Our License Plate Gal Artist — Barb Sistak Baur — is Participating in the 2025 Terrain Biennial, an international festival of art created for front yards, balconies, and porches.

Her sculptural art work, entitled Harmony, is installed in front of her home, along the public road, and is intended for public viewing. It is part of the international display of public art in intimidate settings where artists create art made for front yards, balconies, and porches. These are mini art installations that people can tour and view from Oct 1 to November 15th, 2025. There will be maps of exhibitions published online so people can download info and tour the works. Go to https://terrainexhibitions.org/

Info:

Artwork: Harmony

Artist: Barb Sistak Baur

Location: 27570 N Chevy Chase Rd, Mundelein, IL 60060

Time: Daylight hours

Duration: Oct 1 thru Nov 15, 2025

Barb's Work

This is a sculptural cuboid artwork that measures approx 12x12x13 in. using old license plates that have been re-imaged with rust and paint and shaped into the unexpected 3-D cube.  The cube is mounted on a 3 for pole. She created this piece to harmonize with the environment as we all should harmonize with our environment. Rust is a natural process and offers interesting messages. It prompts reflection of past life and the license plates are past but they are made present here. It is an outdoor piece that is installed in a natural area of her home acreage along the public road, intended for public viewing.

What Are Terrain Exhibitions?

The Biennial is an international festival of public art produced by Terrain Exhibitions. Terrain Exhibitions expands the audience of an artwork and the function of the front yard.

Artists and curators work to produce public art installations (think sculptures, textiles, projections, performances — you name it!) outside their homes. Terrain Exhibitions makes private space public. Terrain Biennial projects are visible from the street or sidewalk 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the full six weeks of the Biennial.

DIY is a core value of the Chicagoland art community, with apartment galleries, DIY shows, maker-spaces, and lending libraries as key resource hubs for artists. From crafting to painting, mending to stitching, construction to recycling, artists are resourceful, performing science and alchemy with time and material.

Visitors, neighbors, school children, teachers and their parents are exposed to challenging contemporary art, offering the experience of discovery and surprise to the community.

What is the history of Terrain Exhibitions?

Terrain Exhibitions are staffed and run entirely by volunteer efforts.

Founded in October of 2011 by artist Sabina Ott and educator John Paulett, Terrain Exhibitions was a public exhibition space in Oak Park, IL. Terrain Exhibitions featured interventions into the conventional landscape of a front yard. Contemporary artists were invited to create site-specific projects challenging the space between public and private, decoration and function, figure and ground.

In the spring of 2018, Sabina Ott, founder of Terrain Exhibitions established it as a 501c3 not for profit arts organization with the mission to organize and produce the Terrain Biennial, administer the Terrain the Terrain Residency in Springfield Illinois and advocate for making public art from private spaces.

Sabina Ott passed away in the summer of 2018, leaving behind an ambitious and innovative legacy spanning three editions of the Terrain Biennial and countless artist projects at her home in Oak Park, IL.

-- Barb Sistak Baur

License Plate Garage Art Studio