‘The Rosetta Stone’ returns to the Blue Moon Gallery

GRAYSLAKE – After a whirlwind tour spanning two years, Michael Litewski’s distinguished painting “The Rosetta Stone” returns to the Blue Moon Gallery for a special homecoming.

“We have been honored and thrilled to see the prestige and excitement surrounding ‘The Rosetta Stone’ since its creation in early 2019,” said Kendra Kett, director of Blue Moon Gallery. “After an inaugural showing in the 16th Street Gallery’s winter juried exhibition in Racine, Wisconsin, in February 2019, the painting made its way to the Blue Moon in the summer of 2020, when Litewski was a featured artist with his ‘Going Home & Other Places’ exhibition.”

Litewski, who is from Zion, presented current works featuring the impact of national and global trends and events on the “house and home” and the family unit within.

The gallery will be presenting a special exhibition from 6 to 9 p.m. Nov. 20 featuring “The Rosetta Stone” in a homecoming engagement along with several pieces from Litewski’s decades-spanning career.

Of the painting, Litewski said its primary story is of a house sliding off its foundation.

“The house is broken into three parts which, for me, symbolize our three branches of government. We are entering a difficult time in our nation’s history and I wanted to build this idea into the artwork,” Litewski said in a news release.

In fall 2020, “The Rosetta Stone” was scooped up into the 76th Rockford Biennial exhibition, a highly competitive show produced by the Rockford Art Museum in Rockford, where more than 700 works were submitted by Midwest artists from nine states. Only 76 were juried into the exhibition, making “The Rosetta Stone” a highly esteemed work.

“Having this piece in the Rockford Biennial was really important. As an artist, you always want to have your work shown in a museum,” Litewski said.

In January, “The Rosetta Stone” won its first curator’s award for excellence when it was shown in the Annual Members Exhibition at the Robert T. Wright Gallery of Art at the College of Lake County in Grayslake.

Litewski has always wanted to show his work in New York City and he soon got the chance.

“I entered ‘The Rosetta Stone’ into the 108th annual Exhibition of the Allied Artists of America at the very prestigious Salmagundi Club in New York,” he said. “The Allied Artists of America is one of the oldest art guilds in the country and you could not ask for a more distinguished space to show your art as the Salmagundi Club. ‘The Rosetta Stone’ was accepted, and my wife and I traveled out to New York City to see the show. It was a true honor for my work to be shown there and a huge career highlight.”

The gallery’s year-round collective artists will be showing new and recent works and there will be guest artist exhibitions – “Transcend:distance” (a four-woman encaustic artist group) and an exhibition by embroidery artist Laura O’Connor of Grayslake. All of the exhibitions can be seen from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the gallery. Admission and parking are free.

The gallery is at 18620 Belvidere Road in Grayslake.

For information, call Kett at 224-388-7948 or visit the gallery’s website at www.thebluemoongallery.com.