OS Projects presents “…and the far off flutter of smoke stained wings.”, an exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Stephen Williams. The exhibition opens on November 8, 2025 and continues through January 10, 2026. The public is invited to meet the artist on Saturday, November 8 from 1 – 3 pm. Stephen Williams’ artwork asks a fundamental question: How do the things that we observe and experience outside of ourselves become infused with emotion and meaning and entry points for our imaginations? The peculiar transformation that takes place during the artmaking process, when words, concepts and experiences move from being “a thing in the world to a world in a thing,” is a source of endless fascination for the artist. Williams describes the 15 paintings in his OS Projects exhibit as renderings of anonymous interior spaces, analogous to rooms he has never entered or never could. Their images are generated spontaneously and proceed to completion in an improvisational manner. This approach allows the artist to indulge in a kind of freedom and vulnerability as well as an expansiveness that flirts with failure at every moment. To develop the palette of his paintings, Williams uses only black, blue, yellow, red and white paints. Each has been given a symbolic value. Black represents subjectivity, while blue stands for subjective experience/water. Yellow expresses metaphor/plane of immanence/air, and red is objective experience/fire. White symbolizes objectivity, the opposite of black. In contrast to the self-contained paintings, Williams’ sculptures function as models. They are physical prompts for things the artist has been thinking about or would like to consider further. Like the forms in his paintings, the sculptures exist in a state of flux. By virtue of being placed into different configurations, they become different things. What is real? The question has preoccupied Williams throughout his life. The answer, he has discovered through his decades-long art practice, is that reality is “a place where you no longer possess a thing but instead it possesses you.” About the Artist Born in Joliet, Illinois, Stephen Williams currently lives and works in Chicago. He holds degrees from the University of Illinois School of Architecture and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Williams has exhibited his work at various art venues, including the Chicago galleries CompassRose, Dart and 65GRAND, and Deborah Sharpe and Charles Cowles galleries in New York. His artwork is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, JP Morgan Chase Bank, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the American Medical Association.&nbsp;

Stephen Williams: "...and the far off flutter of smoke stained wings."

OS Projects is a contemporary art gallery in downtown Racine featuring visual artists in solo and small group exhibits. The gallery’s primary focus is on artists living and working in the Chicago-Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee urban corridor. While the range of media the gallery presents is broad, the exhibited artists are unified in their engagement with topical issues, experimentation with materials and processes, and adherence to craft. Artists who will be exhibiting their work at OS Projects in 2026 include Stephen Williams, Colin Matthes, Dan Devening, and Barbara Cooper. OS Projects has 4 exhibits per year.&nbsp; Openings take place on the second Saturday of February, May, August&nbsp;and November. Image: Installation view of Catherine Sollman: Gut Symmetry, 2025. Photo by Robert C Osborne.

OS Projects

Gut Symmetry, an exhibition of paintings and prints by Chicago artist Catherine Sollman, opens at OS Projects on August 9, 2025. The exhibition continues through October 11, 2025. OS Projects will host a reception for the artist from 1 – 3 pm on Saturday, August 9. Catherine Sollman uses basic shapes to create abstract forms that refer to the human body or environment, both natural and built. Her work is characterized by precision as well as unconventional color combinations that she often pushes toward garishness in pursuit of a particular vibrational quality. Gut Symmetry comprises two bodies of work: small gouache paintings and monotypes, which are one-of-a-kind prints. The paintings are predicated on a limited set of rules and tools—straightedge, compass, pencil and gouache—and have evolved to occupy an important place in Sollman’s practice. They are an investigation of form, color and relationships as well as an attempt to trigger pulsations between color and shape. Sollman describes them as “a quest for sensation.” While the gouache paintings are created directly and intuitively, the monotypes incorporate an element of chance using ghost prints, migrating motifs and the reuse and reconfiguration of the printed surface or matrix. Their imagery hints at bodily structures, the exchange of matter and the tension between exuberant impulse and the need to withhold. They reflect Sollman’s ongoing interest in exploring print’s capacity to accommodate abstraction, chance, mood and iteration while allowing for formality and humor. Both the gouache paintings and monotype prints in Gut Symmetry function as loci of experimentation for the artist. They are also a meditation on antiquated notions of femininity, impropriety, rightness and order. Within each, Sollman strives to facilitate a type of presence—a small escape, a work that soothes and surprises, a portal to somewhere else. About the Artist Born and raised in Racine, Wisconsin, Catherine Sollman is a printmaker and teaching artist whose practice consists of small-scale abstract works on paper that emphasize geometry and color play. She earned her BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and continued her studies with Karen Kunc, Terry James Conrad, Katie Baldwin and other notable printmakers. Her work has been exhibited in galleries across the U.S. including the Highpoint Center for Printmaking (Minneapolis, MN), Mixografia (Los Angeles, CA), Print Austin (Austin, TX) and Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL). She was a 2024 Artist-in-Residence at Weir Farm National Historic Park (Wilton, CT) and will be a 2026 Artist-in-Residence at Peninsula School of Art (Fish Creek, WI). Sollman lives and works on Chicago’s West Side. Image: Nicole, Augusta Street by Catherine Sollman, 2025.&nbsp;

Catherine Sollman: Gut Symmetry

OS Projects is pleased to present Things Seem Strong, a solo exhibition of photographs by Milwaukee artist Mark Brautigam, opening May 10 and continuing through July 12. A reception for the artist will take place on Saturday, May 10, from 1–3 pm. Mark Brautigam’s artwork interrogates our sense of time, on both a personal and geological scale. Using photography and video as his primary media, Brautigam explores how these different timescales manifest across our lives and the landscape. In his OS Projects exhibition, Brautigam directs his attention to the Driftless Area, a region encompassing southwestern Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois that was spared the repeated leveling forces of glaciation common throughout the Upper Midwest. Cycles of sedimentation and erosion have continued to shape the landscape of the Driftless for millions of years, creating a geological terrain that stands in stark contrast to the areas that surround it. The photographs in Things Seem Strong were made in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota from 2017-2020. Installed across the walls of the gallery like a film strip or the unbound pages of a book, the series contrasts two vastly different senses of time: the human sense of time, which we rely on to define our lives, and deep time, which defines the history of the planet. While many of the images feature the unique landforms of a region hundreds of millions of years old, they also depict fleeting moments of humanity and a world that is seasonally cyclical, ultimately pitting the ephemeral against the eternal. About the Artist Mark Brautigam is an artist whose work explores the intersection of place, time, and memory. He attended the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, and served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps for four years. He has exhibited at the Haggerty Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center and the Newspace Center for Photography. His work is in the collections of the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Museum of Wisconsin Art, the Haggerty Museum of Art and the Racine Art Museum, as well as the We Energies Foundation Art Collection and numerous private collections.

Mark Brautigam: Things Seem Strong

In Defense of Beauty, an exhibition featuring mixed media works by Chicago artist Allison Svoboda, opens at OS Projects on February 8, 2025 and continues through April 12, 2025. The gallery will host a reception for the artist on Saturday, February 8, from 1 – 3 pm. Allison Svoboda’s artwork functions as an extended meditation on our natural environment. At OS Projects, Svoboda will be exhibiting two bodies of related work: “radical” plein air paintings the artist created at various locations in collaboration with bodies of water that are under threat, and torn paper installations from her Mandala series. Svoboda’s plein air paintings are an ode to the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River and their watersheds. Svoboda combined water from these sites with water-soluble pigments and exposed the work to water movement, wind and land-derived materials such as sand, salt and plant matter. Akin to automatism practiced by the Dadaists and Surrealists, the paintings are made in a sense from a “spirit hand,” as natural forces and materials are allowed to take over the surfacesof the works, imbuing them with the intrinsic character of the water and surrounding land. Like the plein air works, Svoboda’s Mandala series is influenced by organic forms and patterns (such as fractal geometry) and guided by both design and instinct. To create the works in the series, the artist first made hundreds of small paintings with thousands of brushstrokes, after which she collated the paintings, tore out images that align, then constructed from them a visually complex, wall-mounted collage of self-similar shapes. The paper’s ephemeral quality and rhythmic brushwork evoke a Buddhist mandala and encourage extended contemplation. Predicated on equal doses of inquiry and revelation, Svoboda’s artwork asks us to pay close attention to the dichotomy between destruction and growth that defines the natural world--as well as the fear, braided with wonder, that encapsulates our response to it. About the ArtistAllison Svoboda’s art practice exists on the edge between intuitive and deliberate mark making. Through paintings, sculpture and installations that are both ethereal and ominous, Svoboda highlights nature’s ability to regenerate, activate, and heal despite the damaged state of our environment. In 2015, she received the Hemera Fellowship to study Zen, calligraphy and shibori in Japan. This meditative practice and mark making continue to influence her work.Svoboda has shown her work at galleries, art centers and museums throughout the U.S. and abroad, including the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum (Chicago, IL); Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL); Walker Gallery (Denver, CO); K Imperial Gallery (San Francisco, CA); Olson-Larsen Galleries (Des Moines, IA); Fiskars Village (Finland); and Mingara Gallery (Australia). Svoboda’s public art sculptures can be seen at Nashville International Airport and North Center Plaza in Chicago. Her work is in private, corporate and hotel collections throughout the world, including Four Seasons Hotel San Francisco, InterContinental Real Guatemala, and the Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi, among others. Image: Fullmoon Painting #5, by Allison Svoboda, 2022.

Allison Svoboda: In Defense of Beauty

OS Projects presents Eight Lines at a Time, an exhibition of large-scale paintings, prints and drawings by Monika Wulfers. Opening November 9, 2024, the exhibit continues through January 11, 2025. The gallery will host a reception for the artist on Saturday, November 9 from 1 – 3 pm. Wulfers will also give an artist talk at the gallery on Saturday, December 7 at 2 pm.Connectivity, chance, method, system, and the colors black and white, are the building blocks of Monika Wulfers’ artwork. The artist defines three-dimensional space using the simplest units— points, lines and their numerical analogues—all of which serve as organizing elements of reality. Her investigations into the relationships among these units function as a premise for visual knowing.Wulfers’ fascination with space as both concept and experience comes from observing natural phenomena. While learning to fly, the artist noticed an airplane does not fly in a straight line but can angulate almost sideways toward its destination as it compensates for wind speed. Her experiences on and near water made her think about the curvature of the earth, particularly when sailing past islands that appeared from her vantage point to rotate around her boat. Riding a train, she became aware of the relationship between spatial proximity and motion, as objects nearby appeared to move fast while objects in the distance moved more slowly.Wulfers’ artwork is a distillation of her keen observations of how our position in, and movement through, three-dimensional space influences our perceptions. While the grid and perspective are implied in the works, the perception of shape, volume and scale changes depending on the viewpoint, inviting further contemplation and reflection. As one writer has noted, “(Wulfers) depicts reality not by showing the object itself in her (artwork) but by showing its interior dimension.”Born in Berlin, Germany, Monika Wulfers lives and works in Racine, Wisconsin. She received a BA in Philosophy from North Central College in Naperville, Illinois and an MFA with a concentration in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied film under Stan Brakhage and painting under Ray Yoshida and Ted Halkin. Her oeuvre includes painting, neon installations, digital prints, video, and photography.&nbsp;About the ArtistOne of the Founding Members of Artists Residents of Chicago (ARC), Wulfers has served as Director of its Educational Foundation. In 1975, she joined Argonne National Laboratory as a resident artist. She was also on the faculty at Barat College (Lake Forest, IL) and College of Lake County, (Grayslake, IL.) Over the past five decades, Wulfers has made significant contributions in art and technology and advanced the use of the computer as an artistic medium. Her work has been shown in museums in the U.S. and internationally and is included in the permanent collections of the Elmhurst Art Museum (Elmhurst, IL), DePaul University (Chicago, IL), Wilhelm- Hack-Museum (Ludwigshafen, Germany) and Argonne National Laboratory in addition to numerous private collections.&nbsp;OS Projects is located at 601 Sixth Street, Racine, Wisconsin. Gallery hours are Saturdays, 12 - 5 pm, and by appointment. For more information, please visit the gallery website: osprojects.art.&nbsp;Image: Random 2235 2236, Monika Wulfers, 2022.

Monika Wulfers: Eight Lines at a Time

OS Projects presents its own pristine devices, a solo exhibition of photographs by Milwaukee artist Lois Bielefeld. The show opens August 10 and continues through October 12. The gallery will host a reception for the artist on Saturday, August 10, from 1 – 3 pm. Bielefeld will also give an artist talk at the gallery on September 28 at 2 pm.Through a creative practice that comprises several disciplines, Lois Bielefeld strives to make sense of the collisions that take place on a daily basis within the self, between the self and others, and between the self and the world. The artist’s methodically researched projects are an eloquent expression of the human impulse to ascribe meaning to the messiness of existence and to create order from complexity while asserting a claim for difference.In the OS Projects exhibition, Bielefeld focuses on freeway islands, areas of land designed to capture excess precipitation and vehicle pollution. Over time, and unintentionally, these interstitial spaces have become complex mini habitats encircled by asphalt and rushing traffic.By photographing and aestheticizing freeway islands from the West Coast to Wisconsin, Bielefeld questions our assumptions and romanticized notions of wilderness as untouched or uninhabited places. The project aligns with environmental historian William Cronon’s argument that wilderness is a product of civilization rather than something that stands apart from humans.Just as Cronon challenges us to find wilderness in our backyards, abandoned lots and local parks, Bielefeld encourages us to do the same with the inconspicuous patches of land we pass every day as we navigate a highway system so extensive it could encircle the world twice.About the ArtistLois Bielefeld is a queer series-based artist working in photography, audio, video and performance. Their work continually asks what links routine and ritual to the formation of identity, personhood and the development of meaning-making. Their work is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York City, the Museum of Wisconsin Art, Saint Kate Arts Hotel, the Warehouse Museum and the Racine Art Museum. Bielefeld has shown at The International Center of Photography in New York City, The National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, deYoung Museum in San Francisco, The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and Dom Wein in Vienna. Bielefeld is represented by Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee.&nbsp;

Lois Bielefeld Artist Talk

OS Projects presents its own pristine devices, a solo exhibition of photographs by Milwaukee artist Lois Bielefeld. The show opens August 10 and continues through October 12. The gallery will host a reception for the artist on Saturday, August 10, from 1 – 3 pm. Bielefeld will also give an artist talk at the gallery on September 28 at 2 pm.Through a creative practice that comprises several disciplines, Lois Bielefeld strives to make sense of the collisions that take place on a daily basis within the self, between the self and others, and between the self and the world. The artist’s methodically researched projects are an eloquent expression of the human impulse to ascribe meaning to the messiness of existence and to create order from complexity while asserting a claim for difference.In the OS Projects exhibition, Bielefeld focuses on freeway islands, areas of land designed to capture excess precipitation and vehicle pollution. Over time, and unintentionally, these interstitial spaces have become complex mini habitats encircled by asphalt and rushing traffic.By photographing and aestheticizing freeway islands from the West Coast to Wisconsin, Bielefeld questions our assumptions and romanticized notions of wilderness as untouched or uninhabited places. The project aligns with environmental historian William Cronon’s argument that wilderness is a product of civilization rather than something that stands apart from humans.Just as Cronon challenges us to find wilderness in our backyards, abandoned lots and local parks, Bielefeld encourages us to do the same with the inconspicuous patches of land we pass every day as we navigate a highway system so extensive it could encircle the world twice.About the ArtistLois Bielefeld is a queer series-based artist working in photography, audio, video and performance. Their work continually asks what links routine and ritual to the formation of identity, personhood and the development of meaning-making. Their work is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York City, the Museum of Wisconsin Art, Saint Kate Arts Hotel, the Warehouse Museum and the Racine Art Museum. Bielefeld has shown at The International Center of Photography in New York City, The National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, deYoung Museum in San Francisco, The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and Dom Wein in Vienna. Bielefeld is represented by Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee.&nbsp;Image: Lois Bielefeld, Ramp 175N, 46th Street. Milwaukee, WI,&nbsp;2019, Archival pigment print

Lois Bielefeld: its own pristine devices

OS Projects is pleased to present Processing Skies Past featuring work by Chicago artist Sarah Leuchtner.Sarah Leuchtner’s work explores memory, loss and transformation through a painterly lens while reflecting on what it means to be an artist in a post-internet era. In Processing Skies Past, Leuchtner convenes her enigmatic alphabet of invented shapes with an expansive range of studio and industrial materials—from paint and collage to zip ties and chain link fencing—to make sense of a year marked by profound grief but also love, friendship and opportunity.A central motif in the exhibit is a chain link gate through which the artist passes each day on her way to and from her workspace. Leuchtner has adopted the gate’s diamond pattern as a formal device to warp the rectilinear grids that structure her works. The gate also functions as a mark- making tool: the artist placed it on top of several works-in-progress, then spray painted the object, leaving a spectral image of the chain link pattern on her surfaces.Two pivotal works in the show feature the gate fully integrated with a collage sandwiched between plexiglass and fastened to the galvanized wire with zip ties. In a corollary act, Leuchtner has installed a collage between plexiglass on a chain link fence across the street from her studio. A photograph of the installation (which will remain on the fence until it deteriorates or is removed by the property owner) is included in the exhibit.Embracing the material characteristics and conceptual possibilities of her surroundings allows Leuchtner to reflect upon, channel and process the major changes and emotional intensity of her past year. As she moves and manipulates her materials through time—from outside to inside, then back outside again—she mimics the way in which a consequential event is experienced, processed internally, and output into the world.About the ArtistSarah Leuchtner is a Chicago-based contemporary artist working in painting, drawing and sculpture. Leuchtner received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016. She has had exhibitions at Lawrence and Clark Gallery, Hans Gallery, Bianca Bova Gallery andNortheastern Illinois University, all in Chicago, and has also shown her work at NADA Chicago (2020) and Expo Chicago (2022.) She has exhibited in New York at Below Grand Gallery (formerly Superdutchess Gallery) and at the International Centre for the Arts in Monte Castello, Italy. In 2020, Leuchtner was included in a show at The CICA Museum of Contemporary Art in South Korea. Recent solo exhibitions include Midnight Mirage at Belong Gallery (Chicago) in 2022 and Sequential Escapes at Goldfinch Gallery (Chicago) in 2023. Leuchtner’s work is permanently featured at L7 Chicago and the United Club ORD Collection.&nbsp;

Sarah Leuchtner: Processing Skies Past

OS Projects presents What We Leave Behind, a survey of Chicago artist Toby Zallman’s works from 2018 through 2024. The exhibit, which opens February 10, 2024 and continues through April 13, 2024, features large-scale drawings, sculptures and an installation. A reception for the artist takes place on Saturday, February 10, from 1 – 3 pm. Zallman will also give a talk about the exhibit at 2 pm that day.Toby Zallman’s labor-intensive art transforms toxic refuse into evocative objects of abstract seduction that inject beauty into environmentally devastating situations while arousing cognitive dissonance in viewers. Her works respond to society’s single-use culture of waste by incorporating mundane and utilitarian materials into an engaging visual experience that incites both pleasure and distress.Zallman is attracted to the physical qualities embodied in waste products, which provide a rich range of possibilities for transformation into both 2-D and 3-D forms. Sculptures in the show include a work constructed from over one thousand plastic bottles and small “molluscs” made from plastic waste. The drawings and installation combine conventional drawing materials with computer-manipulated images and reference shopping bags, water bottles and trash bags. Several are made up of numerous individual pieces of paper the artist pieces together into monumental grids that extend across the wall.What We Leave Behind, the show’s title, refers to the plastic waste that is blighting our planet and will take years to break down into the toxic chemicals from which it was made. It is Zallman’s hope that by creating alluring objects and visual experiences from the waste, while simultaneously foregrounding our complicity in ecological degradation, her project will support behavioral change.About the ArtistToby Zallman is a Chicago artist whose art practice focuses on sculpture and drawing. In 2004, after becoming aware of the degree to which our plastic and e-waste is damaging the environment, she began incorporating recycled/re-purposed materials into her sculpture and utilizing them as a source of visual inspiration for both her sculptures and drawings. She has used computer detritus, plastic bags, plastic bottles and solid plastic trash to create unique art worksthat shed light on the environmental devastation caused by rampant consumerism. Zallman shows both locally and nationally. Recent exhibits include “Transformations” at the Evanston Art Center (3-person exhibit), “reefscollapse” at Ignition Projects Space in Chicago (solo) and “Our Plastic Trash” at Western Illinois University (solo.) Zallman is the recipient of a 2022 Puffin Foundation grant, several Illinois Arts Council grants and an Individual Artist Program Grant from the City of Chicago. She has had artist residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo and Ragdale.Image: Toby Zallman, Ice Mountain, 2021, 18” x 20” x 22”, made from approximately 1,200 plastic bottles.&nbsp;

What We Leave Behind

Christine Forni and Jennifer Mannebach will give a talk about their work on January 13, the final day of their exhibition, Thresholds. The talk, which starts at 2:00 pm, is free and open to the public.The gallery is open for exhibition viewing on Saturdays through January 13th from noon to 5 pm and by appointment.For more information about the exhibit: <a href="https://www.osprojects.art/thresholds">https://www.osprojects.art/thresholds</a>.

Artist Talk: Christine Forni and Jennifer Mannebach

OS Projects is pleased to present Thresholds, featuring sculptures and mixed media works by Chicago artists Christine Forni and Jennifer Mannebach. Mannebach has also created a site- specific window installation for the exhibit. Thresholds opens November 11, 2023 and continues through January 13, 2024.&nbsp;A reception for the artists will take place on Saturday, November 11 from 1 – 3 pm.Christine Forni and Jennifer Mannebach both address the fragmented and shifting terrain of nature and memory in their expansive bodies of work. The artists methodically deconstruct and reinterpret the relationship between past and present, spotlighting areas and remnants that are typically hidden or overlooked.Forni captures fleeting glimpses of terrain using light in interaction with glass, porcelain, reclaimed minerals and paint skins. By layering these elements in a complex deconstruction/reconstruction process and employing chromatic shifts that stray from a source’s original color, the artist allows her landscapes to become mentally stratified from personal memories. Forni’s experience growing up in the Rust Belt—where industry and nature are often starkly juxtaposed—informs her studio practice. The glass layers in her sculptures invite close observation and reveal unexpected margins as well as the tenacity of nature through time.Mannebach is interested in boundaries, remnants and where things collect. Her mixed media pieces of fractal disruptions, based on hundreds of photos Mannebach took of the cracked earth of a summer playa in Oregon, address shifting ground in natural landscapes. Her related sculptures derive from a short video of a young child balancing on a backyard slide. Mannebach has cast and recreated parts of the slide, highlighting the presence of touch as well as the fragmented nature of memory and the complexity of our interior landscapes—a different kind of shifting ground. The sculptures also allude to found objects, like rocks or seashells, which are often played with to the point where they become part of the emotional landscape of the moment.In both Forni’s and Mannebach’s bodies of work, the experience has passed, but the objects remain, remade and reimagined. Nature and memory are not stable, the artists emphasize, but rather always on the threshold of a shift.&nbsp;About the ArtistsChristine Forni is a painter and sculptor examining links between human behavior and the natural world. Forni has exhibited at Ueno Royal Japanese Art Museum and Awagami Paper Museum (Japan); deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (MA); Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago); Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (Chicago); Museo Franz Mayer (Mexico City); and Museo Internazionale Italia Arte (Turin) among other institutions. She created the “Drawing You Outside” project and routinely collaborates with poets, environmentalists, botanists, historians, physicists, writers, performance and sound artists. In 2017, Forni was invited to speak about design and evolution in nature at the Academia Romania in Bucharest, where she also exhibited her work. This autumn, she was a guest speaker at the 12th Constructal Law Conference in Turin, Italy. Forni has participated in numerous artist residencies, including Oregon Caves National Monument, Vermont Studio Center and École du Breuil d’Horticulture (Paris).&nbsp;Jennifer Mannebach is a Chicago-based artist, curator and gallery director. She has exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago), Flatfile Gallery (Chicago), Jack Olson Gallery (Northern Illinois University) and other venues, nationally and internationally. In 2006, she was a visiting artist at The American Academy in Rome. Mannebach received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she subsequently taught for six years. She is an adjunct professor at Concordia University Chicago, an Artist/Researcher with CAPE, and the Director of O’Connor Gallery at Dominican University. Awards include the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, CAAP grants, IAC grants and the Governor’s International Arts Exchange Grant. Recent exhibits include Wanting It Both Ways, a group exhibition at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (Chicago); No Place Like Home at the Schingoethe Center (Aurora, IL); and Fissures, a two-person exhibition at Boundary (Chicago.)

Christine Forni and Jennifer Mannebach: THRESHOLDS

OS Projects presents Generations, opening August 12, 2023 and continuing through October 14, 2023. The exhibition pairs Racine artist and educator Jerrold Belland with Chicago artist Andrew Larson, a former student. A reception for the artists will take place Saturday, August 12, from 1 – 3 pm.Generations features recent cityscapes by Jerrold Belland and figurative interiors by Andrew Larson. Both painters evoke a sense of place: Belland through direct observation and Larson through invention and synthesis. Although the artists share an interest in historical modes of painting, they prioritize expression and spontaneity over precision and preconceptions.Belland’s paintings are inspired by the view from his fourth-floor studio window, which overlooks a patchwork of industrial zones and working-class neighborhoods. By looking long and hard, and diving deeply into his subject matter, the artist emulates his overarching approach to art. Larson’s subject matter is humans and their environment, with a focus on atmospheric effects, both as a painterly device and an examination of toxic auras. Myth and vices, and high and low culture, make appearances in his compositions, which combine mystery, melancholy and humor.While the act of painting encapsulates time in layers of color and medium, time for artists is marked by phases of development and influence, impelled by supporters, peers and mentors. Generations conflates these manifestations of time by bringing together a former teacher and student to compare several decades of notes on the painterly life.About the ArtistsJerrold Belland was born and raised on a dairy farm near Lake Geneva, WI. He has 60 years of experience as an artist, illustrator and author. He graduated with a BFA from UW Madison and, shortly thereafter, received his master’s degree from UW-Milwaukee. During his long career as an art educator in the Racine Unified School District, Belland exhibited his paintings locally, regionally and nationally, which he continues to do. For the past 18 years, he has maintained a studio practice at 16th Street Studios in Racine. His work is in numerous collections, both private and public, and he was included in the comprehensive survey, A Creative Place: The History of Wisconsin Art. Belland is the recipient of a 2012 RAM Artist Fellowship from the Racine Art Museum.Andrew Larson was born in Racine, WI and studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, from which he graduated with a BFA. He is principal at Andrew Larson Design, Inc., which focuses on association publications and pharmaceutical marketing. From 2000-2010, Larson was a singer/songwriter/guitarist for the Gnomes, writing and recording three albums of material (I, II and III) and performing at Chicago venues such as The Hideout, Schubas and Beat Kitchen. Since 2010, he has increased his dedication to painting after years spent dividing his creative energy. Larson currently lives in Chicago and paints from a studio in the West Side Austin neighborhood.&nbsp;

Generations

OS Projects is pleased to present Grammar Lessons, an exhibition of recent paintings and drawings by Lisa Englander, opening May 13, 2023 and continuing through July 15, 2023.&nbsp; An artist reception will be held on Saturday, May 13 from 1 – 3 pm. The artist will also give a talk about her work on June 24 at 1:30 pm.Lisa Englander’s shamelessly decorative artwork features obsessive patterning, elaborate colorations and simplified ornamentation. Her paintings are visually organized in musical fashion, with sections of color meeting, connecting and abruptly stopping before migrating to a different area of the work like riffs in a jazz composition. Painted areas enunciate and restate themes, while intersecting planes of minutely scaled patterns shade and shadow each other to create complex, imaginary spaces.In Grammar Lessons, Englander investigates the scope and subtleties of a monochromatic palette. She creates rich black paintings in which no black paint is used as well as vivid works in multiple shades of a single hue.&nbsp;Her paintings—all executed freehand—are made from watercolor washes which can be layered up to thirty times to generate the depth and luminosity of color the artist seeks.Grammar Lessons also finds Englander returning to her love of drawing, inspired by a discarded vintage copy of Owen Jones’ pioneering work, The Grammar of Ornament, first published in 1856.&nbsp;The book features 100 color plates of objects and patterns from around the world and throughout history, along with propositions about proportions, colors and rules of abstraction.&nbsp;Englander has long subscribed to Jones’ argument that one of humankind’s universal qualities is the desire to make beautiful things. The artist has also shared Jones’ comprehensive global approach to ornament and beauty, with its focus on pattern and decoration, throughout her career. In Grammar Lessons, Englander revisits her early explorations of Jones’ visual research by using printed images from the book as the starting point for a new series of elaborate multi-media collages she debuts in this exhibition.About the ArtistBorn and raised in Brooklyn, New York, <a href="https://www.lisaenglander.com/">Lisa Englander</a> lives and works in Racine, Wisconsin. She received her BA in printmaking and drawing from Brooklyn College, where she studied with Lois Dodd and Philip Pearlstein, and her MFA in printmaking from UW-Milwaukee.Englander’s work has been featured in over 25 solo shows in museums and galleries including Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters (Madison, WI); Bergstrom-Mahler Museum (Neenah WI); Chicago Cultural Center; Grace Chosy Gallery (Madison, WI); Mount Mary College (Milwaukee, WI); and Bradley Galleries (Milwaukee, WI), among others.She has participated in over 300 group exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad. Her paintings have also been included in national and international surveys of watercolor including Watercolor Now, Watercolor U.S.A. and the Missouri Watercolor Society International in Barcelona, Spain. Englander’s work can be found in museum, public, corporate and private collections throughout the U.S.

Artist talk: Lisa Englander

OS Projects is pleased to present Grammar Lessons, an exhibition of recent paintings and drawings by Lisa Englander, opening May 13, 2023 and continuing through July 15, 2023. An artist reception will be held on Saturday, May 13 from 1 – 3 pm. The artist will also give a talk about her work on June 24 at 1:30 pm.Lisa Englander’s shamelessly decorative artwork features obsessive patterning, elaborate colorations and simplified ornamentation. Her paintings are visually organized in musical fashion, with sections of color meeting, connecting and abruptly stopping before migrating to a different area of the work like riffs in a jazz composition. Painted areas enunciate and restate themes, while intersecting planes of minutely scaled patterns shade and shadow each other to create complex, imaginary spaces.In Grammar Lessons, Englander investigates the scope and subtleties of a monochromatic palette. She creates rich black paintings in which no black paint is used as well as vivid works in multiple shades of a single hue. Her paintings—all executed freehand—are made from watercolor washes which can be layered up to thirty times to generate the depth and luminosity of color the artist seeks.Grammar Lessons also finds Englander returning to her love of drawing, inspired by a discarded vintage copy of Owen Jones’ pioneering work, The Grammar of Ornament, first published in 1856. The book features 100 color plates of objects and patterns from around the world and throughout history, along with propositions about proportions, colors and rules of abstraction.Englander has long subscribed to Jones’ argument that one of humankind’s universal qualities is the desire to make beautiful things. The artist has also shared Jones’ comprehensive global approach to ornament and beauty, with its focus on pattern and decoration, throughout her career. In Grammar Lessons, Englander revisits her early explorations of Jones’ visual research byusing printed images from the book as the starting point for a new series of elaborate multi- media collages she debuts in this exhibition.About the ArtistBorn and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Lisa Englander lives and works in Racine, Wisconsin. She received her BA in printmaking and drawing from Brooklyn College, where she studied with Lois Dodd and Philip Pearlstein, and her MFA in printmaking from UW-Milwaukee.Englander’s work has been featured in over 25 solo shows in museums and galleries including Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters (Madison, WI); Bergstrom-Mahler Museum (Neenah WI); Chicago Cultural Center; Grace Chosy Gallery (Madison, WI); Mount Mary College (Milwaukee, WI); and Bradley Galleries (Milwaukee, WI), among others.She has participated in over 300 group exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad. Her paintings have also been included in national and international surveys of watercolor including Watercolor Now, Watercolor U.S.A. and the Missouri Watercolor Society International in Barcelona, Spain. Englander’s work can be found in museum, public, corporate and private collections throughout the U.S.Special Gallery Hours for Exhibit: Lisa Englander will be at OS Projects on Fridays (except 6/2) from noon - 5 pm to speak with visitors about her work. The gallery is also open Saturdays noon - 5 pm and by appointment.

Lisa Englander: Grammar Lessons 

<a href="https://www.osprojects.art/upcoming">Sharp Points</a>, an exhibition of paper-based works by UW-Parkside professor Carey Watters, opens at OS Projects on February 11, 2023 and continues through April 8, 2023. The gallery will have a reception for the artist on Saturday, February 11, from 1 – 3 pm.Carey Watters’ artwork is highly personal and mythical in nature, weaving together feminist concepts, historic map making and religious and pagan symbolism. The forgotten saints and anonymous korai that populate her work serve as metaphors for the artist’s experiences as a woman. Watters reanimates their broken postures and enigmatic faces, reinventing the characters as powerful heroines engaged in epic struggles.The artwork is the culmination of a multifaceted practice grounded in Watters’ career as an environmental graphic designer, which has given her experience working with a range of materials and craft techniques. All her projects require extensive research and many hours of cutting, gluing and pinning before they are assembled. Watters also fabricates nearly all her own materials and employs printmaking techniques to create textures, layers and repetitive patterns that lend depth and complexity to the work. &nbsp;The marbled paper Watters creates is specific to traditional Italian marbling patterns, and the gold elements in her works employ traditional underpainting and gold-leaf gilding. Watters combines these traditional techniques with digital fabrication tools to increase efficiency and position her practice in a contemporary context. The work that results is labor-intensive, process driven and committed to rigorous craftsmanship.&nbsp;&nbsp;About the ArtistCarey Watters is an associate professor of graphic design at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. She holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in printmaking and book arts.&nbsp; Watters has been working as a professional graphic designer since receiving her BFA in graphic design from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1999. She has exhibited her work regionally, nationally and internationally. Recent solo exhibits include Fragmented Virtues at the Trout Museum of Art (Appleton, WI), Tiny Cuts at the Museum of Wisconsin Art (West Bend, WI) and Excavation: Current Work at UW-Parkside’s Foundation Gallery. Watters’ work is influenced by her travels to Calabria, Basilicata, Puglia, and Sicily, Italy and her research of Byzantine architecture, design, and religious reliquaries.

Carey Watters: Sharp Points

<html><head></head><body>OS Projects presents In High Regard, an exhibition featuring mixed media works by Chicago artist Brian Divis. The exhibition opens November 12, 2022 and continues through January 14, 2023. An artist reception will take place on Saturday, November 12, from 1 – 3 pm.In High Regard explores issues surrounding domesticity, gender, reverence and material tradition. The works in the exhibit are constructed from fibrous textiles, such as yarn, coated with metal and graphite powders. The materials pay homage to the artist’s rural Midwestern background, situated between a loving mother skilled in the craft of sewing and a labor-driven father who worked at the local wire and steel mill.By combining craft-associated and industrial materials and destabilizing their tactile perceptions, Divis creates surfaces worthy of reverence while complicating the relationship between sculpture, painting, gravity and light. Through a process of revealing and concealing, the cultural, spiritual and art historical status of the objects and their materials are brought into question, while their gendered histories are reimagined.As he transforms the conventional associations and perceptions of his materials and objects, Divis creates new aesthetic frames of reference that foster awareness of the forces at play in the formation of absolutes and stereotypes--advocating for acceptance and empathy over judgement and animosity. The goal, the artist states, is for the objects to emerge with a thick presence that prompts viewers to reconsider their socially constructed beliefs about the things often held in high regard.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419564/ljltfk0yljmlzvhbromf.jpg"><figcaption>Detail of top image</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;</body></html>

Brian Divis: In High Regard

Coconuts, an exhibition of new paintings by Milwaukee artist Shane Walsh, opens at OS Projects on August 13, 2022. The exhibition continues through October 15, 2022. OS Projects will host a reception for the artist on Saturday, August 13, from 1 – 3 pm.Approaching painting as a form of collage, Shane Walsh playfully dissects then reconstructs visual languages to arrive at a form of abstract painting that is autobiographical and historically aware.The artist’s cut and paste ethos is rooted in his experience as a DJ during the 1990’s as well as his involvement in the subcultures of that era. Other quotidian influences--like xeroxed zines, video game arcades, television motion graphics and design elements from disco and early graffiti- -combine in his high-octane works with painterly and geometric abstraction.Walsh redirects and choreographs this ensemble on the paintings’ surface utilizing a variety of paint handling techniques and charged interactions in a process that is both planned and fortuitous to equal degree. The transformed whole of these elements destabilizes their component languages and generates the grammar for a new one.For Walsh, restating the terms of formal abstract painting is not a sufficient exercise in 2022. By reshaping existing visual codes, the artist creates a customized and individualized dialect of abstraction that is both specific to his experiences and relevant to his time and place.About the ArtistShane Walsh lives and works in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He received his MFA from the University of Washington and his BFA from Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. He has had solo exhibitions at Asya Geisburg Gallery (New York), The Alice Wilds (Milwaukee), Thelma Sadoff Center for the Arts (Fond Du Lac), and Blindfold Gallery (Seattle), among others. Group exhibitions include the Museum of Wisconsin Art, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Juxtapoz Projects at Mana Contemporary (Jersey City), Open Gallery (Portland), Skidmore Contemporary (Los Angeles), and Francine Seders Gallery (Seattle.) Walsh is a three-time recipient of the Mary Nohl Suitcase Fund award and has been featured twice in New American Paintings.&nbsp;Image: Electric City Ghost by Shane Walsh, 2022

Shane Walsh: Coconuts 

OS Projects presents Friend or Foe, an exhibition by Kevin Miyazaki. An artist reception will be held on Saturday, May 14 from 1 to 3 pm.In the spring of 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, forcing 120,000 Japanese Americans to leave their homes for internment camps located in desolate areas, typically deserts. Miyazaki’s father’s family was part of this forced migration, spending several years incarcerated in military-style barracks in Wyoming as well as the high desert of California.Friend or Foe plumbs the artist’s family history to consider what it was like for members of the Japanese American community—the majority of whom were U.S. citizens—to be uprooted from their homes and sent to live in cramped, communal quarters within a harsh landscape surrounded by barbed wire. The exhibition braids together a range of lyrical and evocative works: window silhouettes of migratory birds and Japanese war planes speckled with constellations, reimagined Boy Scout merit badges, photos of Japanese glass buoys that have meandered across the Pacific Ocean, and the floor of an internment camp cabin delineated with sheets of glassine. From the works’ interactions emerges the observation that sacrifice and patriotism have taken many forms in our nation’s history.Though the narratives contained within Friend or Foe are personal, they speak to experiences shared by all Americans around immigration, assimilation, migration and discrimination—and, ultimately, to the successes and shortcomings that comprise the American story.About the ArtistKevin J. Miyazaki is an artist and photographer living in Milwaukee, WI. His artwork examines issues of identity, memory, migration and community, often through the lens of the Japanese American community. He has exhibited his work at museums, art centers and galleries including the Griffin Museum of Photography, Haggerty Museum of Art, Hyde Park Art Center, Jewish Museum Milwaukee, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Wisconsin Art, Portrait Society Gallery and Warehouse Gallery. Miyazaki’s editorial publication clients include The New York Times, AARP, Smithsonian, Penguin Random House and HGTV.&nbsp;Image: composite image of window vinyl decals by Kevin Miyazaki, 2022&nbsp;

Kevin Miyazaki: Friend or Foe

The gallery will host an artist reception on Saturday, February 12 from 1 to 3 pm. Masks are required at the reception for all visitors.&nbsp;Rebellious Fibers, a two-person exhibit featuring mixed media works by Yvette Kaiser Smith and Bobbi Meier, opens at OS Projects on February 12, 2022 and continues through April 16, 2022.&nbsp;At first glance, Rebellious Fibers reads as a lesson in dichotomy. Meier’s forms are organic, soft- edged, exuberant and boisterous. Kaiser Smith’s works are architectural, industrial, ordered and, in comparison, subdued. Sustained viewing, however, reveals similarities and kinship beyond the superficial.Both bodies of work are responses to the times we live in. In reaction to the widening divisions in our society, Kaiser Smith looks for simple and direct ways to combine disparate materials and challenge our perceptions of difference. Her works ask viewers to consider whether we see diversity as a hard difference that leads to the notion of otherness, or rather as variation within a unified group. Meier embraces color as a means of transcending the darkness of the pandemic and its attendant sadness. She creates work that is enticing, revelatory and joyful. Her objects embrace our desire and need for touch while exemplifying a way of moving from confinement to openness.The works in Rebellious Fibers engage fabric, sewing, tucking, padding and weaving. Many parts are assembled to create one garment, one body, one whole. Yet neither Kaiser Smith nor Meier considers herself a fiber artist, instead identifying as mixed media artists who make sculptural objects using the language of fiber and fiber traditions. Their respective bodies of work share a rebellious spirit that colors outside of the lines of traditions and generates new idioms within sculpture and fiber art.About the ArtistsYvette Kaiser Smith uses number sequences to create wall-based, geometric abstractions, where values of digits direct a composition’s formal structure. Born in Soviet-occupied Prague, Kaiser Smith has resided in Chicago since 1991. She holds a BFA from Southern Methodist University, which includes a fellowship to Yale School of Art Summer Program, and an MFA in sculpture from University of Chicago. Kaiser Smith has exhibited at regional museums, art centers, and university galleries throughout the U.S. Exhibitions abroad include U.S. Embassies in Moscow, Ankara, and Abuja; the National Art Museum of China (Beijing); and alternative galleries in London, Rome, Berlin and Bulgaria. Kaiser Smith has also exhibited her work at Bridges Mathematical Art Exhibitions in Austria and Sweden and created site-specific commissions for Facebook Chicago, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Rosewood Hotel Abu Dhabi and PricewaterhouseCoopers in NYC, among other clients. She has been awarded residencies at Ragdale Foundation and, most recently, ARV.International in Vishovgrad, Bulgaria.Bobbi Meier is a Chicago-based visual artist. Life’s frustrations, joys, and fears are embedded into her abstract sculptures, drawings, and installations through her provocative use of materials such as pantyhose, spandex, porcelain, and found home furnishings. Meier’s work has been exhibited both regionally and nationally and is in the collection of the Kohler Foundation and John Michael Kohler Art Center. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions in Chicago include Strange Etiquette at Salonlb, Domina Domi at Okay Gallery, Visceral at Extra Projects Gallery and Perspiration Glitz at Roots &amp; Culture. She has been awarded residencies at the John Michael Kohler Arts/Industry Program, Ragdale Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Ox-Bow School of Art, Anderson Ranch and Sanskriti-Kendra in New Delhi. Meier is a co-director of ADDS Donna, an artist-run space in Chicago. She earned her MA in Art Education and MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.&nbsp;

Yvette Kaiser Smith & Bobbi Meier: Rebellious Fibers

<a href="https://www.osprojects.art/vroom">….VROOM!</a>November 13- January 15, 2022 &nbsp;(open Saturdays 12:00-5:00 or by appointment)OS Projects is honored to present Chicago artist Sarah Krepp in a solo exhibition featuring her singular mixed media paintings and sculptures.Sarah Krepp, a preeminent visual artist, educator and curator, has exploded the boundaries of painting during her decades-long experimentation with materials and processes.&nbsp; She is an astute observer of conditions on the ground, deftly weaving incisive social and environmental commentary into her ambitious works.Combining scraps of blown-out tires, tar, lace and handwritten text fragments transcribed from radio news programs, Krepp’s works set up an interplay between the brute force of the road and fragile domesticity. The abundantly massed surfaces, with their explosions and extrusions of black conglomerates, serve as metaphors for the threat of engulfment—in particular, ecological disaster.&nbsp; Blown-out tires, littered along roadsides and stacked into piles at shredding facilities, epitomize an American landscape built upon oil, commerce and the enduring fantasy of the open road.&nbsp; By incorporating the detritus of this landscape, Krepp’s works foreground the indulgences of contemporary society and the tendency to downplay or dismiss consequences.On a formal level, Krepp’s layered yet lyrical assemblages of everyday materials play with and puncture the borders between painting, sculpture, drawing and choreography.&nbsp; Her visually complex works create an energetic impact that prioritizes poetic dynamics before the content is understood.&nbsp; Inhabiting an ambiguous space with both curiosity and confidence, Krepp’s works speak to our struggle to understand the fractured world while reaffirming the vigor and exuberance of our lived experiences.About the Artist<a href="http://www.sarahkrepp.com/">Sarah Krepp</a> has shown her interdisciplinary art in museums and galleries nationally and internationally.&nbsp; Her works are in museum, corporate and private collections throughout North America including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Illinois State Museum, Brauer Museum of Art, the corporate headquarters for GE and McDonald’s, and BMO Harris Bank, among others.Krepp has been awarded many research grants and residencies—most recently, a residency at Cill Rialaig Arts Centre in County Kerry, Ireland.&nbsp; She has also received travel grants to conduct research in Scotland, England, Ireland and Germany.&nbsp;Image courtesy of the artist.&nbsp;&nbsp;

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