The Riverside Arts Center is pleased to present In the Circle of Melissa Potter, an exhibition of art by Melissa Potter and artists she has collaborated with or mentored including Ida Bakhturidze, Jillian Bruschera, Jelena Jovčić, Hillary Johnson, Nana Magradze, Clifton Meador, Adam Pantić, Susannah Papish, Gregory Potter, Isota Potter, Maggie Puckett, Miriam Schaer, Marilyn Sward, and Loretta & Annabelle, curated by Joanne Aono. Please join us for a reception with the artists on Sunday, October 26th from 3 – 6 pm. The exhibition will be on view Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays through December 6, 2025. An Artist Talk and Papermaking Workshop will be held at Melissa’s studio in Riverside on Saturday, November 22nd at 1 pm.

Artist Reception: Sunday, October 26, 2025, 3:00 – 6:00 PM
Please join us afterwards for a private cocktail hour at the Quincy Street Distillery

Exhibition Dates: October 26 – December 6, 2025

Exhibition on view: Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays 1:00 – 5:00 PM

Artist Talk and Papermaking Workshop: Saturday, November 22, 2025, 1:00 PM. At Melissa Potter’s Riverside Studio.

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The object is the source
The making of the object is the center
–Marilyn Sward, co-founder of the Center for Book & Paper at Columbia College

The Riverside Arts Center’s exhibition, In the Circle of Melissa Potter, includes artworks by the artist and those with whom she has collaborated and mentored. Her art projects and social practices involve partnerships with other artists, researchers, students, and communities. A descendent from a long line of feminist and educated women activists, artists, and crafters, Potter channels them to fuel her research-based and labor-driven art. The exhibition features Potter’s wall hangings derived from handmade paper, felt art created with women artisans from the Republic of Georgia, and posters designed for community gardens that address historical and feminist topics. Survey books covering Potter’s research on labor, craft, plants for paper and dyes, and histories about women from marginalized groups chronicle her community-driven art projects. In keeping with her outreach, Potter is offering a papermaking workshop coinciding with her exhibition.

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Melissa H Potter is a feminist interdisciplinary artist, writer, and curator whose work has been exhibited in numerous venues including White Columns, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, to name a few. Her films have been screened at international film festivals, such as the Cinneffable and the Reeling International LGBT Film Festival.

Potter has been the recipient of three Fulbright Scholar grants, as well as funding from CEC ArtsLink, Trust for Mutual Understanding, and Soros Fund for Arts and Culture, all of which enabled her to build two papermaking studios at university art departments in Serbia and Bosnia & Hercegovina. In addition, she collaborated with women felt artisans and activists from Georgia through her project, “Craft Power,” with Miriam Schaer. Melissa developed research, documentary and advocacy projects with ethnographers and intangible heritage experts to protect, interpret and archive endangered women’s handicrafts and social customs. In Chicago, this work extends to the history of the Hull-House arts and crafts movement and its contemporary influence in crafts media including hand papermaking and artists’ books. Potter is a Professor at Columbia College Chicago and collaborates with artists in the medium of hand papermaking.

As a curator, Potter’s exhibitions include “Social Paper: Hand Papermaking in the Context of Socially Engaged Art” with Jessica Cochran and “Revolution at Point Zero: Feminist Social Practice” with Neysa Page Lieberman. Her curatorial and recent hand papermaking projects, including “Seeds InService” with Maggie Puckett, have been funded by the Crafts Research Fund, Clinton Hill Foundation, The Nathan Cummings Foundation & Jane M. Saks, and the MAKER Grant. A prolific writer, her critical essays have been printed in BOMB, Art Papers, Flash Art, Metropolis M, Hand Papermaking, and AfterImage among others.

https://www.melpotter.com

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Riverside Arts Center
32 East Quincy Street, Riverside, Illinois 60546
www.riversideartscenter.com

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Tags: In the Circle of Melissa Potter, Melissa Potter, Riverside, Riverside Arts Center