MCC art galleries to host postcard art competition, Ben Grant paintings

The McHenry County College is hosting two upcoming art exhibitions, including paintings by Ben Grant in Galleries One and Two in the MCC library, through Dec. 7 and the traveling Postcard Art Competition and Exhibition in the Epping Gallery in the bookstore hallway in Building B, through Dec. 6.

Milwaukee-based artist Ben Grant will feature his abstract painting show titled "I Would Prefer Not To." Grant's work explores the potential for meaning in simple, bold and colorful combinations of shape and dimension. The paintings' colored bands are created using a myriad of different techniques including brushing, rolling, tearing, spraying, sanding, and drawing.

Grant earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Cooper Union in New York City and his Master of Fine Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Grant's work has been exhibited in New York, Chicago and Wisconsin. He is currently a lecturer of art at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and is represented by Tory Folliard Gallery in Milwaukee.

The Postcard Art Competition is a juried traveling exhibit that started in 2000 and is sponsored by the Lake County Discovery Museums' Curt Teich Postcard Archives in Wauconda. The exhibit celebrates the postcard as an art form and visual document by challenging fine artists to produce original works in postcard size. The 36 works included in the exhibit were selected from nearly 300 total entries submitted by artists from across the U.S. and Canada.

The Curt Teich Postcard Archives is one of the largest collections anywhere of visual images of 20th century North America, depicting an America evolving through seven decades of unprecedented growth. The core collection is the industrial archives of Curt Teich and Company of Chicago, which operated from 1898 to 1978 as the world's leading printer of view and advertising postcards. McHenry County College/Epping Gallery has been a PACE exhibit venue and Art Purchase sponsor since 2000; pieces purchased through the sponsorship are added to the MCC Permanent Art Collection and installed in locations throughout the campus.

This is the final year of the Postcard Art Competition. The Curt Teich Postcard Collection is being moved to the Newberry Library in Chicago in January 2017.

For more information about McHenry County College's art galleries, contact Sandra Lang, curator, at (815) 455-8785 or at slang@mchenry.edu.