Crystal Neubauer is a Mixed Media Artist drawn to the broken, cast out, and overlooked items of the past. She sees beauty in the mundane, brings new life to forgotten objects, and finds the process of salvaging old materials and creating new art to be therapeutic and healing. As her work evolves, a more complete understanding of why she does what she does and chooses to use materials that others see as trash comes to light:

It’s about seeing something beautiful in the discarded

About giving new life to what has been broken and cast out

It’s about seeing worth in what has been deemed worthless

And value in the valueless

Ultimately it’s about humanity

And redemption

And love

Lover of all dogs, mozzarella sticks and of course – sewing machines, Rachel first began seriously sewing after enrolling in the fashion design program at Columbia College Chicago in 2001.  While there she found her passion for fabrics, patternmaking and design.  Prior to starting Stitch, Rachel worked with Cynthia Rowley in New York and as a design assistant for HGTV’s Design on a Dime.  She likes to think her talent was inherited from her Nana – who is arguably the best seamstress around.

Help us save lives through art.  With each purchase of a heart painting, 100% goes directly to the American Heart Association.  Each of the canvases is $50 and we need your help to raise as much as possible for the #1 cause of death within the nation- heart disease. Local artist, Christine Olson was commissioned to create these heart paintings and they are darling.  :] We can ship anywhere too!  Give the gift of life and love all month long.  Check out our events page for our heart healthy party at the end of the month too!  Thanks!!

Katie Bordignon, owner of Tuscanycreative  lives in the ‘burbs of Chicago and loves to spend her days creating handmadegoodies – both whimsical and practical – for children of all ages.

She’s oh so creative and always open tonew ideas –  But most of all Katie treasures simply making little ones feel special and loved through her original designs.

And Katie knows kids!  After being a public school teacher in the northwest suburbs for about ten years Katie decided to stay at home so she could raise her two children – Tuscany (now 6) and Agostino (now 3).  With lots of creative energy she picked up her
needle and thread and started making adorable things for her own children and
her nieces in NYC.

Soon Tuscanycreative was born. After being in business now for two years Katie has made children feel special in over 40 states and in more than four countries around  the world.

Miranda Rowe is an artist and graphic designer currently living in “Famously Hot” Columbia, South Carolina, A great departure from her small hometown in western New York State. With an excitement for art and design, she studied at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh graduating with a bachelors degree in graphic design. Miranda has used her talent as a designer to create several products including a line of paint-by-number murals for kids rooms and one-of-a-kind handmade flasks.

Lisa Chow is a Houston, Texas based artist, illustrator, make believer and story teller. Armed with an overly active imagination, a healthy dose of creativity and self-taught skills learned through trial and error, her work is whimsical, delicate, surreal and strange. Drawing inspiration from crowded cities, fairy tales and bygone years, Lisa strives to transport viewers to foreign lands that still feel oddly like home.

Paonia, Colorado: the place where Amie was introduced to a variety of artisans who’s creative passions were their life’s work.

paeonia, the name that represents the creative part of Amie’s life. The artist has an background in Interior Design but an interest in a variety of mediums. Her current focus is metalwork. Metals fit Amie’s appreciation for artwork that serves a dual purpose, to be both functional and beautiful. The material is at once sturdy and malleable, therefore offering a range of design possibilities.
Amie received her BFA in Interior Design from The University of Georgia. She grew up in the southeast and currently resides in Chicago, IL with her husband and two cats.

Saturday morning was my favorite time of the week. I would wake up as early as I could, and have 8 hours of cartoons injected into my brain. But, if I wasn’t watching cartoons, I was definitely drawing them. My Mom would always buy me sketchbooks for me to fill up with Disney characters, Animaniacs, or whatever my imagination unraveled. I’m Randy by the way These days, I find myself right where it all began, drawing cartoon-like monsters in a character series called RADisRAD.

iamhome, is Chicago-based artists and designers (and married couple) Sarah Belknap and Joseph Belknap. The Belknaps are heavily influenced by color theory, home, children’s books, landscape, science and architecture. They love camping, cooking obnoxiously pretentious meals and their magic escaping cat, Hawkeye.

Write something and be sure it will be seen- these awesome chalkboard skulls add a fun touch to any quirky home. These  skulls are cast from plastic and layered with coats of porcelain enamel chalkboard paint to make a flawless and easy to doodle on chalkboard.

Todd Hoffman, a Chicago artist, art director and illustrator of the children’s book Robots Everywhere, has always loved fish.  Not to eat as much as what they represent.  Fish symbolize a will against the odds, hope through perseverance, happiness despite struggle, and humility in the face of challenge.  In many cultures, they are deemed to be blessed with luck and represent a charmed life. Since fish are among Todd’s favorite doodles, Kissed By A Fish seemed kismet, taking shape in mid-2011.  Each of his fish is original – hand-drawn, painted and ready to hang.  No two are exactly alike.

Whether it’s for you, for someone celebrating a new beginning, or as an encouragement for someone swimming against the current, Todd hopes his fish bring a kiss of good luck and serve as a reminder that we all swim together as we make our way upstream.

Kevin Lucius is a graphic designer from Chicago. His work is done digitally using old textures, animal photos, and vintage design elements.

All of the wood block prints are are mounted sealed and stained by the artist within the confines of his tiny Chicago apartment. In other words… these are truly about as handmade as you can get!

Kevin has been featured in Advanced Photoshop Magazine, Smashing Magazine, Decor8, and numerous other design blogs. When he is not working he enjoys hanging out with his wife and cat and enjoying a craft beer.

“Having always been fascinated with everything old, I am particularly in love with all of Chicago’s old brick buildings, fire escapes, neon signs, and block by block oddities that can be found in so many neighborhoods, especially away from downtown proper. I did not grow up in Chicago, so things like “The El”, historic Wrigley Field, old diners, local hot dog joints and dive bars will always intrigue me as well.” –Bonnie Jean Adams, The Chicago Examiner (from “Meet Chicagoan Helene Smith, Guest Photographer…”, March 2011)

I have always been drawn to things out of place: Things from another time, another place, something ironic, something not beautiful, yet in a beautiful place. Something staggeringly beautiful. The unsightly or abandoned.

Sadly, a number of the businesses and establishments that I have photographed, along with their urban beauty, have since been closed, relocated or torn down. Without such places and their local history, how do we appreciate and differentiate our neighborhoods? This is a bigger question for society to tackle. Hopefully sooner, rather than later.

Some of my prints are 35mm film, taken with my old Pentax K1000.  Recently, I have added digital work as well. I work with both color and black & white film.

Mandy creates digital black and white photography collages which are sublimated onto canvas fabric.  She is a self-taught digital artist and uses her own photographic images as a base before manipulating them into an abstract, layered design.  Her pieces focus on the well-known landmarks of the city and the architectural aspects within. The process of sublimation turns the inks from a solid directly into a gas when they are heat pressed onto the canvas, where the ink essentially becomes a part of the fabric and allows the texture of the canvas to remain untouched.

Mandy has exhibited her work in art festivals, small galleries and coffee shops throughout Chicago and the suburbs and continues to look for new locations for her next piece.  She has recently expanded to landmarks across the Midwest and recently took a trip to California to take photographs for future designs. She also enjoys working with personal photos to create a one of a kind design that makes for an unforgettable gift.

Mandy graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in Computer Engineering in 2003.  After moving to a new condo the West Loop in 2008, Mandy was faced with the task of decorating a large blank wall in her living room.  Her husband and she decided that they wanted artwork that represented Chicago and their new neighborhood but was not the standard, big box store version of the Chicago Theater sign.  Mandy ventured out to take pictures of landmarks around the West Loop and upon realizing that many of her photos weren’t the type to blow up for large format printing, she decided to try collaging four or five of the pictures together to digitally create one image and her style was born.

greenie bean recycle is for the wild at heart, the kindred spirits, wanderlusters, modern day hippies. together, we are radical, in our notions of practicality, reusability, and save the world-isms. change can happen.greenie bean is for you who is fascinated by folksy, organic faith in humanity rooted in ever-evolving lust for life. you long to stitch a space for yourself in every growing tradition and grass roots community. for you who holds the dirt of the earth in your tiny palms and feels the beat of your heart whisper, “today is mine yet this is ours to share.”

Kelli grew up in the sprawling cornfields of Cuba, Illinois, a town of 1,400 and no stop lights. She began sewing tiny quilts at her grandmother’s side before the age of five and like her mom, became a thrift store pro, possessing no shame for her habit of digging through alleys. After graduating from Monmouth College, Kelli migrated to Chicago to pursue bigger dreams and her red-headed husband, Jimmy.

Being fascinated with all things “old”, greenie bean recycle began in July 2007 and soon became Kelli’s mark, her political statement, and her attempt to further the beauty of recycling and reusing. Her craft is her activism - an opportunity to educate others about all things political, beautiful, and life affirming.

Aside from being a crafter, Kelli is a Social Justice and Community Development graduate student at Loyola University and is co-founder of the Urban Folk Circuit. She enjoys exploring every neighborhood of Chicago, cooking without recipes, frequenting local theater, and cuddling with her kittens, Killer Queen and Jubilee. Her obsessions include peppermint mochas, vintage housewares, avocado green, and protest music. Her life goals include learning to can vegetables from her frontyard homestead and running a craft and sewing shop

StudioChris creates art that connects people with popular Chicago neighborhoods.

Chris was born and raised on Chicago’s southwest side, in the Clearing neighborhood. He studied graphic design and advertising at Columbia College in South Loop, and graduated in 1991. For the past 20 years, his day job has been in creative and management roles at a Fortune 500 company where his work has received national and international recognition.

In May 2011 Chris made a creative idea reality by merging his passions for art, architecture, and Chicago to create a series of posters celebrating Chicago’s neighborhoods. Each poster features an iconic image that represents the neighborhood’s uniqueness and history. The posters are screen printed on earth-friendly, recycled paper to give the prints a hand-crafted feel.

Each piece of substance designs jewelry is designed and constructed by the hands of Carolyn Healy.  Great consideration is given to the materials, textures, colors, the way light reflects or passes through each, and the source of the components. The jewelry is sometimes vintage, sometimes reclaimed, and sometimes new, but always created with the idea that great jewelry made around environmentally friendly practices doesn’t have to be a splurge.  substance designs is driven to charitable giving, purchases locally when possible, support products made in the USA, and scours second hand stores in search of broken pieces to reincarnate.  Almost all designs are vegetarian.

With years of creative experience making stained glass, a Masters in Literature from Northwestern. and a certificate in Design Concepts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Carolyn combine creativity, discipline, and keen eye for simple lines to create the substance designs jewelry line.

The goals are simple: reclaim, renew, and respect.

There’s something about Nikki Scheel’s photography that gets me everytime.  It’s brilliantly created with fascinating imagery, infused colors and filters and made with interweaving layers of time and love too. For me, her work can take you to a place of nostalgia.  childhood. happiness.  She captures the moments of peace- of that brief second when you realize “wow. everything’s alright. i’m… fine.”  It’s a beautiful moment to experience and one that comes when you least expect it- so just continue waiting if you haven’t had one yet. it’s worth it. :] The moment may not last long, but the memory of having that moment sticks and it says something about how life can be so transient and wonderful and evolving!  I think back to this time two years ago, and my life was completely different and taking place in a whole different city too.  Nikki’s photography reminds me that life needs to be experienced and that there’s so many good things out there that just need to be discovered, happened upon, sought after.  Her work is gorgeous.   At one point she told me about how she spends countless hours on each of her photographs, making them to be a perfectly delicate balance of light, color, filters and all the other layers that make up each image.  This amazes me because it’s like you’re getting that time and love and effort that a painter would put into a painting, that a ceramic artist would put into the clay they are molding, that a printmaker puts into the design and inking of each print.  With each image, you can be sure that it is uniquely beautiful- original in ideas and perfect in imagery.  I hope that you’ll stop by the shop and look through her work- these should definitely be experienced in person! :] Check out some of her images below:

Check out her page on our site for more of her work.  Oh and by the way, this website that you’re looking at- she designed it along with her partner, Joe: www.twodesigngurus.com.

Thanks! :]

L

Sometimes, another regular of ours comes in to talk about the artwork we have here and we’ll have conversations about specific artists, their style of creating, the colors they use and what the artist is all about.  The other day he bought some artwork by an artist that we’ve been talking about for a while- it was awesome.

Other times, some of our regulars come in just to say hi, look around and have a good conversation.  More often than not, they’ll leave with an awesome piece of artwork or a hand-painted robot bank, or a great new jewelry piece.

Sarah and I will say this everyday: We’re so lucky to have customers like you guys- people who are genuine and care about supporting artists and local businesses like Sacred Art.  We can’t say it enough, but THANK YOU!!!

(and now I’m listening to Track 6 of Oasis’ “Don’t Look Back in Anger” and it’s oh so good.)

L :]