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

What does color feel like? In the hands of the artists gathered for Color Play, it feels like&nbsp;memory, motion, celebration, and wonder. Kim Storage Gallery is proud to present this vibrant group&nbsp;exhibition featuring the work of Poppy Dodge, Megan Woodard Johnson, Kathleen Waterloo, and Gretchen&nbsp;Warsen—four artists united by an unapologetic devotion to color as a primary language of expression.Across wildly different materials and methods, each artist approaches color not as decoration but as the very&nbsp;subject of their work. Poppy Dodge, a self-described Color Maximalist working in Sonoma County, California,&nbsp;builds richly layered abstractions inspired by improvisational quilting and collage—stacking shapes and hues&nbsp;into what she calls “playful color conversations” that stitch together a life’s worth of experience. Megan&nbsp;Woodard Johnson, a Milwaukee-based mixed media painter, layers paint and expressive drawn line with&nbsp;found ephemera—vintage ledgers, packaging, handwritten records—to map the beautiful, layered complexity&nbsp;of everyday moments. Her work captures how small, ordinary joys quietly accumulate into a life, and how&nbsp;color can carry the full weight of memory and mood. Kathleen Waterloo brings a uniquely architectural&nbsp;sensibility to the group: a former interior architect turned encaustic painter, she transforms aerial views,&nbsp;street maps, and structural blueprints into luminous abstract compositions rendered in molten wax and&nbsp;pigment. And Gretchen Warsen, working on a large scale in her studio, builds paintings through accumulation&nbsp;and intuition—layering opaque acrylic color, drawn line, and translucent fields while drawing inspiration from&nbsp;interior design, children’s illustration, and the eternal freshness of flowers. Her titles, arrived at through&nbsp;reflection and conversation with her daughters, serve as gentle invitations into each work’s emotional world.Together, these four artists make a compelling case that color is never neutral—it carries feeling, triggers&nbsp;memory, and opens dialogue between artist and viewer. Color Play invites visitors to slow down, look closely,&nbsp;and let color do what it does best: surprise, delight, and connect us to one another<a href="https://us.list-manage.com/rmKCk2gE3Bv?e=0feabe6389&amp;c2id=59e859111d676330d8f5e0c66464fc47" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">View the Exhibition</a> Artist Talks: Saturday, July 18 at 1 PM <a href="mailto:kim@kimstoragegallery.com?subject=RSVP%20for%20Color%20Play&amp;body=Hi%20Kim%2C%0A%0AI%20look%20forward%20to%20joining%20you." rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">RSVP</a>

Color Play

The John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) will debut&nbsp;Emily Endo: Estuary, a new exhibition by artist Emily Endo (they/them), on view from February 7 through August 16, 2026.Endo’s largest exhibition to date,&nbsp;Estuary&nbsp;marks JMKAC’s first scent-focused exhibition, inviting visitors into a multisensory experience that explores the body and perception. Endo is known for intricate glass sculptures that reference vascular systems, organic structures, and the porous boundaries between bodies and environment. In&nbsp;Estuary, they expand this practice by integrating scentwith sculptural forms, engaging visitors through both sight and smell. The exhibition challenges conventional modes of looking, encouraging audiences to experience art through embodied and sensory awareness. “Emily Endo’s work asks us to reconsider how meaning is formed through the senses,” said&nbsp;Chava.Krivchenia, Assistant Curator at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. “By aligning scent alongside sculpture,&nbsp;Estuary&nbsp;creates intuitive ways of engaging with art.”Smell plays a central role in the exhibition. Closely tied to memory and emotion, scent has the power to transport, influence mood, and reshape perception. Rather than functioning as an accessory, curated fragrances throughout the gallery act as an extension of the sculptural works themselves. Drawn from minerals, seawater, metal, glass, and organic compounds, these scents reference both natural environments and industrial processes, serving as connective tissue between material, memory, and the body. Estuary&nbsp;also considers how perception differs across species. While humans tend to prioritize vision, many animals rely on smell or sound to navigate the world. Featured works incorporate a turtle shell, highlighting the overlapping and divergent ways animal and human bodies experience their environments. Through this lens, the exhibition invites reflection on the boundaries—both physical and perceptual—that shape how we understand and navigate the world.In addition to their artistic practice, Endo is an educator whose teaching background in glass, scent, and sculpture informs their approach to making. Their studio practice is grounded in curiosity, experimentation, and care, viewing the studio as a site of discovery and learning.Endo will also serve as the first 2026 artist-in-residence for ExAir, JMKAC’s residency program. Their time on- site will support deeper community engagement through public events and offer visitors insight into their evolving creative process.About Emily Endo Emily Endo works across sculpture, scent, and installation, pursuing a research-driven practice grounded in material experimentation and sensory experience. They hold an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art (2010) and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (2006). Endo’s work has been exhibited at Somerset House (London); Massey Klein (New York); Marta, Harkawik, and the Neutra VDL House (Los Angeles); LVL3 (Chicago); and Bullseye Projects (Portland). Recent press includes: The New York Times Style Magazine, Wallpaper, and Architectural Digest. Endo lives and works in Joshua Tree, California. Emily Endo. Photo courtesy of the artist.About the John Michael Kohler Arts CenterFounded in 1967, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) is a nonprofit creative hub that supports the work of contemporary artists through original exhibitions, commissions, residencies, publications, and community programming across visual and performing arts. The only institution in the world that collects artist- built and artist home-based environments, JMKAC is a leading center for the research, preservation, and presentation of artists with wide-ranging practices and backgrounds from academically trained to self-taught and folk traditions, championing long-term relationships with artists and elevating work that has often been overlooked or under-recognized. JMKAC is a vital cultural resource that responds to the needs of its local and regional communities, preserving artistic heritage by uplifting contemporary voices and empowering future generations.HoursTuesday, Wednesday, Friday: 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.Thursday: 10:00 a.m.–8:00 p.m.Saturday, Sunday: 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. Image: Emily Endo,&nbsp;Orphic Diadem, 2024; glass, stainless steel, and fragrance; 22 x 22 x 10 in. Photo: Margeaux Walter.

Emily Endo: Estuary

Opening January 31, 2026, at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC),&nbsp;Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis: Rock Fade (~45&nbsp;Billion&nbsp;Years)&nbsp;is a large-scale installation by artist-collaborators Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis. Inviting viewers into an encounter with deep geological time, human perception, and our impulse to order the natural world, the work consists of a carefully selected sequence of stones arranged in a perfect line, gradually diminishing in size. This deceptively simple gesture becomes a profound meditation on material, meaning, and scale, prompting visitors to consider how aesthetic experience is shaped not only by material form, but also by embodied perception and collective engagement.&nbsp;&nbsp;“Rock&nbsp;Fade&nbsp;takes something deeply familiar, a stone, and asks us to encounter it in a new light. As the sequence shifts from boulder to sand, the work reveals how perception, movement, and shared experience shape what we understand as art,” states&nbsp;Jodi Throckmorton, Chief Curator at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. “Relocating the installation across phases challenges us to reflect on our own role in ordering, witnessing, and ultimately returning these materials to the world.”&nbsp;&nbsp;On view through August 16,&nbsp;Rock Fade (~45&nbsp;Billion&nbsp;Years)&nbsp;references local and global rituals of marking time and space with stones, through collection, spirituality, and boundary setting. The work engages a deep human tradition to collect, order, control, and define the natural world against the backdrop of the slow transformation of rocks across ancient seas, volcanic flows, and glacial drifts; always in motion, even in their stillness. This juxtaposition highlights the tension between the human impulse to order and the inevitable processes of erosion and transformation that characterize geological time, revealing the work’s core inquiry: that the act of arranging the stones is both fleeting and monumental. Over time, the artwork will erode, scatter, and reintegrate with the earth, resulting not in failure, but in fulfillment.&nbsp;&nbsp;Rock&nbsp;Fade&nbsp;(~45&nbsp;Billion&nbsp;Years)&nbsp;builds on the conceptual framework of an earlier gesture of stone placement found in the artist environment of pioneer fiber artist Lenore G. Tawney (1907-2007) at JMKAC’s Art Preserve, in which Tawney arranged a subtle gradient of rocks from large to small. The work becomes a form of intergenerational dialogue—artists speaking to one another across time not by replicating but by amplifying, through matter, order, and attention. Clayton and Lewis will be Lenore G. Tawney Fellows at JMKAC in 2026, a fellowship that fosters new engagement with Tawney’s art environment, made possible with support from the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation. Candidates are encouraged to apply with projects that study overlooked aspects of works and movements related to Tawney or discuss previously unexplored connections between those works and art from other disciplines.&nbsp;&nbsp;“Rock Fade&nbsp;engages with the tradition of artist-built environments and the Arts Center’s work to preserve them while embracing the processes that shape them, offering a rare opportunity to witness an artwork that lives, changes, and integrates back into the environment over time. We’re proud to collaborate with Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis as this project unfolds with our community,” adds&nbsp;Amy Horst,&nbsp;Executive&nbsp;Director of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.&nbsp;&nbsp;Rock Fade&nbsp;is designed to shift the audience’s relationship to material, scale, and time as it unfolds through multiple phases starting with the exhibition at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (January 31-August 16, 2026). The linear installation in a white-cube space depicts the stones removed from their natural setting, placed in a controlled environment that invites close-looking and contemplation.&nbsp;&nbsp;On September 19, 2026, a community procession will follow, inviting participants of all ages and ability to help transport the stones from the gallery to an outdoor site. The procession is logistical and symbolic: an act of communal labor, care, and transformation that becomes a form of glaciation and procession through movement, merging geologic time with collective human effort. The procession will conclude at the Art Preserve where Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis will utilize the rocks for a long-term outdoor installation. The procession will be documented in a film to extend its impact and reach.&nbsp;&nbsp;For its final phase,&nbsp;Rock Fade&nbsp;will come to rest where, for years to come, environmental forces will erode and reshape the installation. Visitors will encounter the work embedded in the land, part as sculpture, part as earthwork, with accessibility top of mind to ensure a wide range of bodies are able to experience the piece.&nbsp;The project, through all the stages, reminds visitors to slow down, notice matter, and share responsibility for how they move through time and space, particularly potent during a global moment of political and climate crisis and shortened attention spans.&nbsp;&nbsp;About&nbsp;Lenka&nbsp;Clayton&nbsp;Lenka Clayton is an interdisciplinary artist whose work considers, exaggerates, and alters the accepted rules of everyday life, extending the familiar into the realms of the poetic and absurd. Clayton is the founder of&nbsp;An Artist Residency in Motherhood, a self-directed, open-source artist residency program that takes place inside the homes and lives of artists who are also parents.&nbsp;&nbsp;Recent exhibitions include&nbsp;Rising Sun&nbsp;(2023) at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia,&nbsp;Day Jobs&nbsp;(2023) at the Blanton Museum of Art,&nbsp;The Museum Collects Itself&nbsp;(2023) at the Mattress Factory Museum in Pittsburgh,&nbsp;and&nbsp;To Begin Again&nbsp;(2022) at ICA Boston. Clayton’s work has been supported by The Warhol Foundation and The National Endowment for the Arts. She has received an Art&nbsp;Matters Award, a Carol R. Brown Award for Creative Achievement, and a Creative Development Grant from Heinz/Pittsburgh Foundation. She has been an artist-in-residence at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, PA and Headlands Center for the Arts, CA and was a Sabrina Merage Fellow with Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum.&nbsp;&nbsp;Clayton’s work is held in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, SFMoMA in California, Hamburger Kunsthalle in Germany, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum in Massachusetts, and The Carnegie Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and The Philadelphia Art Museum in Pennsylvania. Permanent public artworks include Darkhouse Lighthouse, and Historic Site, both made with collaborator Phillip Andrew Lewis.&nbsp;&nbsp;About&nbsp;Phillip&nbsp;Andrew&nbsp;Lewis&nbsp;Phillip Andrew Lewis is a Philadelphia-based artist who works in a variety of media including photography, video, objects, and sound. His creative research often responds to historical events, psychology, and phenomenology. This work consistently examines duration, perceptual limits, and attentive observation. Lewis is actively involved in collaboration with artists and various groups.&nbsp;&nbsp;Phillip has exhibited his work both nationally and internationally. He received a 2012 Creative Capital Grant in Visual Art for his ongoing long-term project entitled SYNONYM. He has also received generous support for his research from Black Cube, Headlands Center for the Arts, Culture and Animals Foundation, Center for Creative Photography, Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York, Fathomers, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Midway Contemporary Arts Fund, Tennessee Arts Commission, University of Tennessee, UrbanArt Commission, The Heinz Endowments, The Pittsburgh Foundation, and Sabrina Merage Foundation. In collaboration with his wife, Lenka Clayton, he runs a project space in Pittsburgh called Gallery Closed, which is open 24/7 via two street-facing windows.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis: Rock Fade (~45 Billion Years)

Fluid Mechanics&nbsp;is guest curated by Alexandra Riesco, Tandem Press 2025–2026 University of Wisconsin-Madison Graduate Student Curatorial Assistant. During her time at Tandem over the past year, Riesco has familiarized herself with many of the prints created at Tandem Press. As one of her final projects, she was challenged to conceptualize and curate an exhibition, selecting pieces from the Tandem Press inventory and contextualizing them to create a unique statement. Fluidity is defined as the ability of a substance to flow easily, the quality of being smooth and continuous, or the state of being unstable, likely to change repeatedly or unexpectedly. Artists use fluidity both conceptually and materially to express a range of seemingly contradictory ideas: stillness and motion, serenity and distress, unpredictability and the breakdown of boundaries. The quality of fluidity is directly tied to how liquids behave. Liquids respond to their environment, changing shape to fit their container. They are also transparent, acting as a lens to highlight or distort their surroundings. Beyond how these substances physically behave, different fluids—water, tears, beer, ether, etc—can each carry their own meanings.Fluid Mechanics&nbsp;features work by local Madison artists as well as selected works from Tandem Press’s inventory, each using or expressing fluidity in different ways. Created in a variety of processes and techniques, including printmaking, sculpture, photography, and painting, these works demonstrate the wide range of ideas and emotions that fluidity can express.This exhibition includes works by&nbsp;<a href="https://baranataei.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: inherit;" target="_blank">Baran Ataei</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://tandempress.wisc.edu/artists/suzanne-caporael/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: inherit;" target="_blank">Suzanne Caporael</a>, Emma Harris,&nbsp;<a href="https://danifhughes.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: inherit;" target="_blank">Dani Hughes</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://tandempress.wisc.edu/artists/marie-lorenz/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: inherit;" target="_blank">Marie Lorenz</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://tandempress.wisc.edu/artists/cameron-martin/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: inherit;" target="_blank">Cameron Martin</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://tandempress.wisc.edu/artists/judy-pfaff/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: inherit;" target="_blank">Judy Pfaff</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://tandempress.wisc.edu/artists/jane-rosen/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: inherit;" target="_blank">Jane Rosen</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://tandempress.wisc.edu/artists/alison-saar/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: inherit;" target="_blank">Alison Saar</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://christianulloa.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: inherit;" target="_blank">Christian Ulloa</a>.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alexandrariesco.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: inherit;" target="_blank">Alexandra Riesco</a>&nbsp;is an artist and printmaker from Miami, Florida. Her work is heavily influenced by the natural world and the dynamic processes that drive it. After completing a semester-long geology field program, she discovered the parallels between the forces that shape the planet and the slow, physical processes of printmaking. Her interest in the sciences and deep love for the outdoors feeds her practice, which incorporates drawing, printmaking, and papermaking to explore the bodily experience of the landscape, mapping and the geologic record, and the possibilities of a reciprocal rather than controlling relationship with the environment. Riesco received her B.A. in Studio Art and Biology modified with Earth Sciences from Dartmouth College in 2017, where she won the Robert Read Prize and the Artist’s Book Prize. After spending a few years working in outdoor education, Riesco returned to printmaking and has worked as an assistant printer, workshop instructor, and manager of a fine art print publisher. She is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree in Printmaking from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she received the Graduate Research Scholars Fellowship from the School of Education.

Fluid Mechanics

David R. Harper: Good Morning Sweetheart&nbsp;brings together sculpture, textiles, ceramics, stained glass, and found imagery to explore how memory takes shape in objects. Couches, perfume bottles, motel soaps, detergents, birds, flowers, fragments of figurative sculpture, and everyday household items appear throughout the exhibition. Familiar at first glance, these things are carefully handmade, altered, and recombined—becoming intimate, uncanny, and quietly charged.The exhibition unfolds across two connected spaces. In the MMoCA Icon, Harper creates a suspended environment centered on a lightweight mid-century couch upholstered in handwoven tones of pink, sherbet, melon, and honey. Embedded with domestic cleaning products, the couch becomes a floating “memory bank”—a meditation on home, care, and repose—surrounded by a mobile featuring a summer patio umbrella and garlands of cast-ceramic Froot Loops.In the State Street Gallery, the exhibition pivots around&nbsp;She Drank the Water That Was Meant for the Orchids&nbsp;(2019), a recent addition to MMoCA’s collection. New large-scale embroideries, stuffed horses with embedded objects, shelves of ceramic vases covered in cast cicadas, and ceramic flower bouquets extend the exhibition’s domestic and emotional terrain.Across both spaces, memory functions as a material. Objects act as containers of experience—holding care, pleasure, grief, desire, and loss. Rather than telling a single story, Harper creates environments where meaning emerges through movement and attention. Looking becomes an active process, shaped by proximity, perspective, and the viewer’s own lived experience.About the ArtistDavid R. Harper (b. Toronto, Canada / Lives and Works in the American Midwest), received his BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Fiber and Material Studies. He currently teaches in the Painting and Drawing department at the Art Institute of Chicago and the New Studio Practice department at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.&nbsp;Harper’s work employs both traditional and non-traditional materials such as embroidery, ceramic, and casting materials such as salt and charcoal in a cross-disciplinary manner to create objects installations that grapple with notions of loss, love, feelings of belonging and how we use objects to inform our notions of self.&nbsp;Harper has been included in group shows at museums in the US and Canada, including MASS MoCA, National Gallery of Canada and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and has participated in numerous solo exhibitions including&nbsp;My Own Personal Ghost&nbsp;(The John Michael Kohler Art Center),&nbsp;Plateau&nbsp;(South Bend Museum of Art)&nbsp;Skin and Bone&nbsp;(Textile Museum of Canada), A solo touring exhibition of Harper’s work titled&nbsp;Entre Le Chien et Le Loup&nbsp;was organized by the University of Toronto in 2013&nbsp;He has participated in several residencies, including the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency (2016), Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (2014), and the Kohler Arts Industry (2012/2014)&nbsp;&nbsp;His work can be found in a number of notable collections, including The Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), The John Michael Kohler Art Center, The Museum of Wisconsin Art, The National Gallery of Canada, the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation (Los Angeles), and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

David R. Harper: Good Morning Sweetheart

The momentum continues this summer with&nbsp;Forward V: Our Wisconsin &amp; Regional Artists, our fifth annual celebration of the exceptional painters, sculptors, printmakers, and mixed-media artists who call Wisconsin and the greater Midwest home.&nbsp;&nbsp;This beloved exhibition carries special meaning in 2026 — it will be the first Forward in our beautiful new space, and it arrives at a landmark moment for the Third Ward as the&nbsp;Historic Third Ward Association celebrates its 50th Anniversary.Forward V gathers artists&nbsp;Marc Anderson, Reginald Baylor, Allison B. Cooke, Al Eickberg, Steve Gerhartz, Bobby Girsh, Michael Guinane, Mutópe J. Johnson, Darren Jones, Shelby Keefe, Antwan Ramar, Jolanta Kinga Rose, Colette Odya Smith, Michael Charles Sutton, and John Waite.This year we are proud to introduce two&nbsp;emerging artists&nbsp;to the Forward stage:&nbsp;Greta Berens&nbsp;from MIAD and&nbsp;Abigail Tran&nbsp;from UWM — two extraordinary young talents whose inclusion reflects our deep belief in growing and supporting the next generation of Wisconsin artists.

Forward V: Our Wisconsin & Regional Artists 

Racine Art Museum announces inaugural multi-arts festival; In/Between debuts

Gelsy Verna (1962–2008) was a Haitian-Canadian artist, educator, and collaborator who taught at UW–Madison and left a lasting impact on students and colleagues. Working primarily in collage and drawing, Verna used symbols, text, and layered images to explore how meaning is never fixed, but constantly shifting.Throughout her work, Verna often challenged familiar cultural icons. In one series, she reimagined Martin Luther King Jr. with different hairstyles, patterns, and even Mickey Mouse ears. In another, she portrayed Marilyn Monroe with brown skin. With wit, courage, and imagination, these works invite viewers to question how identity, history, and power are constructed.Mother, Father, Please Help Me&nbsp;was drawn and redrawn over several years in collaboration with artist and frequent collaborator David Dunlap. Built through many layers of images and marks, it functions as a palimpsest—a surface that holds traces of earlier versions beneath what we see now. The work embodies Verna’s belief that images and symbols change over time, and that new meanings emerge through revision, proximity, and combination.This artwork has both a front and a back, and both are essential to fully experiencing the piece. To allow visitors to encounter the complete work, the reverse side has been carefully reproduced and printed for display.Recently acquired by MMoCA from the artist’s estate,&nbsp;Mother, Father, Please Help Me&nbsp;is among the last major works available from Verna’s studio. Verna died suddenly in 2008 at just 46, leaving behind a rich artistic legacy that her sister, Mahalia Verna now works to preserve.&nbsp;

Gelsy Verna: Mother, Father, Please Help Me

Papercutting as a creative handcraft has roots in many cultures, including centuries-old examples from China, the Polish tradition of&nbsp;wycinanki,&nbsp;and the Mexican history of&nbsp;papel picado. Celebrating handwork and recognizing its potential to connect across time, space, and geography, this exhibition combines various forms of papercutting.&nbsp;Through large- and small-scale works, contemporary makers expand upon tradition, adding their voices to rich creative lineages. To further illustrate this concept, shadow puppet theater utilizing paper silhouettes will be performed throughout the run of the show.Cut It Out&nbsp;is part of&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.handwork2026.org/" target="_blank">Handwork 2026</a>, Craft in America’s nationwide semiquincentennial collaboration showcasing the importance of the handmade and celebrating the diversity of craft that defines America.

Cut It Out: Papercutting Traditions and Beyond

How do you throw a brick through the window… is inspired by artist and activist Johanna Hedva, who poses the question, “How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed?” Hedva’s statement questions the rights and opportunities of individuals with disabilities as they navigate forms of protest.Through new commissions and recent works, artists Yani aviles, Chloe P. Crawford, Nat Decker, Jeff Kasper, Carly Mandel, Jeffrey Meris, and Libby Paloma look toward Hedva’s work to prioritize modes of dissent that influence personal, political, and social systems.&nbsp; Each artist uses strategies of movement, communication, interruptions in time and space, or moments of play to achieve such transformation. As Hedva suggests in her question, the most meaningful strategies for challenging cultural systems and governing bodies are actions that take place beyond the streets. By circulating these artists’ processes of resistance, this exhibition makes enacting a revolution become more approachable and possible on both individual and communal scales.How do you throw a brick through the window… is co-organized by Tufts University Art Galleries (TUAG) with the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC).

How do you throw a brick through the window…

Italian immigrant Silvio Barile spent decades converting his pizzeria into a museum to honor his heritage. The Italian American Historic Artistic Museum in Redford Charter Township, Michigan, was once enormous. The interior walls of the restaurant were covered with murals, photos, and postcards of iconic Italian imagery such as statues of Julius Caesar, Roman ruins, Renaissance-era paintings, olive trees, and Italian and American pop culture figures. In addition to two-dimensional adornments, Barile fabricated large-scale concrete statues depicting events and characters renowned in Italian and American history. His sculptures filled the pizzeria, then the patio behind it, then the acre of woodland behind the patio. Even after the restaurant closed in 2002, the museum remained and continued to grow.After Barile’s death in February 2019, increasing costs and pressure from the community resulted in the destruction of the site in 2020. In May 2021, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center acquired three large painted concrete works by Barile that were believed to be the last remaining components of the museum. In the early months of 2022, a grouping of eight additional works was found and acquired by the Arts Center. This is the first time these works are being shown outside of the Michigan site.

Silvio Barile

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.

<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

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

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

&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.

Calendar

Chicago Gallery News