Artist, former Joliet resident, has painted more than 71 years

JOLIET – Richard Ainsworth, director of Gallery Seven in Joliet, praised the beautiful artwork in former Joliet resident Sally Schoch’s “Floral Impressions” show.

The exhibit’s 40 pieces cover the entire “featured artist” wall – and then some.

“We took down our own work to make room,” Ainsworth said.

A painter for 71 years, Schoch, 81, of Wilmette, is an abstract expressionist and fabric collage artist. She said her favorite aspects of art are texture and color. Schoch said she is fascinated with color, although she prefers to dress herself in black and white.

“A friend said to me, ‘Your color comes out in your hands,’ ” Schoch said.

Dubbing herself the “jack of all trades and master of none” and “having the attention span of a gnat,” Schoch – a graduate of Joliet Township High School and the School of the Art Institute in Chicago – said she has done portraits, black-and-white series, big barns, sailboats and even doll-making.

She painted her first noteworthy mural in 1946 – when she was a seventh-grader and known as Sally Ann Davis – on a wall in Farragut School. A local newspaper snapped a photo of Schoch standing next to the Mother Goose-themed painting.

“It was hysterical,” she said, but then, Schoch doesn’t take herself too seriously. “I once had a professor tell me, ‘Don’t think everything you do is great. It’s not. Be lucky if you have a couple of things that are great.’ You learn to throw things away.”

Schoch prefers watercolor and oil to acrylic (“I’m not too swift with acrylic,” Schoch said). She loves the malleability, intense colors and slow dry time of oil, as well as the spontaneity in watercolor.

Spontaneity and its unknown outcome are why Schoch prefers abstract to realism.

“Sometimes, art is great,” Schoch said, “and at other times, it’s horrible, and I paint over them.”

Since Mother Nature provides plenty of inspiration, Schoch said her favorite place to go for it is the Chicago Botanic Garden, where she can observe firsthand the life cycles of varieties of flowers.

“You can get any color, any shape, any kind of flower imaginable,” Schoch said. “It’s endless, and you don’t have to make them terribly representational. As you know, photography takes care of that, especially today.”

That said, Schoch does work from photographs – and from memory. One won’t find Schoch setting up an easel in a public place, even when that place is a vast flower garden.

“I’m rather reserved,” Schoch said. “I don’t like people looking over my shoulder.”

Schoch has a similar passion for texture. Although one can paint texture into an art piece, the result is not the same as the tactile feel of various fibers. Fiber floral art? Well, that is the best mix of the two, Schoch feels.

Schoch recently exhibited her fiber work in Indiana, she said, and spends about 30 hours a week creating art – and another 10 hours a week minimum doing volunteer work. She's hoping to participate in ArtPrize next year, a juried art show in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that features more than 1,500 art pieces in 160 venues across three square miles, according to its website.

In the meantime, Schoch enjoys hearing the viewer’s reaction – good or bad – to her art. She recalled the comments from “a couple of little old ladies” who’d checked out Schoch’s paintings at an exhibit: “They don’t look very real.”

“I had to turn away and laugh,” Schoch said. “Isn’t life grand?”

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IF YOU GO

WHAT: ‘Floral Impressions’

WHEN: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m. to noon Saturday

WHERE: Gallery Seven, 116 N. Chicago St., Joliet

ETC: A collection of 40 abstract floral paintings by former Joliet resident Sally Schoch

INFORMATION: www.galleryseven.net

CONTACT: 815-483-4310 or gallery7@gmail.com