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Seasonal Art Program
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curated by
Melina
Ausikaitis
contact
art_lulacafe
Current Exhibition
SPRING 2026
opening reception
Tuesday, March 31st
6-9pm
Jesse Malmed
ALL CAPS
2021-2026
Etsy users collectively and selectively enthuse “[t]he best object I’ve ever bought… perfect… best hat, funniest hat.. they’re making me write something for every item… don’t think I fully get the joke…witty and well made… still hasn’t arrived but I support this message and cause… way too big… the perfect size… obsessed… my favorite merch… these are the best letters in the alphabet” and The Chicago Reader kvells “one of the best minds of my generation. A hundred or so hats, including some brand new ones.
Jesse Malmed’s Jetsy Merchblatt, a MoMMA and Pop idea container shoppe lives and works near the intersection of The Poetry Store and Gadzooks. www.jessemalmed.net / jetsy.biz / @marmblatt @jetsymerchblatt
Jesse Malmed’s Jetsy Merchblatt, a MoMMA and Pop idea container shoppe lives and works near the intersection of The Poetry Store and Gadzooks. www.jessemalmed.net / jetsy.biz / @marmblatt @jetsymerchblatt
**** Jesse’s caps are available at a special Lula price $33.33
please contact the artist directly to purchase
Website: jessemalmed.net
Instagram: marmblatt
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Diego Bleifuss Prados
NATIONWIDE HAND CAR WASH
3006 W. ROOSEVELT RD. CHICAGO
watercolor on paper
2026
Diego Bleifuss Prados is a Chicago-based painter. He is interested in buildings, shops, and street corners, and painting as a form of preservation and historical documentation. His work has been featured in Block Club Chicago, and his paintings have been exhibited at the Bridgeport Art Center and the University of Denver Museum of Anthropology. He is a union-member, a socialist, and lives in Humboldt Park.
Bus Stop Paintings is a series of watercolor paintings that seeks to capture the vernacular architecture of working class and immigrant neighborhoods. The paintings on display at Lula Cafe catalog Chicago’s hand-painted signs, common brick, sun and shadow, metal grates, old window displays, architectural terra cotta, the stains, spots, and gunk on sidewalks, and the layers of care and tenderness that accumulate in buildings over the years.
Many of the shops I have painted are now, just a few years later, gone. Others, like Laundryland, Dollar Plus, or 2617 W. North Ave, have lost their distinct signage. Most of the others are threatened by the steady march of time and the autonomic workings of real estate and finance capital. But I hope these paintings are celebrations, not death masks. They are snapshots of a specific moment in the life of a building: when the paint on a sign was chipped just so, when a curtain was drawn across a window, when a note was taped to a door. I’d like these watercolors to serve as a record of this city’s beauty and the architectural treasures, inset like precious stones, on even our humblest stretch of street.
It’s also impossible to talk about these paintings without acknowledging that many of the neighborhoods they depict have, in recent months, been violently targeted by the State. From Little Village to Hermosa, immigrants and immigrant communities across Chicago have been preyed upon by ICE and CBP agents carrying out the blood and soil nativism of our Federal government. They are shattering families, caging children, kidnapping workers, and they have killed people. These attacks on immigrants are attacks on the entire working class, and I worry that some of these neighborhoods will never fully recover.
The art critic John Berger wrote that “Photography is the process of rendering observations self-conscious.” These watercolors are an attempt to take part in that same process; and I hope they remind you to notice, appreciate, and defend the richly decorated buildings and neighborhoods around us, before they’re gone.
Bus Stop Paintings is a series of watercolor paintings that seeks to capture the vernacular architecture of working class and immigrant neighborhoods. The paintings on display at Lula Cafe catalog Chicago’s hand-painted signs, common brick, sun and shadow, metal grates, old window displays, architectural terra cotta, the stains, spots, and gunk on sidewalks, and the layers of care and tenderness that accumulate in buildings over the years.
Many of the shops I have painted are now, just a few years later, gone. Others, like Laundryland, Dollar Plus, or 2617 W. North Ave, have lost their distinct signage. Most of the others are threatened by the steady march of time and the autonomic workings of real estate and finance capital. But I hope these paintings are celebrations, not death masks. They are snapshots of a specific moment in the life of a building: when the paint on a sign was chipped just so, when a curtain was drawn across a window, when a note was taped to a door. I’d like these watercolors to serve as a record of this city’s beauty and the architectural treasures, inset like precious stones, on even our humblest stretch of street.
It’s also impossible to talk about these paintings without acknowledging that many of the neighborhoods they depict have, in recent months, been violently targeted by the State. From Little Village to Hermosa, immigrants and immigrant communities across Chicago have been preyed upon by ICE and CBP agents carrying out the blood and soil nativism of our Federal government. They are shattering families, caging children, kidnapping workers, and they have killed people. These attacks on immigrants are attacks on the entire working class, and I worry that some of these neighborhoods will never fully recover.
The art critic John Berger wrote that “Photography is the process of rendering observations self-conscious.” These watercolors are an attempt to take part in that same process; and I hope they remind you to notice, appreciate, and defend the richly decorated buildings and neighborhoods around us, before they’re gone.
pricelist
for further inquiry please contact the artist directly
Website: busstoppaintings.com
Instagram: bus.stop.paintings
Lula Cafe - PAST EXHIBITIONS
Winter 2026
Chris Strong
Grant Newman
Fall 2025
Eric Claridge
Melina Ausikaitis
Summer 2025
Claire Mooney
Christopher Michael Hefner
Spring 2025
XLAOOC
EXTRA LARGE AND OUT OF CONTEXT:
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an exhibition curated by Anders Nilsen
Participating Artists:
Yvan Alagbe’
Charles Burns
Genevieve Castree
CF
Kevin Huizenga
Jack Kirby
Aidan Koch
Marijpol
Anders Nilson
Laura Park
Chris Ware
Flor Flores
Marzena Abrahamik
Fall 2024
Zander Raymond
Claire Moore
Spring 2024
Carie Lassman
Brian Wells
Winter 2024
Sue Crawford
Day Brierre
Spring 2023
Lee Miko Romero
Mariano Chavez
Summer 2023
Ray Borchers
Ann Marie Greenberg
Winter 2023
Kaylee Wyant
Angela Lopez
Summer 2022
Lori Seidemann
Cody Hudson
Winter 2022
Grace Rother
Volker Saul
Fall 2022
Robert Jordan
Sam Rosby
Summer 2021
Amy Case
Caroline Walp
Adam Sherman
Dan Devening
Doug McCombs
Juan Chavez
Wesley Kimler
Rex Flodstrom
Winter 2021
Michelle Bolinger
Monica Rezman
Spring 2020
Pamela Frasier
Rose Lazar
Spring 2019
Ray Borchers
Morgan Sims
Summer 2019
Emily Counts
Melina Ausikaitis
Winter 2019
Allen Moore
Dan Black
Fall 2019
Rob Mazurek
Nathan McKee
Spring 2018
Marzena Abrahamik
Beth Hoeckel
Summer 2018
Jeremy Bolen
Claire Arctander
Winter 2018
Jordan Martins
Fall 2018
Anu Sankarin
Leslie Baum
Spring 2017
Joe Cassan
Melina Ausikaitis
Summer 2017
Gwendolyn Zabicki
Garrett Jensen
Fall 2017
Nathan Vernau
Tim
Nickodemus