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Beth Shadur
Press Kit
bredflame@ameritech.net
www.bethshadur.com
847.530.2558
Glacial Rapture, wc on yupo paper
Beth Shadur is an artist who has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions in the United
States and abroad, including at the Art Institute of Chicago; the Drawing Center in New York
City; the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, NY; the Butler Institute of Art in Youngstown, Ohio;
and at the Colorado Springs Art Museum, Colorado Springs, CO. She has created over 150 large
public murals as public, private and community art projects in both the United States and Great
Britain. She is an Artist-in-Education for the Illinois Arts Council in Chicago, IL. She has taught
and served as a visiting artist at many colleges and universities, including Northwestern
University, Evanston, IL; Northeast Missouri State University, Kirksville, MO; and as a visiting
artist and scholar at Paradise Valley Community College in Scottsdale, AZ. Shadur’s work
appears in many publications, books and catalogues, including Twentieth Century Watercolors,
Abbeville Press; The Special Unit, Barlinnie Prison, Its Evolution Through Art, Third Eye Centre,
Glasgow, Scotland; Community Murals: The People’s Art, Associated University Press, NJ; and
Art and Cartography, Art Institute of Chicago. Her mural work in Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow,
Scotland is included in the archives of the Peoples Palace Museum in Glasgow.
As an educator, Shadur has lectured widely on community arts in both the United States and
abroad. She has curated numerous national exhibitions, including the ongoing ‘The Poetic
Dialogue Project’, which has traveled throughout the United States. Collaborative Vision: The
Poetic Dialogue Project, featuring collaborative works by pairs of poets and artists, was
exhibited at the Chicago Cultural Center from January-April 2009, and will travel to various
university galleries. In 2006, Shadur presented at the International Conference on Arts in
Society in Edinburgh, Scotland, and her Poetic Dialogue Project was published in the
International Journal on Arts In Society. Shadur has been awarded numerous Ragdale
Fellowships and is a Thomas Watson Fellow from Brown University; from 2004-6, she served as
Executive Director of ARC Gallery, Chicago. She participated in the Cool Globes Public Art
Project in Chicago in 2007, and in 2008, was Artist-in-Residence at the Burren College of Art in
Ireland through a Governor’s Award for International Arts Exchange from the Illinois Arts
Council. In 2009, she participated in ArtPrize, Grand Rapids, MI. Most recently, Shadur was a
fellow at the Leighton Artist Colony at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Banff, Alberta, Canada.
Since 2012, Shadur serves as the Gallery Director at Prairie State College in Chicago Heights, IL.
Her work is owned in many private and public collections.
Curator
Beth Shadur has been an independent curator of exhibitions since 1994. Besides her renowned
The Poetic Dialogue Project, begun in 2004, Shadur has been the Curator for several other
national and international exhibitions. In 2005, she co-curated, with Scottish artist Miriam
Vickers, an international exchange exhibition between the artists of ARC Gallery, Chicago, and
those of Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland. The exhibition in Edinburgh was a featured
exhibition of the 2005 Edinburgh Festival. Among the other exhibitions Shadur has curated has
been “Environmental Concerns,” at Artemisia Gallery, Chicago, IL, with works addressing issues
of the environment and man’s impact on it; “East Meets West,” and “West Meets East,” two
exhibitions featuring women artists from both coasts of Florida, for the Florida Women’s
Caucus for Art.
In 1997, Shadur co-curated “Deep Water,” (with Inez Hollander) an exhibition of works in
water-based media at the Sarasota Center for Visual Arts. This exhibition challenged
perceptions of what is defined as watercolor, featuring works which takes watercolor beyond
the common idea that it is a medium of beauty, to paint ‘pretty pictures,’ but instead as a
medium to approach a contemporary image that can challenge. Included in this exhibition were
works by such artists as Sondra Freckelton, Patricia Tobacco-Forrester, Miriam Karp, Lisa
Englander, Helen Klebesadel, and Gladys Nilsson, all heavy-hitters known as masters of the
medium. This exhibition was published in an article, “Deep Water”, in Watercolor Magazine in
1997.
Convergence: The Poetic Dialogue Project, 2015, is the fourth exhibition in the ongoing Poetic
Dialogue Project of collaboration between contemporary artists and poets, creating new works
of art by responding to the muse of each other’s works in a creative dialogue. This project came
about after a wonderful meeting of hearts and minds in 2004 at the Ragdale Foundation
between Arizona poet Lois Roma-Deeley and Shadur, as both explored the parallel creative
process of artist and poet in an ongoing dialogue, and began to collaborate in their own work.
They have now collaborated on various works for 10 years.
Previously, Shadur curated three exhibitions, the first, Collaborative Vision: The Poetic Dialogue
Project in 2009, in which Shadur paired thirty-one visual artists with thirty one poets based on
the resonance of their works. Each pair were asked to develop a creative collaboration in
whatever direction they chose as a pair, in order to create a new work. This exhibition
premiered at the Chicago Cultural Center and traveled nationally.
Prior to the 2009 exhibition, there was one in 2004, in which twenty-one Chicago area visual
artists responded to the poetry of six national poets, and a second exhibition in 2005, where
works of visual art themselves become the muse for each poet in works of ‘ekphrasis’,
premiered in Chicago at ARC Gallery, the second oldest women’s cooperative in the nation,
where Shadur served as Executive Director at the time. These shows then traveled nationally,
became part of the 2004 and 2005 Chicago Humanities Festivals, were included in the
International Conference on Arts in Society in Edinburgh, Scotland in 2006, and the Project was
published in the International Journal of Arts in Society in Melbourne, Australia.
Shadur also serves as Gallery Director for the Christopher Art Gallery at Prairie State College,
where she curates five exhibitions yearly, and also oversees three student exhibitions. She has
curated important exhibitions such as The Discerning Eye, featuring photography masters
Dawoud Bey, Terry Evans, and Joseph Jachna; Narrative!, featuring Gladys Nilsson, Eleanor
Spiess-Ferris and John Pitman Weber, and many other exhibits in a wide range of media. Other
artists have included Margaret Wharton, Reginald Baylor, Jane Fulton Alt, and Bonnie Peterson.
Artist Statement
Fragility of the Sacred Series
My new works in the Fragility of the Sacred series comprise paintings and individual handmade
artists' books that include visual arts response to the poetry of Lois Roma-Deeley, with whom I
have collaborated on a number of projects since 2004. This has resulted in a series of works
both in response to her poetry, and at times, in a total collaboration with her to develop ideas
and text that are incorporated in my work. Working with text and images has informed my
practice for many years, as I have often included text in my work. The text serves to enhance,
define or even to challenge the viewer to think of connections between what might seem to be
unrelated images. I often use symbolism, taken from various world cultures, as well as personal
symbols, to create works that include images that are both beautiful but also dangerous,
including cancer cells, endangered species of plants and animals, ever changing landscapes
impacted by man's usage, and other images.
The new work integrates idea, text and visual images, with the theme of fragility. I am
undertaking this work now as I am a mid-career artist, facing aging parents and the loss of my
sister to a rare form of cancer. This theme has been present in my life in many aspects and
deserves interpretation and exploration. Roma-Deeley's poetry offers me much to interpret,
and synthesizes my personal experiences and responses to the world. I am looking at fragility of
not only the wider environment, but the fragility of our own lives, both in terms of physical
fragility but in terms of emotional fragility so common in our current world situation. As I age, I
understand more significantly how fragile our plans are for our futures, and I am using
symbolism to explore and portray these ideas.
To begin this work, I took three weeks as an Artist in Residence at the Leighton Artist
Colony, Banff Centre for the Arts. During my time there, the series transformed to Fragility of
the Sacred, as I embraced the sacred ground on which I worked. I began to think of what we
hold sacred, and how we often devalue that, and how to resolve that issue in my own life. The
sacred quality of the landscape and earth is embraced by First Nation people who live in the
Banff National Park area; I found their idea of Vision Quest within the land appealing as I
worked there, and found passionate inspiration in my research and direct work in the land. This
residency informed my ideas of the sacred, and will continue in the years to come. I think this
work will be of interest to a wide public; all can relate to issues of fragility, whether personal,
political, environmental, or spiritual.
Press Samples
“Vivid colors create an array of images that challenge the viewers who visit an exhibit of works
by Beth Shadur at the Visual Arts center….At first glance, the paintings exude a cheerful aura,
but upon further study disturbing images, such as threatening tools or machinery, puzzle the
viewer. This is exactly Shadur’s intent. “I want the images to be distrubring behind a false
veneer of comfort, humor and beauty, “ she explained. “If the pieces challenge the observer to
think, observe and question, then I have been successful in these works.” Shirley Courson, The
Entertainer, review of a solo show at the Northwest Florida Visual Arts Center.
“Images of disturbing beauty,” Jessica D’Amico, Fine Arts Editor, Phoenix Sun
“One of the most serene creations in the exhibition is “Supplication” by Beth Shadur of
Highland Park: two white, disembodied hands sit on a pedestal with a small pile of white sand
in between them. The hands are presented in an asking, almost begging gesture, reaching out,
yet with fingers folded back in a contained, asking stance. The piece is meant to be a quiet,
elegant and subtle prayer.” Robert Loerzel, Artists Respond to September 11, Pioneer Press
“The Art Institute (of Chicago) is showing, in conjunction with its show of artistic maps, some
samples of maps in art. The samples include works by well-known artists Jasper Johns, Christo,
Claes Oldenburg and Misch Kon, and not so well-known Beth Shadur. Shadur is a Chicago artist
who is represented by “I Love You-For B,” a watercolor dedicated to her then fiancé and now
husband Bruce Mainzer. Over a map of the RTA system, she has placed landmarks in their
relationship, a Totem Pole in Lincoln Park, Cubs and Sox caps, a teddy bear, a box of Cracker
Jacks. Her technique is, the Institute’s (Suzanne) McCullagh points out, mapmakerly.“She
meticulously delineates her design, returning to hand-color it with saturated watercolors
contained within the boundaries of her drawing. She also, like Barbari’s publisher, copyrighted
her image, and like Leardo more than 500 years ago, the world she charts is hers.” Charles
Leroux, Chicago Tribune, Early Mapmakers Detailed Their Own Works of Art, regarding the Art
and Cartography exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago.
“ a rare and inviting experience,” Ann Markovich, New Art Examiner review of solo exhibition
“an inventory of what Yeats called “the rag and bone shop of the heart, by Beth Shadur,” John
Russell, in article Gallery View, New York Times
“To prove how flexible the (Drawing) center’s definition of “drawing” is, the range is from Miss
Shadur’s realist watercolors, packed with autobiographical memorabilia, to Donna Slavo’s 99
brown paper shopping bags,” Grace Glueck, New York Times reviewing The Drawing Center’s
Selections 13.
Ravissant, wc and mixed media on paper
Violado, wc and mixed media on paper
On Gossamer Wings,
wc and mixed media on paper
Sanctuary, wc and mixed media on paper
Fire and Ice, mixed media hand-made artist book, with poetry by Lois Roma-Deeley
Imperiled, wc and mixed media hand-made artist book with detail of page on right
Release, wc and mixed media handmade artist’s book, with detail of page on right
Glacial Rapture, wc on yupo paper
Glow, wc on yupo paper
Sacred Rundel, wc on yupo paper
An Mullach Mor—Lonrach, wc on yupo paper
Beth Shadur
230 Ridge Road
Highland Park IL 60035
847.530.2558
www.bethshadur.com
bredflame@ameritech.net
Tremble, mixed media hand-made artist book with poetry by Lois
Roma-Deeley, addressing our fragility against gun violence