Allie Kushnir's "Foliage" in “Quiet Intersections," at Voices Studios -- June 5 through July 31.
Exhibit: Friday, June 5, through Friday, July 31
Opening Reception: Friday, June 5, 5:30 – 9 p.m.
Voices Studios, 1585 Central Avenue, Dubuque IA
Four Chicago-based artists will present concurrent solo exhibitions across the galleries of Dubuque's Voices Studios from June 5 through July 31, with the collective Quiet Intersections exhibit a multi-faceted experience that reveals how individual artistic voices can converge, diverge, and share creative space.
Though each artist works from a deeply personal lens, their practices intersect in their investigations of memory, materiality, and the quiet tensions that shape contemporary life. Each of these artists has chosen a distinctively different path to navigate a personal studio practice within the demands of the urban art world.
Allie Kushnir (Main Gallery) explores the emotional architecture of natural forms. Her paintings and works on paper balance lush organic movement with a studied restraint, inviting viewers into spaces where growth and stillness coexist. Kushnir’s sensitivity to color and gesture creates a contemplative environment – one that anchors the broader exhibition with its meditative, breathing presence.
The works of Shalen Stephenson (JM Gallery) expands the language of abstraction through layered mark-making, shifting transparencies, and a rhythmic sense of construction. His compositions feel both architectural and atmospheric, revealing the tension between control and improvisation. Stephenson’s practice intersects with Kushnir’s through a shared interest in organic rhythm, yet his visual world is more structural – an exploration of how form emerges from repetition, erasure, and the persistence of the hand.
Dubuque native Thérèse Mulgrew (Mazzanine Gallery) creates figurative paintings that bring an intimate, cinematic quality to Quiet Intersections. Her portraits and interior scenes capture fleeting emotional states with a softness that belies their psychological depth. Mulgrew’s work introduces the human presence into the exhibition’s dialogue, bridging the abstract and material investigations of her peers with a focus on vulnerability, memory, and the quiet drama of everyday life.
Noel Mercado (Studio Gallery) transforms found materials into sculptural forms that challenge assumptions about value, labor, and cultural identity. His assemblages and object based works carry a raw physicality that contrasts sharply with the delicacy of Mulgrew’s paintings and the atmospheric qualities of Kushnir and Stephenson. Yet Mercado’s practice intersects with theirs through its deep engagement with process – each artist, in their own way, reveals how transformation occurs through attention, repetition, and care.
Together, these four exhibitions create perspectives on how we build meaning from the fragments of our environments – natural, emotional, material, and cultural. Quiet Intersections invites viewers to move between galleries, noticing the echoes that pass from one space to another: a gesture that reappears, a color that resurfaces, a shared sense of searching. The result is a multilayered experience, one that celebrates the richness of Chicago’s contemporary art community.
An opening reception for Quiet Intersections will take place on June 5 from 5:30 to 9 p.m. with an artist's talk starting at 6 p.m. The exhibition will be on display through July 31, gallery admission is free, and more information is available by visiting VoicesStudios.org.
