Cartooning and animation are powerful modes for speaking truth to power, when protest is captioned in a word bubble and dry humor delivers the punch. This juried national exhibition comes at a fraught time, an election year, and invites artists working in all forms of cartooning and animation to submit works that speak to this moment in human history.

ASMA KAZI Sept 19 - Oct 30, 2024

This is a whimsical reimagining of how our familiar organic ecosystems reflect cosmic phenomena, drawing parallels between micro and macro environments. These works are a cosmic soup of elements from the natural world and fiction, integrating seemingly disparate components into cohesive clusters where vibrant life flourishes in unexpected ways, reflecting on the interconnectedness of life across scales in the macrocosm.

Piercing purity from young artists and poets, postcard size art and/or poems by young artists showcased. Open call to all area schools, D97 and D200 + to area youth invited to create an artwork for submission.

ELAINE LUTHER Aug 12 - Sept 30, 2024

Working tiny is a great way to experiment - with these artworks, I explored the theme of trees, using my own photographs and public domain photographs. The techniques used include cyanotype, direct printing of photographs on archival tissue paper and collage. The photos and cyanotypes are mounted on painted wood panel.

In Partnership with Gerber/Hart Library Archive

Throughout history signs, flyers, and handouts employing powerful images and text all serve to communicate ideas in impactful ways as tools of protest and of community building. This open-call exhibit, which runs at the same time that the Democratic National Convention is in Chicago, will strive to uplift the artistry of image combined with text in these designs as OPAL partners with the Gerber Hart Archives to take a look at both the historical significance and the human perspective offered through the storytelling power of the sign.

Judge: Gene Skala

A place is what you make it, when you stop to look and absorb the scene you create a place, what you see is a landscape and as artists, we take the next step and create and record the feeling in art, and by doing so make sacred space. Landscapes, interiors, architectural scenery and still life works, reveal both artist’s interpretation of, and intimacy with – place. This is an open-call exhibition for art that evokes the sacred space of creation and creativity in new ways, escape landscape, real and imagined magical spaces.

ALEX BRIGHTBILL-VELAZQUEZ June 5 - July 31
is a Mexican artist who immigrated to Chicago at the age of ten. She earned a BFA from the Northeastern Illinois University and has shown at numerous galleries and curated art shows and cultural events. Her artwork embodies the hybridity of growing up with two cultural experiences, her love of animals and nature.

Jurors: Pia Cruzalegui & Mia Garcia-Hills

During Pride Month in this critical election year, the Oak Park Art League will highlight underrepresented artist’s voices from diverse populations including disabled, BIPOC, incarcerated, queer, and transgender artists and reflect their experiences at this particular time when diversity, equity and inclusion are suppressed more than ever before.

Judge: Gretchen Jankowski

“The world is beautiful but not sayable. That is why we need art”
Charles Simic (US Poet Laureate and Oak Parker)

What memory of a feeling from a daydreaming, circles inside our mind and can only be freed through the portal of abstract art? In this open-call exhibition, artists demonstrate their understanding of the visual language of shape, form, color, texture and line, evoking emotional response, the beauty of the unsayable without the dependence of representational reference.

Solo micro art exhibit of sculptural pyrographic work by Daniela Wenzel

Celebrating 100+ years of venerable history and five generations of Oak Park Art League Artist Members, this biannual exhibition presents a curated showcase of work by OPAL’s current membership.
Artist Members are invited to exhibit works that best represent their studio practice.

The exhibit includes an online component that will serve to record and archive Artist Member involvement at OPAL in 2024. 

The inaugural exhibition in the new niche mini gallery is of mini quilts made with upcycled materials by Amanda Nadig, Elaine Luther, Sylvia Alexander, Katie Turner and Tess Gobeil

In this rendition of the Oak Park Art League’s annual figure and portrait open-call exhibition, contemporary viewpoints are sought that portray the figure and face, paying homage to this tradition of figure study and life drawing that OPAL has encouraged and sustained for its long history.

We welcome the new year with an open-call exhibition for artists to show their most recent work from. All work must have been completed within 2023 and not exhibited at OPAL before.

November / December - Artist Member Winter Exhibition

No theme. No judges. Open Call. Must have been created in the past 4 years and be no more than 42” in any direction.  Must be an Artist Member for this exhibition but you can register to become one ($100 annually) when you deliver your work. This will be the finale to the exhibition schedule for 2023, so don't miss this chance to show what you want!!!

SEMI ANNUAL JURIED EXHIBITION

Submission is now closed.

We invite artists to submit their best works in any medium, including painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, fiber arts, ceramics, etc. (with the exception of video and projection-based work). This is a wonderful opportunity to showcase your talent, reach a new audience, and connect with fellow artists.

To be eligible for the exhibition, all artworks must be original, completed within the past three years, and not previously exhibited at OPAL and ready to hang.

*SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED*

OPAL is looking for artwork that depicts the artist's interpretation, relationship, or experience with the landscape theme. All mediums will be accepted. (drawing, painting, mixed media, digital/new media, printmaking, photography, ceramics, fiber, glass, sculpture, etc).

The OPAL Social Awareness Exhibition strives to harness the transformative power of art to promote awareness, provoke dialogue, and inspire action. As a community resource art center, ALL artists are invited to represent themselves, their communities and their culture. OPAL hopes that social justice can be accomplished in coming together through art, in understanding and acceptance.

● This is an Open Call for everyone.

The Small Works Exhibition is an Open Call,
featuring small-scale artwork.
With each piece being under 12” by 12”, it allows the Gallery to showcase artwork from as many artists as possible in a single show, and it’s a chance for artists to create art at a scale they might not typically use. Limitations can create new forms of expression.

This exhibition opens Thursday May 18 (1-6pm) with a wide variety of local and regional artists presenting their best works, including painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, fiber arts, and ceramics.

This exhibition is generously sponsored by the:
GOOD HEART * WORK SMART FOUNDATION

Making our communities a better place - one child at a time!

This is an Open Call exhibition for artwork that best represents the artist's understanding and practice of the visual language of shape, form, color, texture and line.

Abstract art, “also called nonobjective art or nonrepresentational art, … in which the portrayal [recognizably specific] of things [objects, life forms] from the visible world plays little or no part.”

This is the first Art Member exhibition of the 2023 season. Art Members are encouraged to enter one or two works of art that best represent their studio practice.

This is an OPAL Art Member only show.

For all artists who utilize the human figure and/or the human face, as the dominant content of your artwork, this is an Open Call exhibition for you.
This is the never-ending narrative of figures and faces.
Show yourself and your subject in this exhibition and add your voice.

Let's see what you've got! We want to see what you did in 2022. All work must have been created in 2022 (NO EXCEPTIONS). This is an Open Call. The work you submit will be included if it meets the Call criteria. Deliver your work on the drop-off dates below.

No theme. No judges. Must have been created in the past 3 years and be no more than 36" in any direction. Let's see what you've got! OPAL Artist Member FALL Exhibition 2022. Must be an Artist Member for this exhibition but you can register to become one ($100 annually) when you deliver your work. This will be the finale to the exhibition schedule for 2022, so don't miss this chance to show what you want!!!

This Open Call is looking for artworks that reflect on what “HOME” means through the experiences and emotions that define our understanding of who we are, collectively and individually.

There are physical and emotional realities to where we stay, and where we stay may or may not be “HOME.”

This Exhibit is proudly sponsored by BYLINE BANK

Celebrating its 101st year, the Oak Park Art League (OPAL) proudly announces a regional call for art work with Art 101: A Regional Juried Exhibition. OPAL is looking for work that best demonstrates the artist's use of materials and mastery of skill in their chosen medium.

Often considered to be art in its most direct and fundamental form, drawing has expanded beyond marks made with charcoal on paper. In its most traditional sense, the act of drawing depicts the observation and continued practice of mark making by the artist. The artist creates a narrative with their choice of drawing materials and ways that line, proportion, scale, subject and positive & negative space are depicted. The physical process or act of drawing con-temporarily includes additions of other mediums, while staying true to the act of creating a line on a surface to create an image.

Bigger is not always better. The rejection of working on a large scale can be prompted by available materials or space to work, or simply the artist's interpretation of macro to micro. Artistic creation on a grand scale once depicted importance, power or influence of subject and artist. Today, work created on a much smaller scale is no less important, influential or powerful. Rather, its creation offers a more intimate relationship between artist and subject and its completion offers that to subject and viewer. This exhibition celebrates the innovation of artists that work on a small scale - whether by necessity or intended message.

Whether depicting scenery as illustration or storytelling, background setting or main subject, artists have a strong relationship with the landscape that surrounds them. From Renaissance painters to contemporary practitioners such as Diebenkorn, Hockney and Gornik, the depiction of landscape is not simply a matter of copying nature or the artist's view. A creative distillation of color, scale, shape, space, atmosphere and composition become the driver of the artistic inquiry. Through the reorganization and simplification of this visual information the artist becomes a translator. The Midwest landscape, rural to urban, offers ample opportunity for creative expression and query.