327 Gale Ave.

Bobbi Meier, host

Danny Orendorff, curator

Tim Brown, artist

Tim Brown is a visual artist who received his BFA from Kansas University and his Masters of Fine Arts from the University of California Santa Barbara. He has exhibited in group exhibitions around the United States and has had solo shows in both Chicago and Texas. He works as a sculptor using materials such as found wood, architectural glass, plastic wrap, office-variety acrylic diffusors, and clamp lights with party bulbs. Brown uses a variety of elements that are combined in a variety of ways to create environments for the viewer. 

http://timothynbrown.com

My sculptural work continues to be concerned with elements of the Light & Space movement combined with the materiality of Arte Povera. It uses inexpensive lighting effects and common materials to create mystical and otherworldly environments. For the Terrain Biennial, I am producing a new sculpture called Pilleus, named after a sock-like cap that was given to freed slaves in Roman times that became a New World symbol of Liberty. The Pilleus sculpture will use the form of the pilleus and combine it with a Maypole Ceremony, which is traditionally a dance and singing ceremony associated with rites of fertility that were held originally in Germany, but eventually fanned out to most regions of Europe and Jamaica.  The result of this mash-up will be a fun and active ceremony for children and adults that will not only produce a temporary wrapped sculpture in the shape of the Pilleus, but will also encourage a meditation on liberty, identity, and shelter.

Danny Orendorff is a curator, writer, teacher, and activist whose work and research in the field of contemporary arts and crafts addresses issues of race, gender, sexuality, and other historical inventions of identity. He currently works as Programs Director for Threewalls, a Chicago non-profit gallery, for whom he facilitates events and exhibitions. From 2013-2014, Orendorff was the Curator-in-Residence and Interim Director of Artistic Programs for The Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, MO, at which he organized four large group exhibitions and myriad public programs. Orendorff’s previous curated projects have been presented by The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design (Asheville, NC), SFCamerawork (San Francisco, CA), Columbia College’s Glass Curtain Gallery (Chicago, IL), Monte Vista Projects (Los Angeles, CA), Carthage College’s HF Johnson Gallery of Art (Kenosha, WI), and MU Gallery (Eindhoven, The Netherlands). As a writer, Orendorff’s journalism and criticism has been published by Art in America Online, Art21, Art Practical, Bad at Sports, Camerawork Journal of Photographic Arts, and NewCity Chicago, and he has composed exhibition essays included in publications produced by the Chicago Cultural Center, Rockford Art Museum, Grand Arts, the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, and the H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute. Orendorff is currently a Graduate Advisor in the Fiber & Material Studies program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and was previously a Lecturer at University of Missouri – Kansas City and the Kansas City Art Institute

http://www.dandannydaniel.com

Tim Brown, Schmoo II, plastic, metal, lighting, 2014