Welcome to the BareWalls 2009 Participating Artist Gallery

We want to thank all of the artists below who so generously contributed their work to the BareWalls 2009 silent auction.


Margaret Abbott-Trboyevic, MFA, 1977




After working in etching and mezzotint, coaxing light out of deep darkness, Margaret Abbott-Trboyevic finds oil painting now gives her great flexibility and a variety of effects. It has now become her preferred medium. She has exhibited in Portugal and the United States in both private and group exhibitions and has also participated in BareWalls for the past five years. Her work is in collections in the United States, Canada, Holland France, Mexico and Portugal.



Inez Abrahamson, BFA, 1950




Inez Abrahamson is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has taught painting and ceramics over the years at TAC (formerly, The Suburban Fine Arts Center), Deerfield Art Studio, the YMCA, and the Highland Park Senior Center. Abrahamson has exhibited widely at venues including the Suburban Fine Arts Center, the Depot Museum in Beverly Shores, Indiana, and various group shows and art fairs in Old Orchard, Hyde Park, Port Clinton, and Oak Brook.



Carmel Anderson, BFA, 1985


Carmel Anderson received her BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago with a focus in fashion design. After many successful years as a fashion designer, she returned to her passion of painting. Over the years she has worked hard to create her own style of painting by pushing the boundaries of traditional watercolor technique. By mixing in other media, Anderson has been able to create colorful, textural work with a transparency in a style that is loose and open to surprise.

 

Shira Avni, MFA, 2003




Award-winning animation filmmaker Shira Avni has worked at the National Film Board of Canada since 1997, and is an Assistant Professor of Animation/Cinema at Concordia University. She holds an MFA in Film/Video/New Media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her recent film, John and Michael, has shown in over 60 festivals worldwide and garnered eighteen international awards, as well as screenings on PBS, CBC, and TV5 television networks. Tying Your Own Shoes, Avni’s new short animated documentary is currently in production at the National Film Board of Canada.  Shira Avni lives happily in Montreal with puppeteer Salim Hammad and their very fat cat.



Joy Appenzeller Bauer, BFA, 1995




Ben Fain




Ben Fain is a Chicago based artist that has exhibited locally and internationally. He is best know for his large scale public performances and parades. He has received numerous awards and prizes including a full merit scholarship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a fellowship to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (along with the art collective Dos Pestañeos, whom he has been a member of since 2002), and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Residency Grant. He has taught at the School of the Art institute of Chicago and currently co-runs Alogon Gallery. (www.benfain.com)



Lorna Filippini-Mulliken, BFA




Lorna Filippini-Mulliken received her BFA from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago and graduated with hopes of a career in fashion. Instead of fashion, she found herself working in textile conservation. In July of 2005, she retired from a position as a textile conservator at the Art Institute of Chicago and has returned to painting.



Shellie Fiocca, MFA, 2006




Shellie Fiocca received her BFA form Bowling Green University and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently lives and works in Chicago as a web designer and visual artist.



Nicole Kristiana FitzGibbon, BFA, 2005




Nicole Kristiana FitzGibbon received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BA from Bryn Mawr College with a concentration in Fine Art and Art History. She was born in New York and lived most of her life in the Philadelphia area. She now resides in Bellefonte, a suburb of Wilmington, Delaware. She takes wonderment in her surroundings both at home and around the world. She has visited fifteen states and nine countries and she has visually recorded the experience in each location. Recently her work was published as the cover of Philadelphia Stories Magazine.



Joan Fitzsimmons, MFA, 1977





Joan Fitzsimmons received her BFA from the Washington University School of Fine Arts in St. Louis and her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is presently a Professor of Art at Norwalk Community College. She has taught photography at Fairfield University and Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven and for five years she conducted an art program at Webster Correctional Institute in Cheshire, CT. She has had solo exhibitions at The Discovery Museum in Bridgeport, 4th Street Photo in New York, and Randolph Street Gallery in Chicago. She has also exhibited at Transmission Gallery in Glasgow, Scotland, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her work is in the collections at The Brooklyn Museum of American Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as well as, in various other private and public collections.



Amanda Lee Franck, BFA, 2009




Amanda Lee Franck grew up in Chicago. She makes paintings that develop from the impulse to collect and categorize experience. Her process is informed by her volunteer work in the insect collection at the Field Museum. Franck is inspired by the attempt to archive the world, by the way the passage of time obscures and saturates, and by the unintended effects of a natural history diorama. The paintings she creates are unreliable documents of landscapes and events that are recorded in writing, and later reconstructed as visual images.



Wendee Goles, BFA, 2004




Wendee Goles was born in Phoenix Arizona and started painting at the age of fourteen. At age nineteen she came to Chicago to live and work. For eight years she waited tables while painting canvases, guitars, murals, sewing custom scarves and drawing portraits for her customers. She then attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for six years and spent many of those years studying with Karl Wirsum. She currently lives in Villa Park, Illinois with her husband Steve and her two small children Ryley and Franky.



Larry W. Green, BFA, 1975 




Larry W. Green was born in Terre Haute Indiana and studied under Jon Laskay at the Indiana State University Laboratory School. She attended the School of the Art Institution of Chicago from 1971 to 1975 and received a BFA in 1975 in Printmaking and Painting. Green has had numerous shows through out the United States and Chicago.



Jonathan Green
www.jonathangreenstudios.com

Jonathan Green has a passion for creating and collecting cross-cultural fine art representing the themes of work, love, belonging and spirituality. He is also committed to promoting cross-cultural arts to be included in mainstream museums throughout the United States and Europe.

He has a drive to enhance the visibility, perceptions, and recognition of professional visual artists of African American, Caribbean, Latin American descent for their cultural contributions to this nation. He strives to show such contributions as they are specifically noted in the use of the artists’ creations in the areas of education, health, performing arts, business, and the environment.


Nadine Guerrera, BFA, 1999, MFA, 2002




Nadine Guerrera was born in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1973. She received a BFA from Albertus Magnus College in New Haven and a second BFA and MFA in Studio Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has screened work in the NAP Video Biennale, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Paula Cooper Gallery. She also has exhibited in the Soho20 Gallery in NY and other galleries in Chicago and Connecticut. She currently lies and works in New York City.



Ashley Hagen, BFA, 1999




Ashley Hagen began her painting career in Ames, Iowa at the age of two when her mother took painting classes at Iowa State University and brought her along to paint by her side. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently she lives and works as an artist and art instructor in Los Angeles, California.



Andrew Hannigan, MAAT, 2009


Andrew Hannigan received his BA from DePaul University and his Masters of Arts in Art Therapy degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His main concentration is drawing and painting in which he explores where the historical formal elements of image-making sit alongside a range of odd juxtapositions of partial subject.



Daphne Vickers Hill, MAAE, 2002




Daphne Vickers Hill received her BA in studio art from Indiana University and her Master of Arts in Art Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently teaches studio art at Proviso East High School in Maywood, Illinois. She is also in the process of creating a body of artwork for exhibition.



Eric Hill, BFA, 2002




Eric Hill studied painting and drawing at Interlochen Center for the Arts Summer Program before attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he received his BFA with Professional Certificate in Art Education K-12. Hill currently teaches Visual Art at Lincoln Park High School.   His work has primarily been exhibited in and around Chicago, but it has also been exhibited in Kentucky, New Mexico, Michigan, and Maine.



Leo Holub



A pioneer of photography as a fine art, Leo Holub co-founded the photography department at Stanford University in 1962 and built out the program's studios and darkroom facilities himself. Leo Holub's black and white photographs include images over the past 70 years, showing San Francisco as it once was seen through his eyes. His photographs are on display in the M.H. de Young and Modern Art Museums in San Francisco. He began shooting photographs of daily life when he received his first camera in 1930, when photography was only beginning to be accepted as an art form. His work poetically depicts life in the Bay Area since the mid-twentieth century. Leo attended the now historic F-64 group exhibition at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in 1932 that exhibited works by pioneering photographers such as Ansel Adams and Imogen Cunningham, who later became colleagues of Leo's. Holub designed Adams' 1963 book, An Introduction to Hawaii and the catalog for Adams' 1963 show at the M.H. de Young Museum. Leo is not only an excellent photographer but is also an intrinsic part of San Francisco's history in the 20th Century.




Kate Hoyer, BFA, 1995




Kate Hoyer has exhibited at the Davis Art Advisory in Nashville, Gallery 57 in Highwood, Illinois, the Horizon Gallery in Santa Fe and at the Oakbrook Center. Her style of painting started by playing with color schemes back in the early 1980's. Initially, she would create abstract drawings with stripes but then Hoyer had an epiphany—she wanted to combine the design of stripes with a recognizable subject giving something ordinary a unique presences.



Diane Minicucci Huff, BFA, 1969




Diane Minicucci Huff received her BFA in Fashion Design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After working in retail for a few years, she married and raised a family. During those years, she explored the art of ceramics--always searching for unique colors in glazes that painters could achieve with ease. In the past decade she utilized a method of working with colored liquid clay that combines both clay and painting. These are her clay mono-prints. She currently works in canvas and oils. More of her work can be viewed at DianeHuff.com.



Doug Huston




Professor, Printmedia (1976). BFA, 1971, Michigan State University; MFA, 1975, Cranbrook Academy of Art. Former poodlebass player with Poly Mer and the Emulsions. Collections: In 11 nations around the globe, and Brooklyn Museum, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Detroit Institute of Art, Art Institute of Chicago. Bibliography: New Art Examiner, Print Magazine, Art News, The Journal of the Mid America Print Council, NBC Evening News. Award: NEA Grant.



Sung Jang, BFA, 2000, Faculty




Sung Jang received his BFA with focus in sculpture from the school of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000 and his Masters in Design from Domus Academy in Milano, Italy in 2005. He currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in designed objects department. As both artist and designer, Jang has worked for renowned clients such as Samsung and Louis Vuitton and has exhibited internationally.


Tracy G. Jones, BFA, 1998 




Tracy G. Jones was born in Indianapolis and received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has exhibited at National City Bank and REFCO Group Ltd in Chicago. He currently lives and works in Chicago. More of his work can be seen at www.tracygjones.com.



April Jouse, BFA, 2006






April Jouse graduated from the School of the Art Institute in 2006 and continues to create work in her Chicago-based home and in local print shops.



Barbara Miller Kapp, BFA, 1970




Born and raised in Chicago, Barbara Miller Kapp’s grandmother gave her first sketchbook to her at an early age. She received her BFA in printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1970. She has been a full-time mom, taught art at a grammar school, directed a gallery specializing in prints, and owned her own gallery/gift shop specializing in image rubber stamps. Kapp is currently a performing member in a Gamelan (Javanese percussion) ensemble and the Near Eastern Rhythms ensemble and is also employed as an assistant to an orchestra leader.


seung jae kim, MFA, 2006




seung jae kim was born in South Korea where he received his BFA. He got his MFA in photography from the School Art Institute of Chicago in 2006 and has exhibited in Los Angeles, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Toronto, Azerbaijan, China and Korea. Kim has received fellowships from Nippon steel and the Vermont studio center and has had residencies in New York, Vermont and Nebraska. He currently lives and works in Chicago.



Jin Soo Kim





Kathleen King, BFA, 1973, MFA, 1977




Kathleen King is a Chicago based artist exhibiting her work in New York City and Chicago. Her artworks are in several private and public collections in the United States and internationally. King recently taught at Korea University in Seoul as a visiting adjunct professor in the International Summer Campus Program. She also is on the board of the Skopelos Art Foundation in Greece and has held workshops as a visiting artist there.


Jordie Krimstein



Ellen Lanyon, BFA




Ellen Lanyon was born in Chicago and has studied at the University of Chicago, Roosevelt College, and the Courault Institute of the University of London. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA form the University of Iowa. She has exhibited in more than 70 solo exhibitions including those organized by The Fort Wayne Art Museum, The Madison Art Center, the University of California at Davis, Penn State Museum, the Blaffer and N.A.M.E. Gallery in Chicago.



Margie Lawrence, BFA




Margie Lawrence was born in Chicago and received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has also studied at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Drake University in Des Moines, and at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Eugene O'Neill Theater Institute in Waterford, Connecticut. She is in both public and private collections including the Sun Times collection, the Baseball Hall of Fame collection in Cooperstown and the Murphy's Bleacher collection. Lawrence is an avid baseball fan. Since 1988 she has attended at least 800 Cubs games.


Alex M. Lee, BFA, 2005, MFA 2009




Alex M. Lee an artist who works with new media and photography in order to explore ideas about perception, truth, reality, and fiction. He received his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009. He has exhibited internationally as well as within the United States at venues including February Gallery in Chicago, Mio Photo in Osaka, Japan, the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, and the Doubner Space in the Czech Republic. He currently lives and works in Chicago.



Joowon Lee, MFA




Joowon Lee is a digital painting artist. Lee received her MFA in Visual Communications at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was the winner of the SAIC Trustees Full Scholarship. After graduation, she taught design at the University of Missouri-Columbia and has participated in the Chicago Mayor's Special Project from the City of Chicago-Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. Currently, Lee teaches in South Korea at Hongik University and Yonsei University.



Kim Leutwyler, BFA, 2009




Kim Leutwyler is a Chicago-based artist who works in a variety of media including painting, installation, ceramics, print media, and drawing. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States, and she is part of the permanent collection at the Naestved Cultural Center in Denmark. Never residing in one place for more than a few years, Kim has traveled extensively throughout North America, the European continent, Asia and the South Pacific region. She holds concurrent degrees in studio and art history from Arizona State University, and recently graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a painting and drawing degree.



Karin Lowney-Seed, BFA, 1984, MFA, 1986





Karin Lowney-Seed is an award-winning fine artist with a sharp narrative style of painting. She has been the featured artist in many shows and has had several one-person shows. She has recently been featured on a book cover and plans to publish a children’s book that she wrote and illustrated. Her interior design business, My Interior, has been recognized and showcased on the cover of several national magazine publications.



Jim Lutes


Jim Lutes is a professor of Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He received his BA from Washington State University and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has exhibited internationally and nationally for over 20 years. His work has been included in the Whitney Biennial, Documenta, and the Corcoran Biennial. He has recently had a retrospective at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago and exhibited at the Kinkead Contemporary in Los Angeles. He currently lives and works in Chicago.



Kimberly Madison, BFA, 1998





Kimberly Madison is all for bright colors and textures! She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has been commissioned to create paintings for numerous private collections and this year she became the featured artist for the 2009 Smart Talk Series and Alpha Kappa Alpha's feature artist during their Founder's Day Conference. She is active in community service and her artwork has benefited several charities. Most recently she helped raise funds for the Kenya Greenbelt Project and she also volunteers her time and artwork to Children & Families First’s youth art programs teaching under-privileged children confidence through art.



W.K. Marhoefer, MFA, 1979




In 1970, W.K. Marhoefer received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. During the 1970's Marhoefer’s work was included in numerous galleries including the Hyde Park Art Center, and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1980, Marhoefer and his wife, Michelle, who is also an artist, opened a studio in Chicago specializing in the restoration of porcelain, pottery, and sculptural art objects. Broken Art Restoration has a nationwide reputation of excellence and restores 1200 to 1500 art objects per year. For the past 20 years, William has continued to make art, and exhibited his work only occasionally because of the time demands of Broken Art Restoration. In 2006, he decided it was time to show again, and has been with Ann Nathan Gallery in River North as well had two solo exhibitions at the Architrouve gallery on West Chicago Avenue.



Mark E Mattson, BAE, 1967, MFA, 1970




Mark E. Mattson received his Bachelors in Art Education and is Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art institute of Chicago. He has always worked as an Art teacher, teaching at Maine West in Des Plaines Illinois, the Disney Magnet School in Chicago, and Francis W Parker School in Chicago, where he is the Chair of the Visual Arts department. During his lifelong teaching career, painting has informed his teaching and teaching has challenged his painting.



Carl McGrady




Carl McGrady studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Chicago and Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. Japan has been his greatest single artistic influence. There he studied the Ukiyo-e Masters and was mentored by great Japanese Artists such as Unichi Hiratsuka and Shiko Munakata, Japan’s Masters of black and white modern prints. McGrady’s work has been imbued with this tradition.



Barbara Lazarus Metz, MFA, 1977





Barbara Lazarus Metz received her MFA in printmaking in 1977 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1983, she co-founded and then directed Artists Book Works, a facility to advance the art of the book, until it merged with Paper Press and became the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts in 1994. She has taught the art of the book at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Loyola University, Columbia College and various art centers and colleges throughout the country.


Steven Thomas Miller, Faculty




Steven Thomas Miller was born in Flint, Michigan and received his BFA from the Art Center College of Design. He has taught at the Art Center and the Otis/Parsons School of Art and currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was a featured artist for Nordstroms from 1988-1995 and has pieces in the collections of Blue Cross Blue Shield, Northwest University, Exxon, and RR Donnelly. He is represented by Zoe Gallery and a part of the Joliet Downtown Artist Alliance Group. Miller is currently working on finishing his first book on the Art of Illustrating Fashion Accessories for Laurence King Publishing. He has also worked extensively with Prismacolor art products helping to develop and test new products. He lives in the south suburbs of Chicago with his wife and 2 of his 3 adult children.



William K. Moore, BFA, 1976




William K. Moore was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan and received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently he resides in Chicago after a thirty-year adventure outside of the state of Illinois. His admiration for the Chicago Imagist movement of the late 60s and its influence on him has provided a source of high energy and inspiration throughout those thirty years. Moore has always recognized and prized his Chicago roots and his painting heroes.



Takeshi Moro, MFA, 2008




Takeshi Moro was born in Tokyo Japan and is currently residing in Toledo Ohio. He attended Brown University in Rhode Island where he received his BA in 2001 and received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. After graduating Takeshi taught at Bowling Green State University in Ohio as a full-time faculty member in the photography department. He is currently working as an Assistant Professor of Photography and Digital Media at Otterbein College in Ohio.



Jeff Musser




Jeff Musser’s subject matter is very diverse. He explores everything from floral still-lives to personal loss, and issues of body image to portraits of art icons like Wayne Theibaud/Mel Ramos. His new direction reflects his interest in the art of tattooing examining why people use the ideas an imagery of others to express who they are in such a permanent medium.



Kori Newkirk


Born in the Bronx, Kori Newkirk makes work out of hair extensions, pony beads, and pomade, investigaing cultural ideas and images of beauty, expanding his practice to include everything from neon lights to fiberglass sharks. In 2008, the Studio Museum in Harlem honored him with a 10-year retrospective of his work.

Kori Newkirk is a visual artist working in mixed-media and installation. He was born in the Bronx and spent the majority of his youth in Central New York. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Art Institute of Chicago, and his Master of Fine Arts degree as a Chancellor's Fellow in the Studio Art program at the University of California at Irvine.



Ray Noland, BFA, 1995



Ray Noland aka CRO received his BFA in 1995 form the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After graduating he worked as a graphic designer primarily in the music and nightlife industry. In 1998 Noland moved to Seattle and subsequently Los Angeles where he lived and worked for two years in print and motion design. He moved back to Chicago in the fall of 2001. Noland is the creator of GoTellMama! – a grassroots Obama art, video and street campaign which toured the country during the election of 2008. In the 24 months leading up to the 2008 election he hosted 10 art exhibitions in 9 cities, drove over 20,000 miles, and was viewed by 80,000 on Youtube. He has work in the collections of the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian and collectors as far reaching as Switzerland & Australia. He currently lives and works out of his Pilsen studio. More of his work can be seen at www.creativerescue.org.


Roland S. Oria, BFA, 1992


A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Roland S. Oria is fascinated by the principles of classicism and realism. While best-known for his work in charcoal, pastel and acrylic, he enjoys stretching the boundaries of traditionally accepted media, most recently adding rust, sandblasted glass, archival newspaper and volcanic ash to his repertoire of materials. Whatever the medium, his figurative and architectural works are grand in scale, yet intimate in the viewing experience they offer. Roland's work has been exhibited both in the United States and the United Kingdom. To see more images of work by Roland Oria, please visit www.rolandoria.us.



Angel Otero, BFA 2007, MFA 2009




Born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, Angel Otero is a rising star in the international art scene. After participating in Art Chicago 2009, Otero gained critical recognition, and several international galleries offered him representation, including Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago. This year he sold out on the first day of ARCO in Spain and Circa 09 in Puerto Rico. Otero recently won the Leonore Annenberg Foundation Fellowship in the Performing and Visual Arts, allowing him to live and create work in New York for the next two years.

Otero’s relationship with his family, especially his grandmother, is a recurrent theme in his work, and the experience of coming to Chicago and interacting with the vibrant community at SAIC inspired him to present these themes in new ways. His figurative work focuses on images of home, often depicted in bright colors against stark backgrounds.  He adds cloth and other materials to the paint to create texture and sometimes incorporates elements of collage. These techniques lend a strong sense of emotional immediacy to his work.


Kristina Paabus, MFA, 2009




Kristina Paabus was born and raised in Massachusetts and has also called Tallinn, Providence, Minneapolis, and Chicago home. She studied Fine Arts and Religious Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Fine and Applied Arts at the Estonian Academy of Arts, and received her BFA in from the Rhode Island School of Design. In the spring of 2009 she earned her MFA in Print media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was awarded a Graduate Fellowship upon completion. Shortly after graduation Kristina was an Artist in Residence at Ox-Bow School of Art and recipient of the Dale Metternich Memorial Scholarship. She has recently exhibited at the First Amendment Gallery in Minneapolis, the Sullivan Galleries in Chicago, and at the Boston Printmakers North American Print Biennial. Starting in the fall of 2009 Kristina will be traveling to Estonia as a Fulbright Fellow to study animation at the Estonian Academy of Arts.



tommaso paladino, BFA, 1994




tommaso paladino watches, listens, reads, and paints. He cherishes what painting has been and hates what painting has become. The process is for the painter the end result is for the viewer. There should be nothing more, nothing less.



Tom Palazzolo, MFA, 1966




Palazzolo resides comfortably in his own sphere of reference, a domain that includes a rich heritage of art history and film as well as his own personal memories. This familiar and gleeful attitude toward these weighty traditions allows him to draw from them freely while indulging in a virtuoso display of visual and verbal puns, sexual innuendoes and obscure references.
     --Callie Angel, Assistant Curator, Whitney Museum of Modern Art


Mike Parsons, BFA, 2004




Mike Parsons was born and raised in Austin, Texas. He received his BFA in 2004 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He now lives and works in Austin where he continues to paint figurative and narrative scenes depicting our society and mass media.


Catherine A. Phelps, BFA, 1983, MAAT, 1987




Catherine A. Phelps has worked as a teaching artist and therapist for the last 25 years. She currently works in a public school, grades kindergarten through eighth grade. While raising her five children, she volunteers her time to many local efforts including Ragdale, an artist community.


Rita Price, BFA, 1982




Rita Price’s images evolve from an intense interest in natural elements, organic shapes and forms, as well as political statements. Price was born in the Bronx, New York and received her MFA from the University of Illinois and her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has also studied at Brooklyn College and the New York Art Students League. She has exhibited at Binny & Smith Gallery in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Habitat Gallery in Boca Raton and the Edna Hibel Museum in Palm Beach.


Jim Pryzdia





As an artist, Jim Pryzdia is a naturalist, sociologist, and a spiritualist. In his paintings, the natural is often uplifting and approachable and the sociological message for those who deeply engage with the work often seems like "bad news from the doctor." When these two impressions merge, the spiritual occurs.



Jyotika Purwar, MFA, 2004




Jyotika Purwar was born and raised in India, received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is currently the Chair of the School of Design at Westwood College, O’Hare campus. Inspired by growing up in India, Purwar studies about people, their culture, different food, cooking, films made in every language, mapping the earth, studying the skies, the ocean, physics, music, fashion, history, dinosaurs, art, ceramics, the history of a place, design, technology, space, politics and everything that affects the human spirit.



Virginia O. Roeder, MAAT, 1988




Virginia O. Roeder was born in Ohio, and is an alumna of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MA in Art Therapy in 1988. Previous to this, Roeder acquired a BA in Art Education from the University of Maryland-College Park, and an MFA in Painting from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Currently her paintings are represented by Sebastian Volpe in Toronto. Roeder has exhibited widely, recently creating an artwork for the Caurio de Guadalupe Mural in Zamora, Mexico. Her paintings can be found in many private and public collections, including: Kirkland & Ellis Law Offices in Chicago, the First Continental Bank of Chicago, Jack Daniels Distillery in Lexington, Kentucky, and the Madison Art Center in Madison, Wisconsin.


The Roger Brown Study Collection 



Ken Rosenthal, MFA, 1993




Ken Rosenthal’s artwork is represented by a number of galleries in the US, including the Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe, the Michael Dawson Gallery in Los Angeles and Clamp Art in New York. Rosenthal’s photographs are in many public and private collections internationally including The George Eastman House collection, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the National Portrait Gallery in London. Since 2002 his work has been featured in more than 150 solo and group exhibitions internationally. Recent solo exhibitions of have been held at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires, and Etherton Gallery in Tucson. Rosenthal’s first monograph, Seen and Not Seen, will be published as part of the Wittliff Gallery Series by the University of Texas Press. He currently lives and works in Tucson, Arizona.




James Schneider, BFA, 2002




James Schneider received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002. He has produced numerous scientific and natural history illustrations for the Zoological Research Department of the Field Museum and has exhibited at the Butcher Shop in Chicago. He currently lives in Chicago where he works as a freelance artist and Illustrator.



Sally Schoch, BFA, 1958, MFA, 1962



Sally Schoch received both her BFA and MFA form the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has also studied at the University of Chicago and the University of Miami. She has exhibited at Ruth Volid in Chicago, the National College of Education in Evanston, West Jefferson Bank in Joliet and the Meat Export Association in Denver, Colorado.



Rebecca Shore, BFA, 1981, Faculty




Rebecca Shore is Adjunct Professor of Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  She received her BFA in 1981 from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including Byron Roche Gallery in Chicago, Elmhurst Art Museum, Van deGriff/Marr in Santa Fe, the Chicago Cultural Center, and the Museum de Arte in São Paulo, Brazil.



Howard Shoudis, BFA, 1981





Chris D. Smith, BFA, 2007




Chris D. Smith was raised in the suburban Chicagoland area, a melting pot of agriculture, industry, and cultural diversity. Smith received a BS from Northern Illinois University, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MA from Eastern Illinois University. He currently lives and works in the Chicagoland area.


Joseph Spangler, BFA, 2000




Joseph Spangler has exhibited at Gallery Homeland in Portland, Elder Art Gallery in Charlotte, and Galleries Maurice Sternberg in Chicago. His work has been commissioned by numerous public and private parties and he received the Fine Arts Achievement Award from the Bank of America in San Diego, California.



Eleanor Spiess-Ferris




Eleanor Spiess-Ferris has exhibited for many years throughout Illinois and the United States as well as internationally. She has recently exhibited at the Chicago Cultural Center, Printworks Gallery in Chicago and Elmhurst College. She has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council and Arts Midwest, as well as awards from the Chicago and Vicinity Exhibition. Speiss-Ferris is currently represented by Aron Packer Gallery and Printworks Gallery.



Douglas Stapleton, MFA, 1989




Douglas Stapleton is an Assistant Curator of Art with the Illinois State Museum Chicago Gallery. Stapleton is active in the arts community as an Artistic Associate of the Seldoms, a Chicago based contemporary dance company. His past collaborative and solo performance work has been presented in Chicago and elsewhere for the past fifteen years. Stapleton is a member of the performance and teaching company Moving Stories, with company members Julie Caffey and Pate Conaway, and he sits on the Board of Directors for Refuge Center for Artists in Recovery. In his spare time he makes collages.



Jay L. Strommen, MFA, 2000






Bruce Thorn, BFA, 1975






Bruce Thorn was born on the South Side of Chicago, the third of three children and a first generation American. He received a scholarship to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and graduated with a BFA in painting and drawing in 1975. Ten years after graduation from, Thorn returned to college to attend the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, studying with Martin Puryear, Dennis Kowalski, Phyliss Bramson, and Dan Ramirez. He received his MFA degree from U.I.C. in 1987. Bruce moved to Oregon in 1990, where he lived until 2000. Inspired by the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest, he abandoned narrative aspects of painting and began extensive explorations of abstraction. While in Oregon, Bruce Thorn received a Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant and his work was shown at the Portland Art Museum, Davidson Galleries in Seattle, and Zaks Gallery in Chicago. Since 2000, Thorn has been living and working in Chicago as a full-time visual artist.


Alfred Li Tsao, BFA, 2002




Alfred Li Tsao is a Chicago based artist who graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a BFA specializing in Visual Communication and a Masters in Integrated Marketing Communications from Roosevelt University. He is a freelance graphic designer whose true passion is painting. Alfred has exhibited at the James R. Thompson Center, Harold Washington Library, the Chicago Cultural Center, Gallery 2, and the Yoga Trek Center in Oak Park. Tsao is also a volunteer at the Cuentos Foundation, a grassroots non-profit organization that focuses on art, activism, diversity, and social justice in Edgewater.



Maureen Warren, BFA, 1976




Maureen Warren received an MFA from the University of Illinois, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has also studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Cracow and Warsaw, Poland as a Fulbright Scholar. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally at venues including the Chicago Cultural Center, the O’Hare International Airport, Smithsonian Institution’s Castle Gallery in Washington DC and Dom Polonii Gallery in Cracow, Poland.



Erik Weisenburger



Yoshi, MAAT, 2007




Yoshi was born and raised in Japan as a child, but grew up in California from the age of ten. During this time he experienced various forms of acculturation. His experience as an Asian-American male of mixed Asian cultures and the American military lifestyle gives him a unique perspective on life. He has been homeless. He has had endless amount of dead-end jobs. And in the end, what he’s learned is that the smallest, mundane things experience daily can be the most beautiful. Sometimes, we just don't take enough time to appreciate them.



Jim Zanzi


Jim Zanzi, professor emeritus but still teaching. I have taught at SAIC since1967, officially in the Sculpture Department, but I've worked all over theSchool in many departments. My focus has been the documentation andinterpretation of architecture, monuments, and tombs, through hybrids of photomedia.  I have two current, ongoing projects. One concerns recording the livingspirits of deceased persons who are depicted photographically on their tombs,using video imaging into chromogenic development transfers. The other is a lifesize, living homage to exceptional artist muses and historical moments expressedin conifers and other plants in Spring Lake, Wisconsin.



Ryan Zoghlin, BFA, 1991





Ryan Zoghlin received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is in many private and public collections including the collections of the Getty Conservation Institute, the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, Colorado, the Deloitte & Touche Corporate Art Collection, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. He exhibits work regularly both nationally and internationally. He currently lives and works in Chicago.