Intimacy of Visibility

Ivy Guild, a Los Angeles based artist, is a first-year MFA in the Studio Art program at the University of California, Irvine, and graduated from the University of San Diego in 2016 with a dual-degree in Visual Arts and Art History. She works in sculpture, photography, film, performance, and installation. Her ongoing research investigates materiality, intimacy, the uncanny, and the abject through contemporary women’s issues, the body, and domesticity. Guild recently exhibited at Florida State University’s Museum of Fine Arts and the Dutzi Gallery of California State University Long Beach. She has received merit-based scholarships and fellowships from the University of California, Irvine, the University of San Diego, and Vermont Studio Center. Guild has also exhibited at Jonathan Ferrara Gallery (New Orleans), the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego Art Institute, William D. Cannon Art Gallery (Carlsbad), and the Athenaeum Music and Arts Library (La Jolla), among others. Accordion content 1.

Marina Peng (b. Baton Rouge, Louisiana) is a multimedia installation artist based in St. Louis, MO. She received her BFA from Washington University in St. Louis. Her practice consists of video, text, built structures, and performances that observe the rigid social structures that restrict marginalized identities. She has attended residencies at ACRE, Caldera Arts, Paul Artspace, and OTIS College of Art and Design. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at spaces including 50/50 (Kansas City), Granite City Art and Design District (Granite City), The Luminary (St. Louis), Flood Plain (St. Louis), and Open House (Kansas City). She is the recipient of an Artist Support grant from the Regional Arts Commission and an Emergency Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

Vanessa Viruet is a Chicago based fiber artist of Puerto Rican descent. She was raised in Milwaukee, WI and received two degrees from the Maryland Institute College of Art, a MA in Teaching and a BFA in Fiber. Viruet creates monumental scale artworks to examine the complex histories rooted in textiles. Her work addresses issues such as identity, cultural heritage, gender and class. For six years she served as an art instructor for Chicago Public Schools and in 2018 she received her MFA in Fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She recently completed an apprenticeship at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia and an ACRE summer residency in Steuben, WI. Viruet exhibits her work nationally and has studied abroad in France and Jamaica. She currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Someday she hopes to have her own college scholarship for artists of color.

Lauren Leving is a Chicago-based writer and curator. She is the Exhibitions Manager at Wrightwood 659, a new gallery space focused on the intersections of contemporary art, activism, and architecture. She holds a Master’s in Museum & Exhibition Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has worked as the Curatorial Fellow for Hyde Park Art Center, at 6018North, and in commercial galleries in both Chicago and New Orleans. Her research and curation investigate the intersections of contemporary exhibition practices, pedagogy, and identity politics.