Nat Soti transforms symbols into stories, inviting viewers into a world of discovery where meaning is never handed to you, only uncovered. At the Beverly Arts Center, the Chicago-based artist and designer unfolds his evolving visual language in All These Words Are, on view through Feb. 22 at 2407 W. 111th St.
The exhibition opens with a reception on Saturday, Feb. 7, welcoming all visitors from 2 until 5 p.m. It spans digital prints, mixed-media works, paintings, drawings, collages, video, and motion graphics. Across each medium, recurring shapes and motifs form a personal alphabet whose meanings are revealed through repetition, context, and exploration. The show sits at the intersection of art and graphic design, blending visual storytelling, experimentation, and creative play.
“The symbols do not mean anything on their own,” Soti said. “Meaning only happens when I start using them, combining them and placing them in relationship with one another.”
One of the exhibition’s highlights is a broadsheet newspaper that Soti designed and printed himself. The publication extends the gallery beyond its walls, letting visitors hold a part of his visual language in their hands. He said he was thrilled with the result and plans to continue creating more. The project also helped him explore visual language more deeply and consider how language functions in general.
“I enjoy making work that’s a mystery to myself and seeing the finished product,” Soti said.
Soti has been drawn to visual storytelling since childhood.
Comic books sparked his imagination and led him to invent superheroes of his own. That habit of creation has endured for decades, evolving alongside new technologies, materials, and media.
“I might enjoy learning to make things more than actually making them,” Soti admitted. “It is probably why I work in so many different media. It is fun to see what I make in my 50s compared to what I made in my 20s. It is fascinating to see what has stayed the same and what has changed.”
Much of the exhibition grew out of Soti’s teaching practice. Now in his fourth year as a full-time professor at Saint Xavier University, he teaches graphic design courses including Computer Graphics, Graphic Design I and II, and Typography, as well as a video art class. Many of the works in the show originated in digital vector graphics, the same software he teaches in ART 116, a general education computer graphics course.
“In order to teach effectively, I wanted to be actively working with it myself,” Soti said. “Because of teaching, I have become more aware of my creative process. I am making art with an eye toward what I might be able to share with students.”
Teaching and making are inseparable in Soti’s view. In the classroom, he encourages students to do more than consume technology; he wants them to create with it. “If there is one thing I hope students take away, whether they continue making art or not, it is that they use technology to make, not just to watch,” he said.
Yet the exhibition is not a classroom assignment. It is a space to linger, to question, to reflect. “In our culture, there is constant pressure for hot takes, talking points, personal declarations,” Soti said. “I wanted to make work that invites a pause before certainty. Something you can sit with, think about, maybe even lose yourself in.”
On the horizon, Soti plans to continue building the visual language explored in All These Words Are. The broadsheet newspaper is just the beginning. He hopes to experiment further with printed forms and motion-based work. At Saint Xavier, he is eager to explore the possibilities of the university’s new video studio, testing tools and ideas that may eventually appear in future exhibitions.
“What I like about this body of work is that I can jump back in quickly,” he said. “There is already a world here, and it is still growing.”
