The Brommel-Hahs Lecture Series, hosted by Northeastern Illinois University’s Department of Art + Design, presents Art as/in/for Social Practice—a one-day event featuring workshops for Northeastern’s students, along with public lectures and an exhibition reception. The event highlights local Chicago artists, Eric Von Haynes, Damon Locks, and Edra Soto, whose work centers on community, activism, and placemaking.

TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 2025
• Artist Talks: 4:30 – 5:30 PM – Alumni Hall
• Exhibition Reception: 5:30 – 7:30 PM– Skylight Gallery
• Exhibition Dates: April 1 – April 11
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Eric Von Haynes is a designer, printmaker, and educator. He operates Flatlands Press and teaches Graphic Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and Print Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As President of the Chicago Printers Guild and a resident artist at the Chicago Art Department, he supports and connects local printmakers and fosters collaboration within the community. His work explores analog and digital printing techniques, community-based projects, and collaborative publishing.

Damon Locks is a Chicago-based visual artist, educator, vocalist/musician. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago where he received his BFA in fine arts. Since 2014 he has been working with the Prisons and Neighborhood Arts Project at Stateville Correctional Center teaching art. He is a 2025 recipient of the Creative Capital Award. In 2017 he became a Soros Justice Media Fellow. He received an Helen Coburn Meier and Tim Meier Achievement Award in the Arts in 2015. In 2019, he became a 3Arts Awardee. He spent 4 years as an artist in residence as a part of the Museum of Contemporary Arts’ SPACE Program, introducing civically engaged art into the curriculum at Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy High School. He teaches Improvisation in the Sound Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Damon leads the Black Monument Ensemble, is a member of New Future City Radio, Exploding Star Orchestra and co-founded the band The Eternals.

Edra Soto b. 1971) is a Puerto Rican-born artist, educator, and co-director of outdoor project space The Franklin. Soto instigates meaningful, relevant, and often difficult conversations surrounding socioeconomic and cultural oppression, erasure of history, and loss of cultural knowledge. Having grown up in Puerto Rico, and now immersed in her Chicago community, the artist has evolved to raise questions through her work about constructed social orders, diasporic identity, and the legacy of colonialism.Soto has presented at outstanding venues, including the Driehaus Museum, IL (2025); Carnegie Museum of Art, PA (2024); Comfort Station, IL (2024); Maine College of Art & Design, ME (2024); John Michael Kohler Arts Center, WI (2024), Hyde Park Art Center, IL (2023); Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA (2023); Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (2022); El Museo del Barrio, NY (2021); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (2018); Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA (2017) and The Arts Club of Chicago, IL (2017) among others. She has lectured at notable institutions, including SOMA, MX; Yale University, CN; the College Art Association, PR and the Art Institute of Chicago, ILShe has been awarded the Joyce Award; 3Arts Next Level Award; Illinois Arts Council Fellowship; Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant; Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award; and US LatinX Art Forum Fellowship; and MacArthur Foundation International Connections Fund. Soto has received numerous public commissions, for Public Art Fund at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park, NY (2024); Noor Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (2024); the Chicago Architecture Biennial, IL (2023); Terminal 5 at O’Hare International Airport, IL (2023); Chicago Botanic Garden, IL (2022) and Millenium Park in Chicago, IL (2019) among others. Her work is in the collection of institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Pérez Art Museum Miami; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico and Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago.

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Tags: Damon Locks, Edra Soto, Eric Von Haynes, Exhibition, lecture, NEIU, Northeastern, University