Place and Memory CINDY LESPERANCE, CAROLYN ALBRACHT, & JEANINE COUPE RYDING

Located in the Community Gallery

Exhibit Reception: Join us at our exhibit reception on June 9, 6-8pm at the Octagon! Come meet some of the artists, see the show, listen to our crowdsourced exhibit playlist, and if weather permits, hang out on the patio and enjoy some light refreshments! Masks are required for events.

Artist Panel: Register here to join a virtual panel event featuring the artists of Place and Memory! Carolyn Albracht, Jeanine Coupe Ryding, and Cindy Lesperance will discuss their artistic process, their artwork that is currently exhibiting at the Octagon Center for the Arts, and how their work reflects on place and memory. Tuesday, June 14th, 6:00-7:00 p.m. CT, Zoom.

Gallery Show Statement: Place and Memory

Sometimes a place is experienced from the ground. Sitting in the window of a rural coffee shop, imagining the lives of passersby. Or walking through the prairie as birds flit from one tall stem of grass to another as the sun beats down overhead. Place is made from the detailed goings on, the minutia, of everyday life within local communities and ecosystems. 

Sometimes a place is viewed from above, distilled down into forms, colors, and textures. As the scale expands, the intricacies of place become less important. The composition of the geographies and tone of the topographies as the sun casts shadows across the landscape take precedence over the experiences of the people who live there or the ecosystems those people exist within. 

Sometimes a place is built from the experiences had, the relationships created, and the opportunities taken by those who lived there or perhaps those who passed through. Humans bestow emotional meaning. Meaning creates place. Over time, the place is remembered and re-remembered. The remembering is reflective and performative. As memories are made and re-made, the place changes. 

The concept of place, or the historical progression of place as an idea, traces back to Aristotle and Plato in Ancient Greece. Plato wrote of place as simply a location, and Aristotle defined place as a container ¹. Place can be a physical environment such as a city, town, or neighborhood; a complicated interplay between people and the environment; or, more obscurely, a way of knowing ^2. Place is as much a way of knowing as it is a thing in the world ^3. With the addition of meaningfulness through experience and memories, a geographical place has a sense of place, or essence, formed by the subjective and emotional attachment that people have to place as profound centers of human existence. ⁴

Place and Memory is a compilation of three artists. Who come from different backgrounds. Who have different lived experiences. Who, using different media, share their conception of place, and the importance of memory, through their artwork. 

^[1] Tim Cresswell, Place: An Introduction (Chichester, United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2015), p. 25.

^[2] Ibid., p. 18.

^[3] Ibid., p. 18.

^[4] John A. Agnew, Place and Politics: The Geographical Mediation of State and Society (Boston, MA: Allen & Unwin, 1987). Also Edward Relph, Place and Placelessness (London, United Kingdom: Pion, 1976), p. 43.

Biography: Carolyn Albracht

Carolyn Albracht is Associate Professor of Art Education in the department of Art and Design at Wayne State College. She is also owner and director of Blue Cat Gallery & Studio in downtown Wayne, NE. She formerly owned and operated L’eglise Art Center & Gallery in Aurora, NE and taught K-12 art at Hampton Public School in Hampton, NE. Carolyn served as the Visual Arts Coordinator for the Fall Arts & Music Festival in Aurora from 2004-2007, and served on the Fine Arts Board of the Hamilton Community Foundation for ten years. She has been a member of the Nebraska Art Teachers Association since 2008, has served as the organization’s secretary since 2016, and served as the organization’s 2014 Fall Conference Chair in Aurora. Carolyn studied Studio Art and Psychology at the University of Nebraska at Kearney where she earned a BA in 1999. She continued her studies at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, earning an MA in Museum Studies in 2003. She completed a K-12 Art Education teaching endorsement in 2009. And finally, she earned a PhD in Education Studies at UNL in August 2016. Carolyn’s personal artistic and teaching philosophy includes the idea that the arts are a necessity and not a luxury, and so she strives to make the visual arts as accessible as possible to people in her corner of the world.

Find Carolyn at https://bluecatgalle

Biography: Jeanine Coupe Ryding

Jeanine Coupe Ryding’s prints, collages and artists books are in museum and private collections in the U.S, Europe and Japan. Her work focuses primarily on woodcut prints, etchings, artist’s books, collage and most recently, painting. She founded both Shadow Press and Press 928 in Evanston, Illinois for fine art printing and publishing. She received her BA degree from The University of Iowa and her MFA from the Universitat der Kunste, in Berlin, Germany. Jeanine has received various awards and residencies including Illinois Arts Council Award, Arts Midwest Grant, Frans Masereel Center residencies in Belgium and Anchor Graphics residency in Chicago. She taught in the PrintMedia Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1991 to 2019.

Find Jeanine at www.jeaninecouperyding.com

Biography: Cindy Lesperance

Cindy Lesperance is an award-winning Chicago based artist who works out of her private studio in the NW suburbs.  

Her art has been exhibited in many galleries and museums including:  Zhou B Art Center–Chicago, IL, Bridgeport Art Center, 4th Floor Gallery–Chicago, IL, RMU-State Street Gallery–Chicago, IL , Atlantic Gallery–New York, NY,  Niza Knoll Gallery–Denver CO, Rockford Art Museum, Quad Cities International Airport Gallery, Freeport Art Museum and has been chosen by prominent jurors such as: Joanne Materra, Kaveh Mojtabai, Fred Camper, James Yood, Aron Packer, Dan Addington, Sarah Krepp, Jerry McLaughlin, Lisa Pressman and Sergio Gomez to participate and earn awards in many juried shows.  She has been featured in publications including: EA Magazine, ACS Magazine, Cover or the Journal of Financial Service Professionals and Featured Artist of the Red Dot Blog.  Her work is displayed in private and public collections throughout the nation and is on view as part of the permanent collection of the Encaustic Art Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

She is member and Past President of FUSEDChicago (2018-2021), a Chicago Based group of Midwest artists who work in Encaustic and a member of the Northwest Area Arts Council.  

Cindy has evolved a personal style that is highly sophisticated and meticulous in attention to craftsmanship. Her process incorporates a technique she developed of applying small droplets of encaustic, a combination of beeswax, resin and pigment, one-by-one to the surface of the painting and exploring the relationship of these drips to the spaces in between them.  The overall effect produces a tactile quality that when viewed in person, engages those who encounter it.  

Find Cindy at www.CindyLesperance.com