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visit the month-long exhibit by appointment:
Call 815-866-5167 or email [email protected]

On Friday, March 8, NCI ARTworks will host an opening reception for the work of professional artists Dana Collins and Sandra Rust from 6 to 8pm in the historic Westclox building in Peru. The opening reception is free and all are welcome. 

Sandra Rust is a professional photographer based in Chicago, Illinois. She graduated from Columbia College in Chicago with a B.A. in fine art and studied digital imaging in graduate school at Governors State University. Her photography clients include: HGTV Dream Homes, Shell Corporation, Oprah, as well as major advertising agency assignments and local Illinois tourism promotions. Sandra specialized in professional talent and corporate headshot portraits.

Her work has been featured in fine art galleries throughout the US and Europe. She has won numerous awards and has been showcased for three years in a row in American Photographer, Wild Planet, Outdoor Photographer, WWF, National Wildlife Federation, and Student Conservation Association.
In her photography, Sandra captures nature, wildlife, architectural, portraits, industrial, and editorial images. This process is enhanced and influenced by her background as a fine art artist/graphic designer/illustrator.

Working on a conservation project in the Florida Everglades years ago ignited her passion to heighten awareness of the need to protect nature and wildlife. Sandra comments, "I want to show how important our plant and animal kingdom is to our own existence." Sandra brings to life colorful, life-filled, inflight images of nature, wildlife, and the wings of the world. 

Dana Collins has exhibited her paintings, drawings, and sculpture in over four dozen solo and juried group exhibitions in New York, Florida, and throughout New England and the Midwest. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Washington University, and her Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from Pratt Institute in New York. She also studied as an undergraduate at Yale University Norfolk School of Painting, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and did additional post-graduate work at Arrowmont School in Tennessee, Columbia College in Chicago, and the University of Illinois. Her numerous awards include the Sisselman Award from the Berkshire Museum in Massachusetts and the Sculptor’s Guild Competition in New York.

The forty-two works in the current exhibition are from the past two years. Speaking of this series, Dana Collins says, “Plein air” simply means open air, which is what I am doing in these paintings. I work from direct observation of the sites, never from photographs. 

“I mostly work from a small rowboat in the backwaters of the upper Mississippi River, though for the current works that show ice and snow I set up my easel in front of the big windows facing the water at my Wisconsin home.

“I have always found something new and interesting on the water. It is more than a matter of form – the composition, reflections, movement, all that. What draws me is something more still and - for want of better words – spiritual, profound.” 

Collins’ career includes teaching at Long Island University, the Brooklyn Center; Pratt Institute Graduate School; George Walter Vincent Smith Museum and Longmeadow College in Springfield, MA; Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield, MA; and Studio Arts Teacher Training Workshops for The College Board in Princeton, NJ. She has also served as a Studio Art Consultant for the College Board in Princeton, New Jersey, and conducted workshops in studio teaching in Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, California and throughout the Midwest. 

Her earlier plein air work has been exhibited locally at Outside the Lines Art Gallery in Dubuque, Quad City Botannical Center in Rock Island, and McAuley Gallery, Mt. Mercy College, Iowa. Her illustrated lectures on the series, “Working on the Water,” were presented as part of the “From Both Sides” exhibition in Princeton, and “En Plein Air” at the Hegler Carus Foundation. 

A resident of Princeton, Illinois, Collins enjoys gardening, is a published poet, and for many years was a violist with the Illinois Valley Symphony Orchestra. She was also the on-air host of the Sunday Morning Classical Music program on radio station WLRZ in Peru. She is included in the current Marquis “Who’s Who Among American Women,” “Who’s Who in America.” and “Who’s Who in the World.” More of her work can be seen at danacollinsart.com.

In addition to the opening reception on March 8 from 6 to 8pm, the NCI ARTworks will be open to the public for private viewing by appointment. To view and purchase the items on exhibit or on this website, please email [email protected] to schedule a time.

Dana Collins

Sandra Rust