Lubeznik Center for the Arts (LCA) will host an opening reception for their newest art exhibition, Ordinary Wonders, on Friday, April 4 from 5 to 8 p.m. Central.
The exhibiting artists, Jessica Labatte and Cecil McDonald, Jr., and LCA's curator, Whitney Bradshaw, will be in attendance at the opening reception celebration.
All are welcome to enjoy the exhibitions, complimentary light refreshments and a cash bar. As always, admission is free.
In Ordinary Wonders, Labatte and McDonald utilize the photographic medium in very different ways to illuminate the extraordinary brilliance within the everyday. Their exquisitely staged pictures made in and around domestic spaces with family, friends and objects elevate the mundane and develop quiet yet radical gestures of expansion and liberation.
Labatte’s still-life images, featuring flowers from her garden alongside her children’s toys and sculptures, capture the joy of everyday domestic life. They reflect the challenges of artmaking as a working mother. Much of Labatte’s work has evolved into a collaboration with her children, driven by the necessity of balancing parenting and her art. During the pandemic, while pregnant and parenting a toddler, she managed her role as chair of photography at Northern Illinois University, while also sustaining her art practice. This period led her to incorporate her child’s projects into her own work. Her process and artworks offer a vision of a loving, connected and playful balance for artist mothers, while also delivering a feminist critique of the world and its demands on women, particularly working artist mothers.
McDonald’s seemingly candid but carefully staged, beautifully lit, sumptuously colored, cinematic images of his family and friends expand the breadth of visual representations of Black people. In American visual culture, we most often see Black folks pictured at two extremes—either depicted as victims of violence, pain or poverty or as icons of popular culture like athletes and entertainers. Within his series In the Company of Black, McDonald positions extraordinarily ordinary pictures of Black people existing between the poles of Black misery and Black exceptionalism as a celebratory act of resistance, inclusion and representational expansion.
Ordinary Wonders will be on display at LCA through June 15, 2025.
LCA's free First Friday cultural programs take place on the first Friday of each month from 5-8 p.m. The annual schedule includes everything from exhibition openings to live music and dance performances. All events are free and provide complimentary light bites and a cash bar.
For more information, contact Jessie Sexton, LCA’s marketing manager, at (219) 874-4900 or jsexton@LubeznikCenter.org.
