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.

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.