Whether your art is inspired by the implications of quantum physics, metaphysics, spirituality, formal design or any combination we invite you to submit your abstract explorations of art to this national juried exhibition.

Lynn Harris Micro Solo Show

During OPAL’s Fall Fundraiser, the work by current OPAL members on the gallery walls will create a rich backdrop of creative expression, epitomizing OPAL’s mission and reflecting our unique artistic community. Artists will interpret the multiple meanings of the word ‘fashion’ - the concept of fashion, the verb to fashion, to create in your own unique style an artwork that can only be made by you and is immediately recognizable as your work.

Emerging Curator Exhibition: Stories from the Soul is an innovative art exhibition designed to foster meaningful dialogue between artists of diverse backgrounds. Curated by OPAL Artist Resident alum Shanelle Harrison, this show will feature five invited artists whose works reflect personal narratives, cultural heritage, and unique life experiences.

This open call judged exhibition seeks to showcase innovative “green” eco-art works and aligns with Plastic-free July, seeking to inspire action and social change through the use of found objects, repurposed for art.

OPAL Board & Staff show

Explorations of how fiber can be used to reflect the interweaving of community while still representing artifice, facade, pride, protection or disguise are all welcome interpretations and valid explorations during Pride month. All media welcome, made of or depicting hair.

How small can you work and still maintain your style?  Find out!  This national open call will feature a group of artists, and each artist will have a solo show, but there’s a catch!  The solo show will be in a box gallery that is 12” x 12” x 12”

Bugs, People
Alexandra Blom

This exhibition aligns with the excitement of EXPO in Chicago by featuring the artist members of OPAL in our 104th Anniversary Spring exhibition. What artworks of yours would you want to be shown at EXPO?

This juried exhibition seeks to showcase a diverse spectrum of work based on the human form yet pushing the boundaries of how we depict ourselves and the bodies we inhabit.

Opening Reception and Awards
Saturday, March 15, 1-4pm

Jurors:
Artist Susan Hall & William Ewers, Executive Director of Palette & Chisel

The show is and open call and is not judged. It is structured to provide a safe, anonymous environment to explore “secret paintings” within a supportive and curious community.
The works will be revealed along with an anonymous reading of their stories and hung during a live performance in front of an audience.

SOUVENIRS
Nancy Wisti Grayson

This is an open call for recent artwork inspired by new beginnings with a special emphasis on works in progress. Show your process and share something that may feel risky and unfinished.

FAMILY TIES
Kelley Clink
Jan 4 - Mar 9 2025

Annual Fall Artist Member Exhibition, small works version. This exhibit is open to all current Artist Members. All media welcome. Size is limited to 8” in its largest dimension. Up to 6 submissions per artist

Christina Cornier, THE FIRST YEAR
Nov 30 - Jan 2025

Cartooning and animation are powerful modes for speaking truth to power, when protest is captioned in a word bubble and dry humor delivers the punch. This juried national exhibition comes at a fraught time, an election year, and invites artists working in all forms of cartooning and animation to submit works that speak to this moment in human history.

ASMA KAZI Sept 19 - Oct 30, 2024

This is a whimsical reimagining of how our familiar organic ecosystems reflect cosmic phenomena, drawing parallels between micro and macro environments. These works are a cosmic soup of elements from the natural world and fiction, integrating seemingly disparate components into cohesive clusters where vibrant life flourishes in unexpected ways, reflecting on the interconnectedness of life across scales in the macrocosm.

Piercing purity from young artists and poets, postcard size art and/or poems by young artists showcased. Open call to all area schools, D97 and D200 + to area youth invited to create an artwork for submission.

ELAINE LUTHER Aug 12 - Sept 30, 2024

Working tiny is a great way to experiment - with these artworks, I explored the theme of trees, using my own photographs and public domain photographs. The techniques used include cyanotype, direct printing of photographs on archival tissue paper and collage. The photos and cyanotypes are mounted on painted wood panel.

In Partnership with Gerber/Hart Library Archive

Throughout history signs, flyers, and handouts employing powerful images and text all serve to communicate ideas in impactful ways as tools of protest and of community building. This open-call exhibit, which runs at the same time that the Democratic National Convention is in Chicago, will strive to uplift the artistry of image combined with text in these designs as OPAL partners with the Gerber Hart Archives to take a look at both the historical significance and the human perspective offered through the storytelling power of the sign.

Judge: Gene Skala

A place is what you make it, when you stop to look and absorb the scene you create a place, what you see is a landscape and as artists, we take the next step and create and record the feeling in art, and by doing so make sacred space. Landscapes, interiors, architectural scenery and still life works, reveal both artist’s interpretation of, and intimacy with – place. This is an open-call exhibition for art that evokes the sacred space of creation and creativity in new ways, escape landscape, real and imagined magical spaces.

ALEX BRIGHTBILL-VELAZQUEZ June 5 - July 31
is a Mexican artist who immigrated to Chicago at the age of ten. She earned a BFA from the Northeastern Illinois University and has shown at numerous galleries and curated art shows and cultural events. Her artwork embodies the hybridity of growing up with two cultural experiences, her love of animals and nature.

Jurors: Pia Cruzalegui & Mia Garcia-Hills

During Pride Month in this critical election year, the Oak Park Art League will highlight underrepresented artist’s voices from diverse populations including disabled, BIPOC, incarcerated, queer, and transgender artists and reflect their experiences at this particular time when diversity, equity and inclusion are suppressed more than ever before.

Judge: Gretchen Jankowski

“The world is beautiful but not sayable. That is why we need art”
Charles Simic (US Poet Laureate and Oak Parker)

What memory of a feeling from a daydreaming, circles inside our mind and can only be freed through the portal of abstract art? In this open-call exhibition, artists demonstrate their understanding of the visual language of shape, form, color, texture and line, evoking emotional response, the beauty of the unsayable without the dependence of representational reference.

Solo micro art exhibit of sculptural pyrographic work by Daniela Wenzel

Celebrating 100+ years of venerable history and five generations of Oak Park Art League Artist Members, this biannual exhibition presents a curated showcase of work by OPAL’s current membership.
Artist Members are invited to exhibit works that best represent their studio practice.

The exhibit includes an online component that will serve to record and archive Artist Member involvement at OPAL in 2024. 

The inaugural exhibition in the new niche mini gallery is of mini quilts made with upcycled materials by Amanda Nadig, Elaine Luther, Sylvia Alexander, Katie Turner and Tess Gobeil

In this rendition of the Oak Park Art League’s annual figure and portrait open-call exhibition, contemporary viewpoints are sought that portray the figure and face, paying homage to this tradition of figure study and life drawing that OPAL has encouraged and sustained for its long history.