 |
||
 |
CROWN POINT STAR Thursday, June 29, 2000 Lake County's weekly hometown news source since 1857 |
||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gene Milkowski/Star | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Crown Point | |||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
| By Christopher C. Paine Star Staff Writer | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| After months of waiting, the City of Crown Point became a member of the 'train-gang' when the Old Courthouse poster was unveiled before residents during the Taste of Crown Point. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| notoriety back to Crown Point."
According to Gail Van Sessen, Executive Director of the Crown Point Chamber, "The chamber decided five or six months ago to sponsor a poster. We agreed it should be done and part of the series." |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
| The painting is the latest addition to the revived South Shore poster series, and the third unveiled this month. Crown Point Chamber of Commerce President Carol Highsmith said "We felt that this was a very worthwhile project to be involved with and that it would bring |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
| Continued below | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| join the South Shore Line | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| "The Old Courthouse is the best known feature in Northwest Indiana. We believe it is also the most attractive in Northwest Indiana," she said. The artist, Bruce Cegur, is a Hammond native who was picked by Mitch Markovitz, Art Director of the Northwest Indiana Forum. "Bruce Cegur brings a new, more modern view to the series. His style has a bit more freedom and I think he was a perfect match for this project," he said. Cegur, a self-taught artist created three different mockups on the computer for the Chamber to choose from. A painter for the last 15 years, his influences include classical artists such as Ivan Albright, Van Gogh, Hopper and Hockney. For the last two years, Cegur has been one of the eight artists whose work has graced the poster series. While he works in a variety of media, ranging from watercolor to prismacolor, the latest effort, his fourth in the series, was done in oil. "This image is taken from 30 different photos of the Old Courthouse. I then pulled them together in Photoshop to create the final image," he said. From beginning to end, the process of creating the poster painting was three months. "The artist came and showed us some of the ideas he had and we chose bits from each one," VanSessen said. A graduate of Hammond High School, Cegur was not a fine arts graduate in college, "I disappointed everybody when I didn't go on to art school when I graduated high school." Instead, Cegur went to college in Tennessee to study for the ministry. He dropped out after two years of study. "I've been painting for as long as I can remember," he said. "Art was more my calling." The posters will be available in the Chamber of Commerce office in the Old Courthouse in Crown Point. For more information call 219-663-1800. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
| Poster series points to future | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| While more are on the way, the future of illustration is in doubt CHRISTOPHER C. PAINE Star Staff Writer |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
| The revival of the South Shore poster happened in 1996 after the sudden, negative reaction by Chicagoans to the idea of a move by the Bears to Gary. The public relations revival of the breakthrough South Shore poster series was spearheaded by the Northwest Indiana forum. Artists, experienced in commercial illustration, were selected to bring the new series to life. "The early posters were stone lithographs," Mitch Markovich, Art Director of the Northwest Indiana Forum. The original posters were a regular series that ran on the South Shore rail line during the 1920's. The original series contained about 50 posters. According to John Rush, one of the artists contributing to the series, "The original series was done when the age of color reproduction was coming." Each poster in the modern series begins as a painting. Most of the paintings are done in oil, then reproduced as posters. According to Markovitz, There were usually 20 plates in the creation of the posters. That brought 20 rich, regular colors to them. "The artists were usually fresh out of college and had a sense of what fine art was and they brought that to the work." For the artists, the future of this kind of work remains unclear. "I think I am part of the last generation doing this kind of art," Rush said. "Illustration like this will be unheard of soon. It'll all be done on computer." Bruce Cegur, the artist on the recently completed Old Courthouse poster disagrees, "This kind of illustration is not going away. (Those commissioning) these projects want something to hold onto. And having a painting also gives you a backup in case a file is lost or corrupted. "The fact is that you have an original. I like the idea of that," he said. Still both agree that despite the rush of technology, the medium of painting will not go away. "Oil painting is so hypnotic, it's like a drub," said Rush. "You never learn how to oil paint. You continually learn how to learn how to oil paint." Cegur said "I paint concepts rather than things. Realism and some abstract art." The new series presently has 33 posters with a cutoff set for 52. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||
 |
 |
|||
