Floating Works is our workforce development initiative that connects art, community, and public life. The program brings together artists, students, trades workers, and public institutions to create pathways for community-driven economic growth.
By leveraging the power of art, our work:
- Builds skills-based training programs in the arts.
- Develops fabrication and conservation infrastructure on Chicago’s South and West Sides.
- Positions art and aesthetics as drivers of vibrancy, resilience, and investment in neighborhoods.
Floating Works models how community, training, and infrastructure can come together to shape our cultural and economic future. This vision takes shape through collaborative projects developed with artists, students, and communities.
Description /
The TABLES Project explores the table as both a symbolic and functional site of gathering, ritual, and exchange. Rather than focusing on the production of dining furniture, the project emphasizes the cultural and familial practices that emerge around the table—moments of communion, storytelling, nourishment, and care.
Launching in 2025, the program convenes a small group each week to reflect on family, food, culture, and love. These conversations inform the design and construction of wooden tables for participants’ homes. The resulting objects are both functional and symbolic: places of daily use as well as touchstones for reimagining how intentional gatherings can strengthen households.
The tables also serve as central elements in a photo-based campaign designed to inspire broader audiences to view the home as a site of sanctuary, education, and connection.
TABLES Project is led by Chicago-based artist and educator Nathan Miller, whose multidisciplinary practice spans photography, writing, woodworking, and public installation.
Participants /
Linda Kimbrough, Chevveria Stevens, Demaurus Stevens, and Christopher Willis
The TABLES Project explores the table as both a symbolic and functional site of gathering, ritual, and exchange. Rather than focusing on the production of dining furniture, the project emphasizes the cultural and familial practices that emerge around the table—moments of communion, storytelling, nourishment, and care.
Launching in 2025, the program convenes a small group each week to reflect on family, food, culture, and love. These conversations inform the design and construction of wooden tables for participants’ homes. The resulting objects are both functional and symbolic: places of daily use as well as touchstones for reimagining how intentional gatherings can strengthen households.
The tables also serve as central elements in a photo-based campaign designed to inspire broader audiences to view the home as a site of sanctuary, education, and connection.
TABLES Project is led by Chicago-based artist and educator Nathan Miller, whose multidisciplinary practice spans photography, writing, woodworking, and public installation.
Participants /
Linda Kimbrough, Chevveria Stevens, Demaurus Stevens, and Christopher Willis
Description /
In summer 2024, we launched our first Floating Works Conservation Summer Intensive. Through site visits, readings, and lectures with conservation specialists across the Midwest, five recent graduates and students were introduced to the foundations of arts conservation careers and approaches. Participants gained firsthand experience with conservation techniques, visiting with professional conservators and touring working conservation facilities in the midwest.
The Conservation Intensive was led by artist and educator Andi Crist.
Participants /
Marla Chinbat, Katon Sylvain-Blackburn, Irma Gualpa, Messejah Washington, and Veronica Pruneda