Sandburg’s first art show of the new year, “Lingering Forms,” highlights the work of alumna Madelyn Havens through March 24.

An opening reception will be held from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Jan. 23 in the Sandburg Art Gallery in Building D on the Carl Sandburg College campus. The exhibition and reception are free and open to the public. Regular gallery hours are weekdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Havens, a 2019 Sandburg graduate, is a Chicago-based abstract figurative painter whose work explores the physical and emotional complexities of the human form. According to the college, through an intimate material practice, she investigates the body as both presence and memory, exploring how form, texture and gesture can convey what lies beneath the surface. Her paintings often center on themes of vulnerability, fragmentation and the tension between softness and distortion.

A work by Sandburg alumna Madelyn Havens is featured in “Lingering Forms,” which opens Jan. 23 and runs through March 24 in the Sandburg Art Gallery at Carl Sandburg College. (Photo courtesy of Carl Sandburg College)

“Within my painting process, I explore bodily interiority and exteriority in relation to the surface of painting, evoking a discomforting sense of corporeal (dis)embodiment, where haunted flesh becomes palpable,” Havens said.

A Bushnell-Prairie City High School alumna, Havens earned a bachelor’s degree in studio art from Knox College and a Master of Fine Arts from Illinois State University. Her work has been exhibited at venues including Heaven Gallery and Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, as well as Knox’s Borzello Gallery. She has also been featured in New American Paintings and shown at the Figge Art Museum.