Art Gallery

ROCKFORD UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY

Rockford University Art Gallery is always free.
Open to the public:

• Current Gallery Hours: Wednesdays from 3pm-5pm, Fridays 12pm-3pm
• Contact anorris@rockford.edu
• Or by appointment

Contact: Gallery Director Ari Norris at anorris@rockford.edu

The Rockford University Art Gallery provides a varied series of art exhibitions and related programming in support of the Department of Art and Art History and is an important educational and cultural resource for the campus and community. The Gallery is located in the Clark Arts Center, the locus of the University’s Department of Art and Art History.

Fall 2025 Exhibitions

Fotos y Recuerdos
Salvador Dominguez

On Display: September 2nd – October 17th
Reception: Friday, October 10th, 6:00-8:00PM
Artist Talk: Friday, October 10th, 7:00PM

Salvador Dominguez was born in 1985 in Zacatecas, Mexico, and grew up in Pomona, California. He now lives and works in Chicago,
Illinois, where he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. Like many first-generation immigrants, language is an important part of
Dominguez’s narrative. Not just in terms of communication but also in its relevance within a broader contemporary American culture. Employing pattern, vibrant shifting colors and abstracted pictographic imagery, Dominguez’s works occupy a unique space between painting, textile-making and functional design.

Dominguez’s 2024 solo presentation with De Boer Gallery at the New Art Dealers Association (NADA) Contemporary Art Fair in Miami was recognized by ARTnews in their top 6 selections from the fair, writing “In his works that take on art history from the Renaissance to Pop art, Dominguez imbues his own sense of cultural history to provide a sharp commentary on growing up in the United States as the child of immigrants.”

Recent solo and group exhibitions include De Boer Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Andrew Rafacz (Chicago, IL), Western Exhibitions (Chicago, IL), DePaul Art Museum (Chicago, IL), Lubeznik Center for the Arts (Michigan City, IN), Ralph Arnold Gallery at Loyola University (Chicago, IL), Walker Art Gallery (Garnett, KS), National Museum of Mexican Art (Chicago, IL), Carroll University (Waukesha, WI), One After 909 (Chicago, IL), Thomas Masters Gallery (Chicago, IL), and the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (Chicago, IL).

Post-Digital Landscapes
Curtis Anthony Bozif, Ruth Lantz, & Jonathan Worcester

On Display: October 27th – December 12th
Reception: Friday, November 21st, 6:00-8:00PM
Artist Talk: Friday, November 21st, 7:00PM

Curtis Anthony Bozif is a Chicago-based visual artist and art writer. He was born in 1982 in St. Louis, Missouri. He earned his BFA in Painting and Art History from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2006. That same year, he moved to Chicago where, in 2008, he earned his MFA from the Department of Art Theory & Practice at Northwestern University. His art has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in numerous private collections throughout the country. To date, his art criticism has been featured in Newcity, Bridge,and the Reader. Since 2008, Bozif has worked as a Digitization Specialist in the Digital Products & Data Curation workgroup at the Northwestern University Libraries where he specializes in cultural heritage imaging and digital assets and project management with an emphasis on color management, image quality standards, analytics, and quality control. Aside from making his own art, Bozif enjoys thinking and writing about other peoples’ art; reading about art, history, ecology, and nature; hiking, backpacking, and camping; and listening to jazz and classical music. He keeps his studio and lives with his wife, Zoë, and their growing family of houseplants, in the lakeside neighborhood of Rogers Park on Chicago’s far northside.

Ruth Lantz, an Urbana, IL based artist, received her Masters in Visual Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) in Portland, OR in 2010. Her work has been featured nationally at numerous galleries and institutions, including the Rockford Art Museum (Rockford, IL), Russo Lee Gallery (Portland, OR) Disjecta (Portland, OR), Washington State University Vancouver (Vancouver, WA), Governors State University (University Park, IL), St. Louis Artist’s Guild (St. Louis, MO), Northern Illinois University (Dekalb, IL) and Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, IN). Her work was featured at the Portland International Airport and she was a presenter in the “Making a Better Painting” Symposium at the Hoffman Gallery at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR. Lantz is the founder of Crit Connection, a project providing networking opportunities and resources to emerging and mid-career artists.

Jonathan Worcester lives and works in Chicago, IL. He received his MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2024, and his BA from Sarah Lawrence College in 2015. He is the Departmental Specialist in the Applied Arts of Europe Department at the Art Institute of Chicago and currently a Teaching Fellow in Painting and Drawing at SAIC.