LOUISE PAPPAGEORGE

Louise
Pappageorge - Bio

Louise Pappageorge is a native of Chicago and a graduate of the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. Her work is included in many national and international private and corporate collections including the City of Chicago Merlo Library. Publications include American Craft, Fiber Arts and Home Magazines. She currently divides her time between Chicago and Michigan.

Early on through the women in her life, Louise was exposed to many types of “domestic crafts” sewing, crochet, knitting and embroidery. Although her artworks have little to do with the utility of these crafts, she retained a profound interest in the mediums and sensibilities of those domestic crafts and their implications to feminism and women’s work.

Her first investigations into fine art that employed “craft works” were loom woven wire sculptures. These woven structures employ light, color and two dimensional relief to accentuate a dynamic and changing surface much like the soothing ethereal nature of water. These ephemeral and light loving surfaces continue to be prominent in her current works and explorations.

She has worked with constructions of found objects, bones, branches, thorns and wax creating sculptures that mirror forms and rhythms of the natural environment, combining one or more objects to re-contexturalize their relationship to one another.

Her graphic works employ weaving and collaging of imagery scoured from the pages of women’s periodicals. They scrutinize and examine ideals and values of beauty, perfection and objectification imbedded covertly and subliminally into the pages of magazines, on billboards and in advertising. These commentaries on conditioning and conformity of women’s behavior linked to those expectations and societal norms culminated with her self-published book “Tina”. “Tina” is an exploration of some of the results of these assimilations and the expectations and behaviors they bring forth.

Her current body of work uses found and newly created crochet and laces to construct sculptural bodies of work that are metal leafed and patinaed creating sculptural forms from a feminized craft. She views these dimensional artworks as a dialogue about the initial feminized craft used as a background, metamorphosed into sculptural forms; no longer background but the object itself; that takes on the characteristics of the “masculine” fine art sculpture enhancing their intrinsic value morphing our physiological and psychological relationship to them.

An experiment with casting laces in bronze further exploring the contextual relationship of lace to the surface. These newly defined artworks are a defiance of invisibility and the gravity that has kept them in the background. She sees this becoming as alchemical, a phoenix from the flames so to speak. A transformation where the original material “lady work” disappears forever and a newly created artwork emerges in a form diametrically opposed to its’ origins but retaining the threadlike ethereal quality of the original.

Louise continues her inquiry into altering perception through new materials. A two week ceramic hand building intensive at Oxbow in the summer of 2019, peaked her interest into further exploring this medium. These three dimensional ceramic forms are reflections of the natural world, interior psychological spaces and folds and forms of cloth. Many are in direct dialogue with the her concurrent works in fiber.

Louises’ work and life has taken turns and detours. Within the turns and detours there exists a strong reciprocity between the back and forth shifts from woven wire, lace and crochet and graphics to nature assemblage and ceramics. There are of course the formal aspects of light, shadow, composition and surface treatments, but the underlying theme running through all is the exploration and relationship to domesticity, the natural environment both natural and societal and our emotional interconnections to process and object.

LOUISE PAPPAGEORGE CV

2021 DuMa Biennial , Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque, IA
-Awarded second place
Elkhart Juried Regional, Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart, IN
ALMA, Chicago, IL
3rd Midwest Open, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL
Our Planet, Ourselves, ARC Gallery, Chicago, IL
The Second Half, Las Laguna Art Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
Axis 16th National Juried Exhibition, Sacramento, CA
Small Wonders, 64 arts, Buchanan Center for the Arts, St Charles, IL

2020 Object and Environs, 2 person show, Oliva Gallery, Chicago, IL
Michigan Ceramics, Birmingham Blomfield Art Center, Birmingham, MI
—Honorable Mention, Vessel
42nd Elkhart Juried Regional, Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart, IN
—Awarded Best Sculpture
—Noontime Talk
2020 West Michigan Area Show, Kalamazoo Institute of Art, Kalamazoo, MI
—Awarded Best in Mixed Media
October National 2020, Gallery 510, Decatur, IL
—Awarded first place in 3D
Fantastic Fibers, Yeiser Art Center, Paducah, KY 42001
Off Center Ceramics, Blue Line Arts, Roseville, CA
Michigan Ceramics 2020, Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, Birmingham, MI
Craft in Contemporary Art, Site:Brooklyn, Brooklyn, NY
Specto Art Space, Solo Exhibition
Judy Ferrara Gallery, Spring Exhibition, Three Oaks, MI
23rd San Angelo National Ceramic Competition, San Angelo Museum of Fine Art, San Angelo, TX

2019 Innovations In Fiber A Mixed Media Exhibition, South Haven Arts Center, South Haven, MI
64 Arts, Monmouth, IL
91st Michigan Contemporary Art Exhibition Muskegon Museum of Art, Muskegon, MI
Solo Exhibition Judy Ferarra Gallery, Three Oaks, MI
Textures Kavanagh Gallery, St. Charles, IL
Michigan Fine Arts Competition, MFAC award Bloomfield Art CenterBirmingham, MI
Memorial Day Show Judith Racht Gallery, Harbert, MI
Abstractly Speaking Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, I
2ND Midwest Open Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL

2018 West Michigan Area Show Kalamazoo Institute of Art, Kalamazoo, MI
The Rockford Midwestern Biennial Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL
21st International Exhibition - awarded 3rd prize Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL
Small Works Members Show Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL

2017 Master’s Exhibition Judith Racht Gallery, Harbert, MI
2010 The Whole Nine Yards Judith Racht Gallery, Harbert, MI
Southern Illinois Artisan Shop, Whittington, IL
2009 You Think That’s Funny Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL
Cross Pollination Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL
Southern Illinois Artisan Shop Wittington, IL

2008 Clay and Fiber Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL
Annual Member’s Show Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL
F-U-N Judith Racht Gallery, Harbert, MI
Currents Studio Montclaire, Montclaire, NJ
2008 Are We There Yet? ARC Gallery, Chicago, IL
3rd Annual National Juried Exhibition Kathrine Butler Gallery, Sarasota, FLA
Yelling At Your Environment Harrrington Arts, San Francisco, CA
Graphica The Art Center, Butler, PA
Sound Opinions CD Cover WBEZ Chicago, IL


2007 SOLO SHOWS
Perfectations: The Allure of Advertising Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL
Morton Community College Gallery Cicero, IL
MC Ginsburg Objects of Art Iowa City, IA
2006 Signatures of Age Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL
Layer on Layer: A Collage Show Judith Racht Gallery, Harbert, MI
Abstract Mind Mural Aldo Castillo Gallery, Chicago, IL
- Daley Center, O’hare International Airport, Museum of Science and Industry
2004 7th Annual Chicago Art Open National Vietnam Veterans Museum, Chicago, IL
River East Art Center Chicago, IL
Around The Coyote Chicago, IL
2003 Art On Armitage Chicago, IL
1992 Modern Constructes: New Aesthetics in Fiber Art Columbia College, Chicago, IL
1989 11th Annual Vahki Exhibition Mesa, Arizona
1989 Karl Mann Showroom Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL
1988 Small Forms Textile Arts Center, Chicago, IL


Public Art MERLO LIBRARY, Collection of the City of Chicago, IL “Infra Red”
Publications American Craft, Fiberarts, Home Magazine, Textile Art Center, featured artist

COMMISSIONS AND ACQUISITIONS
Merlo Library, City of Chicago
Silver Cross Hospital, New Lenox, IL
Oracle Corporation, Redwood, CA
Barnett Bank, Jacksonville, FL
Regents Park, Hyde Park, IL
Tai Pei, Tawain
Ana Kanazawa Hotel, Tokyo, Japan
Pappageorge Haymes LTD
Homart Development, Lombard, IL
Clybourn Lofts, Chicago, IL
Numerous Private Collections

Education BFA School of the Art Institute, Chicago, IL

The word ‘thread’ is often used to represent continuity, of an idea, a theme, a life. The simple repetitive action of interlocking threads and joining pieces and sections together to create something whole, repeated among generations, handed down and shared, chronicles the continuum of life. These sculptures focus on both our relationship to thread and the larger contemplation of the role of work in culture and the art world and how historically the value of an artist’s work is determined by gender, race and class.
Our relationship with thread originates when we are born and maintains us through life. Thread swaddles, warms, heals, is with us until we are buried and then, shrouds us. Historically, with few exceptions, the products of thread are the work of women, craft not art, utilitarian not precious. Spun threads are woven, knitted, crocheted, sewn. Clothing, quilts, tapestry, tablecloths. These everyday manifestations have a power beyond their value. They connect us to our past, our family, to events, and eras. Commonplace objects with a hold on our memory and subconscious.

IL