07/08/2026
Pictured:
WINDOW | Esperanza Ortega
pine, spray paint, acrylic airbrush, blinds
For the next two weeks, Summer School is in session.
Summer School features the work of nine students and recent graduates from the Peck School of the Arts. Their work explores different techniques and ideas, but it's united by the bizarre and magical experience that is attending art school together.
Despite the wide range of interests and subject matters at play, one can’t help but notice connecting threads. The same moves and ideas that pop up across the show, the common concerns and interests that coalesce to form the micro zeitgeist of a painting department—like lifting up a rock to see what's living underneath, Summer School is an unfiltered look into the exciting ideas of Milwaukee's newest painters.
Esperanza Ortega ( Esperanza ) is a multimedia artist whose practice combines painting and sculpture to explore the shifting relationship between the digital and material world
Claire Casey ( Claire Casey ) is an oil painter working primarily in colorful figurative absurdism. Their paintings question what is uplifted or, alternately, repressed by the dominant contemporary American culture.
Madison Stickler ( madison stickler ) makes work that explores the intersections of the digital and physical worlds—recontextualizing images by combining physical collage and materials with digital compositions and visual devices.
Jacklyn Berta ( Jacklyn Berta ) makes painted forms that lure a viewer to be voyeuristic—things hidden behind skins of paint and canvas offer a reward for looking and the rhythmic stitching is analogous to a record of the passing of time.
Nalani Gomez ( Nalani Gomez ) explores conformity in gestural painting combined with subverting systems and boundaries. She superimposes shapes in spatial planes to adhere to a system of control—as the gestures become more and more constrained, they must develop their own autonomy in the final composition.
Kitt Nittesheim ( Kitt Nettesheim ) is inspired by mundanity and normality, and how simple things can build into more than they are. They use sparseness and impulsive markmaking to create strange compositions and twist
