Gallery 5

Join us for an open conversation between exhibiting artist Ashley Freeby, teaching artist Sarah Nishirua, and the current class-takers in Nishura’s Quiltmaking class  at Hyde Park Art Center.

Ashley M. Freeby lives and works in Chicago, IL. She anchors her interdisciplinary, labor intensive practice in her curiosity for truth telling. Beginning with an acute exploration of American history she investigate a collective, more inclusive story around the current society we live in. The discoveries of pre-existing documentation and objects are reused or recreated by hand, to build a critical examination of social constructs of identity and culture.

Freeby graduated with an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018. She first exhibited her work at Hyde Park Art Center in Ground Floor 2018.  Solo exhibitions of her work have been presented in Kanzlei, Berlin, Germany, and GalleryX, Chicago. Her work has been included in group exhibitions in Toronto, Chicago, and Pennsylvania. Recent residencies include  Vermont Studio Center (2019); Institut für Alles Mögliche, Berlin (2018); Chicago Artist Coalition (2018-19) and she is currently a fellow at Halcyon Arts Lab in Washington, DC.

Sarah Nishiura grew up in Detroit and now lives in Chicago, where she uses traditional techniques to craft one-of-a-kind quilts from her own designs. Sarah learned to sew from her mother and learned to love geometry from her father. From her grandparents, who were great builders, painters, stitchers, weavers and gardeners, she learned that making things is one of the greatest imperatives, privileges and pleasures in life.

Nishiura studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and has been teaching at Hyde Park Art Center for over a decade.  She is a recent finalist for the Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship and has exhibited her textile works, drawings, and paintings all over including the Koehnline Museum of Art, San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, and the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts.