West Chicago artist's work featured in June at Gallery 200
According to a common phrase, art is in the eye of the beholder or, in this case, the creator. Artist Heide Reimann Morris has created works of art that articulate how she views the world from her travels abroad to the nature in her own back yard.
“Perception” will be on display June 1-30, 2012 at Gallery 200, 200 Main St. in West Chicago.
Morris is a retired art teacher from West Chicago Elementary School District #33 and has enjoyed traveling nationally and internationally with her family as well as sailing Lake Michigan and the Caribbean with her husband and friends. Over the years, she has taken many photographs to represent her adventures and she uses those photographs as the foundation of her final paintings.
“As an artist I can interpret the scene as I see it and develop color and composition to get a feel of what it looks like to me. Some pieces may have humor or curiosity and some are just beautiful things I have seen and tried to capture in the painting,” said Morris. The exhibit will include the original photographs and a short explanation of her interpretations of that image next to her paintings.
Although her international travels have taken her to many exciting locations, she often finds artistic inspiration in her own back yard. Said Morris, “I spend a lot of time in my yard, so the animals and flowers give me plenty of material.”
The exhibit will focus primarily on soft pastels, although Morris works in a variety of mediums, including clay, watercolor and fiber arts. According to Morris, working with pastels allows her to use her drawing skills yet the medium acts more like paint. In several of the pieces, she has also used watercolor as an underpainting. “I have started to combine materials, so in some pieces you can see areas that look more like a watercolor and then areas that are all pastel over it,” she said.
Morris, a West Chicago resident and chairman of the West Chicago Cultural Arts Commission, has exhibited previously at Gallery 200 in soft pastels and participates in the annual “Wonderful & Wearable” accessory exhibit and sale in December with jewelry and works in fiber arts such as hats, scarves and sweaters. Her popular clay classes have developed a following by those persons interested in cultivating their artistic side while creating ghosts and little pumpkins in time for the fall holidays.
Gallery 200 is a cultural initiative supported by the City of West Chicago and the West Chicago Cultural Arts Commission, and is one more reason West Chicago was named an Illinois Arts Friendly Community in 2007. Gallery 200 is open Thursday and Friday from 12:00 - 8:00 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 12:00 to 4:00 p.m. For more information, including a list of current art classes and performing arts schedules, call (630) 293-9550 or visit www.gallery200.org.