Alice Shaddle: Fuller Circles

Hyde Park Art Center, the renowned non-profit hub for contemporary art located on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, announces Alice Shaddle: Fuller Circles, introducing the enduring work of the artist (1928 – 2017) to new audiences in Chicago, where her practice was based for over 60 years. On view from March 23 – June 16, 2024, the exhibition and corresponding free public programs are part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that highlights the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.

Shaddle worked in many media, focusing on particular modes and materials, fearlessly and intensively, resulting in highly resolved bodies of work. The exhibition examines distinct phases in Shaddle's life and work, including an early papier maché bas relief sculpture from 1964 (one of only two known extant works from this period); shadow boxes with haunting visages from the 1970s; documentation and remnants from her immersive floor installations and related, large-scale colored pencil drawings from 1978 to 1984; and collages created during her yearslong collaboration with her close friend, artist Katheryn Kucera. The exhibition will showcase Shaddle’s elaborate processes of layering and construction, revealing meticulous modes of working and inventive use of materials.

The exhibition design incorporates architectural features from Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1892 George Blossom House in Hyde Park, where Shaddle lived for over five decades. Shaddle meticulously conserved the house and created works inspired by/under the influence of Wright’s very early Prairie School idiom, its architectural features, and the changing qualities of light.

The exhibition is informed by a three-year research project (funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art) into the lives and works of Shaddle and her former husband, artist and curator Don Baum, in which exhaustive images and information on Shaddle’s life and work were gathered and organized, and many artists, scholars, critics, and friends of Shaddle and Baum were interviewed. This project provided the curatorial team with rich resources to draw from for this exhibition. The research project was conducted by Shaddle and Baum’s son, Charles Baum, and grandson, Cain Baum, with assistance from art historian Susan Weininger. The launch of a major online catalogue raisonné of Shaddle’s and Baum’s work, including the interviews, will coincide with the exhibition, providing access to extensive research resources for artists, scholars, and future audiences.

The exhibition is curated by Nicholas Lowe and Lisa Stone, who share the impetus of creating this exhibition: “We are honored to delve deeply into Shaddle’s incredible oeuvre, which is endlessly fascinating and never exhausts its possibilities. It’s a rare pleasure to work so closely and harmoniously with Shaddle’s son and grandson, and the project has a strong ‘family spine.’ It’s most appropriate for this exhibition to be hosted by Hyde Park Art Center, a beating cultural heart in Shaddle’s world for over fifty years. Shaddle exhibited widely throughout her career, in and beyond Chicago. She has slipped from the public’s eye and is most deserving of critical, visual, and art historical attention, for work that is conceptually rich, extraordinarily crafted, and especially relevant in current efforts to reevaluate art made by women. We’re especially excited to engage many artists and scholars in the curatorial and interpretive processes. Fuller Circles will offer new audiences access to her creative vision. Alice Shaddle will open many eyes!”

The richly illustrated exhibition catalog, with installation images and contributions by artists and scholars, will be available at Hyde Park Art Center in spring 2024.

For extensive information on Alice Shaddle’s life, works, and exhibitions, see the online archive, www.shaddlebaumarchive.com, which will launch in spring 2024.

 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Alice Shaddle (1928-2017) lived and worked in Chicago and taught art classes at Hyde Park Art Center for over 50 years, informing, encouraging, and delighting countless young artists. She was a founding member and exhibited for almost four decades at Artemisia Gallery, an alternative exhibition space started by a group of women frustrated by the lack of opportunities for female artists in Chicago. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 1954 and, as a working mother, her MFA from SAIC in 1972. The artist was fearless in her experimentation with media, creating elaborate floor installations, paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, reliefs, boxed objects, magazines, and all manner of collages. As part of her inventive use of materials, Shaddle had a disciplined practice of creating and mailing hundreds of collages as gifts for her family and close friends. Shaddle’s poetry augments her varied visual works. She meticulously conserved and championed Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1892 George Blossom House on Kenwood Avenue, where she lived for over five decades. Shaddle exhibited widely and her work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Illinois State Museum, and several private collections.

For more information, please visit www.hydeparkart.org.