David Sobotka (r)evolutions

ABOUT DAVID SOBOTKA in his words

I majored in Fine Art at Calvin College. While earning my degree, I cultivated a mind-set of creativity and an openness to the wonder of the world. In simple terms, as a result of the program, I began to view the world as a canvas.

Over the course of my career as a graphic artist, I have worked to creatively communicate clear messages for my work clients. For over 35 years, I have confronted and solved the basic technical challenges of successful design by compellingly integrating color, composition, structure, and form. In fact, through sheer repetition, balancing these foundational artistic building blocks became second nature to me. What first started as a challenge for me become as natural as breathing.

However... trying to say something as a fine artist was still very difficult for me. I had a lot to say, but I still could not execute my personal artistic vision in a satisfactory manner. I wanted to be happy with my end result, but I fell short time and time again. I finally gave up creating personal artwork in 1997. I still enjoyed viewing art, and I was successful in my career as a graphic artist, so at least I had those creative outlets.

Still, it was not enough.

In 2007, I picked up a camera and began photographing the immediate world around me.

Over time, as I shot my photographs, I discovered new ways of seeing the world that was informed by my training, work experience and the thoughts and ideas about life itself and what it means to live in this world. I found that I finally had the means to convey what was meaningful to me personally, in an artistic medium that opened tremendous personal opportunities to grow in confidence as an artist.

For the next dozen years I honed my vision and my technical skills, all the time thinking about the thousands of images that I photographed. I saw each photograph as a fossil of some event, person, place, object, or idea that could not ever be truly replicated again. I could freeze a moment of time, but sadly that moment was gone.

In 2020, COVID struck, and I was put on unpaid leave from my job. With the newfound free time I had, I was able to pursue an illustration project for a close friend. Remarkably, that project led to a melding of photography and digital art manipulation, and the style of what you will see in this exhibition is an ongoing culmination of everything I have learned these past 35 years as a graphic and fine artist.

Follow David on instagram or visit his website.

vortex 39 David Sobotka

We are born, we live and then we die.

How did we come into existence?

Are we created or randomly assembled?

What happens to each of us when we die?

Do we continue to exist after we die or do we fall into oblivion?

With that knowledge of our shared mortality, what is our responsibility to our world?

GARY CUDWORTH Tethered Worlds

In Tethered Worlds, beings emerge from paper as if summoned from an unnamed myth. Created in Pen and Graphite with obsessive detail they inhabit sparse terrains, bound by filaments, structures, or unseen compulsions. Their gestures suggest both purpose and futility, as they move forward, often unaware of what confines them. Each drawing reveals a figure caught mid-ritual, mid-thought, or mid-failure—part of a strange ecology where freedom and burden coexist. These characters are not machines, but entities weathering their own unknowns—quietly entangled, deeply connected

Artist Bio

Gary Cudworth is a visual artist and graduate of Northern Illinois University, where he received several major honors, including an Illinois Arts Council Grant and the Rockford Register Star Award. Early in his career, his paper sculptures were represented by the Roy Boyd Gallery in Chicago and acquired by notable collections such as McDonald’s Corporation, General Electric, the Rockford Art Museum, and the University of Northern Iowa Museum.

After years of working in three dimensions, Gary Cudworth has returned to drawing with renewed intensity and vision. His recent work—including the series Tethered Worlds, on view at Water Street Studios—explores psychologically charged, surreal figures rendered in meticulous detail. Across sculpture and drawing, his practice continues to investigate form, constraint, and the architecture of inner life.

Follow Gary on instagram or visit his website.

CAROL WEBER Natural Boundaries

Through the Trees Carol Weber