One of SORA’s very own students, Lauren Levato, has been chosen as a featured artist by the annual Chicago Artists Month celebration in October 2009. Lauren is a second year student whose work includes both figurative drawings and assemblage involving insects and text.  See Lauren’s Chicago Artists Month info here.

From October 9th - November 7th, Lauren will be curating Binary: A Pairing of Opposite States, an exhbition which will pair Chicago artists together to create new visual art work which can be see in real time online at oppositestates.com.

The show kicked off on Friday, Oct. 9th at the Saint Paul’s Cultural Center with the Wetware Render Machine Performance, which featured SORA students and members of the audience and local artists’ community. Exploring the idea of turning people into drawing “machines” who either build off the work of the previous artist or delve into their own creations, the performance was a great hit that produced an amazing amount of art work of all different styles and media, while adhering to the classical format of drawing from a live model.

Although SORA students helped jump start the performance with their renderings, it wasn’t long before members of the audience joined in and demonstrated the universal appeal of creating art and sharing in the collaborative creative experience. The enthusiasm of the audience demonstrated the real need of making art available to everyone and continuing to foster artists’ connections to their communities.  The show also put in perspective the continual relevance of classical realism within the digital age and its relationship with non-classical media and non-representational art.

Here are some of the amazing art work created by the audience and SORA Students:

By unknown artist

By SORA Student Karen Becker

By Unknown Artist

For more information about Lauren Levato and her methodologies, please see her interview with the Columbia Chronicle.