Peter Fagundo

BIO: Adjunct Associate Professor: Painting and Drawing, Contemporary Practices (2008) BS, 1997, Regis University, Denver, CO; MFA, 2003, Trustee Merit Scholar in Painting and Drawing, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL Exhibitions: Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; NADA Miami, Miami, Devening Projects, Chicago; Trinity College, Palos Heights; Franklin Hudson, New York; Bike Room, Chicago; Three Walls, Chicago; Boom, Oak Park. Publications: Newcity Chicago, Chicago Tribune Curatorial: ETF (Essential Transmutation Frequency) Evanston,IL; The Pond, Chicago, IL

ARTIST STATEMENT: These Paintings are a response external and internal changes; cultural, seasonal, political, personal... weather patterns

Jesse Freeman

BIO: Jesse Freeman is an American visual artist and writer based in Tokyo. His mediums include photography, filmmaking, collage, and ikebana under the Sogetsu school.

ARTIST STATEMENT: I am nothing in particular. I just have an idea and see which medium is best to express it … and offer my perspective.

Grant Gasser

BIO: Grant Gasser (b. 1997) is an artist / graphic designer originally from Cleveland, Ohio. He is currently working and living in Nashville, Tennessee. His work spans from digital design to painting to electronic music.

ARTIST STATEMENT: His work aims to highlight an improvisational style within a seemingly structured world, graphic design. His work consists of digital and photographic aesthetics which are manipulated and distorted to reveal their bones. While converting these digital works to a printed form, his goal is to humanize and materialize their texture and depth. He pulls (literally) from media around him comparable to how a beat maker samples sounds.

Tansy Hargan

BIO: Tansy Hargan is a British and Irish textile artist, based in the U.K.  She has a BA (hons) Architecture (Thames Polytechnic, London, 1991) and an MA Landscape Architecture (University of Sheffield, 2008).  Tansy became a chartered landscape architect in 2012 and worked in post-industrial regeneration until 2017.  Through all of this, drawing and textiles have been her principle media.

ARTIST STATEMENT: My work is the result of a long-term critical observation of landscapes and ecological processes.   I explore urban and rural places with my sketchbook, making brisk marks and colour blocks to simplify and record snapshots of what I experience.  Repetition and annotation are important parts of my practice, both in helping me see and understand concepts and typologies and as a way of generating multiple compositions for distinct bodies of work.  My mixed media palette is an allusion to the materials and mechanisms of landscape: it is layered and adapted, diverse and inventive.  I deconstruct old garments to harvest high quality fabrics, which I combine with utility textiles and commercial by-products, such as tailors’ waste.  My methods mimic geophysical activity, as I alter reclaimed textiles by staining, bleaching, scraping, scoring, and slashing.  My work develops in stages, with layers added and taken away repeatedly, and traces of past iterations visible through and between subsequent veils and fibres.

Mark Holt

BIO: Mark Holt, born and raised in Long Beach, California, is a Chicago-based musician and sound artist. His creative work manifests as analog and electronic studio compositions, improvisational instrumental outbursts, performance, interactive sound installations, and sound design and scores for experimental short films. As an improvisational “composer,” Holt creates ephemeral pieces that function as “snap jams.” He was co-director of the alternative project space INTERSECT.

ARTIST STATEMENT: Working in analog with the goal of activating psychological responses from the viewer, I create sounds by manipulating voice, vibrations and harmonies through analog synthesizers, custom mechanical instruments, de-tuning string instruments and adding acoustic distortions to percussion. My current interests find me creating looping cassettes by recording on cassette then disassembling the bodies and cutting and splicing tape to various lengths, and building small objects and sculptures from vintage recorders, cassette tapes, wire, metal rods, metal plates, speakers and electric motors. The motors explore mechanical rhythm, shift and blur the location of the sound, and encourage a questioning of the familiarity of the space. I also record with vintage equipment and recondition traditional acoustic and electric musical instruments to create nonconventional sounds. I am interested in the kinetic possibilities and psychological effects of sound, and my work prompts viewers to introspect and discover while encouraging a subjective experience.

Dan Landgren

BIO: ​I'm Dan, a motion and graphic designer based in Chicago. I graduated from DePaul University with a BFA in Graphic Design and a minor in Animation. As a multi-disciplinary designer, artist, and printmaker I have experience in 2D/3D animation, UX/UI design, videography + photography, bookmaking, screen printing, and risography. The driving force behind my work is experimentation and learning.

ARTIST STATEMENT: ​“Part Whole” is a 12 page zine that was inspired by going on walks. Walking is super therapeutic for me and allows me to decompress my anxiety and stress of the day whether it be from working or life in general. My thought process has always been pretty scattered (especially on walks) and I wanted to try and recreate that feeling in a short form story.

Benjamin Merritt

BIO:  I am a printmaker based in Minneapolis with a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. Since graduating in 2019 I have been a Jerome Emerging Printmakers Resident at Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis & a Resident Artist at Spudnik Press in Chicago.

ARTIST STATEMENT:  My work affirms & celebrates the experience of chronic illness & disability through text & printmaking. I make copperplate etchings, scraping away & altering the copper to show a long history of marks on the final print. This markmaking is bodily & visceral, a translation of lived experience into inscription.

I relate the arduous processes of printmaking to living with a chronic illness. The labor & time behind making a print is often unseen & unknown. Similarly, folks who live with disabilities or chronic illnesses are expected to cloak the way their bodies operate in favor of assimilating to the norm. Often, folks with invisible disabilities are accused of lying, expected to ‘out’ themselves or prove to others that they are disabled. This labor is reenacted & made physical in the act of making a print.

Michal Orzechowski

BIO: My name is Michał Orzechowski. I was born in Poland, in 1983. I live and work in Lodz city. I graduated from Lodz Film School, studying Animation and Film Special Effects. Prior to film school, I studied for a year at the Academy of Fine Arts.

ARTIST STATEMENT: I hope my works speak for themselves.

Juan Arango Palacios

BIO: Juan Arango Palacios was born in Pereira, Colombia, and was raised in a traditional Catholic home. Their traditional upbringing was cut short by a series of migrations that their family took seeking a better future. The family moved from Colombia to southern Louisiana where Juan’s sense of identity and belonging began to be skewed by their lack of knowledge of the English language, their unfamiliarity with American culture, and their internal struggle with a queer identity. Living in other parts of Louisiana and Texas, and being further subdued by the conservative culture in which they lived, Juan continued to live with a constant fear of their own identity throughout their youth. Juan currently studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has found a safe-haven within the queer community in Chicago.

ARTIST STATEMENT: As a queer body that was raised in a post-colonial context in Colombia, my identity was shaped in the shadows of North American normativity. My sense of self was further confounded by a series of migrations that my family experienced in search of work and a more prosperous future. Moving through varying homophobic and misogynistic cultures in Louisiana and Texas, I have formed a disembodied identity that is not attached to any specific homeland and has always been challenged by the general norm.

My practice works towards addressing the lived experiences of ambulant queer identities that have been marginalized within a diasporic or migratory context. Through the fluid and boundless medium of paint, I have been able to represent memories,places, people, and archetypes that I associate with the safety, survival, and endurance of queer bodies in spaces that challenge their existence. Also, through the process of weaving I am producing narrative objects that aim at expressing the stories of individuals within a similar context. Placing emphasis on color and composition, my work aims at creating images glorifying and fantasizing the idea of safety in a queer experience.

Tracie Peisley

BIO: Peisley’s work is intense, highly charged with an emotional content that relates to the everyday drama of existing.

An experienced Artist, she qualified with a BA(hons) in Fine Art at Bath Academy 1988, MA at City Of Birmingham Polytechnic 1989 and MA in Art Psychotherapy in 2006 at Hertfordshire University.

A rigorous training in drawing with Arthur Neil and lively discourse in feminism at Bath Academy, she positions herself alongside contemporary Women Artists, exploring themes of intimacy, storytelling, identity, vulnerability and shame. What it is to be human…passionate, poetic and wanting to soothe others peisley pulls the viewer into personal dialogue through imagery and form that cuts to s symbolic resonance that hits the back of the psyche with a sometimes awkward acknowledgement that something that the artist needed to be flagged has been captured.

Studying Art Therapy liberated her to work in different media and trust an intuitive process led by her unconscious. The training validated the significance of authentic expression to tell her truth which speaks to universal truths. In 2003 at Hertfordshire she used ceramics to explore themes of intimacy and female potency. She developed her bright and lyrical style and applied it to build a portfolio of work in porcelain, alongside vibrant figurative paintings.

Psychological break down 25 years ago took her to Greece for self-directed wilderness therapy. Learning the language she immersed herself in Greek culture, nature and art. She dedicates part of the year in Greece, studying the ancient collections of Greek and Etruscan Art which influences her drawing, ceramics and strong personal narrative.

Her work can be viewed on her website,www.traciepeisley.com and Instagram @peisleyart.

ARTIST STATEMENT: This series of sculptures mostly made in 2020 Peisley affectionally calls the unloveables. They are the outsiders, the performers and artisans, the extraordinary characters that together find acceptance and ease with their individual differences in a family like troupe.

Made from her unconscious you could say they are like figures from dreams all appearing with something to express about personality and unresolved relationships with self and others.

Rory Scott

BIO: Rory Scott is a multidisciplinary artist, whose work is recognized for its use of patterns, glitter and for its likeness to the Universe. Through both digital and handmade means, Scott explores the ideas of impermanence, the passage of time and the impacts of technology upon the evolution of humanity. Through recorded thoughts, sounds and use of retro sci-fi imagery, her work confronts and reconciles the passage of time by juxtaposing the old with the new. The prominence of patterns in her work, draws parallels between the existence of patterns in nature and in the rhythm of our thoughts and lives. Illustrating repetition creates form over time.

ARTIST STATEMENT: My body of work is a constant exploration of impermanence, the passage of time, the impacts of technology and patterns upon our lives. The prominence of patterns in my work, draws parallels between the existence of patterns in nature and in the rhythm of our thoughts and lives.

My desire is to communicate that every mark we make consistently over time, results in form both visually and as the fabric of our lives. If we can give value to the seemingly insignificant decisions/thoughts we make each day, we can harness the power of these moments to create positive change & live more deliberate and meaningful lives. 

Aleksandar Veljkovic

BIO: Born in 1994 in Belgrade, Veljkovic finished his studies in graphic design in 2017 at the University of Higher Education "Belgrade Polytechnic", and is currently in his fourth year of painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Arts in Belgrade. He participated in the project "restART in Nature" in 2019 in Italy, "Mobility of youth workers" in 2014 in Italy, comic workshop "Deliblaticum" in Deliblato Sands.

He has had several solo, group and online exhibitions, the most important of which are "Platypus", a group exhibition at Graphic Collective in Belgrade/Serbia in 2020, “34. October Art Salon” a group exhibition at Cultural Center,Kovin/Serbia in 2020, "Exhibition of finalists", a group exhibition at the National Museum in Pančevo/Serbia in 2019, "Drawings and works on paper", a solo exhibition at Home of Youth in Pančevo/Serbia in 2018, "Atelier", a group exhibition in Pancevo’s City Library in Serbia in 2017, and "Drawings", a solo exhibition at Home of Youth in 2014.

ARTIST STATEMENT: In my artistic practice, I freely combine different modern and traditional techniques and media. Some of my favorites are the following: digital collage, vector graphics, aquatint, inkwash, oil on canvas, watercolor, etc.

I believe that the artist today, in his artistic expression, can use the experience from all fields of the previous artistic heritage, both in terms of technique and materials, and in terms of poetry, and to incorporate them in his work in some way. That is why I strive to master as many techniques and media as possible. I often use ink and pen drawings as a template for digital graphics (vector graphics), then in the reverse process I transpose that digital work into acrylic or oil. In addition to this process, during drawing, I deal with human analysis, which is a motif that often inspires me. "Who is he?", "What are you thinking about?", "What is he facing in life?" - these are the questions I try to answer while drawing someone.

Caleb Yono

BIO: Caleb Yono (they/them) b. 1981 Ann Arbor MI.  MFA 2015 SAIC.

Caleb has exhibited and performed extensively with in Chicago and Mexico City. Their work was featured in several exhibitions at key galleries and museums, including the Roots & Culture and the Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Monya Rowe, and The Leather Archives and Museum. 

ARTIST STATEMENT: Caleb Yono works with representations of figures caught in moments of transformation and transmutation. Caleb's works on paper, performances, photographs, videos, and objects; hope to understand and process the dissonance and harmony of the feminine, femme, and hysteric.