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

West Town

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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

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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

at RAM’s Wustum MuseumStitched Stories: Narrative Quilts and Textiles&nbsp;brings together quilted, woven, and embroidered works from RAM’s collection that tell stories through fabric and thread. Whether incorporating representational imagery or utilizing abstraction, these small- and large-scale fiber works explore the multitude of ways in which textiles can be used to convey meaning. Drawing from both personal memory and imagined worlds, the artists represented in&nbsp;Stitched Stories&nbsp;demonstrate the versatility of fiber as a medium for storytelling as they transport viewers to faraway lands—from the bottom of the ocean to outer space. Significantly, several artists with Wisconsin ties are represented, underscoring the rich history of textile production in the state.

Stitched Stories: Narrative Quilts and Textiles

At RAM’s Wustum MuseumCynthia Toops is a polymer art pioneer who has been pushing the boundaries of the medium since the 1980s. The artist is well known for her micromosaic technique, which pieces together tiny shards of polymer into figurative or abstract compositions. Her distinctive style pulls inspiration from everyday events or objects, botanical subjects, folk art, and the cultural jewelry and ancient beads which she collects. While Toops works on her own, she also often collaborates with her husband, Dan Adams, who creates the glass beads and components featured in some pieces.

RAM Showcase: Cynthia Toops

At the Art Preserve: May 5, 2026–January 10, 2027At the Arts Center: May 30, 2026–December 6, 2026 This exhibition will bring together for the first time the work of two artists who have both dedicated their lives, through their multifaceted artistic processes, to healing.After a life of rambling,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jmkac.org/artist/blagdon-emery/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(38, 62, 148);" target="_blank">Emery Blagdon</a>&nbsp;(1907–1986) settled on his family’s homestead in Garfield Table, Nebraska. Many members of his family had been afflicted with cancer. Convinced of the healing potential of the unseen forces of the earth, Blagdon spent forty years constructing “The Healing Machine.” Using largely tin foil, masking tape, Christmas decorations, and wire, Blagdon sought to harness magnetism, electricity, and other energies to surround visitors with positive forces. JMKAC has owned “The Healing Machine” since 2004. Guadalupe Maravilla migrated to the United States from El Salvador, unaccompanied, at age eight. At thirty-six, he was diagnosed with cancer, which he links to inherited trauma. During treatment, Maravilla connected with Indigenous healing practices, including sound baths—ceremonies that harness sonic vibrations from gongs, conch shells, and other instruments to restore calm and balance and release toxins in the body. He began making sculptures, paintings, performances, and large-scale installations that incorporate found objects related to his own migration story and various gongs and bowls, which he activates to conduct sound ceremonies. Blurring art, science, and medicine, he calls these activations “healing machines.”At the&nbsp;Arts Center, central to the exhibition is Maravilla’s Mariposa Relámpago, a school bus that has been reimagined as a healing temple. Throughout the exhibition, the healing machines will be activated by Maravilla and various other healers, playing the sculptures to turn on and amplify the energy in the gallery—transforming the space into an immersive healing environment. For the coinciding installation at the&nbsp;Art Preserve, Maravilla’s El Espíritu de Mariposa Relámpago Disease Thrower, a monumental bronze snake with a butterfly head, lightning bolt, and gong, serves as a central altar. Surrounded by Blagdon’s energy-focusing paintings and a selection of Maravilla’s retablos, this installation harnesses the energy held in the shed formerly occupied by Blagdon’s “The Healing Machine,” while it is on view at the Arts Center.

Guadalupe Maravilla with Emery Blagdon: The star exploding in the body

This exhibition will bring together for the first time the work of two artists who have dedicated their lives, through their multifaceted artistic processes, to healing.After a life of rambling, Emery Blagdon (1907–1986) settled on his family’s homestead in Garfield Table, Nebraska. Many members of his family had been afflicted with cancer. Convinced of the healing potential of the unseen forces of the earth, Blagdon spent forty years constructing “The Healing Machine.” Using largely tin foil, masking tape, Christmas decorations, and wire, Blagdon sought to harness magnetism, electricity, and other energies to surround visitors with positive forces. JMKAC has owned “The Healing Machine” since 2004.Guadalupe Maravilla migrated to the United States from El Salvador, unaccompanied, at age eight. At thirty-six, he was diagnosed with cancer, which he links to inherited trauma. During treatment, Maravilla connected with Indigenous healing practices, including sound baths—ceremonies that harness sonic vibrations from gongs, conch shells, and other instruments to restore calm and balance and release toxins in the body. He began making sculptures, paintings, performances, and large-scale installations that incorporate found objects related to his own migration story and various gongs and bowls, which he activates to conduct sound ceremonies. Blurring art, science, and medicine, he calls these activations “healing machines.”At the Arts Center, central to the exhibition is Maravilla’s Mariposa Relámpago, a school bus that has been reimagined as a healing temple. Throughout the exhibition, the healing machines will be activated by Maravilla and various other healers, playing the sculptures to turn on and amplify the energy in the gallery—transforming the space into an immersive healing environment.For the coinciding installation at the Art Preserve, Maravilla’s El Espíritu de Mariposa Relámpago Disease Thrower, a monumental bronze snake with a butterfly head, lightning bolt, and gong, serves as a central altar. Surrounded by Blagdon’s energy-focusing paintings and a selection of Maravilla’s retablos, this installation harnesses the energy held in the shed formerly occupied by Blagdon’s “The Healing Machine,” while it is on view at the Arts Center.

Number One at Tandem Press&nbsp;celebrates the vision of Tandem Press founder William Weege and the groundbreaking work of the press’s first collaborating artist, Sam Gilliam. Their partnership established a spirit of experimentation and technical innovation that continues to define Tandem Press today. Featuring works that reflect Gilliam’s bold approach to abstraction alongside Weege’s commitment to collaborative printmaking, the exhibition honors the creative foundation upon which the press was built. Together, these works trace the beginning of a legacy that has shaped generations of artists and printers.Sam Gilliam&nbsp;(1933-2022) was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. Since the early sixties, Sam Gilliam has been a pillar of the Washington D.C., the modern, and the contemporary art communities. He has tested the boundaries of color, form, texture, and the canvas itself over the course of his long, productive career. Gilliam was a major contributor to the Washington Color School, a group of Washington D.C. artists that developed a form of abstract color field painting during the late 1950s through mid-1970s.His inventive approach to creating art has also had a great impact on the field of Abstract Expressionism. One of the most important African-American artists of the twentieth century, Sam Gilliam was the subject of a 1983 retrospective exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C.,&nbsp;Modern Painter at the Corcoran: Sam Gilliam. His works are included in prestigious collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Beymans Museum in Rotterdam,&nbsp;the Phillips Collection, the Corcoran Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum, the National Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, and the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris among many others.William Weege&nbsp;(b. 1935, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; d. 2020, Arena, Wisconsin) was a pillar in the printmaking and papermaking fields in the United States. He exuberantly explored unconventional printmaking processes, adding paint, collage, handmade paper, and sewn elements to various printed surfaces to create vibrant abstract expressions. He was also an early practitioner in the revival of handmade paper, which started in the 1960s.Although he is best known for his later abstract works, much of his early art commented on social and political issues. Weege studied engineering and city planning and worked at a commercial printing firm before returning to school to study printmaking. He received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1970, Weege represented the United States at the Venice Biennale before joining the UW-Madison Art Department faculty in 1971. He founded Tandem Press in 1987. In addition to being a distinguished professor, Weege had a very successful career as an artist. He exhibited widely, and his work is included in many museum collections throughout the United States including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Sam Gilliam & William Weege

<a href="https://kimstoragegallery.us22.list-manage.com/track/click?u=63eb3ae92ac5ae9371f4d5ed0&amp;id=af142533d1&amp;e=0feabe6389" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Doug Fath</a>’s paintings are open narratives that examine myth, culture, pain, and hope. Working in a Magic Realist style, his canvases invite viewers into dreamscapes where the familiar and the fantastical converge — where blindfolded pigs recline in lush abundance, armed bears stand vigil amid wildflowers, and bluebirds rise singing into darkened skies. Through vibrant color and the charged presence of animals, Fath constructs a symbolic language that is at once personal and universal, poetic and politically alert.&nbsp;At the heart of his practice is a commitment to painting as a healing mechanism — a space where isolation, grief, injustice, and resilience can be held together without easy resolution. Fath’s imagery draws on encyclopedias, folk art, scientific illustration, literature, and poetry, weaving them into allegories that speak to the current political and social moment. The narrative is always open-ended, never didactic — he invites the viewer to complete the meaning, to bring their own experience into dialogue with his.&nbsp;His primary influences are the women of the Mexican Surrealist movement — Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, and Remedios Varo — whose unflinching examination of pain, isolation, and the inner life runs throughout his work. Fath received his MFA in Photography from the University of Illinois at Chicago and has exhibited across the United States at venues including the James Watrous Gallery, Arts + Literature Laboratory, Tory Folliard Gallery, the Dubuque Museum of Art, and the Museum of Wisconsin Art.

Doug Fath

Kim Storage Gallery is pleased to present Finding Home, a new exhibition by artist Doug Fath, on view from November 13, 2026 through December 19, 2026. An opening reception will be held on Friday, November 13th from 5 to 7 PM, and is free and open to the public. Finding Home brings together a new body of immersive, glowing landscape paintings in which Fath continues his ongoing exploration of the search for meaning — both personal and collective — through myth, chance association, and visual connection. The exhibition's title piece takes its inspiration from novelist Barbara Kingsolver, whose opening to The Poison Wood Bible imagines a primordial forest existing before time, its every corner alive. Working from that image, Fath said his paintings in the show aim to capture the feeling of finding home within oneself, unmoored by time.Doug Fath's paintings function as open-ended narratives touching on myth, culture, pain, and hope. Working in a Surrealist style, he populates dreamlike canvases with symbolically charged animals — set among lush, vivid color — to build a visual language that is both personal and universal. Painting serves as a form of healing for Fath, holding grief, isolation, and resilience together without resolving them, and he leaves each piece's meaning open for the viewer to complete rather than dictating it outright. His primary influences are women of the Mexican Surrealist movement, among them Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, and Remedios Varo. Fath earned his MFA in Photography from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1992 and his BFA from Columbia College in 1990. His work has been shown across the United States, including at the James Watrous Gallery, Arts + Literature Laboratory, Tory Folliard Gallery, the Dubuque Museum of Art, and the Museum of Wisconsin Art, among other venues. He lives and works in Madison, Wisconsin.

Finding Home

Mark your calendars — this October, JK Art House opens Between Reflection and Revelation: David Dunlop's Material Alchemy, a new exhibition that bridges Old Master painting technique with strikingly contemporary materials. Painter David Allen Dunlop applies traditional translucent oil painting methods — the kind pioneered on copper and pietra dura by 17th-century Dutch and Italian masters — to copper, gold, steel, and aluminum. The result: paintings that genuinely shift and glow as you move through the gallery. The exhibition runs October 14 through December 28. We're kicking things off with a full weekend: Opening Night Gallery Night — Friday, October 16, 5–9 PM Gallery Day — Saturday, October 17, 11 AM–6 PM And there's more: during Gallery Night, we're hosting a free Parlor Workshop in partnership with the John Michael Kohler Arts Center

Between Reflection and Revelation: David Dunlop's Material Alchemy

New England…has recently posited itself as a grand signifier in my existence as a jewelry artist. It is learning about New England’s seminal history as the seat of the American Industrial Revolution, the undeniable gravity to the founding of this nation, its growth and ultimate dissolution, and the remnants and detritus that are informing my current work. My formative years were spent in southern California where cultural imprints positioned me in a liminal existence between prejudice and privilege. I am half Black and half White. Living in a middle-class suburb of Los Angeles and visiting my father in socio-economically and racially divided South Central Los Angeles impacted my identity as a young person searching for which culture to occupy and how. Ultimately, I realized the choice itself provided me with a tool of social leverage.&nbsp;—Tanya CraneResponding to her own biracial background, Tanya Crane imbues her enamel, metal, and found object jewelry with reflections on history, resiliency, migration, community, adornment, humanity, identity, family, and heritage.&nbsp;As she considers how traditions shift across space or through time, Crane creates patterns that echo designs of global Indigenous makers. This exhibition features jewelry inspired by historical adornment in RAM’s permanent collection—specifically, incised metal bracelets and neckpieces from West Africa that were used as currency. Objects like this were exchanged within trade or barter networks, not only for local agricultural and luxury products but also in transatlantic slave trade negotiations. This potential compelled Crane to cautiously move forward with her explorations.As she states, “The research for my jewelry encompasses both a response to my immediate landscape and my family stories relative to the impacts of the Great Migration. It is through this lens that I interact with and respond to the museum’s collection, contextualizing that historical work through a contemporary lens and providing a dynamic framework to investigate the past in the present.”Crane’s artwork metaphorically embodies the many layers of human existence—specifically, history, race, class, and culture. Through her practice, she reaches into the past to better understand the present and, potentially, the future. As a contemporary jeweler, Crane centers mark-making, patterns, and material choice to build the content in her individual pieces, and doesn’t shy away from using scale to create bold statements. The sgraffito technique she often employs means she carves through one layer of information to get to another—literally uncovering and exposing what has come before.In 2022, RAM invited Crane—who was teaching at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, and has since moved back to her home state of California—to consider making work in response to a small selection of historical African pieces in the museum’s collection. Crane’s personal investment in using jewelry to make connections and her stated interest in the history of adornment made her a good candidate for this provocative project—she was ready to consider tackling the metaphorical weight of these metal historical objects that once functioned very differently than they do in a museum collection.<h5> </h5>Tanya Crane received her MFA in Metalsmithing + Jewelry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and her BFA in Metal from the State University of New York at New Paltz. Crane is an Assistant Professor of 3D Foundations, Jewelry and Sculpture at Long Beach City College. Named a 2024 United States Artist Fellow in Craft, she was selected in 2023 to be an inaugural recipient of the Center for Craft’s Teaching Artist Cohort. Crane was also a recipient of The Doris Prouty Foundation Artist Grant—offered to BIPOC/AAPI women artists in Massachusetts and North Carolina to further their artistic activity and practice. She was the 2018 Society of North American Goldsmith’s Emerging Artist and selected to present at SOFA Chicago, as well as the 2017 winner of the Society of Arts and Crafts–Boston Artist Award.Crane’s work is in the collections of the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock, AR; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis, TN; Philadelphia Art Museum; Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield, OH; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; and Racine Art Museum.

Tanya Crane: Embodied Histories—Exploring the Legacy of African Jewelry

OS Projects presents Anthropogenic Life Forms, an exhibition of sculptures by Chicago artist Barbara Cooper. The show opens on November 14, 2026 and continues through January 9, 2027. The public is invited to meet the artist on Saturday, November 14 from 1 – 3 pm. Cooper will also give an artist talk at 2 pm on Saturday, December 5.Barbara Cooper’s obsession—and horror—is with microplastics, now found in all parts of the environment, including our air, water, and food. The artist started focusing on plastics after learning about plastiglomerates, a hybrid rock made from plastic debris fused with natural materials that will geologically define the Anthropocene epoch.Cooper’s sculptures refer to human body systems that allow us to absorb oxygen and nutrients but have also been found to harbor alarmingly large quantities of microplastics. The sculptures are sewn from aluminum window screening, stitched like surgical incisions. Plastic water bottles picked up off the streets of the artist’s neighborhood are manipulated to fit into the screen forms, then coated with layers of paper pulp and beeswax, merging the industrial and the organic and mirroring how plastics have become enmeshed with all living systems. The resulting “life forms” bear proof of a society and culture that refuses to think about where material goes after we no longer have use for it.Author and curator Giovanni Aloi describes Cooper’s sculptures as “as fossils recording the consequences of an age unable to control its appetite.” By transforming refuse that cannot biodegrade, the artist highlights not only the aesthetic tension within the ugly and discarded—creating jewels that hold the poison of our epoch—but also the deception that enables us to keep producing and using these toxic materials with accelerating intensity. About the Artist<a href="https://www.barbaracooperartist.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" target="_blank">Barbara Cooper</a> works in sculpture, drawing, and public art, utilizing diverse media such as wood, metal, paper, glass and found objects. Additional projects include gardens and structures for dance and theater. Her work is biomorphic in style and process driven, growing from the inside out. Because issues of sustainability and an ecology of wholeness are central to her art practice, she uses repurposed materials in her projects whenever possible.A graduate of Cranbrook Academy of Art and Cleveland Institute of Art, Cooper’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Racine Art Museum, the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art, Honolulu Museum of Art, and the Illinois State Museum, among others. She has participated in numerous residencies and fellowships, both in the US and internationally, and has used them as opportunities to research and engage with new environments and geographies. Image: Life Form 3 by Barbara Cooper, 2024

Barbara Cooper: Anthropogenic Life Forms

Since the 1980s, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center has built a remarkable collection of Asian textiles, including works from Bengali kantha, Hmong-Miao paj ntaub, and Japanese boro traditions. While these practices developed in different regions and cultures, they share common themes of resourcefulness, care, and storytelling through cloth.<a href="https://us.list-manage.com/pnUEGGLwsr2?e=62e89a6c87&amp;c2id=edfb4aca6fcc01b3e5cc7350834d6f24" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" target="_blank">When Threads Meet, They Speak</a> brings these textile traditions into conversation for the first time, highlighting the connections and distinctions that emerge through their materials, techniques, and histories. Often created by women in rural communities, these works transform worn fabrics into objects of beauty and utility, carrying generations of creativity, resilience, and cultural knowledge within every stitch. <a href="https://us.list-manage.com/xDUrCcgR1W_?e=62e89a6c87&amp;c2id=edfb4aca6fcc01b3e5cc7350834d6f24" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" target="_blank">View the Exhibition</a>

When Threads Meet, They Speak

RAM Downtown441 Main StreetRacine, WI, 53403 Wed Oct 28, 2026 –&nbsp;Sun Jan 31, 2027 While a perennial favorite among artists working in clay and an artist whose work has been collected by North American museums since the 1950s, Toshiko Takaezu (1922 – 2011) has recently been pushed into the spotlight. Takaezu is being applauded by those who marvel at what she accomplished with her chosen materials, sometimes making sculpture that was as tall as she was, and by those who appreciate her love of nature and the environment or her ability to find balance and harmony as a person and an artist. For several decades, RAM has been acquiring work by Takaezu, ranging from early functional pieces to her trademark closed forms and moons to landmark multi-piece groupings.&nbsp;With an archive of nearly 125 works, RAM has the honor of documenting this significant artist who pushed the boundaries of clay and drew no distinctions between the handwork of making a pot and the handwork of daily life such as cooking or gardening. This exhibition features major works, such as&nbsp;Gaea&nbsp;and the highly acclaimed&nbsp;Star Series, that are returning after a two-year nationwide tour, as well as never before seen at RAM pieces. By all accounts, Takaezu’s holdings at RAM comprise the largest collection of her work in a North American institution but, most importantly, they reflect a singular voice who helped expand the potential of a material not always associated with artistic vision. Installation View of Star SeriesToshiko Takaezu

Welcome Home, Toshiko: The Toshiko Takaezu Archive Debuts at RAM

Called “Floating Flowers” by Thomas Haneman, these fantastical botanical paintings, richly toned and wildly inventive, could be specimens from outer space, underwater, or some sort of Eden. Positioned out-of-space and time, they joyously spring from his canvases, unfettered by nature or science. Many of them face away from the viewer, growing in the direction of an unseen source of light or energy. After emerging from a long and crippling depression, and inspired by his garden, Haneman’s subjects appear like synapses, the fresh sparks in his brain, brought on by his new-found happiness and excitement for life. They are the visual result of his healing, synaptic displays of joy. His paintings bear reference to seventeenth-century Dutch still-life and eighteenth-century botanical illustrations, while feeling atemporal and contemporary.

Floating Flowers

Crystal City is a monumental found-object sculpture by Robert Blackstone (1971–2023) that depicts a self-contained modern city. Begun when he was a sophomore in high school, Blackstone built the work from found objects, electronics, harvested glass, toys, family videos, and personal mementos. Crystal City combines sound, light, movement, and living elements to create a miniature immersive urban landscape. First created and shown in Dayton, Ohio, this marks the first time the work will be exhibited outside that city. Originally conceived as an elegy for Blackstone’s grandmother, the project evolved into a reflection on social and economic injustice and a vision of a more unified, interconnected city. The exhibition also features additional works by Blackstone drawn from the downtown Dayton bank building where he developed the project in its final years. Many of these sculptures attest to Blackstone’s interest in history, the passing of time, and the human condition.

Robert Blackstone: Crystal City

&nbsp;(Windows on Fifth Gallery)Using cut paper, Wisconsin-based Velliquette crafts a site-specific installation that explores the handmade, the ornamental, and the imagination.

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