Richard Rezac
Untitled (07-01), 2007
Painted wood and aluminum

Richard Rezac imbues a dynamic tension both in his sculptures and their relationship to the viewer. The elements of each work are composed according to a syntax combining reduced forms to create a formal language and are constructed in various materials including welded aluminum, cast bronze, cast plaster, nickel-plated bronze, and painted wood. Acutely aware of a work’s relationship to the viewer, Rezac's sculptures are cantilevered overhead, placed on the floor or mounted both parallel and perpendicular to the wall. Richard Rezac has had solo exhibitions at the Portland Art Museum, Oregan; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; Feature, Inc., New York; Kunstverein Recklinghausen, Germany; and James Harris Gallery, Seattle. Rezac received the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, and the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Award. He is an adjunct professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Julia Fish
Study for West Landing [with West stair profile/East's color], 2007
From the series Between: Stairs and Landings, (2005-2007)
22.25 x 30 in., Gouache on paper.

Since 1992, Julia Fish’s paintings and works on paper have recorded the experience of looking and living within the space of her home and studio/residence in Chicago. The series Between: Stairs and Landings are works on paper developed in reference to the east and west staircases of her residence in Chicago; the two stairway spaces are eccentric: each flight requires a specific physical negotiation of stairs and landings that have become integral to every-day lived experience. Julia Fish’s work has been curated into exhibitions at many Museums including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Martin-Gropius Bau, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, among many others. Her work has been presented in twenty-one solo exhibitions since 1980, including Rhona Hoffman Gallery and was the subject of a ten-year survey exhibition at The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago in 1996. She is also Professor of Studio Arts in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Kevin Kaempf of People Powered
Loop Limited: Recycled Paint, detailed view of stacked cans
recyled paint, cans, graphics

Kevin Kaempf started the collaborative group People Powered as a framework to explore Kaempf's interest and involvement in community-building, bike culture, environmental activism, design and art. People Powered adopts consumer culture's aesthetic forms to distribute information about sustainable living practices such as community composting, recycling, and free public transportation. The projects take the form of pilot programs and are presented as possible models for implementation at the neighborhood level. Kevin Kaempf is an Instructor in the First Year Program and the Sculpture department at The School of the Art Institute. In 2006, People Powered exhibited Shared: Chicago Blue Bikes as part the Museum of Contemporary Art's 12x12 series. People Powered was included in the exhibition Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art curated by Stephanie Smith at the Smart Museum.

Michael Thomas of Lucky Pierre
Rock and Roll: Impatience, 2007

Michael Thomas is the founder and director of Lucky Pierre, a multi-disciplinary art-making/performance collective. Lucky Pierre has created performances, video pieces, writings, installations, radio and sound pieces. Their piece Final Meals, a video installation of volunteers eating recreations of the last meals requested by prisoners executed in Texas, has been presented in Frankfurt, Leipzig, Graz, Minneapolis, Kansas City and at the exhibition Captive Audience at Gallery 400. Lucky Pierre’s performances have been presented at the Eurokaz International Theatre Festival in Zagreb, Croatia; the Kana Nahk Festival in Rakvere Estonia; the Belluard Bollwerk International in Fribourg Switzerland; and the Rhino and PAC/edge Festivals in Chicago. A retrospective of Lucky Pierre's work was presented at the Suisse Institute in Rome. Michael Thomas with composer Jeffery Kowalkowski has written the oratorio "Ruth" which is to be performed in Tel Aviv. Thomas' writings have been widely published, most recently in TDR (The Drama Review).

Michelle Bolinger
Devils Tower, 2009
18x15in., Oil, graphite & colored pencil on canvas

Michelle Bolinger's paintings and works on paper combine drawing materials and oil paint. She reconciles landscapes experienced through small constructions in the studio. The work is not meant to be singular in meaning or depiction, as the process of making layers many ideas, sensations, times and places. Tactile and abstract, her work references the landscape of the American West as well as the mythic history of painting. Michelle received her MFA from the University of Washington in 2005 and has shown at Francine Seders Gallery, The Henry Art Gallery and Crawl Space, all in Seattle, WA. In addition she has recently shown at Roots & Culture Contemporary Arts Center, the Chicago Cultural Center, and The Presidents Gallery at Harold Washington College. She currently teaches at Lake Forest College and Northwestern University.

Todd Simeone
Record Cover in a Flash (Air Supply), 2006
Ultrachrome inkjet print, 28x28in, Ed. 1 of 3

Working largely in photography, video, and sculpture, Todd Simeone engages a variety of everyday themes situated between designed popular culture and unwitting individual sentiment. For example, in Record Cover in a Flash, Simeone takes a picture of a beat-up record jacket for Air Supply's 1981 album The One That You Love, but removes the band name and replaces the hot air balloon in the center of the picture with a photographer's flash hovering in the vast blue sky over a sliver of gray mountains. Todd Simeone received his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2008 and was included in New Insight, a special exhibition curated by Suzanne Ghez at Art Chicago, 2008. His work has also been exhibited at the James Harris Gallery in Seattle, and is included in major collections including the Progressive Corporation in Cleaveland, Ohio and Microsoft in Redmond, WA. He currently lives and works in Chicago and teaches in the Photography Department at the School of the Art Institute.