Material Matters: Uncommon Approaches to Mixed Media

The Evanston Art Center (EAC) is excited to welcome the public to Dean Habegger’s exhibition Material Matters: Uncommon Approaches to Mixed Media!

Artist Dean Habegger works with a wide variety of materials and processes, including painting, drawing, and mixed media collage and assemblage, often incorporating dried organic materials in his works. Along with creating new works on paper, canvas, and wood, Habegger also upcycles materials and reworks older, incomplete pieces. Material Matters: Uncommon Approaches to Mixed Media is an exhibition employing some or all of his processes.

“My work usually comes about through a cyclical process I have been using for 40+ years. Usually, pieces of art develop in a linear process, working with similar ideas or processes for a time. After a while, I cycle back to my previous ways of working. Whatever is achieved in the more linear way of working then becomes infused into a future iteration of the cyclical process. I often have dozens of unfinished works sitting around in the studio, waiting for my working process to evolve in a manner that suits them and brings them to completion.” – Dean Habegger

The mixed media pieces have evolved over periods of concentration, as Habegger’s use of dried organic materials first started in the late 1980s. The current phase of his work which incorporates organic materials started in earnest around 2013 and has become one of his longest-running processes since. Thematically, Habegger’s newer works reflect on aspects of older works, and much of the pieces rely on traditional processes in still life and landscape painting and drawing. By process of reflection, he establishes a visual vocabulary that demonstrates his personal symbolism and iconography, with repetitive use of imagery and conceptual motifs.

Material Matters: Uncommon Approaches to Mixed Media will be exhibited in the Second Floor Gallery of Evanston Art Center. Opening reception is free and open to the public. This exhibition is partially funded by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the EAC’s general membership.

Evanston Art Center, a nonprofit 501 (c)(3) organization, is dedicated to fostering the appreciation and expression of the arts among diverse audiences.