Oakton hosts exhibit of Chicago-based photographer Jay Boersma

Des Plaines, Ill. (Feb. 14, 2022) – Oakton Community College invites the community to explore the exhibition Jay Boersma: The Consistency of His Vision, now through March 31, at Oakton's Koehnline Museum of Art, 1600 E. Golf Road, Des Plaines.

The Koehnline Museum of Art has recently featured a series of exhibitions illuminating significant chapters of Chicago art history from the early 20th century to the present. Boersma — a fine art and documentary photographer, mixed media artist, designer and creative director — was born in Chicago.

Boersma graduated from Eisenhower High School in Blue Island, Illinois and attended the University of Illinois at Chicago. He worked as a studio assistant at Shigeta-Wright Photography Studio in Chicago. Between 1979 and 1996, he taught photography and art at Bradley University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Governors State University.

After 20 years of teaching, Boersma changed careers in 1996 and became the creative director for Playboy Magazine's website, playboy.com. Currently, Boersma has work in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and several private collections.

"This exhibition features another episode of Chicago's art saga in the field of photography," said Nathan Harpaz, Ph.D., Koehnline Museum manager and curator. "A retrospective exhibition, it presents Boersma's work from his early years in Providence, Rhode Island, his photos that were part of the Changing Chicago project, his haunting images of empty and abandoned spaces, and the sometimes colorful and always striking images of the streets in places he has traveled around the world."

"I remain fascinated by the built world and its endless variety of human-made structures, environments, and details and the unique ways in which these are transformed by age, use, and — in particular — the act of photographing them," Boersma said in a media statement.
The Koehnline Museum of Art is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday.

For more information, contact Harpaz at nharpaz@oakton.edu or (847) 635-2633.