Creative Conversation a Talk with Laura Shaeffer of Compound Yellow

Compound Yellow is run by a generous, collaborative group of local volunteers. We are always happy to accept help and participation whether through facility maintenance, installation assistance, event management, or public communications.

Founded by Laura Shaeffer, Compound Yellow is a non-profit 501(c)(3) experimental art space with a curatorial focus on cultural production, sharing economies, participatory art, and interdisciplinary explorations. Comprised of a group of artists, curators, educators, parents, and engaged citizens, Compound Yellow hosts exhibitions, interventions, performances, workshops, lectures, gatherings, and collective imagining. We want to celebrate a culture of sharing, connecting, and collective action! 

: Laura Shaeffer works as an artist-organizer,  independent cultural producer, and informal teacher based in Oak Park, Illinois since 2016. Over the past 20 years, she has worked alone and in collaboration on numerous projects housed within unconventional and often underutilized spaces on the South Side of Chicago, including Home Gallery, The Op Shop, and Southside Hub of Production (SHoP) and now, in Oak Park, Compound Yellow. She specializes in developing collaborative networks in the arts and other creative endeavors. For the past 6 years, Laura has worked in the field of creative care partnering for people living with dementia.

"Her approach is a combination of activism and common sense; community building and home-making. She honors domestic spaces as sites of radical, informal pedagogy, and this manifests itself in an important through-line that runs across her projects; they act as platforms for kids to express their creativity and imagination and indulge their curiosity.