GALEX 55 NATIONAL COMPETITION & EXHIBITION

March 5 - April 3, 2021

OF NOTE:

Due to current COVID-19 mitigations in our region, hosting an opening reception for GALEX 55 is not possible. We do encourage everyone to visit the galleries Tuesday - Friday 10:30-4:30pm, Saturdays 10:30-3pm.

GALEX is comprised of the words "Galesburg" and "Exhibit" What began as a regional competition has grown into a national juried competition and exhibition, now in its 55th year. This year's exhibition includes 76 pieces by artists from 39 states. This year's Juror, Oscar Jay Gillespie, awarded over $2,500 in cash prizes. Oscar Jay Gillespie is a Master Engraver and Professor of Art at Bradley University where he has been a member of the faculty for more than 25 years, teaching printmaking and drawing. Examples of his work may be found in more than 50 permanent collections in the United State and abroad. Since 1974, he has shown in more than 300 Solo, Juried and invitational Exhibitions. The popularity of his work and skill with the burin has made him a perennial favorite as a guest artist and lecturer.

“My career as a professor at Bradley University began with directing the Bradley National Print and Drawing Exhibition as well as my duties teaching printmaking and drawing. While our gallery director has taken over the duties of managing the show, I have been intimately involved for the entire thirty-four years of my tenure at the university. Over those years, I have had the privilege of participating in the selection and hosting of our jurors. The wonderful thing about this involvement is that there is a full and stimulating scope of visual interests in those who have come to select each show. No two jurists have come into the effort with the same curiosities or preferences. No pool of images or applicants is the same. What each selector has had in common with the others is an honest approach to putting works together with an open heart and mind. I am very inspired about having the same opportunity to select an exhibition from what I will see in the works that are submitted to this year’s Galex. It will be my honor and pleasure.”

— Oscar J. Gillespie

Juror’s Comments

Submissions to a juried exhibition, especially one like Galex that accepts work from across the artistic spectrum, come from so many personalities, abilities and sensitivities that the first act of a juror is to scan the field. This first reading is to look for those things that have presence beyond common practice and study. For me, this first bit takes more than one turn. I looked three times at every work before I began to say yes to anything. I tried to look at the process in terms of “yes, I’m sure” and “maybe this needs me to look again”. When I had gone through each work again, twice, saying yes or maybe, I had a body of images that was ready for a count. To my surprise, I had the number needed to fill the space without removing any yes votes.

In selecting awards, I looked for things with which I thought I would love to live in my own space at home or in the studio, be full of quiet aspects of harmony and balance and still have a vibrant and spirited display of light and pattern. Small works can be so rich and enigmatic that they command the room, even when that room is filled with larger color works. Color in a small gouache painting can Nuanced tone and value in a monochrome print will ever be enigmatic to my way of seeing, so this is an easy choice. Cut and formed pieces of paper in a sublime bouquet appeals to my sense of dance when a certain tune is playing. Brushwork lures me, glazed clay sculpture is fascinating, carved and printed abstractions that depict water and light at dusk or dawn are sublime. Extraordinary combinations of materials and imagery and text keep me looking for clues to their meaning. The rust of an antique tool combined with a blue, slumped glass drapery is really phenomenal, especially with the added shadows from the gallery lighting. All of these qualities make me want to make art. I am inspired from being in this space with this work.

It is a good feeling to have had the privilege to put all of this wonderful work in the same space for a time. Tuesday and her staff have done a wonderful job of organizing and hanging the show. The experience has been a very welcome and positive one for me, and I hope everyone who visits will find some joy.