
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
Kayce is an artist educator, designer and mom. She studied Studio Art (and music, too!) at Florida State University, and earned her MFA from Memphis College of Art in Tennessee. Her practice is varied, working across media and collaborating with artists, writers, musicians, and community members to explore personal stories, histories, places, and art experience outside of institutional spaces. Kayce has over 15 years experience as an arts and design educator and is honored to spend her days with the amazing young people at The Chicago High School for the Arts! In all creative pursuits – as teacher, collaborator, maker – Kayce sees art as a place to inspire curiosity and critical literacy.
Whitney Bradshaw is an artist, activist, educator, curator, and former social worker. Bradshaw has been the head of the visual art conservatory at ChiArts since the fall of 2012. Bradshaw’s work has been exhibited widely including solo shows at the DePaul Art Museum (Chicago), The Lubeznik Center for the Arts (Michigan City, Indiana), The Tarble Arts Center at Eastern Illinois University, the Wave Pool Contemporary Art Fulfillment Center (Cincinnati), The Show Gallery (St Paul) and the Museum of Surgical Science (Chicago). Additionally, her work was curated into the Dock6 Design + Art 13, 2020 (Chicago), Female in Focus 2020 at the Center for Fine Art Photography (Fort Collins, Colorado), and the Terrain Biennial 2020 (Chicago). She has also shown work at Box 13 Artspace (Houston), James Kearney Campus Gallery at New Jersey State (Trenton), Iceberg Projects (Chicago), Brooks Stevens Gallery at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (Milwaukee), Gallery 400 at University of Illinois Chicago and the Midway Art Fair (Chicago). Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the DePaul Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago, Northwestern School of Law, the Sara M. and Michelle Vance Waddell Collection (Cincinnati), and numerous other private collections. Additionally, her work has 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, Esthetic Lens Magazine, the LA Times, The Calodian Record (Vermont), the Chicago Tribune, and WTTW’s Chicago Tonight did a segment on Bradshaw’s work in 2018.
Interdisciplinary artist born and raised on the southside of Chicago. I received a BA in Art & Design in 2016 from Columbia College Chicago and an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies in 2020 from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. My pedagogical approach reflects my work as an interdisciplinary artist invested in research, community, and “materials” that make up society. My art practice engages various modes of making from sculpture, printmaking, installation, performances, and material studies. My art practices are informed by a critical Black Queer lens, which is tied closely to my pedagogical method of teaching. Through a black queer lens I develop curriculum projects that ask students to investigate what is being hidden in the shadows of canonical events that often shape how students view the world. Through my artistic practice and pedagogical practice, I’m constantly influencing and being influenced by the world we live in. I value the unique potential of every learner, and foreground nurturing the students’ learning environments and imagination of expression.
A native of Buffalo, NY, Megan Greene graduated with honors from the University of Notre Dame in 1998, and earned an MFA degree from Rutgers University in 2002. Ms. Greene is represented by Regards in Chicago and Kinz Tillou Fine Art in New York. She is also the mother of twin girls.
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.
His work ranges from documenting community actions and protests to exploring personal narratives around grief and nostalgia. Working with a mixture of analog photography and digital, he believes in the power of storytelling and sees it as an inherently political process.
As a recent undergraduate from University of Illinois at Chicago, he continues to examine the crossroads of education, photography, and social movements through curriculum development, and youth programming.
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.
abalonemoney.com
Kera MacKenzie is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in film, video, live broadcast and installation. Her works have explored radical subjectivities, the mechanisms of empathy, suspense, liveness, and control. She has screened and exhibited at spaces including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Anthology Film Archives and UnionDocs (New York City), the MassArt Film Society (Boston), Microlights (Milwaukee), Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival, La lumière collective (Montreal), Cellular Cinema (Minneapolis), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, The Nightingale, and Chicago Underground Film Festival (all Chicago). Kera has been an artist in residence at The Luminary (St. Louis), ACRE (Wisconsin), Culturia (Berlin), and most recently at Signal Culture (Owego, NY). 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 live-streaming television network (ACRETV.org), and an educator.
Devin Mays holds a B.B.A in International Business and Marketing from Howard University. After receiving his degree, he worked in advertising developing brand strategies and commercials for the better part of a decade. He returned to school to pursue an M.F.A in studio practice from the University of Chicago where he graduated in 2016. There he began an auto-ethnographic exploration of material and memory, which he often refers to as gestures. Since then he has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Lowe Art Museum, University of Florida; Nahmad Projects, London; NADA Miami, DePaul Art Museum, Chicago; Regards Chicago and collaborated with the Rebuild Foundation as a designer and contributor for exhibitions and publications. He currently lives and works in Chicago, IL. http://regardsgallery.com/
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