Current Art Gallery Exhibits

Epping Gallery, artspace144, and the Student Galleries

Fox Valley Conference Art Show

April 8 – April 19, 2026

Reception and Awards Ceremony: On Thursday, April 16, from 6 to 8 p.m., awards will be presented at 6:15 p.m. in the Luecht Auditorium (B170). A reception will follow on the first floor of Building A, including Epping Gallery, artspace144, and the Student Galleries.

Free and open to the public.

• FVC Art Show Information

  Starting April 8 and running through April 19, area high school art students will showcase their work at the annual Fox Valley Conference Art Show at McHenry County College. Each school’s FVC art teachers selected a wide range of both 2D and 3D artworks exploring drawing, painting, printmaking, mixed media, illustration, photography, graphic design, ceramics, sculpture, and jewelry. Teachers looked for works of art with a purposeful exploration of concepts, technical media applications, imaginative expression, formal compositional qualities, and the meaning and function of the artwork.

  The 2026 Fox Valley Conference Art Exhibition is on display on the lower level of Building A. It is hanging in Epping Gallery, artspace144, and the Student Galleries, just beyond the cafeteria. The participating high schools in this juried show are Cary-Grove, Crystal Lake Central, Crystal Lake South, Dundee-Crown, Huntley, Harry D. Jacobs, McHenry East, McHenry Upper Campus, Prairie Ridge, Hampshire, and Central High School (Burlington).

  For more information, contact the 2026 FVC Art Show hosts: Prairie Ridge High School—Aaron Cummins (email acummins@d155.org).

Galleries One and Two

April Behnke

Off/Grid

March 9 - April 17, 2026

Artist Talk and Reception: Wednesday, April 1, 2026

2:30 p.m. Artist Talk in Luecht Auditorium, B170

3:30 p.m. Reception in Gallery One, A212

• Behnke's Statement
  In Off/Grid, Chicago-based artist April Behnke presents a series of paintings that explore perception, structure, and visual instability. The work is rooted in the grid, but deliberately pushes against its order. Behnke’s paintings follow systems of organization while simultaneously disrupting them, creating tension between logic and unpredictability.
  
  The grid in Behnke’s work serves both as a formal tool and as a perceptual guide. It organizes space and reminds viewers that the painting exists as a physical object, with edges, surface, and material presence. Yet the grid is rarely fixed or perfectly aligned. It bends, shifts, and fragments, while shapes and color interplays layered across the surface disrupt the expected order. This balance between structure and visual surprise creates a dynamic viewing experience that shifts between awareness of the painting as a constructed object and immersion in depth or illusion.
  
  Behnke’s paintings often layer multiple organizing systems at once, including grids, diamonds, diagonal lines, and waves. These underlying patterns are partially blocked, overlapped, or shifted by opaque shapes and variations in color or tone, which prevent the eye from settling. Foreground and background relationships are frequently reversed, creating spatial ambiguity. As a result, perception remains active, and the viewer’s eye moves across the surface, noticing new relationships over time.
  
  Off/Grid reflects Behnke’s interest in perception as an active experience. The work invites viewers to slow down, test their expectations, and remain engaged as the paintings shift between stability and instability, clarity and ambiguity. Rather than offering fixed meaning, the paintings create space for ongoing visual and mental interaction.
• About April Behnke
  April Behnke received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BFA from Cornell University. She has completed residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha and the Slak Foundation in the Netherlands. Behnke has exhibited nationally and internationally, including in Mexico City, Seoul, New York City, Berlin, Chicago, London, and Basel. Her work is included in Georgetown University's art collection and has been featured in Chicago Gallery News, The Washington Post, Time Out Chicago, and on CBS News, among other media outlets. Recent awards include the Creative Accelerator Grant from the Illinois Arts Council. Behnke is based in Chicago. For more details about Behnke, visit her website and Instagram page.

For more information, to request pricing, or to be added to the mailing list for upcoming exhibitions, email Trevor Power, Art Gallery Curator.