Meet Kristen

Kristen currently resides in nature near many lakes halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee. Growing up in the Midwest, after graduating from The University of Iowa with a Communications major, she began painting and creating collages in the evenings after work while sitting on her living room floor. Kristen’s artwork combines mixed materials, including acrylic and oil paint, pencil, paper, fabric and fragments of wood.

Selected exhibitions include James May Gallery in Milwaukee, WI; The Robert Wright Gallery of Art at College of Lake County, Grayslake, IL; The Saw Room Gallery in Evanston, IL; The Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Barnsdall Art Gallery in Los Angeles, and Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, and many art pop-up exhibitions in local businesses and libraries. She’s a member of Chicago Alliance of Visual Artists, Chicago Women’s Caucus for Art, Evanston Made, Adler Art Center and Woman Made Gallery. Each November, Kristen also curates the small and mighty Up North Art Pop-up Show.

Also skilled in image archiving, permissions and photo research, Kristen’s job experience includes Getty Images, Warner Bros. Entertainment Media Archives, and HMH Education.

My work is a dialogue between time and material, where history is not a backdrop but a living participant. I collect found objects—fragments of the discarded, the forgotten, the once-cherished—and reassemble them into layered collages that function as portals. These portals are not merely visual; they are conceptual thresholds that invite viewers to step into alternate narratives, to reimagine the past through the lens of the present.

Each object carries its own memory, a residue of human touch and context. By juxtaposing these elements—rusted metal beside faded photographs, handwritten notes layered over industrial textures—I aim to disrupt linear storytelling and instead evoke a sense of temporal simultaneity. The collage becomes a site of excavation and invention, where personal and collective histories converge.

Through this practice, I explore how memory is constructed, how meaning is layered, and how art can serve as a vessel for time travel—not through fantasy, but through the tangible echoes of what once was.

 -Kristen Neveu

Upcoming Art Events

Woman Made Gallery Small Works Show - 1332 S. Halsted St., Chicago, IL - November 22-December 20

Evanston Made Holiday Market - 1710 Maple Ave., Evanston, IL - December 5-21

Chicago Alliance of Visual Artists Winter Show - Renaissance Court at Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL - November 13-January 2

Evanston Made Group Show at Great Harvest Bread, 2126 Central St., Evanston, IL - December 6-January 25

Waukegan Public Library Solo Show  - Waukegan, IL - December 27 - January 31, 2026