Chicago-based artist, writer, and educator William J. O’Brien works across drawing, painting, ceramics, metal sculpture, installation, and assemblage. Drawing from Modernism, vernacular traditions, and the material histories of self-taught and Outsider Art, O’Brien’s multidisciplinary practice explores identity, expression, ritual, and the possibilities of material and process. His prolific body of work is characterized by an exuberant use of color, pattern, texture, and accumulation.
O’Brien has presented solo exhibitions at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, the Renaissance Society, Chicago; KMAC Museum, Louisville; the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Witte de With, Rotterdam; and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, among others. In 2014, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago presented his first major museum survey, curated by Naomi Beckwith.
He has received awards and fellowships from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Artadia, the Illinois Arts Council, and Ucross, and has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo, the Roger Brown Artist Residency, Vermont Studio Center, and Ucross Foundation. His work is held in numerous public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Hammer Museum, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, DePaul Art Museum, Cleveland Clinic, and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
Alongside his visual practice, O’Brien writes about art, queer identity, memory, class, creativity, and personal history. He is the author and illustrator of Nighttime Kingdom (2024), published by Shadow Work Press, and his essay “A Power Outage Made Us Possible” was published in The New York Times’ Modern Love in 2026.
O’Brien is a Full Professor in the Department of Ceramics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he has also served as Chair.