Joliet couple exhibiting artwork at The Strange & Unusual Gallery

“Phenomenal” is what an art gallery owner called a Joliet couple’s opening reception.

Erik Ohrn and Eryn Blaser are the creators of E Squared, which The Strange & Unusual Gallery in downtown Joliet is playing through Sept. 30. “E Squared” refers to the first initials of the couple, who’ve been together since 2006, they said.

“Erik and Eryn are two completely different artists. But they complement each other and take you on a journey. It’s really just a beautiful journey and a beautiful show, very textured, very emotional. It’s definitely worth seeing.”
— Christine Nordstrom, co-owner, The Strange & Unusual Gallery in Joliet

Christine Nordstrom, gallery co-owner with her husband Terry Eastham, said 31 of the 63 pieces sold on opening night. Ohrn paints large oils based on the human form. Blaser creates small, very tactile, multi-media pieces.

“So that shows you how phenomenal it was,” Nordstrom said. “It was just a packed house. For six straight hours on a Saturday, we were nonstop. And it was wonderful.”

Nordstrom said guests were a mix of the artists’ friends and family, regular gallery supporters and “some new faces that nobody knew.”

“It was a very good mix of sales,” Nordstrom said. “It’s just a very juxtaposed show. Erik and Eryn are two completely different artists. But they complement each other and take you on a journey. It’s really just a beautiful journey and a beautiful show, very textured, very emotional. It’s definitely worth seeing.”

Visually communicating thoughts and feelings

Ohrn’s work does focus on the human body. But he is not a portraitist. Often his figures are shapes and forms that “morph and take over each other,” he said.

“What I’m most interested in is our internal landscape contrasted with the external world,” Ohrn said. “So I’m interested in projecting head spaces or head space. I really want to express feelings or a multitude of feelings.”

Ohrn said the process of creating an oil painting means as much to him as the subject matter.

“I definitely respond to texture, the layering, the process of layering the paint – and the accumulation of different moments in time that kind of build on this overall feeling,” Ohrn said.

Ohrn said when he’s “out and about,” he pays attention to people and is curious about their thoughts.

“We all experience life in our own unique – and sometimes similar – ways,” Ohrn said.

But he’s not always “the best” at communicating in words, he said. So he expresses his own impressions visually.

“For me, this is my way of communicating,” Ohrn said.

Eryn Blaser and her husband Erik Ohrn chat while at the Strange and Unusual Gallery in Downtown Joliet on Sunday, Sept. 17. — Eryn Blaser and her husband Erik Ohrn chat while at the Strange and Unusual Gallery in Downtown Joliet on Sunday, Sept. 17, 2023. (Gary Middendorf/Gary Middendorf)

Small tactile pieces show connectivity and growth

Blaser, an art teacher by day, said she’s dabbled with printmaking, worked with paper through the years and experimented with fiber art, “making things three dimensional.” But this first solo show steered her into working with the materials in a new way.

“A lot of my work for this show has a lot to do with human connectivity and growth as an individual, as a person,” Blaser said. “The fabric, for me, is like a skin or a layer and now that looks in our day-to-day lives.”

Blaser said everyone that people interact with over a day, a year, contributes to their individual depth or layers. That’s why Blaser even made her own paper for some of the pieces.

“[It’s to show] the story the plants go through,” Blaser said, “the breakdown and the building it back up in a different purpose and way. It’s been wonderful to bring those components together.”

Blaser said her pieces are beautiful, but they also show the struggle and the release, which is part of nature and life. And because Blaser is 39, she considered her life in segments of 13 and how she grew in each segment.

Her work – with canvas that looks like leather and all the tiny stitching – is very tactile and she encourages people to touch it, to discover it, to find their own interpretations, she said – as even Blaser did through the process.

“For me, it was making that dedicated time and tuning out of everything else and that was extremely hard for me,” Blaser said. “Because I am so involved in the arts community — and I’m an art teacher and students come first, my community comes first, a lot of things come first — that I fell in love with the experimentation and needed to keep going. And I haven’t stopped.”

Blaser said she’s still creating, albeit at a slower space since school started again.

“If I want to keep at this, I need to sometimes zone out of everything else and be a little selfish at times,” Blaser said.