Megan Wolfkill: To Bear Witness
Opening Reception: Friday, August 7th, 5-8pm
Exhibition dates: August 7 – 28, 2026
To deeply know something or someone outside of yourself is intimate. You must open your perception to what’s around you, set yourself aside, listen closely, and consider what might misalign with your worldview. And then, a glimmer of connection.
Jayne King: Archaeology of the Self
Opening Reception: Friday, August 7th, 5-8pm
Exhibition dates: August 7 – 28, 2026
My work reconsiders the malleable nature of memory, haunted and holy spaces, and the chain of living connection through a recontextualization of heirloom porcelain objects. At the heart of my practice is a series of large hand-painted porcelain pots inspired by functional historical forms, such as amphorae and canopic jars, that I refer to as my “memory vessels”.
Michelle Williams: Luminous Witness
Opening Reception: Friday, August 7th, 5-8pm
Exhibition dates: August 7 – 28, 2026
I am drawn to the human figure as the most honest landscape we have. Through the slow, meditative act of beading alongside mixed media, I build up layer upon layer until the subject in front of me becomes something new: a surface that holds light differently than it holds shadow, a form that reveals itself gradually, the way people do.
A.R.C. Gallery proudly awards fully funded Solo Exhibitions to multiple artists each year. These exhibitions made possible by a generous grant from the Athena Foundation in support of making solo show opportunities accessible to a broader audience. Visual artists of all disciplines, ages and geographic locations are encouraged to apply. The artists are selected by the A.R.C. cooperative based on the quality of their work and commitment to their practice.
Members
Stacey Lee Gee was born in New Jersey and currently resides in Chicago. She exhibits both nationally and internationally including at the the Lubeznik Center, Chicago Cultural Center, Ignition Project Space, Ceres Gallery, Terrain Biennial, and Centro d’Art e Cultura. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Iowa and is the current president of ARC.
Stacey's work is an extension of the energy that leaks from her fingertips, a reconfiguration of objects past their appropriate era. Her art reorders the past in order to prepare for the future. She believes art is a service meant to perpetuate the healthy psyche of society.
Raissa Bailey maintains an active studio practice in Evanston, IL. Her work explores femininity and spirituality and her recent Venus series has evolved from suggestive form through abstraction in painting to textile, mixed media, sculpture, photography, digital images and storytelling all while focused on Paleolithic Venus figurines. Raissa is influenced by her travels around the world and her own diverse background. In recent years, her process of creation has gained importance as a spiritual practice of reflection and connection. Sources such as the I Ching and shamanic studies influence the work by encouraging a visual and conceptual depth. Her artistic influences include nature, prehistoric art, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo and Lavar Monroe as well as the theory of Biocentrism by Dr. Robert Lanza and Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children series. Raissa graduated from DePaul University with a BA and holds a certificate in Studio Art and Design from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She also is a professional Creative Director and leads a team of Designers for the Bradford Exchange.
Jasmine Elizabeth is an artist who specializes primarily in painting, collage, and photography. Being raised and living in the Midwest as a brown individual along with having a background in history, the sciences and film has significantly influenced their vision and practice, manifesting in an exploration of themes of isolation, identity, and what it means to exist under an unrelenting gaze.
I am a figurative painter and a long-time member of ARC Gallery, a woman-run gallery in Chicago. I am fascinated by color and form--but also by the stories paintings can suggest…There is a darkness to some of these paintings; but the figures in them nevertheless are connected to each other—in a unity that defines them. They exist within a community, an ecosystem—they are not without hope.
Cait Hardie works in water based media on paper, with an approach that could be described as an intersection of drawing and painting. Her work was exhibited at Morpho Gallery in Chicago in 2018 and 2019.
Michele Stutts is a nationally and internationally exhibited artist. She specializes in watercolor, 2D and 3D mixed media, and her current work is in video and mixed media installations. She teaches Fundamentals of Art at the American Academy of Art.
Iris Goldstein makes plaster-relief sculptures, using materials found in hardware stores to create presences which explore the connections between surface form and an emotive impact of color. Her primary interest is abstraction, and the repeated patterns of the forms, which are often geometric but also sensual, playing against the subtle shiftings of the color.
Cheri is a conceptual artist, educator and lecturer. Her work spans a broad range from drawings, paintings and sculpture to installations and sound work, often sculpting the space through the use of sound and language. She received her BFA form Ohio University and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
I love people. I love feasting my eyes on them with abandon..
Freezing their features and expressions on my canvas brings me great satisfaction. I am amazed how different we all look, yet we are all the same: human. Our experiences are similar and our reactions as well. It shows in our facial expressions.
Laura Cloud has traveled to Brazil, Australia, Japan, Europe and across the USA over the past few years. She has documented each trip in an ongoing series called The Travel Journals. This work has been shown both nationally and internationally. She has also attended residency programs located in Vermont, Ireland and Japan. Recent work was exhibited at the Museu Historico de Santa Catarina, in Florianopolis, Brazil and in the Sidney Yates Gallery, Chicago Culture Center.
My work as an artist come from wrestling with the unknown. It is inspired by liminal spaces, in-between moments, the crossing of different worlds, and the ongoing practice of abiding in darkness. Exploring a contemporary re-engagement with pattern and decoration, my paintings function like collaged visual fields that are meant to spark memory, nostalgia, and familiarity. Using the language of color and the truth hidden in beauty, my hope is to remind my viewers of what we all have in common, to disarm, and to offer respite from the weight of the world.
Art for me is about learning, expressing emotions, points of view, identity, and stories, visually. It is the ever shifting concoction of work and play. I am a woman, a wife and mother, known to slip into a dreamy appreciation of a composition I see in a face or space before me.
I am a painter exploring both the physical act of painting and how meaning is created on canvas. Process is essential part of my painting practice. I work primarily with oil paint for its physical richness and manipulative quality. I make a lot of changes to a painting over an extended period of time by layering, scratching, drawing on and rubbing out the paint until I feel the work is finished.
My work is a process of reckoning. I build spirit-filled collage, drawings and sculpture rooted in ever evolving narratives. I layer disparate media such as watercolor, acrylic and even glitter within high key figurative scenarios. Through an additive and lifting process, imagery is built up and at times lost, buried or revealed again. This physical editing reflects a meditation on the landscapes of impermanence and memory.
In my work iconic characters might develop multiple limbs to help them swim, fly, and run through vibrant, emotionally textured landscapes before rooting into the earth. Skies open under oceans in a kind of psychological cartography. There is a free interplay of the recognizable and magical. I’m not a surrealist who aims to disrupt perception, but a truth teller who immerses the viewer in it. I treat the interior psychological landscape not as an abstract state, but as a physical, living, and deeply felt reality.
Elyse Martin was born in Chicago and has lived there most of her life. With breaks for chasing down celebrities and enjoying disco, Elyse was immersed in art all her life, including a 7th grade Saturday Scholarship class at the Art Institute. Elyse thrived, and fueled her artistic expression with a love for art supplies, and spend hours at art stores with her father.
Randi Shepard is a photographer and printmaking artist from Chicago. After receiving her B.F.A in Visual Communications from The Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1983, she immediately broke into the commercial photography scene in Chicago, working with people photographers, such as her long-time mentor Jean Moss (as well as Steve Ewert, Joann Carney and Marc Hauser).
My work reflects an ongoing inner dialogue with myself and my materials. I am attracted to the reflective qualities of the glass beads, the interaction of materials and the historical implications of the materials. Due to the nature and slow process of beading there is much time during the art making process to reflect and let feelings surface. As a result of my process I am interested in the layers that compose each of us. Thus there are many layers within my sculptures.Each sculpture is thickly encrusted with beads.
Lee Stanton is an artist and art history instructor currently living in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago. Lee holds a Master of Fine Art in Studio Art from Northern Illinois University, a Master of Art History from the University of Illinois at Chicago, a Master of Education in Human Resource Education: e-Learning from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and a Bachelor degree from Illinois State University.
ARC GALLERY & EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION, SINCE 1973.
ARC Gallery is an internationally recognized exhibition space that has been an integral part of the Chicago art scene since its inception in 1973. Founded during the women’s movement as an alternative to the mainstream gallery system, ARC is one of the longest running art spaces of its kind in the country. As a non-profit, woman artist-run cooperative, ARC continues its feminist tradition by providing exhibition opportunities for professional and emerging artists working in all media based on excellence of artwork, without discrimination toward ethnicity, race, gender, age, class, religious, sexual or political orientation.
Gallery Hours:
Thursday & Friday: 2 – 6 pm
Saturday & Sunday: 12 – 4 pm