Normal Editions Workshop in the Wonsook Kim School of Art will host Bethany Collins as visiting artist in residence February 3–7. Collaborating with students, staff, and faculty to produce a limited edition print is the focus of the visit.

Artwork by Bethany Collins. Artwork has a deep red background with scattered and clumps of letters throughout.

Bethany Collins, Leave us no more (The Star Spangled Banner), 2019. Charcoal and acrylic on wood panel. 48 x 72 x 2 inches.
Courtesy of the artist and PATRON Gallery.
Photo credit: Jessica Bingham and Zach Buckley

An artist from Chicago, Collins works in a variety of media including drawing, painting, prints, sculptures, and artist’s books where she incorporates fractured or illegible phrases, either punishingly erased or arduously rendered. She has explored personal, bureaucratic, and lyrical language. As Holland Cotter recently wrote in The New York Times, “Language itself, viewed as intrinsically racialized, is Bethany Collins’ primary material.” The artist elaborates, “I adore language because of its potential capacity, but if language is biased and not representative of us, it’s bound to fail.”

Collins’ work was recently featured in a solo exhibition at University Galleries of Illinois State University titled Bethany Collins: A Pattern or Practice.

Normal Editions is located in 129A Center for the Visual Arts. Visitors are welcome to stop by to observe the project in process.

Bethany Collins’ visit is sponsored in part by Normal Editions, University Galleries, and the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

More information about the artist can be found on Bethany Collins’ website.