RITA GRENDZE - HELIOTROPES AND SKEPTICS - The Laura A. Sprague Art Gallery of Joliet Junior College

Rita Grendze, installation view of Heliotropes and Skeptics at the Laura A. Sprague Art Gallery of Joliet Junior College

There is only one week left to experience the Rita Grendze exhibition at the Laura A. Sprague Art Gallery of Joliet Junior College. The exhibition is titled Heliotropes and Skeptics and includes a series of beautiful watercolor and mixed media works, which flank a fiber-based sculptural installation. Together, the works offer a unique “feel-good” experience—perfect for Chicago’s gray winter days.

Grendze uses the heliotrope/skeptic metaphor as a way to reflect on human nature. The word heliotrope comes from the combination of the Greek words for “sun” and “direction.” It is commonly understood to symbolize admiration and love. The term brings to mind the way in which a plant’s leaves follow the sun as it moves across the sky—instinctively reaching toward light.

Within this context, Grendze explains that the skeptic should not be thought of as a negative influence, but as a necessary one. Without the skeptic questioning, the heliotrope would not be challenged to explore a stronger argument or deepen their convictions.

The installation of the exhibition visually reinforces the idea of “following the sun.” As you enter the main space of the gallery, you are immediately met by a series of colorful and friendly worm-like forms that seem to guide you into the space, subconsciously directing you toward an ominous black piece hung on the rear wall. These plush fiber-based creatures seem to wander throughout the space, creating a playful yet mysterious presence.

Rita Grendze, Uneclipsed, yarn, cord, metal hoop, 2024

The soft textures and vibrant colors invite a tactile response, tempting viewers to engage with the work. While the instinct may be to touch, the forms function as visual guides leading the viewer through the installation—much like heliotropic plants turning toward the light.

Make an effort to see this exhibition. It is well worth the time. Heliotropes and Skeptics continues through March 13 at the Laura A. Sprague Art Gallery of Joliet Junior College. The gallery is on the main campus, located at 1215 Houbolt Road in Joliet, Illinois 60431. Exhibitions are free and open to the public.

Rita Grendze, Stitches and Symbols, watercolor, graphite, yarn on paper, 2022

Rita Grendze is a sculptor making art from ordinary objects. Both her undergraduate and graduate degrees, as well as her year of study on a Fulbright Grant, focused on fiber art. For Grendze this has translated into a lifelong love of process and abundant, accumulative materials.

Grendze has taught at Maryland Institute, College of Art in the Fiber and Foundations departments, as well as at Jersey City University. Since moving to the Chicago area in 2001, she has worked in theater, created props for outdoor spectacles, has taught community workshops in Chicago and the suburbs, has completed commissions, and costumed plays, created large-scale installations and managed a gallery.

Grendze currently teaches in an arts integration program on the elementary and middle school levels. She is committed to introducing new ways of problem solving to a generation that is still reeling from the effects of the pandemic lock down. The bulk of her time, however, has been dedicated to her studio practice and to her family. Her recent residency at Millay Arts infused new energy into her home studio. Grendze shows regularly, including a recently completed two-person show at the Schingoethe Museum and a solo show at Waubonsee Community College.

Rita Grendze, Stitches and Symbols (detail), watercolor, graphite, yarn on paper, 2022

The Laura A. Sprague Art Gallery is a 2,055 square foot state-of-the-art exhibition space in the J-Building on the Main Campus of Joliet Junior College. The main campus is located at 1215 Houbolt Road in Joliet, Illinois 60431. Curated by Director Suzanne Gorgas, the gallery hosts several shows and receptions each year which feature the work of contemporary visiting artists and are accompanied by artist lectures. Gallery hours are Monday–Friday, 8am–8pm. Learn more at: https://jjc.edu/about-jjc/places-interest/laura-sprague-art-gallery

THE MEMBERS' SHOW - The Arts Club of Chicago

Tanya Gill, to gather (detail), 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 threadwork. 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, as exhibitions increasingly highlight fiber as a conceptual and critical medium—recognizing the artistic relevance rather than dismissing it as merely decorative.

In a world saturated with digital imagery, curators seem drawn to artists whose handmade fiber-based processes highlight environmental issues—sustainability, consumerism, and their long-term impact on the planet. 

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

One intriguing piece, to gather by Tanya Gill, brought to mind Kintsugi—a Japanese practice of repairing broken ceramics with lacquer mixed with powdered precious metal, intentionally highlighting the fracture. Rather than attempting to restore 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. On her website, Gill explains 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 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 colored pencil on paper with thread.

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

PICTURES OF YOU – Bridgeport Art Center

Robert James Johnson, Not Enough Heart to Go Around (detail), 2024, oil on canvas

Pictures of You, January 16–March 6, 2026

Last weekend, a uniquely eclectic portrait exhibition, titled Pictures of You, opened in the Fourth Floor Gallery of the Bridgeport Art Center. The exhibition curated by Marci Rubin, presents a wide-ranging assortment of portraiture across a variety of contemporary practices. 

In selecting the exhibition, Rubin brought together an expansive mixture of painting, drawing, photography, mixed media, textile, and sculpture reflecting approaches that range from conservatively traditional to boldly experimental. The exhibition is installed in a salon-style format, to accommodate the extensive diversity of the work on view.

Robert James Johnson, Not Enough Heart to Go Around (detail), 2024, oil on canvas, 84"x84"

One of the more intriguing pieces in the show was created by Robert James Johnson. The seven-foot square canvas titled Not Enough Heart to Go Around is impossible to ignore.

The brilliantly colorful canvas combines classical technique with symbolic imagery, reinterpreted within a contemporary context. Johnson references historically familiar compositions yet paints with emotion, resulting in a deeply personal inflection. The artist appears to include himself within the composition, a gesture that may offer insight into the work’s title.

Together, these elements might imply the emotional transition or vulnerability of being caught between giving of oneself and self-preservation. And perhaps the repeated figure might also imply an internal dialogue, reinforcing the work’s focus on the psychological experience rather than the narrative. In any case, the painting deserves careful contemplation.

I’ve always believed that the creation of art was a version of therapy—dealing with our personal issues or observations of the world around us—while side-stepping the involvement of a therapist. So, is the painting critique of today's society? Does it reference inequality, injustice or neglect? Is it a comment on the world in which we live? The fear of not having enough... the fear of giving so much that nothing is left?

The three figures in the painting—each a presumed likeness of the artist wearing a pensive expression—seem to represent the passage of time. The space suggests a room with a centralized table. On the table, a human heart rests on a silver tray, becoming the focal point of the composition and the painting’s title. Across the top of the canvas, a symbolic heartbeat pulsing briefly before flatlining and concluding with a fast-forward symbol entwined by a poisonous coral snake.

While the exhibition includes works that demonstrate solid traditional technical skills, the collection also challenges the typical ideas of portraiture by offering a range of contemporary approaches. Through the use of diverse materials and styles, Pictures of You emphasizes the ongoing exploration of the portrait in contemporary art.

Mey-Mey Lim Sojourner Stoneware 2017 15x11x8

John Benton, Point of View, 2023, oil on canvas, 20" x 24"

Katharine Oltogge, Melancholy, 2025, oil on canvas, 18" x 24"

Pictures of You continues through March 6, 2026 in the Fourth Floor Gallery of the Bridgeport Art Center, which is located at 1200 West 35th Street, Chicago, IL 60609. Learn more at bridgeportart.com/

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Robert James Johnson is a 2024 recipient of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events Individual Artist Program grant. He is a graduate of Studio Incamminati School of Contemporary Realist Art in Philadelphia and holds a BFA from the Savannah College of Art & Design. Originally from Miami, he is now based in Chicago.

Marci Rubin
Fiber based Installation/Sculpture artist/Curator Bridgeport Center Chicago

Marci Rubin earned a BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and an MFA from the University of Chicago. Following her graduate studies, she founded Framing Mode & Gallery, a contemporary art gallery and custom framing studio in Chicago’s South Loop, which operated from 2003 to 2018 and functioned as a site for socially engaged artistic practice.

Since 2022, Rubin has served as Curator at the Bridgeport Art Center in Chicago, where she oversees the curation, design, and installation of exhibitions for the 4th Floor Gallery and Corridor Gallery, alongside an active studio practice. Her work has been exhibited nationally in academic and nonprofit institutions.