The River North Design District‘s (RNDD) Fall Gallery Walk has never asked anyone to choose between art and furniture. For three hours, a stretch of showrooms between the Merchandise Mart and Hubbard Street stop selling anything at all.
This September 11 marks the 10th anniversary of the walk, though the format hasn’t changed. Exactly 18 showrooms across River North (rug houses, tile purveyors, kitchen and bath specialists, furniture galleries) each get matched with an interior designer, who is in turn matched with one or more artists. The showroom’s jobs are to clear a corner, plug in some lighting, and host the city’s design community. The event also doubles as a fundraiser benefitting the Tunnels to Towers Foundation, a nonprofit that honors FDNY firefighter Stephen Siller and others who lost their lives on September 11, 2001.
To mark the milestone, RNDD has brought back a run of “Gallery Walk All Stars,” returning designers and artists from past editions, alongside newer names making their first appearance. All 18 venues participate in this cycle, connected along the route by a trolley that runs the length of the district. Vignettes stay installed for roughly a month after, through October 9.
We sat down with five of this year’s participating showrooms to chat about what’s going up, who’s behind it, and what each is willing to move out of the way to make room for it:
Studio41: The Anchor of the District
Ask around River North about which showroom the walk orbits, and Studio41 comes up fast. It’s one of the district’s anchor showrooms and one of the largest, most centrally located spaces on the route.
This year Studio41 is paired with Epic Interiors working with three artists: Pamela Staker, Lucy Slivinski, and Salvador Dominguez, also all returning names, an unusually large roster for a single vignette.
“We’re creating a couple of small vignettes, but actually bringing in something like 17 pieces of art,” says Garrett Dynes of Studio41. The showroom’s sponsor partner for the evening is Kohler-adjacent plumbing brand Jesse, underwriting the open bar and bringing its own branded presence to the space for the night.
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- Lucy Slivinski is a sculptor and installation artist based in Chicago. She has utilized recycled materials in her practice for over 30 years.
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- Pamela Staker is a contemporary abstract artist located in Chicago. She focuses on large-scale, colorful, layered abstract paintings.
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- Salvador Dominguez is a Mexican-born, American visual artist.
“They’ll bring in extra things that night, play their videos on all the TVs, and it kind of becomes their showroom for the evening,” he says. In past years, the sponsor slot has gone to hardware and finish brands with their own aesthetic point of view, turning the showroom, for one evening, into something closer to a co-branded takeover.
TOTO: The District’s Pickup Point
Toto’s River North showroom is one of only three the brand operates in the country, and it functions as something like a hub for the walk itself: a trolley stop, a central meeting point, the kind of location where, according to showroom manager and designer Hailey Gurvis, the crowd builds fast and doesn’t thin out until closing.
Hailey, who designs the Toto vignette through her design practice Hailey Lauren Designs and sits on RNDD’s board, has done this pairing enough times to have a pattern: because a plumbing fixture showroom doesn’t offer the wall space a gallery or furniture store might, Toto tends to land sculptural and installation-based artists rather than painters. The brand is paired with Seonyoung Lee and Kelly Mathews, both returning All Stars.
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- Seonyoung Lee is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary fiber and installation artist using weaving. Originally from South Korea, her practice engages with themes of overcoming, embracing and healing from emotional vulnerability.
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- Kelly Mathews is a visual artist from St Joseph, MI, working primarily in encaustic and photography. She creates art reflecting her lived experiences with Bipolar Disorder, addiction, rehab, and recovery.
“Seonyoung does really cool weaving, so it’s going to be a piece that drapes over the whole door,” Hailey says. “Kelly is doing a new installation piece that holds plants. She’ll be raffling off some of her pieces as well that night. They’re very sculptural—we usually end up with sculptures or installations here, because we don’t have a lot of wall space like a traditional showroom does, so we hook things up overhead.”
Both artists, she notes, are making work specifically for the space this year, which doesn’t always happen. “It’s always fun when they do that,” she says.
Roca Tile: A Table for Memory
Roca Tile is a newer name on the district roster, but the showroom has moved fast to make itself a fixture of the district’s calendar beyond the walk itself, hosting monthly public programming that ranges from a Chicago Women in Architecture happy hour to tile-mosaic workshops, floral arrangement classes, and a figure-drawing session run in partnership with a local artist. The goal is simple exposure: get people into the space who might otherwise never have a reason to walk in.
This year’s Gallery Walk pairing puts designer Lauren Collander Interiors alongside artist Matthew Nguyen, another returning All Star.
Matthew Nguyen is a self-taught abstract artist from Chicagoland and refers to himself as a “Pandemic Painter.” He was called to paint during the pandemic, creating finished artworks in his imagination without ever having had a paintbrush in his hand.
“There’s going to be a table right in the middle, and it’s an experience. You sit down and write something about a memory,” Elizabeth Labouef of Roca Tile says of the vignette, still taking shape as of late summer. “We’re moving the pedestals and the plants around it, so the whole space gets transformed. Matthew’s large-format abstract expressionist pieces will go up around it.”
The night before the walk, RNDD hosts a kickoff gathering for all participating showrooms at Heritage Auctions, a preview-before-the-preview that lets staff and artists across the district meet before the doors open to the public.
“Yesterday was the launch party, getting everybody together who’s participating in the gallery walk,” she says. “They always have some really cool stuff in there. It’s a lot of fun.”
Oscar Isberian Rugs: A Corner That Doesn’t Move
Oscar Isberian Rugs is a family-run business dating to 1920, and its showroom floor tells you as much. Stock rotates constantly, rugs get rolled, unrolled, and hauled through the space on a near-daily basis. That makes the Gallery Walk a logistical puzzle other showrooms don’t have to solve.
“We collaborate with the designer, giving them the possibilities of what can be done here. We assign the space, tell them what they can do, what they can’t do,” says Sevak Alaverdyan of Oscar Isberian. “Then I work with them on organizing the event. What are they hoping to achieve? Do they want food, cocktails? Can they paint the walls?”
Elizabeth La Bouef is a Chicago-based artist and designer who studied fine arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The company then designates one fixed spot, typically near the entrance, and builds around it instead of through it.
“The art will be the first thing you see when you walk in, and it stays up for about a month,” he says. “The hope is just that people come to know the designer’s work through it, and maybe it turns into a sale down the line.”
The brand’s 2026 pairing is Zach Hayes Design, one of the returning Gallery Walk All Stars, working alongside artists Raul de la Torre and Elizabeth La Bouef. Elizabeth wears two hats in this year’s walk—she also works on staff at Roca Tile, one of the district’s other participating showrooms. Her contribution is sculptural ceramic work combined with woven elements. She’ll be presenting two vessels made specifically for the show.
“My pieces are going to be more neutral, and more organized than what I usually do,” she says. “My work tends to be looser and expressionist. For something like this, I wanted it a little more restrained and geared toward the space.”
Bulthaup: Bauhaus by Hand
Not every showroom on the walk builds its vignette around a single artist-and-designer pairing. Bulthaup, the German kitchen and cabinetry brand that’s operated since 1949, is going bigger this year with Bauhaus by Hand, an evening built around modernist, machine-precise cabinetry sharing a room with work made entirely by hand.
The brand’s installation brings together designer Jennifer Sucher of Sucher Studios, woodworker Lee Roth of Roth Custom Woodworking, and ceramicist Barbara Theile, layering sculptural woodwork, expressive ceramic pieces, textiles, and vintage elements into and around Bulthaup’s own contemporary German cabinetry. Guests can expect an atmosphere pitched somewhere between salon and supper party; part installation, part gathering, built around the idea that craftsmanship and conversation belong in the same room.
Lee Roth is a woodworker that loves creating for himself, friends, and family. “I often ask myself, why buy it when I can make it?,” he says on the Roth Custom Woodworking website.
It’s a fitting pairing for a brand that has built its identity around precision and restraint.
“Bulthaup’s design style is minimal but extremely functional,” says Andre Gonzalez of Bulthaup. “We don’t want a customer to come in, make a purchase, and never hear from them again. Our team follows up with the customer periodically to check in and ensure their needs are continuously being met. It’s an important relationship that feels warm and familial.”
BT Studios is the expressive outlet of artist, Barbara Theile, comprised of paint, pottery, and soft goods pieces. As a Chicago-based interior designer by trade, she composes spaces that speak to the souls and stories of her clients.
The River North Design District’s 10th Annual Fall Gallery Walk takes place Friday, September 11, from 5-8PM. Vignettes remain on view through October 9.
The after-party, “Art of Living Fashion,” runs 8-10:30PM at the BSH Experience & Design Center, with tickets starting at $100, benefiting the Tunnels to Towers Foundation.
