CAPE is excited to launch its second WORKROOM residency program. This summer the gallery space is transformed into dedicated art studios for CAPE teaching artists. WORKROOM provides CAPE artists with a creative environment where they can explore new ideas, experiment with different techniques, and further develop their arts integration practices for future classroom projects.

Featured resident artists: Annamaria Castellucci Cabral, Arturo Barrera, Asya Dubrovina, Betsy Zacsek + Niema Qureshi, Eseosa Edebiri, Fay Jenson, Fiorella Hilda Gomez Bermudez, Jason Roebke, Jessica Mueller.

WORKROOM also hosts IntuiTeens, a program of the Intuit Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, a unique opportunity for teens to explore their creativity and celebrate the power of self-taught art. 

Gallery hours 10 AM-4 PM Tuesday-Thursday or by appointment.

Annamaria Castellucci Cabral
Sculpture, Collage

Annamaria Castellucci is an art educator and mixed media collage artist. She has created sculptural and conceptual pieces from discarded materials and has exhibited around the Chicago area and in galleries along the east coast. She received her Masters from Columbia College Chicago in Interdisciplinary Arts education. She has been an art educator for 21 years teaching and has taught a variety of visual art disciplines. She has taught ages 5-99 and enjoys sharing her love of art with all age groups.

Arturo Barrera
Painting/Drawing/Printing

Arturo Barrera is an Art educator in the Chicago Public School system, the third-largest school district in the United States. I served as an Assistant Principal for 4 years and have been teaching art education for

over 33 years. He received a B.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Art Education, a M.F.A. from Northern Illinois University in printmaking and painting and an M.A. in Education Administration from Governors State University. 

“I create and coordinate various mural projects that incorporate the talents of my students. I am a recipient of various grants, which benefit my students, the school, and various communities.”

Asya Dubrovina
Installation, Painting/Drawing/Print, Sculpture, Sound, Time-based, Video

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 School of the Art Institute of Chicago and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She lives in Chicago, IL.

Betsy Zacsek + Niema Qureshi
Installation, Painting/Drawing/Print, Sound

Niema Qureshi is an interdisciplinary artist and Assistant Professor, Adjunct at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her research focuses on engaging underrepresented youth in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math).

Betsy Zacsek has been a Teaching Artist since 2011. She is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who has created and curated art in galleries, moving trucks, public spaces, parks, and schools.

Eseosa Edebiri
Painting/Drawing/Print, Textiles

“I am an interdisciplinary artist from the Bay Area, currently based in Chicago, where I received my BFA from The School of the Art Institute.”

Fay Jenson
Installation, Painting/Drawing/Print, Sculpture, Writing

Fay Jenson (FJ) is a multidisciplinary artist and art educator from Chicago. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with an emphasis in Art education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received her National Board Certification: Visual Art this past winter 23′. Fay will be graduating from St. Francis University with a Masters in Science: Teaching and Learning Best Practices in August 24′. She hopes to earn her PHD in the next 5 years, wishing to research the relationship and complex dynamics between developmental growth/diversity among youth, visual art & the impact on the brain, and the structure of public education. How do these factors challenge each other? How do students with disabilities flow through this system, and how can art help?

Fiorella Hilda Gomez Bermudez
Performance, Installation, Sculpture, Video, unconventional materials: recycled materials, repurposed materials, and trash

Fiorella Hilda Gomez Bermudez is Peruvian multidisciplinary artist and educator based in Wheaton, Illinois. Through performance and the re-activation of recycled materials, her work explores the complexities of migration, belonging and colorism within the Latinx community. Gomez manipulates alternative materials such as plastic, dry flowers and trash, to build sculptures, installations and fiber objects that imagine the immigrant’s journey within the United States. She is a teaching artist for CAPE, an organization that partners with the West Chicago School system that fosters collaboration between teachers and students experimenting with art. Her work has been shown in several national and international galleries and institutions, including Biblioteca Nacional del Peru, Blanden Memorial Museum, Triton Art Gallery and The School of the Art Institute. Gomez was the recipient of a Dean’s Grant and the Anna McMaster Memorial Scholarship while she completed her Bachelors of Fine Arts with emphasis on Art Education (BFAAE) at the School of Art Institute of Chicago.

Jason Roebke
Painting/Drawing/Printing, Music

The diversity of Jason Roebke’s musical associations make him one of the most sought after bassists, composers, and educators in Chicago and beyond. He composes music that is extreme in its pairing of silence and explosive gestures. His music is rooted in jazz and takes inspiration from experimental music, noise, and improvisation. Solo performance and a duo with dancer Ayako Kato are also at the forefront of his creative activities. As a double bassist, his playing is intensely physical, audacious, and sparse. The Chicago Reader described his work as “a carefully orchestrated rummage through a hardware store.” Roebke studied privately with saxophonist and composer Roscoe Mitchell as well as legendary double bass pedagogue Stuart Sankey. In 2009, he was awarded the Fellowship in Music Composition from the Illinois Arts Council. Roebke tours widely in the US and Europe.

Jessica Mueller
Installation, Painting/Drawing/Printing, Writing, Textiles

Jessica Mueller is a faculty member in the Design and Illustration Departments at the American Academy of Art. Since 2004, she has been a teaching artist with Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE), working in Chicago Public Schools. Jessica holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and is a member of the Chicago ACT Collective and MotherArt: Revisited. She exhibits locally and nationally, and her work is part of the permanent collections at the School of the Art Institute’s Flaxman Library, Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, Columbia College’s Center for Book and Paper Arts, and the Library of Congress. Jessica is a recipient of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) 2019 Heart of Gold Award, she is a 3Arts 2021 Make A Wave grantee and a fellow for The Dots Between, 2022 cohort.