William J. O’Brien (b. 1975, Eastlake, OH) maintains a diverse practice working in ceramics, drawing, painting, fabric assemblage, installation, and text. For over twenty years, O’Brien has made wall-based pieces using colored pencil on paper or cut sections of sewn felt. Inspired by mid-20th century abstraction, decoration, and self-taught artists, O’Brien’s work expands on geometries found in nature and studied in mathematics. Each intuitive composition’s palette disrupts a planned outcome given that color combinations are often selected at random. O’Brien is a major fixture in the Chicago visual arts community and holds a tenured faculty position in the Ceramics Department at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been the subject of multiple solo museum shows including, but not limited to, those at KMAC, Louisville (2026, 2017), The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (2018), The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2014), and The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (2011)