Under the Freeway is a project conceived by Connie Noyes after receiving a life-sized cardboard box in her studio. Located at the junction of I-94 and I-55 in Chicago the studio is less than 100 feet from where Chicago’s most invisible citizens make their home. The box arrived at a time when she was engaged with major designers, working on commissions for display in high-end public spaces. Visual awareness of the disparity of economic and social capital between classes was the catalyst for this work.

Born in Washington D.C, Noyes is an interdisciplinary artist She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MA degree in Psychology from Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont California. She was awarded the Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council and has received numerous professional development grants. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally in places such as San Francisco, Paris, London and Innsbruck, but most recently at Salwa Zeidan Gallery in Abu Dhabi and the 3rd Biennale International d’art non-objective in Grenoble, France. She has been selected for numerous international artists’ residencies, some of which include the Emaar International Art Symposium in Dubai, Thupelo International Workshop in Cape Town, South Africa and the 5th International Visual Arts Symposium in Monastir, Tunisia. In 2016 she will take part in the Center Program at the Hyde Park Art Center and a residency at ZK/U in Berlin. Noyes' work is also in a number of corporate, private, and museum collections including that of, The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, The Ekstrom Library of Photographic Archives Special Collections in Louisville and the Greenville County Museum in South Carolina.