Laurie Hogin featured in Chicago Life Magazine

*To see the article on the Chicago Life website, please click HERE

CHICAGO ARTISAN: 

Laurie Hogin 

The fine artist paints her view of the natural world, and she wants us to stop destroying it and ourselves 

BY PAMELA DITTMER MCKUEN 

When Laurie Hogin was growing up in a suburban neighborhood outside Midtown Manhattan, she found sanctuary from a chaotic home in a vast nearby woodland. She learned to name. native plants and trees and identify songbirds, wildflowers, fungi, and mosses. Deep into the flora and fauna, and accompanied by her two best friends, she found solace and healing. 

Then, their beloved forest became an illegal dumping ground heaped with household garbage and industrial waste. The outraged, saddened trio of children. raised money for the World Wildlife Fund, and Hogin made propaganda posters for her school homeroom.

"I documented what was happening by drawing it. We didn't have cameras, so I drew dumps in the woods," says Hogin, a fine artist, university professor, environmental activist and rescuer of unwanted dogs. "Essentially, I am still doing the same thing." 

Hogin is internationally recognized for her allegorical paintings of mutant animals and plants in dioramas of freakish menageries or individually posed and ornately framed, like classical still lifes. At first glance, her psychedelic-hued subjects appear as warm and inviting as a Walt Disney cartoon, but closer inspection reveals deep nuance and even horror. 

In her surreal world, remote vistas are desolate. Monkeys with human faces are screaming and gnashing. Bunnies sport protective tiger stripes. Impossibly pigmented reptiles are slithering amid human skulls. Albino animals and fruits are void of essence. 

These are not peaceable kingdoms. They have been subjugated by habitat destruction, pesticides, global warming, genetic modifications, addiction, violence, commercialism, greed and myriad other societal ills. 

"It's the difference between the way the natural environment is traditionally depicted and what's actually going on with it," Hogin says. 

Mutant Animals as Avatars 

Depending on the work, Hogin's mutants are avatars for the human race or symbols of specific human behaviors. Some compositions are political satire, and others are self-portraits. Animals are more fun for her to paint than humans, and they provide greater opportunity for colorization and caricature. A monkey brandishing a firearm or a zoned-out candy-pink guinea pig on tranquilizers is more palatable to viewers than a person doing the same thing. 

"Humans are not as separate from evolutionary biology as we might think," she says. "We, too, are animals. We do aspire to rationality, and that's important and a good thing, and something we have evolved to do. But we also are driven by our instincts as part of our evolutionary heritage." 

Every element of her work, even her titles, is layered with meaning. Firebirds, which are folkloric creatures who are reincarnated through fire, symbolize adaptation and survival. Rabbits represent feminism and ubiquity. 

CMYK Valentines, a reference to the cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink plates used in some printing processes, introduces romantic love in the digital age. 

My Pretty Ponies of the Apocalypse, a series of seven horse portraits, is a mashup of cultural touchstones: "My Little Pony" toys by Hasbro, All The Pretty Horses novel and movie, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse of Christian literature foretelling the end of times. The paintings are small, relatable 

to her collection of toy horse figurines, and each is tagged with the chemical name of a common plastic both essential to and destructive of modern life.

Art for a Healthier Society 

"I don't think you are going to change policy with artwork," she says. "What you can do is influence a culture. The fact that art exists in society makes the society healthier because it makes you think more broadly. As an artist, I do my part in that. My hope is to evoke empathy toward all creatures and the ecosystems that support them." 

Hogin earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1985, and her Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1989. While a grad student, she worked for an environmental activism group focused on pollution and human health. She also met a fellow student, Greg Boozell, a documentary photographer and filmmaker, whom she married in 1995. 

After graduation, Hogin launched her studio practice and exhibition career, but her ultimate goal was to teach. She held several adjunct positions, and in 1997 joined the faculty at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she is a professor of studio art in the School of Art and Design. 

She and Boozell reside downstate in a rural area near forest, prairie, river and trails for running and biking. They live with their two adopted mixed-breed dogs and studio companions, Reggie and Xena. 

Hogin's artistry has been exhibited at such prestigious venues as the DePaul Art Museum, DePaul University, Chicago; California Center for the Arts, Escondido; New Museum, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover; and Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans. 

She is represented by Tory Folliard Gallery in Milwaukee, Koplin Del Rio in Seattle and Littlejohn Contemporary Art in New York. 

"I have always admired Laurie's work, from her meticulous technique to the research and development that deepen the meaning of every brushstroke," says Rockford Museum of Art executive director and curator Carrie Johnson. The museum in 2020 put on an exhibition of Hogin's paintings and sculptures accompanied by her favorite songs and inspirational books. 

Says art dealer Tory Folliard: "It is that tension between the beauty of her work and the troubled scene that lies below that I find most compelling. I may not know the specifics of the chaos, but I can certainly tell that something is very wrong in this world, and I want to know why." 

Hogin's life and work have gone through many changes over the decades, but she's never left the woodland of her youth far be- hind. Metaphorically speaking, her "woods" have only expanded. 

"As you can see, I've never really stopped making those posters," she says. 

Derrick Buisch and Laurie Hogin Featured in Rockford Art Museum exhibition, "Sonic Disruptions"

*To read Press Release on the Rockford Art Museum website, please click HERE.

FEB 7–MAY 25, 2020 | ROCKFORD ART MUSEUMSPONSORED BY SMITH CHARITABLE FOUNDATION, COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF NORTHERN ILLINOIS + ROCKFORD AREA ARTS COUNCIL

This 15-week major exhibition features Derrick Buisch and Laurie Hogin who use color, imagery, narrative, and symbols to stimulate our senses and challenge our perceptions. Vibrating lines morph into playful symbols of pop culture and brilliant color combinations provide jolts of electric energy in paintings. Meant to be visually engaging and potentially unnerving, Buisch combines evocative imagery with moments of uneasy hilarity. Hogin creates beautiful yet bizarre apocalyptic landscapes and allegorical animal portraits saturated in brilliant color and imbued with elaborate narratives reflecting pop culture and the human experience. Deeply concerned by the social and political issues in our contemporary culture, her dazzling yet disturbing narrative allegories portray the disastrous effects of drug abuse, altered food sources, over-consumerism and misguided political and economic forces.

Also featured in this dynamic exhibition is a custom-designed playlist and reading list of the artists’ favorite music and books, as well as related programming.

Derrick Buisch received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, and his MFA from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. A professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison since 1997, he has exhibited regionally and nationally. Buisch is represented in several public and private collections, including Rockford Art Museum.

Laurie Hogin received her BFA from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Now Associate Director and Director of Graduate Studies at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she has exhibited across the country and around the world. Laurie Hogin is represented in numerous public and private collections, including the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Iowa; Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, Illinois; Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso, Indiana; Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; and Rockford Art Museum.

Beasts of the Painted World

To read this article on Urban Milwaukee, please click HERE.

Beasts of the Painted World

The painters in Tory Folliard’s group show capture a natural world filled with strange creatures.

Mythic Menageries Exhibit. Photo taken October 23rd, 2019 by Catherine Jozwik.

The Tory Folliard Gallery’s current exhibition, Mythic Menageries, features 11 local, regional and international artists whose works capture the duality of the natural world, as a magical place filled with fabulous colors and imagination, but also with dark psychological, environmental, and political undertones.

On display through November 23, the exhibit includes, paintings, sculptures, and other works by Christina Bothwell, Mark Chatterly, El Gato Chimney, Laurie Hogan, Flora Langlois, Michael Noland, Anne Siems, Aniela Sobieski, Fred Stonehouse, Tom Uttech, and Robin Whiteman.

Siems, Langlois and Sobieski portray their female subjects in harmony with and empowered by nature, living in utopian forests with animals as spirit guides. Sobieski’s departure from traditional portraiture illustrates birds and clouds painted on women’s faces, perhaps to suggest lofty goals and aspirations. Noland’s bold gouache-on-paper works highlight animals highly symbolic to many cultures, such as the lion and the owl.

Mythic Menageries showcases several paintings by celebrated Saukville artist Tom Uttech, whose current retrospective exhibit Into the Woods opened at theMuseum of Wisconsin Art October 12. In his meditative paintings, Uttech embraces the remote beauty of North Woods landscapes in Wisconsin and Canada, which he’s spent significant time exploring. Like many other Mythic Menageries works, the paintings explore how changes to natural habitats effect animal and plant species. In one of Uttech’s large-scale paintings, a figure with a deer head and a human body hugs its knees, perhaps in desperation.

Chatterly’s “Big Blue Dog” sculpture, a 70-inch canine with impossibly long forelegs, stands sentry in a corner near the windows while another small dog sculpture sits next to it. Is the canine fulfilling his “watchdog” duties, protecting the gallery’s works?

Like his colleague Fred Stonehouse, Milan, Italy resident El Gato Chimney’s surrealist paintings focus on weird winged beast/human hybrids. While Stonehouse sets his canvas paintings against black backgrounds and uses ornate wooden frames found in antique shops, Chimney’s watercolor and gouache paintings on paper are lighter colored and reminiscent of book illustrations. Whiteman’s four small porcelain ceramic sculptures also consist of half-human, half-animal figures. For example, ”Peccaries” depicts a headless woman with pigs in place of feet. Bothwell’s three colored cast glass figures of fish and a squirrel with acorns, also incorporate unusual materials like old toys and doll parts.

“The thread connecting all of these artists is undeniable, but it is their differences and uniquely individual visions that are the strength of this group,” writes Stonehouse in the exhibit statement. “Their common interest in the expressive and conceptual efficacy of animals as a subject links their works together, but the highly internalized content and personal richness of their imaginations are evidence of the continued relevance of animals and the natural world as worthwhile territory for the artists to explore.”

Mythic Menageries Exhibit. Photos taken October 23rd, 2019 by Catherine Jozwik.