CLC student art show starting monthlong run

College of Lake County in Grayslake will be the place for art aficionados to gather starting Friday.

It'll be the first day for the 29th annual student art exhibition at CLC. An opening reception and awards presentation will run from 7 to 9 p.m. at CLC's Robert T. Wright Community Gallery of Art, on the college's Grayslake campus.

Free and open to the public, the student art show will go through May 15. It's a juried exhibit including paintings, drawings, computer graphics, photography, ceramics, jewelry, digital media and sculpture.

CLC's students created the art exhibits. Yale Factor, an art professor emeritus at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, served as the event's juror.

Steve Jones, curator at the Wright Community Gallery of Art, said Factor was expected to receive about 200 pieces to judge. He said 50 to 60 art works would be selected for the exhibition.

"It is a very popular show," Jones said, "because it involves our students. We get a lot of traffic through the gallery."

Kudos to be announced Friday include the CLC student activities office merit awards and the $150 Mendelson Award, given in memory of artist Steve Mendelson by his parents.

Jones said about 400 were in attendance at last year's opening event.

The privately operated College of Lake County Foundation established the Wright Community Gallery of Art in 1981. CLC officials say the gallery is considered a resource for local artists and residents.

The gallery is next to CLC's library/learning resource center on the flagship Grayslake campus.

Boha Song of Libertyville has been selected to receive a $500 scholarship from the Lake County Art League, with Janice Snow Metzger of Antioch getting the Phoebe Boyd Memorial $500 scholarship, which honors the longtime fine arts supporter.

Song's and Metzger's works are expected to be part of the exhibit.