The Working Girl's Studio

01/01/2026

12/25/2025

Happy Holidays to all of our Facebook, family and friends!

12/06/2025

Color is the skin of life.”
With this single sentence, Sonia Delaunay summed up the inner battle she carried for years—a struggle that began in childhood when she was taken from her parents due to poverty and raised by her wealthy aunt in Russia. Despite the comfort, she always felt like an outsider… a “guest” who didn’t truly belong. This deep sense of displacement stayed with her, and when she later moved to Paris, she faced a new challenge: being a woman artist in a time that imposed strict limits on women and dismissed their creative presence, which intensified her feelings of suffocation and isolation.

Art, however, became her turning point. The moment she touched color, she started building a world of her own—one untouched by painful memories or social constraints. She used color as a path to freedom, transformed her loneliness into rhythmic circular movement, and reshaped the world around her with lines, circles, and gradients that declared: “I am here… creating my world with my own hands.”

For Sonia, art was not an escape but a reconstruction of the self. Color became her language, light became her space, and the canvas became the only place where she could decide who she was. Through this liberation, she moved from the margins into the spotlight: pioneering Orphism, blending art with fashion, textile, and design, and becoming the first woman to receive a lifetime retrospective at the Louvre.

Sonia Delaunay’s journey transformed from loneliness and non-belonging into full freedom—a freedom she created herself. Art became the door through which she overcame everything that once tried to limit her.

09/03/2025

Join us in wishing a very happy birthday to artist Amy Sherald! 🥳

Through her dynamic portraits, Amy Sherald (b. 1973) creates stories that offer a complex view on African American culture and history. The sitters in these portraits are unconstrained by the limits placed upon them throughout history, living in a world where “Black” means whatever Sherald wants it to mean. Her work simultaneously offers criticisms on the cruelty that Black Americans have faced while maintaining their respect and power.

When asked what she wants people to take away from her art, Sherald responded, “I want people to be able to imagine life outside of the circumscribed stereotype... I just want them to see that a more beautiful world exists beyond the confines of your environment.”

[Image description: Painting of a young girl wearing a yellow dress.]

Artwork credit: Amy Sherald, “They call me Redbone, but I’d rather be Strawberry Shortcake,” 2009; © Amy Sherald, Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth

02/14/2025

Thank you to the Illinois Department of Human Services for supporting Azubuike in empowering youth, celebrating culture, building community, and creating space for ourselves through the arts.

02/03/2025

Youth demonstrations like the Greensboro sit-ins have proven time and time again to be an effective tool for change!