CAC displays up to 12 exhibitions annually by a variety of emerging and established artists, group shows, and student work. Our robust calendar of exhibits and public programs champions local and regional artists that reflect our diverse creative community.
It’s All About the Square: Area Artists Association
Exhibition: November 2–30, 2024
Artists’ Reception: Artists’ Reception: Saturday, November 9 from 12-2 PM
Free Family Art Day: Saturday, November 16 from 10 AM-2 PM, Register Here!
In honor of its 44th Anniversary, The Area Artists Association challenged its members to explore the theme “It’s All About the Square”. The square can create a foundation and stable defined space, as well as evoke emotion and tell many stories. Included artworks will address the concept of the square formally and conceptually in a wide variety of media including painting, drawing, artists books, photography, and sculpture as the artists tackle the topic in creative ways, pushing the boundaries and interpretations of “the square” in this exhibit.
Among the twenty-four featured artists are: Tom Brand and Carole Stodder (Pines); Larry Brechner, Donna Hapac, and Kristina Knowski (Chesterton); Deb Dyer (New Buffalo), Amanda Freymann, Larry Jensen, and Kevin Firme (Beverly Shores), Christine Hubbell (Westville), Teresina Pavel (Gary), Dorothy Graden (Valparaiso); Jane Cowley, ANKO (Anneke Dekker), Bunny Dimke, Diane Grams, Timothy D. Lace, Laurel Izard and Suzy Vance (Michigan City); Carol Estes and Ginny Scott (LaPorte); Kuhn Hong (Chicago); Connie Kassal and George Kassal (Long Beach).
Happening Next
CAC Annual Members’ Exhibition
Exhibition: December 5, 2024–January 11, 2025
Artists’ Reception: Saturday, December 14 from 12-2PM
Artwork Drop Off: December 3 + 4, 2024 from 9 AM-5 PM
Artwork Pick Up: January 13, 2025 from 11 AM-4PM
Interested in curating an exhibit, or exhibiting your work at the Chesterton Art Center?
Submit an application today!
Recent Exhibitions at Chesterton Art Center
Of Giants and Warriors: Diane Grams + Timothy D. Lace
Exhibition: September 6–October 30, 2024
Of Giants and Warriors delved into tales of memory, metaphor, ancient artistic processes, resilience, joy, and passion. Grams’ fresco paintings offered a feminist gaze into modern gender socialization and the masculine history of fresco-making. Lace’s large-scale photographs of Mardi Gras Indians in brightly colored suits of feathers and beads told of the rituals taking place on the backstreets of New Orleans celebrating connections between African and Native American traditions.
Both artists pushed contemporary boundaries to offer explorations into worlds of modern narrative imagery with roots in ancient history.
Two themes. Two artists. Two rooms. Shared visions.
Beneath the Surface: Jon Hook + Andrea Peterson
Exhibition: July 5-September 1, 2024
Beneath the Surface explored our human relationship to the environment as a quest for process and transformation that is grounded both physically and in the abstract. Our connection with the natural relies on notions that are unseen, that require trust and the ability to understand something immediately without the need for conscious reasoning. With this body of work in ceramics, paper arts, prints, and artist books, Jon Hook and Andrea Peterson offered us origin myths, life cycle stories, sustainable lessons, and deep wonders.
Jon Hook and Andrea Peterson are Hook, Pottery, Paper located in LaPorte, Indiana. Their homestead studios were founded with the intention to create works of art and research in an environmentally sustainable manner. While they are deeply rooted in traditional artmaking methods, they add contemporary practices to reflect our contemporary world.
72nd Annual Chesterton Woman’s Club Art Show
Exhibition: June 3-29, 2024
The works in this year's art show were diverse and covered a wide spectrum of media: oil, acrylic, watercolor, sculpture, pastels, stained glass, ink, pencil, charcoal drawings, glass, prints, mosaic, mixed media, fiber, and photography.
Chesterton Art Center has an enduring tradition of building strong relationships in the community. We are able to engage artists and NW Indiana community members and dynamically connect them while fulfilling our purpose as a vibrant arts hub. Our relationship with Chesterton Woman’s Club is a fine example of our dedication to community engagement and long-lasting relationships.
Birds of the Hudson: Block Prints by Stephen Rengstorf + Prairies Big and Small: Photographs by Susan Kirt
Exhibition: May 2- 29, 2024
Birds of the Hudson: This exhibition organized by the Estate of Stephen Rengstorf featured woodcut and linoleum block prints created by Rengstorf, celebrating his love of raptors and the outdoors. “I create images that offer the viewer a glimpse into the daily odyssey of birds in the environment this great river provides, “ said Rengstorf of the place he called home, New York’s Hudson River Valley.
Prairies Big and Small: This exhibition immersed the viewer in the rare and endangered Tallgrass Prairie ecosystem and the fragments of this once vast landscape. Kirt’s exceptional photographs connect people with the diverse prairie plants and animals found in the patchwork of the Chicago region’s grasslands, both in remnants and planted reconstructions.
Dual Exhibitions: Duneland Weavers Guild and CAC Youth Art
Exhibition: April 6-29, 2024
Fiber Art ‘24: The talented artists of the Guild were busy creating original handwoven and knitted shawls, scarves, linens, wall hangings and more. Items were available for purchase on-site at the Art Center during the exhibition. Members of the Duneland Weavers’ Guild presented various weaving demonstrations at CAC throughout their exhibition.
Expressive Minds: CAC Youth Art Exhibition: Expressive Minds highlighted the work of CAC’s in-house and outreach youth + teen students, ages 5-18, who participated in CAC programming between September 2023-March 2024. This show was a celebration of the young artists who imagine, make, construct, and create with CAC.
Duneland Schools Student Exhibition
CHS Exhibition: March 2-13, 2024 | K-8 Exhibition: March 16-30, 2024
CAC welcomed our Duneland students, families, and community to this annual exhibition tradition showcasing hundreds of young artists from across the school district. Visitors enjoyed galleries full of imaginative and thoughtful works across all media created by artists from kindergarten through high school.
CHANGES: Bryana Bibbs Exhibition
Exhibition: January 8-February 29, 2024
Bryana Bibbs, 11.22.20, 2020
CAC welcomed Chicago-based artist Bryana Bibbs who works at the intersection of textiles, painting, and community-based practices. Changes features 79 weavings from her Journal Series of 2020 documenting her personal experiences in wool, dried paint, flax, recycled sari silk, degummed silk cocoons, and handmade fibers and yarns.
The weavings were hung in order chronologically throughout both galleries allowing the viewer to engage in the calendar of time depicted by the entire series.
Annual CAC Members’ Exhibition
Exhibition: December 2, 2023–January 4, 2024
Chesterton Art Center was pleased to host and celebrate 76 of our creative and supportive members with the Annual Members’ Exhibit on display. The members of Chesterton Art Center represent the truly unique and talented regional creative community. They are an integral part of CAC’s mission to serve and champion our local artists. Every media and style is typically represented at this annual exhibition, including painting, photography, sculpture, drawing, glass, wood, ceramics, and mixed media.
Visions of Reality: Duneland Photography Club
Exhibition: November 2–28, 2023
Visions of Reality showcases an array of artworks and perspectives from the Duneland Photography Club. With their technical skills and sense of creativity, they express their emotions and perceptions across a spectrum of image making from abstract compositions to realistic street photography. This exhibit highlights the diversity of these eighteen artists, a mix of both emerging and established photographers, all creating with the same medium to produce the reality each of them sees.
A Brush with Nature: Duneland Plein Air Painters
Exhibition: October 3–30, 2023
This group exhibition includes twenty-nine local artists who are part of the popular Duneland Plein Air Painters collective. Featuring works from their year of paint out sessions, this exhibit showcases some of the most beautiful locales from across our region in watercolor, acrylic and oil painting. Join us this month to celebrate their beautiful work in our galleries.
Dual Exhibitions: Suzy Vance and Teen Arts Group (TAG)
Exhibition: September 2-30, 2023
Suzy Vance: Collaborating wit the Natural World
Suzy expresses her creativity in a variety of media, one of which is Haiga. This is a combination of photography and Haiku. Seeking to foster self awareness and peace in the world, she hopes her work will draw the viewer in and imbue gratitude in each of us for all that we are and all that contributes to us...each day…every moment.
Teen Arts Group: As I See It
Their work collectively explores the perspective of leaving adolescence and entering early adulthood and how this transitionary period changes their view of the world. The imaginative ideas in their minds become tangible stories that are shared through their expressive work as they attempt to define the world as they see it.
Emily Casella: In Emotion On Entrain
Exhibition: July 8–August 30, 2023
Casella's artworks transform the Chesterton Art Center’s galleries into a train station where viewers can mingle at a cafe kiosk, hop inside a train, and disembark into a vibrant neighborhood park in full color and three dimensions. Each piece poses a different conundrum of thought about the strange motions of life propelled by what society implies, tries to control, or demands what should be versus how an individual may feel. “This show is about love, the trepidation and exasperation of waiting for the promises that media and society told us what love should be, and trying to find what it actually is on Earth.”
Dual Exhibitions: Matthew Berg and Abbie Parmele
Exhibition: May 2 -30, 2023
Matthew Berg: Lake Mill Club
Berg’s narrative paintings tell stories of an idyllic childhood at the lake surrounded by the presence of loved ones, companionship, and nature. Using a variety of surface textures, Berg aims to visually convey the delicate and delightful nature of memories of family gatherings and endless summers.
Abbie Parmele: An Invitation–Everything is Energy
Parmele’s oil paintings are a blending of ethereal abstracts and landscapes that radiate life’s energy. These heart-centered works are an invitation to experience another dimension that touches us all.
Artists in Residence of Indiana Dunes National Park: Sense of Place
Exhibition: January 17–March 1, 2023
The Indiana Dunes National Park Artist-in-Residence program has been sharing the park’s inspirational landscape for over 25 years and has served 70 artists to date. This exhibit is a survey of works held in the National Park collection, including works from 2021 and 2022 that have not yet been exhibited publicly. View this celebration of the natural world that surrounds us as seen through the eyes of these artist visitors across many media, including painting,
photography, sculpture, fiber, and mixed media.
This exhibition was made possible in partnership with Indiana Dunes National Park and was generously supported by Friends of Indiana Dunes.
Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. + Regional Artists: Mark My Words
Exhibition: October 3-November 29, 2022
CAC has a new group exhibition pairing renowned artist Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. and a large range of regional print artists on display starting October 3. Mark My Words is a visual exploration of language and how it interfaces with and shapes contemporary material culture and social concerns.
An installation of letterpress artist Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.’s bold and poignant posters of social and environmental justice messages and calls to action covers the walls. Zines and self-published small-run works by artists, illustrators, and printers from the region and beyond are also showcased along with a Pop-Up Shop of artists’ works.
Corey Hagelberg: The Design if Fine… The Design is not Fine
Exhibition: August 4–September 28, 2022
Corey Hagelberg emphasizes and embraces the opposites and contradictions in our everyday experiences blurring the lines between humor and tragedy, natural and industrial, accusation and confession, and beautiful and grotesque. His work with black and white woodcut has highlighted the relationship between the human and natural world, and his social practice addresses issues of food justice, community growing spaces, and regenerative agriculture as it relates to creating resilient local economies and a livable planet.
“The exhibition at Chesterton Art Center will consist of about 20 black and white woodcuts spanning almost 20 years of production. Some as large as 10 feet in length, this body of work speaks to the beauty of the natural world while raising questions about the human impact on the land. Some pieces act to celebrate the beauty of nature while others tell specific stories of environmental destruction on the South Shore of Lake Michigan where industry dominates the resilient, but imperiled, Indiana Dunes.” Hagelberg stated, when asked about the specific focus of the exhibition.
Stephanie Samaitis Carnell: Transition
Exhibition: July 2-28, 2022
This exhibit explores Carnell’s body of work from traditional printmaking techniques to new digital processes, a transition in media and artistic practice.
For decades, Carnell has been a committed printmaker producing works in traditional techniques such as etching, drypoint, and aquatint, but also the contemporary process of solarplate etching. Combining various techniques and fusing photography, drawing, digital processes, and printing surfaces, Carnell embraced experimentation and unanticipated results that inspired her.
Her exploration of fractal art, using calculated fractal patterns to create images, opened new doors and freedom for Carnell to play with color and presentation.
Cathy Feeman: Shadow, Mooring + Undercurrents
Exhibition: February 1–March 26, 2022
Feeman’s mixed-media works explore the relationship between our histories, or our perceived histories, and our identities. Referencing physical geography, she names communities as placeholders and purveyors of individual and collective stories to be told, honored, and not forgotten.
“The goal of this project is to make visible what is hidden, or even in danger of being lost; to honor the lives and stories of the women, past and present, who immigrated to this often forgotten corner of Chicago; and to give light to the undercurrents of these communities and stories, and the erosion of these cultural moorings,” says Feeman.
Annual Exhibitions at Chesterton Art Center
Chesterton Art Center has an enduring tradition of building strong relationships in the community. We are able to engage artists and NW Indiana community members and dynamically connect them while fulfilling our purpose as a vibrant arts hub. Our commitments to annual exhibitions is a fine example of our dedication to community engagement and long-lasting relationships. Currently, we host annual events such as Duneland Schools Corporation Student Exhibitions, Chesterton Woman’s Club Art Show, Duneland Weavers Guild, as well as, several exhibitions highlighting our own Youth Art Students and CAC Members.
