Michael Golden took art classes in the 1970s at Beverly Arts Center in Chicago. Now he returns to exhibit his work in the East Gallery.
“The Bird is a Place: Works by Michael Golden” is on display from Saturday to Sept. 18. It features art blending nature, science and geometric design.
“I just retired, but I’ve been an art professor for 25 years. I always liked when a student of mine would come back after 10 or 15 years and write a letter about what they were doing, so it inspired me to thinking about when I was a kid,” said Golden, who worked at Houston Community College.
“I took classes with Jack Simmerling and at the Beverly Arts Center. I remember thinking that I would love to have a show there, because I still have family there. They’ve never really seen my work in person.
“I thought it would be cool to go back to where I started. A lot of the imagery, its genesis was when I was a kid.”
Beverly Arts Center’s 50th anniversary in 2017 spurred Golden, an alumnus of St. John Fisher School in Chicago, to inquire about exhibiting at the center.
“I wanted to go to Morgan Park High School so badly because they had art classes. My parents told me I had to go to Catholic school. Marist High School had no art classes,” he said.
So his parents, Patricia and the late Warren Golden, signed him up for classes at the Beverly Arts Center.
Golden was diagnosed with a blind right eye from birth.
“I don’t have that depth perception. I rely on a lot of things that artists have used since (man was) painting in caves, like overlapping and perspective more and more since the world that I see is very flat. I use a lot of patterns and color to make it more interesting,” said Golden, who utilizes sacred geometry in his art.
“The Bird is a Place” features 30 pieces, mostly acrylic-on-canvas paintings along with some paintings on top of antique prints and documents and a couple of cast aluminum sculptures.
He said the Beverly Arts Center “is a great place that can pull a community together, a place where kids can go when so many arts programs are being cut in public schools.”
“The arts really feed our soul. That’s an important thing,” Golden said. “I know it’s part of their mission and it really just helps the whole community.”
Jessi Virtusio is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
‘The Bird is a Place: Works by Michael Golden’
When: July 30-Sept. 18; 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Saturday (closes at 5 p.m. Friday-Saturday if no evening events) and 1-4 p.m. Sunday; call to confirm hours as they are subject to change
Where: Beverly Arts Center’s East Gallery, 2407 W. 111th St., Chicago
Admission: Free
Information: 773-445-3838 or www.beverlyartcenter.org
Etc.: Opening reception, 6-8 p.m. July 30
