Gallery 901 exhibits strive to increase awareness around pressing social issues to a diverse audience. We present exhibits of community artists and groups which celebrate the affirmative impact of the creative process, and which encourage positive social change. The artists, groups, and organizations highlight healing or transformational components to their artwork. Gallery 901 is an inclusive gallery that often welcomes audiences who may not frequent art spaces.
Past Shows @ Gallery 901
The Philosopher Walks
Paintings by Anne Hayden Stevens
The Philosopher Walks is an exhibition of 14 luminous landscape paintings, in which tiny figures make their way through a mountainous, unknown world. Stevens, a painter and printmaker, has made large scale installations in Evanston in two pop-up exhibitions curated by Evanston Made and Lisa Degliantoni, and curates outdoor installations and screenings at the Evanston Art Center as Side/Lot with artist Mat Rappaport. Stevens participated in the Center Program and Bridge at the Hyde Park Art Center, and the Field/Work program at the Chicago Artists Coalition, and is on the planning committee for the Terrain Biennial, an international public art exhibition based in Oak Park, Il.
In this exhibition at the Open Studio Project, Stevens shares a series of intimate paintings produced during the pandemic. Stevens’ textured and lyrical landscapes employ simple forms of trees, bodies, mountains and water to hold space for the travelers through the paintings. The difficulty of this period, politically and socially, has made it really important to carry the weight of possibility, and the wisdom we know we hold, into the future.
Seeds of Change
In Partnership with Connections for the Homeless
During the Fall and winter of 2021-22, Open Studio Project partnered with Connections for the Homeless to lead art making workshops for individuals experiencing homelessness. Art groups met for 20 weeks at two Evanston sites: Hilda’s Place drop-in center at Lake Street Church, and at the Margarita Inn shelter. The works on display are examples of the transformative power of the Open Studio process: participants set an intention, created artwork in a choice-based,
judgment-free environment, and reflected on their experience through writing. As a result, participants reported reduced stress, increased mindfulness, and the satisfaction of tapping into their own creativity in a safe, supportive group environment.
An E-Town Innovation Grant from the Evanston Community Foundation made this
successful partnership possible.
Higher Self
Artwork by ETHS Students
Homing Maps: A Study in Wayfinding
by Vanessa Filley
In a time that feels chaotic, confusing and contradictory, finding one’s way can be filled with complicated and challenging decisions. Artist Vanessa Filley’s work over the last two years has turned away from figurative photography and toward a form of energetic way finding. She has moved through cutting up photographs into abstract forms, pricking paper with pins to create something from nothing into pencil, pinprick and watercolor drawings as a way to understand, explore and harness the energy of living.
At the core of her current work is an inquiry into the idea that each individual is only a part of a larger whole, composed of ever shifting matter, and that our collective and individual actions have a ripple effect into the present and long arc of history. Her drawings have a sense of the astral as they seek to mull the buzz and must of creatures and places intermingled, they are a path to discovery, a divining rod or a compass on this road of life.
Notice
by Hannah Litvan
A series of paintings exploring physical and emotional self-observation.
Emotions are valid, sacred, and scary. I am floating in the eternal struggle of my own expectations of my life, my feelings, and my physical being. Building an honest relationship is difficult even with ourselves. We must be truthful and kind; a difficult combination. It takes work, time, and love, but I hold on to hope for growth.
Wholeness
by Annette O’Donnell
Artists in every form, whether they be writers, musicians, dramatists, actors, or visual artists of any medium have access to the Creative Source. It doesn’t take any special training or gifts to be able to channel it; it’s there and it’s accessible if we take the time to approach it. When we engage with the Creative Source, we love ourselves into wholeness. It takes bravery and courage to do this, but there’s a freedom that comes with it, too. We don’t feel bound by the Earthly experience.
Annette realized that she’d been accessing it in the creation of her art all along, but training with the Open Studio Project on their process, as well as studying the female spiritist artists aided her to put language to what she was already experiencing. Her hope is that every human on this Earth connects to the Creative Source during their lives. Through this experience, they will become whole.
The works in this show were created by this process: Annette meditated, set intentions, created art while listening to music, witnessed the images, and now is sharing it with you. Love yourself into wholeness.
Woven Stories
Woven Stories are weavings from the workshops of The We Were Never Alone Project. The We Were Never Alone Project are a weaving workshops for domestic violence victims and survivors led by survivor and textile artist, Bryana Bibbs. These workshops have taken place throughout Illinois at galleries and local community art spaces.
During these free limited-participant workshops, participants weave on a cardboard loom with traditional and non-traditional materials, but most importantly they share their stories amongst a group of people who understand their stories. The mission of the project is to eliminate the stigma of being a victim and survivor of domestic violence. So often there is a significant amount of victim shaming and blaming once victims and survivors come forward with their stories. Therefore, the goal of this project is to create a safe, supportive, judgement-free community while creating woven art.
Woven Stories showcases each participants personality and story through the use of color, texture, and found objects/materials.
thewewereneveraloneproject.org
@thewewereneveraloneproject
REYS of Sunshine
In collaboration with Resilient Evanston Youth Showcase
MY COVID YEAR
Books, Prints, and Houses by Beth Herman Adler
“My Covid Year” at Gallery 901, featuring work created by Beth Herman Adler during the pandemic.
Everything That Helps Us Fly: Art that Uplifts During Challenging Times
Group Exhibition by Artists:
Ausrine Kerr, Sonata Kazimieraitiene Rita Shimelfarb, and Izida Valatka
View this dynamic group show featuring art that depicts angels, wings, and love. The artwork was selected to help inspire us to protect ourselves from negativity and feeling lost. It has a spiritual, uplifting nature and is welcoming to all. Pieces include stained glass, painting, ceramics, and porcelain angels. Artists are from Evanston & Chicago
Pandemic Diaries: Participatory Art
by Ellen Gradman
Over the course of the pandemic, through the lock down, and continuing to the present, Ellen Gradman has rediscovered pieces of her artist soul that have been missing for a while. Her pieces, Pandemic Diaries, are a record of this resurgence. The boxes holding the work together and providing the background are from orders of new art supplies or food delivers, both types of deliveries being essential.
Life Journey Labyrinth:
Installation by Corinne Peterson
View a labyrinth made from hundreds of clay objects—artifacts of the interior of people’s fists, which we call clenches. Individuals forcefully squeezed soft clay to express frustration, determination, grief, or even joy in these chaotic times.
Fahrenheit
by Connie Gillock
Dolls4Peace Memorial & Art Action
Chicago, June 2020: Gun violence still plagues our neighborhoods. On June 21, 2020, 104 people were shot and 14 died on this Father’s day weekend. Among the deaths were two teenagers and a three year old boy. This past weekend another 63 people were shot including a 1-year-old and 10-year old who were killed.
As an act of creative resistance and in the spirit of grassroots memorials, The heART Project aims to bring awareness, raise consciousness and support peaceful communities through community arts and therapeutic art making. The heART Project will host healing spaces and exhibit the Dolls4Peace Memorial across Chicago in remembrance and as an art action and creative resistance to violence and trauma.
Over 55 Chicago Public Schools and social service organizations have participated.
Facilitated by Rochele Royster.
Facilitator Showcase
Displaying the works of some of Open Studio Project’s incredible facilitators.
Pen & Ink Drawings – Kate Berry Brown
I am an artist, and I am a mother. I have three young children who squeeze, squish, hug, tap and bump my body all the time. I am surrounded by love. I am lucky. I am blessed. I am tired. I am crowded.
My drawings depict abstract piles of undulating shapes, like body parts and bellies and blubber. These forms mold to one another and become a solid biological mass. Using only a fountain pen and a bottle of ink I use cross hatching on paper as a meditative process. Life is chaotic and full – especially these days as we collectively navigate homeschooling, floods of varying emotion and both loss and disappointment. Because of this chaos I like the simplicity of my materials and the repetitive nature of making thousands of thoughtful marks. I cut into my paper which gives the finished pieces a sort of scalloped edge. By doing this I am both fighting and embracing the confines of the basic rectangle. Kate Berry Brown
Instagram: @kateberrybrownart
School Pictures – Melissa Ann Pinney
“My photographs bear witness to inner city public schools, providing a vision of the students’ fierce & fragile world when they are most free to be together and to be themselves, informed by moments of spontaneous play, self-presentation and gesture. I never know what the children will do next; their beauty, their conflicts, their compassion are unrehearsed. This project focuses on students during unstructured time in several culturally and economically diverse public schools. Bell Elementary School serves neighborhood, deaf and gifted children. I’ve also chronicled the historic and hopeful merger of Jenner Academy, a predominately black school, and Ogden Elementary, a school with a large white population.The students become active participants in the art-making, not by posing but by inviting me into their world. I am after the mystery and surprise of each moment. Sometimes a student looks directly into the camera as if to ask: Do you see me? Do you really see me?” Melissa Ann Pinney
The Art of Recovery
View this series of round canvases created by Veterans from the Edward Hines Jr VA Hospital. Each image represents what recovery means to them. Recovery is both a personal journey and a community process. The exhibit allows you to ponder the meaning of recovery, what you do for others, and how others contribute to your recovery.
The recovery journey is documented through this series; some examples are physical recovery from an illness or injury, mental health recovery from depression, PTSD, addiction or recovery in relation to the current pandemic.
This art exhibit will be on display at Gallery 901 in Evanston, IL – it will also be displayed virtually for the OSP and Hines communities. Exhibit organized by Erin Mooney-Simkus, Art Therapist at Hines VA Hospital.
Movie of The Art of Recovery
Sarah Series – Connie Gillock
Connie Gillock’s recent work – the Sarah Series – is an emphatic treatise to love, family and the continuity of life, bound in a fundamental conception of dignity.
Afro-Instrumentality – Allen Moore
Afro instrumentality DIY Visual and Auditory experience, highlighting social justice, symbols and signifiers of urban “black” culture through the perspective of Afro-futurism and Allen’s cathartic process. He wants to create an experience; a conversation about the consumption/integration of black culture in current popular culture and address issues of social justice.
Allen works as an educator, teaching Artist, experimental Sound Artist, curator and Mentor. Recently he has worked in Evanston as a youth worker/mentor for 2 and a half years and made a deep connections with 4th through 12th grade students.
Unraveling the Passage of Time – Elena Kaiser
“I have been an artist all my life, which now spans 61 years. My art led me to a Master of Art Therapy at The School of the Art Institute in 1986. There, I met and studied with Don Seiden, who became an important mentor – may his memory be a blessing. My current art works have been stirring in me as I aided both of my beloved parents along their final journey to the realm beyond. My father died August 8, 2018, and my mother followed on January 20, 2019. Now, absolute silence.
My midlife journey is now coming into focus. My three children are now young adults. For almost 30 years, I have put my painter self to the side in order to be their mother. Nursing, dressing, bathing, feeding, clothing, leading by example and failing to lead by example. Now, no one to take care of, no call of duty. Only a husband and psychotherapy practice to maintain. I see the passage of time unraveling. I return to my roots. I am quieting the inner critic who has kept me from going to my studio and am instead enjoying the sheer bliss of colors, textures, light, and my narrative that pokes through.
I love process painting, which is similar to what Open Studio Project promotes. Alone in my studio, each mark, stroke, and print defines the present moment. I am once again reminded of artists I fell in love with in my youth: Marc Chagall, Franz Marc, Sonia Delaunay, Alice Neel, Wassily Kandinsky, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, and others. I also remember the artists who are and were my friends and teachers, Nancy Rosen, Michiko Itatani, and Don Seiden. I am inspired by everyone who makes the time to make their life’s marks.
Finally, I unpacked my Hot Box after an inspiring week at Oxbow this summer. My monotype printing on rice-paper rolls contains a visual narrative of my reflection on death. I felt as I worked that I was reliving the joys and sorrows of death’s mysteries. Until my parents’ passing, I had never experienced death up close. But I was summoned first by my father and then by my mother to do so. I dedicate this work to their memory in appreciation of their lifelong support. Sonnie and Gene, as they were known, supported my desire to study art as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, travel alone throughout Europe and Israel, and pursue a degree in Art Therapy at a time when everyone asked, “What’s art therapy?”
It is fulfilling to now live my life being mindful of what is inside me as an artist and an art therapist as I guide others big and small to love themselves and thus love life itself.”
Elena Kaiser
Connections: Learning to Dance – Raissa Bailey
“An exploration of art to reflect the connection of body, mind and spirit
It has been said that when someone loses their sight, other senses like sound and smell can become heightened. These heightened senses help compensate for a limit in the other so the individual can still navigate successfully through the world. In some ways with even greater awareness. Similarly, when my physical body was jeopardized and limited, I found that my mind and spirit connections were heightened. As I was left mostly immobile for almost two years due to a bone infection in my foot, I used art to step outside my situation and explore the depth of my human experience and the connection of the mind, body and spirit.”
Raissa Bailey
VERITY – Nina Moyer
“I want to share my view of a world that can be continually defined and redefined. I am interested in the value of integrity and values in general- what we hold precious, and how these things define us. I build on the primacy of organic, grounding structures. The past five years my canvas has been bison skulls.” – Nina Moyer
Transplanted – Bridget Stump
“I am passionate about the restorative powers of creative time and community.
“My artistic endeavors focus on journaling and photography.
“In 2017, I ‘transplanted’ to Evanston with my family. While moving brought challenges to our family, this time has shown each of us our strengths and brought us closer, with a lot of humor. Time at the lake, appreciating the city’s architecture and public art are ways we connect with our new environment. I engage with the Open Studio Project, Northwestern University and Chicago School of Photography in my quest to develop my creativity and become more knowledgeable about our new hometown. Our transition to Chicagoland provides me with a bounty of opportunities to embrace the visual arts, for which I’m profoundly grateful.”- Bridget Stump
Challenging Conception, by the ART of Infertility
The ART of Infertility, a national arts organization and winner of The Hope Award for Innovation, hosted a two month-long art and storytelling exhibit at Open Studio Project’s Gallery 901. Challenging Conception: The ART of Infertility in Chicago, raised awareness about reproductive loss and infertility during October in response to Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.
Curt’s Cafe Art Show
With its partnership with Curt’s Cafe, OSP held an art show for the participants in May of 2018.
The Power of the Female Spirit, by Fran Joy
“The purpose behind my work is to show the power, strength, and triumph of the human spirit. As I witness the loss of life and humanity throughout the world, I am drawn to those who believe that the power of their faith and the strength of their spirit and character are what truly matters and will make a difference in their lives. In my own spiritual journey, heavy losses have made each blessing more meaningful and relative to whom I have become. In some images I have emphasized the eyes that are windows to the soul. I’m going for their essence more than their exact look. Some are powerful icons revealing the impact of their experiences, their fortitude and vision for the future. Other images are meant to convey a message that I hope will make one stop for at least a second to experience one’s own sense of humanity.”- Fran Joy
Peacemakers, by Ingrid Hess & Patti Vick
This gallery show featured artwork and writings from “We All Need Peace,” a recent exhibition from the Illinois Holocaust Museum, by Ingrid Hess and OSP Facilitator, Patti Vick. The Peacemakers event was to help advance and launch OSP’s Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum.
