Job Conger

Over the past decade, Robert Sill began noticing a trend that disturbed him: Gallery spaces had grown, and large-scale works tended to dominate shows. But bigger isn’t always better, and Sill, a curator at the Illinois State Museum, decided that it was time for something different. The result is think small!, an exhibit featuring an […]

Michael Dunbar still has a problem with his early school years: “When you know what you’re going to do and you have to listen to teachers and figure out ‘How does this apply to me?’, it makes school a real challenge.” Young Michael knew what he wanted to do for a living at a very early […]

Quincy philanthropist John Willis Gardner accomplished two goals in one stroke when he founded the Gardner Museum of Architecture & Design in 1977, preserving important pieces of Quincy’s history that otherwise might have ended up in landfills and saving a gorgeous stone Romanesque Revival structure that had been built in 1888 to house Quincy’s public […]

The Springfield Art Association shows off part of its outstanding collection of early-20th-century paintings at a special exhibit that continues through March 19. The show includes the first painting purchased by SAA, “Sardine Boats, Brittany.” The work by C. Arnold Slade, an internationally known artist at the time, was among several paintings displayed in the […]

Visiting the art gallery on the second floor of the Illinois State Museum is comparable to discovering a cookie factory in your neighbor’s garage, two doors away. It may be the best-kept secret in central Illinois, thanks in part to the much greater fame of the museum’s outstanding natural-history collection. ISM’s gallery currently features two […]

Call it destiny: Small-town girl or boy seeks fame and fortune in the big city and falls for an uptown opposite number, and the couple lives happily ever after. Lady Luck dealt a different hand to Gloria and Jerry Josserand, and they’ve parlayed that hand into considerable success as one of the most prolific partnerships […]

At first glance, the 80-plus paintings on display at Prairie Art Alliance are a circus of styles, techniques, and colors, ranging from black-and-white to psychedelic. What’s striking is the diversity of abstracts, dancers, wildlife, portraits, and skyscapes. More remarkable is the fact that all of these works were produced by one man: John E. Erickson. […]

Many people interested in learning how to paint on canvas turn to academe and enroll in semester-long classes. Others seek guidance from Springfield Art Association or the Prairie Art Alliance. Many would therefore be surprised to learn there exists a teacher whose approach to placing colors on cloth produces take-home results not at the end […]

In 1966, Bob Waldmire and I were enrolled at Springfield Junior College, and already he was known as an artist whose star was on the rise. And though many artists are destined to follow their stars into the sky, Bob was to follow his onto Route 66 and beyond. During a recent visit to Springfield, […]

For the first time in the history of the Prairie Art Alliance, organizers have assembled an exhibit of works by faculty at Springfield’s different institutions of higher education, including Robert Morris College, Springfield College in Illinois, Lincoln Land Community College, and the University of Illinois at Springfield. The exhibit represents a break from tradition: Usually […]