CHICAGO — Do people need art? I know I always have, as something to enjoy, discuss, learn from, be puzzled by, and sometimes create. Obviously, I need food, shelter, and clothing first, but beyond that, art has given me a myriad of ways through which to engage with the world in all its fantastic, boring, unknown, and even horrible aspects. Art has made me fully human. Maybe it’s done the same for you, too.No community is bereft of artists and art lovers in need of nurturing. But resources are not equitably distributed, among them the money to pay for museum access or ceramics classes, and so Chicago has long been home to social service-oriented arts organizations. The great historic one is Hull-House settlement, which operated from 1889 to 1963, where recent immigrants to the city could access childcare, education, and plentiful art-making opportunities. Among its descendants are After School Matters, which pays thousands of high school teens to learn creative skills via after school and summer programs; Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project, or PNAP, whose work includes teaching art and poetry classes at Stateville Prison; and Arts of Life, which runs a trio of professional art studios and a gallery for artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Installation view of Bonding Thru Experience (BE). Center: Tracey Christmas, “Not Forgotten” (2025), recycled yarn, nylon, wool, cotton, and rug backingMarking its 10-year anniversary is Red Line Service (RLS), dedicated to providing art opportunities for currently or formerly unhoused people. RLS began as a social-practice experiment by artist Billie McGuinness and curator Rhoda Rosen, who spent one night a week for four months in the winter of 2015 at the CTA Red Line terminus platforms, offering overnight and continuous riders conversation and hot homemade food at a table set with flowers, from midnight to dawn. Since then, Rosen has evolved the organization into one that runs monthly lectures, arts workshops, exhibition tours, wellness hours, studio critiques, and more for an intergenerational, cross-class, multicultural group of artists affected by housing insecurity. Food is nearly always on offer.Crucially, she is not the only one in charge: Red Line Service is dedicated to what they call “community sovereignty,” meaning experts and philanthropists do not make all the decisions in the hierarchical fashion customary at nonprofits. Red Line artists have a say in everything that the organization accomplishes. What this looks like in practice is that 80% of the Board of Directors have experienced housing insecurity; the programming, event, and fundraising committees are staffed by community members; and all written materials, from grants to wall texts, are likewise reviewed. Importantly, everyone gets paid for the work they do, including being compensated for having their art displayed in exhibitions (RLS is W.A.G.E. certified). Aspirationally, Red Line Service is fundraising for its most ambitious act of administrative solidarity, to abolish the executive director model and replace it with a pair of co-directors, at least one of whom will have known housing insecurity firsthand.Shaylynn Scales, “Back in Time to 2014” (2023), acrylic and glitter on woodBonding Thru Experience (BE) celebrates Red Line Service’s first decade. The exhibition is elegantly installed in a bright brick warehouse building, amid the plentiful galleries and studios of Chicago’s artsy Bridgeport neighborhood. It includes dozens of paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures by individual artists, plus an ongoing printmaking project done in conjunction with the Human Rights program at the University of Miami School of Law. After workshops led by the Radical Printshop Project and Process/Process, two Chicago printers with strong sociopolitical outreach programs, a group of Red Line artists produced linocuts and screen prints illustrating fair housing concepts. Advocates working to ratify the UN Human Right to Adequate Housing — the United States is one of the few countries that have so far failed at this — can avail themselves of these images, created from embodied knowledge, for their campaigns.Among the show’s standouts are a cathartic punch needle rug by Tracey Christmas and a series of dense urban character sketches by Dontay Lockett deserving of an entire graphic novel. Three of Shay Jones’s “Lotsa Pockets” display the crafty ingenuity of their maker, who started fashioning denim aprons from scraps, with loads of pockets and lots of blingy décor, when she was unhoused and had to worry about where to stash her belongings. A pair of enormous pencil drawings by Ravi Arupa astonish with their intricacy, labor, and biomorphic worldbuilding. They are outdone only by his harmonious scrap wood constructions, with their clever configurations and sensitive attention to texture. Someone should give every one of these star artists a solo show in a commercial gallery, and someone else should buy that artwork and display it at home. But salability is only one value of art making. So many others are present here — from therapy to advocacy to documentary — as well as plenty that are not really possible to display but that are felt at every Red Line Service program I have ever attended. Many events are open to the general public, though they always cater first and foremost to community members; I’ve been to two exhibits, given one invited art history lecture, and produced one round of community art reviews. What is it that is felt but not displayable? It is the sense of belonging and empowerment that comes from being part of a community where your company and contributions have a place. It is civic life, in elemental form. Ravi Arupa (left to right), “Juxtaposition #2” (2024), bamboo, poplar, wooden found object, varnish, glue; “The Black (W)hole Project: Space in the Place” and “The Black (W)hole Project: Collapse of the Spiral” (both 2022), graphite on paperLeft: Sergio Verastegui, “Nightmare” (2025), graphite on paper; right: Ravi Arupa, “Before the Beehive” (2023), wood, wire, acrylic, varnish, found objectsInstallation view of Bonding Thru Experience (BE). On left display: Shay Jones, “Lotsa Pockets #5” (2001–25), mixed mediaPaintings: Dontay Lockett, “Brotherhood,” “Boxed In,” “Untitled” (all 2024), watercolor; sculpture: Ravi Arupa, “String Theory” (2025), wood, rubber, wire, glue, acrylicWilliam Robinson, “Mine” (2025), clay, plastic toy furniture, acrylic paintVarious Red Line Service artists, UN Human Right to Housing prints (2023–25), linocuts and screen printsBonding Thru Experience (BE) continues at 3636 South Iron Street, 4th Floor, Chicago, Illinois, through July 27. The exhibition was curated by Amira Hegazy.