Artist Profiles
Photo courtesy of Young Chicago Authors.
Kara Jackson
Kara Jackson is a poet, performer, songwriter, and folk singer. Whether through the banjo, the guitar, her own voice, or a pen, Kara's work confronts and copes with the tangible reality of misogynoir and living while black. Strengthened by a grief over friends, family, self and country, Kara Jackson's work demonstrates a distinct, physical voice that calls for more than just survival, one that honors the history and the unsung work of black people in America.
Matt Koester
Matt Koester is a digital artist, poet, playwright, features writer, journalist, and multi-instrumentalist raised in Warrenville, IL. Matt's work with the program Microsoft Paint stretches the limits of what you can do with the tools you're given. Drawing together elements of web culture and animation, Matt's work encourages us to work with what we have, to find materials and inspiration anywhere we are.
Emma Lister
Emma Lister, raised in Oak Park, is a sculptor, ceramicist, stage designer, painter, and writer. Her sculptures work through a metaphor with our own body, learning or exposing an interior space that conceals just as much as it uncovers. From different perspectives we remember as much as we forget. Emma Lister's sculptures undergo an immense amount of process and violence that compounds and develops into a form. When we encounter them here, they have already endured unseen change and trauma. With this, Emma builds a common ground.