Faculty

Born and raised in Chicago, Ms. Stezalski received her B.F.A. in Film and Television from the Tisch School of the Arts of New York University in 1994. In 1996, she enrolled at the Florence Academy of Art in Italy to study classical drawing and painting. She returned to Chicago in 2000, where she became an instructor at the School of the Art Institute (SAIC) and the Urban Gateways Center for the Arts. She also served as the SAIC resident teaching artist in Advanced Placement Drawing and Painting at the Chicago Public Schools/Gallery 37 Advanced Arts Education Program. Ms. Stezalski continues to paint and is a recipient of a grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and received recognition as a teacher from the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited in the United States, England, Sweden, and Italy. http://www.DianaStezalski.net.

Nicole Northway moved to Chicago for graduate school.  She earned her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in May of 2008. She currently maintains a studio in Bridgeport as well as her Humbolt Park apartment. Her work has been recognized by the Union League Civic and Arts Foundation, whose support has helped her tremendously in transitioning into her professional career. Ms. Northway has been making and exhibiting work for nearly ten years in the cities of St. Louis and Chicago. Her work has been shown most recently in a solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Workshop. Her paintings have also been exhibited in the Next Fair at Art Chicago, Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts in St. Louis, and the Ah…Decadence show at the Sullivan Gallery. Ms. Northway also teaches at Columbia College and DePaul University.

Monica Balc was born and raised in Bucharest, Romania. She attended “Liceul Nicolae Tonitza,” an art high school. A year after her admittance to Universitatea de Arta in Bucharest, she moved to Arizona. She obtained a B.F.A. from Arizona State University in 1996. A year later, Ms. Balc moved to Chicago where she obtained an M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her selected exhibits include: Juried Shows: Knoxville Art Museum (TN); Old Town Art Fair (IL); Women Made Gallery (IL); Beverly Arts Center (IL); Suburban Fine Arts Center (IL); Three Arts Club (IL); Solo Shows: Galeria 003 (Bucharest); Lee Dulgar Gallery (IL); Selected Group Shows: North Park University (IL), Artemisia Gallery (IL); ARC Gallery (IL); Contemporary Art Workshop, Chicago (IL); School of the Art Institute of Chicago (IL). Currently, Ms. Balc teaches art and works as an independent artist. http://www.chicagosculpture.com.

Joel Wanek is a Chicago-based photographer and educator. He teaches photography at many of the city's premier arts organizations, including the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Center for Community Arts Partnerships, Marwen Foundation and the Hyde Park Arts Center. His photographs have been featured in a variety of publications including Stop Smiling, DownBeat, Jazz Times, Chicago Sun-Times, The Chicago Reader, ZoneZero, Vibrations (France) & The New Cosmos of Photography (Japan). Mr. Wanek has participated in group shows at Bucket Rider Gallery and The Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, and CENART in Mexico City. He holds a B.F.A. in Photography & Cinematography from Webster University in St. Louis and has carried out advanced studies at The Center for Documentary Studies at both Duke University and Columbia College Chicago. http://www.joelwanek.com

Born in Vermont, Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford received his M.F.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2009. He has taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the British Institute and co-directed the Children's Expressive Arts Project, a not-for-profit that works domestically and internationally to effect change through the arts. Recently he spent a year living and working in Sicily as a Fulbright Scholar where he carried out a project that spanned teaching art to underprivileged teens, studying traditional boat building, and staging a reenactment of Ulysses escaping from the Cyclops Polyphemus on a large-scale floating sculpture. His work has been exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center, Mess Hall and Gallery 400, among other spaces.

Iain Muirhead is a contemporary visual artist and an entrepreneur. He received his B.F.A. in 1996 from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) with emphasis in studio arts, design, and exhibition studies. He is a founding partner at NFA SPACE, a pioneering artist run space programming curated exhibits of contemporary emerging artists from 1996 through 2002. The project has received critical attention in leading art industry publications such as Art Forum, Art in America, Art Papers, and Sculpture Magazine and was featured in the 2009 Hyde Park Art Center exhibit Artists Run Chicago. Mr. Muirhead maintains a contemporary studio practice with roots in painting and performance. He was awarded professional artist residencies at The Cliff Dwellers Club in 2006 and The Ragdale Foundation in 2008. He works both individually and collaboratively, recently creating site specific installations with the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) and an ongoing project titled Chon Ji Dojang, an environment devoted to the study of Korean martial arts and violence prevention located in Chicago's Ravenswood neighborhood. In Chicago, he exhibited at Northern Illinois University, Evanston Art Center, Beacon Street Gallery and Performance Space, Dogmatic Gallery, and Deluxe Projects, among others. http://www.iainmuirhead.com

Ryan Swanson is a visual artist and designer. He received a BFA degree from Savannah College of Art and Design and an MFA degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His exhibition history includes the Chicago Cultural Center, The Shelburne Museum in Vermont, Rowland Contemporary Gallery, and the Hyde Park Art Center. Mr. Swanson has also worked as a graphic designer for over ten years. He currently designs in web and print, for a variety of clients, in addition to his art practice and teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. http://ryanswansondesign.com

W. Keith Brown is a Chicago-based art educator, researcher, and writer, whose practices center on contemporary art education, visual studies, visual arts research, and postmodern art history, theory, and criticism. In 2003, Mr. Brown received a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art (BAFA) from the University of Kentucky. In 2007, he earned a Masters of Arts in Art Education (MAAE) from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2010, Mr. Brown received a Master of Education (Med) and Illinois State certificate in secondary visual art instruction from DePaul University. Aside from being an art history teacher at ChiArts, Mr. Brown is also a contributor to the artist-pedagogical collective, Stockyard Institute, founder of the Critical Visual Art Education (CVAE) Club, an art critic for Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art's Chicago division, contributor to Proximity Magazine, and editor for the Illinois Art Education Association (IAEA). http://www.williamkeithbrown.com/