Current Artists-In-Residence 2024 - 2025
Sara Emerson (she/her)
PRINTMAKING & BOOK ARTS
Sara Emerson is a printmaker living and working in Chicago. Born in Brooklyn, New York, she holds a BA in Printmaking and Social Practice of the Arts from Bennington College. Sara’s experience with printmaking has driven her towards collaborative creative endeavors with others—master printers, print publishing houses, nonprofits, educational institutions, and artists from around the world. She studied as an apprentice printer at Overpass Projects, joined the printmaking department as a technician at Williams College, and completed Tamarind Institute’s Lithography Intensive in 2021.
Sara Emerson’s work speaks to the borderlands of the seen and the unseen, inhabiting a world where the tangible and the imagined converge. Her prints explore the delicate interplay between the ephemeral and the eternal. She embraces minimalism and abstraction, creating moments of stillness and introspection. A defining aspect of her work is the use of gradients, which embody the ambiguity and depth of the human experience, allowing for an exploration of the Indefinite and the Sublime.
Anthony Park Kascak (he/him)
CERAMICS
Anthony Park Kascak (he/him) is a first generation Korean-American with a BFA in Art Practices and BA in Psychology from the University of Colorado Boulder, and an MFA from the University of Arkansas. He has attended residencies and exhibited work in Germany, China, South Korea, and around the United States. Anthony was recently an Artist in Residence and Exhibitions Specialist at the LUX Center for the Arts in Lincoln, NE from 2021-2024.
Sofía Fernández Díaz (she/her)
TEXTILES
Sofía Fernández Díaz is an interdisciplinary artist and educator from Mexico City searching for the hidden relationships between everything around us. Her process is fueled by an intimate knowledge of both ancient and modern processes, combining experimentation, intuition, and play to discover unexpected commonalities between unrelated materials. Her familiarity with naturally occurring patterns and formations allows her to recreate these systems in her work using beeswax, fibers, natural dyes and many other materials to form immediate, visceral connections. Over the past decade, Sofía has engaged in fruitful exchanges with artisans across Mexico, sharing her deep understanding of their processes and daily rituals through workshops focused on natural pigments and dyeing techniques
She is a lecturer at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she teaches Intro to Fiber and Material Studies and a Teaching Artist of Natural Dyes, Inks and Pigments at Lillstreet Art Center. Last year, her first solo exhibition in Chicago —“ y luego bailaron” was held at Goldfinch Gallery. This year she was nominated and selected to receive the Re/Match artist award. Sofía will be exhibiting in two local group shows at Chicago Art Department and Co-Prosperity. Internationally, her work will be featured by Mexico City/Berlin gallery Lagos at the Volta Art Fair in Switzerland and will attend a month-long residency with ACE in Buenos Aires to create Ciclos, the second iteration of an ongoing collaborative project with performance artist Sofia Gabriel.
Sofia was awarded the Joan Livingston full scholarship for her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies at SAIC. Following her graduation, she received a Spark grant from the Chicago Artist Coalition and was granted a Radicle Studio Residency at Hyde Park Art Center in 2023. Sofía holds a BFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and a degree in Art Anthropology from CIESAS in Mexico City. Her work has been exhibited, published, and collected both nationally and internationally.
Melissa Broek (she/her)
METALSMITHING & JEWELRY
Melissa Broek explores the balance between growth and decay in nature, transforming raw materials into intricate jewelry. Her inspiration is based on cell structure and microscopic landscapes – an alchemy of the organic and the crafted. Melissa is captivated by the tension between industrial and organic elements, crafting adornments that echo the essence of an abandoned railroad station slowly reclaimed by nature.
Born and raised in Grand Rapids, MI, Melissa has her BFA in Furniture Design from Kendall College of Art and Design. She moved to Asheville, NC in 2016 and has since spent time developing her craft at John C Campbell Folk School, Penland School of Craft, and Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts.
Currently, Melissa is thrilled to be part of the 2024 Artist in Residence cohort at Lillstreet Art Center. With excitement for the future, she looks forward to expanding her teaching methodology, embracing collaborative opportunities, and exploring artistic vision.
Tara Sabini (she/her)
DRAWING & PAINTING
Tara Sabini (she/her) is a painter-printmaker based in Chicago, Illinois. Tara is a figurative and still life artist, working in the mediums of oil paint, ink wash and intaglio practices. Set in the domestic sphere, Tara’s practice is concerned with recontextualizing the traditional usage and order of still life objects to explore issues of generational trauma, the body’s relationship to memory, the conflation of labor and love, and gender roles.
Tara holds a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and has exhibited and curated work in a variety of venues in Chicago, Rhode Island and Massachusetts including the Bridgeport Art Center, Zhou B Art Center, and the Memorial Hall Project Space, among others. Tara is also a faculty in the Drawing and Painting departments at Lillstreet Art Center and Evanston Art Center, and considers teaching to be an essential extension of her studio practice.
Day Brierre (she/her)
CERAMICS
Day is a Haitian-born illustrator and ceramics artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her visual palette derives inspiration from Afro-indigenous myths and folklore. She earned a BA in ceramics from Florida International University in 2018. Day has participated in residencies at BKLYN CLAY and Clayworks On Columbia in New York City. She was awarded a Leroy Neiman fellowship at Oxbow School of Art and Artist Residencies in 2023. Her illustrations have been featured in esteemed publications such as the New York Times and Elle magazine.
Seuil Chung (he/him)
CERAMICS
Seuil Chung is an artist based in Chicago, Illinois. Chung works with hand-built ceramic sculptures that explore contemplations on the human psyche through diaristic narratives. He is a long-term artist-in-residence at Lillstreet Art Center in Chicago, Illinois. Chung received his BFA in Studio Art at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019 and his MFA in Ceramics at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2021. He taught at the University of Akron in Ohio in the Ceramics Department from 2021 to 2023.
Chung’s recent solo exhibitions include “I Love You” at Concept Art Gallery (Pittsburgh, PA), Mouse Hunt” at KINK Contemporary Gallery (Cleveland, OH), and “Baby Shark Show” at the University of Akron (Akron, OH). He also exhibited at the Akron Art Museum as one of the exhibiting artists for the FRONT: International 2022 (Akron, OH).
