Today I joined my family for Easter Sunday Brunch out at Pheasant Run Resort
in St. Charles. It was one of those huge ballrooms full of people and buffet tables.
Trying hard to pace yourself, plate after plate, trying to get your money’s worth.
Which is hard to do… but I gave it my best shot! Hello, dessert table!

After Brunch, we walked around the Resort and found that my painter-friend
Cheryl Holz has an exhibition of her work currently in the Bourbon Street Gallery.
It’s this great little section of Pheasant Run  that they’ve done up to look like this
little old cobblestone street. Sadly, the actual Gallery was closed as it is Easter!
But that didn’t stop me from peeking inside, snapping a few photos and finding
a few more beauties in the hallway! Even from a distance… beautiful!

Cheryl grew up in the country, collecting moss, bugs, leaves and to her mother’s chagrin,
snakes and salamanders. Her rural upbringing had a big influence on her aesthetic
sensibility, and most of her work today is an homage to nature’s strength, beauty and
diversity. She emulates natural aging processes by building up and wearing away paint
and plaster to hollow wooden panels. Anything from dragonfly wings to prairie grasses
are embedded at various points of the process. The symbolic implications of the methods
and materials are as important as the imagery.

I met Cheryl a few years back at Art In The Barn in Barrington…
pretty much right above me! I’m in the Lower Barn, and she’s in the Upper Barn.
But the first time I went up to see her work, I was immediately enamored.
The colors. The textures. The layers. The typography. Love it all.
Since then, we’ve done some “art fair trading” and I have one of her prints in my bedroom.
In case you can’t make it to Pheasant Run Resort… here’s a few more pictures…

And my favorite of the ones I could actually get close enough to really see…

Cheryl Holz : On exhibit now through May 2, 2012 at Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles.
Closing Reception on Saturday, April 14th from 5:00pm-7:00pm.

Or, you can check out more of Cheryl’s work at www.CherylHolz.com