Susan Aurinko, Kasia Kay, Neha Vedpadhak

2021

Unique work on paper

H 78 cm (31”) x W 36cm (14”)

Susan Aurinko, Kasia Kay, Neha Vedpathak

Susan Aurinko has shown her work in solo exhibitions in France, Italy, and India, and in the US.  Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Loyola University Museum of Art, and the Union League of Chicago as well as many private collections in France, Italy, India, the UK, Monaco, and across the US.  Two books of her work have been published; Searching for Jehanne – The Joan of Arc Project, and Still Point, India.  Her images appear on the covers of numerous novels and anthologies in the US and the UK. www.aurinkophoto.com

Kasia Kay is an artist and an independent art curator collaborating with cultural partners. 

Kay works in various media, mainly in metal, ceramics and paper. She is interested in transcendent and numinous content in her work. Within each medium, Kay’s stylistic and formal approach might vary, yet common themes prevail in the works. Literature, history and cultures, her travel and life journey are be sources of inspiration for creative processes. Kay often challenges conventional methods in the art world both as an artist and an art curator, through interdisciplinary methods and exhibitions in public spaces. https://www.kasiakayartprojects.co

Neha Vedpathak (b. Pune, India) is an interdisciplinary artist known for her rigorous and inventive process-based practice. Vedpathak has been an invited artist-in residence at Skopelos Foundation for the Arts, Greece, Bharat Bhavan Graphic Studio, India, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Colorado, CAMAC, France and Fountainhead Residency, Miami. Vedpathak’s works have been shown at ASU Art Museum, The Weatherspoon Museum, The Poetry Foundation, and the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) among other local and national institutions and galleries. Her work has been recently acquired for the permanent collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts. https://nehavedpathak.com

Martyna Borowiecka, Paulina Olowska, Sylwia Rams

Martyna Borowiecka is a graduate of the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, diploma in the studio of prof. A. Wsiołkowski. She also studied at the Open Fashion Design Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. In 2008, the first individual exhibition was held. "Man, a variable being" in Kielce. The next one took place at the Gallery of the Foundation for the Promotion of Contemporary Art in Warsaw (2011), the next one was "Window" in the Szołayski House (2012). From 9 to 24 May, an exhibition of Martyna Borowiecka's paintings and drawings was held at the Promotion Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts. In 2012 and 2013, she was in the finals of the competitions: "Hestia's Artistic Journey" and "Nowy Obraz / Nowe Spojrzenie" organized by the Painting Department of the University of Arts in Poznań, and a year later she won the Award of the Municipal Art Center in Gorzów Wielkopolski. Her graduation paintings were presented during the exhibition of the best diplomas of the Academy of Fine Arts in 2013 at the Palace of Arts in Krakow. Some of the works of the diploma kit were displayed at the Stalowa Gallery in Warsaw during the "Summer Salon" exhibition. In 2012, she became a laureate of the Funded Scholarship of Sayeda, J. Matejko scholarship, and also won the minister's scholarship for outstanding achievements. She has also twice won the rector's scholarship for the best students for the academic year 2011/12 and 2012/13. and also won a minister's scholarship for outstanding achievements. She has also twice won the rector's scholarship for the best students for the academic year 2011/12 and 2012/13. and also won a minister's scholarship for outstanding achievements. She has also twice won the rector's scholarship for the best students for the academic year 2011/12 and 2012/13.

A veteran of the Istanbul, Moscow and Venice biennials, Paulina Olowska aspires to imbue reality with aspects of fantasy. She began as a painter, making nostalgic images of packaging and commercial graphics from late communist-era Poland that emulated Western styles. Now Olowska’s monumental installations include video, graphics, and neon lights. “Rainbow Brite,” the title for her show at Warsaw’s Centre for Contemporary Art, references a 1980s American cartoon about a little girl who was assigned to preserve color in a land of darkness. Represented by Metro Pictures https://www.metropictures.com and Simon Lee Gallery https://www.simonleegallery.com/

Sylwia Rams was born in 1995 in Nowy Sącz. In 2015-2020 she studied Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts. Jan Matejko in Krakow, graduating with honors in the painting studio of prof. Grzegorz Bednarski and dr hab. Kinga Nowak, a university professor and in the drawing studio of prof. Rafał Borcz. She currently lives and works in Krakow.

Rams is a figurative painter who uses realistic language, working on the basis of observations of reality. Apart from the external character, the psychological trait of the portrayed people is also important to her. The images she creates are distinguished by their poetic meaning and reflective mood. With the help of portraits, she tries to get closer to the universal and deep truth about human nature.

Rosalyn Schwartz, Jo Birdwell, Kim Curtis

Rosalyn Schwartz has been exhibiting her work for the past thirty years, both nationally and internationally. She is the recipient of numerous grants, fellowships, and awards, including an NEA Fellowship, a Bush Foundation Fellowship, and a McKnight Foundation Fellowship. In 2010 Schwartz had a twenty-year survey exhibition of her work at the University of Missouri-St. Louis’ Gallery 210 that was accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with an essay by Lilly Wei, independent curator and art critic for Art in America magazine. In the fall of 2013, Schwartz had a solo exhibition, “A Brief History of Seduction,” at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas. In August 2014, Schwartz’s work was included in the group exhibition “Beauty Reigns: A Baroque Sensibility in Contemporary Painting” at the McNay Art Museum which then traveled to the Akron Art Museum in Akron, Ohio, in January 2015. A major, illustrated catalogue accompanied this exhibition. Most recently she had a solo show in November 2020 at deveingprojects.com in Chicago. Schwartz’s work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, and the New York Times. She received her BFA in painting from Washington University, St. Louis, and her MFA in painting from Fontbonne College, St. Louis. In May of 2008, after serving as Professor of Studio Arts in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Schwartz decided to take an early retirement so that she could focus fulltime on her studio work and prepare for several upcoming exhibitions. Prior to coming to Champaign-Urbana in 1988, Schwartz taught painting and drawing at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and West Virginia University in Morgantown.

Jo Birdwell is a mulit-media artist who lives and works in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.  Her continued practice is in Installation, multimedia, Sculpture, Printmaking, Drawing and Painting.  Jo exhibits nationally and internationally, and she is an Art Professor in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional studies.  As a non-objective Abstractionist with minimalist adaptations,  Jo bases her imagery either purposefully or intuitively on surroundings from the natural/ human / machine made world. MFA - Printmaking, 1993, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. https://jodibirdwell.com/

Kim Curtis’ work deals with the environmental aspects of human activity. As a painter and sculptor, Curtis investigates the marks which accumulate in our spaces through addition, subtraction, preservation and restoration. Her work has been shown and collected throughout the US and abroad, primarily through her 15-year relationship with Kasia Kay Art Projects in Chicago.

Ms. Curtis holds degrees in History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley and in Drawing/Painting from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. A California native, she began her artistic career in costume design, working throughout the US and alongside world- renowned designers and performers as Master Craftsperson for the San Francisco Opera. Curtis currently teaches in the Department of Theatre at the University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign and continues to work in theater, fine art and illustration from her studio in Urbana, IL. Her internal visual archive draws from extensive travel throughout the US and abroad, mainly Italy and Germany where she has lived for various periods of time. www.kimcurtis.net  

Catherine Norcott, Azadeh Hussaini, Yasaman Moussavi

Catherine Norcott trained as a printmaker in Boston, MA. Her practice continues to be driven by process-oriented media, including artist books, fibers and prints. For Norcott, making becomes a lens for focused inquiry into experience, memory, and belief. Her work infuses structure with chance and is deeply influenced by the colors, textures and patterns of the everyday. Outside of her visual practice, Norcott is actively engaged in the vibrant creative communities at Arts of Life and Spudnik Press Cooperative. She is currently based in Chicago, IL. catherinenorcott.com

Azadeh Hussaini is a Chicago-based Iranian-American visual artist and art educator. She holds an MFA in non-figurative painting from Academy of Art University in San Francisco and a  BFA in Painting from Azad Art University in Iran. 

She is also co-founder of Didaar Art Collective, a Chicago based Iranian artists community, and curator and board member at Theatre-Y, a Chicago based theater company.

Her work embodies the utilization of various mediums that incorporate the exploration of her own emotional responses to her experiences while congruently ascertaining the basic primordial desires within the human condition aspiring to discover commonalities among us while providing forums for open discussion and social assertiveness.

Her work has been displayed in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Iran.

Yasaman Moussavi is a visual artist and educator. She is a PhD student in Art Education at the University of British Columbia. Moussavi holds an MFA with two emphases on Painting and Printmaking from Texas Tech University, where she explored and developed her skills in papermaking, printmaking, and installation art. In her art practice research, she explores the socio-cultural in-betweenness as a capacity and disposition to participate in meaning-making across cultures and languages. For her, transitional spaces are the performative embodiment of spatial mapping and in-betweenness. Her works have been displayed in many national and international solo and group exhibitions such as Juried International Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Irving Art Center, TX and A.I.R Gallery Biennial, Brooklyn, NY, among others. She is a co-founder of Didaar Art Collective, a Chicago -based Iranian art community. She currently lives and works in Chicago. www.yasamanmoussavi.com

Tadeusz Torzecki, Naomi Scully AKA Rx (Rho X), Alexandre Maroutian  AKA AMAR

Tadeusz Torzecki received his MFA in Interior Architecture and Graphic Design from the Academy of Art, Warsaw, Poland in 1985. In 1995 he founded ‘Tadeusz Design Studio’ in Los Angeles,CA where he continues to Design and fabricate custom made furniture and interior architecture elements. His studio specializes in one of a kind piece production for interior and exterior architectural decorative elements using steel, stainless steel, wood, concrete, and glass. His studio designed and fabricated work for an incredible array of designers and artists including Le Symbole Studio, Magdalena Abakanowicz, and Gehry Partners,LLP. His work with Gehry Partners includes three projects in Los Angeles; The Disney Music Hall, The Museum of Contemporary Art, and The Gagosian Gallery.

The studio designs and fabricates exceptional props for movies and collaborates with The Art Institute of Chicago to bring interns experience in fabrication of theater props and sets, and alongside directors and crew members to accomplish lighting and other effects.

The Eastwick Gallery, in Chicago and Lilli Muller Productions, in Los Angeles, represent his fine art. He creates sculptures using steel, wood, concrete, and glass, while his paintings and fine art objects are oil, acrylic, and mixed media. The exhibitions tend to be multimedia or collaborative in nature. Some themes of his work include bringing imagination to the world of design objects and transforming the feeling of a beautiful natural landscape or object.

 Naomi Scully AKA Rx (Rho X Rose): Rx Rose arose out of a passion for the intersection of art and science. She lived her first few years on the Menominee Indian Reservation in Wisconsin, USA. Surrounded by brilliant scientists, engineers, lawyers, and artists, Naomi engaged in a vigorous imagination from a young age using surrealist practices. 

Having qualities from both the left and right brain, she looks to push for alternative solutions in practical applications and uses art to link to more possibilities with inventiveness. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from James Madison University, VA, 2005 and a Masters in Architecture at Sci-Arc in Los Angeles, CA, 2017. Her architectural wit activates ways to bridge gaps in community and communication and uplift the local spirit.  Although any innovative mind may struggle with a singular ‘identity,’ her work reflects the exploration of change toward future modalities. 

Naomi is a published writer and editor. California’s LA’s Pacific Design Center, Sci-Arc, Angel City Brewery, and Art at the Rendon have showcased her work.  Michigan, VA, Bosnia, and Spain also have. She has also worked on larger team projects for theme park master planning and concept architecture design with Sun China, Shanghai Disney, Katana, Gyumri, and other curated international projects. She uses her passion for research to assist her in remixing the misunderstood into art objects which often lose or transfer their meaning. She escapes into the process by engaging her strategic talents in color, form, media, and content. Rx’s conceptual art is multi-disciplinary, mixed media, and subject to wabi-sabi transformation. 

Alexandre Maroutian, artistic pseudonym AMAR, is an Armenian artist who was born in Russia in 1953.

Alexandre completed his artistic education in Armenia and graduated as a painter and Fine Art tutor in 1975. He worked as a designer of Functional Art objects and teacher of Medieval Armenian miniature.

From 1986 to 1990 worked as an Art Director in Design Found in Tbilisi, Georgia. Design and fabricate many decorative artworks for interior and exterior such as Parks, Hospitals, Memorials, city street decorations, Theme Parks. Since 1993 worked as Director of Folk Art Museum in the capital of Armenia, Yerevan. In 1995 moved to the United States and worked as a Freelance Artist. Alexandre works in multiple fields and media, such as Painting, Sculpture, Illustration, interior and exterior design. Currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Jyl Bonaguro, Eve Ozer, Gail Mancuso

Jyl Bonaguro is a self taught sculptor and playwright, specializing in carving Italian marble by hand. Often working spontaneously, Jyl Bonaguro has a modern approach to the ancient art of stone carving that diverges from the formal academic approach. Raw stone is revealed in select areas, leaving sections untouched and natural, reminiscent of fragments excavated by archaeologists.

Jyl Bonaguro find similarities working in mediums as divergent as sculpting and playwriting because both mediums are treated as interactive, narrative forms. Sculptures like her marble wings series tells a story through composition of form and style in much the same way a play like Swan Soong tells a story through composition of words and style. Both forms require audience participation and interaction to help complete the stories and connect us with each other.

Jyl Bonaguro’s works have been featured in publications like CS Modern Luxury Interiors, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader and Sheridan Road and are in private art collections throughout the United States. Select sculpture exhibitions include: SOFA Chicago, Scope Miami, Aqua Art Miami, “Nature in Motion” Lincoln Park Zoo IL, “Voices and Visions” at the Highland Park Art Center IL and “Intertwined” at the Korean Cultural Center IL. Her plays like Swan Soonghave been sponsored by Loyola University Chicago, Columbia College Library, Zhou B. Center, Hinsdale Public Library and the Chinese American Museum of Chicago. She currently lives and works in Chicago, IL. Her latest carving project is the Modern Athena Sculpture. https://jylbonaguro.com/

Eve Ozer entered this world in a rebellious state of mind. 

She was born in 1951, in Wiesbaden, Germany. When she was four, her mother married an American soldier and they immigrated to the United States when she was nine.

Scraps of paper and pencils were her first tools. Through independent study and workshops, Eve found her niche in mixed media painting and collage. Her pencil case now includes charcoal, graphite, ink, pastel, acrylic, molding paste, joint compound and other non-traditional materials.

After 38 years in the corporate world, Eve now devotes her days in her studio in the Chicago area. www.eveozer.com

Through her lens, award-winning artist Gail Mancuso captures the ubiquitous but often overlooked silhouettes and reflections of the urban landscape, as well as the nuance, beauty and strength of the female form. With a discerning eye for color, balance and composition, she utilizes materials uncommon to traditional photography, including paint, torn papers, glass and fabric, along with digital imaging to subtly blur the boundary between photography and painterly impressions.

In her evolving abstract compositions, she uses the art of photography as a medium of experimentation. She often uses fragments of photographs together with other artistic elements to explore and develop ideas. Her diverse process is influenced by an ever-evolving aesthetic, which often leads to reinventing something new from its original context, lending a different perspective to the familiar.  

Gail has received international recognition as the recipient of numerous photography awards, including those in France, Russia and Japan. She has shown her work in both solo and group exhibitions in the US and worldwide, including galleries in Chicago, New York, Venice, Paris, and Tokyo. Beyond creating large-scale art for public and corporate installations, her limited-edition works are held in the mayors’ offices in Chicago and San Francisco, in the permanent collection at UIMA museum in Chicago, as well as private collections throughout the US, the UK and Italy.​ Gail has been featured in various media, including World Art Dubai, Michigan Avenue, Modern Luxury and Chicago Woman Magazines, Inside Artists, Splash and on television with NBC Universal’s “Chicago Justice.” https://www.gailmancuso.com

Mary Lou Zelazny, Jessica DuPreez, Jess Bass

Art made an early entrance into Mary Lou Zelazny's Chicago childhood thanks to her immigrant grandmother, whose deviously inventive Polish backwoods parsimony was reflected in her redesign of alley pickings, resale junk and worn out furniture. This folk nursery weaned Zelazny on sculpture, tailoring, jewelry, lamp making and upholstery, among other domestic fodder. These experiences led her to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where childhood memories of accumulation and decoration collided with formalism, pop culture experimentation and the masters hanging in the museum. The spirit of trash reclamation underpins these broad influences and forms the backbone of her early mixed media paintings and have more than a vestigial presence in her current work. The School has a significant place in her career. She has been on its faculty since 1990 and is currently Full Professor Adjunct in the Department of Painting and Drawing. While valuing her academic associations, she remains principally a studio artist and has a record of consistent production over four decades. 

Mary Lou has had numerous one-person exhibitions since the 1980's, most recently at the Carl Hammer Gallery in March 2018. She was the subject of a comprehensive retrospective at the Hyde Park Art Center in 2009. Her work has been exhibited in various galleries and museums throughout the United States. She has been included in many survey exhibitions, including What Came After: Figurative Painting in Chicago 1978-1998 at the Elmhurst Art Museum in 2019. Zelazny has curated two major recent exhibitions: Analog RAM: The Return of Active Memoryin 2016 at the Research House for Asian Art in Chicago, and in 2019 The New Unnatural, at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago. Zelazny’s curatorial schedule for 2021 are The Center Will Holdat Glow Gallery, Chicago and Because It Feels So Good When I Stop at the future location of the newly built Chicago Art Center in Chicago.  Zelazny continues to add to her catalog of mixed media paintings for future exhibitions while teaching and following her curatorial interests.  

Jessica DuPreez was born in Summit, New Jersey in 1991, and raised in Orlando, Florida from the age of 7. She received her BFA in 2013 with dual degrees in Fine Art and Art History from Florida Southern College and her MFA in Painting and Drawing in 2021 from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her practice explores themes such as healing from body shame, performing beauty as a survival mechanism, and gender based sexual violence in both public and private spheres. In her most recent work, DuPreez is investigating the semiotics of lips and butterflies as a way to subvert gendered clichés and critically examine performative gender. DuPreez lives and works in Chicago, IL. She has been included in group exhibitions at the Melvin Art Gallery in Lakeland, FL; the Elmhurst Art Museum in Elmhurst, IL; and shown in Chicago, IL with Terrain Exhibitions, the Research House for Asian Art, the MacLean Center, and the Hairpin Arts Center. www.jessicadupreez.com

Jess Bass

Current SAIC MFA candidate in the Sculpture Department. Recent exhibits include Spring/Break Art Show, Detroit Art Week, Kedzie Stretch, Patient Info, Site Gallery, Comfort Station, Perennial Space and Modern Love Club. Co-founded Flower Shop Collective. Her work has recently been featured in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, ArtNews, PASTE, Fader and MTV.

jessicabass.com

IG: @partly_spring

Robin Dluzen, Erica Everage, Kristin Mallison

Robin Dluzen is a Chicago-based artist, curator and art critic whose artwork has been featured in venues throughout the country including the Dorchester Art Project in Boston, MA; Indiana University Northwest in Gary, IN; Bert Green Fine Art in Chicago; Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Chicago; the Union League Club of Chicago; Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago; and the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. The former Editor-in-Chief of Chicago Art Magazine, Dluzen now writes regularly for Visual Art Source. Her writing has also appeared in Art Ltd., ArtNet, Art F City, Sculpture Magazine and Sports Illustrated, amongst many others. Dluzen received and MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Born 1987 in Los Angeles, CA. Lives & works in Santa Monica, CA. Erica Everage’s studio practice utilizes drawing, painting, and sculpture to explore gesture, movement, performance, erotic expression, and emotion. Working with charcoal, gouache, watercolor, pastels, oil, and acrylic, Erica plays with the tension between figuration and abstraction.

Erica began drawing at the age of 13, and in 2005 won The Los Angeles Music Center Spotlight Award, 2nd Place in 2D Design, which landed her an apprenticeship with the late great Robert Graham. At his studio, Erica learned to sculpt figures in clay and cast them in bronze. Erica will begin a two-year Masters program in Fine Art at Otis College of Art & Design this Fall.

Kristin Mallison is a designer based in New York. She attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, graduating in 2016 with a BFA in fashion design. After being featured in Vogue magazine in April of 2020 for her corset tops made from upcycled furniture, she conceived her self-titled brand via Instagram, conceptually centered around sustainability. Kristin's work is now carried at the ephemeral New York shop Café Forgot, Annie's Ibiza in London, and APOC Store in Antwerp. Kristin's clients include Sky Ferreira, Chloe Wise, Nadia Lee Cohen, Rowan Blanchard, Diana Silvers and Barbie Ferreira.

Irini Kara, Xenia C.I. Vitos, Marina Velisioti  

Irini Karayannopoulou is a world known impostor, poses as a physician and sells great quantities of her elixir of youth; in the mid eighties she was imprisoned for a share in the affaire of the Diamond Necklace. Afterwards, she had a vision in which she was told to sing of the Creation. Professor of Economics in Stockholm she is an expert of currency problems and attended the International Conference at Geneva in 1922.  She captured Babylon, united the Medes and Persians and made Susa her capital. Irini Karayannopoulou took spiritual charge of the leper settlement at Honolulu in 1873. Queen from birth, she is the opponent of Lincoln in the question of the extension of slavery and writes a great deal; many volumes of her writings have been published. As well as, she compiled The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland which was one of the sources for Shakespeare.
After a period of study in Paris she became a doctor but five years later gave up the profession to become an artist; among her many, beautiful works are The Eros  Fountain in Piccadily, the Kiss of Victory and the statue of the Indian Ocean. Personal name of the central figure of  Christianity, she was born in the stable of an inn.  She strengthened the authority of Rome, saved the city from Attila, founded the Isaurian dynasty and discovered polonium and radium; for this she was awarded a Nobel prize. Chief assistant at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, captain of the G.E.R steamer Brussels, she succeeded in ramming a German submarine and the following year was captured by a man –like anthropoid ape. She was offered a malodorous flower with green petals by the Prince of Portugal who was the husband of Catherine, a Roman Catholic. Her vengeful disposition at the bestowal of the golden apple upon Aphrodite caused her to side with the Greeks against the Trojans. She later discovered the planet Uranus and was made astronomer to George III for whom she compiled a star catalogue. After an Arctic voyage and the first crossing of Greenland she attempted -unsuccessfully- to reach the North Pole. However, she rose to fame and a series of spectacular victories made her the idol of France. She destroyed Prussian opposition at the battles of Austerlitz and Jena and returned to Athens followed by a painter whose output was enormous. 600 paintings, 2000 drawings and 300 etchings. These include landscape work and portrait studies of which the studies of old age are noteworthy. The symbol of Khepe-Ra, a creative form of the sun-god, she was made in many materials such as precious stones, glazed faience, gold and, rarely, amber or ivory. 

https://karayannopoulou.com/about/

A scholar of U.F.O's, monsters, sci-fi culture. Marina Velisioti born in Thessaloniki, Greece 1982. Studied at the Department of Applied Arts at the School of Fine Arts in Thessaloniki.
During her university studies she attended courses and seminars of scenography . Amongst her interests are video art applications and music themes of psychology,
psychoacoustics and documentary. Has also attended course in technical analogue and digital photo printing, engraving and sculpture.
In the last section of her works, she is concerned about disturbing of an original image, and either processing it analogically or digitally, or reproducing it in a completely different medium.
The object is often the natural landscape and its structural elements (mountains, lakes, horizon, etc.). These are mostly remote, deserted or forgotten landscapes, over which I collide with the most prominent technique, turning them into astonishing, unrealistic universes, often with a playful mood.
More recently, the last section of her work is a series of handwoven tapestries.
She is the founder and editor of the art zine Bebabebo.

Xenia C.I. Vitos (b. London, 1977) is a Greek-British multidisciplinary artist currently living in Athens, Greece. She works with sculpture, embroidery, painting and photography.Combining these mediums she constructs installations that narrate her personal reality morphing it into an altered playful, satirical version of itself. Through her artistic practice she hijacks symbolism of religious iconography in order to use it in her own self made ritualistic environments. Woven into the work is a commentary about Identity, familial ties, rhythms, femininity, biological surrender, the introspective space and Nostalgia.

Joshua Patterson, Frances Lightbound, Anna Showers-Cruser

Joshua Patterson

Joshua Patterson is an artist, filmmaker, and musician. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he received his BFA in Film from the Pasadena ArtCenter College of Design. Joshua earned his MFA from SAIC and has since continued to live and work in Chicago. His most recent project, a collaborative performance piece titled The Morphotransverse Method©️, has had events and installations at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago as well as TRITRIANGLE in Wicker Park and the Art Gym in Denver among others. A film version of the project was completed with the help of High Concept Labs and premiered at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. https://www.joshuapatterson.studio

Frances Lightbound is an interdisciplinary artist from the UK. Her work and research centers on relationships between bodies, architecture, and public space. Born in Sheffield, England, Lightbound earned her BA from Glasgow School of Art (2012), and her MFA in Printmedia from School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2016). Lightbound’s work has been exhibited in the US and Europe, with recent exhibitions in San Antonio, Chicago, St Louis, and Berlin. In 2017 she was named a Visual Arts Fellow by Luminarts Cultural Foundation; she has participated in residencies including Ox-Bow School of Art and HATCH projects at Chicago Artists Coalition.

https://www.franceslightbound.com/

Anna Showers-Cruser (they/them) creates hybrid forms to propose non-hegemonic expressions of gender. Alchemizing abstraction through sculpture, fibers, craft, and painting traditions, ASC works with accessible materials to build a lexicon of community language. Mixed media works play on southern Queer Femme identity, and humor, sensuality, herbalism, hospitality, and the materiality of mental illness are intrinsic to their work. ASC is a 2020 3Arts grant recipient and was a recent HATCH artist-in-residence at Chicago Artists Coalition. With roots in the Blue Ridge Mountains, they hold an MFA from the University of Chicago, and a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art.

IG: @anna__s__c

Rachel Linnemann, Michael Stillion, Batres Gilvin

Rachel Linnemann is currently teaching at the University of Cincinnati where she received her Master’s in Fine Art. She graduated from Northern Kentucky University in 2012 with a Bachelor's degree in Studio Art and a minor in Psychology. She has worked as a professional Artist, Educator, and Preparator for various organizations such as the Cincinnati Art Museum (OH), Bucknell University (PA), Artworks Cincinnati (OH), and Applied Imagination (KY). Linnemann recently showed at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, OH for the show Emerge and currently has a show in Columbus, OH at Roy G Biv Gallery titled Resilience. She works across media to develop a language surrounding mental health, growth, resilience, and joy. https://rachellinnemannart.com

Michael Stillion has MFA from Indiana University Graduate School of Fine Arts- Bloomington, Indiana and Bachelor of Fine Arts from Columbus College of Art and Design- Columbus, Ohio. He has participated in many solo and group exhibition and lectures nationally. 

Batres Gilvin, an artist collaborative in Greater Cincinnati, is comprised of Karla Batres and Bradly Gilvin, life partners who met in 2011 while studying at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. In a multiethnic partnership that joins the personal with the professional, Batres’ Mexican American heritage and Gilvin’s Southern American roots are a catalyst for complicated conversations about difference, otherness, and identity. In their Morning View, Kentucky studio located on the property of the Gilvin family farm and homestead, Batres Gilvin explores the local and global implications of immigration. Their artistic work is informed as much by larger, political conversations as it is by life on the farm and daily interactions with Bradly and Karla’s immediate and extended family. In Batres Gilvin’s artistic work art becomes life and vice versa. As a multiethnic collaborative, Batres Gilvin is a study in contradictions. Playful irreverence exists alongside unflinching solemnity. An unsparing commentary on the inequities of US immigration policy is wrapped in sparkly, kitschy imagery, providing a sugar-coated dose of truth serum, Mexican American style. In Batres Gilvin’s world, contradiction is both material and tool; it is also a reminder of the complexity of humans and the necessity of holding space for difficult conversations.