2025 Exhibitions + Events

Locked Achievements

Take an emotionally powerful journey with Chicago’s incarcerated youth in this collaboration between The Beautiful Cat and Stomping Grounds Literary Arts Initiative, featuring visual art and poetry.

Locked Achievements Closing Reception & Artist Celebration

We celebrated the talented work of the Locked Achievements artists with a guided gallery tour, writing letters to the teens still incarcerated, and by learning more about the carceral system including how the Locked Achievements exhibition and exhibition catalog are serving as mitigating evidence. All with great music, pizza, and community.

Simple Pleasures

Get lost in the details of Indian artist and designer Bansri Thakkar’s drawings.

Color/Chill with Cat & Plant Portraits

We spent a chill afternoon enjoying free coloring sheets by Bansri Thakkar as folks lined up for custom cat and plant portraits.

My Toe is on the Trip Wire

Be pulled into a world of shining flora with Julia Paloma’s cozy, metal sculptures.

Plaster Casting

Art is for everyone! Which is why we hosted a plaster casting workshop where participants used play dough to make relief sculptures then learned how to cast them in plaster.

End of the Tail

How do we honor our grief in a world on fire? What role can art play in processing our emotions so we can hold fast to our humanity and not forget the version of ourself that our lost ones loved?

line drawing of Muchen Wang with big hair and pink cheeks

Sankofa / Backcast

Dream of better worlds and be inspired to make those worlds a reality with the work of Afrofuturist Alvin Schexnider.