Thursday February 17, 2011
6 pm to 9 pm

at the

Irish American Heritage Center

4626 N. Knox Ave
Chicago, IL 60630

Sponsored in part by
	Irish American Heritage Center
	Two Brothers Brewing Co.
	Red Rabbit Catering
	Abbott Party Rental

The Arts of Life Awards Show 2011 is taking place on Thursday, February 17th from 6-9pm at the Irish American Heritage Center. The studio will be closed that Thursday 2/17, Friday 2/18 and Monday 2/21(Presidents Day).

The Awards Show is an wonderful opportunity to celebrate each of our artists. Each artist receives an award for their accomplishments in 2010.  This year we’re offering families and community partners some fun and helpful ways they can show support for individual artists and/or the studio.

Sponsor An Easel – $100

This will help the studio purchase a new display easel with a permanent customized plaque bearing your choice of message (anything from Way to Go Matt! to Sponsored by Drake Interiors).

Buy a page in our program. $150 and up

You can highlight your business, send an artist a message, send The Arts of Life a message, use your own logo… We can do anything that would work for you.

- 1/2 page in the program is $150 and a full page is $275.

Please let us know if either of these sponsorship opportunities appeal to you or if you have any questions. And keep an eye out for the official Awards Show invite, coming soon! – contact info@artsoflife.org or 312.829.2787

VSA Celebrates President Kennedy’s Legacy of Supporting Civil Rights for People with Disabilities

Large-scale art installations by artists with disabilities featured in the Kennedy Center Hall of States

Washington, DC (Vocus/PRWEB) January 19, 2011

VSA, the international organization on arts and disability and an affiliate of the Kennedy Center, honors President Kennedy’s commitment to disability rights as part of The Presidency of John F. Kennedy: A 50th Anniversary Celebration―a three week-long series of performances and events featuring music, theater, dance, exhibitions, and poetry―by presenting three large-scale visual arts installations by artists with disabilities Jan. 12–Feb. 13, 2011, in the Kennedy Center Hall of States.

In 1963, President Kennedy signed the first major legislation addressing mental illness and intellectual disabilities. As a result of this landmark legislation, people with disabilities are recognized as having the right to live with dignity and to be contributing members of society. VSA, founded by Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, commissioned three large-scale visual arts installations by art studios inclusive of artists with mental illness and intellectual disabilities as part of the Kennedy Center’s celebration:

• Art Enables’ artists created Diverse Design, a larger-than-life installation that includes decorated benches, birdhouses, pottery, and paintings, as well as a backdrop by Charles Meissner that pays homage to the studio’s home city of Washington, D.C.
• From New York City the Fountain Gallery brings a three-part sculptural installation, Finding the Way to Balance, which addresses the extremes of bipolar disorder, conceptualized by lead artist Bernie Stote.
• The Arts of Life of Chicago presents an installation featuring human-scale handmade puppets and a parade of ten-foot tall paintings, inspired by the artists’ chosen theme, “Sticky Situations.”

“The civil rights legislation signed by President Kennedy set the stage for artists with disabilities to participate fully in today’s art world,” commented Jennifer Wexler, VSA director of visual arts. “The Presidency of John F. Kennedy: A 50th Anniversary Celebration is an exciting and inclusive event for anyone who cares deeply about the roles of the arts and artists in this nation.”

About VSA

VSA, the international organization on arts and disability, was founded more than 35 years ago by Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith to provide arts and education opportunities for people with disabilities and increase access to the arts for all. With 52 international affiliates and a network of nationwide affiliates, VSA is changing perceptions about people with disabilities around the world. Each year, 7 million people of all ages and abilities participate in VSA programs, which cover all artistic genres. VSA is an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. For more information, visit http://www.vsarts.org.

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For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2011/1/prweb8065903.htm

Check out some of the pictures from our Northwestern students art day
More photos can be found here

A benefit for
The Arts of Life

The Arts of Life Chicago
2010 W. Carroll Ave
Chicago, IL 60612

Saturday, November 6th, 2010 at 5:00 PM (CT)

Its back! Last year’s event was a huge success and we can’t wait to see what’s cookin’ this year. Enter your Chili for only $25 or just come to taste.

$25 Chili Entry
$15 Tix at the door
$10 Advance Tix

Special thanks to the sponsors

On October 9th and 10th, the Arts of Life is participating in the latest neighborhood Arts collaboration in the Kinzie Corridor Art District.

Artists from three different neighborhood collectives will be opening their studios:

We’re proud to welcome Hubbard Street Art Walk as a new addition to our event. They have the following openings:
Studios on Hubbard at 1474 W. Hubbard St.,
Wright Auction House at 1440 W. Hubbard St.,
Spudnik Press at 1821 W. Hubbard St.,
and Ogden Studios at 350 W. Ogden.

Fulton Street Collective, located at 2000 W. Fulton, near the intersection of Damen and Fulton, will have 3 artists showing at their arts collective.

One block away, the Arts of Life art studio will be showing a special exhibit and is functioning as the information hub for the entire weekend.

More information is available at www.kinziecorridorarts.com

The family friendly event, starting at 11 am, is being organized by The Arts of Life’s Art Director Ryan Shuquem, who feels that the Kinzie Corridor can equal the creativity and diversity of areas like Pilsen. “It’s an easy way for up and coming artists to demonstrate their vision and at the same time participate in the cultural development of their neighborhood.”

Featured Exhibit: The theme of Chicago Artists Month 2010 looks at how the city influences art and artists, and how artists transform the city by contributing to civic dialogue and quality of life. Arts of Life has been exploring this theme over the last two months by facilitating a portrait exchange between its artists, artists in the Chicago community, and artists from Esperanza.

Titled “How We Make Each Other,” the exhibit seeks to show the effects and influence that artists can have on each other by spending time together sharing who they are and what they do. Artists exhibiting include community artists, members of Arts of Life, and members of Esperanza art studio. Arts of Life and the Kinzie Corridor Art Walk are pleased that their combined efforts have not gone unnoticed. The Kinzie Corridor Art Walk is a featured program of Chicago Artists Month.

Also, Arts of Life artist Mike Marino has been selected as a featured artist for this year’s Chicago Artists Month. His work will be shown in the ‘How We Make Each Other’ exhibit.
www.chicagoartistsmonth.org/Kinzie-Corridor-Art-Walk/
www.chicagoartistsmonth.org/Mike-Marino/

The Artwalk After Party begins at 7 pm on Saturday the 9th at the Arts of Life studio.
Locals garage-rock popsters Magic Milk will perform as well as Andrew Taylor and performance artist Smiley Thims.

The Kinzie Corridor Art Walk is part of Chicago Artists Month 2010, the fifteenth annual celebration of Chicago’s vibrant visual art community. In October, more than 200 exhibitions of emerging and established artists, openings, demonstrations, tours, open studios and neighborhood art walks take place at galleries, cultural centers and arts buildings throughout the city. Chicago Artists Month is coordinated by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. For more information, visit www.chicagoartistsmonth.org.

The Arts of Life is honored to have been selected to develop an installation to be displayed in the Hall of States at the Kennedy Center in our nation’s capitol from January 12 to February 11 of next year. Two other groups were also chosen to participate, Fountain Gallery in New York, and Art Enables in D.C. The exhibition will be a testament to the Kennedy family’s long-standing commitment to disability rights and advocacy, including President Kennedy’s signing of the first major legislation to address mental illness and intellectual disabilities in 1963.

Artistic Director Ryan Shuquem and Resident Artist, performance facilitator, Emily Smith are facilitating a puppet theater installation with artists from our previous puppet show projects, including Mike Marino, Francis Roberts, David Krueger, and Stefan Harhaj. Ryan Shuquem has this to say about the project, “Our past two puppet shows, including our valuable work done with students at the Easter Seals school for children with autism, have been successful in multiple ways. Many different artists from our studio have been able to participate by contributing to backdrops, soundtracks, story ideas, dialogue, and the puppets themselves. Puppets are recognizable and attractive to people from a wide range of abilities, ages, cultures, and education. Puppets cross boundaries related to culture, language, and comprehensive skills, which make them great tools for sharing our program with others, and also good tools for advocacy, which is the theme of the exhibit. Also, using puppets, artists are able to engage with and share their work in a way that is more direct than in just about any other art media.”

We are excited to be part of this exhibit and look forward to sharing it with you. We will be documenting the process as we work and will keep you updated!

Bill Lilly stopped making a poster of his favorite band Def Leppard to talk about his tornado painting, “Killer. (Midnight Tornado) (F5),” which is mostly black and gray, except for the blue roof, yellow windows and red door of a house and the red lightning bolts crackling down from the black and gray sky.

Appropriately, it was painted on a window.

Artist Jenny Kominsky, who is influenced by Vincent Van Gogh, painted her version of “Starry Night” for the Arts of Life Summer Exhibit.
(Joe Cyganowski/for Sun-Times Media)

Jenny Kominsky works on a painting at the Arts of Life studio in Glenview, which opened last January.
(Joe Cyganowski/for Sun-Times Media)

Marianne Wehr, an artist with the Arts of Life, works on a pastel piece in the organization’s new Glenview location. The Arts of Life brings artists with and without disabilities together to form an artists community.
(Joe Cyganowski/for Sun-Times Media)

Bill Lilly admires his tornado painting being held by Denise Fisher, co-founder and executive director of The Arts of Life. The painting is part of the 10th annual Arts of Life Summer Exhibit in Glenview.
(Joe Cyganowski/for Sun-Times Media)

Lilly, 37, smiled when he said it will be included in the Arts of Life 10th annual summer exhibit on June 19 at the organization’s new studio in Glenview.

“I love knowing about weather,” Lilly said about the inspiration behind the tornado painting. “I love creating stuff.”

The Arts of Life is a pair of non-profit studios in Chicago and Glenview for artists with developmental disabilities. Their mission is promoting self-respect, inspiring artistic expression, building community and developing independence through participation in the fine arts. Artists without disabilities come in to help and work alongside the Arts of Life artists.

Since 2001, the Arts of Life has had an exhibition every summer to showcase the artists’ works. It’s grown from just 10 artists and some appetizers the first year, to between 60 and 70 pieces by 35 artists, a concert, a play, lawn party games, an auction, a raffle and an old-fashioned cookout this year at the Glenview studio, which opened in January.

“We wanted to showcase this location,” said Denise Fisher, co-founder and executive director. “It marks the success of our program.”

The idea was, and still is, to create an artist community that fosters personal growth by having artists share in decision making processes and take ownership of the facilities. When artists have been with the Arts of Life for a month, the program director helps the artists set goals and develop an artist’s plan.

“We use art as a way for people to advocate for themselves,” Fisher said. She added that the name of the organization reflects that. “We were trying to capture a name that spoke to the whole person and the potential art had to help people explore their environments and express themselves. We also wanted to express our idea that anything you do as an individual is your art, that you can find art in anything.”

The art in the summer exhibit sells for between $10 and $400, depending on size, materials used and framing. Fisher said the money goes back into the program, to pay for each artist’s monthly stipend regardless of whether they sell anything.

“We don’t want people to feel like they have to create something marketable,” she said. “Because the community piece is so important to our studio, we want to make sure everyone has the same opportunities.”

The artists, at the very least, are becoming well-versed in their discipline.

Jenny Kominsky, 19, explained that one of her paintings in the exhibit is a reproduction of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”

“I like the way he paints with lines in all different directions,” she said. “He’s laying his emotions out in the painting.”

The emotional release is why she likes to paint.

“I get to put my emotions in painting, and I get to see them,” she said.

Fisher would like to start music and performance arts programs, like those at the Chicago location, in Glenview, to provide a more well-rounded offering of the arts.

That’s music to Lilly’s ears, which are partial to the Def Leppard song “Overture” on the band’s 1980 album “On Through the Night.”

“I would love to sing Def Leppard songs,” he said.

The Arts of Life Summer Exhibit
6-9 p.m. June 19 at The Arts of Life, 1963 Johns Dr., Glenview. $30 in advance, $40 at the door. (847) 486-0808, www.artsoflife.org.

Creating. Sharing. Growing.

from F Newsmagazine of the School of the Art Institute, Chicago

Art that Empowers

A look at The Arts of Life not-for-profit studio

By Brandon Kosters

Bobby Verran celebrates his birthday at Arts of Life. Photographs by Ya-Chi Hsu

“It’s not all kung-fu fighting,” Kris Schenkel said while discussing his role model, Superman. “It’s not all about being able to see through certain things people aren’t supposed to see through. [Superman] teaches you what it means. He teaches you what kids are looking for in the world. He has great respect towards everyone.”

Schenkel is an artist at The Arts of Life studio on the Near-West side. He does drawings with pencil and marker, and also paints. The Arts of Life focuses on facilitating art-making for developmentally disabled adults, providing participants with a monthly stipend.

Artists come in during the day Monday through Friday to work on paintings, music and performances with the assistance of volunteers from the community, many of whom are students.

Standing over his drawings of Superman, Schenkel spoke about his previous job changing pillowcases for the airlines. “They’d bring a shipment of pillows. We’d take 25 pillows and put them in a bag. Take the old cases off, put the new ones on …”

“[Being here] is not about getting paid,” Schenkel said. “It’s about looking at how you feel with yourself and the picture. It doesn’t have to be precise in the picture. It’s something you can look at and feel good about.”

Arts of Life is celebrating its 10th year while mourning the loss of its founding artist Veronica Cuculich. Affectionately known to many as “Grandma,” she passed away on January 1 and would have been 80 years old in April.

Cuculich started the program in 2000 with current Executive Director Denise Fisher. The goal of the organization is to honor the beauty and wisdom of a group who are all too frequently denied their forum for personal expression through fostering creativity.

Ryan Shuquem, Art and Music Director of the program, works in the studio as both a visual artist and musician. For him, a reward has been “seeing the changes in each person individually after four or five months, and seeing how they transform once they realize they call the shots,” he said in an interview with F Newsmagazine.

Shuquem said that the program does a service to the community in helping to “dispel misconceptions of what these individuals have to offer.”

Outreach Coordinator Tim Sarrantonio has been with the organization since May of 2009. Within that time, four artists have been added to the program, and the center moved from 2110 West Grand to its new location at 2010 West Carroll Avenue.

Kris Schenkel at Arts of Life Photographs by Ya-Chi Hsu

A studio has also recently been started in Glenview, with five artists producing work. These five artists are all also represented in group shows and benefits that The Arts of Life organizes.

Sarrantonio said that The Arts of Life is invaluable to Chicago, for three reasons:

“Number one, it represents a clear and uplifting alternative for adults with developmental disabilities who do piece work in factories where they are actually valued at a lesser rate than others.”

“Number two, from an art standpoint it’s a valuable part of the outsider art community in terms of the purity and non-bullshit that our artists represent.”

“And, number three, it represents an excitement for other people coming in here. It may remind other artists why they do what they do.”

Mission Statement:

We are an artistic community that provides adults with developmental disabilities an environment to experience personal growth.
Volunteer Opportunities:
Volunteers play a critical role in our success by assisting the artists with their projects, working on active committees, teaching new art skills, designing databases, planning special events, assisting in grant applications, and much more. For more information please email info@artsoflife.org.
Upcoming Events:
Arts of Life is Panache boutique’s “Charity of the Month” for the month of April.
A cocktail reception will be held April 14, 6-9 p.m. Mention Arts of Life and 15% of sales will benefit the organization.

Panache Boutique is inviting everyone to attend a wonderful evening of shopping, cocktails, and hors d’oeuvres to benefit The Arts of Life! The evening will also feature makeovers from J Gordon Designs new GORDON:FACE mineral cosmetics. In addition to this evening, the entire month of April will have 15% of all pre-tax purchases donated back to The Arts of Life!

Time: 6:00PM Wednesday, April 14th
Location: Panache Chicago

Architectural Artifacts