Join CAPE for an evening of art, education, and conversation!

Discover how CAPE teaching artists bring their studio practices into the classroom—and how their work with students and teachers inspires their art.

This public event features a panel of artists sharing their experiences from CAPE’s in-school and afterschool programs: Asya Dubrovina, Jordan Knecht, Jennifer Mannebach, and John Neff. Each artist will present their practice and discuss how it has evolved through collaboration and teaching.

The conversation will also open up to audience questions and dialogue. Whether you’re an artist, educator, student, or curious community member, we invite you to join the conversation at CAPE!

Let us know that you are coming, RSVP here!

Asya Dubrovina

Asya Dubrovina (b. 1988 St. Petersburg Russia) is an artist and filmmaker who received her B.A at Keene State College with a concentration of Visual Studies and Moving Image and her M.F.A in Moving Image from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her nonfiction films investigate poetics and the boundaries between the personal and the political. Her interests lie in how places carry memory, sound as an experience and the materiality of film. Using single channel film and 16 mm installation, her work engages the viewer sensorially. Her work has shown at SEFF at Binghamton University, NY, Co-Prosperity, ACRE and Gallery 400 in Chicago, IL. She currently teaches multidisciplinary arts and film courses at CAPE, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She lives in Chicago, IL.

Jordan Knecht

Jordan Knecht is an artist, educator, musician, DJ, and systems designer, surfing the wave of unknowing. Jordan is the founder of the publishing house, Adult Punk, clothing brand, Wave of Unknowing, and micro-record shop, Somebody Else’s. Jordan’s work is rooted in play and reciprocal care, two guiding forces which inform all projects and collaborations.

Jennifer Mannebach

Jennifer Mannebach is interested in the borders and edges of where things collect and how boundaries are created and represented. She exploits the potential of material relationships, playing with translucency and dynamic shifts in scale, with respect to malleability at the seams. Materials find a home with each other, but always with a looming tectonic shift. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she subsequently taught for 6 years. She is the Director of the O’Connor Gallery at Dominican University, an adjunct professor at Concordia University Chicago, an artist/researcher with CAPE, and an advocate for many of her artist friends at Little City Foundation, where she was an art facilitator for 15 years. Awards include Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, CAAP grants, IAC grants, and the Governor’s International Arts Exchange Grant.

John Neff

John Neff is a Chicago-based artist, writer, curator, and educator. He has exhibited internationally since the 1990s at venues including Artists Space, NY; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Renaissance Society, IL; Donald Young Gallery, IL; Regards, IL; Gallery 400, IL; Scherben, Germany; and King’s Leap, NY. In 2010, he co-founded Iceberg Projects, Chicago. Additional curatorial collaborations include projects with Alphawood Gallery, IL; Delmes & Zander, Germany; Gallery 400, IL; and Suitable, IL. Since 2010, Neff has taught in undergraduate and graduate fine art programs throughout Chicago, including at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has been collaborating with CPS art teacher Kitty Conde, through CAPE, since 2010. Neff is the recipient of grants from Artadia (2002) and the Illinois Arts Council (2002). He holds a BFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.