Art Events

Attend the opening reception for Lindsay Olson’s exhibit MANUFACTURED RIVER on Friday, March 28, 6:00-9:00pm.

Stickney, Illinois interviewing personnel, attending seminars and reading deeply, Lindsay Olson learned the science behind what engineers do to treat human wastewater. Returning to the studio, she used an assortment of elegant fibers, embroidery and stitching techniques to create richly colored textiles that help explain how water can be endlessly recycled if we care for it properly. Wastewater treatment has been the most successful public health initiative in the history of human beings and Olson’s Manufactured River brings awareness to its importance to the future of clean water.

Located subgrade in the undercroft of the historic former Church of the Epiphany, the brick and timbered Catacombs Gallery alludes to spaces where wastewater flows and atmospherically lends as a backdrop for the exhibit. Experientially for visitors, the exhibit will additionally present a choreographed sound installation composed by music engineer and producer Jon Smith, recorded in part, on site at the Stickney Water Reclamation Plant.

Make sure to RSVP for this amazing event!

Golden Hour at Epiphany:

Stop by Epiphany for Golden Hour beforehand for free live music, drinks and lite bites in the Café Bar! Doors open at 5pm with 1/2 priced bottles of wine and other specials until 7:00pm

Golden Hour Menu + Music Schedule

Please note that outside food or beverages are not permitted in the venue.

Attend the opening reception for Jonathan Franklin’s THE YELLOW GUITAR on Friday, March 28, from 6:00-9:00pm.

Musical instruments can often be seen as objects of exquisite complexity and beauty. Aesthetically, they are beautiful objects in themselves, but it is when they are played that instruments become mesmerizing and transformative. Inspired by the vivid colors and playful motifs in Henri Matisse’s 1939 painting La Musique (The Music), Jonathan Franklin’s exhibition The Yellow Guitar pays homage to Matisse’s masterwork, while presenting a whimsical array of musical instruments and performers in perfect harmony with Epiphany Center for the Arts’ historic Sanctuary space and intimate music venue.

For Franklin, the guitar has always represented something accessible and romantic. Unlike a piano, the guitar is portable, and its six strings open to a world of acoustic and vocal possibilities. He credits Elvis Presley and the Beatles for sparking his first inclination to play the guitar. As a teenager, Franklin belonged to a group called The Insex, which was the best (and only) American rock band between Calcutta and Bangkok. Since those halcyon days from decades ago, his love for music in all its shapes and forms has never ebbed.

In this series of paintings, the characters showcase a variety of instruments, from guitars to drums, violins, and saxophones, among others. All that is left for the viewer is to imagine the music.

Make sure to RSVP for this amazing event!

Golden Hour at Epiphany:

Stop by Epiphany for Golden Hour beforehand for free live music, drinks and lite bites in the Café Bar! Doors open at 5pm with 1/2 priced bottles of wine and other specials until 7:00pm

Golden Hour Menu + Music Schedule

Please note that outside food or beverages are not permitted in the venue.

Attend the Opening Reception for Helen Geglio and Anders Zanichkowsky’s exhibit GUARDIAN THREADS on Friday, March 28, from 6:00-9:00pm.

Guardian Threads brings together the evocative works of Helen Geglio and Anders Zanichkowsky, highlighting deep themes of comfort, protection, and peace woven into their textiles to mark the passage of time. 

A selection of work from Helen Geglio's various textile series delve into narratives of memory, motherhood, and resilience, using repurposed materials to craft intricate pieces that protect and honor life journeys and the stories of women. Her Amulet Bundles are meditations on motherhood. Worries and fears for our children are bundled up and tied, held tightly inside protective layers of cloth. Anxiety Shields ward off the circular thoughts of sleepless nights when the world seems on end. Geglio’s Wisdom Cloaks pay tribute to the accumulated knowledge, experience and maturity of women, while honoring the resilience and wisdom of women through the ages.

Anders Zanichkowsky's burial blankets offer a distinctive sense of comfort and peace. Long before they’re used as a burial shroud, these memento mori are meant to serve as a blanket, bedspread, wall hanging, altar piece, or shawl that gathers the essence of personal memories over time. The handwoven shrouds, crafted from natural fibers, then provide a gentle, protective cocoon that honors the departed while supporting eco-friendly burial practices. As these blankets transition from everyday use to their final, sacred purpose, they embody a seamless journey from life to death, offering profound solace and tranquility to both the living and the departed.

Together, within Epiphany Center for the Arts’ most intimate gallery, Geglio and Zanichkowsky’s works invite viewers to reflect on the comforting and protective qualities of textiles, the peace they bring both in life and death, and the enduring legacies woven into the fabric of our lives.

Attend the opening reception for Katrin Schnabl’s QUALIA on Friday, March 28, from 6:00-9:00pm.

QUALIA is an invitation for an amplified embodied sensory experience - the way it feels to “feel.” Quale (s)/ qualia(pl), defined as instance(s) of subjective conscious experience, presents a paradox: debated as something that does not exist, or conversely, be something of great neuroscientific significance. Katrin Schnabl views QUALIA as a sensory phenomenon, an inter-firing that naturally occurs without thought, yet possesses a visceral impact all its own.

Schnabl’s exhibit presents a series of sculptures and scrolls, SISTERS, along with several works from her PORTAL series, which resemble doorframes and scrolls swathed in a surface of sheer, colorful fabrics, curvilinearly stitched together, forming a dimensional unit.

EWNS (an acronym for East West North South) is a large format hanging tapestry, structured as a triptych. EWNS forms a continuous circle, split open, and experienced in three, 30-foot sections. Conjuring maps and migratory patterns over a spherical form, it is a meditation on the complementing function of our bodies’ halves: a side for fielding circular inputs, and a side for cardinal directions. Participatorily, it offers an embodied deliberation on what is embedded into many languages as the right and the left, highlighting distinctions between what is considered proper and lawful versus what is deemed less important or significant. As a visual journey across a landscape, the structure’s borders become an activation of color fields, a continuous series of neighboring contact points with varying resonances, direction, and dimension via line, texture, form, light, and movement.

Schnabl is interested in the experiential dimensions of her work. A commonality is its invitation for a somatic sensory reading; a sense-making through moving and exploring its dynamic and dimensional potential. Schnabl’s work invokes an impulse to “step inside,” as a way to process its information with the entire body, and she considers this as “yoU aRe A Work Of Art “– short URAWOA. Her offering leans into the trust the individual brings to their body as an extraordinary instrument, and Schnabl’s wish for that amplification.  Photo credit: James Prinz

Make sure to RSVP for this amazing event!

Golden Hour at Epiphany:

Stop by Epiphany for Golden Hour beforehand for free live music, drinks and lite bites in the Café Bar! Doors open at 5pm with 1/2 priced bottles of wine and other specials until 7:00pm

Golden Hour Menu + Music Schedule

Please note that outside food or beverages are not permitted in the venue.

Attend the opening reception for Margot McMahon’s exhibit RING OF FIRE: FRIENDS, REEFS, AND BOUNCING BACK
on Friday, May 9, from 6:00-9:00pm.

Coral reefs are an ancient microcosm with a changing diversity of phantasmagoric beauty. As a crucial building block of our planet that feeds twenty-five percent of sea life, the urgency to save coral from repeated bleaching episodes is becoming clear. The Ring of Fire and Coral Triangle, located in the Southern Pacific Ocean, shows why it matters.

Endorsed by UNESCO for ocean awareness during the United Nations Ocean Decade, Margot McMahon’s Ring of Fire: Friends, Reefs, and Bouncing Back exhibit brings attention to how human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, significantly contribute to climate change and rising sea temperatures, which severely impacts ocean life and marine biodiversity. United States’ weather patterns originate in the Southern Pacific Ocean. A warmer ocean slows currents causing west coast droughts, more volatile storms, and Midwest flooding.

On McMahon’s 2017 diving excursion to the Palauan reefs in the Ring of Fire with a childhood friend, they witnessed the largest recorded global bleaching event, impacting the Coral Triangle: a marine epicenter with the highest coral reef and fish diversity in the world. On a return trip in 2023, the two friends and environmental activists observed a revitalization of the coral reefs through a healthy reef bounce-back, made possible by reduced carbon emissions during the global Covid-19 lock-down, conservation efforts, and sustainable practices.

Over the seven years of reef recovery worldwide, McMahon painted her Ring of Fire series to show the symbiotic relationship between a vast variety of plants, animals, and minerals that form the most diverse ecosystem on earth.  Her ocean landscapes also emulate prayer cloths to express a spiritual energy that conveys healing, while highlighting the biodiversity and stunning magnificence of the reefs. Through her technique mixte process, combining egg tempera and oil paints, McMahon’s coral reefs are luminous, as light penetrates and reflects through the layers, giving the paintings a depth and vibrancy that echo the resonance of the ocean.

Coral reef bleaching events are caused by environmental stressors that include increased water temperatures due to global warming and human pollution. These stressors disrupt the interdependent relationship between coral and algae, leading to the whitening or bleaching of corals. With the increase of carbon emissions since 2023, the world is currently experiencing its fourth global coral bleaching event, which NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) announced in April 2024 and is ongoing. This event has affected coral reefs across all major ocean basins, including the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

Make sure to RSVP for this amazing event!

Golden Hour at Epiphany:

Stop by Epiphany for Golden Hour beforehand for free live music, drinks and lite bites in the Café Bar! Doors open at 5pm with 1/2 priced bottles of wine and other specials until 7:00pm

Golden Hour Menu + Music Schedule

Please note that outside food or beverages are not permitted in the venue.

Attend the opening reception for Laurie Buman’s SANTOS Y MILAGROS (SAINTS & MIRACLES) | THE LIGHT WITHIN THE DARKNESS SERIES on Friday, May 16, from 6:00-9:00pm.

Laurie Buman’s series, Santos y Milagros (Saints & Miracles) | The Light Within the Darkness, is the culmination of over a decade of work. This collection explores social issues affecting the most vulnerable members of society. Through the lives of the Saints, Buman addresses contemporary concerns and shares the stories of these heroic women.

Each piece is layered with meaning beyond the obvious—every item and image carries its own history, coming together to form a larger narrative that transcends the physical. With these images, Buman seeks to inspire awareness, protection, and positive change in the world.

Make sure to RSVP for this amazing event!

Golden Hour at Epiphany:

Stop by Epiphany for Golden Hour beforehand for free live music, drinks and lite bites in the Café Bar! Doors open at 5pm with 1/2 priced bottles of wine and other specials until 7:00pm

Golden Hour Menu + Music Schedule

Please note that outside food or beverages are not permitted in the venue.

Attend the opening reception for Laurie LeBreton’s INSISTING AND MAINTINING on Friday, May 16, from 6:00-9:00pm.

Artist Alok Vaid-Menon has said, “There’s something audacious and beautiful about insisting on maintaining your humor and delight.” For Laurie LeBreton, humor and delight are a direct result of her work as a fiber artist. She works primarily in handmade paper to convey these ideas, using her favorite properties of paper – the messy pleasure of making it, its ability to absorb color, and both its apparent fragility and veritable strength.

The paper tapestries in LeBreton’s exhibit INSISTING AND MAINTAINING are typical of her work in many ways. The simplicity and repetitiveness of their construction lead LeBreton to calm and peace. There’s an element of playfulness: She turns a series of flat objects into a three-dimensional structure. She uses this simple structure to comment on impermanence through various means of installation. She uses color to express joy.

Finally, through this work, LeBreton also honors traditional women’s crafts – quilt making, sewing, and weaving, with the intent to convey warmth and comfort, and to express love.

Make sure to RSVP for this amazing event!

Golden Hour at Epiphany:
Stop by Epiphany for Golden Hour beforehand for free live music, drinks and lite bites in the Café Bar! Doors open at 5pm with 1/2 priced bottles of wine and other specials until 7:00pm

Golden Hour Menu + Music Schedule

Please note that outside food or beverages are not permitted in the venue.

Attend the Opening Reception for Melissa Weber’s exhibit ODE TO COMMON THINGS on Thursday, May 22, from 6:00-9:00 pm.

Melissa Weber’s ODE TO COMMON THINGS invites viewers to reimagine the ordinary, by drawing inspiration from everyday objects. Weber references Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's collection of poems by the same title, in which he expressed profound affection and admiration for everyday objects, highlighting their intrinsic value and the roles they play in our lives.

Weber's sculptures transform familiar objects, such as brick remnants, rocks and cardboard packing materials into subjects of reflection, emphasizing their intrinsic beauty and the narratives they embody. Working primarily with clay, Weber explores the transformation from wet mass to fragile form through fire, creating ceramic arrangements, visual systems and topographies that engage with history and spatial relationships.

Situated within the undercroft of the historic former Church of the Epiphany, an 1885 Richardson Romanesque church, now a vibrant cultural hub—the exhibition integrates the building’s stone walls and wood beams as important components of the artistic narrative. In this context, space itself becomes an object, engaging in dialogue with the sculptures and challenging traditional distinctions between subject and environment. In this setting, Weber explores how themes of transformation and the passage of time mirror the metamorphosis of raw materials into refined forms, encouraging deeper contemplation of material transformation and the ephemeral nature of perception. By elevating the mundane to the revered, ODE TO COMMON THINGS encourages a renewed appreciation for the simple elements of daily life, fostering a deeper connection between the observer and the often-overlooked details that shape our existence.

Make sure to RSVP for this amazing event!

Golden Hour at Epiphany:

Stop by Epiphany for Golden Hour beforehand for free live music, drinks and lite bites in the Café Bar! Doors open at 5pm with 1/2 priced bottles of wine and other specials until 7:00pm

Golden Hour Menu + Music Schedule

Please note that outside food or beverages are not permitted in the venue.

Attend the opening reception for Marianne Lovink’s exhibit COUNTERWEIGHT on Thursday, May 22, 6:00-9:00pm.

In her latest series of work, Marianne Lovink explores the dynamic relationship between sculptural form and its embellishment. She is fascinated by the visual language of mark making and the limitless expressive potential found in repetitive motifs, which has evolved over millennia. This investigation is deeply influenced by the interplay of positive and negative space, and the tension that arises when a motif both conforms to and resists the sculptural form. This tension engages the viewer and activates the eye, inviting further contemplation. While Lovink’s meticulous craftsmanship, restrained palette, and use of tactile materials remain a consistent element of her practice, she has recently expanded her use of color to provide further visual complexity and enrich the overall composition.

Make sure to RSVP for this amazing event!

Golden Hour at Epiphany:
Stop by Epiphany for Golden Hour beforehand for free live music, drinks and lite bites in the Café Bar! Doors open at 5pm with 1/2 priced bottles of wine and other specials until 7:00pm

Golden Hour Menu + Music Schedule

Please note that outside food or beverages are not permitted in the venue.