Meet Artist Mentors
Damon Locks is a Chicago based visual artist, educator, vocalist/musician, and deejay. He attended The Art Institute in Chicago where he received his BFA in Fine Arts. Recently, he has been lending his artistic and/or teaching talents to organizations such as Prisons and Neighborhood Arts Project, Art Reach, the Center for Urban Pedagogy, and at UIC. The voices, the places, the stories, the human exchange helps connect his work to the experiences of others, thus making the work stronger. He is a recent recipient of the Helen Coburn Meier and Tim Meier Achievement Award in the Arts and the 2016 MAKER Grant. He also just completed a music residency at The New Quorum in New Orleans. With the aesthetics of a printmaker, he calls upon the medium that suits the situation best whether it be screen/relief/digital print, photography, ink, pencil, voice, drum machine, sampler, or turntables. Regardless of the medium the goal is to reach out and connect.
Meet Artist Residents
Allen Moore is a Chicago based Educator, Curator, Painter, and Experimental Sound Artist. He was born and raised in Robbins Illinois. Allen holds a Masters in Art from Governors State University and a Masters of Fine Art from Northern Illinois University. His work converses with signifiers of Black culture and personal narrative; bringing to view the underlying themes of racial, emotional and socio-economical conditions.
I make work about women’s experience in the world. My work is figurative, and uses the landscape as a vehicle for provoking emotional responses about our common experience. In my mind, I am on the trajectory of a serious working artist. Conceptually, I am very clear what my work is about and why I should be making it. It feeds me and keeps me in dialogue with the art world and the culture as I reflect on my place in it. In reality, I have bumped along in an emerging artist state, prioritizing raising a family and making a salary. I work with a gallery in Seattle, and show in one or two exhibitions a year, often with a critique group, Dialogue Chicago, which has sustained me over the last five years. I live my art daily, but I have prioritized my family over career building up to this point. I am working on increasing my output, by building two bodies of work (oil paintings and my digital collages) to 20 pieces each, and will use the Field/Work residency to build a plan to transition to making art full-time. My work was included in this year’s Rockford Art Museum Midwestern Biennial, and in the Evanston Art Center Biennial in 2011. Locally I have shown at Governor’s State University Art Gallery, the Harold Washington Library Center, and the Bridgeport Art Center.
Becky Grajeda is a sound artist based in Chicago. Brought up in southern California in a multiracial and multilingual household, she gained a great appreciation and ear for languages and their nuances and the variances in people's voices. She studied vocal performance, music composition, and American studies at Kenyon College and received a Masters of Fine Arts degree in sound art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. Her works of sound assemblage, multi-channel installation and performance frequently include field recordings of the sounds of machinations and moving bodies and/or in involve abstracting vocal inflection, intonation, and intended meaning in speech. In her recent site specific performances she plays with the audience’s perceptions of sound within a space. Her work has been exhibited or performed in Chicago, the UK, Finland, Paris and in the Czech Republic. In 2014 she received a grant from the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events to document three of her performative sound works.
The son of a Lutheran pastor and a psychotherapist, Brent Fogt was born in Ohio and raised in Texas. Fogt’s sculpture, collage and drawings have been featured in solo exhibitions at Austin College, Emory University, Indiana University and the Lawndale Art Center, and in publications such as New American Paintings, Art in America and hyperallergic.com. He has completed artist residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, I-Park Foundation, and Yaddo. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan and a Master of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. Fogt lives and works in Chicago. Learn more about Brent Fogt’s solo BOLT exhibition Do Something Else.
Cassie Tompkins is a Chicago-based, interdisciplinary artist and designer. She has worked with many different mediums, including photography, printmaking, and textiles, almost always exploiting light, pattern, color, and the little bits of beauty that are found within the mundanity of everyday life. In 2001 she graduated witha BFA in photography from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design and in 2010 received a BFA with a concentration in visual communication design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Cassie currently works as part of the Design team at the Art Institute of Chicago, is a freelance designer for Illinois Humanities, and is the creator of "Regional", a mini-magazine dedicated to examining American cuisine.
As a documentary artist and creative director, I create and curate projects by witnessing and documenting lives in today’s urban society through photography, video and radio. I am a 2016 graduate of The Remix Project (Chicago Chapter) and currently a 2016 FIELD/WORK Resident of Chicago Arts Coalition. Notable published platforms and collaborations of my work include The Remix Project, Green Label/Mountain Dew, The Source Magazine, MADE Magazine and North Magazine of CEDARst Companies.
Christina derives her inspiration from nature and ordinary encounters. Her work explores the subtleties of light, color, movement, time, texture and genuine gestures. Working in a range of mediums: acrylic, watercolor, clay, and pen, allows her to articulate different aspects of these subtleties. Alongside her practice, mentoring and educating Chicago youth has been a vital part of her work. She is currently the College Orientation Program Director at Metro Achievement Center, an after-school program for inner-city girls. Christina holds a BFA in Ceramics from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Gretchen Hasse is a storyteller working in comics, collage, public art, and moving images. She holds a BA in Anthropology from Northern Illinois University, and an MFA in Film, Video and New Media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited work throughout the city, and her films have screened in Chicago, New York City, Berlin, London, and computer screens everywhere. Gretchen’s work is primarily about resilience. Having lived with rheumatoid arthritis since she was a teenager, she is drawn to stories and images that describe perseverance through pain. She knows that a dark sense of humor, a keen eye for social criticism, and the diligence to work for change are essential tools for survival. Gretchen draws inspiration for all of her work through a strong community engagement. In addition to her creative support for numerous social justice campaigns, she is an active member of AnySquared Projects, an all-volunteer collaborative and artistic network in Logan Square.
I am the daughter of two United States Marines and grew up in a military community in Twentynine Palms, California (MCAGCC). Clark received her BFA in Photography from California State University, Long Beach in 2010 and received her MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago in 2016. With my work, I am exploring how the influence of military, specifically the United States Marine Corps directs American culture and my own ideologies. On the American culture level, how is patriotism or respect for country attainted outside of a direct relationship with the military? This respect is inherent within military culture. There is a difference between patriotism and blind patriotism (nationalism). And on a personal level, how does a female, a minority, or an LGBTQ+ person identify within these spaces? How does one identify when they encompass all three aspects? My photographic work intentionally searches to probe how identity is formed in ultra masculine and nationalistic spaces.
Johana Moscoso is an artist who explores co-narratives of South American and North American cultures. She incorporates a variety of mediums into installations that express her interest in gender roles, culture, and migration. In her fiber work she utilizes stitch and embroidery to create tapestries that reference the migratory journeys of her family. These tapestries become abstract maps that trace the time, labor, and nostalgia of these journeys. In her performance work she strives to evoke intimate feelings that cannot be described in words but are better expressed through movement. By using traditional Latino dance in her performances Moscoso questions gender roles in Hispanic culture. Engaging these fragile human states is the pivotal endeavor in her performance work. Ultimately, her application of fiber, textiles and performance with physical environments has enabled her to create performative installations that empower the feminine presence and celebrate culture and migration.
Katie Vota is a Chicago-based artist working to create interactive environments and sculptural objects that engage viewers in ideas of play, touch, pleasure, power exchange, and the roll of the active body in shaping identity. Vota received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (2010, magna cum laude) and a Studio MFA from the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago (2015). She was awarded a US Student Fulbright Grant (’11-’12) to study traditions of Andean Back-strap Weaving and Natural Dyeing in Cusco, Peru, with the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco. Vota has exhibited in numerous solo and juried exhibitions, at venues including Threewalls (Chicago), The Leroy Neiman Center Gallery (Chicago), Pratt MPW School of Art Gallery (Utica, NY), The Krasl Art Center (St. Joseph, MI), The Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis), and Area 405 (Baltimore). She is a Lenore Tawney Foundation Scholar, and has participated in residencies such as Corner Gallery’s Individual Artist Residency and Crosshatch (formerly the Institute for Sustainable Art and Natural Design) in Traverse City, MI.
Mat Rappaport’s artwork has been exhibited in the United States and internationally in museums, galleries, film festivals and public spaces including the United Kingdom and the former Yugoslavia. His current work utilizes mobile video, performance and photography to explore habitation, perception and power as related to built environments. Rappaport is a co-initiator of V1B3 [www.v1b3.com], which seeks to shape the experience of urban environments through media based interventions. Rappaport has published essays in the iDMAa Journal and a chapter in the book Beyond Globalization: Making New Worlds in Media, Art and Social Practices by Rutgers University Press. Rappaport’s photographic work is included in the Midwest Photographer’s Collection at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. He has received fellowships from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Howard Foundation, the Mary L. Nohl Fund, the Montgomery County Ohio Cultural District, and University of Wisconsin Milwaukee’s Center for 21st Century Studies. Rappaport received his MFA from the University of Notre Dame. Rappaport is an Associate Professor at Columbia College in Chicago.
Nina Yeboah is a reader, prose writer, and black art enthusiast. She was born to Ghanaian parents in Alexandria, Louisiana and raised in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Her nonfiction can be found in The Critical Flame, the Philadelphia Printworks Blog, Shadow and Act, and A fropean. She is an alum of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and the 2016 recipient of the Voices Rising Fellowship from Vermont Studio Center. In addition to her own writing, she is interested in the political work black people do through art: documenting, subverting, reimagining and theorizing. In Chicago, she leads the arts discussion group, Chicago Reading Africa. The initiative has produced public programming which has received support from Illinois Humanities, Comfort Station, the Rebuild Foundation, and the Black Ink Book Exchange.
Sabba Elahi grew up in a traditional Pakistani household in the Midwest and experienced the rupture of being raised in a collectivist and modest culture in a climate of growing xenophobia and islamaphobia. Elahi's artwork references reconstructions of place and identity. With her current work she subverts textile, text, and the craft of embroidery to confont the racialization, surveillance, and the dehumanizing of brown and Muslim bodies and the western distance from warfare. Elahi was a 2013-2014 Resident Artist in Chicago Artist Coalition’s Bolt Program. Most recently Elahi exhibited her work at Woman Made Gallery and Ragdale's 40th Anniversary exhibition, and she works at Marwen, providing portfolio and creative professional development to young Chicago artists. Elahi received her M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Stephanie Graham is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Chicago. Her work draws on her fascination with subcultures, social class, relationships, and, of course, being black. She holds a BA in Cinematography and Photography from Columbia College Chicago. Stephanie has a love for 90 Day Fiance, the Real Housewives, and memes.
Image: Stephanie Graham, Love You Bro, #5.
Artist Photo: Dorey Kronick
Wen Liu was born in Shanghai, China and is currently based in Chicago, IL. She is a DCASE Individual Artists Program Grantee for 2018, 2019 and 2020, and received the Illinois Arts Council Agency 2020 Artist Fellowship Award. She has attended residencies at Vermont Studio Center, MASS MoCA, ACRE, Hyde Park Art Center and The RAiR Foundation. Her work has been exhibited in the National Grand Theater in Beijing, China; 6018/North, Zhou B Art Center, Manifold Gallery, Lubeznik Center for the Arts in Michigan City, IN, Culture Center in Chicago; and Tiger Strikes Asteroid.
Image: Wen Liu, For Those I Have Never Met Found, handkerchief ash, found table cloth ash, clay, reclaimed wood 36 x 80 x 70 inches
Meet Guest Facilitators
Known for his vibrant, abstract compositions, Chad Kouri (b. 1985) examines themes commonly associated with visual literacy - specifically how we see, read, and remember the world around us. He is influenced by minimalism, jazz, conceptual and systematic art, design, and printmaking. His most recent works are meant to prompt introspection and imagination, inspiring a slower pace in our day to day lives as a form of self-care and personal grounding. Kouri is originally from a small town north of Detroit and is a co-founder of the Chicago-based art and design incubator, The Post Family.
Cortney Lederer is an independent curator and art consultant with sixteen years of experience managing an array of artistic programming for organizations and businesses. From 2011–14 she served as the Director of Exhibitions and Residencies at the Chicago Artists Coalition (CAC), where she designed and managed its two residency programs: BOLT Residency and HATCH Projects. While at CAC, Lederer curated and managed special projects for businesses such as tech incubator 1871, Patron Tequila, TOMS Shoes, Groupon and Taste of Chicago (DCASE). She has curated and produced hundreds of solo and group exhibitions during her tenure at CAC. In June 2014, Lederer launched CNL Art Consulting (CNL), which provides project-based consulting to organizations with a specialization in curating, project management, program design and development. CNL works with notable organizations such as 3Arts, Chicago Artists Coalition, Lillltsreet Art Center and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Currently, CNL is acting as project manager of EXPO Chicago’s Palais de Tokyo initiative. Lederer is an instructor in the Arts Administration and Policy department at SAIC and serves on the board of Every House as a Door, the Education Advisory Committee for CAC and programming advisory committee for Snowy City Arts.
Denenge is a space sculptor whose award-winning teaching, art, and writing bridge disciplines of ritual, design, ecology, and Afrofuturity. Her fantastical interactive environments and performances, guided by hybrid archetypal beings through liminal spaces, interrogate, titillate, decolonize, and empower, inspired by Sun Ra and asking: "Who controls the future?" She is Associate Professor, Adjunct, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Founder of Denenge Design and In The Luscious Garden, focused on holistic and conceptual approaches to human-centered design.
Her work and writing have been featured at venues internationally including: ICA London for Black Quantum Futurism: Temporal Deprogramming; Corpus Meum at Arts Club of Chicago; Kunsthaus Zürich; Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin; ARTEXTE; U.S. Library of Congress (NASA/Blumberg); Red Bull Arts NY; Schomburg Center; Art Gallery of Ontario; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Goethe Institut.
She was selected as a 2014 NEH Fellow; 2017 Place Lab Fellow, Rebuild Foundation with U-Chicago Harris School of Public Policy; and 2020 (now 2022) La Becque laureate. Publications and collections include: Peggy Cooper Cafritz Collection; AFRIFUTURI 02022020 monograph; essay on AFRICOBRA co-founder Jae Jarrell, Kavi Gupta Gallery for the 58th Venice Biennale; Antennae: Journal of Art and Nature; Fleeting Monuments for the Black Arts Movement (U-Minn); Vegetal Entwinements (MIT); and Africa Fashion (Victoria & Albert Museum).
Artwork caption: Holographic High Priestess (2020-2022) and High Priestess of the Intergalactic Federation, Special Envoy to Mars (2018, 2019)
Originally commissioned by then-NASA/Blumberg Chair of Astrobiology Dr. Lucianne Walkowicz, for Becoming Interplanetary/Decolonizing Mars Symposium at U.S. Library of Congress, Kluge Center and also performed in 2019 at ICA London as part of Black Quantum Futurism: Temporal Deprogramming, this multi-media audience-interactive poetic riff traverses time, space and altered dimensions. Wearing garments and a headdress inspired by depictions of Califia – the fictional BIPOC warrior queen after whom California is named--Duyst-Akpem considers what it means to be human, to reach for the stars, to become interplanetary.”
During pandemic, the project went virtual, becoming Holographic High Priestess as a video loop projected as an "appearance/apparition" two stories high for Terrain Biennial at Blanc Gallery, Chicago, and as a glitch projection for Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow at Chicago Design Museum.
Dan Devening is an artist, curator and educator living in Chicago. He’s currently Adjunct Professor in the Department of Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University from 1993 – 2008. Since the mid-1980s, his paintings and works on paper have been exhibitted nationally and internationally. In the US, his work has been featured at Autumn Space, Roy Boyd Gallery, Chicago Cultural Center, Terra Museum of American Art, ebersmoore gallery, Threewalls and Julius Caesar in Chicago; Kinkead Contemporary in Los Angeles and Launch F18 and Printed Matter, Inc. in NY among many others. Recent projects include exhibitions in Germany at the Kunsterverein Recklinghausen, Museum Kurhaus in Kleve, galerie oqbo and Scotty Enterprises in Berlin, dok25a in Dusseldorf and Renate Schroeder Gallery in Cologne. Other international group exhibitions include shows at Art Metropole in Toronto; De Appel in Amsterdam; Secession in Vienna and Galerie des Multiples in Paris. His recent solo show at groelle pass:projects occurred this past June in Wuppertal, Germany. His curatorial projects include New Business at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago; Seers, Signs at 57W57Arts in New York; Seems at the Block Museum at Northwestern University; Gravity Matters and Shadowy Folds at dok25a in Dusseldorf, Germany;The Nature of Disturbanceat rowlandcontemporary in Chicago; Where There Is, recent drawings from Chicago at galerie oqbo in Berlin; Infra-Thin at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellen, Illinois; and Paper Products at the Evanston Art Center. As a co-curator with Shannon Stratton (Chief Curator, Museum of Arts and Design, New York) and Jonathan Middleton (Director, Or Gallery, Vancouver), Dan Devening was awarded a grant from the MacArthur Foundation in 2012 to produce a series of exhibitions and events featuring artists from Berlin, Chicago and Vancouver. The exhibition and events continued until 2015. In 2007, he inaugurated and currently directs devening projects + editions, a gallery project featuring exhibitions and site-specific installations by emerging and established international artists. Since its inauguration, he has produced more than 80 exhibitions. He is also a partner in Paris London Hong Kong, an experimental exhibition space in the West Loop that opened in 2013. dandevening.comdeveningprojects.comparislondonhongkong.com
Emanuel Aguilar is a gallerist and independent curator living and working in Chicago, IL. In 2015 he founded PATRON, a contemporary art gallery with a focus on emerging artists and conceptual practice. Previously he was a director at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago and Berlin and a founder of the arts and culture magazine Jettison Quarterly. Aguilar serves on the board of ACRE Residency.
Erika Allen is a social change artist, with a focus on dismantling racism and the related healing and understanding of how structural oppression impacts society. Her practice for the last 20 years has focused on community based transformation through the food system and integration of visual and installations of urban farms that integrate food, culture, spirit and the arts. Her art practice is multi-disciplinary and manifests outside of a traditional art world context, more akin to the practical arts of land based folk artists. She integrates farms, spirit groves, edible landscapes, earth shaping and sporadic installations and small and large scale painted works, often integrating text rifts and recurring visual iconography as pattern and texture. As part of this work she is a student of Traditional West African and indigenous iconography that deeply influences her arts practice and is key to the recovery from historic oppression and displacement of ancestral memory and traditions. Allen earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute in 1992 and MA in art psychotherapy from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2000. As Chicago and National Projects Director for Growing Power, Inc., Ms. Allen has integrated creative and therapeutic techniques with food security and community development enabling her to develop nine urban agriculture and food system projects and impact policy in Chicago. She also facilitates the planning and visioning of similar projects for clients from a broad spectrum of backgrounds and environments. She actively works to create healthy and diverse food options in urban-city and rural communities. Allen is a Post Carbon Institute Fellow. Erika served on the Illinois Food, Farms and Jobs Act Council appointed by Illinois Governor Quinn and most recently served on Chicago Mayor - Rahm Emmanuel’s transition team – Energy, Environment and Public Space Committee. Erika was appointed as a Board Commissioner for the Chicago Park District in September 2012. She is the proud mother of 9 year old son Ayokunle, a Yoruba name meaning “joy fills the home and world.”
Julia Fischbach is a director and co-founder of PATRON, contemporary art gallery with a focus on emerging artists and conceptual practice, and working in Chicago, IL. Previously she was a director at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago and Berlin for seventeen years.
Julie Herwitt CPA has over 25 years of experience working with small businesses and individuals. Additionally, Julie has a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and exhibits her paintings throughout the US. This dual personality is what allows Julie to bring a unique perspective to the tax and accounting needs of artists, writers, musicians and other creative individuals. She is a frequent guest lecturer at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College. Additionally, she has given workshops through the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, the Chicago Artists’ Coalition, The Music Industry Workshop and other Midwest arts organizations. As a result of Julie’s experience with both accounting and the arts, her accounting practice works with numerous artists, writers and musicians.
Kate Dumbleton is an Assistant Professor of Arts Administration and Policy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), where she also leads the Management Studio in its graduate program. She is also the Executive and Artistic Director of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival. Previously, Dumbleton was the Executive Director of the critically acclaimed Chicago Jazz Ensemble. Her work in jazz, improvised music, and performance spans nearly two decades, including music direction for jazz clubs and festivals; curatorial direction of artist residencies; direction of interdisciplinary projects in music, dance, theater, visual art, and film; venue and record label management; administrative direction; and artist management. She owned and operated a successful performance, exhibition space/wine bar in the Bay Area from 2000-06. Her research interests include improvisation studies, black experimental music, and artist driven production networks. Kate's current affiliations include the Advisory Council for the Chicago Artists Resource and ChicagoMusic.org; Programming Committee Member for Made in Chicago Performance Series in Millennium Park; Board of Directors for the Experimental Sound Studio (ESS); Board of Directors for Rova Arts (SF); Artistic Direction Advisory Council, Yerba Buena Garden Festival (SF); Leadership Team for Red Poppy Art House (SF). She has served on numerous local and national grant and prize panel committees. Dumbleton has a B.A. (Cum Laude) in History from Hamilton College, New York and an M.A. in Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Kate Schutta is an artist, educator, and Director of Career and Professional Experience (CAPX) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Kate Schutta advises students and alumni/ae on professional and job search strategies and coordinates Career and Professional Experience (CAPX) activities and resources. Schutta’s past experience includes book cover and poster illustration and teaching at SAIC and the Royal College of Art. Exhibitions include: National Museum of Art, Wroclaw; Royal College of Art (RCA); and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Grants and Fellowships: Chicago Artists Assistance Program grants; RCA Research Fellowship in Communication Design; and Peoples' Republic of Poland Art & Culture Grant. Education: MFA (1989), BFA (1985), School of the Art Institute of Chicago; BA History of Art (1983), Bryn Mawr College. Kate will be a guest speaker for Artist Case Studies: Business Models on October 16, 2018.
Krista Franklin’s poems and visual art have been published in Poetry, Black Camera, Copper Nickel, Callaloo, Vinyl, BOMB Magazine, Encyclopedia, Vol. F-K, and the anthology The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. Willow Books published Study of Love & Black Body, her chapbook of poems, in 2012. Franklin’s work has exhibited at The Studio Museum in Harlem, Chicago Cultural Center, The Cornell Fine Arts Museum, The Columbia Museum of Art, National Museum of Mexican Art, and featured on 20th Century Fox’s Empire (Season Two and Three). She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts – Book & Paper from Columbia College Chicago.
Kristen Kaza is the Creative Director and Founder of No Small Plans Productions, partying with a purpose since 2012 producing & programming events with and for Chicago's creative and philanthropic communities. She has programmed and produced events for the Museum of Contemporary Art, United States Artists, Chicago Community Trust, EMPIRE Fox, EXPO Chicago, and many more. Kristen is also the Executive Producer of Slo 'Mo, a longtime R&B dance party celebrating queer community & slow jams. In 2016, Kristen launched REUNION, a coworking & event/exhibition space in Humboldt Park prioritizing space for women, the queer community and people of color. REUNION hosts classes, workshops, events and art shows, as well as work during the day in their bustling coworking studio. Kristen teaches marketing and public relations at Columbia College Chicago, her Alma Mater, and is an active member in the LGTBQ community.
Maria Gaspar is an interdisciplinary artist born in Chicago. She has presented her work at The MCA Chicago, Jane Addams Hull House Museum, the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, the Alpineum Produzentengalerie, and Artspace New Haven, amongst others. Recently, Gaspar was awarded a Creative Capital Award, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Award, the National Museum of Mexican Art Sor Juana Women of Achievement Award, and residencies at the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago and Project Row Houses in Houston. She was featured in the Chicago Tribune as Chicagoan of the Year in the Visual Arts in 2014. She is an Assistant Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Gaspar received her MFA in Studio Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago and her BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.
Mark Jeffery is a Chicago based performance/installation artist, curator and educator at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since 1993, Mark Jeffery has developed unconventional collaborations with visual artists, scholars, video artists, sound artists, new media and code artists, dancers, choreographers, curators, and writers. He is co-founder (2012-) and choreographer of the arts collective ATOM-r (Anatomical Theatres of Mixed Reality. He is curator of the IN>TIME performance series hosted by multiple venues in Chicago. Mark was a former member of the internationally renowned Goat Island Performance Group from 1996-2009. Image: Documentation from a recent performance at the Graham Foundation with ATOM-r, Kjell Theøry. Image credit: Grace Duval.
Melissa Potter is a multi-media artist specializing in hand papermaking and printmaking exhibiting nationally and internationally at venues including White Columns, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and film festivals including the VideoDumbo Festival and the Reeling International LGBT Film Festival. She is a three-time Fulbright recipient to Serbia and Bosnia and Hercegovina, and has been the recipient of other awards and residencies including the Soros Fund for Arts and Culture, ArtsLink and the Trust for Mutual Understanding. She curated exhibitions including Social Paper, the first exhibition considering hand papermaking in a socially engaged art context, and Among Tender Roots, the first retrospective featuring Mexican artist, Laura Anderson Barbata’s work. Her critical essays have been printed in BOMB, Art Papers, Flash Art, Metropolis M, Hand Papermaking, and AfterImage among others.
Myra Greene was born in New York City and received her B.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and her M.F.A. in photography from the University of New Mexico. She currently resides in Chicago Il, where she is an Associate Professor of Photography at Columbia College Chicago. She received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Photography (2009) and has completed residencies at Light Work in Syracuse New York (2004) and the Center for Photography at Woodstock (2004). Greene's work has been featured in nationally exhibitions in galleries and museums including The New York Public Library (2012), Art Museum of the Americas in Washington. D.C. (2012), FotoFest 2010 in Houston, Texas, at the Winter Street Studios (2010), Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in Atlanta (2009), Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco (2008), Yuma Art Center Museum in Yuma Arizona (2008), Wadswoth Museum in Hartford CT (2006) and Sculpture Center in New York City (2003). Her work is in the permanent collection of Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City and The New York Public Library.
Patrice N. Perkins is the founder of Creative Genius Law®, a business and intellectual property law firm and strategic legal partner exclusively for creative entrepreneurs, innovators, and change agents. They are game changers looking to impact the world in creative ways. Patrice’s mission is to encourage clients to tap into the unrealized revenue potential of their intellectual property while using the law to protect and nurture creativity rather than stifling it. She develops legal strategies and provides counsel in the areas of business law, contracts and negotiation, intellectual property (trademarks and copyrights), social media, advertising, and marketing law. She’s been recognized by the American Bar Association as a “Legal Rebel” for being a leading innovator in the legal industry. She’s previously spoken at Chicago Creative Expo, Self Employment in the Arts Conference, Chicago Urban League, Chicago Artists Coalition, Blogging While Brown, Alt Design Summit, BlogHer, Eat Write Retreat, and AVVO Lawyernomics to name a few. She's appeared in popular media and blogs including FORTUNE, NBC, Women 2.0, Design Sponge, Young, Fabulous & Self-Employed, Carol Roth and is a member of the Board of Directors for the Chicago Artists Coalition. Patrice publishes Creative Genius Society, a business and law blog, and is the creator of the Quit Kit, a strategic planning system to help creative entrepreneurs ditch their 9 to 5 for full-time entrepreneurship. You can follow Patrice on Twitter and Instagram @creative_esq. Patrice will be a guest speaker for Know Your Rights: A Legal Toolkit for Creative Producers on March 5, 2019.
Artist-scholar Rashayla Marie Brown manages an “undisciplinary” studio practice through photography, performance, writing, installation, and video. A lifelong nomad who moved 24 times, she began her practice as a poet in London. An Artadia and Franklin Furnace grantee, RMB has presented work internationally at Tate Modern, London; Krabbesholm Højskole, Copenhagen; Turbine Hall, Johannesburg; and in commissions at Bemis Contemporary, Omaha; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; Rhodes College, Memphis; among others. She holds degrees from Northwestern University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Yale University.
Sonnenzimmer is the collective output of Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi. Their work explores the contemporary and historic impact of the graphic impulse through publishing, exhibitions, graphic design, and performance. While the duo works in an array of media, their focus is on triangulating a deeper understanding of the role of graphic expression at large. In addition to their self-driven work, Sonnenzimmer actively engages in commissioned projects aiming to reshape preconceived notions of the graphic arts. Their work has been shown in The United States, Brazil, China, and Europe; with recent solo exhibitions at Vebikus Kunsthalle Schaffhausen, Switzerland, and Hatch Show Print in Nashville, Tennessee. They lead lectures & workshops in academic and commercial settings, including past visits to Aalto University, Finland; California Institute for the Arts, CA; Columbia College Chicago, IL; Cranbrook Art Academy, MI; Facebook Analog Research Laboratory, CA; Grafisches Forum Zürich, Switzerland; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Minneapolis College of Art and Design, MN; Pratt Institute, NY; Yale School of Art, CT.
Tricia Van Eck is Artistic Director and Founder of 6108North, which challenges what art is, whom it’s for, and where and how it is created. 6018North creates unique experiences within intimate spaces. In the process, we empower artists to work together and with the public to nurture creativity, build community, and enhance Chicago’s quality of life. Named after its physical address in Edgewater, 6018North is also itinerant and presents shows around Chicago, nationally, and internationally -- in France, Germany, and India — to connect Chicago artists with local and international audiences. 6018North was an Affiliate Partner of the Chicago Architecture Biennial and 2 of its 4 architectural-based exhibitions remain on view – at 6018North, Chapel by Rodrigo Lara Zendejas and Its Elemental, a large group show of installations throughout the house. Its presentation of Every House Has A Door‘s Caesar’s Bridge at Comfort Station was listed as Best Visual Art of 2015 by the Chicago Tribune. 6018North consistently receives accolades from local and international press but remains a kind of hidden gem for intimate encounters with artists and their work.
Meet Guest Speakers
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.
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