Terrain Biennial 2023

John Colson: Stick People Unite!

October 1 - November 15, 2023

Reception Saturday, October 21, 2023 6 - 9pm

Please join us for a celebration for boundary Terrain Biennial artist John Colson and his project Stick People Unite!  Colson has constructed, in-situ, several large-scale “stick people” with found materials from boundary and elsewhere. 

John and others will play music, we will have hot cider and more!  

Terrain Biennial is a grassroots public art festival that brings artists and neighbors together to put public art on the front lawns (and porches, windows, and rooftops, too!) of neighborhoods across the world.

🍄 Terrain Biennial 2023: Mycelium Connection 🍄

“In celebration of the Terrain Biennial's 10th anniversary chose the theme Mycelium Connection to honor and expand our mission of making unexpected, yet vital human and environmental connections. We ask ourselves who and what have we overlooked and why? Mycelium is a thriving underground network of fungal threads, vital to many natural ecosystems. Despite myceliumʻs enormous geographical span, it remains invisible to most. Terrain Biennial launched in Oak Park, Illinois, and spread across redlining from Chicago to India. This year, we are here to continue the work to foster, joyfully uplift, and cultivate solidarity across differences. Like mycelium, springing up from the most unexpected cracks and shadows, art is already all around. Creation flows from the hands and deserves to be shared with many.”

—Terrain Biennial, 2023

John Colson ( b.1962 ) is a multi-disciplinary artist living in the Beverly neighborhood, Chicago, IL. After receiving a BFA from the University of North Texas and an MFA from Northern Illinois University, Colson settled in Chicago in 1990 . Primarily a sculptor, he often works in wood, producing humorous abstract figurative pieces that frequently rely on linear elements, creating three dimensional drawings. Colson also works in ceramics, collaborative performance and digital painting. In 2023, he self published the light hearted “Fish with Hats “ collection of drawings and brief stories, intended to be a children’s book for all ages.