Arts Features

A wildlife photo contest in Girard goes all out on teaching students to embrace nature photography. In its fifth year, the Robert L. McKemie Award for Photographic Excellence in Outdoor and Wildlife Photography, held at North Mac High School, has developed into an anticipated attraction. The top prize is a $200 scholarship, while second- and […]

The Pharmacy Gallery and Art Space’s most recent group exhibit,, which had a two-evening opening this past Friday and Saturday, is entitled “Bio-Region.” According to promotional material, the show’s theme is “how every person explores the creativity of their unique space.” As usual, each member artist in the Springfield-based group interpreted the common idea in […]

Springfield’s independent contemporary gallery known as DEMO Project is heading into its final year. The small building on the Springfield Art Association campus is expected to meet its long-ordained demolition in either the spring or summer of 2018, in order to make way for new SAA facilities. As the inevitable end approaches, however, the high […]

Self-described by founder and director Alex Martin as “DIY rogue theater,” Springfield’s  Absurdist People’s Theater Troupe would like nothing more than to shake things up in Springfield. “I went to Blackburn College and did theater for four years,” Martin said. “When I came back here to my home community and looked around at the different […]

A new exhibit at the Illinois State Museum (ISM) aims to introduce visitors to contemporary artworks.  “Just Good Art: The Chuck Thurow Gift” opened Feb. 4. It is a collection of modern paintings donated last year to the ISM by art collector Chuck Thurow. Thurow, a former executive director at the Hyde Park Art Center […]

On Jan. 14 the downtown YMCA hosted an event called the “Cookies & Canvas Monster Mash Up,” during which kids between the ages of six and 12 were encouraged to draw depictions of monsters (or other creatures – aliens were a popular choice). The resulting works were later handed over to the member artists of […]

The current exhibit at the consistently innovative UIS Visual Arts Gallery is not your grandmother’s ceramics display. A series of evocative, colorful and otherworldly shapes, the elegant “Oblique Frontiers” offers hints of an alternate reality of tactile beauty and mysterious utility. Artist Tyler Lotz is a professor of ceramics at the Illinois State University College […]

DEMO Project may be the best-kept secret in the Springfield art scene, even after four years of presenting thoughtfully programmed monthly exhibitions by innovative artists from a variety of locations. The small house located on the Springfield Art Association campus was formerly living quarters for caretakers of the historic Edwards Place and is slated for […]

Since first opening in the summer of 2011, the Pharmacy Gallery and Art Space has transformed from a group of scrappy upstarts to something of an area institution – all without losing a combined sense of fun and exploration along with a self-evident belief in the intrinsic value of local, independently produced art. On Friday, […]

On Nov. 21, the Illinois Executive Mansion hosted an artist’s reception for Olu-Jimi Adeniyi of Springfield, resident artist for the Springfield and Central Illinois African-American History Museum. The exhibit, which completed its run on Nov. 26, is intended to be the first of many to grace the mansion’s gallery once renovations are completed sometime in […]

The Trutter Center at Lincoln Land Community College presents “Trutter: Black and White.” Art and artifacts from the travels of Springfield architect Philip Trutter and his wife, Mary Kathryn Trutter, are on display along with black and white photographs of Trutter’s architectural projects, which include Capital Airport, the Municipal Building West, Franklin Junior High School […]