about bert leveille press

about bert leveille press and writings — press

COVID-19 Bert Levelle

It can be worthwhile to consider what a painting needs. Lights? Multiple dimensions? Dancers, poets? “Synapse,” created by Bert Leveille in a seven-foot-square vault at the Old Courthouse Arts Center in Woodstock, IL, requires all this and then some. Installed for the last two months of 2020, also the final months of the venue’s thirty-year existence, “synapse” uses three large silvery canvases, one suspended fabric-and-wire object, and a trio of changing-color LED floor lights to bring the imagery of Leveille’s earlier paintings to life. The result resembles a dancer rendered in Japanese calligraphy, spinning slowly in a moody abstract landscape. Overlaid across this scene are related textual fragments — including the tenderhearted inside is not so dark / when you shine / a light. stop. — not unlike how the owners of Japanese scrolls would fill the white space around a waterfall or a gourd with lines of poetry. The words, a collaboration with the Atrocious Poets (Annie Hex and Jen May), appear suspended in the vault’s doorway, through the magical intermediary of a sheet of hung Plexiglas.

— Lori Waxman 2021-01-19 10:55 AM

https://60wrdmin.org/artwork/4849092_Bert_Leveille.html

Leveille, Hex and May create a Gallery Installation some can't get enough of

Some northern Illinois poets had to write outside the lines for a unique Woodstock art exhibition.

Leveille, Hex and May create a Gallery Installation some can't get enough of.

Poets & Visual Artists Take Creativity To The Next Level In Gallery Installation.

... Woodstock resident Anita Theodore said it was her second time coming to see the display. There is one piece that she said she can’t get enough of.

“It’s suspended, but still has movement. But then you've got keywords like stop and silent and dark and shadow," she explained. "So, it's a very clever, very thoughtful…and I think I'm just going to come back and look at it over and over again.”

Theodore was describing a piece by artist Bert Leveille called Synapse. Leveille collaborated with poets Annie Hex and Jennifer May. The piece was inspired by Leveille’s art coach, Paul Klein, who died of cancer this October. In an explanation of her piece, Leveille said she was working on a painting last year while Klein underwent brain surgery. She said at some point, her painting turned into an image of his brain.

Anne Burns was there with Theodore. Burns is also a fan of this piece. She suggested that the words really complement the work.

“It frames the inside moving figure. So it's...because life is just not linear, it just moves, you know, and the brain moves and I love how it just…that last stop," said Burns. ...

— YVONNE BOOSE
Yvonne Boose reporter at WNIJ radio in DeKalb . Yvonne Boose is a 2020 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project. It's a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms like WNIJ. You can learn more about Report for America at wnij.org.

The entire article can be read and heard at:
https://www.northernpublicradio.org/post/poets-visual-artists-take-creativity-next-level-gallery-installation

Artwork fills an empty spot in downtown Lake Geneva

Light and activity can be seen through the window at the storefront at 231 Cook St. But persons enterring the storefront won't find anything for sale there. What they will find is a free art show courtesy of artist bert leveille and the Lake Geneva Art Museum. ...

— Chris Schultz

"the END is the beginning"

..."LEFT: Diana and Blake Karlin of Woodstock look at the exhibit "the END is the beginning by artist Bert Leveille. ... BOTTOM RIGHT: Artist Bert Leveille talks with a friend during a closing reception for her "the END is the beginning" installation. ... NW Herald, 2016

— photos by Matthew Apgar, mapgar@showmedia.com

press for leveille exhibit "Bridging the millennium"

Bert Leveille graduated from Elmhurst College's art department in 1971. But take a walk through EC's Accelerator Art Space, and you may not even know it. Through Oct. 3, the artist will be showcasing her drawings, paintings and sculptures in a free gallery open to the public, entitled "Bridging the Millennium." And across the drawing table, the cryptic and often bludgeoned images are as original as if she's graduated a wide-eyed art student yesterday.

Like Alvin Schwartz sketches bathed in cherry wine red and punch drunk orange, the paintings appear on queen-size canvas and stretch along every wall in the college's newly renovated art space. The more entrancing illustrations play respectfully into what Leveille calls her alternate universe and consciousness, featuring more gothic creations draped with threaded appendages and thinner shadows. "Nebular Breach" and "Future," both acrylics on canvas, are prime representations of Leveille's calendar style; it's one she expresses as a challenged essence of reality, while up close the drawings speak proverbial volumes of imagination revolting from repression.

As a 1971 graduate, Leveille belonged to the original wave of EC art students (since the program wasn't established until 1969), even having peered with now EC professor John Weber. As Weber claimed in his introduction of Leveille on Sept. 10, she has stayed in touch and in the area since her graduation, and now the EC has an opportunity to enjoy the spoils of her proximity. ...

— Will Petty, Editor in chief, The Leader - Cult(ure) September 14, 2004

"leveille installation at Bubotto"

Art exhibit brings taste of 19th century Paris to Elgin

The exhibitors are looking at Leveille's exhibit, called an art installation. ...Artist Bert Leveille, dressed in an elaborate gown, led spectators upstairs at Facaccia's to view her installation...

— Amy E. Williams, Elgin and South Elgin Daily Herald, March 1988
— photos by Brian Peterson, Daily Herald Photo

"leveille installation at Bubotto"

Artistic support
Elgin's Bubotto arts salon has become a place to learn and grow

... featured artist Bert Leveille's wall-sized tapestries.

...The wall-sized canvases of Elgin painter Bert Leveille dominate Sunday's show with up to 24 by 15 feet of surrealistic color splashes. Bubotto's featured artist, Leveille paints her pieces in sections rolled out on the floor. Sometimes she doesn't see the complete composition until the installation unveiling. It's a journey through my subconsious," she said of her sweeping style. "Some people find (the paintings) very nightmarish, and some people find them very fanciful."

— Kathleen Roberts, The Courier News, March, 1995

"Totally Tubular"
Take a ‘Totally Tubular’ stroll through artist Leveille’s subconscious

Viewing the latest exhibit by artist Bert Leveille is a far cry from simply walking between paintings hung on the wall.

The experience is more like taking a stroll through Leveille’s subconscious ... dance performance... The dancers represented some of the figures in Leveille's mind, which come to life in her paintings and art pieces. And the tubes for which the exhibit is named were incorporated...

— Mary Piskorski, Daily Herald, November, 1992

"Totally Tubular"
Recurring Images

While novelists frequently say their characters take on a life of their own, it is far more unusual to hear a painter speak in those terms. But that is precisely how...Bert Leveille regards her work. ...

The characters that bubble up from Leveille's imagination are not readily apparent in day-to-day life.

"Although my creatures have some human traits, they're not humans," she explains. ... "I think of them as being more universal ... Tubes started showing up whenever I did water colors... By making them three-dimensional tunnels, large enough to go inside, I'm creating a dialogue. By bringing tunnels to life, so to speak, I hope to find out what it means. ...
an experiment in fantasy, but then fantasy could be reality. I was always fascinated with how the microscopic view of something looks completely different from what we see. ...I don't tie myself down to recognizable. ..."

— Hugh Hart, Chicago Tribune, November 26, 1992

"Experiment in fantasy"
Fantasy in art

... she specializes in unique sculptures and paintings.

— Daily Courier News, September, 1989

"Experiment in Fantasy"<br>Artist turns fantasy world into art reality

"Experiment in Fantasy"
Artist turns fantasy world into art reality

....Rebellious by nature, Leveille reveled in the freedom coming with artistic expression. After all, the work was her own. She could set the parameters.... "I wanted it all to come from the subconscious."...Leveille now finds herself "making a conscious effort" to allow some recognizable forms to come through — literally. "I felt these characters wanted to get off the canvas," ...giving these characters a complete three-dimensional world to work in....

"...experimental, with holes and lines. It's like a language. Just like a writer has to build a vocabulary of words , an artist has to build a vocabulary of images."

The holes Leveille refers to are actual tears in her free-form canvases. "They bring tthe pieces together in that a person could be looking at one piece and see another,"...

"That's part of the beauty of abstract art. People see what they want to see."

— Danielle Aceto, Northwest Herald, April 21, 1988