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

The Path to Nowhere Errol Ortiz and Stanley Dean Edwards Oliva Gallery presents The Path to Nowhere, a two-person exhibition featuring Errol Ortiz and Stanley Dean Edwards. Bringing together two distinct Chicago-connected artists, the exhibition places Ortiz’s charged, symbol-rich Imagist language in direct conversation with Edwards’s disciplined geometric abstraction. Ortiz’s work moves through current events, social tension, pattern, humor, and unease, while Edwards builds pressure through structure, color, and precise compositional restraint. Together, their work creates a space of visual suspension, where images scatter, forms lock into place, and two very different artistic logics meet in unexpected cohesion.The opening reception will also include a screening of a short documentary on Errol Ortiz by On The Real Film in collaboration with Pentimenti Productions. The film premieres at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago on May 26 as part of a series on Chicago artists, with the June 12 reception offering a more intimate opportunity to view the film and meet the artist.

The Path to Nowhere with Errol Ortiz and Stanley Dean Edwards

<a href="https://www.newberry.org/calendar/free-and-independent" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Free and Independent: The Declaration of Independence and the Words That Made the United States</a>, features a rare early copy of the Declaration. The exhibition features more than two dozen historic items inviting visitors to survey selected phrases from the Declaration, such as "All Men are created equal," and to consider some of the surprising ideas behind those words. Collection items highlight influential figures such as John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. On display will be the only surviving manuscript copy of John Jay’s&nbsp;Federalist no. 3, one of only five surviving manuscript drafts of any of the Federalist essays. The exhibition is curated by Eric Slauter, Deputy Dean of the Arts and Humanities Division and the College at University of Chicago. Slauter is the author of&nbsp;The State as a Work of Art: The Cultural Origins of the Constitution, essays on the language of rights and equality in early America, and a forthcoming book on the origins, meanings, and afterlives of the Declaration of Independence. The Newberry's copy of the Declaration is a rare broadside from Newport, Rhode Island, mistakenly dated June 13 rather than July 13, 1776, that demonstrates how supporters and opponents of independence might have first encountered the empire-shattering news.&nbsp;Only in August 1776, as the document began to circulate in Europe, did delegates of Congress sign the famous handwritten parchment scroll currently at the National Archives.&nbsp; Other exhibition items include:<ul><li>A 1776 map of America;</li><li>A revolutionary timeline dedicated to Benjamin Franklin;</li><li>One of the first petitions by enslaved people to circulate widely in print;</li><li>Notes of a meeting between members of Congress and representatives of Native nations taken by Thomas Paine;</li><li>The biography of Deborah Sampson, a woman who disguised herself as a man to fight in the army.</li></ul> Free and Independent&nbsp;will be on view in the Hanson Gallery through July 18’s NewberryFest open house celebration, and is part of an array of programs and events related to the 250th&nbsp;anniversary of the Declaration. The Newberry is proud to be a partner in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.il250.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(70, 120, 134);" target="_blank">Illinois America 250</a>, an inclusive, statewide effort to bring together Illinoisans’ diverse perspectives about our history – and our future. Learn more at:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.newberry.org/the-newberry-observes-america-250" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(70, 120, 134);" target="_blank">https://www.newberry.org/the-newberry-observes-america-250.</a> Free Public Programs being held along with the exhibition include: <a href="https://www.newberry.org/calendar/coffee-nation" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(70, 120, 134);" target="_blank">May 7, 6pm</a>“Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States.” Presenters: Author Michelle McDonald in conversation with curator and scholar Eric Slauter. Coffee Nation challenges traditional interpretations of the American Revolution, as coffee’s spectacular profitability in US markets and popularity on the new nation’s tables by the mid-nineteenth century was the antithesis of independence.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.newberry.org/calendar/allen-stephenson-conversation" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(70, 120, 134);" target="_blank">June 6, 2pm</a>Annual Colonial History Program: “The Declaration of Independence.” Discussants: Scholar/author Danielle Allen (Harvard University) and historian Scott Stephenson (Museum of the American Revolution), in partnership with Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Illinois. The discussion will be followed by a book signing of Dr. Allen’s latest book,&nbsp;Radical Duke.&nbsp;Reproduction artifacts from the Museum of the American Revolution will be available for viewing, including a recreation of George Washington’s tent in Washington Square Park, located across the street from the Newberry’s main entrance. <a href="https://www.newberry.org/calendar/declaration-reading" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(70, 120, 134);" target="_blank">July 8, 5pm</a>Sharing the Spirit of America: A Statewide &amp; National Reading of the Declaration of Independence Gather with special guests, fellow visitors, and library staff for a live, simultaneous nationwide public reading of the Declaration of Independence with one and all in Chicago and across the country. <a href="https://www.newberry.org/calendar/newberryfest-250" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(70, 120, 134);" target="_blank">July 18, 10am</a>NewberryFest: 250 Years of the United States Learn more about the history and legacy of the American Revolution by exploring our collection and try your own hand at historical calligraphy techniques. Celebrate all things Newberry with collection presentations, hands-on activities, tours, a mini used book sale, and so much more at this open house event. Image: Declaration of Independence broadside, Newport, RI: Solomon Southwick, 1776, VAULT Case broadside E221 .U57.

Free and Independent: The Declaration of Independence and the Words That Made the United States

Marking the gallery’s second solo exhibition with Jennifer Rochlin, on view in Chicago from June 6 through July 18, 2026, the presentation will unveil a new body of ceramic vessels and paintings in which personal narrative, memory, and material experimentation are closely interwoven.Returning to the city where she received her MFA in painting in 1999, Rochlin approaches&nbsp;The Horizon Keeps Moving&nbsp;as both a form of return and excavation. The works are shaped by layered impressions of Chicago—its lakefront horizon, the river, its architectural density, and its more intimate geographies of bars, alleys, and domestic thresholds. These elements surface as sculpted anecdotes across ceramic forms, where drawing and surface function as extensions of thought. In this context, the city operates not simply as backdrop but as a structuring logic—one through which memory, subjectivity, and narrative are continuously reassembled.<a href="http://link.marianeibrahim.com/ls/click?upn=u001.QEhnWBve3x4w-2FznpuSOKkHDHeH9lWxp-2BpojXmbdTFEfNIzMO4Fk0hZGVAcuFTnrwh8bO4SorqqInd4p4CD6AREU9uXdzg2BZ6OB0F2jAgIQ-2BzEgmloUlTMCFMoxelkmP-2FAEuyLOJeI3TqDkkRsl8IA-3D-3DeeEq_0g5QiKQ3ANfCkWXxwzczn1phIok0-2FnBF8GNWXrNhq2-2B4ftGj9DI8Jn4AfRAGeAJVikNEQwxpwEcoOyKbtwuEcKJX9jU3-2BoN-2BCdE2f3amVWjwnMunuiQFw-2B6GbgGdZ5PMEAxUdzfeQ1q0Cgxmxj62b7kuA1dPk003xaNSZsrD7SFXwaXF2Si1YtC8-2BnL2v2VWwMVxu3F9tVJIWGR-2BztJUOorRk15QF10xD-2F4qvAG5RCYPucXcnse5l1WApBcTL1XF24kkUzjCEAiNRXvNFRkhETYeKp-2BTrBz31NWadQNASJTN6OixVNohqfHY0pqOQSJeAq-2FdEdulcbC3pp-2B3ZkeIhPrGjWK6UPmGbCxvIZP8t8UEpkw6iWmodF9mG87T0zF2vPOYoacO8495462sQ1JGycI1ASakMew7L-2Fr9ZoY-2Bxyc9K6S64teg-2B5gO-2FMFCRVWk9c-2Fg76e2T5hC8HNl7hxwHPOHObAXz152qYCmwQ76FgF-2FOhX8QReW9e4eAATWC5ZK5lFsVMVo0PKjXxprjQ8jCMixisLn8L2DRG8OVjHpKejG70hEBJCjc51k0ACXkB1VXkOwX5lX-2FCR4Rf-2FZH9-2F-2FBy8281378CwRDyIphGrXiQ4ZuzGMFWsDjDbXj6-2F8ldgKKq8XstIaMgwxYvjNCItN8KCubueIIA0T8FGLeYpM41i8-2FRz7-2F7Nv4zVumjU1Oes2iZQiswnbcCySDcRzv283J12c-2FdHMnm7NJlh2bVpjXMLdPwGCb9UOopNzhHVEYt4Bf2MlLiAUt6sgUdg1aCVabimCm4ezOVNB-2FjD-2BCPjnnAyVktICDeT2cTsSYQn5WQ2XFm-2B74p7gVNKJuMcj5T6vPQ-3D-3D" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">MORE ON THE EXHIBITION</a> Jennifer Rochlin (b. 1968 in Baltimore, Maryland; lives and works in Altadena, CA) received her MFA in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999. Later moving to the west coast, an unexpected opportunity teaching ceramics at an all-girls Catholic high school prompted her first experiments with clay. Largely self-taught in the medium, vessels eventually became central to her practice.&nbsp;Rochlin builds terracotta pots through coil and slab construction, through which the imperfect marks of the artist’s hand are left imprinted on the surface of the clay. The sculptures are engraved with sgraffito techniquesand take on unusual shapes, where imagery moves fluidly across portraiture, politics, art history, and floral patterns, oscillating between personal and collective vignettes. Image: Jennifer Rochlin,&nbsp;Spring in Chicago with Georgia O’Keefe Clouds, 2026.&nbsp;Courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim.

Jennifer Rochlin: The Horizon Keeps Moving

The John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) invites you to attend and help share the 56th Midsummer Festival of the Arts, taking place July 18–19, 2026, in downtown Sheboygan.This free, two-day event brings together more than 100 juried artists from across the country, live music through the Levitt AMP Sheboygan Music Series, artist demonstrations, hands-on artmaking activities, family-friendly programming, food vendors, and community partners. The festival annually attracts thousands of visitors and celebrates creativity, community, and artistic excellence.Highlights this year include:• More than 100 juried artists representing a wide range of artistic disciplines• Live music and performances throughout the weekend• An Emerging Artist area featuring five regional artists• Community partner organizations including RCS Empowers, Project Onward, and Impressions Fine Art Gallery• Interactive artmaking experiences inspired by current Arts Center exhibitions

56th Midsummer Festival of the Arts

Chicago Rooms, Chicago Cultural Center&nbsp;Ornament &amp; Information&nbsp;presents artists working in Chicago and Vienna whose practices explore the historic intellectual exchange between the two cities&nbsp;—&nbsp;from modern architecture to mid-century economic thought. Through sculpture, painting and conceptual approaches, the exhibition reflects on how ideas evolve as they move between cultural contexts.&nbsp;The exhibition is curated in partnership with Gertie Chicago and featured artists include Anna Sophie Berger, Gaylen Gerber, Benjamin Hirte, B. Ingrid Olson, Devin T. Mays, Max Guy, Josef Strau, Isabelle Frances McGuire, Walter Pichler, Diane Simpson, Miriam Stoney, Valentina Triet, Micah Schippa Wildfong, Heimo Zobernig.&nbsp;Public programs include an&nbsp;opening reception on&nbsp;Friday,&nbsp;April 10,&nbsp;6-7pm in the&nbsp;Chicago Rooms&nbsp;and&nbsp;additional&nbsp;performances and artist-led events throughout the exhibition&nbsp;duration.&nbsp;The first performance&nbsp;will be held&nbsp;Saturday,&nbsp;April 11,&nbsp;at 3&nbsp;p.m.&nbsp;inside the&nbsp;Chicago Rooms.&nbsp;Please click&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://link.mediaoutreach.meltwater.com/ls/click?upn=u001.CSSunAOBvEOR4GhykBjJWWnTwxFlkUDDBF-2Fji248p2y6hFXsBorvoCC9fZuH5e36Pn-2BTTdSEqSZcF6S-2FCbBA0-2Fq9IH6tXX2BG5b0Mps0RIwEBqRxy-2BD7ec1SCRVfkVtG_fmR_0g5QiKQ3ANfCkWXxwzczn1phIok0-2FnBF8GNWXrNhq2-2B4ftGj9DI8Jn4AfRAGeAJVn7gGoI0v4yHfyxNzcTgWoLurliSnTAPDeTMjcpIoytOOx4olIMMV-2FUlia6rP-2BnJxXYH5O8tvn-2Fktq8OM7hVEsSIVa5QMZTlavNfGLkxY-2Bv5Ob8cNxVZY2QQwdDW7CjMxGACT3QdirHvuvzc-2FrsOP9qq38FKVrw-2Bh9GrF70Ft5aLbE8Nue-2F99yQjGNHjMHb-2B3klk5eNOWFwW9KoazpZWTUcBbiIMt1fpkZVbGxYby8-2FZaNQF4a7WBLAQ6RzIXxH8YyP-2F0HccGKvy2aTPy9pvMm3xHybxP0PGZAjjh3XTrzdo312fc-2BPPYJJGr0RPZuVeVLIsYvy4aTZbNapQwdWH-2Ffw-3D-3D" target="_blank">here</a>&nbsp;for more information on&nbsp;this&nbsp;exhibition.&nbsp;&nbsp;Image: Viennese Drinking Fountain, Hans Muhr, Presented to the City of Chicago on October 2, 1998

Ornament & Information 

Drawn from the Art Institute’s collection, this exhibition focuses on Greek multidisciplinary artist Lucas Samaras’s innovative photographs, as well as sculptures and paintings recently gifted to the museum by the Samaras Estate. These works offer a glimpse into Samaras’s broader practice and invites us into his creative, engaged, and focused life.

Lucas Samaras: Sitting, Standing, Walking, Looking

Volume Gallery x Stony Island Arts BankReceptionWednesday, June 245-7pm &nbsp;Join us Wednesday, June 24th, 5-7 PM for bubbles to celebrate the launch of Volume Gallery’s collaboration with Stony Island Arts Bank. Design and architecture have been a shared language for Theaster Gates, Heiji Choy Black, and the founders of Volume Gallery, Sam Vinz and Claire Warner, since the beginning of their friendship. The Stony Island Arts Bank and Volume Gallery have long championed many of the greatest contemporary emerging and established designers and artists, bringing their work to the worldfrom their spaces in Chicago. In this group exhibition, artists and designers share a common desire to honor where they come from with objects of beauty and brilliance and of enduring meaning and substance. The many perspectives, cultures, and geographies represented in Chicago are brought to life here as these makers intend to better our world through art and craft. Featuring work by: Tanya AguiñigaRobell AwakeStephen BurksSung JangTerumi SaitoSHENEQUALarry TchogninouNorman Teague&nbsp;Stony Island Arts Bank6760 S Stony Island Ave2nd Fl GalleryChicago, IL 60649&nbsp;More about exhibited works&nbsp;<a href="https://ymlps3.com/74799mhmqataeqjsmagaujsarajbsm/click.php" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(137, 137, 137);" target="_blank">here.</a>

Volume Gallery x Stony Island Arts Bank

Volume Gallery announces&nbsp;Coyolxauhqui Imperative,&nbsp;a solo exhibition&nbsp;by Tanya Aguiñiga, opening Saturday, June 13, 2026, from 3 to 6 p.m in gallery two. Tanya Aguiñiga is a Los Angeles-based artist and activist raised in Tijuana, Mexico. Her ongoing investigations of identity and belonging made with meaningful materials are both deeply personal and an expression of her community.In this new body of work, Aguiñiga strategically removes threads from the warp and weft of delicate gauze to create images — a subtractive process like reverse embroidery. Mounted over black velvet, sections of open weave catch light and shadow to outline animals long held sacred across Mesoamerica: opossums, coyotes, vultures, snakes, and bats. These creatures occupied central roles in Indigenous life and cosmology, and some of their Nahuatl names,&nbsp;tlacuatzin&nbsp;and&nbsp;coyotl, persist in daily language as quiet evidence of their cultural significance. Today, they are largely vilified as pests or nuisances, despite their vital ecological roles. Aguińiga’s imagery is inspired by depictions of these sacred animals in Pre-Columbian codices, pictorial manuscripts covering everything from history and geography to mythology.The opossum—today dismissed or even feared—was among the most revered figures in Mesoamerican cosmology: a Robin Hood-like hero who stole fire from the gods and delivered it to humanity and who was credited in Maya tradition as an embodiment of feminine creative force, linked to the earth-lunar goddess. The vulture was also seen as far more than a scavenger; across Mesoamerican and South American traditions, it was understood as a transformer, converting death and filth into life and light. Known to the ancient world as a cathartic cleanser, the vulture appears throughout mythology as a keeper of fire and a shamanic figure associated with celestial brightness.These animals were venerated figures, woven into creation myths, healing practices, and the highest expressions of spiritual life. Indigenous Peoples have understood that these animals perform quiet, necessary labor in our ecosystems, consuming decaying materials that spread disease. Performing an essential role, they are indispensable and deserving of respect. Ultimately, Aguiñiga’s new textile works are about perception and the effects of misunderstanding. These essential animals are metaphors for those whose value goes unrecognized, whose presence is treated as a burden rather than a gift. Like the migrants who cross the same borderlands these creatures inhabit, they are fundamental to our society, yet widely maligned.For Aguiñiga, this work is also an act of ancestral recovery. Patterns referencing Otomi weaving and the craft traditions of Michoacán and Jalisco — regions tied to her own family history — speak to a Mestizo lineage fractured by colonization, now accessible only via fragments: a tourist object, a surviving codex, a persisting craft tradition. By working with gauze-like textile — used across Mesoamerica for everything from lacework to fishing nets — she draws on a material lineage that is at once sacred and utilitarian. Through material, image, and pattern, she reaches toward what has been lost, making meaning out of erasure.Coyolxauhqui Imperative&nbsp;will be on view through July 25, 2026. Tanya Aguiñiga&nbsp;holds an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and a BA from San Diego State University. In her formative years, she created various collaborative installations with the Border Arts Workshop, an artists’ group that engages the languages of activism and community-based public art. Aguiñiga is the founder and director of AMBOS (Art Made Between Opposite Sides), an ongoing series of artist interventions and commuter collaborations that address bi-national transition and identity in the US/Mexico border regions. AMBOS seeks to create a greater sense of interconnectedness while simultaneously documenting the border. Aguiñiga is a 2024 Center for Craft Catalyst Award Recipient, a 2023 Loewe Craft Prize finalist, a 2022 Latinx Artist Fellow, a recipient of the 26th annual Heinz Award, a United States Artists Target Fellow in the field of Crafts and Traditional Arts, a NALAC Grant Recipient, and a Creative Capital 2016 Grant Awardee. She is the inaugural fellow for Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities. She has been the subject of numerous articles in American Craft Magazine and has been featured in Art21’s Art in the Twenty-First Century, KCET’s Artbound, and PBS’s Craft in America Series.Recent museum exhibitions include&nbsp;m\other&nbsp;at The Lancaster Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA,&nbsp;Border Fall Height&nbsp;at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA,&nbsp;Sangre de Nopal/Blood of the Nopal: Tanya Aguiñiga &amp; Porfirio Gutiérrez en Conversación/in Conversation&nbsp;at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA,&nbsp;Intertwined: Weaving in Community&nbsp;at the Sun Valley Museum of Art, Ketchum, ID,&nbsp;In the Shadow of the Wall&nbsp;at Kimball Art Center, Park City, UT,&nbsp;Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living&nbsp;as part of AMBOS at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, A&nbsp;More Perfect Union: American Artists and the Currents of Our Time&nbsp;curated by U.S. Art in Embassies,&nbsp;This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World&nbsp;at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.,&nbsp;Hella Feminist&nbsp;at the Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA, the&nbsp;2022 California Biennial&nbsp;at the Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, CA,&nbsp;LatinXAmerican&nbsp;at the DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL,&nbsp;Disrupting Craft: Renwick Invitational 2018&nbsp;at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C., and&nbsp;Craft and Care&nbsp;at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY. Her work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, Carnegie Museum of Art, DePaul Art Museum, Detroit Institute of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, The Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design, Oakland Museum of California, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Smithsonian American Art Museum and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, The Mint Museum in Charlotte, and The Wichita Art Museum. ﻿

Tanya Aguiñiga: Coyolxauhqui Imperative

Volume Gallery announces&nbsp;Urban Drama,&nbsp;Joe Feddersen’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, opening June 13, 2026, from 3 to 6 p.m. Working across woven linen baskets, blown and fused glass, and printmaking, Joe Feddersen, a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes based in Omak, Washington, brings together ancestral modalities with contemporary iconography to create work that reflects his lived experience. The multi-disciplinary artist speaks from a Plateau perspective—one that honors our inseparable connection with the landscape.Feddersen’s visual language is exemplified by stylized outlines—abstractions of everyday figures rendered graphic, like signs. At first glance, his work might seem traditional, and in some ways, his approach is a continuation of ancestral artistic innovations, just as Plateau people wove slanted triangles to depict mountains or painted pictographs on stone, Feddersen uses the same economy of form to depict the scenery he observes today. Parking lots, power lines, and tire tracks appear alongside bear tracks, eagles, and snakes—each given equal visual weight, each acknowledged as a character in our environment. Nature and society are shown entwined—creating indexical and unromanticized portraits of the American landscape as it actually is, shaped by industrialization, land use, and ongoing human presence.His precise linen baskets, a continuation of centuries-old Plateau “sally bag” designs, are renderings of our world—its conflicts, infrastructures, and ironies. Feddersen’s compositions are taken directly from the landscape: aerial views of parking lots, the sinuous path of a snake, the diamond geometry of high-voltage towers. The towers carry particular resonance for Feddersen, who understands them as monuments to dispossession—invasive structures on Indigenous land lost to bad-faith deals and flooding when dams were built. One recent basket,&nbsp;Wild Peaks, takes its name from an SUV tire brand, its tread abstracted into repetitive forms that read like a mountain range; the imagery’s double meaning is a wry commentary on the idealized vision of the American West that consumer culture sells back to us. Additional recent pieces show protesters and ICE agents, urgent depictions of ongoing conflict and resistance. Protesters drawn with heads of affinity animals document gatherings in the small town of Omak, the cast of characters acting as a pictorial record of a moment in history.Feddersen’s glass vessels are blown and then sandblasted with the artist’s signature symbology—trucks, bicycles, and animals are layered over subtler, weaving-like patterns etched beneath. Feddersen’s large-scale&nbsp;Charmed&nbsp;glass installations combine several ideas: a petroglyph wall, a wind chime, and a charm bracelet. Hundreds of clear fused-glass pendants, ranging from four to ten inches each, hang suspended across the wall, casting shifting shadows that animate the space around them. Feddersen’s&nbsp;Charmed&nbsp;pieces portray a teeming crowd of moments from our surroundings, in this latest iteration, cars and trucks mingle with protesters and buffalo.With a long-time background as a printmaker, Feddersen thinks in layers across his practice. His&nbsp;Urban Drama&nbsp;monoprints are painterly and energetic, incorporating spray paint and collage. High-voltage towers are reduced to pure geometry, explored through reversals of positive and negative space and Pop-like repetition. Feddersen’s decades of experience in the medium are evident in the assured, direct, and indirect application of color and labyrinthine pattern.At the heart of Feddersen’s practice is a commitment to observing, documenting, and storytelling. Viewing making as an act of reciprocity with the earth, he documents a landscape shaped by history, industry, and survival. With a finely tuned sense of humor, his work reminds us that the marks we leave on the land are all part of the same ongoing story.Urban Drama&nbsp;will be on view through July 25, 2026. Joe Feddersen&nbsp;(b. 1953, Omak, WA) emerged in the 1980s as part of a new generation of Indigenous artists along with colleagues such as Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith, Truman Lowe, Kay WalkingStick, and James Lavadour. Their generation was bolstered by a new found sense of unity and agency with grass-roots Native-run alternative spaces and community centers cropping up across the country. Feddersen started out as a printmaker, his major at the University of Washington where he earned his B.F.A. While still grounded in printmaking’s layered imagery and processes, his repertoire has expanded to painting, photography, large-scale multi-media installations, collage, glass, and basket weaving. Throughout, Feddersen’s work explores his experiences in the world he inhabits as a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes, a lineage grounded in the northern region of the historic Plateau territory. His work combines traditional Plateau imagery and techniques with references to the present day; geometric designs and motifs—mountains, elk, canoes, and petroglyphs—merge with geometries of the modern West—computer game animations, electrical towers, hard-edge abstraction, and graffiti. Feddersen’s work weaves its way through Indigenous thought and visual heritage, settler histories, and contemporary American art and culture.Since completing his MFA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1989, Feddersen has exhibited extensively both regionally and nationally. Until 2009, he taught at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where he is now Emeritus Faculty. In 2023, Feddersen’s work was featured at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., as well as the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington, and in 2024 he was included in the exhibition&nbsp;Implicit Explicit&nbsp;at Hauser &amp; Wirth, Los Angeles. A major retrospective of Feddersen’s work entitled&nbsp;Earth, Water, Sky&nbsp;opened at the Northwest Museum of Art and Culture in Spokane, Washington in 2024, traveled to the High Desert Museum, Bend, Oregon, and will open September 2026 at the Missoula Art Museum, Montana. The exhibition features 120 works created throughout his 45-year career. Feddersen received the Governor’s Arts &amp; Heritage Award for significant contributions to Washington State’s arts landscape or cultural heritage in 2024. Feddersen’s work appears in numerous institutional collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Seattle Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, Oregon, The Heard Museum, Phoenix, and the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.

Joe Feddersen: Urban Drama

You are cordially invited to&nbsp;The Extended Moment,&nbsp;a dynamic exhibition&nbsp;by Danish photographer&nbsp;Jacob Gils. We are pleased to announce that&nbsp;Gils will be in attendance.

Jacob Gils: The Extended Moment

Presented by AfterImage Film Festival and Fine Line Creative Arts CenterJoin us on Saturday, July 25, for a lovely evening under the stars, as we present a selection of the very best short films from the 2026 edition of the AfterImage Film Festival.&nbsp;Come early to secure your spot on the lawn and enjoy a variety of food for purchase from Le Truff Noir, along with beer and wine. Bring your blankets, lawn chairs, and friends for a memorable summer night filled with delicious food, fantastic films and good company.<a href="https://rrlf5liab.cc.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001wXVqhHXkX1uZYf1Dd1etehd5E4R0XCH3mtdh72XbCwJXanO_OEgtN1JIn-1iWcBBEyxwtPmXO3eLZzeAbyiCs6oqjhvf_z6hWMK1F4AlOhCWNwMnGh3vUtaFlENaN1oUH2mhSKxtIGSHCg4ZNdohOYQ1bYC54RW2tOWteAW_04ljlT-HseVdJQ==&amp;c=nd5qvpyImw0q1f5nF8A_6Valm1AtPlykwL6ZkejX2kmeM-VyBmRLRg==&amp;ch=IFTEB33dvqfbFN9JzUOnYEhW-inmBHa8if_HkTquub1ntSTZVpli9g==" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Film Fest 2026</a>

Spend an Evening Under the Stars at Fine Line

Virtual Artist Talk: Thursday, July 9th at 7pmArtist Reception and Awards: Saturday, July 11th from 5-7pm Join Us in July for Vicinity 2026: What's Going On?"; a juried exhibit of photographic artists from our region. Registration is available for the Virtual Artist's Talk <a href="https://perspectivegallery.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=04a588cae42ffc5c2d944d823&amp;id=ca5c68cb51&amp;e=d73170d386" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);" target="_blank">here</a>. Our juror Jan Tichy had this to say about the exhibition: "Borrowing its title from Marvin Gaye’s enduring question and call for compassion, What’s Going On approaches photography as a form of witness. Questions of identity, labor, race, migration, ecology, intimacy, violence, memory, and belonging unfold through an overwhelming presence of portraiture. Yet these are not portraits seeking resolution or certainty. Instead, they register states of tension: vulnerability and performance, exhaustion and resilience, isolation and collective presence." Jan Tichy, is a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the departments of Photography and Art &amp; Technology/Sound Practices. Besides being an educator and curator, Tichy is a contem­porary artist working at the intersection of video, sculpture, architecture and photogra­phy.&nbsp;Selected ArtistsWarmest congratulations to Robin Bailey, Ronit Bazelel, Spiro Bolos, Drew Endicott, Nick Faitage, Shari Fellows, Zhenye Feng, Marcus Giolas, Jaeden Hannus, Yilin Jin, Hillary Johnson, Lauren Johnston, Jude Kharchou, Kurt Kramer, Wendy Love, Stephen Marc, Scott Mcintosh, David Obermeyer, Phillip Parker-Turner, Carolyn Potts, Berkley Reddick, Brent Showalter, Jack Siegel, Elizabeth Sisson-Freeman, Stafford Smith, Frank Styburski, Joyce Symoniak, Jayla Trenyce, Beatrice Turner, and Becki Utigard.

9th Annual Vicinity Regional Exhibition

Part I, September 23, 2025 - February 22, 2026Part II, March 24, 2026 - July 26, 2026Why and how do people form political communities? How does political society organize our economic lives - and vice versa? And how as individuals do we navigate society?Smart to the Core: Wise to Power&nbsp;examines these questions by integrating visual art with foundational texts of modern social and political thought spanning nearly four centuries. Through a wide range of creative practices and philosophical perspectives, the exhibition addresses themes that are widely familiar yet deeply connected to specific political, economic, and cultural histories.<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://uchicago.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=aba2086a45b4ee8391b89447b&amp;id=a6520b5f11&amp;e=00938adab1" target="_blank">Learn more about this exhibition</a>

Smart to the Core: Wise to Power (Part II)

Go behind the scenes of printmaking during this special offsite visit to the <a href="https://driehausmuseum.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=32343bbcd4e3063e18cdf64bf&amp;id=b8ba843115&amp;e=d1db3f815c" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Chicago Printmakers Collaborative</a>. <a href="https://driehausmuseum.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=32343bbcd4e3063e18cdf64bf&amp;id=27beada8e3&amp;e=d1db3f815c" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TICKETS</a>

Chicago Printmakers Collaborative Tour

Center for Native Futures presents Hattie Lee Mendoza, Melissa Melero-Moose, Sean Chandler

Hattie Lee Mendoza, Melissa Melero-Moose, Sean Chandler 

Waterscapes convey emotional depth. The artists in the Horizons Exhibition capture the essence of water by reflecting upon abstract shapes of color and light that shimmer on the surface. They are keenly aware of subtle shifts in temperature, mood and atmosphere.&nbsp;They blur the lines between representation and abstraction. See beyond the horizon through their eyes.&nbsp; This exhibition addresses the fragile relationship humans have with water, our most precious natural resource. Twenty percent of all revenue from sales will be donated to the Alliance for the Great Lakes. Artists: Anna Marie Crovetti, Mark Collins, Catherine Daniels, Cindy Fuller, Ted Glasoe, Louise LeBourgeois, Lynne Miller Jones, Eleanor Speiss-Ferris, Ellen Starr Lyon, and Nina Weiss.&nbsp; Image: By the Buoy" by Lynne Miller Jones Gallery Hours: Thursday through Sunday, 1 to 6 PMWebsite: <a href="http://www.grovegallery.shop" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(56, 101, 115);" target="_blank">www.grovegallery.shop</a>Contact: Sarah Kaiser, Gallery Director<a href="mailto:sarah@studio215.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">sarah@studio215.org</a>773 318 0163

Horizons: the Waterscapes

Randolph Street Market Festival<a href="https://randolphstreetmarket.com/event/randolph-street-market-festival-july-2026/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Buy Tickets</a><a href="https://randolphstreetmarket.com/vendor-application-july/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Become a Vendor</a>Indoor &amp; OutdoorSUMMER SOLSTICE BASH!Stroll on over to the Market and enjoy shopping 200 indoor and outdoor dealers! Find some great shades and breezy fashion as well as accoutrements for casual lifestyle and leisure time. Recharge your battery inside with cool cool A/C. Continuous live music, DJ’s, food and 3-Market Bars too!

Randolph Street Market Festival 

The Evanston Art Center (EAC) is excited to welcome the public to its upcoming exhibition,&nbsp;Moritz Kellerman | Recent Paintings. The exhibition will be on view from June 27 through July 29, 2026, with an opening reception on Sunday, June 28, from 1–4 p.m. The reception is free and open to the public.Born in Nicaragua, Moritz Kellerman is both a 21st-century artist and an art historian whose work is informed by the art of both the past and present. During his graduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Kellerman became inspired by the work of Willem de Kooning and Richard Diebenkorn. He also draws inspiration from the Old Renaissance Masters in his painting practice. His use of wood panels recalls the techniques of Leonardo da Vinci, while his method of mixing paint directly on the surface of the work echoes that of Claude Monet.Since 1981, Kellerman has exhibited extensively at colleges, museums, and galleries. He is a tenured professor at Oakton College, where he teaches Studio Art and Art History.Moritz Kellerman | Recent Paintings&nbsp;will be exhibited in the Second Floor Gallery of the Art Center. The opening reception is free and open to the public. This exhibition is partially funded by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the EAC’s general membership.

Moritz Kellerman | Recent Paintings

The Evanston Art Center (EAC) is excited to welcome the public to its upcoming exhibition,&nbsp;Rina Akowala | Ode to Color. The exhibition will be on view from June 27 through July 29, 2026, with an opening reception on Sunday, June 28, from 1–4 p.m. The reception is free and open to the public.Chicago-based, Indian-born artist Rina Akowala translates her global travels into vibrant abstract landscapes. Working across oils, inks, mixed media, and acrylics, she captures the essence of diverse locales—from European countrysides to South American waterfalls, from the farmlands of Iowa to the Indian subcontinent—emphasizing the interplay of light on land and water. Her recent work uniquely blends spiritual iconography with natural scenery, depicting ethereal representations of Lord Ganesha, the Hindu deity of wisdom and new beginnings. These pieces incorporate landscape elements, reflecting Ganesha’s invocation at the start of new ventures.Rina Akowala | Ode to Color&nbsp;will be exhibited in the Second Floor Atrium Gallery at the Art Center. The opening reception is free and open to the public. This exhibition is partially funded by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the EAC’s general membership.

Rina Akowala | Ode to Color

On Friday, July 10th, we will be having an exhibit opening for special exhibitor Meghan Borah's show "Rainy Day Women." The opening will run from 5-7 PM and will display Meghan's unique, thought-provoking work, which is influenced by&nbsp;how others view us, how we view ourselves, how we react, and how that makes us feel.&nbsp; Image: Meghan Borah, "Girls with Flowers."&nbsp;

Meghan Borah: Rainy Day Women

Artists: Natalja Heybrook, Ruti Modlin, Jeein Kim

July Solo Shows

Vibrance is an exhibition illuminated by movement, identity, and the electric pulse of human connection. Featuring four Chicago based artists, photography, paintings, and neon glass sculptures transform the gallery into a living atmosphere, one saturated with color, rhythm, intimacy, and unapologetic presence. Presented during Pride Month, Vibrance serves as both celebration and declaration: an affirmation of life, visibility, and the triumphs continually forged through collective resilience and self-expression. Spencer Gale constructs abstract neon sculptures that bend light into emotional architecture. His luminous and organic forms activate the surrounding environment, dissolving the boundary between object and observer.&nbsp;Photographer Francisco Malave turns his lens toward the nightlife culture. Navigating the dim corners of clubs and gay bars, Malave captures fleeting moments often hidden from public memory. His photographs reveal beauty within spaces society deems to remain unseen, preserving the spirit of nightlife not as spectacle, but as sanctuary. Painter Devon James approaches the human form as both landscape and language. Through fluorescent palettes, layered patterns, and intertwined humanoid figures, the work explores intimacy, coexistence, and the beauty found within human connection. Bodies merge and interlock within surreal compositions, suggesting the fragile yet powerful ways individuals influence and shape one another. Interdisciplinary artist Connor Young, presents paintings from his ongoing series, Killer Queen, a response to the right wing’s legislative attacks on Drag performers, queer spaces and forms of expression. In response to this, Young leans into the stereotypes that conservatives project onto Drag performers, depicting drag queens and queer icons in bright, saturated colors, with exaggerated, and often humorous poses and features.&nbsp; Together, these artists construct a bright dialogue centered on visibility, liberation, and communal energy. Vibrance explores the conditions that allow individuals to express themselves most freely, while honoring the cultural spaces, histories, and creative communities that make such expression possible. Rooted within the spirit of Chicago, the exhibition invites viewers into a world where light becomes language, color becomes emotion, and difference becomes connection.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Vibrance

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

Calendar

Chicago Gallery News