Evanston Magazine interviewed us for their January 2016 issue - check it out in the link below. We are so thrilled to be featured.

evanstonmagazine.com/2015/12/09/art-tha…

Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, IL invited me to a three week residency which they then extended into six glorious weeks in addition to offering me a partial fellowship.

I was given Sylvia's studio which is SO LARGE, full of beautiful light from all the skylights and a lovely sleeping loft.

Aug. 13, 2014
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

contact: Aron Packer, packer@packergallery.com
312/226-8984 or packergallery.com

Lauren Levato Coyne: Wolf Peach
solo exhibition of newest drawings
artist reception Fri., Sept. 5, 6 - 9 p.m., show continues through Oct. 18

CHICAGO - Opening our fall season we address issues of death. Artist Lauren Levato Coyne opens her second solo exhibition with the gallery on the ideas of poisoning and her continued thoughts on death via her largest and most elaborate drawings to date. In addition, two other artists open solo shows the same night, Theresa James whose cyanotype/drawings deal with religion and faith, and Ellen Greene whose painted gloves and mixed media pieces focus on murder ballads.

Levato Coyne has been thinking a lot about poisons and their impact on the physical and mental health of generations. Man made poisons such as Agent Orange, processed sugar, and alcohol, as well as nature’s toxins like nightshade, venom, and Monarch butterflies to name a few. False poisons as well, such as the once firm belief that tomatoes were a fatal fruit. These and other elements make up the drawings that have their root in the impact of death from diabetes, cancers, and prolonged exposure to poison, intentional or unwitting.

Levato Coyne's drawings are paralinguistic symbolist portraits and still lives. Their linguistic structuring is divorced from linguistic content; meaning is indicated, but encrypted. Each drawing begins with an interior narrative rooted in personal history: a family ejected from the American South that took with them many of the curious beliefs and habits of the Appalachian Mountain Kingdom. The animals and colors in Levato Coyne's drawings are therefore influenced by the storytelling and imagery of fairytales and wives-tales, as well as medical and zoological antiquity, and farming.

Combining lush realism with an economy of line and negative space helps create a schema that differentiates the human from the flora and fauna that populate the work while, contrarily, breaking down the wall between interior and exterior, reality and non-reality. Dense layers and rich colors drawn without the confines of space and time force the narrator's story into focus, but the story, though present, remains elusive and undefinable. The drawings are like words hovering on the tip of the tongue.


About the Artist
Lauren Levato Coyne is an artist and author based in Chicago. She has exhibited her work since 2003 and in 2008 entered a two-year period of master study at The School of Representational Art in Chicago and privately with Steven Assael in New York City. In 2012 USA Projects awarded her a grant for "Wunderkammer," an ongoing series of drawings and sculptures. Levato Coyne is a visiting instructor at Georgia State University, UIUC, University of Wisconsin, The Art Institute of Chicago, and Morbid Anatomy (NY) among others. Her work graces the covers and interiors of several books and is housed in many private collections.   

CONCURRENT SOLO EXHIBITIONS:

Theresa James: Not All Angels Have Wings
Lauren Levato Coyne: Wolf Peach
Ellen Greene: Murder Ballads

Opening reception: Fri., Sept. 5, 6 - 9 p.m., continues through Oct. 18, 2014
EXPO Chicago reception: Fri., Sept. 19, 6 - 9 p.m.

Please stay tuned for events in October related to these shows including a Death Panel discussion and a Murder Ballad concert!

###

Mark your calendars for Friday, Sept. 5 for my solo show Wolf Peach opening in Chicago's West Loop gallery district at Packer Schopf Gallery.

This is my second solo exhibition with the gallery.

Images for the show will be released in August and September, I am keeping things a little more secretive this time around.

In October the gallery will host a Death Panel featuring me with artists Teresa James and Ellen Greene who both also have solo exhibitions at the gallery along with mine. We serendipitously all wound up making work relating to death. Ellen's show is about murder ballads so look for an announcement of a murder ballad concert too!

Packer Schopf Gallery
Teresa James
Ellen Greene

Happy to be included in this astounding list of contemporary artists, aptly titled Substance as curated by Daniel Maidman and published by Poets and Artists.

My fantastic husband Rory Coyne is also included.

Click below to see all the images and order your own copy!

Substance Issue

http://centuryguild.net/pages/events


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 10, 2013
chicago@centuryguild.net
312/617-8711

Symbiosis
New Work from Lauren Levato Coyne and Rory Coyne

CHICAGO - Century Guild is proud to present Symbiosis, an exhibition of new work from Lauren Levato Coyne and Rory Coyne, commencing with an artist's reception on Oct. 12 from 7 - 10 p.m., and continuing through Sun., Nov. 24. This is the first time the couple, who were married in July, will be presenting work together.

Symbiosis is the word the artists chose based on the mutually beneficial nature of their relationship and their shared studio practice, as well as a nod toward the animals that influence their work. However it is a fitting title for their art as well, as the work of each artist deals with relationships that are symbiotic in some manner, whether physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual.

About Lauren Levato Coyne
Artist and writer Lauren Levato Coyne is a collector of exotic and unusual specimens with a focus on the entomological and anatomical. Levato Coyne's work comes from the intersection of wonder and memory and how the body itself becomes a wunderkammer, amassing all manner of mysterious and confounding issues, dramas, revelations, and dilemmas that either touch us as a fleeting corporeal moment or take up permanent residence in the body's collection. The themes of body as wonder, memory, and curiosity have been the foundation of Levato Coyne’s on-going series of self-portraits.

About Rory Coyne
Rory Coyne is emerging as a leader among a group of dedicated painters working in the contemporary allegorical realist movement. He began serious study of classical master works at SUNY Fredonia, where he earned his BFA in 2003. He then entered the graduate program at the University of New Mexico where he continued exploring and developing his love for classical, figurative technique, while also teaching. After receiving his Masters of Fine Art in 2007 he moved to Chicago to pursue his craft. Coyne’s paintings are fables rooted in reverence for the stories and techniques of the past, yet the subjects are fully contemporary in their dramas and personal symbolisms.

-more-



Pg. 2

About Century Guild
Founded in Chicago in 1999, Century Guild Gallery specializes in museum quality turn-of-the-century lithography, ceramics, and objects, as well as contemporary artists whose exceptional work captures the romance and sinister beauty of fin-de-siècle European art.

Symbiosis
New Work by Lauren Levato Coyne and Rory Coyne
Oct. 12 - Nov. 24, 2013
Century Guild
Chicago location
2136 W. North Avenue, Chicago, IL 60647
(One and a half blocks west of North-Damen-Milwaukee intersection)
Open Wed. - Fri 11 a.m. - 7 p.m., Sat. - Sun. noon - 6 p.m.
chicago@centuryguild.net
312/617-8711

SPECIAL EXHIBITION NOTE:
Century Guild will be having our annual Gran Guignol event on Oct. 25, 26, and 27. Symbiosis will be off view during this time, however both artists will be creating new work for this special event and their exhibition will resume on Oct. 30, 2013.

###

I'm pleased as punch to announce The International Museum of Surgical Science has offered me an exhibition to display the works made during "The Year of Curiosities," funded by my grant via USAProjects.

The exhibit, titled "The Age of Spontaneous Generation," opens in December 2013. Stay tuned for more!