Creek Gallery to offer artist workshop 'Finding Your Creative Voice'

Creek Gallery offers a one-day artist workshop, "Finding Your Creative Voice," at 9 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 27, at Willow Creek Crystal Lake, 220 Exchange Drive. The workshop also will include a Panera lunch, light snacks and beverages. To learn more, visit www.facebook.com/CreekGallery.WCL/ or www.willowcreek.org/en/locations/crystal-lake.

• Gallerist and art consultant Susan Blackman talks about determining price, placement and promotion in the 21st-century art market in "Move Your Art Career Forward." Blackman blends a passion for art with a results-oriented, bottom-line business background and perspective. She earned an MBA in business management and a specialty in marketing. As a result, she has been uniquely qualified throughout her career to guide businesses and individuals through the process of art acquisition, installation and management. Blackman is a seasoned veteran in the business of art. After joining the field in 1986, she managed five art galleries and later became a gallery owner before turning her focus to the business of art consulting. And for all of these reasons, she is uniquely qualified to help artists move their career forward.

• Tim Lowly shares his decades of experience an exhibiting artist and gallery director in "Refine Your Creative Voice." Lowly is an interdisciplinary artist, working with painting, drawing, installation, digital media, photography and music: both individually and collaboratively. His work has a lyrical realism and quiet spirituality that have over the last thirty years contributed to an international reputation. He is affiliated with North Park University in Chicago as professor, gallery director, and artist-in-residence. He is represented by Koplin Del Rio Gallery.

There also will be an original jazz performance of music based on artwork in the fifth annual Creek Gallery exhibition. Javier Resendiz and Jake Wark will offer "Improvisational Descriptive Music." These acclaimed musicians form a keyboard and tenor sax duo to create original, improvisational jazz compositions based on artwork included in this year's Creek Gallery exhibition.

Resendiz has performed in Mexico's most distinguished venues, such as Palacio de Bellas Artes and CENART, as well as important venues around the world, including Beijing Haidan Centre, Washington Kennedy Center, and Notre Dame University Bartolo Performing Arts Center. He has also been invited as a performer for multiple International festivals such as Euroja Jazz, Festival Cervantino, Havana-Cuba Jazz Festival and the Lima Jazz Festival, among others.

Wark is a saxophonist, educator, composer and improviser originally from Rochester, New York. Wark can be heard performing jazz and creative music as in various groups in Chicago. His newest recording release is "Blow," with the collaborative trio Four Letter Words.

• Artist, educator, curator and art mentor Sergio Gomez shares his extensive experience exhibiting locally, nationally and internationally in "Expanding Your Exhibition Circle." He will share the benefits and challenges of each in a new videocast created for the Creek Gallery arts conference.

Gomez is a Chicago-based visual artist whose contributions to the art world include being director of exhibitions at the Zhou B. Art Center, owner and director of 33 Contemporary Gallery, and co-founder of the artist mentorship program, Artist Next Level, with Yanina Gomez. He has decades of experience as a exhibiting artist and curator, working with galleries, art exhibitions and museums locally to internationally.