Faculty

Whitney Bradshaw is an artist, educator, curator, social worker and mother. Bradshaw has been the chair of the visual art conservatory at ChiArts (the Chicago High School for the Arts) since fall of 2012. She was formerly the assistant curator of the renowned LaSalle Bank Photography Collection and the curator of photography for the Bank of America Collection. As a curator, she developed more than 40 exhibitions, which have been loaned to museums throughout the United States, Central and South America, Europe and Asia. While curating for 13 years, Bradshaw was an adjunct professor in the photography department at Columbia College Chicago where she taught both graduate and undergraduate courses in theory and criticism, color photography, senior seminar, etc. She received an MFA in photography in 2001. In 2003, she had a solo exhibition of herScar series at the International Museum of Surgical Science. After focusing many years on parenting, curating, and teaching Bradshaw is back in the studio and deeply invested in her work. In the Fall of 2018 Bradshaw had a solo exhibition of her Outcry project at the DePaul Art Museum September-December. This exhibition was written about in the Chicago Tribune and her process for this social practice project was illustrated on a segment for public TV, WTTW’s, Chicago Tonight. She also had a solo show of Outcry at the Tarble Arts Center at Eastern Illinois University and at The Show Gallery in the Twin Cities, both in 2019. The latter was reviewed on MPR’s Art Hounds and in the Star Tribune. Her photographs can be found in the permanent collections of the DePaul Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago, several private collectors, and have been published and/or reviewed in the New York Times, Columbia College’s 6×6 series, Time Out New York, New City, the MCA Chicago catalog for The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music 1965-Now, and the Chicago Tribune. In 1991 Bradshaw attained a BA in Sociology with a minor in Women’s Studies from Eastern Illinois, a program she spearheaded and was one of the first to graduate with a degree in. She also worked in various capacities as a social worker across the city of Chicago. In 2001 she was named one of the top 10 MFA candidates and awarded the College Art Association Regional MFA Exhibition at UIC’s Gallery 400. Some of her artwork can be viewed at whitneybradshaw.com

Melina Ausikaitis is a multidisciplinary artist and musician from Chicago. She has exhibited and performed all over the country and traveled the world playing in her band Joan of Arc. She is as much an inventor/historian as an artist. Check out her drawings, videos, sculptures, garments and Halloween costumes at melinaausikaitis.com

Originally from North Florida, Kayce received her BA in Studio Art and a Minor in Music from Florida State University. She went on to earn her MFA from the Memphis College of Art in Tennessee before moving to Chicago in 2005. An interdisciplinary artist working in drawing, objects, video, and performance, she exhibits nationwide and performs locally. Her biggest project to date combined many of her creative interests to revisit the vaudevillian form. The Great Fire: A Traveling Truck Show toured Chicago neighborhoods in October 2012 with a moving truck as a pop-up stage, engaging audiences with a bit of Chicago history, storytelling, music, and other wackiness. Kayce has over 10 years experience as an arts and design educator working with students of all ages. She is the other half of musical project Jacques Hammer & Wanda Drug and curatorial/production experiment Good Stuff House.  www.kaycebayer.com

Jeanne Donegan is an image based artist and educator living in Chicago. She received her BFA from the University of Connecticut, her home state, and her MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago. In 2016/2017 she held an artist residency at Lillstreet Art Center, where she is now the Director of the Photography Department and runs a photographic artist lecture series titled, Discourse. Her work has been exhibited at venues such as Hyde Park Art Center and Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, IL; The Pitch Project in Milwaukee, WI; The Madison Public Library in Madison, WI; and Honolulu Art Museum School in Honolulu, HI. She has been interviewed by various online and print publications such as Sixty Inches From Center, Wave-pool, Fotographia, Facets Features, and Art Ascent: Art & Literature Journal. Her experimental film works have screened in the Chicago Underground Film Festival at Logan Theater and Chicagoland Shorts Vol. 3, which premiered at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2017.

Megan Kalmes is an artist and educator living and working in Chicago. Megan works traditionally with oil on canvas. Her paintings are figurative and often depict a feminine protagonist entranced within her own psyche – a sort of psychological landscape. Megan loves art history and embraces the fundamentals of painting and drawing. She believes that figuration can be more than a reflection of the self or of society; transcending beyond mere representation to a place of greater sensitivity and call upon the nature of being. The act of self-reviewing is present in Megan’s personal work and in her teaching. Her painting practice informs her communication with students providing enrichment and development from a place of emotional investment. Megan has taught with the Early College Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at Clarke University in Dubuque, Iowa. Megan also has experience with after-school programming working with vulnerable and at-risk youth groups. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and Minor in Art History from Clarke University. Megan also holds Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Studio and an MFA in Painting from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Chris Lin is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago, working in media including films, books, puppetry, music, and installation. Born and raised in Taipei, Taiwan, he moved to British Columbia, Canada and received his BFA with honor from University of Victoria in 2005. After relocating to Chicago, Mr. Lin pursued an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and graduated in 2008. His exhibition history includes Contemporary Art Workshop, Eel Space, and OP Shop in Chicago, Verge Art Fair in New York, Deluge Contemporary Art and 50/50 Arts Collective in Victoria, BC, and Atlantic Centre for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, FL. His visual art and short stories has been published in Fiction At Work and Balliwik. Mr. Lin is the co-founder and collaborative director at Good Stuff House, a performance and publishing art collaborative, and the founding member and ukulele player of the folk-thrash-hop duo Hannis Pannis. www.cardboardish.com

Kera MacKenzie is an interdisciplinary artist who works with moving images, photography, sets, installations, performance and live broadcasts. She has screened and exhibited her work at spaces including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Edinburgh Artists’ Moving Image Festival, MassArt Film Society (Boston), Aurora Picture Show (Houston), High Desert Test Sites (New Mexico), The Luminary (St Louis) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago Underground Film Festival, and Links Hall (all Chicago). She received her MFA in Moving Image from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2013. Additionally, Kera is a Founding Co-Director of ACRE TV, an artist-made livestreaming tele-vision network (ACRETV.org), an educator, and a recent recipient of a UIC/UofC/SAIC Consortium Fellowship for the trans-disciplinary program Field Trip / Field Notes / Field Guide. keramackenzie.com 

A son of several places, Devin Mawdsley is proud to call Chicago home. He is a painter and a drawer who received his B.A. at the College of William and Mary in Chinese and an M.F.A in Studio Painting from Indiana University. He has experience in the visual arts, including drawing and digital photography, as well as language instruction, both Chinese and English. His recent exhibition history includes the Momenta Art Gallery in New York, Buy Art Not People in Chicago, as well as the Department of State, Art in Embassies program (Suva). You can find his work at www.devinmawdsley.com/.

Rebecca Memoli is a Chicago based photographer and curator.  She received her BFA in Photography from Pratt Institute in 2006 and soon after co-founded The Blood Dumpster Artist Collective in Brooklyn, NY. As a curator, Memoli has organized several group exhibitions and art happenings in New York, Kansas City and Chicago.  Her work has been shown in group art exhibitions throughout the US and in Chile.  She has had three solo exhibitions including one at the New York Public Library, Mulberry Branch. In 2017 Memoli received her MFA in Photography from Columbia College and received the Albert P. Weisman Award for her ongoing curatorial project, The Feeling is Mutual.  She currently works as a Teaching Artist at Lillstreet Art Center and Chicago Public School’s Advanced Art Program at Gallery 37.  Her gallery reviews can be read on the New Art Examiner website.

BFA, 2011, School of the Art Institute, Chicago, IL; MFA, 2016, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA. Exhibitions: NURTUREart Gallery, NYC; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Parson Paris Gallery, Paris; VideoFag, Toronto; Defibrillator, Chicago; Enemy, Chicago

Nick Wylie is an artist, administrator, and educator based in Chicago. He currently serves as Managing Director for Public Media Institute, where he helps takes care of a nonprofit art center (Co-Prosperity Sphere), a radio station (Lumpen Radio), and magazine publisher (Lumpen). Wylie received his BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, did post-baccalaureate work in Art History at Northwestern University, and went to the University of Illinois at Chicago for his MFA. In 2006 he co-founded Harold Arts, a Chicago-based non-profit arts organization with a residency in Ohio, and was its co-director until early 2010. He then co-founded ACRE (Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions), a 501(c)3 with residency in rural Wisconsin and an extensive exhibition program in Chicago. Wylie served as co-director of ACRE until moving to San Francisco and joining its Board of Directors in 2015. From 2015-18 he served as Associate Director Southern Exposure, a nonprofit, artist-run gallery, and art education space in San Francisco, and before that was from 2012-2015 the Founding Artistic Director at Mana Contemporary Chicago, a large art center in the Pilsen neighborhood. He has taught studio art and arts administration courses at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the University of St Francis. Wylie’s art practice, which incorporates video technology, performance, drawing, and queer futurity, has haunted galleries in Chicago and beyond for the past fifteen years. His work currently focuses on Elmer Ellsworth, a dandy abolitionist and lover of Lincoln, who was first to die in the Civil War after taking down a giant confederate flag flying in Alexandria VA. Mr. Wylie’s writings and projects can be found on publicmediainstitute.com