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Art Department Faculty
Jack Kirkpatrick | Joseph Rejholec | Carol Weber | Sergio Gomez
Jack Kirkpatrick - Art Department Chairman
- MFA School of the Art Institute
- BFA Illinois State University
"I have a broad based background. Initially trained as a functional potter, I gradually became interested in drawing and sculpture as an expression of clay and its relationship to art making. My large-scale figurative terra cotta sculptures draw inspiration from ethnographic art and mythologic archetype."
"I make art like I cook. There's a recipe and then you forget it, making do with what's in front of you."
"Art...cooking...life...teaching... it all blends within the form, the recipe's lost, but reinvented."
- MA Northern Illinois University
- BA Fort Lewis College, Durango, CO
- Also attended Syracuse University and The Art Students League of New York.
"There are many influential elements that I must consider and understand before I can start a piece of Art work. To begin to comprehend and piece together these various facets becomes the very ideas I incorporate in my work. Being sensitive, visually aware and conscious of the mystery beyond myself becomes the spirituality of making Art for me."
"The foundation for my work comes from the experiences that have occurred in my life. Visual,emotional and psychological events that have somehow touched, challenged and changed the way I see and understand myself. These changes that have affected me, coupled with a need to express myself, develop into a conversation with abstract shape and form. The work ethic I take into my studio becomes another factor in the realization of my Art. The physical nature of the materials, processes, and tools I use sometimes dictates responses that I might incorporate in my work. This process of arranging, rearranging and establishing a juxtaposition of shapes allows me intuitively to orchestrate shapes into singular symbol. Similar to the word structure of poetic form or phrasing used in music, particularly Jazz."
"Therefore, the works that I construct and exhibit are to be engaged as a symbol on a visually intuitive level. Each piece should also involve the viewer in mutually intellectual and psychological bond between the formal elements and their metaphorical references. Consequently, I don't work with a conscious and specific conviction about each piece or group of works, but rather they are always open to change and new association."
Carol Weber
- MFA Northern Illinois University
- MA Northern Illinois University
- BA Principia College
Carol is also the curator of the Photo-Four Gallery located on SSC's main campus.
"The involvement I have with my work happens on many levels. The act of art-making combines with personal experience and spiritual awareness to express the metaphorical statements within my work. In life, as in art, there is always an unknown. The creative process allows for me an avenue to pursue this ongoing experience within a visual and mental realm. Communication through art has served mankind well throughout time. Teaching is another way for me, besides the making of art, to share my commitment to art as a fundamental communicative experience."
MFA Northern Illinois State University
MA Governors State University
BA Governors State University
360 REWIND: Sergio Gomez Time: 4:13 - File Size: 17.7 MB
Sergio Gomez is advisor for South Suburban College's Latino club ¡SOLES! (Student Organization for Latino Empowerment and Success). In 2004, Sergio co-founded 33 Collective Gallery in Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood. 33 Collective Gallery represents emerging and established Chicago artists while presenting exhibition opportunities to artists from the United States and abroad. In 2008, Sergio founded VisualArtToday.com; a curated online exhibition space for international contemporary art. In addition, Sergio is an accomplished graphic and web designer.
"The human form is the most important element in my work and it exists as an anonymous representation of the self. Objects and places are not necessarily important and rarely have a dominant part in my work. In fact, they may be absent all together. The figures exist in condensed fields of color and texture that often resemble nature forms. It is unknown whether the human figures are indoors or outdoors, perceived or remembered, standing or floating, alive or dead. In my artwork, presence overrides identity. Overall, I appeal for a sense of human awareness and spiritual consciousness."
