GALESBURG — Sandburg’s first art show of the new year highlights the work of alumna Madelyn Havens through March 24.
The opening reception for Havens’ exhibit, “Lingering Forms,” will take place from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Jan. 23 in the Sandburg art gallery in building D on the college’s Galesburg campus. The show and reception are free and open to the public. Regular gallery hours are weekdays from 8 a.m.-6 p.m.
A 2019 Sandburg graduate, Havens is a Chicago-based abstract figurative painter whose work delves into the physical and emotional complexities of the human form. Through an intimate material practice, she investigates the body as both presence and memory, exploring how form, texture and gesture can convey what lies beneath the surface. Her paintings often center on themes of vulnerability, fragmentation, and the tension between softness and distortion.
Also a Bushnell-Prairie City High School alumna, Havens earned her bachelor’s in studio art from Knox College and a Master of Fine Arts from Illinois State University. Her work has been exhibited at venues including Heaven Gallery and Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, as well as Knox’s Borzello Gallery. She's also been featured in the New American Paintings and shown at the Figge Art Museum.
“Within my painting process, I explore bodily interiority and exteriority in relation to the surface of painting, evoking a discomforting sense of corporeal (dis)embodiment, where haunted flesh becomes palpable," Havens said. "Indexing conversations with the body into the painting is a way to understand my body and create an experience of what happens when language fails to capture the complexity of sensation. Painting becomes a mediation with the canvas, a constant discovery of what can give shape to the intangible: how it feels when my skin folds into itself, bodily urges and the soft texture of fatty tissue.”
Learn more about Havens on her website, madelynhavens.art.
For more information about the show, contact gallery director and art program coordinator Lisa Walker at 309.341.5303 or ldwalker@sandburg.edu.
“Slipping Through My Fists” is one of the pieces by Sandburg alumna Madelyn Havens that’s featured in her show “Lingering Forms,” which is up through March 24 on the college’s Galesburg campus. (Courtesy Madelyn Havens)