Meet the Artists
Lucille Herman
Colleen Aufderheide
Nancy Behles
Colleen Aufderheide earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Miami University, Ohio and a Master of Arts in Education from North Park University in Chicago. As Chair of the Fine Arts at Loyola Academy, students inspire her daily with their creativity, passion and intellectual curiosity. Collaborating with young people and fellow artists provides new perspectives on art, and the world, fueling Colleen’s own art practice.
As an artist, Colleen blends and combines. Whether working with ideas, colors, images, textures or techniques, she aims to connect differing elements into a cohesive whole. As an art educator Colleen enjoys sharing her passion for the creative process and helping students make connections between their lives and art-making. Colleen’s process begins with sketching which provides an opportunity to study the way in which forms and spaces interconnect. When working on a more complex work of art, her goal is to engage in the art-making process at an intuitive level, letting her experience and creative insight guide the work to completion.
Printmaking has always been Colleen’s primary medium of choice and now influences her mixed-media paintings. Because the printmaking process involves layering different images to create a whole, the results can be unpredictable and exciting. Colleen enjoys the tactile nature of forming an image on one surface, applying it with ink and transferring it to paper. The same process of creating visual surprises drives her large scale paintings. Building and manipulating the surface involves a back and forth of addition and subtraction of paint and mixed media including parts of her old prints. The paintings evolve and create their own narrative woven from the images, colors and textures Colleen brings to the work each day. Visit: www.colleenaufderheide.com
Nancy Behles is a professional artist and art instructor. Her work is held in both private and corporate collections. She has been teaching oil painting, acrylic painting and oil pastel drawing at the North Shore Art League in Winnetka, IL since 2003.
Nancy’s work celebrates her love for drawing, color, and composition. Many of her paintings rely heavily upon contour lines to create rhythmic and repetitive elements. The subject that has always captured her interest has been the human figure. More recently for Nancy, the lush panoramas in and around Door County, Wisconsin have lent a new appreciation for landscape paintings, both impressionistic and abstract. This ever-changing seasonal palette continues to be an inspiration to her.
Nancy has a deep desire that her paintings reflect the joy she has felt while making them. Any day spent painting for her is better than any other day!
To view more of Nancy’s work, please visit: www.nancybehles.com
Judith Bobbe
Judith is driven by a love of color and oil paint. For her the textures of paint can be earthy, gritty, elemental, ethereal, like air, like dirt. The mutability of paint helps to convey what inspires her in the fluctuating, and enduring forces of nature. Through layers of mark making, pushing, pulling, dragging and scrubbing through paint, Judith builds and excavates. The process of working with paint leaves textures on the
canvas which evoke the impermanence of the natural world.
For Judith the mysterious sources of life are compelled to be expressed, through the elements and the pleasures of paint.
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View more of Judith’s work at: www.judithbobbe.com and follow her on Instagram @heyjude121250 and on Facebook
Carol Burin
Carol Burin grew up on Chicago’s northwest side and currently lives on Chicago’s suburban North Shore. She earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and earned a post-graduate degree from Loyola University Chicago.
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Carol has created works of art since the early 1990’s and has been mentored by many Chicago-area artists. She is a member of the North Shore Art League, the Evanston Art Center, the Chicago Alliance of Visual Artists, and Women Made Gallery.
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Painting represents a language that helps her express herself to the world. Carol works primarily in oil on canvas, but continues to experiment with other media and support to channel her expanding vision and creativity.
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Carol finds herself on a journey, albeit a winding one, from realism to pure abstraction. She has rearranged motifs into more imaginary compositions; her emotional reaction to what she observes takes precedence over visual impression. There is little in her recent paintings that one should take literally. Rather, recent works offer color, movement, and gestural strokes that reflect feeling and emotion lingering in her imagination after the original image disappears.
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Carol’s work has been exhibited at local restaurants and cafes, art association exhibits, galleries within not-for-profit institutions, and can be found in the homes of private collectors.
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When Carol is not creating two-dimensional works of art, she designs and creates jewelry that’s often influenced by the palette and sense of discovery reflected in her paintings.
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To view more of Carol's work visit: www.CarolBurinStudio.com and www.ShopCarolBurinStudio.com
Lucille Herman
Currently based in Evanston, IL., Lucille Herman has exhibited lithographs, engravings, constructions, paintings and figure drawings in the U.S. and Europe. Lucille’s 30 plus year practice as an Art Therapist and teacher in the Art Therapy Graduate program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago supports a process-oriented and transformational approach to the creation of art.
Lucille’s creative process is a search for intimacy, inspired by rawness, beauty and resplendence of nature. As she navigates the ineffability of this process, her hope is that it invites the viewers to travel with her, and creates the space necessary to reflect, explore and inform their own journey.
To view more of Lucille’s work please visit: www.lucillehermanartist.org
Bonnie J. Katz
Bonnie Katz’s current work is inspired from observing behaviors and characteristics of the animal world around her. Her summer was spent working in gardens that were frequented by rabbits and birds. Clay as her medium, she models figures both sculptural and as functional vessels. The work is smoked in a sawdust pit to give an ambiance of mystery and wonder.
Bonnie Katz is an artist and teacher within the Chicago arts community. Currently she teaches at the Evanston Art center as well as having taught at universities, public and private schools. Katz received a BFA from Washington University and an MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Her work has been featured in local and international exhibitions.
Peggy Macnamara
Peggy Macnamara is an artist, author, Illustrator and professor. She has served as the Artist-in-Residence at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History since 1990 and as Adjunct Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Macnamara has traveled the world with museum scientists to paint nature and illustrate conservation efforts. She has exhibited throughout the United States and published numerous books. A large collection of her original watercolor paintings are on permanent display at the Field Museum.
You can view more work at: www.peggymacnamara.com or follow her on Instagram: @peggymacnamarawatercolors and Facebook
Stephen Murphy
Stephen Murphy is a lifelong photographer /photo-based artist/visual storyteller. He is a graduate of the Pratt Institute and the University of Chicago, and is all-but-thesis from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Advanced Visual Studies. He is the former chair of the art department of New Trier High School, where he also taught darkroom, digital and alternative process photography. Until the pandemic he was a visiting artist at Walter Payton College Prep for three years.
Murphy has exhibited his work nationally and internationally. Some of the venues include the SE Center for Photography in Greenville, SC, the Overture Center for the Arts in Madison, WI, Praxis Gallery in Minneapolis, the Center for Photographic Arts in Carmel, CA, SOHO PHOTO in NYC, The National Library of Lithuania, Museo Leone in Vercelli, Italy, Perspective Gallery in Evanston, IL, & most recently at The International Center for Photography in NYC, selected for a global exhibition in response to the covid pandemic (the Sears School photograph).
Mary Jo O'Gara
Mary Jo has been a painter for 30 years. She was on the faculty of the North Shore Art League where she taught oil and gouache painting classes. Currently working out of her Winnetka Illinois studio, Mary Jo is represented by Ann Loucks gallery in Glencoe Illinois, Nickey Kehoe of Los Angeles, Warm Springs Gallery in Virginia and Sager Reeves Gallery in Missouri. Mary Jo has exhibited several times in the Chicagoland area, receiving awards for her outstanding work.
Mary Jo states: “Freshness and spontaneity are very important in the painting process. These are qualities I am constantly seeking.” You may view more of her work at: www.maryjoogara.com or follow her on Instagram @maryjoogara and Facebook.
Dennis B. O'Malley
An admitted lifelong lover of the city of Chicago, Dennis O’Malley has always been interested in demonstrating that fondness through his art. In 1995, he was introduced to printmaking and the artists at the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative, especially Deborah Maris Lader, Margaret Buchen and Duffy O’Connor. Printmaking in all forms became his focus and Dennis has been working at the Collaborative ever since, focusing on Chicago scenes and those limitless possibilities.
Printmaking concentration can be in intaglio printing, monotypes, or in Polaroid transfer. Dennis seems to gravitate especially to the etching process, a form of intaglio printmaking, which began in the Middle Ages and was popularized by Durer, Rembrandt and James Whistler. Childe Hassam returned to Etching in 1909 and created many plates until 1919. Intaglio printing refers to lines etched or drawn into the surface of a metal plate (either zinc or copper). The plate is dipped in acid which etches the lines into the plate. Ink is rolled over the plate and then, the plate and paper are run through the press, transferring the ink to the paper. Etching produces special aesthetic results because of the various choices of papers, inks, and printing techniques. Dennis usually finishes his pieces with watercolor and chine colle.
Collaborating with fellow printmakers allows Dennis to absorb the techniques of other skilled artists while magnifying his enjoyment at the same time. Dennis has been exposed to some special people that share their experiences. Making art in this fashion makes going to the Collaborative on Western Avenue a lot more fun for Dennis.
You can view more of Dennis’s work at: www.dennisbomalley.org
Jane Trierweiler
Janet is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she received her BFA in Studio Art, she is a faculty member, teaching drawing and painting at the Evanston Art Center and North Shore Art League. She teaches online through her studio and leads workshops at various venues in the country. Collectors include Northwestern University, the Illinois Institute of Art, Frank Thomas and Fifield Companies.
Please view more of Janet’s work at: www.janettrierweiler.com and follow her on Instagram @jtrierweilerart