Oct 15th 2026

Join us for an artist talk at the Fine Arts Center Gallery at Northeastern Illinois University with Alana Ferguson in conversation with Nancy Lu Rosenheim.

About the exhibition

What motivates cooperation? Is it shared beliefs? Loyalty? Goodness? Is
cooperation achieved through carrots and sticks? We define reward and
punishment as children; we absorb it in the home and in the classroom; we
enact these systems in the playground.

“Follow the Leader” can be sung, demanded, acted, thought, a trap, and a way out.

This exhibition explores symbols of reward, punishment, and power.
Equestrian monuments, carrots and sticks, national flags, and related
symbols are jumbled in mixed-media drawings and participatory kinetic
sculptures.

Alana Ferguson is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and parent living in Chicago. She received a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis in
2012, an MAT from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2016, and an MFA from University of Chicago in 2021. She has been an educator for
over 10 years, teaching in K-12 public schools and university classrooms.
She is an adjunct professor at the College of DuPage and a lecturer at The
School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Alongside teaching and making art,
she has coordinated artist performances in her front yard, in a project
called The Lawn.

Image: Alana Ferguson, Rules, 2025
Colored pencil, acrylic paint, marker on architectural plan

Official Website

More events on this date

Tags: , , , , , ,