Exhibition Archive
Archive
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HOME
Group Exhibition: HOME
Curator: Fiona Cashell
What does it mean to call a place home? How does the act of moving—leaving, arriving, migrating—shape a person? When we think of our relationship to place, there are many complex experiences to consider, and many questions to ask. Perhaps the thread that connects us all, is the desire to belong.
Lisa Walcott
Lisa Walcott:
Opening Reception: Friday, July 11, 2025, 5-8pm
For Dear Life grapples with and makes light of the perils of daily life. Inspiration is derived from domestic spaces—a space that can be hauntingly dull as well as safe and protective. I look for comparisons and rely on the uncanny, such as a flushed baby swing mechanism moving a broom to sweep the floor, referencing the monotony and ingenuity of motherhood.
Monica J. Brown
Monica J. Brown: The Biomythography of Jaybird & The Queen of Hearts
Opening Reception: Friday, July 11, 2025, 5-8pm
“Biomythography” is a term coined by Audre Lord defined as “combining elements of history, biography and myth” within literature. My exploration of this idea is a continuation of the ongoing series of paintings, collages and poetry in my Mythical Memory series. This body of work combines Afro-surrealism, abstraction, and elements of pop art aesthetics. This overlap and intersection of genres is used to create a dialogue around the abstract qualities of time and memory, the liminality of the dream space and the way in which personal narratives can create a mythology. Time and memory are components of history. The mythology enters as the realm where the dream space and memory coincide. Love is the enduring force that weaves it all together.
Margaret Archambault
Margaret Archambault: Affect the Effect
Opening Reception: Friday, July 11, 2025, 5-8pm
Artist Talk: TBD
“Affect the Effect” is a series of paintings that act as a direct reflection of my experiences and my desire to share the truth about the power we possess to overcome doubt and express ourselves in ways that are both unique and universal at the same time. We are the creator and we truly can “Affect the Effect” in and of our lives and sculpt them into that which we desire.
A.R.C. Collective: Member Show
Join the working members of A.R.C. for a special exhibition showcasing their own artwork.
Meet the dedicated member-artists who regularly contribute time, skill, and support to the daily operations of A.R.C. Gallery. This exhibition shines a well-deserved spotlight on the hardworking artists behind the dynamic programming you’ve come to expect from us.
Artists Residents of Chicago (A.R.C.) was founded in 1973 as a women-run artists’ cooperative at a time when the art world largely dismissed women’s voices. In 2025, We continue to champion innovative, emerging, and experimental visual art, reaching a broad audience—including our wonderful West Town community. As a non-commercial gallery, we foster an environment of artistic experimentation and dialogue.
Come celebrate our long and distinguished history as a cultural institution in Chicago. One of the original alternative galleries of the 1970s—alongside Artemisia and N.A.M.E.—A.R.C. is the last of these pioneering spaces still standing.
What does it take to keep an artists cooperative gallery alive for 52 years? Come find out.
Exhibiting Member Artists: Raissa Bailey, Monica Brown, Abigail Engstrand, Nancy Fritz, Stacey Lee Gee, Iris Goldstein, Cait Hardie, Diane Jurado, Beth LeFauve, Elyse Martin, Ruti Modlin, Cheri Reif Naselli, Randi Shepard, Lee Stanton, Michele Stutts, Michelle Williams
Exhibition dates: April 3 - 27, 2025
Gallery hours: Thurs – Fri 2-6pm, Sat – Sun 12-4 pm
This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
Raissa Bailey
Raissa Bailey: Venus Rising, Axiom Schema
Opening Reception: Friday, May 2, 2025, 5-8pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, May 3, 1:00pm
Raissa Bailey’s upcoming solo show, “Venus Rising, Axiom Schema,” delves into the concepts of consciousness and evolution. This innovative showcase blends installation and mixed media art, inviting viewers to explore connections between prehistoric and modern modes of creation.
Pat Stephens
Pat Stephens: Earthy Stories
Opening Reception: Friday, May 2, 2025, 5-8pm
I am interested in how information is realized, interpreted, and shared. My work is inspired by my surroundings and observations of transitory states in the environment. Viewers should think they are looking at a familiar object when in fact they are not; I love the reversal of expectations. These ceramics serve no utilitarian purpose other than to express the world around me. The inspiration for my pieces comes from the eight-block daily dog walk, which includes shadows reflecting off street signs, thrown away to-go containers littering the street, discarded boxes run over by cars, and telephone poles having graffiti, pipes, and wires attached to them.
A.R.C. Affiliate: Member Show
A.R.C. Affiliate: Member Show
Opening Reception: Friday, May 2, 5–8 PM
Join the Affiliate Member artists of A.R.C. for an exhibition showcasing their artwork. Affiliates of ARC have served in the past as working volunteer members of the gallery.
Artists Residents of Chicago (A.R.C.) was founded in 1973 as a women-run artists’ cooperative at a time when the art world largely dismissed women’s voices. In 2025, We continue to champion innovative, emerging, and experimental visual art, reaching a broad audience—including our wonderful West Town community. As a non-commercial gallery, we foster an environment of artistic experimentation and dialogue.
Exhibiting Affiliate Members : Amy Zucker, Jessica Gondeck, Granite Amit, Virginia Carstarphen, Jane Stevens, Nancy Bechtol
Nicole Havekost
Nicole Havekost: Proliferate
Opening Reception: Friday, March 7, 2025, 5-8pm
Proliferate, by artist Nicole Havekost, is of a series of ten works on paper. Made with traditional drawing materials, the artist pokes holes through the paper, creating a white, swollen perforation on the front. Using ovoid forms, the artist references voids and tears, and interiors and exteriors through accumulated gestures. The work speaks to unseen labor, the passage of time, and transformation.
David Najib Kasir
David Najib Kasir:Math of Four Minute Warnings
Opening Reception: Friday, March 7, 2025, 5-8pm
Math of Four Minute Warnings is an exhibition that interrogates the role Western media plays in constructing cultural narratives, while centering a caring and concerning lens on the destruction of Syria and its people through large-scale paintings. For Kasir, the works start from a personal place. “Iraq is my father’s country, and Syria is my mother’s as well as the second home of my youth. It is where my aunts, uncles and cousins were living. It is where there are buildings where I slept in and streets where I played tag and other games as a child. I’ve witnessed years of destruction of my countries from US invasion, with very little regard from Western mainstream media to civilian casualties.”
Jill Wells
Jill Wells: Sewn From Resistance
Opening Reception: Friday, March 7, 2025, 5-8pm
SEWN FROM RESISTANCE: Deconstructing Black Disability Narratives in America is a site-specific, multi-sensory installation by Jill Wells that critically examines the intersection of Black and Disability histories within the American context. This work challenges stereotypical portrayals of Black disability identities while celebrating the resilience and resistance embedded within these lived experiences. Through a fusion of installation, painting, sound, and tactile sculpture, Wells engages sensory elements that shape how individuals' access and engage with information.
Mel Watkin
Mel Watkin: BIRDLAND
Opening Reception: Friday, February 7, 2025, 5-8pm
The Birdland series is an exhibition of drawings on collaged security envelopes – envelopes used for bills, bank statements and other mailings requiring privacy. Different environments and environmental concerns strongly influence my imagery and the materials I work with. The Birdland series reflects my recent travels to the mountain west, rust belt cities like St. Louis and the Shawnee National Forest surrounding my home in Southern Illinois. Birds play a role, as our old farmhouse lies along one of the largest migratory bird routes in the country—the Cache River Flyway.
CV Peterson
CV Peterson: OVERLOOKING POSSIBILITIES: A NATURALIST’S DREAM
Opening Reception: Friday, February 7, 2025, 5-8pm
"Overlooking Possibilities: A Naturalist's Dream" is a series of environmental observations portrayed in a colorful, whimsical way. I use scientific research as inspiration, allowing me to dream of the what-ifs and current possibilities. The good and the bad of Climate Change and humanity's role in it.
Jeanette May
Jeanette May: CURIOUS DEVICES
Opening Reception: Friday, February 7, 2025, 5-8pm
Jeanette May’s still lifes reveal our complicated relationship with obsolete technology by juxtaposing the seductive designs and the inner workings of Curious Devices. Her photographs display a reverence for finely crafted merchandise, industrial design, and scientific wonders. The technological tableaus span antique stereoscopes and art deco clocks to Bluetooth headphones. Each object’s style, color, and construction epitomize a period of both aesthetic and technological advancement. May opens some devices to expose the archaic gears of movie projectors and the enigmatic architecture of circuit boards. What becomes of the beloved tech that stops working or can’t be updated?
Deborah Di Vita Glascott
Deborah Di Vita Glascott: BODY LANGUAGE
Opening Reception: Friday, November 1, 2024, 5-8pm
The figurative works in this exhibition are sourced from candid photos and developed organically, drawn directly with paint. Each speaks a language, spirit, mood or personality she feels compelled to communicate. Through traditional methods of indirect oil painting on canvas, Deborah Di Vita Glascott employs elements of color theory, composition, and the use of pattern to contextualize a modern sense of intimacy.
Angela McElwain
Angela McElwain : ReFormation - Collage and Constructs
Opening Reception: Friday, November 1, 2024, 5-8pm
The definition of reformation: noun
1. the act of changing to a better state or character, way of operating, lifestyle, etc.; the correction of abuses and bad habits or practices.
2. an improved state or way of functioning that results from the correction of abuses and bad habits or practices.
The work on view here illustrates my inquiry into the transformative possibilities of the human endeavor to overcome cultural obstacles, blockades, biology or religious tradition in order to attain one’s own sense of Self. The content is particularly apropos to womxn’s experience. The structure of collage and constructs are especially useful for this inquiry because material used in them is re-formed or reinvented to a new meaning whether the source is torn paper, bits of scrap, strands of hair, shards of glass or other detritus. Some materials, hair for instance, are used for their deeply personal meaning. Others assume a new form different from their original use or purpose acquiring a new symbolism.
Fengzee Yang
Fengzee Yang: SOUNDER WIND
Opening Reception: Friday, November 1, 2024, 5-8pm
TSounder Wind is an evocative exhibition that delves into the unspoken depths of emotion, centering on the profound, primordial yearning etched deep within. Through sculptures that embody archetypal forms, Fengzee invites viewers to contemplate the subtle, unnameable desires that persist throughout our existence. These works act as channels between past and present, exploring the intangible realms of memory, time, and loss.
Drawing inspiration from nature’s raw, ancient materials like clay and wood, the sculptures blur the boundary between the familiar and the enigmatic. Each piece—shaped by time and eroded like fossils—serves as a gateway into inner landscapes of longing. The organic textures and hybrid forms reflect an internal search for something unattainable, yet eternally present, embodying an ongoing dialogue between what is visible and what remains concealed.
This exhibition transcends function and context, inviting us to look beyond the tangible and into the quiet, spiritual spaces within. Informed by personal histories of migration and dislocation, Fengzee’s work taps into a collective subconscious where emotions interweave with memory and time. These sculptures evoke a sense of timelessness, acting as mediators between the present moment and vast, uncharted territories of the soul.
BENEATH THE SURFACE: Spirituality in Art
BENEATH THE SURFACE: Spirituality in Art
Curator: Indira Johnson
Opening Reception: Friday, October 4, 5-8pm
There is something deeper than what we see. Energetic undercurrents of power, violence and love. Undercurrents as unpredictable as they are unexamined in mainstream culture. This ebb and flow can push an individual to feelings of intense passion, inspire the greatest works of art the world has seen, and cause abrupt changes in the course of world history.
Let us put a spotlight on the unspoken energy flow operating beneath the surface of our daily life. Let us examine the invisible threads present in a crowd of people that hold our current culture in a stasis of perpetuation.
This show is a subtle examination of energy and spirituality through art. Through this exhibition, we hope to shine a light on the depth of the human condition to inspire greater spiritual awareness and empathy within this historical time.
Amy Zucker + Valerie McCune
Amy Zucker + Valerie McCune: RELATED
Opening Reception: Friday, September 6, 2024, 5-8pm
"RELATED" is an artistic dialogue between Chicago-based cousins and artists, Amy Zucker and Valerie McCune. This collaboration began as an exploration of familial ties through art and evolved into a mutual exchange of inspiration and creativity. Their unique styles reflect their individual journeys, yet blend harmoniously in this show.
Each piece represents a conversation: one artist's creation sparks the other's response, showcasing their evolving relationship. By hanging their works side by side, viewers are invited to witness the interplay of their distinct voices, united by family
Denise Bellezzo
Denise Bellezzo: NEW WORK: ALTERED PAGES
Opening Reception: Friday, September 6, 2024, 5-8pm
NEW WORK: ALTERED PAGES is a series of drawings and notations on and of organic images. Using the base imagery to respond to, I can modify, eliminate, or accent patterns and textures. Contour line is applied and masked and applied again to build up layers of information. Book pages, maps, floor plans, aerial photography are all starting points for my process. From these previous images, I respond using additive and subtractive techniques; counteracting , engaging, modifying until a satisfying conclusion is reached. For me, a sense of whimsy is encouraged as a response to the papers. A continuous layering of pattern, line, or textures allows for a formalist structure to be imposed that helps simplify the end result.