Northeastern Illinois University’s 2025 Brommel-Hahs Lecture Series will be hosted by the Department of Art + Design. This year’s theme is “Art as/in/for Social Practice” and will feature multidisciplinary artists Eric Von Haynes, Damon Locks and Edra Soto.
The free, day-long event will be held on Tuesday, April 1, and will feature an Artist Talk at 4:30 p.m. in Alumni Hall on the University’s Main Campus, 5500 N. St. Louis Ave. in Chicago. Following the lecture, an Exhibition Reception will be held in the University’s Skylight Gallery, located on the Main Campus in the Salme Harju Steinberg Fine Arts Center. Both events are open to the public. The exhibit will run through April 11.
Northeastern Art + Design students will also have the opportunity to participate in a series of workshops with the artists earlier in the day.
“We are thrilled to have Eric Von Haynes, Damon Locks and Edra Soto share their time and talents at Northeastern Illinois University,” Chair of the Department of Art + Design Kim Ambriz said. “The Department of Art + Design prides itself on being able to offer our students state-of-the-art facilities, knowledgeable instructors, and opportunities to learn from working artists to give our students the tools and experience to express themselves through whatever medium they’re passionate about.”
The Brommel-Hahs Lectures began in 2017 when the Bernard J. Brommel Lectures in the College of Arts and Sciences were renamed in honor of Northeastern President Emerita Sharon Hahs after her retirement in 2016. Northeastern Professor Emeritus Bernard J. Brommel, Ph.D., taught at the University for 28 years in the Department of Communication, Media and Theatre. Dr. Brommel was the University’s first million-dollar donor, the first donor to name a building through a philanthropic gift (Bernard J. Brommel Hall), and instrumental in working with Northeastern President Emerita Salme Harju Steinberg to create the NEIU Foundation’s Founders Society, which recognizes alumni, faculty and friends who notify the University that they have included Northeastern in their estate plans. Dr. Brommel created 25 named scholarships and awards at Northeastern. Each scholarship title includes names of honorees who are alumni, faculty, colleagues and friends with whom Dr. Brommel has worked. Though Dr. Bommel died on Sept. 22, 2018, his legacy at Northeastern continues through the initiatives he implemented.
“The goal of the Brommel-Hahs Lecture Series is to bring prominent speakers in any field of the College of Arts and Sciences to Northeastern to interact with our students and our community,” Ambriz said. “Dr. Brommel and President Hahs understood the importance of the arts and the difference it can make in the lives of our students and the broader community. To have not one, but three artists who work in different mediums be part of the series this year, is a great opportunity to inspire creativity in our students, employees and everyone who attends.”
About the artists
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Photo by: Jordan Knecht
Eric Von Haynes is a designer, printmaker and educator. He operates Flatlands Press and teaches Graphic Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Print Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As president of the Chicago Printers Guild and a resident artist at the Chicago Art Department, he supports and connects local printmakers and fosters collaboration within the community. His work explores analog and digital printing techniques, community-based projects and collaborative publishing.
Damon Locks is a Chicago-based visual artist, educator and vocalist/musician. He attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he earned his BFA. Since 2014, Locks has been working with the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project at Stateville Correctional Center teaching art. He is a 2025 recipient of the Creative Capital Award. In 2017, he became a Soros Justice Media Fellow. He received a Helen Coburn Meier and Tim Meier Achievement Award in the Arts in 2015. In 2019, he became a 3Arts Awardee. He spent 4 years as an artist in residence as a part of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s SPACE Program, introducing civically engaged art into the curriculum at Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy High School. He teaches Improvisation in the Sound Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Locks leads the Black Monument Ensemble, is a member of New Future City Radio, Exploding Star Orchestra and co-founded the band The Eternals.
Photo by: Steph Murray
Edra Soto is a Puerto Rican-born artist, educator and co-director of outdoor project space The Franklin. Soto instigates meaningful, relevant and often difficult conversations surrounding socioeconomic and cultural oppression, erasure of history and loss of cultural knowledge. Having grown up in Puerto Rico, and now immersed in her Chicago community, Soto has evolved to raise questions through her work about constructed social orders, diasporic identity and the legacy of colonialism. Soto has presented at venues including the Driehaus Museum (2025), Carnegie Museum of Art (2024), Comfort Station (2024), Maine College of Art & Design (2024), John Michael Kohler Arts Center (2024), Hyde Park Art Center (2023), Institute of Contemporary Art (2023), Whitney Museum of American Art (2022), El Museo del Barrio (2021), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago(2018), Headlands Center for the Arts (2017) and The Arts Club of Chicago (2017) among others. She has lectured at notable institutions including SOMA in Mexico, Yale University, the College Art Association in Puerto Rico and the Art Institute of Chicago. Soto has been awarded the Joyce Award, 3Arts Next Level Award, Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award, U.S. LatinX Art Forum Fellowship and MacArthur Foundation International Connections Fund. She has received numerous public commissions including the Public Art Fund at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza in New York (2024), Noor Riyadh in Saudi Arabia (2024), the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2023), Terminal 5 at O'Hare International Airport (2023); Chicago Botanic Garden (2022) and Millennium Park (2019), among others. Her work is in the collection of institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Pérez Art Museum, Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
