter built for the ages, and people conversing with "scissor heads," all in one location?
The public viewed artworks like these and more during Parkland Art Gallery's national juried exhibition, "Inside the Box-A Shoebox Show," which was open to all U.S. artists 18 years and older, and featured the work of 38 participants from Arizona, Ohio, California, Texas, Michigan, Missouri, and Illinois. Each art piece fits into a 4-by-12-by-8-inch box (a requirement), created through painting, sculpture, ceramics, metals, drawing, printmaking, photography, textiles, or mixed media.
Alan Leder, executive director of the Evanston Art Center in Evanston, Illinois, served as juror for "Inside the Box." Leder was the senior program director at the Illinois Arts Council for 17 years and was the assistant director of visual arts for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from Northern Illinois University and a master's degree in sculpture and filmmaking from the Art Institute of Chicago. He calls the exhibition "a potent commentary on the state of humankind at the end of this industrially and technologically driven century."
"Selecting the works for "Inside the Box-A Shoebox Show" was a joyful experience of discovery, an unearthing of a wealth of contemporary hidden treasures, a mental and emotional scavenger hunt deep into the American iconographic landscape," Leder said. "On display is a magnificent milieu of shapes, textures, color, and scale."