Ohlson brings over 30 emerging artists together in her first exhibition to reimagine repurposed objects and childhood relics as art.
Warm light filters through Hasani Cannon’s quatrefoil curtains, casting a whimsical sunset of colors across his Oak Park studio. The artist’s hands bathe in a pink glow. As he carefully places four small shells into each well of the mancala-inspired paper-mache sculpture on his worktable, smiling faces, neon lettering and familiar brands like the rugged, electric yellow Nature Valley font arranged in interlaced strips pop out from the sea of recycled cardboard packaging comprising the artwork’s surface.
A house-shaped puzzle opening up into the centuries old board game, “Oware-1” aims to explore and reconstruct childhood memory from the board game covers, cereal boxes, tea packaging and snack boxes Cannon frequently encountered in his household growing up.
The piece falls into the landscape of “a childhood home with a surreal and personal twist” in emerging Chicago painter Sammi Ohlson’s first exhibition, “The Garage Sale,” at the Zhou B Art Center later that month.
Transported to a black pedestal in the maze of Zhou B’s basement exhibition space, Cannon’s colorful piece sits surrounded by an array of thrifted and found objects given new, vivid life on the walls of the gallery on the opening night of Ohlson’s show on February 20, 2026.
Upon initially entering the unassuming, dark and stiflingly narrow brick stairwell reminiscent of an industrial fire escape, attendees clad in bright colors and layered accessories wind down the staircase and find that the claustrophobic passage suddenly reveals the swell of fluorescent gallery lights. Artifacts of every ‘90s kid’s childhood bedroom, pulled apart and reassembled on the gallery walls as nostalgia-soaked, whimsical art pieces decorate the maze of white halls.
Old computer mice, VHS tapes, box televisions and a Playstation 1 bearing surreal technicolor oil-painted teeth, hands and faces hang from the walls or sit in corners, glaring against the snow-white space as attendees excitedly reminisce over the familiar chalky yellow plastic patina of aged electronics that once cast colorful glows across packed family rooms and older siblings’ bedroom floors.
At the center of a sea of heads, boldly dyed hair and maximalist customized outfits, Ohlson excitedly bobs around, rushing between her friends and fellow creatives’ pieces. After several weeks of careful planning, curation and chaotic exchange between the gallery and the more than 30 participating artists across the city, bustling observers are finally able to witness the culmination of the organizer’s time and effort.
Inspired by her collection of found and thrifted vintage technology and household objects, “The Garage Sale” stems from Ohlson’s passion for conscious consumerism and recycling, partly inspired by her friend David Ellis’s “Cardboard Jungle” exhibit featuring works all under $200 and painted on cardboard, heeding the ever-growing need to “reduce, reuse, recycle,” Ohlson said.
“I started hoarding stuff from the thrift store for like so, so long. Not just frames and mirrors, but TVs and Playstations and stuff I just felt like I had to have for some reason. I had to bring it home. I felt emotionally attached to it,” Ohlson said.
“So about two years ago, I started painting on stuff besides paper and canvases. Mirrors and instruments, TVs, things like that,” Ohlson said of her motivation for “The Garage Sale.”
Originally hailing from Massachusetts, Ohlson’s participation in the Chicago visual arts community began after the painter moved to the city with her friend in 2020 with a little more than a dream to continue pursuing her growing interest in the arts.
“I had no job and like $300 and had never been here before either, but I was like, if Jill’s going, I can go. I was 21 years old and I was like, there’s nothing else to do,” Ohlson said.
Now, Ohlson’s Chicago home serves as a testament of her commitment to developing as an artist and exploring found materials. Layered frames around floating faces and hands painted onto repurposed mirrors hang from every corner of the Edgewater apartment. A massive, ocean blue face stares up at the ceiling from the floor of Ohlson’s studio as the painter rolls up the unstretched canvas on the floor to make room for her most recent find, a full-size VHS camera found abandoned in the suburbs and covered in rusty orange clay, awaiting Ohlson’s brush.
“When I first started making art, I was very afraid of color, like, severely. I always did everything in black and white because I was intimidated.”
“Now I kind of move my way around the color wheel and move around human form as I want. My style is a bit surrealist and expressionist, I really like close up facial expressions and teeth and hands. I appreciate the way that hands and teeth show emotion without being as obvious,” Ohlson said.
The painter grew her roots in the local arts by participating in printmaking classes at the Art Institute of Chicago and vending at pop-up events every weekend, slowly meeting other creatives and building up a network of scrappy emerging artists such as herself.
“I felt very inspired by other artists working so hard. I used to be a teacher and did art on the side for a long time. Seeing other people also have a day job and also do art made me realize that it is possible, even if it’s a lot of hours,” Ohlson said.
The painter said her experience working with children also influenced her approach to art, encouraging less rigidity in her creative approach.
“Working with kids does make you sort of be in your imagination in a way that adults don’t. The way that kids view creating is so much more fun than the way we do. They don’t feel pressured or like they have to impress anybody,” Ohlson said.
Ohlson’s partner and a participating artist in “The Garage Sale,” Andi Muriel, affirmed Ohlson’s dedication to success and ingenuity within her craft reflected in the exhibition itself.
“Sammi’s just very inspiring and so creative and resourceful, and I think that’s the main crux of this show in general. So much of what’s in it is just something she saw in the alley and was like, ‘Wouldn’t that look so awesome if I painted something on it?’ … She is such a ‘I wanna do this thing so I’m gonna make it happen’ sort of person,” Muriel said.
“Then to share it, she has so many connections and so many artistic friends in the city that she wants to showcase. Opening that up and then giving the prompt of, ‘find something that you can repurpose or turn into art,’ is such a fun opportunity. I hope more people see random things on the street or in their homes that they didn’t look at in a special way before, and they go, ‘I can make that really cool,” Muriel said.
Curating a “healthy mix” of friends, coworkers and artists she met participating in local arts events, Ohlson’s first exhibition creates space for emerging and underrepresented artists to display their resourcefulness and creativity in a community-oriented space. The exhibition helps create a lifeline for the development of Chicago’s art community in a time of rising uncertainty and widening cracks in the foundational arts institutions that have quietly carried the scene from its emergence.
Kristel Becares, a participating illustrator from Skokie who exhibits in local shows, reflected a dissonance between the accessibility of shows at larger established institutions like at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) or Art Institute of Chicago compared to Ohlson’s show at the Zhou B Art Center. Becares said institutional spaces often create difficult-to-breach echo chambers of established creatives and make breaking into the scene exceedingly challenging for already underrepresented artists.
“When it comes to bigger shows or galleries, sometimes the same artists who people already love get the platform all the time. These spaces have an aversion to people who are taking their craft seriously but aren’t as popular and run the risk of being too safe. A lot of artists who are just as good get sidelined,” said Becares.
This is where underground curators like Ohlson come into play in community-oriented spaces like the Zhou B Art Center, which centers itself around establishing strong networks among local artists in Chicago.
Established by the Zhou Brothers in 2004 after their international success exhibiting solo shows in China and the United States, the Zhou B Art Center dedicates itself to giving a forum for artists formed by artists, renting out studio spaces to artists and facilitating community interactions, said Vice President of Creative Development at the center, Donna Bliss.
“The Zhou Brothers were really dedicated to give a voice to artists. Institutions like the MCA and Art Institute are really more focused on established artists, whereas the Zhou B Art Center works with emerging artists. Art institutions will show their work, but they don’t give them a forum to work or to learn from each other or to be a community. The Zhou Brothers have created a community for artists, which is so valuable,” Bliss said in a Zoom meeting.
Bliss attests that emerging curators like Ohlson are central to the growth of community in the art scene within networks like the Zhou B Art Center as larger institutions become increasingly inaccessible, encouraging curators like her to “really have an open mind, give artists a chance and help the artist understand the potential.”
“Give them the opportunity to show their work, because it’s one of the most rewarding things that can ever happen in your life. That’s what Ohlson’s doing, she’s shining a spotlight on emerging artists’ art and helping them to realize that they’re good, or that they need to approach things differently,” Bliss said.
Amid a decreasing focus on and lack of outreach among local arts spaces in Chicago, established individuals like Bliss and growing creatives like Becares, Cannon and Muriel alike reflect a heightened appreciation for locally oriented institutions.
“Zhou B attracts a lot of weirdos in a very good way,” Muriel said, recounting a particularly striking climate-change oriented piece the artist saw at the gallery featuring a lonely performer monologuing from a massive steel bath, surrounded by trash and blocks of ice as observers cautiously entered the space.
“Zhou B just hosts freaks, and I think the Art Institute should welcome more freaks. There is more to Chicago than the Art Institute and the MCA, these places are awesome but there’s just so much art in Chicago I think the average Chicagoan isn’t tuned into,” Muriel said.
Exhibiting at local venues and conversing with artists involved in both up-and-coming and established spaces in Chicago, Becares mirrored Muriel’s sentiment, highlighting the importance of smaller spaces in opening the door for emerging artists.
“In terms of places like the Art Institute, there’s not really much marrying them with Chicago-based artists. They’re more for preserving art history and offering a space of inspiration, but on our behalf, whereas I would consider Sammi’s show something that’s made by artists for the artists,” Becares said.
“Ohlson and collectives like the Her Artist Collective or Elephant Room seek local artists and open the door for emerging artists and like to encourage them to make work while putting less pressure on being more ‘serious.’ It’s so important for smaller shows to happen because those are the people on the same playing field, ” Becares said.
As attendants of “The Garage Sale” browsed the gallery walls, clad with massive painted stop signs, Babybel cheese wax sculptures, intricate paper chains and even a milk crate of hyperealistic organ plushies, an air of new inspiration and creative liberty often stifled in the sterile, fluorescent gallery spaces that immediately come to mind at the mention of an “art museum” flows through the lower-level cavern of atypical creations.
“There’s a lot more inspiration to be found in a place like this. I’m all for walking through beautiful art at more established spaces and seeing something that someone was thoughtful about, but when you see someone’s personal story like, ‘This came from my mom’s colon cancer diagnosis,’ you know, so much more of what they feel can be seen in this art,” said audience member Dyan Naslund.
“I find more joy in more local networks, like Sammi’s show. Even artists in it that I don’t know, I’m excited to know because they’re like, real people, and I know that I’m going to get something out of it that’s real,” Cannon said of his presence in the space as both an artist and an audience member.
“Whereas if I go to the Art Institute or MCA, not to say that I don’t appreciate the spectacle, but it always feels like it still has that rigid institutional eye to it,” Cannon said.
Aiming to bring Afrocentric narratives to the broader public eye through his recycled material work, Cannon’s voice as an artist and participation in local networks like Ohlson’s group show and the Zhou B Art Center takes a central role in spotlighting underrepresented narratives within the local art scene. The artist said the themes of his work isolate him from the broader arts world, necessitating the strong presence of tight-knit relations between emerging artists to breach the disparities present in the larger arts world.
“I feel like I’m in this little corner here while the art community is in its own little corner of the world, so it’s like I’m in my own corner within a corner… I’m still trying to find my place when it comes to visual art, it still feels like a no-man’s-land sometimes. You’re either tapped in or on your own quest,” Cannon said of establishing his presence within the Chicago art scene.
“I’m really excited to be around other art heads and just look at some art and be like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe this person.’ This winter especially I’ve felt so much more aware that I don’t really go out and see art that much, and it creates this insular feedback loop where the only work I’m seeing is my own.”
“I want to see other people, I want to be inspired. I want to go home and get right back into it,” Cannon said.
Surrounded by huge canvases layered with assortments of eccentric objects, from pencils and solo cups to COVID-tests and tea packaging covered in dynamically flowing streaks of neon paint, Cannon’s creative approach fits perfectly into the landscape of “The Garage Sale,” at which the artist hopes to emphasize the importance of engaging with audiences through tactile and recycled material work.
“With the tactile objects and the use of recycled materials and stuff like that, I feel called to be a lot more of a communal artist. I want you to engage with it, and being that we’re here as a community … We’re not just gonna stare at some art. It’s gonna be like an event,” Cannon said.
Cannon’s vision quickly materialized on the opening night of Ohlson’s show, as the bustling room scene unfolded like a lively gathering of friends, defying the quiet restraint of organized strangers shuffling from wall to wall traditional openings often take the form of.
Artists of all mediums and ages conversed with fellow creatives, introducing each other to their friends and family as they discussed their work. Visitors lingered around relics of their childhoods given new life and the long-forgotten, but all-too-familiar jangly swell of Panic! At the Disco’s 2008 Pretty. Odd. echoed from a CD player set up in a corner, intertwining with the lively hum of delighted connection over the shared memories and nostalgia embedded in the exhibit’s displays.
Weeks following the shockingly high-turnout opening night of “The Garage Sale,” Ohlson sits in her Edgewater studio late in the still unforgiving March night. Illuminated by a pale, clouded ceiling lamp, Ohlson excitedly reflects on the culmination of the last several months of her work, surrounded by vivid pops of colorful stretched canvases and eccentrically framed paintings arranged in a chaotically organized mosaic contrasting the trademark inoffensive beige walls of a Chicago apartment.
With the stress that comes with curating and coordinating over 100 submissions into a cohesive exhibition behind her, Ohlson laughs and admits she “never would have thought the Zhou B Art Center would even read my email, let alone allow me to do this.”
“You just have to be annoying, be annoying on the internet, be annoying on Gmail, people will answer. Be cringe and then you’re free,” Ohlson said jokingly.
But behind the humorous advice, the artist reveals an underlying necessity for artists to embrace vulnerability and show up for themselves within the gallery world and outside of their creative circles — an increasingly difficult task as uncertainty grows and opportunities for connection between underrepresented artists become increasingly difficult to come by within larger institutional spaces.
Muriel, a performance and theatre artist, reflects this challenge extending beyond the visual arts in Chicago and urges creatives of all disciplines to explore discomfort for the sake of artistic growth.
“Something about theatre arts we could all pull from is that theatre is just embarrassing, and a theatre artist needs to shed that feeling to survive. Something about the arts that’s scary is that your product that you’re marketing is literally yourself, and that is so embarrassing, but you cannot go forward being embarrassed. Otherwise no one will see you,” Muriel said.
Ohlson says she hopes to encourage developing creatives to embrace vulnerability and think outside of the box, engaging with the creative process from new, unexplored angles through “The Garage Sale” and its focus on recycling and intentional consumption.
“I hope people are inspired to do things with found objects and discarded items. It’s more fun too, wouldn’t you rather paint on a stapler than a piece of paper,” Ohlson said, examining the objects on the table before her, seemingly teeming with ideas for her next piece.
“It’s a good way to get un-stuck, too. A blank canvas can be so intimidating,” Ohlson said.
Following the culmination of the exhibit, Ohlson finds herself, above all, inspired to continue creating opportunities for growth and creative connection within the local art community.
“Before doing this, I just thought it’d be cool to do a group show, but I’m realizing now that we kind of really need these things, because when else are you going to see so many artists and work on something together?” Ohlson said.
“All of the artists that I worked with were so, so amazing, and so grateful…people want opportunities and to be in community and I want to keep doing that as much as I can. I feel even more called to do it again because of how much artists seem to enjoy it,” Ohlson said.
Header Image by Weronika Lowczyk
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