Community Gallery & Displays

Caroline Barnard
March-April 2025
Caroline Barnard is a St. Charles mixed media artist who creates multilayered acrylic collage paintings and original cloth art dolls. Her finished pieces are joyous and whimsical and reflect her love of colors and textures. She has been designing dolls for over 20 years, and featured on HGTV and in doll magazines and a collaborative doll book. More recently, Caroline has explored building layers into two-dimensional artwork, focusing on whimsical portraits and abstract animals. These were featured in July’s Art Beat Buzz online publication.

As an active member of the St. Charles Arts Council, Caroline participated in the 2024 art banner project, and shows her work at Water Street Studios, Norris Cultural Arts Center, and the Dempsey shop at Fineline Creative Arts Center. She is also a member of the Friends of St. Charles Public Library.

Caitlin Palagi
January-February 2025
Anticipation is a self-curated exhibition of original paintings made over the course of 2024 through the process of intuitive art. I believe in finding my creative voice by trusting in my mind and body. My growth as an artist occurred when I began leaning into my creativity and stopped analyzing it. The process of art, just like life, is a temporary one. Any perceived mistakes I make on the canvas are only held for however long I fixate on them. I approach the blank canvas empty. I leave all preconceived notions of creative ideas, compositions, and visuals behind and I just paint. I let my body guide my movements. This is the closest I have come to understanding being in the moment. It is not a linear process. It is not perfect. I fumble, I need reminders and practice. This exhibit is an emotive exploratory process of my journey to the now – reflective of the big, the small, and everything in between.

While I make my artwork from my own unique perspective and hope to share stories connected to my own vulnerability, I hope that people will also take an introspective vantage point. My artwork is meant to be emotive in nature and connect people’s own stories and experiences together. This exhibition tells a story of the struggle, need, and realization to be present in the moment through motherhood, disability, caregiving, and an innate propensity to dream. To learn more about Caitlin and her artwork, you can visit her website at caitlinpalagicreations.com or find her on Instagram at fullcirclecreative_

Hans Kaiser
September-October 2024 – digital photographs
November-December 2024 – pencil drawings
Artist Statement: I am an artist and photographer working in the tri-cities area of the western suburbs. For the past 26 years, I have photographed still life, nature, architecture and abstract subjects. I work as a graphic artist and have an artists’ studio in my house where I make anything from sculpture to oil painting. I attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where I studied communications and the arts. Recently I have produced a good number of pencil drawings and collage pieces that blur the line between abstract and reality. With photography, I tend to follow a similar path (I love macro photography and close-ups.)

I love music and play the guitar and bass and compose electronic music on my PC. After college I worked at the Art Institute of Chicago for 5 years and was part of the art scene in Chicago. I am drawn to nature and love the outdoors. Photographing nature is one of my favorite things, and the works you are seeing today at the St. Charles Public Library, are a combination of nature photography and digital treatment to produce vibrant, colorful prints that radiate with energy. I live in Batavia with my family, two cats and a dog. You can see more artwork on my website: www.jupiterstarfish.com. To find out more about my work, or to acquire one of the pieces in this show, drop me a line and let me know which piece you like. [email protected]

Willis Lambertson
July-August 2024
Born in Evanston, Illinois and raised in the community of Sleepy Hollow in the Fox River Valley outside Chicago, Willis Lambertson graduated in 1988 from Dundee-Crown High School in Carpentersville, Illinois before receiving two bachelor degrees from the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado in 1993. Having travelled frequently as a child, Willis began shooting photography to record his travels and, upon college graduation, served as photo researcher for an environmental magazine in Colorado. After completing two years of graduate school, Willis continued to travel and take photographs of destinations around the world. Over the past twenty years, his photography has been published in the Fairview Enterprise (KS), Trail & Timberline magazine (CO) and The Daily Herald newspaper in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Of recent, Willis has been displayed at the Dundee Township Library (2022), the Barrington Area Library (2023), Poplar Creek Public Library (2024) and has pictures in the 2022 and 2023 Friends of the Fox River calendars. Currently, Willis resides in Lake Barrington, Illinois.

Maria Ananieva
May-June 2024 / July-August 2024
Maria was born and raised in Bulgaria. At the age of 17 , she moved to the US with her family and since then has pursued art as her career. Her education background is in Graphic Design along with Fine Art classes at College of Dupage and variety of workshops. She started exhibiting her artwork at the age of 19 and hasn’t stopped creating and showing her work since then. She is not only an aspiring artist, but an avid birdwatcher, which is what drives her to create vivid oil paintings to express the experience of birdwatching.

Artist Statement: Having grown up in the mountains, I am very easily drawn to nature, especially birds. As a birdwatcher, my purpose with creating art is not to only portray the beauty and simplicity of this act, but also to advocate for the birds and spread awareness of how we can help them. I find their history, wisdom and behavior incredibly inspiring. I choose oil paint as my primary medium , as the natural, vivid pigments bring me closer to my subject matters. It allows me to express the color, plumage and texture of the birds. I find the simplicity of life a necessity in today’s busy world. I hope you join me in my quest to notice life around us every second and enjoy what each moment spent in nature brings.

Carly Palmer
March-April 2024

Exhibit Statement: This show, “Time And Time Again”, is a self-curated solo exhibition of (22) twenty-two of my artworks, including four (4) paintings and eighteen (18) hand-cut paper collages. All of the collages contain images of various types of clocks and references to time in a literal or metaphorical sense. Often, I personify time to conjure and convey psychological ideas through my art. This body of work reflects that. As a viewer, I invite you to consider your own relationship with time.

I’ve always been fascinated by clocks. I’m drawn to exploring time through a symbolic lens. On occasion, time feels like an illusion, a blur of the minutiae, scarcity watches us back. Its rhythm sways, much like the pendulum, hypnotically moving us back and forth between the past and present. It ticks away the passing moment, knowingly draping itself amongst the curves of our lives. Reminding us that the clock hands tell more than the time. It is here that we try to lose our fragile sense of borrowed time yet find a containment in its contradictory constraints.

Carly Palmer is a St. Charles-based artist & writer. She primarily works in the visual artistic mediums of hand-cut paper collage and acrylic hard-edge abstracts. She has exhibited in several local galleries in the Greater Chicago Area as part of both group and solo shows. She is a Resident Artist, School of Art Outreach Instructor, and the Lead of Gallery Relations at Water Street Studios in Batavia. She is the co-curator of the new Community Gallery where her aim is to bring a spirit of possibility and purpose for emerging artists. She is a 2021-2023 Jungian Studies Program Cohort Graduate from C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago.

Larysa Juriga and Olga Bianko (Buhaienko)
January-February 2024

Larysa is a watercolor artist who lives in Geneva, IL. Originally, she is from Ukraine and came to the U.S. in 2008. Her passion for watercolor started seven years ago, when she first tried it as a way for relaxation and recuperation. In her art, she likes to reflect the beauty of the surrounding world. Larysa loves to paint animals and would be glad to paint a portrait of your pet. She also gives private painting lessons for children and adults.

Olga is an artist from Ukraine. She left the country because of the war. She moved to Geneva in the summer of 2022 and immediately fell in love with the area. Olga loves to paint local beautiful nature and architecture. She can paint a portrait of your car. Olga usually works in monochrome and uses permanent ink for her paintings. Currently, her pictures are for sale in downtown Geneva and at the Fabyan Museum. This fall, six of her paintings were auctioned for charity at Tri-City Partnerships Gala in St. Charles.

Gene McCormick
November-December 2023

British master David Hockney sums up my attitude toward painting: “I paint what I like when I like and where I like” (which sounds a bit more arrogant than intended, at least by me) and I try to do it with uninterrupted passion and gusto, producing interesting images that at best seemingly attempt to get off the canvas and just hang out. They are neo-expressionistic representational paintings of much color, not photographic, and if brushstrokes are visible or a bit of canvas shows through that is okay as my impatient eyes and unruly hand try not to let knowledge or technique ruin the rush of a feeling. “The real is never beautiful,” said Jean-Paul Sartre, and who is to debate him?

Gene McCormick has had more than twenty one-person art exhibitions during the past ten years and has also exhibited at group shows at the Bloomingdale Museum, the Norris Cultural Arts Center and numerous additional Chicago-area venues. He has been the illustrator for the online poetry journal, Misfit Magazine, since its inception in 2014 and has done more than fifty cover illustrations for small press books. Many of his designs have been used for couture sportswear produced by a charitable organization. He also collaborates with Ian Dengler, Portland, Oregon, on an ongoing series of faux postage stamp illustrations.

In addition to visual art, McCormick has had twenty-eight books published, a mix of fiction, nonfiction, art and poetry. He lives in Wayne, Illinois, with his wife and dog and far too many paintings.

Fox Valley Knitters’ Guild
September-October 2023

The Fox Valley Knitters’ Guild will celebrate its 35th anniversary with a juried art show featuring member works from September 5 through October 28. The 39 works on display created by 20 guild members demonstrate the versatility of knitting and related fiber arts. They showcase a variety of garments and other three-dimensional objects, including home decor and sculptural items. Selected pieces feature textures and color work exclusive to fiber arts techniques.

The Fox Valley Knitters’ Guild was formed in November 1987 when 30 avid knitters met at The Fine Line Creative Arts Center in St. Charles to share knowledge and promote knitting and related fiber-based crafts. The guild now has more than 100 members dedicated to the guild’s mission to encourage high standards of design and technique. Meetings feature presentations by local and regional experts, as well as virtual programs with renowned instructors and designers based worldwide.

Charity knitting is important to the guild’s mission. Members have knitted hats, scarves, mittens, shawls and blankets for the elderly, homeless and underserved youth. Other projects have benefitted breast cancer survivors, chemotherapy patients and people with dementia.

Tessa Koller
July-August 2023

Tessa Koller, a St. Charles native, is a working artist who specializes in multiple mediums. Her artmaking skills led to earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design in 2008. Since then, she has pursued painting, abstraction, realistic portraits and landscapes, and visually dynamic acrylic pours. She’s had her work displayed at 116Gallery and many venues in and outside of St. Charles. In addition to exhibiting locally, she has traveled to almost nine countries delivering keynote speeches and showcased her work.

The story behind her artwork is one to follow and is regularly published in multiple magazines and national health and wellness journals. Recently, she was published in the international magazine, Wellbeing Magazine and manages a blog that draws hundreds of unique subscribers from across the world. Visit www.tessakollerart.com for more details about her triumphant story, her articles and blog, and subscribe to her monthly newsletter.

Wayne Art League
May-June 2023

The Wayne Art League was started in the 1950s at the Little Home Church by the Wayside on Army Trail Road in Wayne, Illinois. Initially, we were known as the Wayne Art and Garden Club.

Today we are a group of 40+ artists working in a variety of styles and media. We meet every Monday morning to paint or draw. In the colder months, we meet at the church in Wayne where we paint from still life arrangments or live models. In the warmer months, we move outdoors and paint plein air in various parks and private homes in the Fox Valley and beyond.

We have a long history as a group of dedicated artists who support and nurture one another in the creative process. You can see our exhibits at galleries and other venues in the Fox Valley several times each year.  For more information about the Wayne Art League, contact: [email protected]

Rudy Viereckl
March-April 2023

I am a lifelong resident of the Fox Valley area. I owe my love of the outdoors to my parents, who took us camping every summer. It was during these trips that I learned to appreciate the beauty of nature and how we are stewards of our environment. With a long telephone lens, portable photo blind, and a healthy dose of patience, I am able to capture images that I hope will inspire you. As a lifelong learner, I am just getting started in this journey. I feel that my photographic eye is evolving as environmental issues become prevalent. I am also an optimist and feel that the best is yet to come.

I am inspired by local photographers Thomas Mangelsen and Art Wolf as well. Please visit my Facebook page RVFinephotography or my website at RVFinephotography.com to comment and view additional images of our wonderful suburban life.

These library prints are available for purchase during the show for a 20% show discount. Please contact me at [email protected] for further information.

Carly Palmer
January-February 2023

Carly Palmer is a St. Charles-based writer and artist. She primarily works in the artistic mediums of paper collage, assemblage, and acrylic abstracts. She has exhibited in several local galleries in the Greater Chicago Area as part of both group and solo shows. She is a Resident Artist and School of Art Instructor at Water Street Studios in Batavia, Illinois. She is currently a student in the Jungian Studies Program at C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago. Her most personally meaningful work as an artist and writer weaves together elements of depth psychology, surrealism, and symbolism. This is the creative trinity where both she and her art feel most alive.

The show’s title, “Read Between The Lines”, is an ode to Carly’s endless curiosity about life’s greatest mysteries, as well as a nod to her deep love of reading. Through life and art, she is endlessly exploring what it means to be artfully human. In her work, she often hovers at the crossroads of intention and impulse. She plays into this contrast, and offers the viewer the chance for multiple meanings. She appreciates the juxtaposition of seamless placement in creation and veiled suspense in interpretation.

2022 Community Artists