THE MEMBERS' SHOW - The Arts Club of Chicago

Tanya Gill, to gather, 2025, found vase and thread

The 92nd Exhibition of Visual Artist Members, January 27-March 7, 2026

Last weekend, I was invited to visit The Arts Club of Chicago to experience the annual members’ show. The exhibition is intentionally eclectic, celebrating and showcasing the creative work of the club’s artist members. The works presented offer a wide range of media, styles, genres and forms, all produced within the past two years.

As I wandered through the expansive exhibition, which features more than eighty works of art, I found myself reacquainted with recent pieces by artists I have either worked with in the past or whose careers I’ve followed over the years.

Throughout the show, I became aware of the recurring theme of stitching and thread work. The exhibition offers a number of fiber-based works, reflecting what seems to be a broader trend in the contemporary art world. For decades, fiber and textile arts were marginalized as craft. Today, that distinction continues to blur. Exhibitions are beginning to treat fiber as a conceptual and critical medium—recognizing the artistic relevance rather than disregarding it as merely decoration.

In a world saturated with digital imagery, curators seem to be drawn to artists producing handmade work that references an awareness to environmental issues—sustainability, consumerism and their environmental impact.

Tanya Gill, to gather (detail), 2025, found vase and thread

As I came upon to gather, by Tanya Gill, I was reminded of Kintsugi—a Japanese method of using lacquer mixed with powdered precious metal to repair broken ceramics while emphasizing the fracture. Rather than restoring the object to its original state, kintsugi accepts the break as a part of the object’s life. It is believed that the object becomes more meaningful—highlighting modesty and impermanence—in its new state.

But Gill offers a new twist on this idea. Using a found vessel and thread, Gill reconstructs a shattered vase by meticulously reassembling its broken segments with a web of carefully intertwined fibers.

Gill’s website shares the conceptual origin of the work. A stroke survivor, she describes the firsthand experience of her brain repairing itself—highlighting that her traumatic experience is not unique, but that it’s part of the collective story. She says, “We all experience traumatic events that change our course, demanding that we remake ourselves.”

Vanessa Filley, The Sunlight Dragged Me Here (detail), 2025, watercolor and color pencil on paper with thread.

Another highlight of the show is the geometrically graphic The Sunlight Dragged Me Here, by Vanessa Filley. A watercolor and color pencil work on paper, adorned with meticulously precise pinholes and stitched lines of thread, the piece exudes quiet refinement that invites the viewer into a meditative world of meticulous precision.

The 92nd Exhibition of Visual Artist Members features an impressive range of work. While attending the show, be sure to seek out pieces by Susan Aurinko, William Conger, Lisa Goesling, Katherine Lampert, Maggie Meiners, Sandro Miller, Eric Steele, and Serene Wise. The exhibition continues through March 7th. The Arts Club is located at 201 East Ontario Street, Chicago, IL 60611. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday 11-6 and Saturday 11-3. The Arts Club is closed on Sunday and Monday. Learn more at www.artsclubchicago.org.

Vanessa Filley, The Sunlight Dragged Me Here (detail), 2025, watercolor and color pencil on paper with thread.

TANYA HASTING GILL is a multimedia artist and educator whose work explores collapsing environments, adaptation, and restoration through object making, painting, drawing, video and fiber. Material investigation is central to her practice; she is invested in material properties, limitations and context. Gill constructively plays with material limits and combinations, drawing out new meanings. Her work shifts between the political, social and personal realms, endeavoring to visually articulate and reverberate feelings that we all share. Gill has been a Fulbright-Nehru scholar, as well as in residence at McDowell, Haystack Mountain School of Craft and The Ragdale Foundation. She received a BFA in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and earned a MFA in painting at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Gill calls Northern California, Northern India, and Chicago home. Currently she is nestled in Chicago, IL where she is a Community Artist in Residence at Hyde Park Art Center.

VANESSA FILLEY is a mixed media artist who lives and works in Evanston, IL. She is interested in the energetic threads that orient and connect us, ground us in place and time yet tether us to our ancestral past and future, the lines that bring us home. Her work ranges from large scale sculptural installations to tiny embroidery pieces to poems, photographs, and drawings in watercolor, pinprick and thread. Filley was voted one of Photolucida’s Top 50 in 2018 and has shown work nationally and internationally including the Sonoma County Museum of Art, Berlin Photography Week, the Lishui International Photography Festival, FOCUS PhotoLA, Stricoff Gallery, Galerie Joseph Turene, Western Michigan University, Vivid Art Gallery, Arbor3Arts, The Affordable Art Fair,The Nashville Public Library, the Harold Washington Library in Chicago, the US Consulate General in Saudi Arabia and the inaugural Cosmic Geometries show at Secrist Beach in 2024.

Since 1916, THE ARTS CLUB OF CHICAGO has been a preeminent exhibitor of international art, a forum for established and emerging artists, and a celebrated venue for performers from around the world. For over 100 years, The Arts Club has opened its membership to artists and patrons of the arts, and its exhibitions to the public. At its inaugural meeting, the mission of the Club was defined as: “to encourage higher standards of art, maintain galleries for that purpose, and to promote the mutual acquaintance of art lovers and art workers.” The mission of the Club has since grown and expanded, and is now:

To encourage, foster, promote, and sponsor activities and presentations which would aim to increase public interest in the arts and related activities;To expand the artistic horizons of a public interested in the arts and related activities, which will include lectures, lecture/demonstrations, symposia, gallery talks, films, music, and dance presentations, and related educational programs designed to further these purposes; To maintain a facility for the presentation of these activities and exhibitions; To acquire by gift or purchase, and maintain a permanent collection of fine art, and to present temporary exhibitions of the fine arts in a gallery open to the public.

The Arts Club continues to uphold this mission, offering between three and four public exhibitions per year, a permanent collection including work by many modern and contemporary masters, and a diverse calendar of programming offered to its membership and guests.