Galatea, the truck sculpture in this video, has been moving around to different locations in Chelsea. This video was made after it was stationed outside a retirement home. It’s a montage of people’s reactions and interactions with the sculpture, including poems.

We’ve been hard at work cutting out the pieces of the new truck and printing. I’ve tweeted a few progress updates with photos (@Johnhimmelfarb), but I’ll post some up here soon as well.

Walking into John Himmelfarb’s studio in Chicago is like walking into a candy store, a visual onslaught of colors and excitement, followed by a rush of desire to have everything at once. The subject of an upcoming documentary, his work is included in more than 40 museum collections. Normally you can tell the style of the artist by looking at a few of their paintings. But, the visual vocabularies Himmelfarb employs are so diverse, that it could have been the work of several artists, frenzied cousins even. I caught up with him at his studio to find out more about what drives him and his work.

Read the full article on HuffingtonPost.com:   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judy-chang/john-himmelfarb-interview_b_1064623.html

Special Highlight: Galatea, a sculpture based on the REO Speedwagon, will be on site!

River Gallery is located at 120 S. Main, Chelsea, Michigan

www.chelsearivergallery.com

Chicago artist John Himmelfarb is known for his unique vocabulary of abstract
forms which, depending on scale and composition, may range from pure
abstraction to evocations of gesture, form, landscape, architecture, and even
the characters of an idiosyncratic written language. In this exhibit, Himmelfarb
delves into our fascination with this iconic vehicle in a variety of styles — some
cartoonish, some expressionist, and some referring to the artist’s more typical
hieroglyphics.

Since 2003, images of trucks have become increasingly important in
Himmelfarb’s work. As small elements in his earlier work, they can be found
as far back as the late 1960s, but in the past eight years, they have taken
a central role. However, as images and sculptures, according to the artist,
these works “are not about trucks but about us, our histories, skills and coping
mechanisms, ambitions, and character.”

Trucks of any sort evoke work-ethic and self-sufficiency and, despite their
ubiquity in our everyday lives, are objects of fascination. Children and adults
alike are spellbound when watching powerful work trucks going about their
burly tasks. Synonymous with Americana, antique pickup trucks are objects of
nostalgia, symbolic of a simpler era, perhaps especially for those of us who were
not yet born at the time in which they were built. They are part of our collective
experience and imagination from an early age; as children, we play with them
in miniature, assemble them from kits, and use them to enact grown-up tasks.
As adults, we use them in our work and our recreation, and possibly even to
recapture a little childhood joy.

Maybe these vehicles of self-determinism are intriguing to us because their
numerous varieties and forms are indicative of different abilities, purposes and
functions. In this sense, they are ideal objects to communicate the facets of
human experience. In Himmelfarb’s hands, they become portraits and, in the
same way that collections of physical features on a human face can be beautiful,
and accretions of character lines and wrinkles are clues to personality and life
experience, these custom-built and retro-fitted trucks – with their fanciful cargos
and inventive paraphernalia, are entrees to compelling narratives of the human
condition.

Here is the latest news from my studio, including upcoming shows and recent work. First though, I hope you will enjoy this recent PBS program about my exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center and the related murals under the 53rd St and South Lake Park Ave viaduct in Chicago.   

Click to watch the video

If your travel plans include Indianapolis, IN or DeKalb, IL, you may be interested in two group shows that include my work:    

• Multiple Propositions opens August 12th at the Herron School of Art and Design, in Indianapolis, with a reception on August 26th.   
• In the House: Sculpture for the Home opens August 23rd, at Northern Illinois University Art Museum, with a reception on September 8th, 4:30 – 6PM. 

My second solo show at River Gallery in Chelsea, MI opens September 17th and runs to the end of October.  

On the production side, I’ve just returned from a week at Stewart and Stewart. I’ve included two of the pieces we finished below, Pipe Up and Pipe Down.   

My show at the Cultural Center, “Driven: New Trucks by John Himmelfarb” continues through September, and the show at Metropolitan Capital Bank closes September 20.  

 All the best, 

Veteran Chicago painter and printmaker John Himmelfarb adds sculpture to his repertoire in this exhibition’s thematic treatment of trucks. With a tour-de-force in range of materials and methods, Himmelfarb delves into our fascination with this iconic vehicle in a variety of styles — some cartoonish, some expressionist and some harkening back to the artist’s more typical hieroglyphics.

Related Events:

• Friday, July 8, 5:30–7:30 p.m.: Opening Reception