2156 N. Damen Avenue    ·    Chicago, Illinois 60647    ·    773-525-2232

Join us for our Opening Reception  Friday, May 4 from 6-9 pm   ARC invites you to an exciting new opening at the new location in Bucktown: 2156 North Damen. Esther Charbit, the Langolier Photo Collective and Jane Stevens are presenting provocative commentaries and visions. We hope to see you there.        Exhibition dates: May 2 -26, 2012    Gallery hours: Wed to Sat 12-6 pm, and Sun. 12-4 pm

Esther Charbit   

For her new show, Opera Femmes Fatales, Esther Charbit has been inspired by her love of opera. She employs various media  to create stylized depictions of six operatic heroines. Her work emphasizes color, texture and pattern and has been influenced by the theatrical paintings of Gustav Klimt and the glittering, dramatic composition found in Tiffany glass.

Langolier Photo Collective 

The Langolier Photo Collective: Ron Grenko, David Bechtol, Hermann Wieland and Nancy Bechtol, is a Chicago-based group of photographers which engages in projects with a particular social or contemporary documentary view of historical significance. Each artist has a unique visual style of storytelling, enhanced by deep discussions of the work and resulting in a collective consciousness that radiates a passion for time, place/things, persona/beings or other lifeforms.

This photographic essay, BENSENVILLE, IL.: O'HARE AIRPORT EXPANSION PROJECT, spans a two year period, 2009-2011, documenting the area of Bensenville, Illinois as it transitions from homes to the O'Hare Airport. The photographers were drawn to this area of desolation, destruction, abandonment and ultimately reinvention and witnessed the remaining vestiges of the place that is no longer anyone's home. Then, after years of legal dispute and personal losses, the buildings were razed. Soon the ghosts still anchored there will inhabit the runways of O'Hare.

Ron Grenko is a Chicago photographer and conceptual artist with a reputation for utilizing materials of a visceral nature. 

David Bechtol is a photographer with a focus on nature, landscapes, travel and special events. 

Hermann Wieland restores landmark and historic structures and works for local Chicago art and science museums as a special projects manager.

Nancy Bechtol evolved from a fine arts, painting/multi-media background and a student of legendary Don Baum's "Hairy Who" tradition, to digital envisioning in the early 80s. 

Jane Stevens   In her exhibit, Points of Departure, Jane Stevens focuses on both personal and natural landscapes. The landscapes in these photographs are a visual metaphor for the artist's transformative process and journey into the world. In 2010, she published a book of photographs entitled "Dusty's House: A Victorian Treasure" and in 2011 she completed a book entitled" An Artist's Life: The Work and Life of Don Seiden". These two books led to this 2012 exhibition which focuses on visual images and the moments where journeys begin.