Krista Hoefle received her MFA in Sculpture from Penn State University, and her BFA in Furniture Design from the Savannah College of Art and Design.  Her work uses sculpture as a creative methodology in the exploration of videogame experiences. Through the reinterpretation of virtual interactions and objects into physical spaces, she is interested in revealing underlying -or- hidden aspects of game structure that are otherwise not apparent during regular game play.  

Rebecca Stahr is a visual artist living with her husband and son in a conservation community surrounded by the beautiful native prairie of northern Illinois. Rebecca went on to attend the American Academy of Art in Chicago, studying advertising, graphic design and illustration, where she graduated in 1992. After more than 20 years of working in the commercial art field, Rebecca is now a full time artist. She is a member of various professional organizations and has work displayed in many private collections and public gallery spaces in the greater Chicago and Milwaukee areas.

For over the past 10 years, Rebecca has been struggling with a growing battle of auto-immune illness and chronic pain. Rebecca has learned to use this pain as a lens which informs her art.  Rebecca’s art is inspired by being able to find beauty and value in the broken, as well as the impermanence and cycles of life and nature. The works created point toward a of reflection of deeper value and identity and enables compassion for humanity’s brokenness and imperfection.

Deanna Krueger works abstractly at the juncture where painting, sculpture, and drawing intersect, employing a variety of media, resulting in hybrid works of art.

Deanna received her MFA from Eastern Michigan University. Recent exhibitions include Mediative Surfaces exhibition in Fort Wayne Museum of Art, along with: Mediative Surfaces at North Central College, ZIA Gallery, and The Art Center - Highland Park. All curated by Chuck Gniech. She has received numerous fellowships and awards exhibited widely across the United States. 

Her work can be found in collections of the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Reyes Holdings, Rosemont, IL; University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School; and numerous private collections across the United States and Europe 

Parallel Lives is created and curated by Luis Martin, Founder and Chief Curator of Parenthesis Art Space currently located at Brooklyn Brush Studios in Brooklyn. The exhibition kicks off in Chicago at Next Level Gallery at the Zhou B Art Center co-curated by Sergio Gomez, Founder and Director of NXT Level Projects.

This collaboration invites the audience of both cities to think about art and the Artists that made the work in terms of context and questions the influence of place and time. Furthermore, the PARALLEL LIVES series will create a platform to expand the Artist’s reach to forge a wider sense of community and visibility.

Both events coincide with established community art events. The Chicago opening will occur on May 20th, during “Third Fridays”, a longstanding monthly program initiated by Sergio Gomez that has created a robust audience around the Artists at the Zhou B Art Center. The New York opening takes center stage in Bushwick during an annual weekend summer arts festival, that is now a major attraction for the New York art audience.

Julia Haw (b. 1982, Flint, MI) attended Western Michigan University with a concentration in painting.  She is recognized for her highly bold, nostalgia-inducing and memory-staining paintings. She deals with issues rooted in personal life, Midwestern culture and Western Culture at large that delve into feminism, ageism, memory deterioration, death, intimacy and confrontation. She uses oil paint on cotton or linen as her mainstay medium, in order to achieve empathetic coverage of these socially and emotionally shared issues, and has been able to achieve considerable viewer pause through her dedicated work habit, vibrant color choices, straightforward subject matter, and by using people and objects within her community as models.  Haw’s paintings tend to function as highly relatable, ensuing discussion amongst viewers, and bringing the public forum necessarily back.     Her work has been exhibited in such places as the Chicago Cultural Center, IL State Museum, and extensively with Claire Molek.

Enrico Magnani is an Italian artist who is living among Italy, France, and Germany. His first exhibition opened November 1997 in Milan. Until 2006 he worked as figurative painter and after a transition period his work has become exclusively abstract. His original abstract artworks have brought him in few years to international attention and been presented in museums, foundations, private galleries, and public institutions in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, UK, Vatican City, and the USA. 

Lisa was awarded an Artists Residency at the Studios of Key West for 2016. She was one of six artists awarded a two year Residency from 2010-2012 at the Merchandise Mart of Chicago. Her art appears on the cover of NY Times Bestseller, Colum McCann's novel, TransAtlantic, which won the 2015 D&AD Award of Excellence in London, England. Domenic Iacono awarded Lisa Best of Show in the 2014 Less Is More Exhibition at the Mitchell Gallery in Annapolis, MD. She is featured on the Cable TV Show, Artist to Artist, is a multiple Award Winner through Manhattan Arts International, exhibits throughout the United States and has her art in private/public collections throughout the world.  

Alberto Aguilar wrote this biography but will be speaking in third person. For an unexplained reason he has omitted the word art from this paragraph but has made one exception. Alberto is a Chicago based ___ist and teaches at Harold Washington College. He is coordinator of Pedestrian Project a program dedicated to making ___ more accessible and available to all. Currently he is ___ist in residence at the ___ Institute of Chicago. Aguilar's creative practice incorporates whatever materials are at hand as well as exchanges with others. His work integrates his various life roles and has been exhibited at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary ___, the Queens Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American __, the Nelson-Atkins Museum and the Minneapolis Institute of ___.

Maria Gaspar is an interdisciplinary artist born in Chicago. She has presented her work at The MCA Chicago, Jane Addams Hull House Museum, the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, the Alpineum Produzentengalerie, and Artspace New Haven, amongst others. Recently, Gaspar was awarded a Creative Capital Award, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Award, the National Museum of Mexican Art Sor Juana Women of Achievement Award, and residencies at the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago and Project Row Houses in Houston. She was featured in the Chicago Tribune as Chicagoan of the Year in the Visual Arts in 2014. She is an Assistant Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Gaspar received her MFA in Studio Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago and her BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.

Dan Ramirez been exhibiting Nationally and Internationally for over 35 years. A major influence in his work during his formative years was the Minimalist movement of the late 50’s and 60’s and a love for the art of Barnett Newman. Over time, his paintings developed into a synthesis of Geometric Abstraction coupled with the visual aesthetic of Minimalism. Dan tends to see his work as a form of Minimalist/Romantic/Baroque.

Dan is in the collections of numerous major museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, The National Museum of Mexican Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, MOCRA, St. Louis, The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, and Fundacion Llorens Artigas in Spain. There are numerous books and publications featuring his work and he is currently represented in Chicago by Zolla Liberman Gallery.