Dreamscape Art Exhibition at University Galleries Curated by Teen Art Group
Shown is Gladys Nilsson’s Terrible Twinery, 1971. Watercolor on paper. 22 5/8 x 30 1/2 inches. Collection of University Galleries, Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts, Illinois State University.
Reposted from ISU’s University Galleries
University Galleries of Illinois State University is pleased to present Dreamscape from May 26 through July 11, 2026. All events are free and open to the public.
Dreamscape is a group exhibition of 17 paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures selected from University Galleries’ permanent collection by Bloomington High School members of our Teen Art Group. Over the course of several meetings, the students discussed themes, viewed artworks and developed the checklist and layout of the exhibition.
The exhibition title, Dreamscape, a merging of the words “dream” and “landscape,” alludes to fantasies, nightmares and visions. The term also embraces multiple ideas the Teen Art Group students wanted to explore, including emotional reactions, mental processing, abstractions of bodies and landscapes, and states of dreaming.
Leonid Kosinstev’s Freudian Symphony, a painting filled with intricately overlapping imagery—and named in acknowledgment of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis and author of The Interpretation of Dreams—was an early selection that informed many of the students’ subsequent choices of artworks. The mysteriously bisected, but otherwise untouched, tabletop objects (a garnished sandwich, decorated cake, full beverage and rotary-dial phone) in Janet McKiernan’s painting The Split-Second bring a sense of uncanny doubling. In Tim Kowalczyk’s ceramic Polaroids, Instant Delusions of Mechanical Reproduction, the shiny black squares suggest the wait for a vision to materialize, while the colorful, radiating imagery in Minnie Evans’s mixed-media drawing #517 comes directly from her own dreams.
Exhibiting artists include Alan R. Atkins (M.F.A. 2024), Harold Boyd (professor emeritus, Wonsook Kim School of Art), Bob Carlson & Tom Philabaum, Salvador Dalí, Minnie Evans, Mark Forth (B.S. 1987), David Hodges, Leonid Kosinstev, Tim Kowalczyk (M.F.A. 2011), Janet McKiernan, Schuyler Maehl (B.F.A. 2004), Thomas Morey (B.S. 1972), Gladys Nilsson, William J. O’Brien, Melissa Oresky (professor, Wonsook Kim School of Art), Odilon Redon and Joseph Yoakum.
Teen Art Group members include Maggi Denham, Sage Eyres, Ray Grill, Issaria Jacobs, Ely Miller, Josephine Saebens and Marlee Wayne.
The Teen Art Group was founded at University Galleries in 2018 by Kendra Paitz (director and chief curator) in partnership with Monica Estabrook (art teacher at Bloomington High School). The inaugural year was supported by a grant from the Illinois Prairie Community Foundation—Mirza Arts and Culture Fund. Each academic year, Teen Art Group participants engage in professional development activities, view exhibitions, take a field trip, and curate an exhibition. The 2025-2026 cohort, the eighth one, was led by Paitz, Estabrook, and Tanya Scott (curator of education). The group took a field trip to the Chicago Cultural Center and the Art Institute of Chicago; participated in meetings, workshops, and exhibition tours at University Galleries; and organized this exhibition.
Teen Art Group is supported by University Galleries’ grant from the Illinois Prairie Community Foundation—Mirza Arts and Culture Fund. Additional support is provided by the Lori Baum and Aaron Henkelman University Galleries Community Fund.
Illinois Prairie Community Foundation awarded a Mirza/Arts & Culture Grant to NONPROFIT’S NAME to help fund this program. If you would like to support arts and culture programs like this, donate online. (https://ipcf.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=1214)