West Town, Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village, Kinzie Corridor, Humboldt Park

West Town

Wisconsin

IL • MI • IN

West Loop, Fulton Market, East Garfield Park

West Loop and West Side

Evanston, The North Shore, Northern, Western and Southern Suburbs

Suburbs

Old Town, Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Roscoe Village, Bucktown, Wicker Park, Logan Square, Lincoln Square, Ravenswood, Uptown, Edgewater, Andersonville, Rogers Park

North Side

Michigan Avenue, Streeterville, The Gold Coast, The Loop, and South Loop

Michigan Avenue

Pilsen, Bridgeport, Chinatown, plus Hyde Park, Jackson Park/Dorchester, and Bronzeville

South Side

Superior and Franklin streets, West Chicago Ave, and down to Merchandise Mart and the River

River North

Join ARC Gallery Members &amp; Melanie P. Brown for an artist talk about her new solo exhibition, Driving My Meat Machine: Flight Fantasies. Melanie P. Brown has a long standing practice of painting in direct response to sound, music, and motion. Since 2020 her process has centered on live and recorded sound, her gestures and movements while painting, and video of birds and her own body in motion. Preparing extensive palettes and integrating pastel and charcoal, she translates rhythm, texture, and spatial perception into layered compositions. Her latest series combines all of these elements and explores how it feels to be inside a body as it moves through space as well as the image of the body itself. In some of the pieces she uses gestures of birds in flight which merge with the body as a way of expressing the feeling of unbounded space and infinite freedom that exists inside the mind. She believes that the most accurate portraits capture what something is doing rather than their static form and describes these paintings as kinetic portraits of the inner and outer self. Exhibition dates: July 10 – 31, 2026 Gallery hours: Thurs – Fri 2-6pm, Sat – Sun 12-4 pm

Artist Talk with Melanie P. Brown

Join ARC Gallery Members &amp; Audrey Yang for an artist talk about her new solo exhibition, Sanctuary As Method. Audrey Yang: Sanctuary As Method Sanctuary As Method offers artmaking as refuge for “throwaway” materials—snack wrappers, used kitchen gloves, old bedsheets, dryer lint—and turbulent emotions—anger, disappointment, grief, fear. These are precious evidence and accumulation of every day that we are alive. Processing these over weeks, months, and years—through repeated acts of sewing, folding, painting, soaking, dyeing, shredding, reassembling—yields continuous transformation that cannot be defined or controlled long-term. Drawing inspiration from utopia as method in literature, this body of work traces the shift from suppressing to anticipating potential beyond language and knowing—then seeing that very potential within ourselves. Artmaking as a sanctuary for distress and debris anticipates how we come to peace with our own totality. Audrey Yang is a Chinese-American interdisciplinary artist and educator, born and raised in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. She is currently pursuing a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Art Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is grounded in relationships devoted to learning. She adheres to the belief that self-acceptance—the unlearning of shame—generates reciprocal webs of curiosity between oneself and others. Curiosity enables learners to think, work, interact, and imagine beyond disciplinary boundaries, beyond secondhand language, towards something infinite. Exhibition dates: July 10 – 31, 2026 Gallery hours: Thurs – Fri 2-6pm, Sat – Sun 12-4 pm

Artist Talk with Audrey Yang

Step into the sharp, subversive world of satire, past and present, in this lively panel inspired by the Driehaus Museum’s exhibition&nbsp;Ink &amp; Outrage: 18th-Century Satirical Prints in London &amp; Dublin. Using the exhibition as a springboard, writers and contributors from&nbsp;The Onion&nbsp;and&nbsp;The New Yorker&nbsp;will bring the conversation into the present day, exploring how satire is crafted, circulated, and received in today’s fast-moving media landscape.&nbsp; This discussion focuses on the enduring mechanics of satire, its targets, its techniques, and its cultural impact. Panelists will reflect on how their own practices echo (or diverge from) historical traditions, revealing how, in many ways, the more things change, the more they stay the same.&nbsp; Moderated by Colin Barr of the University of Notre Dame, whose scholarship bridges Irish and English history, the conversation offers audiences a unique opportunity to connect the incisive humor of the 18th century with the satirical voices shaping public discourse today. Whether you’re a longtime fan of contemporary satire or newly curious, this program invites you to see both past and present with fresh eyes.&nbsp; About the Panelists Colin Barr (Moderator)&nbsp;is professor of modern Irish history in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame and the Thomas Moore and Judy Livingston Director of the Keough School’s Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies. Barr was born in Canada and raised in the United States. He holds a B.A. from Stonehill College and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, and has held academic appointments in Ireland, the United States and the United Kingdom. Barr’s work seeks to place the history of the island of Ireland and its peoples in the widest possible context, including that of the United Kingdom, the continent of Europe, the Roman Catholic Church and the global Irish Diaspora.&nbsp; Tom Bachtell&nbsp;is a freelance cartoonist and caricaturist and illustrator. His distinctive drawings appeared in The New Yorker’s Talk of the Town section for 25 years, and he contributes regularly to the New York Review of Books. His work also appears in Politico and i-D Magazine. Tom illustrated Bag Man (Crown 2020) by Rachel Maddow, and recently published his first children’s book, The WhyBecause Book - Das Warum-Weil Buch in Germany (Tanja Langer 2025).Mike Gillis&nbsp;is head writer for The Onion. He’s also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Tricycle, ClickHole, and the Supreme Court (in the form of a recent amicus brief in defense of parody and free speech).&nbsp; Rob Knoll&nbsp;is a staff writer at The Onion. He has also written for the website ClickHole.

Exploring Satire with The Onion and The New Yorker

Explore the role of satire as a visual record of social mores, tastes and opinions on fashionable dress with Alex Aubry, Director of SAIC’s Fashion Resource Center.

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