Terrain Exhibitions Founding Fund on Go Fund Me
Help support the Terrain Biennial 2019 and jump start Terrain Exhibitions as a nonprofit organization. Help us to continue Sabina Ott’s legacy of supporting artists and building community.
This year’s Terrain Biennial already has over 200 artists and locations and is still growing!
We need your help to raise funds for operating costs for the biennial, the residency, and our first year as a nonprofit organization.
Click button to support Terrain Exhibitions via Go Fund Me
Nora Maite Nieves, Terrain Biennial 2015
History of Terrain Exhibitions:
Founded in October 2011 by artist Sabina Ott and educator John Paulett, Terrain Exhibitions was a public exhibition space in Oak Park, IL. Terrain Exhibitions featured interventions into the conventional landscape of a front yard. Contemporary artists were invited to create site-specific projects challenging the space between public and private, decoration and function, figure and ground.
Terrain Exhibitions differed from many other alternative art platforms in that the artworks were accessible 24 hours a day, year-round. Visitors, neighbors, teachers, school children, and their parents were exposed to challenging contemporary art, offering the experience of discovery and surprise to the community. Terrain Exhibitions exhibited work that expanded the audience of an artwork and the function of the front yard.
Erin Hayden, Terrain Biennial 2017
In the summer of 2013 Sabina launched the Terrain Biennial by inviting her neighbors in Oak Park to share her passion for art and to host artists themselves. Since then, the Terrain Biennial has grown into a huge public arts festival spanning countless locations across the world. Over the past six years hundreds of artists and hosts have generously collaborated on the biennial to create something truly special.
In the spring of 2018, Sabina established Terrain Exhibitions as a 501c3 nonprofit arts organization with the mission to organize and produce the Terrain Biennial, administer the Terrain Residency in Springfield, Illinois and advocate for making public art from private spaces.
When Sabina passed away in the summer of 2018, she left behind an ambitious and innovative legacy spanning three editions of the Terrain Biennial and countless artist projects at her home in Oak Park, IL.
The 2019 Terrain Biennial
As a fledgling non profit Terrain Exhibitions has already identified over 200 artists and locations for this year’s 2019 Terrain Biennial.–– an international festival of site-specific art made for front yards, balconies, and porches that will open on October 1st and run until November 17th, 2019.
The Terrain Biennial will take place everywhere! The Terrain Biennial has centers in Oak Park, Chicago, Evanston, Portland (Maine), Lubbock (Texas), Peoria, Springfield, Oakland, Los Angeles, Dhaka (Bangladesh) and London (UK) and more! - check out Terrain Biennial Locations for the full list.
Terrain Residency
We also partner with the Springfield Arts Association to co-sponsor the Terrain Artist Residency in Springfield, IL. The 2019 resident artists Morgan Rose Free and Carla Fisher Schwartz are currently producing work to be exhibited as part of the upcoming Terrain Biennial.
What will the funds be used for?
Biennial kickoff block party
Biennial maps
Residency costs
Website maintenance
Publicity - printing, advertising, etc
General operating costs for nonprofit
INVEST IN TERRAIN / INVEST IN SABINA’S LEGACY!
Help us to continue Sabina’s legacy of generosity by making your gift to Terrain Exhibitions to support the organization and help us to produce this year’s Biennial and Residency programming. Terrain Exhibitions is a 501(c)3 nonprofit arts organization founded in the State of Illinois. Tax ID #83-0649634 Contributions are tax deductible as allowed by law. Your financial support helps us to fulfill our mission.
Lisa Boumstein-Smalley and Geoffry Smalley, Terrain Biennial 2015