Emergent Matter. Wild Future
An Inaugural Exhibition at Roots & Rays
September 21 – October 11 2025
Roots & Rays | Chicago, IL
Works In The Exhibition
For inquiries about any work, please contact Corbly Brockman directly via email.
All works in Emergent Matter. Wild Future. are available for purchase. Sales are split 50/50 between the artist and Roots & Rays Center for Creative Medicine 501(c)(3), sustaining both creative livelihood and community healing.
Purchases are tax-deductible through our nonprofit. Receipt provided on purchase.
CONTACT CORBLY
MEGAN DIDDIE
Megan Diddie, Navigation, Gouache on Paper, 23 3/4" x 22", $2000
Megan Diddie (b. 1985, Los Angeles, CA) is a Chicago-based artist working with drawing, animation, video, and paper-making. Her work explores relationships between human bodies, plants, landscapes, and built environments. Drawing is at the heart of her practice. For Diddie, drawing is a language used to work through ideas, curiosities, and messages from the unconscious. Many of these ideas come from a need to describe discomfort and anxiety through both representational and abstract forms. Her work with video and animation elaborates upon the drawings and is a tool for complicating ideas and refining stories. She likes to imbue a sense of humor, play, and sensuality to each piece. Material exploration of paper has been a huge part of her practice. Her work with handmade paper and fiber exploration has ranged from sculptures to artist books. Working with local fibers from prairies and agriculture, she is interested in how materials can be embedded into ideas as well as the art making process.
Artist Information
Website: www.megandiddie.com | IG: @megandiddie
PAUL ELLIOTT
Paul Elliott is inspired by the likes of, Mad Magazine and the Wizard of Oz, Tucson, AZ based artist. Paul Elliott continues to explore the peeling back of U.S. culture through broken narratives and garish visions.
Artist Information
Website: https://release.pictures | IG: @youdontwanttogointhere
CHIARA NO
Chiara No is a visual artist whose work spans painting, installation, performance, and text to explore themes of identity, embodiment, and resilience. She holds an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and a Post-Baccalaureate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Spring/Break Art Fair (NYC), Vox Populi (Philadelphia), and the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, with a forthcoming solo presentation at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (CT, 2026). She has participated in residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, The Lighthouse Works, Vermont Studio Center, and Wassaic Projects, among others.
Featured in publications such as Hyperallergic and The Rutland Herald, Chiara continues to build a practice that merges the intimate with the mythic, creating work that centers vulnerability and self-determined narratives.Artist Information
Artist Information
Website: www.chiara-no.com | IG: @chiara_no_
TRISSA DODSON
Trissa Dodson is an artist and art therapist whose practice is rooted in the belief that connection is one of our greatest resources for wellbeing. Creativity has long been their guide—helping them authentically connect with self and others while revealing the resilience and fulfillment that can emerge from struggle.
Shaped by identities and experiences that did not fit neatly into one box, Dodson often turned to art when words or representation were absent. Creative practice became a vital way to define, own, and heal those wounds, transforming them into strength.
These experiences inform Trissa’s approach today: embracing the complexities of people’s lives, weaving all parts of the self into a whole, and cultivating shame-free, validating spaces. They see their role as collaborative—supporting clients and communities in clarifying values, accessing resources, and exploring authentic connections.Artist Statement
Artist Statement
Trissa Dodson is a licensed counselor and art therapist practicing in Illinois and Florida. She uses her creative practice to facilitate therapeutic experiences for herself and others. Her art explores themes like relationships, identity, interconnectedness, and transcendence.
Artist Information
Website: www.makepositivespace.com | IG: @trissa.makepositivespace
ELLEN GREENE
Ellen Greene, Stitched Girl, 2025, Child's dress with red yarn and hanger, 19" x 35", $500
Ellen Greene is a seeker of internal equinox—a balance of light and dark within the psyche—explored through an intuitive image-making process grounded in traditional oil painting, western tattoo iconography, found objects, and embellished garments. Drawing from embodied experiences of the feminine, strives for authentic vulnerability and purity of expression.
Their work studies, dissects, and reformulates images of the stereotypical “good mother,” a figure experienced as hostile to their sense of self, while seeking balance in the narrative of personal identity. Positioned between the sweeping scope of a fairy tale and the intimacy of a diary, their practice recenters themself as the hero of their own story.
A love letter to resilience, Ellen’s work maps both personal and artistic transformation. Influenced by Frida Kahlo, Alice Neel, and Louise Bourgeois, their imagery continues a lineage of vulnerable, deeply personal expression.
Artist Statement
"Stitched Girl" explores the tension within my intersecting identities as an artist, art therapist, a person in recovery, a mother, a daughter, a wife and a mental health patient. Each of these roles I experience inside of social systems, such as work, home, the clinic and school that through social norms push to define me in ways that don't always reflect how I see myself. Art making, since I was a child, has helped me carve space for an authentic self-expression. "Stitched Girl" is a material manifestation of a kind of human emotional "messiness" that I experience as both a strength and a vulnerability. Through the process of being present with the meditative, free form stitching I came in contact with my ever emerging self.
Artist Information
Website: www.artbyellengreene.com | www.theartoftogether.org | IG: @ellengreenestudio
SARINA SWALM
Sarina Swalm, Sprouts: squash at checkout, 2025, Ceramic and Underglaze 6" x 6.5" x .25", $100
Sarina Swalm (b. Florida) is a Chicago-based artist whose practice centers on ceramics and drawing, often extending into other media. Rooted in observation, her work explores movement, pattern, joining, and weaving as meditations on reflection and transformation.
Through encounters with ordinary objects—such as a fence, a loaf of bread, or the surface of a light post—Swalm uncovers the quiet complexity embedded in acts of making. Her process emphasizes skill, patience, energy, and intention, highlighting how objects capture and carry layers of time and history.
By suspending interaction and movement in clay, her work becomes a meditation on the invisible narratives embedded in material form. For Swalm, observation is both practice and philosophy, honoring overlooked moments as the essence of existence.
Artist Information
Website: www.sswalm.com | IG: @sarinaswalm
AYA NAKAMURA
Aya Nakamura, Inner Ear, 2023, Colored pencil on handmade paper, 23.25" x 23.25", $1000
Aya Nakamura (b. 1982, Tokyo) is a Chicago-based visual artist whose practice spans painting, drawing, and installation. She earned her MFA and Post-Baccalaureate in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Fine Arts and Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has been exhibited at Western Exhibitions, EXPO Chicago, Heaven Gallery, the Research House for Asian Art, and internationally in Istanbul and Beirut, with an upcoming solo presentation at 4th Ward Project Space in 2025. Nakamura has participated in residencies at Fresh Press (University of Illinois), Meta Open Arts, and Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, and she is a co-founder of Switch Grass Paper. Her work has been reviewed in Newcity Art, Chicago Reader, and Ardose Magazine.
Artist Statement
I interpret and process everyday experience through drawing—how can I represent mourning, the uncanny in meditation, etc.? Working in abstraction is great, because I can attribute form to formless concepts and feelings, and re-imagine what we consider real/representational. I find natural processes alien, beautiful, and fascinating; Buddhist practice is absorbing and teaches me about the extraordinary within the ordinary.
Artist Information
Website: www.aya-nakamura.com | IG: @ayasembe
MIKEY ANDERSON
Mikey Anderson, Queer Wounds in Bloom, 7.5" x 7.5", Mixed media fiber crafts and red hoop, Sold
Mikey Anderson, Textures of Queer Survival, Mixed media fiber crafts and blue hoop, 9.5" x 9.5", Sold
Mikey Anderson, Queer Rage as Radical Softness, Mix media fiber crafts and pink hoop, 6.5" x 6.5", Sold
Mikey Anderson is a queer artist and art therapist from the South Side of Chicago. They hold a BFA in Fine Art and an MA in Art Therapy and Counseling from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Their art practice, informed by a community-driven therapeutic approach, incorporates fiber crafts, queer theory, and activism.
Working across media including embroidery, quilting, comics, and a handmade plush toy line called Yarnies, their artworks are soft, tactile, and participatory. These playful objects invite closeness, where underlying messages of queer advocacy and representation come to the surface.
As an art therapist, Anderson has worked with children, adolescents, young adults, and elders. Their practice is grounded in relational-cultural theory and social justice, often expressed through collective crafting. In both community and individual contexts, they create inclusive, participatory spaces that center intersectional identities and challenge heteronormative narratives.
Through their art and therapeutic practice, Mikey continues to expand queer visibility and foster collective resilience.
Artist Information
Website: https://mikey-anderson.com | IG: @yarniesbymikey
NATE OTTO
Nate Otto has always been an artist, and he has been making art full time artist since 2012. He is married with two kids and lives on the south side of Chicago. Depending on how you count them, Nate has had between 6 and 14 solo shows and painted between 45 and 68 murals. Some really big companies and some really small ones have hired Nate for every type of project imaginable.
Artist Information
Website: https://nateotto.com/ | IG: @ottonate
KEVIN BLAKE
Kevin Blake is a teaching artist born and raised on the south side of Chicago, Illinois. After completing a BFA from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago, Kevin taught Architectural Design, Drafting, and Animation at St. Laurence High School from 2004-2009. Kevin returned to school to complete a master’s degree in art education (2011) from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago and went on to receive a master’s degree in fine arts from The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University (2014). Kevin is actively engaged in the Chicago art community and has an extensive exhibition history in the region. As a companion to his visual output, Kevin has a vibrant writing resume-having published numerous catalog essays, exhibition reviews, and an artist book.
Artist Statement
I interpret and process everyday experience through drawing—how can I represent mourning, the uncanny in meditation, etc.? Working in abstraction is great, because I can attribute form to formless concepts and feelings, and re-imagine what we consider real/representational. I find natural processes alien, beautiful, and fascinating; Buddhist practice is absorbing and teaches me about the extraordinary within the ordinary.
Artist Information
Website: https://kevinblakeart.net | IG: @kevinblakeart
FRANCISCA ‘FRENCHY’ VILLAGRANA
Francisca (Frenchy) Villagrana is a ceramic artist and first-generation Mexican American whose practice explores the intersections of memory, material, and cultural heritage. Drawing inspiration from both traditional and utilitarian objects, she reimagines them as sculptural vessels that embody stories of migration, family, identity and belonging. Her work reflects on the ways objects become carriers of personal and collective memory, offering space for preserving memory and transformation. This work presents a pair of huaraches, slip-cast in terracotta, transformed from their everyday function into a sculptural object.
By casting the shoes in clay, the piece honors huaraches as symbols of labor, tradition, and cultural endurance. Huarachitos carries her memories of visiting Mexico for the first time and reconnecting with her roots after her father’s deportation in 2015. The permanence of fired clay contrasts with the worn impermanence of footwear, encapsulating both fragility and resilience. The work becomes a vessel for intimate memory, grounding personal history within material tradition.
Artist Information
IG: @vfrnchy
FARAH SALEM
Farah Salem is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist and art therapist whose practice bridges somatic art therapy, ancestral healing, and contemporary visual arts. Rooted in photography and expanded through video, performance, sculpture, and installation, their work investigates how trauma manifests in the body while reimagining pathways toward resilience, agency, and liberation.
Drawing from personal memory, collective experience, and ancestral healing traditions from the Arabian Peninsula, their practice examines the parallels between human and geological bodies—how both carry histories of endurance, erosion, and transformation. Through this lens, they explore themes of access, agency, power, and reciprocity with the natural world.
Balancing play, art-based research, and therapeutic knowledge, [Artist’s Name] creates portals between worlds, envisioning liberation as the restoration of embodied agency and relational belonging. Their work positions the body as both archive and landscape, continually reshaped by time, trauma, and the possibility of renewal.
Artist Information
Website: www.farahsalem.com | IG: @ferrah.s
T. Sit
T. Sit, Self Portrait of a Women and Her Dog, 2025, Oil Pastel and Marker, Sold
T. Sit is an artist and therapist in Chicago. She is a graduate of UIUC and the Art Institute of Chicago. T is passionate about fresh croissants and singing loudly and dogs of all shapes and sizes.
Artist Information
Website: www.baileyandassociatescounseling.com/teresasit | IG: @balancedheart
CORBLY BROCKMAN
![Corbly Brockman, [T]rauma Bag](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6440831e316dbe4315f8d301/1758761802796-1RG3FEADTLAJYUQ9PJR9/Corbly+Brockman_1.jpg)
![Corbly Brockman, [T]rauma Bag](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6440831e316dbe4315f8d301/1758761803562-W5GSVMCHUK6JKKBW2R9I/Corbly+Brockman_2.jpg)
Corbly Brockman (b. 1992) is a Queer interdisciplinary artist and art therapist based in Chicago, originally from Cincinnati, OH. He earned an MA in Art Therapy and Counseling from SAIC and a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Brockman’s practice explores identity, community, trauma, and Queering as pathways to transformation and joy. Alongside his studio work, he is a professional counselor at Roots & Rays Creative Counseling and serves on the board of the nonprofit Roots & Rays Center for Creative Medicine.
Artist Statement
My work is an inquiry into how lived experience, Queerness, and trauma shape the body and its relationship to place. I am drawn to practices of transformation—ritual, community, and play—as ways to make visible what has been silenced or erased. Through sculpture, installation, and mixed-media processes, I explore how Queering and placemaking can hold both rupture and wholeness. I see art as a site of liberatory praxis: a space where joy, resilience, and memory can coexist with struggle. In dialogue with ancestral wisdom and narrative, my work creates openings—portals—for imagining new futures where bodies, objects, and communities live.
Artist Information
Website: www.corblybrockman.com | IG: @corbbzzz
ANNIE NOVOTNY
Annie Novotny, Constellations, 2025, Found materials, bead, thread, $333
Annie Novotny is a Chicago-based artist, art therapist, and founder of Roots and Rays Center for Creative Medicine. With a background in fiber arts and a passion for community care, her work weaves together tactile materiality with trauma-informed intention. Annie’s practice reflects her belief in the healing potential of shared experience, creative expression, and the reclamation of sacred space through collaborative art-making.
Artist Statement
Constellations explores the subtle, radiant networks formed through relational space and communal dreaming. Composed of salvaged materials and delicate beadwork, the piece gestures toward both the fragility and strength of human connection. Circles—some overlapping, others orbiting—symbolize the nested, evolving bonds we build when we gather to imagine new worlds. Like stars in a night sky, these elements cohere into a greater pattern of resilience, illuminating the energy that emerges when individuals co-create spaces of possibility.
Artist Information
Website: www.rootsamdrayscounseling.com | IG: @novoannie
Support Artists. Support Community.
By purchasing artwork from Emergent Matter. Wild Future., you are investing in both the exhibiting artists and the mission of Roots & Rays Center for Creative Medicine 501(c)(3). Every sale is shared equally: 50% to the artist and 50% to Roots & Rays.
All purchases are tax-deductible. A receipt will be provided upon purchase.
To inquire about available works, please contact Corbly Brockman.
Visit the Exhibition
Emergent Matter. Wild Future. is on view at: Roots & Rays Center for Creative Medicine. The exhibition is open during special events and by appointment. To arrange a visit, please reach out to us directly.
Acknowledgments
This exhibition is made possible through the vision and generosity of our artists, community, and supporters. Special thanks to the Roots & Rays team, board, and volunteers whose dedication brings this work to life. We can’t wait to grow with you!
