CAC displays up to 12 exhibitions annually by a variety of emerging and established artists, group shows, and student work. Our robust calendar of exhibits and public programs champions local and regional artists that reflect our diverse creative community.
Birds of the Hudson: Block Prints by Stephen Rengstorf (upper gallery)
Exhibition: May 2-29, 2024
Reception: Friday, May 17 from 4-7 PM as part of Chesterton’s Third Friday Series
This exhibition organized by the Estate of Stephen Rengstorf features woodcut and linoleum block prints created by Rengstorf, celebrating his love of raptors and the outdoors. “I create images that offer the viewer a glimpse into the daily odyssey of birds in the environment this great river provides, “ said Rengstorf of the place he called home, New York’s Hudson River Valley.
Prairies Big and Small: Photographs by Susan Kirt (lower gallery)
Exhibition: May 2-29, 2024
Reception: Friday, May 17 from 4-7 PM as part of Chesterton’s Third Friday Series
Satellite Exhibit: May 2-July 31 at Country Inn & Suite’s Das Gallery, with special reception on Thursday, June 20 from 4:30-6:30PM
Prairies Big and Small immerses the viewer in the rare and endangered Tallgrass Prairie ecosystem and the fragments of this once vast landscape. Kirt’s exceptional photographs connect people with the diverse prairie plants and animals found in the patchwork of the Chicago region’s grasslands, both in remnants and planted reconstructions.
CAC is also presenting a satellite exhibit of Kirt’s prairie photographs May 2 – July 31 at the Das Gallery located at Country Inn & Suites, 2020 LaPorte Avenue in Valparaiso. A reception will be held on Thursday June 20, 4:30 – 6:30PM.
Family Art Day: Saturday May 11, 2024 from 10 AM-2 PM.
With guidance from the CAC team, families will explore the work of late printmaker Stephen Rengstorf and photographer Susan Kirt whose practices are both motivated by their love of nature, animals, and the outdoors. Rengstorf worked with linoleum and woodcut block prints that celebrated his love of birds, and Kirt’s captivating photography highlights the endangered Tallgrass Prairie ecosystems of Chicago’s region.
Visitors can then move into the classroom to create a series of projects inspired by both Rengstorf’s and Kirt’s work. Projects will include Gelli printing with nature imagery, bird + bug drawings, and landscape collages. All supplies provided, and you may want to dress for a mess!
This event is free + all ages are welcome, however registration is required. Please register here!
Happening Next
72nd Annual Chesterton Women’s Club Exhibition
Exhibition: June 3-29, 2024
Reception: Thursday, June 6 from 4-6 PM
Recent Exhibitions at Chesterton Art Center
Dual Exhibitions: Duneland Weavers Guild and CAC Youth Art
Exhibition: April 6-29, 2024
Fiber Art ‘24: The talented artists of the Guild were busy creating original handwoven and knitted shawls, scarves, linens, wall hangings and more. Items were available for purchase on-site at the Art Center during the exhibition. Members of the Duneland Weavers’ Guild presented various weaving demonstrations at CAC throughout their exhibition.
Expressive Minds: CAC Youth Art Exhibition: Expressive Minds highlighted the work of CAC’s in-house and outreach youth + teen students, ages 5-18, who participated in CAC programming between September 2023-March 2024. This show was a celebration of the young artists who imagine, make, construct, and create with CAC.
Duneland Schools Student Exhibition
CHS Exhibition: March 2-13, 2024 | K-8 Exhibition: March 16-30, 2024
CAC welcomed our Duneland students, families, and community to this annual exhibition tradition showcasing hundreds of young artists from across the school district. Visitors enjoyed galleries full of imaginative and thoughtful works across all media created by artists from kindergarten through high school.
CHANGES: Bryana Bibbs Exhibition
Exhibition: January 8-February 29, 2024
Bryana Bibbs, 11.22.20, 2020
CAC welcomed Chicago-based artist Bryana Bibbs who works at the intersection of textiles, painting, and community-based practices. Changes features 79 weavings from her Journal Series of 2020 documenting her personal experiences in wool, dried paint, flax, recycled sari silk, degummed silk cocoons, and handmade fibers and yarns.
The weavings were hung in order chronologically throughout both galleries allowing the viewer to engage in the calendar of time depicted by the entire series.
Annual CAC Members’ Exhibition
Exhibition: December 2, 2023–January 4, 2024
Chesterton Art Center was pleased to host and celebrate 76 of our creative and supportive members with the Annual Members’ Exhibit on display. The members of Chesterton Art Center represent the truly unique and talented regional creative community. They are an integral part of CAC’s mission to serve and champion our local artists. Every media and style is typically represented at this annual exhibition, including painting, photography, sculpture, drawing, glass, wood, ceramics, and mixed media.
Visions of Reality: Duneland Photography Club
Exhibition: November 2–28, 2023
Visions of Reality showcases an array of artworks and perspectives from the Duneland Photography Club. With their technical skills and sense of creativity, they express their emotions and perceptions across a spectrum of image making from abstract compositions to realistic street photography. This exhibit highlights the diversity of these eighteen artists, a mix of both emerging and established photographers, all creating with the same medium to produce the reality each of them sees.
A Brush with Nature: Duneland Plein Air Painters
Exhibition: October 3–30, 2023
This group exhibition includes twenty-nine local artists who are part of the popular Duneland Plein Air Painters collective. Featuring works from their year of paint out sessions, this exhibit showcases some of the most beautiful locales from across our region in watercolor, acrylic and oil painting. Join us this month to celebrate their beautiful work in our galleries.
Dual Exhibitions: Suzy Vance and Teen Arts Group (TAG)
Exhibition: September 2-30, 2023
Suzy Vance: Collaborating wit the Natural World
Suzy expresses her creativity in a variety of media, one of which is Haiga. This is a combination of photography and Haiku. Seeking to foster self awareness and peace in the world, she hopes her work will draw the viewer in and imbue gratitude in each of us for all that we are and all that contributes to us...each day…every moment.
Teen Arts Group: As I See It
Their work collectively explores the perspective of leaving adolescence and entering early adulthood and how this transitionary period changes their view of the world. The imaginative ideas in their minds become tangible stories that are shared through their expressive work as they attempt to define the world as they see it.
Emily Casella: In Emotion On Entrain
Exhibition: July 8–August 30, 2023
Casella's artworks transform the Chesterton Art Center’s galleries into a train station where viewers can mingle at a cafe kiosk, hop inside a train, and disembark into a vibrant neighborhood park in full color and three dimensions. Each piece poses a different conundrum of thought about the strange motions of life propelled by what society implies, tries to control, or demands what should be versus how an individual may feel. “This show is about love, the trepidation and exasperation of waiting for the promises that media and society told us what love should be, and trying to find what it actually is on Earth.”
Dual Exhibitions: Matthew Berg and Abbie Parmele
Exhibition: May 2 -30, 2023
Matthew Berg: Lake Mill Club
Berg’s narrative paintings tell stories of an idyllic childhood at the lake surrounded by the presence of loved ones, companionship, and nature. Using a variety of surface textures, Berg aims to visually convey the delicate and delightful nature of memories of family gatherings and endless summers.
Abbie Parmele: An Invitation–Everything is Energy
Parmele’s oil paintings are a blending of ethereal abstracts and landscapes that radiate life’s energy. These heart-centered works are an invitation to experience another dimension that touches us all.
Artists in Residence of Indiana Dunes National Park: Sense of Place
Exhibition: January 17–March 1, 2023
The Indiana Dunes National Park Artist-in-Residence program has been sharing the park’s inspirational landscape for over 25 years and has served 70 artists to date. This exhibit is a survey of works held in the National Park collection, including works from 2021 and 2022 that have not yet been exhibited publicly. View this celebration of the natural world that surrounds us as seen through the eyes of these artist visitors across many media, including painting,
photography, sculpture, fiber, and mixed media.
This exhibition was made possible in partnership with Indiana Dunes National Park and was generously supported by Friends of Indiana Dunes.
Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. + Regional Artists: Mark My Words
Exhibition: October 3-November 29, 2022
CAC has a new group exhibition pairing renowned artist Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. and a large range of regional print artists on display starting October 3. Mark My Words is a visual exploration of language and how it interfaces with and shapes contemporary material culture and social concerns.
An installation of letterpress artist Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.’s bold and poignant posters of social and environmental justice messages and calls to action covers the walls. Zines and self-published small-run works by artists, illustrators, and printers from the region and beyond are also showcased along with a Pop-Up Shop of artists’ works.
Corey Hagelberg: The Design if Fine… The Design is not Fine
Exhibition: August 4–September 28, 2022
Corey Hagelberg emphasizes and embraces the opposites and contradictions in our everyday experiences blurring the lines between humor and tragedy, natural and industrial, accusation and confession, and beautiful and grotesque. His work with black and white woodcut has highlighted the relationship between the human and natural world, and his social practice addresses issues of food justice, community growing spaces, and regenerative agriculture as it relates to creating resilient local economies and a livable planet.
“The exhibition at Chesterton Art Center will consist of about 20 black and white woodcuts spanning almost 20 years of production. Some as large as 10 feet in length, this body of work speaks to the beauty of the natural world while raising questions about the human impact on the land. Some pieces act to celebrate the beauty of nature while others tell specific stories of environmental destruction on the South Shore of Lake Michigan where industry dominates the resilient, but imperiled, Indiana Dunes.” Hagelberg stated, when asked about the specific focus of the exhibition.
Stephanie Samaitis Carnell: Transition
Exhibition: July 2-28, 2022
This exhibit explores Carnell’s body of work from traditional printmaking techniques to new digital processes, a transition in media and artistic practice.
For decades, Carnell has been a committed printmaker producing works in traditional techniques such as etching, drypoint, and aquatint, but also the contemporary process of solarplate etching. Combining various techniques and fusing photography, drawing, digital processes, and printing surfaces, Carnell embraced experimentation and unanticipated results that inspired her.
Her exploration of fractal art, using calculated fractal patterns to create images, opened new doors and freedom for Carnell to play with color and presentation.
Cathy Feeman: Shadow, Mooring + Undercurrents
Exhibition: February 1–March 26, 2022
Feeman’s mixed-media works explore the relationship between our histories, or our perceived histories, and our identities. Referencing physical geography, she names communities as placeholders and purveyors of individual and collective stories to be told, honored, and not forgotten.
“The goal of this project is to make visible what is hidden, or even in danger of being lost; to honor the lives and stories of the women, past and present, who immigrated to this often forgotten corner of Chicago; and to give light to the undercurrents of these communities and stories, and the erosion of these cultural moorings,” says Feeman.
Annual Exhibitions at Chesterton Art Center
Chesterton Art Center has an enduring tradition of building strong relationships in the community. We are able to engage artists and NW Indiana community members and dynamically connect them while fulfilling our purpose as a vibrant arts hub. Our commitments to annual exhibitions is a fine example of our dedication to community engagement and long-lasting relationships. Currently, we host annual events such as Duneland Schools Corporation Student Exhibitions, Chesterton Woman’s Club Art Show, Duneland Weavers Guild, as well as, several exhibitions highlighting our own Youth Art Students and CAC Members.
