BAPA staff reports
Artists, venues, performers and patrons are gearing up for the 13th annual Beverly Art Walk on Saturday, Sept. 26, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The cornerstone event of the Beverly Area Arts Alliance (The Alliance), the much-anticipated, free, family-friendly Art Walk showcases works by 100+ artists, musical performances, public art installations and home studio visits in more than 40 businesses and venues across the Beverly/Morgan Park neighborhood.
“The Beverly Art Walk invites people from all over Chicagoland to experience the best of our community’s artistry, hospitality, and unique small businesses,” said Sal Campbell, Beverly Art Walk curator. “This year, we’re adding new artists, more studios, and unique mini galleries, and bringing back the popular Family Fun Park, Uprising Handmade Market and rollicking after-party.”
Artist Studios and Venues Showcase Variety of Art Genres
The Beverly Art Walk will span throughout the neighborhood to showcase local visual artists in the studios where they create their work as well as in local businesses and venues.
Artists who are opening their studios for the first time for the Beverly Art Walk are multi-media abstract artist and arts educator Phil Cotton, sculptor and African diaspora art collector Fran Cotton, large scale portrait artist John Bakker and designer Indre Vepstas of the “Hello My Goddess” fashion line.
Bakker, an artist, curator, and art educator specializes in capturing the essence of communities and their people in expansive portrait projects that take multiple years to complete. His Roseland Portrait Project gained national attention for turning that neighborhood’s reputation for violence into a true reflection of hardworking, caring people living their daily lives. He sees the Beverly Art Walk as a way to “reinforce” the Beverly/Morgan Park community as a really wonderful place to live. “The Art Walk gives visibility to artists and attracts people from across the city, which is good for business and adds to the esprit de corps.”
Indre Vepstas opens her home studio for the Art Walk for the first time this year, but attendees of the BAPA Garden Walk may remember visiting her garden at 94th and Longwood a few years ago. Inside the home is a kaleidoscopic display of works combining a colorful, natural, modernist sensibility that hints at the family’s Lithuanian heritage and artist community. Indre’s “Hello My Goddess” fashion line will be on display along with the beautiful zen-like ceramic works of her mother, Henrietta Vepstas and large abstract works by her late uncle, artist and educator, Vytausas Virkau and other works by Indre’s parents’ friends.
Multidisciplinary artist Sandra Leonard will be opening her studio this year after a hiatus, displaying new fabric paintings and surreal sculptural costumes. Other artists whose studios and galleries will be open for the Beverly Art Walk include ceramic artist and educator Dan McCabe, Art from the Heart teaching artist Pat Egan, boundary gallerist and painter Susannah Papish, who will be showing the mixed media textile works of Reevah Agarwaal, painter, sculptor and educator Brian Keane, artist/designer Tom Olson and Clifton Henri, photographer, poet and gallerist of Flypaper Chicago.
Many of the studio artists have invited other local artists to join them for Art Walk.
Artist Ashley January will celebrate the first anniversary of The Studio Space, her arts incubator which opened at last year’s Beverly Art Walk. January, whose evocative art investigates Black maternal health and draws inspiration from the lived experiences of women who have endured birth trauma, exhibits new paintings in her ongoing series, “Environments of a Heavy Joy,” and will host a live dance performance called “Healing Landscape” performed by Nia Towe and Brandon Avery, as well as new multimedia space.
Venues along Western Avenue, in clusters around 103rd and 99th streets, and dotted in the community will be teeming with art, music and unique experiences.
New this year, Roots and Rays, 10421 S. Church St., a unique community arts and healing space, will present “A Soft Place to Land” featuring works in fiber, ceramic and other mediums from artists such as Paul Elliott, Kelly McKaig and Robin Power curated by artist and art therapist Annie Novotny.
“Artists need places where their work can be witnessed, where experimentation is welcomed, and where relationships can grow beyond professional or institutional boundaries,” Novotny said. “As an art therapist, I am especially moved by the way the Art Walk makes creativity visible and accessible. It brings art out of exclusive spaces and into studios, businesses, homes, sidewalks, gathering places and everyday neighborhood life.”
A trio of Chicago collage artists, Paloma Trecka, Nellie Seigel and Lisa Barcy explore themes of devotion, memory and humor in “Incantations” at the Vanderpoel Museum inside the Ridge Park Field House, 9625 S. Longwood Drive When there, Art Walk visitors can also view the museum’s prestigious collection of turn-of-the-century art.
On view in The Simmerling Gallery at the Beverly Arts Center (BAC), 2407 W. 111th St., “Holding Space: Grounded,” is a group exhibition that reflects on self-care.
“To hold space is a reminder to pause, adjust and connect with others or return to ourselves, “ said guest curator Kimberly Leja Atwood of Elephant Room Gallery.
Offering diverse perspectives, the artists in this exhibition each translate a moment of stillness into visual form. The show features works from 24 different Chicago-area artists, including local favorites Chantala Kommanivanh and Jennifer Cronin.
Additionally at the BAC there will be an exhibition and sneak peek for a new book soon to be published called, “Peculiar Wilderness: A Chicago Alphabet,” – the result of a partnership between renowned artist Dmitry Samarov and Bookies owner Keith Lewis that revels in the city’s big shoulders and working-class backbone.
Saint Xavier University students, alumni and faculty artists will also exhibit works throughout the BAC.
The Uprising Handmade Market will feature a wide variety of works by artists and artisans for show and sale. Artists and artisans will also be taking over “The Annex,” an historic garage structure that is being converted into a set of five light-filled studio spaces which will soon be for rent behind the shops at 103rd and Wood.
The Garage Gallery behind Nicky’s of Beverly, 10500 S. Western Ave. will continue its tradition of featuring enigmatic and idiosyncratic works in a range of mediums and styles. Also look for “a spray can workshop” with local artist, chef and DJ Won Kim, aka ReviseCMW. He will be working on the mural wall behind Nicky’s early in the day and a team of artists led by Won will be creating a new mural there as the day progresses.
Running Excels, 10328 S. Western Ave., will feature “Terrible Portraits,” a one-man art stand that delivers hilariously crude portraits of customers for $5 each and handmade jewelry by Marquece Holifield, aka Madelyn Rylie.
