Facility

4.12.2026 — 6.26.2026

Opening Reception: 4.12, 2:00-4pm

Waypoint is a site-specific, sculptural installation in three parts. Each is metal. Each part responds to its specific space whether contained, connected or contrasting, and each is also independent. The south gallery holds a three-dimensional, room-scaled line drawing by Ross. The north gallery converses with new forms connected to its corners, rafters and walls by Elizabeth. The central gallery connects the two via a collaborative work referencing waves and the ebb and flow required to live and work as personal and professional partners.

Ross and Elizabeth Fiersten are independent artists as well as partners in the metal shop called Manifold. They are also frequent collaborative partners of Nick Cave, making many of the steel elements that shoulder his imaginative forms.

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From the Artists

‘Waypoint’ is both the title of the exhibition and the installation within the center gallery. We see this show as a waypoint along our journey, a place and time in which we are able to look forward and back, locating ourselves in this moment. The clusters of waves on the floor change depending on where and when they are viewed - expressing movement, agitation and calm. Waypoints are aids to navigation, serving as reference points which are especially important in unknown waters and turbulent times. The metal waves indicate the path between our individual work at each end of the space, and trace the terrain of our relationship as partners in art, design, business, and life.

In the south gallery, Ross’s installation explores how forms and people inhabit space in ways that are often not fully independent nor fully determined. ‘On Balance’ (waxed aluminum, powder-coated steel) consists of counter-weighted pieces evoking a line drawing in metal and shadow. The waxed aluminum extends and explores while the colored steel grounds and locates the rising forms. While the objects are free-standing, their relationships to each other are ephemeral, shifting and changing as one moves through the installation. The composition and orientation of the elements will change over the course of the exhibition allowing for new moments to emerge.

There are people who feel like old souls, and Elizabeth has always had the distinct impression that this is her first rodeo. There are so many questions about where, when, and how. Her latest inquiry has been about the edges and corners of our built world. Why are they largely left untouched, or seemingly taken for granted? They define our spaces and often provide structural strength, yet they don't seem to have as much fun or get as much attention as the middle of our walls. What happens when these introverted junctures are activated and become sources of inspiration? Flowing out and around these spaces in the north gallery are organic shapes influenced by Elizabeth's upbringing in the landscape and cultures of New Mexico. Realized in steel plate at architectural scale, this work attempts to delicately manipulate an otherwise industrial material.

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Elizabeth and Ross Fiersten are co-founders of the metal studio Manifold which is dedicated to the art of fine craftsmanship for the furniture industry and select artists. Manifold has been honored to collaborate on projects with Nick Cave, the Richard Hunt studio, and Miller Knoll. Ross and Elizabeth are artists, designers, and metal fabricators living and working in Chicago for the past three decades. Ross’s background in architecture and studio art guides his approach to making, often blurring the lines between form, function, and space. Elizabeth grew up in Santa Fe where early exposure to small metals and furniture construction have been the foundation of a studio practice creating art in partnership with others and a business centered on craftsmanship. Participating in group shows over the years, this is Ross and Elizabeth's first solo show, together.

4.12.2026 — 3.12.2027

Opening Reception: 4.12, 2:00-4pm

“I Know That’s Right” is a love letter disguised as a memory. The title comes from a phrase my grandmother used to say, an affirmation, a blessing, a quiet celebration. She would say it with a smile that made you feel seen, proud, and held all at once. That spirit lives at the center of this piece.

This work reflects how memory moves: nonlinear, layered, and full of fragments that don’t always need explanation. It holds pieces of identity, imagination, and origin, moments that feel both personal and inherited.

At its core, this piece honors a lineage of Black women whose presence carries wisdom, softness, humor and survival. It is about the ways love shows up, in language, gestures, in what is passed down without ever being formally taught. It’s an offering of gratitude, a reflection on inheritance, and a quiet affirmation that continues to echo: I know that's right.

- Bianca

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Bianca Pastel is a Chicago-based visual artist whose playful and nostalgic art centers the black girlhood experience. Finding influence in 90s movies and cartoons, Bianca creates to remind people of the joy and complexity of childhood memories. With a concentration on digital art mediums, Bianca studied art and design at Columbia College before working alongside her then boss and current mentor, Hebru Brantley. Her portfolio ranges from fine art and screen prints, figurine/sculpture design and children’s literature illustration, to animation and merchandise with clients such as Nike, Adidas, Disney Pixar and Rotofugi. Bianca’s current focus is creating an imaginative cartoon empowering the experience of being a black child and dealing with mental health issues. Follow the journey @yobinky and @biancapastel on instagram.

11.9.2025 — 3.27.2026

Opening Reception: 11.9, 2:00-4pm

Pan works with sculptures, installations, performances, and electronics to curate playgrounds. Like a child's half-finished thoughts, impulsive yet stirring, his work are vessels that deflate trauma, shocks, and simulations. Pan investigates the mediated uncanniness propagated through social media, news, and everyday experience under the looming ghosts.

Pan animates objects’ forms and functions in a DIY approach, where familiar objects are digitally engineered and childishly treated. These objects induce shocks in his life, such as missiles, his middle school, Apple’s AirPods, sad looking stuffed animal, and frogs singing in hell, eliciting a reaction that starts with laughter and then evolves from unease to disturbance. 

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Zj Pan (b. 1998) lives and works in Madison, Wisconsin. Pan obtained his B.S. in Physics and B.S. in Textile and Fashion Design at University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was the recipient of New Artist Society Award at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Facility Fellowship, and Vermont Studio Center Fellowship.

7.12.2025 — 10.25.2025

Opening Reception: 7.12, 7:30-10pm

As a designer, I believe design can create conditions for change. The change I am working towards is a reset from considering the world a source for extraction to one of mutual care. I began with a question: Can something naturally abundant, yet so commonplace as to be invisible, reveal the power of all we share?

Friends and family sat for video portraits with photographer Liv Hamilton, showing up with implicit trust. We used no filters, lighting each person with the sun or salt water, and captured emotions from personal stories. These slowly moving portraits, paired with studies of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in a three-channel video, illuminate piles of road salt seated on silk. Over the course of 11 minutes, tides of emotions roll from wonder to rage to vulnerability. My hope is that as people pass these windows repeatedly, they will see something both new and familiar.

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Tanya Quick is a multi-disciplinary designer based in New York City. In her work, she is interested in synthesizing the full suite of design tools—space, images, text, and animation—to create immersive narratives that compel a person to engage with ideas that are beyond what is immediately in front of them. Tanya’s work has been recognized by The Webby Awards, Anthem Awards, AIGA, Art Directors Club, W3 Web Awards, Davey Awards, Communication Arts, and various publications, including the UK exhibit and book Can Graphic Design Save Your Life.

4.19.2020 — 6.28.2025

Opening Reception: 4.19, 2-4pm

Here, my heart resonates in the wonder of discovery, where I find sources and materials everywhere to re imagine as works of Art. My deepest desire is to share with others a Transformative journey, through the essence of dreams to memory, that activates my work into regenerative possibility. I believe in freedom to my core, beyond the objectivity of patterns or norms. My dance in the Soul, quests for meaningful abstraction that conjure conscious interpretations for a purposeful discourse. 

Through my work, I rebel against conventional perceptions and assumed traditions ,that squander future Hope! I use found objects and materials, as a source of inspiration, that translates my vision into Art. My intention is to imbue the work before you with the breadth of life, the resonating rhythms of vibration, and the aspirations of higher Beauty! I have labored with joy my entire life, for the wonderment and fulfillment of art making, through the creative process. It has been a long and productive learning curve, that’s tested and molded my practice and acumen, time and time again! I am thankful and most grateful to all who have loved me, and to all I dearly Love!

artdaily.com

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Lucy Slivinski, is a critically acclaimed sculptor and installation artist based in Chicago. Slivinski holds an MFA, from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA, from Northern Illinois University. She has utilized recycled materials in her practice for over 30 years. In 2018, and again in 2019, Slivinski was invited to be artist in residence at EXPO CHICAGO, where she created a large-scale light installation. In 2017, she was the first American to create an installation for the Museo de Bellas Artes, in Havana, Cuba as part of “Arte y Moda.” She has exhibited her work in Miami at Art Basel, Fusion MIA and SCOPE fairs and all over the world having had numerous one person exhibitions in New York City, Chicago, Bordeaux, France and Reading, PA to name a few. She has several commissioned public art installations throughout Chicago and abroad, including in 2018, “Phoenix Rising”, in Uptown, and the Logan Skate Park, “Hedgerow”, in Grant Park, “Natural Rhythm”, in Saint Cloud, MN and “Ancestoral Throne,” in Bordeaux, France. In the fall of 2012, CS Interiors Magazine named Slivinski “Best Lighting Designer”, in Chicago. She has work in many private and public art collections such as, Capital Investments Collection, Chicago, Illinois, The Longhouse Collection in New York, the City of Chicago, City of Bolingbrook, Illinois and the City of St. Cloud, Minnesota. Her work has been written about in Art in America, New York Times, and Sculpture Magazine, Chicago Interiors, and Luxe Magazine.

4.19.2020 — 4.01.2026

Opening Reception: 4.19, 2-4pm

The 2025 Nitch Project by Marcus Kennedy consists of two separate but connected works inspired by music

Top: Sentimental Skah Shah Song Haiti Music

Bottom:  Livin La Vida Loca Ricky Martin Song Art Dancing to the Music

“I came up with my own beautiful style. I get inspired by other artists’ work, like Tim Stone. I make it my own and put music into it. I listen to different music, it flows me. I hear a song on the radio (like 101.9 The Mix) and put the song into the artwork. It could be Chuck Berry, Jimmy Smith, Talking Heads. I do the outlines all the way around in pastel first. Shapes are dancing to the music. Then color just comes to my mind and I add paint. Dark colors and bright colors, a little bit of both. I’m pretty good at mixing colors. Painting takes a while, sometimes it takes a day or two. Sometimes it can take weeks. I use paint and pastel at the same time because it looks beautiful that way.” — Marcus

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Born in Evanston in 1991, Marcus Kennedy now lives in Chicago. An avid fan of a wide range of music (especially Brazilian jazz, R&B, reggae, bossa nova, hip hop, and classic rock), he always listens to favorite radio stations while working in the studio. Kennedy often finds inspiration in the work of other artists, sometimes borrowing an initial approach but transforming and reimagining it through his distinct creative vision. His extensive, ongoing series of vibrant pattern-based works on paper has manifested as hundreds of abstract iterations, endless explorations within a certain set of guiding parameters. These velvety acrylic and oil pastel works reflect a sophisticated, intuitive sense of color and form.



8.25.2024 — 11.3.2024

Opening Reception: 8.25, 1-4pm

Can you see it? I'm trying to get a better view. Things aren't looking up lately, though I wish they would. I've been looking up every day. I read that it’s good for the mind. Look it up! Ask the sun. Read the clouds.

This Spring, I lived in Houston, where the most beautiful skies bloomed. Every morning, I walked by a field of grass where the great-tailed grackles gathered. My dad had told me about these birds, how they have this peculiar behavior of looking upwards and I often found myself joining them.

Growing up, my family owned an Audubon Society clock that announced every hour with a bird call. I remember eating breakfast when the song sparrow sang, and coming home from school when the northern cardinal called. Maybe that was the closest we got to letting the birds tell us how to live.

I always looked up to my dad. He could seemingly point at any bird and tell me its name. Now that I've left home, he shares his bird sightings in the family chat, with mom often replying in flowers. There’s a traditional genre of Chinese paintings called 花鳥畫 (flower-and-bird paintings) and I wonder if my ancestors’ group chat looked like this too, exchanging beauty between scrolls, talking through birds, as birds.

I think of the phrase 羽化 (yuhua), used to describe the moment a taoist becomes immortal, a euphemism to describe their passing. Taken literally, it is a changing of feathers; you are said to be riding on a crane to the West. But I was born here and find myself gazing towards the East, wondering if I should tell the birds to turn back. The business of plume hunting nearly brought the shorebirds to extinction. This is the reason the Audubon Society exists today. This is the reason the clock exists in our home.

The clock's speaker has since broken and the birds never call anymore. But it is not too late to look up and to listen for the birds ourselves. My friend Zandria tells me about the Sankofa, a bird that turns its neck back; it is a Ghanaian word that reminds us it is not too late to go back and fetch what we have forgotten. It is not too late to face East. It is not too late to see the sun rise once more. It is not too late to ask the sun what it has been painting.

Everything we want is in eye's reach but only for as long as we are looking. So try squinting your eyes, adjusting your head, and craning your neck further and further until you find yourself falling over backwards and upside down, and there you will see the world, changed. It will be frightening for a moment, but don't worry, falling and flying are not so different if you don't think too hard about the ending. All we have is now, so take your time flying, you're not in a rush.

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Hai-Wen Lin is a Taiwanese-American artist currently based in Chicago. They are an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and earned a M.Des in Fashion, Body and Garment from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where they were selected as a Fashion Future Graduate by the CFDA upon graduating. They are a recipient of the Hopper Prize and have received fellowships from MacDowell and the Ox-Bow School of Art. Lin has performed publicly at the Chicago Cultural Center and MU Gallery and has exhibited work in a variety of places including Prairie, in Chicago; Queen, in Bellingham, Washington; the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles; the Pittsburgh Glass Center; the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art; the walls of their home; their friend’s home; on a plate; on a lake; on their body; in the sky.

4.14.2024 — 6.30.2024

Opening Reception: 4.14, 1-4pm

The works in Ai Kijima’s new show Wanderer’s Tales are probably best understood as sculpted paintings. In each she stitches together segments from a wide range of source textiles from around the world—Uzbek ikats found in Turkish bazaars, strips of indigo-dyed Japanese kimonos, Indian silk sarees—managing to reverently preserve phrases from the stories these fabrics tell, while collaging them to tell new stories of her own.

Like any true traveler, Ai Kijima is at home everywhere, but here is what weaves all the different strands of her border-crossing investigations into a single common thread: No matter where she is, no matter what culture her migratory mind is deep-diving into, Ai Kijima treats each scrap of fabric devoutly, as the elusive wisp of fragile dream-fluff it actually is. She gives every remnant, whether beautiful or banal, the benevolent kiss of her whole-hearted, absolute acceptance, granting each fragment a transcendent grace that can only be achieved through profoundly spiritual aesthetic acts of love.

Always lushly and intimately intricate, joyfully exuberant even when subdued, Ai Kijima’s work somehow manages to thread the needle between every category or label: the mundane and the sublime, East and West, art and craft, painting and sculpture. Like all the best artists she opens up meanings and opportunities where we least expect them, revealing unfathomed dimensions. Here, at long last, is a magic carpet ride through soul-nourishing, gently-tended never-ever-lands—the kinds we always need, but may have only dreamed of once upon a time.

4.14.2024 — 6.30.2024

Trust Yourself

This mural is a mantra for authenticity through self-empowerment. The woven letterforms intuit a journey of growth and self-discovery, illustrating the beauty found in embracing one's own identity. The message "trust yourself" fosters resilience through self-acceptance. This work encourages viewers to trust their instincts and follow their hearts in pursuit of their dreams.

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Tanner Woodford is founder and executive director of the Design Museum of Chicago. As an artist, he paints optimistic, typographic, and larger-than-life murals. His work has appeared at museums and galleries, and in public and private collections. As a designer, educator, and entrepreneur, he has taught, lectured, and led workshops on design issues, social change, and design history in classrooms and at conferences. He is happy to be scrappy, irrepressibly optimistic, and believes design has the capacity to fundamentally improve the human condition.

4.28.2023 -

A Facility Artwork by Nick Cave and Bob Faust

This project commissioned by the Onassis Foundation as part of the Archive of Desire festival.

“Later, in a more perfect society, someone else made just like me is certain to appear and act freely.”

This excerpt from Cavafy’s “Hidden Things,” viscerally connects to human insecurities as well as the potential progress and empowerment. Each is simply attached to a certain time, place or situation, but all are reminders of the walls we build to keep ourselves safe, that without hard work, perseverance and vision for a greater future, can eventually become walls to keep us from truly living. ”Lit,” is a billboard-scaled expression of radical joy intended to refuel us on our way toward that more perfect society. It makes use of the cumulative powers of its components. The words, a Nick Cave soundsuit and the facade of National Sawdust itself. Originally created to conceal race, gender and class, Nick Cave’s soundsuits force a viewer to engage without preconceived judgment. They operate less as armor and more as a key to unlock one’s own full expression. Faust worked with Cave to select a performance still that would seamlessly integrate with the historic masonry. This one from 2003, is made of found materials including a vintage afghan, chainmail keychains, plastic beads and synthetic raffia. First worn as part of a series of “invasion-style” performances, this still comes from Cave’s film titled “Drive-By” that premiered in 2011 in the storefront windows, outside Cave’s former studio on the south side of Chicago. Cavafy’s words are skillfully integrated with the soundsuit as well as the building itself, taking advantage of the windows as a lightsource and frame for the “in a more perfect society,” to instigate the unofficial goal of the “Lit.”

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National Sawdust

Onassis

Broadway World

6.19.20—

“As my heart continues to weep, my emotions continue to ask myself how I can be more purposeful. I rarely ask for your help but at this time I need yours.” — Nick Cave

AMENDS is a multi-component, community-based art project with the goal to eradicate racism—starting with self. Created by Nick Cave and Bob Faust and presented by Facility, it asks individuals to dig deep into themselves to acknowledge and take responsibility for their personal roles in the proliferation of racism through publicly shared confessions and apologies. It is a simple but personally confrontational act of looking in the mirror and acknowledging where each can each make necessary changes for the good of all people immediately, but even more so for the empowerment and success of our successors, our children.

The first component of AMENDS is a collection of handwritten, unapologetically transparent reflections from Chicago leaders titled “Letters to the World Toward the Eradication of Racism.”

Across the street at Carl Schurz Public High School, the project continues as a community-wide expression titled "Dirty Laundry." It asks any and all individuals to identify their own roles in racism and make amends with their fellow human beings by committing these apologies as personal commitments of change on yellow ribbons tied to a clothesline to create a public collection and initiate a community correction.

The final component asks for global participation in the form of a hashtag “#AMENDS.” It is not a call out, but rather a call to action through acknowledgement and subsequent change in each of us.

Make #AMENDS

"As Americans we are all aware that our country is founded on freedom. Black people know all too well the value of it, but white people actually get to feel it. Until all the unaccounted for racist actions are aired and real amends are made, with subsequent and sustained changes in the best interests of ALL, our American foundation is a false one. Those of us who come from especially privileged backgrounds have enormous responsibility in this moment. We must be more than allies, we must actively root out the truths so long buried and ignored, beginning with self. While policies must change, it is enlightenment and vulnerable acknowledgement with a willingness to change that begins and ends in each of our hearts that will finally put an end to racism." — Bob Faust

Thank you for your contributions to the project!

Akilah Haley

Amy Bluhm

Amy Eshelman

Angelique Power

Anke Loh

Carrie Lannon

Courtney Lederer

David Greene, Iron & Wire

Elisa Tenney

Ginger Farley

Justin Ahrens

Kahil El Zabar

Katrin Schnable

Lucy Slavinsky

Lulia Rodrigues

Marilyn Fields

Marshall Svendson

Michael Workman

Monique Meloche

Naomi Beckwith

Nathan Hoyle

Rob Rejamin

Sandro Miller

Stephanie Sick

Tanner Woodford

Tanya Quick

Tony Karmen

Vicki Heyman

Zoe Ryan