Making Our History, an Abraham Lincoln Art Residency

The University of Illinois Springfield organized “Making Our History: Artists Render Lincoln’s Legacies,” an innovative physical and digital art exhibit funded by the University of Illinois Presidential Initiative: Expanding the Impact of the Arts and Humanities. Presented in conjunction with the UIS Center for Lincoln Studies, the UIS Visual Arts Gallery, the Springfield Art Association and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, “Making Our History” is the culmination of a yearlong virtual residency project.

Over the past year, I was selected as one of twenty Illinois artists to participate in a virtual residency with the UIS Center for Lincoln Studies to create an original artwork on Lincoln’s legacies under the guidance of Professors Graham Peck and Brytton Bjorngaard. The art will be exhibited at UIS Visual Arts Gallery, the Springfield Art Association and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library from Thursday, Aug. 11 through Sunday, Sept. 18, 2022. Accompanying the art will be twenty professionally produced short videos documenting our artistic processes and our interpretations of Lincoln’s legacies.

Other artists participating in the exhibit are William Blake, Keenan Dailey, David Hinds, Daniel Houk, Larsen Husby, Jordan Fein, Lori Fuller, Industry of the Ordinary (Adam Brooks & Mathew Wilson), Lindsay Johnson, Kelly Jones, Judith Joseph, Judith Mayer, Alexander Martin, Mark Nelson, Nathan Peck, Don Pollack, Krista Shelton, Corey Smith and Billie Theide.

Link to all of the artworks at Professor Graham Peck’s website.