Art Events

Attend the opening reception for Steven Carrelli’s TEASER, TORMENTOR, AND SCRIM on Friday, January 24, from 6:00-9:00pm.

Teasers, tormentors and scrims are types of curtains used in the theater. They define the space of the stage, and they shape the illusions we see there. Like the theatrical curtains of this title, the curtains represented in these paintings play multiple roles. They act as a figure, a ground, a backdrop, a partition, a lush symbol of authority, a decoration, a convincing illusion, a dissolving ghost image, a remnant of the past, and a surface onto which we project our associations. Likewise, the paintings themselves shift perceptually between space and flat surface, appearing and disappearing, revealing and concealing.

These works take Hans Holbein's 1533 painting The Ambassadors as a model through which to explore the uncertain nature of perception and the visual rhetoric of representation. The Ambassadors is a double portrait of two men sent as diplomats by King Francis I of France to King Henry VIII of England, probably in the hope of convincing Henry not to divorce and leave the Roman Catholic Church. Holbein's painting is a tour de force of Sixteenth Century Northern European realistic representation whose extraordinary attention to observable details suggests great faith in the truthfulness of sight, while the inclusion of a prominent and spatially ambiguous anamorphic image complicates the painting's visual illusion and injects a note of doubt into this statement of faith.

Carrelli’s paintings here are part of a larger series titled Profane Mimesis. They mimic and reinterpret their source, employing a combination of selective imitation and alteration of Holbein's painting to give form to the tensions between sight and vision: between what we see and what we believe it must mean. They are not religious paintings, and neither is Holbein’s. Indeed, the title Profane Mimesis might even suggest that the act of imitation is kind of desecration. However, these paintings do express a dialectic of faith and doubt in the power of images: a combination of love and mistrust of sight. Shown here, in what was once the sacristy of the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany, these paintings have the opportunity to echo and converse with this elegant and rhetorically seductive environment.

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 Ginny Krueger’s TRANSCENDENTAL GARDEN on Friday, January 24, from 6:00-9:00pm.

Since childhood, the flora of the natural world has delighted Ginny Krueger, and this serves as a springboard for her Transcendental Garden exhibit. The forms, color, and textures propose an invented world, and the physicality of materials lends to a multi-dimensional experience that engage the senses, while evoking the multifaceted layers of life.

Krueger’s works are partially or entirely created using the encaustic medium – wax, resin, and pigment in a molten form, applied to wood and further cured through fire. Working with fire is alchemical, fugitive, mesmerizing, and unpredictable, which Krueger views as a moment-by-moment adventure and a process that is infinite in fluidity and possibility. Her works are also treasure troves of fabric, ceramic, paper and other materials. With the encaustic medium serving as the grip, Krueger arranges the materials into fanciful amalgams, or unlikely gardens that that depart from the expected, and convey something entirely new in depth and complexity. 

The earth and its bounty have claim on Krueger. She is driven to make art that is elemental and evocative, where each painting is a medley, a melded place, where both the gritty and sublime combine. Each offering in the exhibit is an invitation into a transcendental world of beauty, whimsy, and mystery.

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 John Behnke’s FALSE GUIDES on Friday, January 24, from 6:00-9:00pm.

False Guides presents frozen moments from three interlocking stories of striving, deception, and perdition. John Behnke uses a rich mix of materials - colored pencils, alcohol markers, acrylics, oils, glaze, and glitter - layered to build scenes of hallucinogenic detail and vivid color. Behnke is known for his radiant, open skies, but scenes in False Guides play in a different register, taking us to realms of dust and shadow. In “The Wanderers” series, we follow a tribe of animated mannequins that populate an abandoned mall in Minnesota. They grope through the merchandise that remains in the ruins, seeking some semblance of an identity. Other works take us to different corners of Behnke’s re-imagined America - Texas and California. In both, cults fueled by promises of transcendence descend into orgies of self-destruction. “All these series are based on people being led in strange ways that warp an individual’s perspective and ultimately cause one’s demise,” the artist says.

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 Louise Pappageorge’s FERAL LACES AND OFF THE WALL DOILIES on Friday, March 21, from 6:00-9:00pm.

The word ‘thread’ is often used to represent continuity - of an idea, a theme, a life. The simple repetitive action of interlocking threads and joining pieces to create something that is handed down among generations, chronicles the continuum of life. For Louise Pappageorge, her proclaimed “obsessive relationship” with the making of cloth and lace structures blossomed in her childhood through skills she learned from her grandmother and mother. Pappageorge states: “The drawing of threads connects me across shared generational labors to the greater multigenerational consciousness of womankind, whose structures have preserved humanity through the creation of magnificent cloths.”

In Feral Laces and Off the Wall Doilies, Pappageorge’s works of found and newly created lace and crochet structures initiate a visual rebellion, as she 

investigates the realms of feminism through artistic exploration that dismantles preconceived boundaries while challenging the traditional demarcation between craft and fine art. In a gender-biased society, craft-based work often tied to women is dismissed as merely functional or decorative, while ‘fine art’ disproportionately celebrates creations by white male artists.

Combining lace, knitted, and crocheted materials with gleaming metal leaf and patinated finishes, Pappageorge’s artwork suggests fine sculptural works, as if created from cast metal. In their final form her sculpture departs from the ethereal and fragile nature of lace structures, delicately born from the hands of women throughout time. Instead, they become dynamic expressions of contradiction and embody the multifaceted nature of “women’s work” and artistic creation. With architecture as a backdrop, these fabrics break free from the constraints of tradition, turn feral and transcend conventional boundaries. Viewers are invited into an unfamiliar dimension where the intricacies of lace and crochet unfold, while straying from the stigma that often relegates utilitarian creations to the periphery. In this merger of materials, these undomesticated laces become seductive adorations of long held traditions and the labors of women over the millennia.

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 Mat’s Dahlberg’s SYMBIOSIS on Friday, March 21, from 6:00-9:00pm.

Through fantastical reimagining of scientific subjects, SYMBIOSIS examines what unites all living beings outside of strict hierarchies and binary definitions.  For billions of years, life on earth has existed in a multiplicity of forms. Through both process and materials, Mats Dahlberg explores the interdependence of disparate organisms, the beauty and violence of nature and regeneration, and the lessons we can learn from it.

Contrary to the belief that Queer identities are a modern concept, humans have exhibited behaviors now attributed to queerness since ancient times. Nature, with its vast diversity, shows that restrictive definitions are based on fear, not truth. Queerness, Dahlberg states: “Is as deep as fungal mycelium networks, as powerful as the constant toil of tectonic movements, and as intricate as the dance of worker bees through the hive.”

Inspired by drag nightlife performance, Dahlberg uses bold colors, intricate designs, and avant-garde creations to defy fashion norms in their costume design. They blend fine art and traditional craft techniques, adorning doilies from their Great Grandmother with beads and rhinestones to honor those of marginalized genders who cultivated craft practices like embroidery and crochet. Their costume work challenges viewers to imagine life forms beyond the human self and explore the possibilities of the noncorporeal, trans body.

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 the group exhibit COME AS YOU ARE on Friday, March 21, from 6:00-9:00pm.

In a group exhibition focused on care, COME AS YOU ARE addresses how we care for ourselves and each other and asks: In what ways can the creative process be an act of healing for our communities and ourselves? What conversations can be created through collaborative making? Through this exhibition, artists utilize a diversity of fiber/textile media to illustrate their visions of collective care.

The participating artists originally connected through their intersecting community and artistic practices. There was a shared desire to “do more,” whether that meant exploring new media, participating in liberatory work, or simply having the time to hang out together. This exhibition is a point of reset. In the way it presented the artists an opportunity to re-examine their relationships with their mediums, viewers are invited to come as you are, reflect on one’s needs and “to-do” lists, and just be in the space together.

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 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.