NON STNDRD will present three solo exhibitions opening on Saturday, September 7th: “Hold Tight” by Aimée Beaubien, “The Center Never Holds” by Joe DeVera, and “Try and again” by Jeff Robinson.

Please join us for a free public reception for these exhibitions on Saturday, September 7th. The event begins at NON STNDRD, located at the National Building Arts Center, from 3:00 to 6:00 PM, and will continue with an opening of “The Wind Still Whispers” by Micah Mickles from 6:00 to 9:00 PM at our flagship site, STNDRD, located at G-CADD in downtown Granite City, Illinois.

Aimée Beaubien: Hold Tight

Hold Tight delves into resilience and adaptability, using lightweight suspension lines—often associated with survival situations and friendship bracelets—to create woven and knotted structures. These paracord forms scramble through a former steel casting sand bunker, echoing the unpredictable paths of vines as they climb, twist, and touch their surroundings. Suspended and intertwined, these interconnected forms respond to an epoch of uncertainty and succession of change. Paracord tendrils drop down, brushing up against weightlessness and formlessness, while driftwood sways in and out of tangled networks within the exposed cement structure of NON STNDRD. 

Aimée Beaubien reorganizes photographic experience while exploring networks of meaning and association between the real and the ideal in immersive installations, collages and artists books. Her work has been shown in national and international exhibitions including SF Camerawork, San Francisco, CA; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; Newport Art Museum, RI; Houston Center for Photography, TX; UCR Museum of Photography, Riverside, CA; Gallery UNO Projektraum, Berlin, Germany; Virus Art Gallery, Rome, Italy. Aimée Beaubien is an Associate Professor of Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL where she has taught since 1997.

Joe DeVera: The Center Never Holds 

The Center Never Holds is a sculptural installation that can be simultaneously viewed as an aggregate of weaponized material and/or a marshaled victim of the military complex.  The work is amalgamated from various sources to form shambling archetypes of “beasts of burden” – constructed with a combination of repurposed military equipment, domestic household items, and discarded materials from local sites.

Joe DeVera’s paintings and installations examine the possible relationships between historiography and art objects while investigating mass conflict’s resonant aftermath. Having emigrated from the Philippines as a youth and enlisted in the Marines Corps after high school (serving two combat deployments) — DeVera’s works are also autobiographical observations of power structures and the machines of empire. Joe DeVera lives in St. Louis, MO, where he is an Assistant Professor at Washington University’s Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art. He received his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art.

Jeff Robinson: Try and again 

Jeff Robinson explores the concept of “try and again,” emphasizing a commitment to experimentation and the role of practice in artistic development. The works on display feature wood and relief carvings inspired by the natural elements of the artist’s backyard, where a newfound practice of tending to the land informs his process. With no prior landscaping experience, Robinson navigates the challenges of identifying, cultivating, and sometimes removing flora—transforming the cuttings and uprooted plants into materials for his art. These creations serve as an offering to the landscape and a reflection on the ongoing process of learning and personal growth. Jeff Robinson is an artist, fabricator, and curator based in Chicago, Illinois. He has exhibited at venues that include Julius Caesar (Chicago), Roman Susan (Chicago), Ski Club (Milwaukee), University Galleries of Illinois State University (Normal), Des Lee Gallery (St. Louis), and Monaco (St. Louis). His work has been featured in New American Paintings, Daily Serving, NewCity Magazine, Sixty Inches from Center, FLOORR Magazine, and the Riverfront Times. Robinson was a HATCH curatorial resident with the Chicago Artists Coalition and has held artist residencies with Ragdale and ACRE. In 2020, he received the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship Award in Visual-Based Arts. He currently serves as Exhibitions Preparator for the Hyde Park Art Center and previously served as Director of the UIS Visual Arts Gallery and Co-director + Co-founder of DEMO Project. STNDRD exhibitions are on view at all times for the duration of the exhibition run. The Wind Still Whispers by Micah Mickles will run through October 19. STNDRD is located at 1822 State Street Granite City, IL 62040, on the campus of the the Granite City Art and Design District (G-CADD).

NON STNDRD can be viewed by appointment and during National Building Arts Center ticketed tours that take place every second Saturday of the month at 11:00 am. Fall exhibitions at NON STNDRD will run through November 2. NON STNDRD is located at 2300 Falling Springs Rd., Sauget, IL 62206, on the campus on the National Building Arts Center.

NON STNDRD is an artist-run initiative, with programming curated by collaborators Bruce Burton, Sage Dawson, and Allison Lacher. For inquiries, please email contact@stndrd.org.

Copyright © 2024, STNDRD + NON STNDRD, All rights reserved

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PREVIOUS EXHIBITIONS AT NON STNDRD

NON STNDRD is pleased to present “Key Loop”, a group exhibition that explores iterations of visual and conceptual pattern. “Key Loop” will open with a free and public reception from 4:00 – 7:00 pm on Saturday, June 22. This exhibition will run through August 17, 2024. NON STNDRD is located on the campus of the National Building Arts Center in Sauget, Illinois.

The title “Key Loop” is inspired by the Greek key—a motif prevalent in Ancient Greece that epitomizes the interlocking, recursive patterns found in life and art. Combined with the concept of “loop,” which denotes endless repetition and continuity, “Key Loop” reflects the cyclical nature of patterns, considering both the persistence and the inevitable transformation of forms and ideas across time. This thematic exploration considers the enduring relevance and evolution of patterns in both historical and contemporary contexts. 

Exhibiting artists include Poppy DeltaDawn, Katie Ford, kg, Rashawn Griffin, Craig Hartenberger, Anna Horvath, Nick Larsen, Michael Jones McKean, Guen Montgomery, Emily Mueller, Garry Noland, and Anna Schenker. “Key Loop” is curated by STNDRD + NON STNDRD Co-Directors Bruce Burton, Sage Dawson, and Allison Lacher.

NON STNDRD is uniquely situated in two adjacent industrial concrete spaces on the National Building Arts Center campus — previously the Sterling Steel Casting Company. These spaces, once steel casting sand bunkers, now serve as experimental venues for contemporary art exhibitions. The stark industrial setting, with its exposed roof, provides a critical backdrop for the thematic concerns of the exhibition.

Here, the artworks, vulnerable to weathering, embrace the temporal dynamics of patterns—how they evolve, decay, and mirror the transience of experience alongside cycles of nature and history. This interplay emphasizes the pervasive influence of patterns—be it personal habits, cyclical cultural shifts, or imprints left by historical events. The works on display engage in a visceral dialogue with the raw architecture of NON STNDRD and the immediate landscape and decorative collection at the National Building Arts Center, enriched by the history and prior function of the facility, as well as the local geography and terrain.

NON STNDRD is an expansion and evolution of site-based inquiry first established by STNDRD, a flagship program in Granite City, Illinois, where exhibitions rely on a flagpole as a site and examine the power and potential of flags. NON STNDRD and STNDRD are artist-run initiatives. 

Funding for NON STNDRD was provided by The Luminary’s (St. Louis) Futures Fund Regranting Initiative.

NON STNDRD is pleased to present two solo exhibitions by Chicago-based artists: Radiant Pearl by Claire Ashley and Snake in the Grass by Assaf Evron.

These exhibitions will open with a free and public reception on Saturday, April 6, from 3:00 – 6:00 pm, and run through June 1, 2024. NON STNDRD is located on the campus of the National Building Arts Center in Sauget, Illinois.

Radiant Pearl and Snake in the Grass and will occupy two adjacent industrial spaces. These raw, exposed concrete spaces formerly served as casting bunkers on the campus of the Sterling Steel Casting Company, and now as an experimental venue for contemporary art. These spaces, nearly identical in scale and architectural design, are marked by history, time, and exposure to the elements.

Radiant Pearl by Claire Ashley presents inflatable sculpture as the surface for painting to live and breathe, becoming a tattooed skin of sorts, on a kind of hybrid body. Mobility and portability are important considerations in the work, both functionally and conceptually; Radiant Pearl engages NON STNDRD as a site to explore the possibilities of scale shifts, as the work moves from packed cube to expansive room-filling amoebic sculpture. The ephemerality of the object serves as a metaphor for the body – its fragility and vulnerability, and in that realization, its urgent call for attention and demand to be seen.

Scottish born, Chicago-based artist Claire Ashley mines the language of painterly abstraction, monumental sculpture, and slapstick humor to investigate inflatables as painting, sculpture, installation and performance costume. These works have been exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries and museums as site-specific installations, performances and collaborations.

Her work has been featured in Studio International, VICE, Hyperallergic, Artforum, Sculpture Magazine, Art Papers, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Time Out Chicago, Yorkshire Post, and Condé Nast Traveller (European). She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and her BFA from Gray’s School of Art (Aberdeen, Scotland). She teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Department of Contemporary Practices, and the Department of Painting and Drawing.

Snake in the Grass by Assaf Evron will present a set of sculptural interactions and ready-mades that respond to the collection of built environment artifacts housed at the National Building Arts Center, on whose campus NON STNDRD resides. Drawing from the history of art and architecture — and their connection to pagan origins — the exhibition pulls from Durer’s iconic engraving, Melencolia I, and its exploration of failed rationality. Snake in the Grass features imagery of rainbows, stars, rivers, and gazing eyes hanging in the space.

Assaf Evron is an artist and a photographer based in Chicago. His work investigates the nature of vision and the ways in which it reflects in socially constructed structures, where he applies photographic thinking in various two and three-dimensional media. Looking at moments along the histories of modernism, Evron questions the construction of individual and collective identities, immigration (of people, ideas, images) and the representations of democracy.

His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. Evron holds an MA from The Cohn Institute as well as an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), where he currently teaches. In conjunction with his exhibition at NON STNDRD, he is presenting a special architectural intervention project at the Mies van der Rohe-designed Edith Farnsworth House in Plano Illinois.

NON STNDRD occupies two adjacent spaces on the National Building Arts Center campus that formerly served as steel casting sand bunkers – and now serving as experimental exhibition venues. Exhibiting artists are encouraged to explore an interplay between raw architecture and immediate landscape, contextualized by the history and function of the facility and the surrounding place, geography and terrain. NON STNDRD embraces artistic experimentation and critical inquiry and shines a light on the non-standard and exploratory nature of contemporary art by presenting it in a space that radically and intentionally breaks from traditional exhibition venues. The National Building Arts Center occupies a sprawling campus that formerly functioned as the Sterling Steel Casting Company, and today serves as a unique, emergent study center housing the nation’s largest and most diversified collection of building artifacts, supported with broad holdings in architecture and allied arts.

Funding for NON STNDRD was provided by The Luminary’s (St. Louis) Futures Fund Regranting Initiative from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

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“Lived-in” will open with a free and public reception on Saturday, August 12, from 3:00 – 6:00 pm. The exhibition will run through October 31. Featured artists include Grant Benoit, Joseph Canizales, Jen Everett, Abby Flanagan, Gina Hunt, Lee Hunter, Sarah Knight, Melissa Pokorny, and Lynne Smith.

“Lived-in” will span the two adjacent spaces that NON STNDRD inhabits. These raw, exposed concrete spaces formerly served as casting bunkers on the campus of the Sterling Steel Casting Company, and “Lived-in” will launch their new identity as an experimental venue for contemporary art on the campus of the National Building Arts Center (NBAC). 

These spaces, nearly identical in their scale and architectural design, are marked by their history, age, and exposure to the elements. Despite their industrial identity, there is an intimacy, familiarity, and even comfort that invites engagement by artist and audience alike. “Lived-in” will present a spectrum of site-based and mixed-media works that draw from these prompts of the site, among them NBAC’s vast collection of building artifacts and holdings in architecture and allied arts. 

Like all exhibitions and projects presented at NON STNDRD, “Lived-in” is time-based and durational. Exhibited works are installed in a pristine form, but these works are at the mercy of the site they inhabit. Exposure to sun, wind, rain and other environmental factors present the potential of works changing – perhaps degrading or evolving in the process – over the course of the eleven-week exhibition period.

Funding for NON STNDRD was provided by The Luminary’s (St. Louis) Futures Fund Regranting Initiative.