APRIL 27th-EDRA SOTO

April 27

______PM

WAKE UP! open,

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keys, WAKE UP!

Edra Soto (b. Puerto Rico 1971) is a Chicago based artist. In 1995 Edra received the Alfonso Arana Fellowship to work in Paris for one year. She obtained an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2OOO. Immediately after, she was awarded the SAIC Trustees Grant to attend Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

She has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work has been feature in New American Paintings and The Museum of Cotemporary Art of Chicago. Soto has lectured at El Museo de Puerto Rico and The Art Institute of Chicago among others.

She is currently a participant at the Hyde Park Art Center’s The Center Program, granted by The Joyce Foundation.

Upcoming exhibitions include Now See Hear at Believe Inn and Point of Departure, curated by Amy Zahi at The Arcade, Columbia College Chicago and et aliae, curated by Beatriz Santiago at Galeria Agustina Ferreyra, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Soto and her husband Dan Sullivan design, fabricated and currently run operations of The Franklin, an artist run exhibition space located in their home’s backyard in East Garfield Park, in Chicago.  This project has been funded by Northeastern Illinois University, 3Arts Foundation, and a grant from The Propeller Fund. 

OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, APRIL 27th, 7-10PM

3216 s. Morgan St. Apt 4R

Chicago, IL, 60608

UP NEXT: HEATHER MEKKELSON

HEATHER MEKKELSON

Saturday, March 9th, 7-10pm

My great-grandfather haled from Stopnica, Poland where his occupation was forester. Upon immigrating to America he settled in North Central Pennsylvania where the only work he could find was as a coal miner. He missed the sun. The following historical account made national news but few believed his eyewitness account.

In the summer of 1928, Stanislaw Jendruch arrived at the coal mine outside of Coudersport, PA for another fourteen hour shift. The time was 5:48 a.m. At 5:46 a.m. the explosion that ripped apart the shaft walls and collapsed the main entrance killed all 43 men and boys who were inside. Stanislaw heard no blast; he was hard of hearing from working with black powder for the last several years. But as he approached the mine, he could recognize the absence of sound all around him. There was no possible way to remove the rubble blocking the portal. Stanislaw, alone at the mining site, ran to the obstructed entrance, and through a small opening, peered in. He could not sufficiently describe in English what he saw, but the closest translation that his wife, Amelia Angeline, could tell the newspapers was that "a glow suggestive of the stopping of stars" poured through.

Heather Mekkelson’s solo and two-person exhibitions include threewalls (Chicago), Roots and Culture (Chicago), Old Gold (Chicago), and STANDARD (Chicago). Her work has also been included in group shows at The Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), The Figge Art Museum (Davenport, IA), The Poor Farm (Manawa, WI), Raid Projects (Los Angeles, CA), and Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA). She has had her work published in Art Journal, Broadsheet (The Contemporary Art Center of South Australia), Time Out Chicago, Chicago Tribune, andArtforum.com. Most recently,Mekkelson became an Artadia Award Chicago 2012 awardee. 
 

 http://www.heathermekkelson.com/