Explore West Town on the first Friday of every month, when our neighborhood galleries and arts- based businesses stay open until 8PM.
See the November 6th map here
November Featured Galleries
West Town Chamber of Commerce
1819 W Chicago Ave
For Here!
by Elsie How
Elsie How is a Filipino-American artist, art therapist, and comedian currently based in Chicago, but raised in rural Iowa. As a visual artist, her work considers vibration, grief, coming of age, and reflection. Elsie has created playful expressive renderings framed by fantastic skies as a visual ode to an American institution: the diner. After comedy shows, music festivals, or drunken college nights, Elsie found the quieter moments spent over a diner meal with friends was always the most memorable. Whether it was with her father after basketball practice, or a much needed reunion with friends, diners created a safe space for the liminal; the in-between, during, and after. Elsie is open for illustration, painting, and design commissions. She will illustrate your children’s book, make your show poster, or paint your pet.
Chicago Truborn
1741 W Chicago Ave
"The Seer, The Slayer, and The Stray" the debut solo show by Chicago artist, Kolormore. You've seen his recently completed mural in West Town, now you have the opportunity to take a piece of the magic home with you. Meet the Seer (Mink), the Slayer (Rider), and the Stray (the Horse). These three figures represent different aspects of the artist himself. Through a growing cast of characters and an evolving visual narrative, Kolormore invites us into a world that's entirely his own. It's mystical, mythological, deeply personal, yet thematically universal. Energy is neither created nor destroyed.
Learn more here
Fulton Street Collective
1821 W Hubbard St
Fulton Street Collective, in collaboration with West Town Chamber of Commerce, presents COLLECTIVE BRILLIANCE Group Art Opening, on Friday November 6th. This members-only exhibition spotlights the exceptional work of artists affiliated with Fulton Street Collective this November 2026. Bringing together a dynamic selection of works across practices and perspectives, the exhibition highlights the skill, dedication, and creative spirit that define our community. More than a showcase of individual achievement, Collective Brilliance celebrates Fulton Street Collective as a community: a work of mutual support, friendship, and cross-pollination... Curated by Jessica Hu
Learn more here
Western Exhibitions
1709 W Chicago Ave
Married artist collaborators Miller & Shellabarger use self-portraiture, laborious material processes, and carefully considered craftsmanship to meditate on love and death. Working across a myriad of media, they adapt traditional American craft techniques, including silhouette cutting, sewing, crocheting and bookmaking into their practice. The possibilities of connection, partnership, interdependency, and the eventualities of loss penetrate the objects and enactments of their work. For their sixth show at Western Exhibitions, “Always Now” in Gallery 1, Miller & Shellabarger present artists’ books, screenprints, photographs, three non-theatrical* performances (more below) and for the first time ever, paintings. Paul Nudd‘s fifth show at Western Exhibitions, “Plasticakes and Gore Orbs” in Gallery 2, is overrun by outrageously crafted and colored mutant ceramic heads. Nudd’s artistic output — paintings, prints, drawings, video, sculpture, installations, zines, publishing projects —over the past twenty years is prolific and protean and yet, this is first ever show devoted solely to ceramics. Nudd has been committed to central themes of primal sludge, growth and disease, systems of classification, mutation and life, patterning and mark making, all of which are evident in his hilariously garish ceramic sculptures. \ Both shows open with a public reception on Friday, November 6 from 5 to 8pm and will run through December 19. Gallery hours are 11am to 6pm, Tuesday to Saturday.
Learn more here
Sunroom Space
2401 W Ohio St # NW
Sunroom will have a rotating selection of risograph prints designed in-house.
Learn more here
Altar Home
1858 W Chicago Ave
Georgios Angelakopoulos's - Expressive mixed media work on canvas, combining layers of acrylic, oil, raw crayon and spray paint with collage elements and wood surfaces in geometric framework.
Learn more here
ARC Gallery & Education Foundation
1463 W Chicago Ave
Join Chicago's first woman artist-run gallery and cooperative in celebrating the opening of three new solo exhibitions. ARC Gallery is pleased to present three solo exhibitions by Abigail Engstrand, Alejandro Mazon, and Laura Farahzad Mayer. The exhibitions will run from 11/06/2026-12/04/2026.
EXHIBITIONS:
Abigail Engstrand: My Sheros I have been working to visually document women I admire. She is my hero. She is my mother, my sister, my grandma, my friend. She is First Lady, a lawyer, librarian, author, artist, actress, representative, activist, scientist. She is ancient, she is alive. She is my daughter. She studies, protects, speaks out and sings … to me. I seek her out. I read, listen and look and sketch her likeness to remember. I use paint and brushes, water, and wool, sometimes silk, and sharp felting needles. I sew and draw and think a lot. My Shero portraits are leaves in my Feminist Family of trees, my girl garden, growing, exploring our roots and branching out.
Alejandro Mazon: FORGOTTEN STORIES IN THE NEW BARROQUE My painting practices unfold like a baroque tableau: Saturated hues cascading across the surface, shadows deepening into mystery, and light breaking from the theatrical insistence. In Indian early 19th century painted photographs, I encountered a chromatic language that is both devotional and worldly – pigments that shimmer like jewels, reds that pulse with ritual fervor, blues that echo the infinite. These colors do not merely adorn; they proclaim identity, faith, and belonging with a grandeur that recalls the gilded altar pieces of another hemisphere. By merging Indian traditions of pigments with Latin American Baroque sensibility, and by embedding the tactile force of found materials, I aim to craft a visual language that speaks of resilience, hybridism, and the human desire for a persistence of memory rendered in luminous tones.
Laura Farahzad Mayer
Laura Farahzad Mayer is an artist, designer, and hand letterer living and working in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her work explores themes of grief, memory, culture, and generational storytelling and is informed by her upbringing in a small town as the daughter of an immigrant. While medium, process, and materiality are conceptually driven considerations in her work, she often works in printmaking, artist books, and small sculptures.
Learn more here
Dovetail
1452 W Chicago Ave
Dovetail is excited to host Chicago-based clothing designer Chris Williford (@CWILI) for a one-night trunk show (5-8pm) featuring his fall collection. Attendees can meet the designer, try on garments, and snag 15% off select vintage.
Learn more here.
The WTFF program facilitates connection amongst West Town's galleries and arts-based businesses and their represented artists, collectors, and patrons, as well as independent area artists.
The West Town Chamber of Commerce launched the First Fridays program in October 2022 at the request of and with support from a contingency of its Member galleries.
The goal of WTFF is to ensure the continued success of West Town area galleries, both emergent and established, as cornerstones of the West Town neighborhood—a nexus of organic growth and sustainable development in the arts and beyond.
The program intends to amplify Member galleries' own programming efforts by creating a monthly guide to exhibitions and events and supplementary programming for patrons to utilize when visiting the neighborhood on the first Friday of each month.
Is your business interested in participating? Here are the guidelines:
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Be located within (and be a Member of) the West Town Chamber of Commerce's service area: Division Street to Hubbard; Halsted Street to Kedzie Avenue. Not a Member yet? Apply today!
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Be showcasing art in some form. This includes traditional galleries, as well as retail, food & beverage, or service businesses that are exhibiting art.
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Be open from 6-8 p.m. the First Friday of each month. Extended hours of programming before or beyond that window are fine, but 6-8 p.m. is the minimum requirement.
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Provide your programming details in advance of the first Friday of the month via this google form.
Interested in presenting an exhibition or event in our office gallery?
In addition to organizing the monthly initiative, the Chamber has also transformed its office space into a rotating gallery where arts-based Members that lack a traditional gallery space are invited to utilize the space for their own exhibitions and related programming.
Interested Members can fill out this Member Expression of Interest form. Not a Member yet? It's easy to apply!