Quick Navigation

Northern Illinois University

NIU Office of Public Affairs


News Release

Contact: Peggy Doherty, NIU Art Museum
(815) 753-1936

March 24, 2004


THE REDBALL IS COMING TO DEKALB

DeKalb – It’s BIG … it’s RED … and it’s popping up unexpectedly on campus and in town. And you can help decide where it should go when the “RedBall Project” makes an appearance in DeKalb.

Join artist Kurt Perschke in exploring and noticing our unique local architectural spaces through the punctuating drama – and humor – of the giant red ball. A Museum Without Walls project, presented by the Northern Illinois University Art Museum with the support of the Fine Arts Committee of the NIU Campus Activities Board, Kurt Perschke will be in residence working with NIU students, both art and non-art majors, April 4-10.

Perschke will present a public slide talk about his artwork at 6 p.m. Monday, April 5 in Room 100 of Jack Arends Hall (Visual Arts Building) on the NIU campus. A meeting for those interested in working with Perschke in selecting sites for the work to be installed in DeKalb will follow. Installations of the RedBall will take place both on campus and in the community later in the week.

Kurt Perschke’s “RedBall Project” is an international series of temporary site-specific installations that respond to the built environment we inhabit and the sculptural space embedded throughout that architectural landscape. Conceived to expand into space where it doesn’t quite fit, the 15’ RedBall acts both as visual punctuation to the perception of our surroundings, and as a surrogate to our own body’s navigation of those spaces. Oversized, expanding and contracting, it both questions and celebrates the environments we have built for ourselves.

The “RedBall Project” has increased environmental perception in St. Louis, Mo.; Providence, R.I.; Barcelona, Spain; Sydney, Australia – and now DeKalb. Documentation of all the “RedBall Project” sites, including those chosen in DeKalb, will be exhibited in the Fall of 2004 at the NIU Art Museum Gallery in Chicago in an exhibition called “RedBall Revisited.”

Kurt Perschke received his M.F.A. degree at the Rochester Institute of Technology and then served as director of the Bonsack Gallery in St. Louis. As a visiting artist, he has developed seminars on temporary public/community based work and site-specific practice at Columbia College in Chicago.

For more information on the previous sitings of Perschke’s “RedBall Project” and other work at the NIU Art Museum, visit: http://www.vpa.niu.edu/museum. This Museum Without Walls project is partially funded by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, the Friends of the NIU Art Museum and the Fine Arts Committee of the NIU Campus Activities Board. For further information please contact the NIU Art Museum at (815) 753-1936.