Drawing on brings together a mixture of artists whose practices stem from, around and on drawing. Charged saturation, value and exploration are at play through a shared obsession in mark making that lies somewhere between abstraction and image. What progresses a practice? What are we drawing on?

Featuring work by Susan Pasowicz, Josiah Ellner, Jonathan Worcester, Ingrid Olson, Barbara Jenkins and Jairo Serna. Curated by Jessica Zawadowicz and Michael Cuadrado

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Opening reception Friday 9/12 6-10PM.
Special Chicago Exhibition Weekend hours Fri-Sun, 12-4pm
Closing reception 10/5 closing reception 12-3PM

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Susan Pasowicz (b. 1955, Chicago) is a dreamer and visionary. Fascinated by organic forms, mystery, and the supernatural, Pasowicz creates atmospheric spaces and whimsical landscapes in graphite and colored pencil. Informed by both the ordinary and the magical, hints of her memories and the everyday become tangled in webs of amorphous shapes and wispy, hair-like marks. Sometimes using both hands or multiple drawing implements simultaneously, her delicate mark-making gradually accumulates and becomes layered on the paper’s surface. Pasowicz’s work transports the viewer to nebulous, fantastical environments where mirrors, portals, windows, and doors appear as recurring motifs. With a process driven by intuitive abstraction and rendering visible the invisible, her dream-like drawings embody a visual language that echoes the mediumistic works of Georginana Houghton and Emma Kunz.

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Josiah Ellner (b. 1996, Milwaukee) holds an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art. Institute of Chicago (2023) and a BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (2019). His works have been exhibited across major cities, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, with recent shows at Latitude Gallery, Tchotchke Gallery, The Color Club, and Lorin Gallery. He has received the Teaching Fellowship and Carrie Ellen Tuttle Fellowship from SAIC and was a resident artist at the Oxbow School of Art and more recently a resident at the Vermont Studio Center. This multicultural upbringing between China and the U.S. shapes his whimsical, colorful style, blending urban alienation with a vivid imagination rooted in the natural world

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Jonathan Worcester is a painter currently living and working in Chicago, IL. He received his BA from Sarah Lawrence College in 2015, and his MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2024. Worcester has been the subject of  solo exhibitions at 65Grand, Chicago, IL, University Club of Chicago, Cleaner Gallery + Projects, Chicago, IL, The Hole @ Weather Proof Gallery, Chicago, IL, and Belong Gallery, Chicago, IL. Worcester is a recipient of the 2023 Luminarts Visual Arts Fellowship, as well as the Van Pappelendam/Castle Scholarship, the Maurice Friedlander Memorial Scholarship, the George/Isabel Brown Scholarship, the Whitney B Halstead Scholarship and has attended residencies at The Poor Farm, and Oxbow School of Art. He is currently working as the Departmental Specialist for the Applied Arts of Europe Department at the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Teaching Fellow in the Painting and Drawing Department at The School of the Art Institute.

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Ingrid Olson (b. 1996. St. Louis, MO) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Her current studio practice explores drawing through hazy, lulling works that reference her immediate surroundings and everyday mystery. She holds a BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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Barbara Jenkins is a full-time English teacher working in Chicago Schools, I can keep practicing daily. My mornings consist of waking before dawn. Beginning with a cup of coffee and my “morning pages,” I can fit in a couple of moves on the two paintings I work on. These small mixed-media paintings become blueprints, or an alphabet, if you will. Once I have a vacation, I have time to create a bigger work of art inspired by the alphabet created within my daily routine. Giving myself this early time daily allows me to bring myself to the classroom.

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Jairo Serna (b. 1996, Queens, NY) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. In 2018 he received his BFA in Painting and Drawing from SUNY Purchase. In 2019, he was the recipient of the Bronx Council on the Arts BRIO award and a recipient of the 2021 NYFA City Artists Corps Grant. Jairo Serna was an artist in residence at the Ox-Bow School of Art in 2021 and The Macedonia Institute in 2024. In 2025, he will be an artist in residence at Wassaic Projects in Wassaic, New York.