Final Showcase

Sat, Dec 14th 2019

We celebrated our semester with a final showcase where the teen apprentices showed their artworks and prepared artists’ statements and biographies. Their work touched on themes like mental health, cultural heritage and pride, self-expression, self-love, daily life in the City of Chicago, and music; they worked in the forms of painting, collage, sculpture, print-making, photography, poetry, video, stickers, and jewelry-making.

We invited family, friends, and colleagues to celebrate with us, and the teen apprentices spoke about their final artworks and experiences throughout Teen Lab. Several apprentices shared that during Teen Lab, they felt their self-confidence grow, their perspective about the history of art institutions and art-making widen, and their agency over their art practice deepen. Many said it was a space of peace and calm that they needed, and a place where they could connect with each other, by inspired by creative youth, and be authentically themselves, where they felt who they were in the present moment was enough.