Tim Abel’s artist statement is too brilliant not to quote directly:
lookforpattern
Accumulate. Revise. Contain.
In the making, I can see my place within this large network; I can impose my own order, which exists only because I do.
Timabelart.com
Abel’s work, which includes creative pieces with young students and other community collaborators, is on view at the current exhibition, An Invitation: Community as Quilt at the Illini Union Art Gallery. And, my friends, it is worth a quick jaunt to the Illini Union (parking has improved in metered lot D-10, but you still might want to park on Mathews Avenue, or, you know, walk, bike, or take our fab MTD) to check out this inventive display of repurposed plastics, fiber arts, and other found objects re-created and elegantly displayed in the Illini Union’s Art Gallery.
The welcoming wall text beckons the viewer to engage with quilt as community, a theme that resonates deeply with me. “This quilt came together as an invitation to share space …and asked for shareable work, and in this invitation, people were welcomed to think of ‘work’ as loosely, concisely or concretely as needed.” The viewer is part of the experience of these works.
Many of the quilts feel three-dimensional because they hang loosely on the wall, and because they are bits of plastic, fiber, and paper pieced by many hands, they aren’t flat. They sparkle and shimmer from sunlight and track lighting and from the air conditioning billowing beneath them.
Abel, a Ph.D. student in Art Education here at the University of Illinois, earned an MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an MA in Art Therapy from New York University. I look forward to engaging with more of his work in the coming months.
An Invitation: Community as Quilt
Works by Tim Abel
Illini Union Art Gallery
1401 W Green
Urbana
June 6-July 7
Illini Union Hours: Daily, 7 a.m. to close
