Kindred Spirits: Margaret Wharton and Betsy Odom

Curated by Whitney Bradshaw, _Kindred Spirits_ brings together Margaret Wharton and Betsy Odom, two celebrated Chicago sculptors separated by nearly forty years yet strikingly aligned in spirit. Born in Virginia and Mississippi respectively, both artists arrived in Chicago carrying sensibilities shaped by Southern histories of making, repair and resourcefulness. Across generations, they share a fascination with everyday objects — chairs, sporting equipment, shoes — and with the gendered meanings attached to them. Through humor, exaggeration and meticulous craft, Wharton and Odom render the familiar delightfully unusable, transforming sculpture into a space where labor becomes play and expectations around gender, sexuality and function are pointedly, comically and wittingly undone. Joy, care and material intelligence anchor both practices.