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2007 Boneyard Arts Festival
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2007 Boneyard Arts Festival Promotional Image Announced
Siblings by Burcu Okay
January 26, 2007
40 North | 88 West announced today the first major development leading up to the fifth annual Boneyard Arts Festival, happening Friday through Sunday, April 20 through 22, 2007. Following last year’s successful juried selection of an original artwork to represent the character and atmosphere of the Festival, 40 North | 88 West proudly announces this year’s selection of an exciting work by a local artist.
After evaluating more than 50 outstanding submissions, the selection panel chose a playful, engaging piece submitted by artist Burcu Okay. As the featured image for this year’s festival, “Siblings” will serve as the unifying theme for this year’s Boneyard Arts Festival promotional materials. 40 North | 88 West congratulates Ms. Okay and thanks each artist who responded to the call and submitted work for consideration.
The selection panel included Lisa Costello, Director of the Parkland College Art Gallery; Jennifer Gunji, an assistant Professor of Graphic Design at the University of Illinois; and Nathan Westerman, an Art Exhibit Preparator at the Krannert Art Museum and Art Exhibition Supervisor at the Springer Cultural Center.
The Artist
Burcu Okay was born in Turkey at 1978. She obtained her BS degree in Art Education at Marmara University. As she was pursuing her Masters degree at the same university, she decided that moving to Urbana-Champaign with her husband was more exciting than finishing the Masters program.
Since 2003, Urbana-Champaign has presented lots of opportunities and challenges for her. She had to blend in with a culture and society that she had only seen in movies. Also, for the first time in her life, she was totally free of any suggestions and guidance from mentors about her work. After a period of adaptation and self-searching, she established her unique style.
Burcu works with a variety of media including cutouts from magazines, old book covers, ink and paint. She uses brightly-colored images to explore dark themes such as loneliness and longing. She creates whimsical and dark imaginary portraits which can be interpreted as both from the past and the future.
She showed her work for the first time in 2006 at Bar Giuliani for the Boneyard Arts Festival and she got encouraging responses. She is very happy to work and live in Urbana-Champaign which provides a welcoming environment for a new international artist. More of her work can be seen at her website, http://buburzubur.deviantart.com/.
The Selection Panel
Lisa Costello is currently the Director of the Parkland Art Gallery. She received a Master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
Jennifer Gunji is an assistant Professor of Graphic Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is currently the chair of the program and also is the art director of the nationally published literary and arts journal, The Ninth Letter. Jennifer’s work concentrates primarily on publication design and catalogue design. Her work has earned her many awards and has appeared in Print magazine, STEP Inside Design, How magazine, Type Director’s Club, and many other publications.
Jennifer has taught at the University of Illinois since 2001 when she began as a visiting professor. Her focus encompasses both traditional and new media, and her teaching emphasizes the continued cultivation of a student’s design and craft skills — aesthetically, technically, and ultimately, how these skills can be applied professionally. Professional projects introduced in the classroom have reproduced real design situations as well as addressed visual communication issues, social or community issues, and projects that explored expanding the students’ cognitive and intuitive skills through experimentation and new methodologies. By simulating a studio environment, she is able to more effectively promote professional standards of communication skills and expose students to all stages of the creative design and production process.
Nathan Westerman currently works at the Krannert Art Museum as an Art Exhibit Preparator and at the Springer Cultural Center as an Art Exhibition Supervisor. He received a Masters of Fine Art in Sculpture from University of Illinois in 2004 and a Bachelors of Fine Art in Painting and Sculpture from Sam Houston State University (Texas) in 2000. As an artist he works with multimedia techniques from photography, painting and sculpture to create installations and interactive artworks that physically engage the viewer.