Chicago artist and designer Nat Soti did not just hang work on the walls at the Beverly Arts Center. He handed visitors a language and asked them to speak it.
At the opening of All These Words Are, which runs through Feb. 22, every guest was invited to choose a nametag designed by Soti using his own system of symbols and color. Each person selected the tag that spoke to them. Soti then asked why they chose it and recorded their responses, turning the reception into a participatory extension of the exhibition itself. The experiment sparked conversation, laughter, and reflection, with attendees leaning into the playfulness of decoding meaning together.
“I enjoy making work that’s a mystery to myself and seeing the finished product,” Soti said.
The reception on Saturday, Feb. 7 packed the gallery, with visitors filling the space and lingering among digital prints, mixed-media works, paintings, drawings, collages, video, and motion graphics. The show operated at the intersection of art and graphic design, with recurring shapes and motifs appearing across mediums to form an evolving visual system. Individual symbols carried no fixed meaning. Meaning emerged only through repetition, combination, and context.
Chicago-based musician, DJ, producer, and artist Gabriel Palomo provided the soundtrack for the evening, spinning driving rhythms and syncopated grooves shaped by a career spanning more than four decades. His set added momentum to an opening that felt closer to a creative happening than a traditional gallery reception.
One of the exhibition’s standout works was a broadsheet newspaper that Soti designed and printed himself. The publication extended the experience beyond the gallery walls, allowing visitors to hold a piece of the visual language in their hands. Soti said he was thrilled with the result and planned to continue exploring printed forms. The project also pushed him to think more deeply about how language functions and how visual systems evolve.
Soti’s fascination with visual storytelling began early. Comic books fueled his childhood imagination, leading him to invent superheroes and build worlds from lines and symbols. Decades later, that instinct remained, shaped by new tools and technologies but grounded in the same curiosity.
At the time of the exhibition, Soti was in his fourth year as a full-time professor at Saint Xavier University, where he taught Computer Graphics, Graphic Design I and II, Typography, and a video art course. Much of the work in the show grew from digital vector graphics, the same medium he used in his general education Computer Graphics class. Teaching sharpened his awareness of process and informed how he approached making.
Rather than delivering fixed meanings, All These Words Are encouraged viewers to pause and explore, leaving space for uncertainty and personal interpretation. In a culture obsessed with quick answers, Soti’s work unfolded gradually, asking for attention and engagement. The pieces operated as an open system, a living language still deciphering itself, shaped continuously by both the artist and the audience.
