Sacred Portals Art Exhibition Opening

Don’t miss the opening of “Sacred Portals,” a four-month exhibition at ALTAR Community Chicago celebrating the visionary work of artist Lydia Ruyle (1935–2016), pioneering creator devoted to reimagining the sacred feminine in art.

Anchored by twelve large-format Crop Circle Portals, this rare body of work merges sacred geometry, myth, and the mystery of the Earth’s own artistry. Inspired by formations near sacred sites in the UK and created at Columbia College Chicago, each portal invites viewers into a vibrant field of divine pattern and cosmic harmony, which Ruyle called “temples in the land.” This marks the first public display in decades of this extraordinary series.

Surrounding these monumental pieces are rotating monthly micro-exhibits from Ruyle’s renowned Goddess Banner Collection, representing hundreds of images of the divine feminine from cultures across the world. Together, these two bodies of work create a powerful juxtaposition—earth and cosmos, goddess and geometry, myth and mystery—forming a living altar to the cycles of creation and renewal.

Donation: $22 (benefiting Sarah’s Circle, supporting women experiencing homelessness in Chicago)

This Opening Night Celebration is open to all genders!

About the Sacred Portals:

These exquisite hand-made paper designs represent crop circle formations that showed up near sacred sites in the UK. Ruyle would choose certain images that spoke to her and transform them into large scale paper art at Columbia College Chicago while visiting her young granddaughters every winter. Rendered in vibrant neon designs of sacred geometry on handmade paper, these monumental works evoke the mysterious, ephemeral annual artistry found upon Mother Earth herself. Each crop circle portal invites the viewer into an experience of the divine through form, pattern, and cosmic harmony — what Ruyle called “temples in the land.”

About Lydia Ruyle (1935–2016):

Lydia spent 3 decades focusing her art on inherited images of women from the many cultures of the world. In her words, “I call them Goddesses. I make icons, sacred images of women, to honor their power and archetypal energy. Why icons? Icons are soul images. All people and cultures create icons to honor the sacred dimension. Images revere, remember, revision us to wholeness, the sacred energy of divine mystery. That mystery is feminine for me. The Goddess symbolizes for me the highest possible development of each human being’s potential on Mother Earth and in the cosmos.” Throughout her life, she was active in women’s issues, her local school board, and state & local Democratic politics. In the 70’s, she was appointed to the Colorado Council for the Arts and Humanities, and then to the Colorado Commission for Higher Education. In the 80’s, after discovering there were no women artists in the art history textbooks, she decided to find and teach about them at the University of Northern Colorado. In 1989, this evolved into a course titled Women in Art, which eventually became a course titled Herstory of the Goddess. In 2010, The Lydia Ruyle Room for Women Artists was dedicated at the University of Northern Colorado. Lydia died in 2016 after a short battle with brain cancer.