Ideas I Have

Featuring the work of Benjamin Bellas, Justin Cooper, Clinton King, Noelle Mason, Ross Moreno, and Magdalen Wong

The H. F. Johnson Gallery of Art presents “Ideas I Have” Oct. 21-Nov. 20. The exhibit features works by six artists who make up the collective i.e.: Benjamin Bellas, Justin Cooper, Clinton King, Noelle Mason, Ross Moreno and Magdalen Wong.

By Noelle Mason

i.e. is a network of independent artists living and working internationally. Interdisciplinary approaches are used to articulate personal and social histories to negotiate cultural mores. Performance, photography, sculpture and video serve to manifest each individual's vision. Their materials can range from gourds, wireless microphones on kites, and a rug depicting the aerial view of the United States and Mexico. New and expanding forms of work emerge, and through individual aesthetic and conceptual strategies, the reality of a place is whimsically transformed and re-interpreted.

By Ross Moreno

Ross Moreno, an adjunct professor of art at Carthage, is one of the artists showing work in the exhibit.

"The inevitable loss of innocence that we all experience as we mature into adults is central to my practice. As a boy goes through adolescence he is forced to come to grips with pressures to be masculine," Moreno said. "In my work this transition is represented through the presentation of parts of my own awkward experience as I become a man in my own life. I play two characters; myself as a disillusioned young boy forced to deal with adult situations, and the hopeless romantic someone who is equally pathetic and heroic. Using these characters I want to create work that can exist somewhere in the middle of these two extremes."

The H.F. Johnson Gallery of Art is open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday evening, and 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday.

This project is partially sponsored by a Community Arts Assistance Program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.