Michele Stutts is a nationally and internationally exhibited artist. She specializes in watercolor, 2D and 3D mixed media, and her current work is in video and mixed media installations. She teaches Fundamentals of Art at the American Academy of Art.

Jasmine Elizabeth is an artist who specializes primarily in painting, collage, and photography. Being raised and living in the Midwest as a brown individual along with having a background in history, the sciences and film has significantly influenced their vision and practice, manifesting in an exploration of themes of isolation, identity, and what it means to exist under an unrelenting gaze.

I love people. I love feasting my eyes on them with abandon..

Freezing their features and expressions on my canvas brings me great satisfaction. I am amazed how different we all look, yet we are all the same: human. Our experiences are similar and our reactions as well. It shows in our facial expressions.

My work as an artist come from wrestling with the unknown. It is inspired by liminal spaces, in-between moments, the crossing of different worlds, and the ongoing practice of abiding in darkness. Exploring a contemporary re-engagement with pattern and decoration, my paintings function like collaged visual fields that are meant to spark memory, nostalgia, and familiarity. Using the language of color and the truth hidden in beauty, my hope is to remind my viewers of what we all have in common, to disarm, and to offer respite from the weight of the world.

I am a painter exploring both the physical act of painting and how meaning is created on canvas. Process is essential part of my painting practice. I work primarily with oil paint for its physical richness and manipulative quality. I make a lot of changes to a painting over an extended period of time by layering, scratching, drawing on and rubbing out the paint until I feel the work is finished.

My work is a process of reckoning. I build spirit-filled collage, drawings and sculpture rooted in ever evolving narratives. I layer disparate media such as watercolor, acrylic and even glitter within high key figurative scenarios. Through an additive and lifting process, imagery is built up and at times lost, buried or revealed again. This physical editing reflects a meditation on the landscapes of impermanence and memory.

In my work iconic characters might develop multiple limbs to help them swim, fly, and run through vibrant, emotionally textured landscapes before rooting into the earth. Skies open under oceans in a kind of psychological cartography. There is a free interplay of the recognizable and magical. I’m not a surrealist who aims to disrupt perception, but a truth teller who immerses the viewer in it. I treat the interior psychological landscape not as an abstract state, but as a physical, living, and deeply felt reality.

Elyse Martin was born in Chicago and has lived there most of her life. With breaks for chasing down celebrities and enjoying disco, Elyse was immersed in art all her life, including a 7th grade Saturday Scholarship class at the Art Institute. Elyse thrived, and fueled her artistic expression with a love for art supplies, and spend hours at art stores with her father.

Randi Shepard is a photographer and printmaking artist from Chicago. After receiving her B.F.A in Visual Communications from The Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1983, she immediately broke into the commercial photography scene in Chicago, working with people photographers, such as her long-time mentor Jean Moss (as well as Steve Ewert, Joann Carney and Marc Hauser). 

My work reflects an ongoing inner dialogue with myself and my materials. I am attracted to the reflective qualities of the glass beads, the interaction of materials and the historical implications of the materials. Due to the nature and slow process of beading there is much time during the art making process to reflect and let feelings surface. As a result of my process I am interested in the layers that compose each of us. Thus there are many layers within my sculptures.Each sculpture is thickly encrusted with beads.

Lee Stanton is an artist and art history instructor currently living in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago. Lee holds a Master of Fine Art in Studio Art from Northern Illinois University, a Master of Art History from the University of Illinois at Chicago, a Master of Education in Human Resource Education: e-Learning from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and a Bachelor degree from Illinois State University.