Chicago Tribune: November 6, 2019

Divine and mysterious evoked in Hinsdale Library exhibit

“The beginning of the universe was an exuberant, joyful act, one that conjured reds and yellows, an act that filled the empty whiteness — not a black void but a blank whiteness — with color and power and energy. That’s what I took from “Big Bang” by Joan Geary, one of the nine paintings hanging in “The World in a Grain of Sand” exhibit…

I have never considered that the Big Bang, that theory of our universe’s creation, might look the way that Geary conceived it. Yet her portrayal will endure in my mind. In her painting, there is mystery combined with many unknown elements and yet the work itself is warm and inviting, hopeful and creative.
 
Besides a new view on the origins of our universe and how it might have come to be, I also walked away from this show with a fresh appreciation for abstract art…
 
But Geary’s works, on display through Nov. 26, have brought that experience to a new level. Stand close to “Big Bang” and look at the textures, at the colors, at the etching and “excavating” — that is Geary’s word — that she has done. What is she telling us? Is she telling us that out of this chaos comes great beauty? Is she telling us that there is always unexplained randomness? Is the answer: deal with it and find the beauty anyway! Look at the explosive wonder.”
 
 

 

 
Dec 2019 – Feb 2020
Reconciled Among the Stars
First Free Church
5255 N. Ashland Ave.
Chicago, IL 60640

September 2019
The World in a Grain of Sand
Sept 1- Nov 30, 2109
Hinsdale Public Library