WMG’s Project Space is a new initiative dedicated to experimentation, process, and dialogue. Unlike formal gallery shows, the Project Space invites artists to share unfinished ideas, evolving works, and interactive components that encourage visitor participation. It is a place where art is not only seen but also experienced as a living conversation between artist and audience.
We launched this new program with an installation by Chicago artist PōCHIS, whose exhibition MY LISAS explores the exhilaration, fragility, and lingering impact of coming-of-age friendships.
PōCHIS: My Lisas | August 30–September 27, 2025
MY LISAS
Coming-of-age friendships shape us, defined by intensity, vulnerability, and discovery. Formed during transitional moments, they offer deep connection, joy, and a sense of being truly seen. Yet, they are also marked by unspoken expectations and shifting priorities, sometimes fading naturally or ending abruptly, leaving nostalgia, guilt and unresolved emotions. My Lisas is a series of oil paintings that explore the exhilaration and melancholy of these friendships, especially those that end and leave a lasting imprint on our identity and memory.
WORK-IN-PROGRESS & INFLUENCES
In this exhibition PōCHIS has shared her sketches, notes, underpaintings, and influences. Visitors could see how she wrote and edited her short essays. Included were books of artists who influenced her style and content. Some of her influences include:
1. Jenny Holzer: I am influenced by the way she uses language to provoke a response from viewers.
2. Alice Neel: I love her portraits. They are urban, honest, audacious. Her portraits create space for the subjects to truly reveal themselves.
3. Marlene Dumas: Her figurative paintings explore the tension between the subjects’ public and private selves. This is my goal as well.
4. David Hockney: His portrait paintings influence mine, especially his work from the 1960s and 70s. They are high contrast with heavy defined shadows and he is really attempting to distill the psychological truth of the moment.
5. Lucien Freud: His portraits seem to capture the subject’s interior life, often revealing vulnerability and awkwardness. Like him, I desire to paint not just how people look but how they are.
INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION
PōCHIS asked visitors to participate in the storytelling and to think about coming-of-age friendships. Who are the friends who shaped you but slipped out of your life? Visitors used post-it and a sticker to explore their “Lisa.”
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work explores the tension between youthful, exuberant figures and the reflective, emotionally complex voice of an older self. The figures, painted in monochrome, capture moments from music festival goers—intimate, public expressions of youth. Layered with my inner voice, these figures reflect on the passage of time and the emotional complexity of memory. The collision between the image and text is the emotional engine of my work.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
PōCHIS is a Chicago based visual artist. For more than two decades, she has run the PōCHIS Bank Art Studio, a full-service art studio creating custom murals and other artwork for unique locations, products and special events. She is a recipient of the multi-year Chicago Neighborhood Arts Program Grant for her work as a fine art instructor to seniors in residential homes. PōCHIS is an active arts advocate: she dedicates her time and art skills to benefit her community and raise awareness for a range of social issues through public artworks including five “Cool Globes” raising awareness of solutions of Climate Change. She also serves on the Cool Globes board. PōCHIS was recently selected by the Chicago CTA and Lakeview-Roscoe Village Chamber of Commerce to create three works of public art as part of their Lowline Restoration Project. She was also selected by Selfless for Scott and Lincoln Park High School to design and spearhead a community mural project in the LPHS cafeteria. She is currently working on the North Lawndale Mural Arts Project to bring a “Winwood Walls” type of Art Center to the Ogden Avenue Corridor. You can see an example of PōCHIS’s mural work at the Embassy Suites Magnificent Mile. PōCHIS and her team created a block long outdoor mural entitled “Urbs in Horto” just east of Columbus Avenue between Grand Avenue and Illinois Street.
© PōCHIS