In 2020, Christine Forni founded Green Garnet Press, an artist's studio sharing eco-friendly printmaking techniques that use non-toxic materials and water-based soy inks instead of harmful chemicals. In January 2024, the initiative expanded to include artists residencies with curated fine art and printmaking exhibitions. Green Garnet Press is all about creating art in way that cares for our planet.
Curated Group Exhibitions for
Green Garnet Press Residency Artists
2024 | Open Studio Expo Chicago (spring)
2025 | Open Studio Expo Chicago (spring)
2025 | Parlour and Ramp (11/7 opening - 12/5)
2026 | Open Studio Expo Chicago (spring)
2026 | Ignition project space (fall)
2027 | Open Studio Expo Chicago (spring)
Green Garnet Press open studio during Expo Chicago with Mia Capodilupo, Samuel Schwindt, and Juliette Morris in April of 2025
Green Garnet Press Residency Artists
2025 | Samuel Schwindt
Samuel Schwindt is a word|object|surface-smith. He is always looking for the maddest spectacles and vampiest explosions.
He received a BFA in Studio Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2019) and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from University of Illinois at Chicago (2024). Now, he works as commission-based leather-gear crafter, archivist, sculptor, curator, freelance writer, and educator.
Recent exhibitions and project-sites include Gallery 400, the Gender and Sexuality Center at University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago Art Department, Evanston Art Center, Boccarra Art Brooklyn, Chicago Sculpture International Project Space, Side Street Studio Arts, the Leather Archives and Museum, Epiphany Center for the Arts, and Parlour and Ramp among others. His writing ranges from exhibition catalogues, and news stories, reviews, and essays for publications such as Another Chicago Magazine, Femme Art Review, Chicago Artist Writers, Sixty Inches from Center, New City Art, and Chicago Reader (among others).
Mia Capodilupo is a sculptor and installation artist originally from Boston, MA. She received a BA from University of Chicago, studied sculpture at Massachusetts College of Art and received an MFA in Sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute.
She has participated in solo and group shows and residencies in museums, galleries and alternative spaces around the country. She has received several grants from the City of Chicago, was a recipient of an individual arts grant from the City of Urbana, IL and received a grant from the Illinois Arts Council in 2011. In 2014, she completed a large public project for the City of Chicago, and was commissioned to create semi-permanent installations for the Indianapolis Art Center and the city of Atlanta in the Summer of 2015, as well as the City of Bellevue, WA in 2016.
Mia is the owner and director of Ignition project space and the gallery director for Lillstreet Art Center both located in Chicago.
2025 | Mia Capodilupo
(in progress: paused, continuing spring 2026)
2025 | Stephanie Graham (in progress)
Stephanie Graham explores the intersections of social class, subcultures, race, relationships, and gender—not as abstract ideas, but as lived experiences deserving critique and celebration. Her work challenges mainstream narratives while amplifying voices often overlooked in society.
Judgment and dismissal often stem from misunderstanding. She encourages listening and connection over assumption, revealing common ground in unexpected places—like when the football superstar and the goth girl end up at prom together.
Working across film, photography, installation, and performance, she blends humor with seriousness to reflect the complexities of contemporary life. Stephanie combines portraiture, documentary, and staged elements in photography and film, using natural and artificial lighting to shape mood and atmosphere. She keeps her sets and props minimal, allowing human interactions to take center stage.
2025 | Nora Moore Lloyd (starting)
Nora Moore Lloyd, Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, born 1947 was trained as a photographer and videographer. She works in multiple mediums to create artworks that document the stories of Indigenous elders and to connect with cultural practices related to harvesting birch bark and wild rice. Nora has been an active member of Chicago’s Native American community for decades.
2025 | Jason Dunda (starting)
Jason Dunda is a Chicago-based Canadian painter who also creates sewn and carved objects. His work deals with intersections of power, labor, and humor, usually through depictions of figures and the spaces they occupy. He has exhibited in Chicago, New York, Sweden, Iceland, Kuwait, France, and Canada and his work is represented in the collections of Todd Oldham, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and the Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto. He holds the position of Assistant Professor of 2D Fundamentals at the Wonsook Kim School of Art at Illinois State University.
Recent projects include “A Hall of Unflattering Portraits,” a solo exhibition at the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ontario, Canada and “Highly Illogical,” a two-person collaborative installation at langeroverdickie in Chicago. International exhibits include the Heine-Onstad Art Centre in Oslo, and the Kuwait Art Foundation in Kuwait City. Recent residencies include the Haystack School of Craft in Deer Isle, Maine, and a four-month research and production residency in Paris sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts.
2025 | Noah Kashiani (starting)
Noah Kashiani (b.1992 Cleveland, Ohio) lives in Chicago Illinois after receiving his MFA from Northern Illinois University (2019). Kashiani's work pulls on the heart strings of our weakest form. Glamorizing the transient nature of human consumption, exploiting our vulnerability to the American dream and really deciding what objects mean to us as humans. Recent exhibitions include Dubya Em Deez, at Cleaner Gallery (Chicago, IL) and Gimme More at Missouri State University (Springfield, MO).
2026 | Joanne Aono (upcoming)
Joanne Aono is a visual artist, curator, and holistic farmer. Her research-based drawings and installations address identity, immigration, and the environment. She draws inspiration from personal histories, observations of nature, and agrarian life.
Her solo exhibitions include Boundary, Chicago, IL; Mosnart, Chicago, IL; Lee Dulgar Gallery, South Holland, IN; and the Geneva Center for the Arts, Geneva, IL. She has been included in two-person and group exhibitions at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, New Haven, CT; the Illinois State Museums, Chicago, Springfield, and Lockport, IL; Firecat Projects, Chicago, IL; Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL; and O’Connor Art Gallery at Dominican University, River Forest, IL; among others.
2024 | Juliette Morris
Juliette Morris is a non-binary artist and printmaker working out of Chicago. They earned their BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022, with a primary focus in printmedia. Morris's artistic exploration revolves around themes of generative queer abstraction and the queer dreamscape.
Their work is dedicated to igniting discussions
regarding the autonomy of queer bodies.
2024 | Paola de la Peña
Paola de la Peña is a multidisciplinary artist from the Mexico’s Monterrey Metropolitan area, San Pedro Garzer Garcia. Her work embodies the contradictions of being both and insider and outsider of Mexican culture. Her current work focuses on cycles of birth, death and rebirth. Her interests are video animation, the importance and meaning of cultural decoration, and obscure meanings found in color coding. The unification of these contradictions comes together in Paola's work through an abundance of information and vibrations of excessiveness. She combines aesthetics of kitsch from Mexican culture hidden in landscape paintings yet they are referential to the mountain range surrounding the place where she grew up.
