Cover a book with words Bethany Collins: A Pattern or Practice
Bethany Collins: A Pattern or Practice, published by University Galleries of Illinois State University, 2022. Photo credit: Jade Nguyen, courtesy of University Galleries.

Chicago-based artist Bethany Collins returns to Illinois State to sign three limited-edition lithographs created collaboratively with Normal Editions and Collins’ 112-page monograph published by University Galleries. The book and print signing will be from 2:30-4:30 p.m., December 6 at University Galleries. The event is free and open to the public. 

Collins works in a variety of media including drawing, painting, prints, sculptures, and artist’s books where she incorporates fractured or illegible phrases, either punishingly erased or arduously rendered. She has explored personal, bureaucratic, and lyrical language. As Holland Cotter recently wrote in The New York Times, “Language itself, viewed as intrinsically racialized, is Bethany Collins’ primary material.” The artist elaborates, “I adore language because of its potential capacity, but if language is biased and not representative of us, it’s bound to fail.”  

Collins was a visiting artist in residence at Illinois State in 2020. The artist’s work was featured in a solo exhibition at University Galleries of Illinois State University titled Bethany Collins: A Pattern or Practice

Bethany Collins’ visit is sponsored in part by Normal Editions and University Galleries.