Meet Artist Residents
Angelica-Maria Ortiz, born and raised in Chicago, was introduced to painting from an adolescent age by her father. She continued to discover herself in her artistry from the year 2001 to the present. Angelica is a multimedia artist who more often dabbles in acrylic painting, but also often participates in charcoal sketching and oil paintings. She often enjoys portraying the female figure in much of her work, but also explores pop art, acrylic pouring, and mixed media paintings that include nostalgic millennial art/cartoons.
Ann Marie Greenberg was born in Kansas City Missouri. In her teens, her family moved to Texas where she went to Booker T Washington High School for the Visual and Performing Arts. She graduated from Kansas City Art Institute in 1990. A resident of Chicago, she uses plastic and other discarded items in prints and drawings to point to the puzzle of tangled webs of consumption and waste and the human impulse for beauty. Recent exhibits include Object Traces, with Teresa Getty at Rare Nest Gallery, Chicago.
Emmanuel Dunagan is an interdisciplinary artist, with a strong focus on illustration and design. Through his highly adaptive style and collaborative nature, he lends himself to an ever-changing industry, while still managing to keep the 'joy of art-making' alive. (He, Him, His + sometimes, gurrrlllll)
Harvey Hayes is a trans painter from Southeastern Massachusetts. Through his work, he employs abstraction to interrogate landscape as a queer form and notion. Harvey earned his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019, and has shown at spaces including Sullivan Galleries, SITE Galleries, The Martin, and Free Range.
Jess Leonard is a multidisciplinary artist who explores the malleability and ownership of memory. Through the experimentation of manipulating photographic processes, her work examines the fluidity between collective memory, personal memory, and inherited memory and experience. Strongly influenced by the nostalgia of place and tactical documentation of experience, she sources family photographs as the foundation of much of her work.
John Dyson is a Chicago-based photographer, multimedia artist and documentarian. His portraiture vehicle Vicurious Media (vicuriousmedia.com) began in Dallas, Texas as a way to breathe personality in the local influencer culture, and grew into a popular experienced-based service for his portrait work. His work has been described as the offspring of Salvador Dali and the Osmond Brothers.
Since moving to Chicago earlier this year, John’s professional work has brought him back to his love of architecture and its interaction with environments. John’s personal projects have him working with video, found photographs, and performance in order to broaden the Vicurious Media brand into a full-fledged media company. Despite these changes to his business, his work always uses a brash amount of pomp and circumstance and a plethora of exclamation points!
Judy K Suh is a filmmaker and artist based in Chicago. She was raised in South Korea during a part of her childhood, and earned a BA in Film and Fine Art from Northwestern University. During college she began to see her visual art and film practices merge. She attended artist residencies at Les Dominicains de Haute Alsace in France, Arteles in Finland and the Banff Centre in Canada, where she developed projection mapping works. Her first solo show Evocative Illusions was at CICA Museum in South Korea. Her video installations have been on public display at festivals such as iLight Singapore and BLINK (2019), and 150 Media Stream. Her short films have screened at Austin Film Festival, Shanghai FF, and Short Shorts Tokyo, among others.
Julia Koreman grew up on the northside of Chicago where she currently works with common construction materials, such as wood and foam board. Her sculptural works employ moveable components that test the unspoken borders and rules that separate form from space and objecthood from environment. Her creative practice is informed by research on the philosophy of mathematics, the manifestos of Russian Constructivists, and critiques of the Minimalist movement.
Julia received a Bachelor of Arts from Kalamazoo College where she double majored in Chemistry and Studio Art. After moving back to Chicago, she co-founded “Double Coincidence,” a shared studio and community space, and curated It Be Like That Sometimes at Hyde Park Art Center. Her artwork has been exhibited at the Southshore Cultural Center in Chicago, IL; Bend Gallery in Grand Rapids, MI; The Park Trades Center in Kalamazoo, MI; The LeRoy Neiman Center in Chicago, IL; and Gallery 37 in Chicago, IL.
Julie Nauman-Mikulski is a visual artist working in mixed media collage, an educator teaching graphic design, and a graphic designer working with non-profit clients. For her twelfth birthday she received a diary that she attributes to engendering a lifelong fascination with memory, personal narratives, identity and dreams. In 2017 Julie completed a 200+ page book titled, Secrets inside Shadows, later purchased by the Joan Flasch Artist Book Collection, Art Institute of Chicago. This book was the culmination of a lifetime of visualizing, writing, notating and collecting; it explored concepts of time, order/disorder and the surreal spectacle of dreams. Recently her work has evolved to include the concept of interdependent entanglement: self/other, waking/dreams, nature/human environments. Julie earned an MFA from the University of Chicago, a BFA (painting and drawing) from SAIC, and a BA (graphic design) from Iowa State University. She has exhibited her work in the US, Canada, and the Netherlands.
Katelyn Patton is an interdisciplinary artist whose current practice combines painting and embroidery to create works that exist in both fields. The fabrics, threads, and embellishments used are salvaged and repurposed as a way to limit her consumption of new materials and help alleviate her uneasiness of contributing to systems harmful to the environment. Her process is heavily influenced by fashion, nature, and the cycles and symbols found in both. She received her BFA in Painting from Indiana University. She has had solo exhibitions in Chicago at the Lillstreet Arts Center, Harold Washington Library, and the Storefront Gallery at the Whistler. Her work has been included in shows at the Woman Made Gallery, Trestle Gallery, and Ground Level Platform. Most recently she attended the Visitor Center Artist Camp residency on art and ecology in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
Madeline Winter is a visual artist from Chicago, Illinois. Her paintings explore the challenges as well as the optimism required while mothering two young daughters. Works include reference to the current state of the artist’s home life through shapes reminiscent of the accoutrement collected during childrearing such as small toys and minuscule puzzle pieces, while also focusing on the female body during different stages of life and maturity. Bright colors reflect the buoyancy of childhood while sharp lines convey the strength of the female experience. Winter has shown work in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C, and throughout Indiana. She has held residencies in Barcelona, Chicago, and Indiana. Winter received her BFA in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA in Painting from Indiana University.
Marine is a Belgian-American artist working primarily in painting. She approaches painting as a practice to explore ideas. Her work focuses on questions such as: What does it mean to understand a place? What does it mean to take the time to understand a place? What systems do we have to oppose to gain a deep understanding of a place?
Marine has a BFA in Painting from Indiana University (2012) and has exhibited work throughout the Midwest; she most recently had a solo show at Elastic Arts Gallery. Marine also works as the Development Director for a nonprofit arts organization called ArtReach Chicago, where she works to empower and connect people through the healing power of glassblowing and ceramics. Marine believes art is a powerful tool for learning and healing, and she is passionate about making the art world more accessible and inclusive. She also has a great love for the mitten state, Belgian chocolate, redwood trees, vegetables, colors and people.
Pamela Feldman is a Chicago-based artist and educator. The focus on her practice is natural dyes. She researches, experiments with, grows, collects, and records natural dyes, their processes, and the colors they yield. Pamela received her BFA from University of California, Davis and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she is currently a lecturer. She earned a Master of Dyeing certification from the Handweavers Guild of America, Level I and Level II. She is also publisher and editor of the Turkey Red Journal, an online newsletter focusing on natural dyes. Pamela has exhibited her work both locally and nationally, including at Northeastern University, Heaven Gallery, Space 900, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. She spends her free time hiking, birding and tent-camping, where she observes the colors of both flora and fauna. In her studio, Pamela experiments with extracting and creating dyes and pigments from the plants she was grown or collected. Influenced by old dye record books, her work takes the form of sample swatches that exhibit the colors hidden within plants.
Phoebe Kuo (b. 1983, Lompoc, CA) is an artist working in wood. Trained as a furniture maker and ethnographer, she appropriates traditional woodworking techniques to comment on place and context. Her site-specific installations resist the common assumption that wood should embody strength and utility, and instead embrace notions of pliability and dependency. By adapting to fit existing architectural conditions—particularly corners, borders, and edges—the work adorns and celebrates what is often overlooked. Born and raised in California and currently based in Chicago, Phoebe received her BS from Stanford University, a certificate in fine woodworking from The Krenov School, and her MFA in Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She has exhibited at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, and ICFF.
Roderick Sawyer is a Southside-based creative that explores the importance of language and storytelling through his art practices. On one hand, Sawyer’s work involves creating video documentaries, photography publications, and editorial articles that analyze Graffiti as a complex system of communication, self-expression, and resistance. On the other hand, Sawyer focuses on creating photo collages and zines that represent his exploration of language acquisition, dialect, and identity through the study of spoken languages like Spanish. Sawyer’s work functions as a tangible and archival experience.
Image: Roderick Sawyer Estoy Perdido, Pero Está Bien (2019). Photobooks created in Puebla, Mexico, from the "A Continuar" series. 5.5 x 8.5 inches.
My work focuses on black people and our experiences through all aspects of life: love, music, death, injustices. Through my work I express my emotions with the hope of creating space for light, healing, and understanding.
Tanya has been drawing since a young child and recently graduated to dabbling with digital art using Procreate to illustrate children's books. She has had art showings of her acrylic paintings in Atlanta, GA, Pittsburgh, PA, and Chicago, IL. Her personalized artwork has been showcased internationally in Malaysia and the UK. She holds a Master of Arts in Counseling with a specialization in Art Therapy. She is a mother of 2, a practicing Art Therapist, and freelance artist.
Tanya believes that being a visual artist means being able to make simple shapes and lines and help them evolve into another form . Art is how you chose to manipulate those lines and shapes. And everyone has an artist within them. Many people chose to stick with one medium and master that, she enjoys the challenge of experimenting with various media. Her love of colors translates to vibrant and whimsical artwork. Illustrating helps her deal with living life and maneuver through all of its complexities.
Teresita Carson Valdéz is a Mexican, Chicago-based artist working in film, video, photography, printmedia, fiber, sound, and installation. She is co-director of the alternative project space INTERSECT, which aims to foster relationships with diverse communities and is invested in facilitating artistic and educational gestures propelled by empathy and generosity. Her experimental films have been shown at film festivals and curated film exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art of San Diego. Recent venues presenting Carson’s work include Adds Donna Gallery, Mana Contemporary, Sullivan Galleries, Moving Image at ACRE, Spudnik Press Collective, Fulton Street Collective, and Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (CICA Museum). She holds a Bachelors in Fine Arts from the School of the Art institute of Chicago.
Vida Sačić is an artist, typographer, and educator. Sačić grew up in Croatia, former Yugoslavia, and moved to the Midwest as a teenage exchange student. Her teaching practice and her creative practice inform each other. Both are inspired by conscious making, the relationship of body to the tools of construction, and the abstraction of language and form. She uses letterpress printing to teach principles of design and typography, as well as collaboration and communication while emphasizing research, process, and expression. Her work explores language, identity, and memory. She exhibits her work internationally, with recent solo and group exhibitions at the Catich Gallery in Iowa, Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Wisconsin, City Museum in Varaždin, Croatia and the Center for Book Arts in New York City. Sačić is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.
Meet Guest Facilitators
Born in the western united states, Stones’ existing realm of work functions to identify portals between her lived experience and embedded generational knowledge to reinforce histories adjacent to, and in the making of her own. She leads in this pursuit with prioritization for her relationship to the natural world, spirituality, stewardship and curiosity. These themes, present and affirmed in most of her endeavors, are often brought forth through the application of analog photography, collage, mending, piecing, object-finding, horticulture, and prayer. Being that they are mediums also once practiced by her ancestors, she considers her orientation to these visual and elemental practices as inheritances; and favors them as individual entities working willfully in partnership with one another toward a more complete expression of communion, connection and liberation.
Image: Shelby Stone, “Untitled(twelve)”, 2020-2021, cyanotype on canvas, 4’x3’
Sydney Stoudmire is a curator, writer, and educator based in Chicago. Her curatorial research is rooted in exploring the intersections between art + science, through a lens of curiosity, pleasure, and play--themes she recently explored as a 2017-2018 Curatorial Research Fellow with the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual the Arts. Stoudmire’s practice is rooted in pairing polarities in time + space in her aim to facilitate experiences that simultaneously engage the creative + rational mind. This integrative approach--derived from psychophysics, cognitive science, energy psychology, art therapy, and other evolving healing modalities--is intended to awaken the senses, and elevate audiences from passive observers to active participants.
As an arts administrator with 10+ experience in cause marketing, Stoudmire also equips creative institutions + social impact organizations with proven methodologies, tools, and strategies help them generate publicity, partnership, and monetary support, through her creative writing consultancy, Follow Your Art. Additionally, she assists creative entrepreneurs in leveraging their inherent cultural assets to launch profitable consultancies that allow them to directly impact the artists + causes they care about.
Beyond her research + curatorial practice, Stoudmire shares an undying love + wonder of nature with her delightful eight month old daughter, Nola. She committed to exemplifying a life of possibility to her by following her bliss, believing in magic, and cultivating curiosity within herself, so that her daughter may always be guided by her own.
Meet Guest Speakers
Alexandria Eregbu is an artist, curator, and visionary. On a fundamental level, Alexandria believes that art and expression are essential functions of community. As such, her work has been most dedicated to providing creative experiences that empower black audiences engaging the arts. Her early interests in civic engagement were initially fostered through her involvement as Lead Teaching Artist with Teens Reimagine Art, Community, and Environment (TRACE)— a youth activism program facilitated through the Chicago Park District.
Most recently Alexandria held a two year position as Curator for Illinois Humanities' city-wide initiative, Envisioning Justice— which examined how incarceration affects Chicago communities and interrogated the failures of our criminal justice system. Previous curatorial projects include, The Annual: A New Exhibition for Chicago Art presented at Chicago Artists Coalition in partnership with EXPO Chicago, Tertiary Dimensions presented as part of PLATFORMS—a retrospective exhibition of Chicago's queer art collective, Chances Dances, and Marvelous Freedom / Vigilance of Desire, Revisited— a group exhibition that engaged the richness of Chicago’s Surrealist past with new works from 13 contemporary artists of the African diaspora.
As an artist, Alexandria’s practice draws from history, lived experiences, and her own imagination to deepen her connectivity to the natural world. Her multi-vocational practice has received generous support from the Chicago Cultural Center's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Rebuild Foundation, Independent Curators International, Joyce Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation, and 3Arts. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Photo: Jackie Rivas
J. Gibran Villalobos is an administrator, curator, and art historian who is an alum of CAC’s HATCH residency. In 2016 he was elected to attend the Advocacy Leadership Institute where he was invited to the White House Office of Public Engagement, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to speak to key issues affecting Latinos in Chicago. He served as the 2017 resident curator at the Chicago Cultural Center where he launched an inaugural summit of Latino artists and administrators across the United States. For this project, he received the Act Up Awards from the Chicago Community Trust, and a Propeller Grant. He has held the posts of Cultural Liaison for the Chicago Park District in the department of Culture, Arts, and Nature, and Public Programs and Partnerships Manager for the Chicago Architecture Biennial. He currently serves on the Auxiliary Board for the National Museum of Mexican Art and on the Board of Directors for the Chicago Artists Coalition. In 2019 he was recipient of the “Leaders of Color Fellow” by Americans for the Arts and was also named by the Field Foundation as recipient of the “Leaders for a New Chicago” award. He is currently serving as the co-Chair to the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture nationwide summit for 2020 in which more than 200 Latino artists and administrators will meet and gather in Chicago. He is faculty lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Department of Arts Administration & Policy and currently works as Assistant Curator in Performance and Public Programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
Julie Rodrigues Widholm is a curator, writer, and arts administrator. She is currently Director and Chief Curator of DePaul Art Museum (DPAM), where she leads the strategic and artistic vision to promote equity and interdisciplinary exhibitions, collections and programs in art museums in including a new multiyear Latinx Initiative. Prior to DPAM, Widholm was a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. During the last 20 years she has organized more than 100 solo and group exhibitions, including Julia Fish: bound by spectrum, Brendan Fernandes: The Living Mask; Barbara Jones-Hogu: Resist, Relate, Unite; Rashid Johnson: Message to Our Folks; Doris Salcedo; Unbound: Contemporary Art after Frida Kahlo; Amalia Pica; Escultura Social: A New Generation of Art from Mexico City, which have been presented at museums across the U.S. such as DePaul Art Museum, MCA Chicago, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Perez Art Museum Miami, the Nasher Museum at Duke University, MIT List Visual Arts Center, and Nasher Sculpture Center, among others. Widholm has authored or contributed to more than 25 publications.
In 2019 Widholm was named Chicagoan of the Year in Museums by the Chicago Tribune and was named one of Chicago’s ART50 Visual Vanguard by New City in 2015, 2017, and 2019. During the 2016-2017 academic year, she was a Senior Fellow in the Institute for Curatorial Research and Practice at the School of the Art Institute Chicago. She has been an instructor, visiting critic, and graduate advisor at national universities and has given numerous public talks. She grew up in Brazil, Mozambique, Portugal, Germany, and across the U.S.
Photo: DePaul University/Jeff Carrion
Kalena Chevalier currently serves as the Program Director for the Cultural Grants Program at the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Kalena has 14 years of experience working in Chicago's arts and culture community. She has worked artistically and administratively with organizations including Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Writers' Theatre, and most recently as the Associate Director of Development for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, where she managed foundation and government fundraising efforts over seven years. She is also a playwright and her plays have been workshopped, developed and produced by several local storefront theaters. Kalena graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor with degrees in Theatre, Dramatic Writing and History. Kalena will be a guest speaker for Mock Proposal Review Panels on December 17, 2018.
Karen Dana Cohen was born in 1982 in Mexico City and lives and works in Chicago, IL. She received a BFA from The National Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico City (2005) and earned her MFA degree at Hunter College, New York (2011), where she based her art studio up until 2017. Her early work consists of scenes where family dynamics evoked visual tension in a composition. By experiencing her own family from abroad and beginning to grow into a family of her own she began exploring her painting practice as a more process-based research. The paintings of her recent work are often part of a specific arrangement based in gestures that she discovered inherited from women in her past as a mandate of femininity. The paintings offer an intimate narrative of the role immigrant women need to reinvent their whole self in order to survive, while at the same time defend their own identity through generations.
Image: Karen Dana, There is a transplanted gathering in between my steps, 2018, Oil on canvas, 72” x 60”
Kate Bowen is an artist, curator, and teacher living and working in Chicago. She is the Acting Executive Director at ACRE (Artists' Cooperative Residency & Exhibitions) and the Video Programming Coordinator at the Museum of Contemporary Photography. She received her MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago in 2011.
Kate Sierzputowski is a freelance writer and arts organizer based in Chicago. Fascinated by artists’ studio processes, she founded the website INSIDE\WITHIN in 2013 to physically explore and archive the creative spaces of Chicago's emerging and established artists. Kate regularly contributes art writing to Hyperallergic, Colossal, the Chicago Reader, and Chicago Magazine. She serves as half of the curatorial duo Episode with Tusk-founder Mary Eleanor Wallace, runs a small gallery on her ear called Chandelier, and has been a co-director of the artist-run gallery space Julius Caesar since 2015.
Kristin Abhalter Smith is the creative director and founder of Roman Susan Art Foundation, a project incubator and platform for Midwestern artists. Since 2012 the space has worked with over 900 artists in the Chicago neighborhood of Rogers Park. Kristin has recently exhibited inflatable sculptures, garments, flags, and paintings at Flatland, Ignition Projects, OPEN Gallery, and STNDRD, and received a DCASE grant for her exhibit at DEMO Projects in Springfield, IL. Kristin received her MFA in Technical Theatre and Design from the University of Minnesota, and has twenty years experience designing, building, and painting for stage and motion picture.
Laura Biagi, Ph.D., is a full time faculty in The Theatre School at DePaul University, where she also serves as the Artistic Director of the school's Summer High School Training Program. Since 2016, Dr. Biagi has been focusing her artistic practice and academic research on creating and teaching her method, Inviting the Medicine (ITM), a blend of devised theater techniques, wellness practices, and leadership training that promotes self-care to build creative, inclusive, and sustainable communities. Her 20018 TEDx Talk, “Reimagine Failure: Breathe, Belong Believe,” is a reflection on the power of our words to shape our reality, and manifest our highest human potential. Dr. Biagi is an Instructor with the Inside/Out Prison Exchange Program and, since 2017, she has collaborated with the Steans Center at DePaul University and Cook County Jail (CCDOC) in Chicago to teach her academic course “Healing Narratives: The Power of Your Story.” Learn more at www.mywildest.com and on Instagram @mywildestvoice
Michal Raz-Russo is the David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Associate Curator of Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Mike Nourse has over 15 years of experience with formal and alternative learning settings. He has taught as adjunct faculty at undergraduate and graduate levels for DePaul University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has managed studio programs at Marwen, and led citywide design and architecture programs for Chicago Architecture Foundation’s partnerships with over twenty Chicago Public Schools. As the Director of Education at Hyde Park Art Center, Mike’s work involves partnerships with over 25 schools, onsite programs for 2000 youth and adults, self-directed teen work, and professional pathways offerings for working artists. Separately Nourse is also the Executive Director of Chicago Art Department, a residency-based learning lab he founded in 2003 which features fully-funded residencies, exhibitions inside of three galleries, mural projects, and studio space for over 20 artists.
Award winning artist Sadie Woods has had an exciting career, showcasing her talents everywhere from academia to nightclubs, boutiques to museums. As a multidisciplinary artist, curator and deejay, Woods' work focuses primarily on cultural memory and preservation and producing collaborations within communities of difference.
Awards and residencies include: 3Arts Make A Wave; 3Arts Artist Projects; Propeller Fund; Ecole du Magasin Curatorial Program and Le Magasin—Centre National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble, FR; Hyde Park Art Center Program; ACRE; Arts + Public Life Curatorial Collective; Nichols Tower Homan Square Artist Residency; High Concept Labs Sponsored Artist; Chicago Artists Coalition's HATCH Projects Resident Curator; Independent Curators International Collaborator, Dakar, SN; Bemis Center for the Arts Artist-In-Residence; Terrain-Hatch Projects Resident Curator; Terrain Exhibitions and Biennial; Ragdale Foundation Artist-In-Residence. She has exhibited her work at Chicago Cultural Center; Krasl Art Center; The New Gallery, NC; Roman Susan Gallery; Washington Project for the Arts, DC; Weinberg/Newton Gallery; Zhou B Art Center. She has had featured curatorial projects at Special Exhibitions EXPO, among others. Publications include Harald Szeemann Méthodologie Individuelle published by JRP Ringier with Le Magasin—Centre National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble, in collaboration with the Department of Curating Contemporary Art, Royal College of Art, London.
Woods received her BA from Columbia College and MFA from The School of the Art Institute. She is currently Faculty at the School of the Art Institute, Residents Orchestrate Project Manager at the Chicago Sinfonietta, resident dj at TAO, and radio dj at Vocalo 91.1FM and Lumpen Radio 105.5FM.
Stephanie Koch is an arts administrator and curator interested in institution building as curatorial practice. She is the Co-Founder of Annas, a Chicago-based residential studio and exhibition space focused on supporting collaborative projects and exhibiting process. Koch holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Chicago and an MA in Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Prior roles have included collections intern at Museum of Contemporary Photography, senior lab assistant at LATITUDE, Managing Director at Museum of Vernacular Arts and Knowledge, and curatorial fellow with ACRE.
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