Aurora Loop Gallery

A native Chicagoan, O’Shaughnessy lived for 28 years in the Wicker Park neighborhood, where she started Wood Street Gallery. It was off the beaten path, which she saw as a challenge to getting people to come see art. Her focus was emerging Chicago artists, those with potential, who hadn’t had any gallery shows. A combination of themed group and solo shows brought people out to the neighborhood. Having 5,000 square feet, there was an opportunity to have up to 5 individual shows a month. O’Shaughnessy, and her husband, Charlie Van Gilder, both artists, sold their building in Chicago in 2014, and made the decision to move to Port Townsend, where Van Gilder had lived in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Since then, they have been focusing on their own art. O’Shaughnessy decided in 2021 that she wanted to expand her studio from the small room she’d been working in and build a studio where she could get back to making sculpture. As she planned it, the idea for a gallery attached to the studio seemed the right thing to do. She wanted to recreate what she had accomplished in Chicago, having a place to help the creative artists on the peninsula show their work.