Visualizing in a New Light

The Art Center Highland Park celebrates our 60​ Anniversary with the theme ‘Celebrate the ​Future.​’ 

View it here

As we face new challenges in our world, we are proud to present our first virtual Annual Spring Benefit. On May 14 - 16, 2020, we invite people to join our “party”, to view amazing virtual exhibitions, to bid on incredible artworks and silent auction items and take part in raffle for a gorgeous pair of diamond pendant earrings from Burdeen’s Jewelry. All proceeds support the educational programming, exhibits and events TACHP provides all year round.

Luckily, TACHP selected as the Arts Honoree, Ellen Sandor, new media artist and Founder/Director of the collaborative arts group (art)n. Ellen had been working on an exhibit to coincide with our event, ​Visualizing in a New Light. ​Fortunately, the ‘shadow’ of a virus could not block her bright light of creativity and genius as we move forward, taking our event and her exhibit into a virtual realm.

Ellen and her team, Azi (Azadeh) Gholizadeh and Diana Torres, completely redesigned their work to accommodate an online experience. As it turned out, there are no better partners under these circumstances and we are thrilled to continue to host our first ever virtual fundraiser, complete with an amazing virtual exhibit.

Viewed through the lens of today’s crisis, (art)n and Ellen Sandor’s work becomes more inspiring and relevant. Throughout her career, Ellen has worked with incredible groups of gifted artists, scientists, technologists and thinkers, resulting in intense collaborations, integrating other artforms, computer graphics, medicine and science. The intense content merged into totally new mediums, PHSColograms, which deal with topics from AIDS and Papilloma viruses, to breast cancer and autism.

Ellen’s work has been groundbreaking, and today she and (art)n have exceeded expectations as they have expanded their selected images to transcend the virtual and literal, the screen and brain, the image and observer. What she and her team share with us in this exhibit is the fulfillment of the possibility that the arts have to inform and influence other areas, science, medicine, with the courage to come at issues from an entirely new direction. They take us back into the gallery, perhaps not physically, but have managed to recreate the space for all of us to enter. Like a traditional exhibition, their incredible work informs, educates and especially entertains. By merging virtual art into a true experience, they also challenge and inspire us to all “Visualize in a New Light.”

Inspired by Ellen Sandor and (art)n, TACHP had planned a juried exhibition called Art & Science, and again have transformed the art into a virtual exhibition. Opening to view on our website on May 8 through June 13, our featured artists/ guest jurors, Olea Nova and Rajee Aryal, selected sixteen artists from across the country that highlight the relationship between art and science. ​Art & Science have always been interdependent, from the chemistry of paint, the theory of color, to the visualization, illustration, and imaging within the field of science and research. TACHP sought work that addresses how art and science intersect and the ways we can interpret and manifest this intersection using the many mediums available to artists. For example, Olea Nova borrows results and concepts of scientific research in theoretical physics and cognitive science which she then combines in one work as form, color, or process. Rajee Aryal merges coding into her work, taking photographs and transforming them into painting that redefine and expand the meaning of computer science.

Congratulations accepted artists:Laura Cerf-Dahl, Susan Holtz, Jamie Kost, Robert Krawczyk, D. Lammie-Hanson, Kaitlin Maloy, Ryota Matsumoto, Chris Myhr, Diane Nelson, Mary Nott, Lindsay Olson, CV Peterson, Howard Sandroff, Heather Sepanik, Corrina Sephora, David Joel Thomas

Together, Visualizing in a New Light, Art & Science, and our exciting Virtual Benefit, help TACHP celebrate the future by bridging knowledge and imagination. This theme takes on new meaning and relevance, illustrating the power that hart has as we face new challenges in today’s world.