Illner Green to hold exhibit for July at FMAAA

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Reception set for Friday, July 8 from 5 to 7 p.m.

BY LORI ILLNER GREENE
Fort Madison Area Art Assocation

FORT MADISON - Join us in the Main Gallery of the FMAAA Art Center located at 825 Ave G in Fort Madison, Iowa for the Opening Reception on Friday, July 8, 2022 from 5pm to 7pm of July’s exhibition Fragility and Impermanence.

Artist Lori Illner Greene takes us through a fantastical image-scape of fragile sculptures composed to investigate ideas of place and our impermanence. The resulting imagery provides us with a lens to look at her interpretation of the interconnection - an energy force if you will - that binds all matter together, eventually repurposing and reusing the same. The exhibition will be on display Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10am to 5pm until the end of FINALE, a free musical performance evening to be held on Saturday, July 30th from 6pm to 9pm, also in the Main Gallery of the Art Center.

This collection of images in glass and silk, along with a video installation, provides a view through the artist’s lens taking a closer look at the fragile sculptures Illner Greene composed to investigate ideas of place and the eventual breakdown of matter, but which also exemplify the invisible energetic connection of all things. Living or inanimate, this work believes our existence plays out in an interconnected timeline forged in a common elemental make-up. When we are no longer, that matter repurposes itself into new. This work is ultimately about our collective impermanence. And the energetic residue left behind.

Illner Greene took on the role of Executive Director of the Fort Madison Area Arts Association at the end of May in 2021. She is responsible for operations of the Art Center, exhibit curation, public relations, and administration of the Association of working artists and supporters. While her role spans all areas, she is focusing on program development, expansion of events, cultural activities and classes in accordance with a stated mission of expanding arts and cultural learning in the community.

As an artist, Lori Illner Greene has created work reflective of place and explores ideas of fragility through figurative sculpture, pastels, and encaustic painting. Her work is often informed by ideas of energetic connections associated with particle physics. She utilizes the technique of paper mâché like assemblage, sometimes including bits of material collected from her wanderings, to create sculptures that become the subject of her photographic imagery, drawings, and paintings. 

Illner Greene participated in both solo and group exhibitions at Loyola University, Chicago, IL; Waubonsee Community College Sugar Grove, IL; and Fort Madison Area Arts Association (FMAAA), Fort Madison, IA. She participated in the SkyWay juried exhibition in 2004 held annually in varying Chicago suburbs and multiple ongoing juried public art exhibitions hosted by the city in Aurora, IL in 2006 and 2007. Recent solo exhibitions are Pastels at FMAAA in 2018, and Raptors at the Visiting Artists Gallery, Burlington, IA in 2019. She participated in a group exhibit with artists Eric Cross and Jessica Larsen in August, 2021 in Incline Village, Nevada entitled Midway.

Attending Mundelein College (Loyola University) 1987-91, she graduated with a bachelor’s in history, minoring in both art and biology. Returning to study both art history and studio art she attended Waubonsee from 2003-2007. Illner Greene enrolled in Sierra Nevada University (University of Nevada) in 2020 and will graduate with an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts in the Fall of 2022. Her art education bookends and punctuates a career spanning GPS information system and agribusiness consulting, information systems design, historical building renovations and proprietorship of the Kingsley Inn, and it informs her current role as Executive Director of the Fort Madison Area Arts Association and the Art Center they provide to the community. She resides in Niota, Illinois with her husband, Eric Greene, where she has Greene Acres Art Studio.

Illner Greene is very much honored on behalf of the FMAAA Art Center to receive the generous sponsorship of IFCO/OCI (Iowa Fertilizer in Wever, IA) which provided financial support to help defray the monthly exhibition costs. As the artist of this exhibit, she is delighted to have received the sponsorship support of Fracture, the company selected to do the glass prints. You can find them on the web and in social media @fractureme and #focusonmoments

FMAAA, fort madison, Fort Madison Area Art Association, iowa, lee county, Lori Illner Greene, Pen City Current

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