"Tapestries" exhibit featuring works by Lialia Kuchma on view in Chicago (12/14/03)

"Tapestries" exhibit featuring works by Lialia Kuchma on view in Chicago

CHICAGO - An exhibit by Chicago artist Lialia Kuchma, titled "Tapestries," opened at the Chicago Cultural Center on November 22 as part of three new exhibitions at the prestigious Michigan Avenue Galleries. The exhibit, organized by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, will be on view through January 25, 2004. An opening reception was held on November 21 and a gallery talk with the artist took place on December 4.

The Chicago Cultural Center exhibit presents a sample of Ms. Kuchma' s stylistically diverse tapestries.

Experimenting with brilliant and contrasting colors, Ms. Kuchma's sensual treatment of her medium results in stunning abstract and expressionistic works, while still remaining true to the history of the art form in its technical aspects.

Ms. Kuchma offers the following conceptualization of her work:

"The slow mechanical generation of a tapestry piece allows for contemplation and the unconscious arrangement of ideas that often begin to shape the next work. The fugal aspects of line and color and the animate hand reach deep into the evolvement of the physical texture of the natural elements of the wool and cotton integrating in the final mechanical process at the loom. The emotive aspects pour and burst in color in contradiction to the logic of the line. The figurative seeks a form in the object world and the abstract the inherent projection of organization/chaos from cells of experience/relationships in conflict, love, fear and consolation.

"To confront the logic of the line with the pulse of color.

"To confront the reason of color with the pulse of the line.

"In their formality and in their ontology they are what has not been and what is."

Also featured at the Center are two other exhibits by Chicago photographers Larry Snider and Sarah Faust titled, respectively, "A World Away: Photographs by Larry Snider" (11/15/03-1/18/04) and "Sarah Faust: Bodies Beheld" (11/22/03-1/25/04).

The Chicago Cultural Center is located at 78 E. Washington St; telephone, (312) 744-6630; website, www.chicagoculturalcenter.org. Admission is free.

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Born in Ukraine, Ms. Kuchma was raised in the Ukrainian Village section of Chicago. A graduate of the University of Illinois at Champaign, Ms. Kuchma subsequently focused on printmaking and did independent studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and with masters of calligraphy and Ukrainian wood inlay.

The transition toward tapestry began in 1975 and has been the primary medium through which Ms. Kuchma has followed her muse - creating dynamic images, both abstract and figurative, in vivid color. Other art forms, in particular photography, have provided an on"going counterpoint.

Ms. Kuchma's tapestries and photographs have been extensively exhibited, both nationally and abroad. This year the artist's work was featured at such venues as the Videoformes International Exhibition of Art in Clermont-Ferrand, France; the Ukrainian National Museum in Evanston, Ill.; and the American Tapestry Biennial 4, in Chicago.

Among Ms. Kuchma's photography projects are the documentation of a major project involving work on the decorative elements in the newly constructed Ss. Volodymyr and Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church; the photographic series "Celebrations," a revisiting of the ancient rituals still celebrated in the Ukrainian Church, such as the Blessing of the Fruit and the Ice Cross (the latter, as part of Yordan, or the Feast of the Epiphany), and over 140 black and white portraits as part of a collaborative project with Irene Antonovych, titled the "Generations Project," which documents the oral histories of the older generation still living in Chicago' s Ukrainian Village.

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