Jane Fulton Alt loves where she lives in Evanston. She and her husband of 25 years own a two-story frame house with a lush backyard.
Alt can cultivate her artistic yearnings in Evanston. The 50-year-old professional photographer has a darkroom in her basement. A couple of blocks north lies the Evanston Arts Center and the Noyes Cultural Arts Center. A few blocks south is Northwestern’s Block Museum.
“They’re all within walking distance,” she said. “(Evanston) is real supportive (of artists). There are a lot of people who live here that are involved in the art world. It’s more liberal, they’re more open to artists.”
Alt and other local artists find Evanston a near perfect environment for artists, when compared with living in Chicago.
The Evanston Arts Center, 2603 Sheridan Road, regularly hosts seminars and displays contemporary art mostly from Cook County artists, Evanston painter Beth Reitmeyer said.
The Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes St., is home to six annual exhibits of area artists. It also houses a theater and leases 28 studios to professional arts organizations.
Last fall, NU finished additions to the Block Museum of Art, 1967 South Campus Drive. Local artists see great potential in the improved museum.
“It’s a really beautiful facility,” Reitmeyer said. “Their upcoming exhibitions seem (to be) a mix between more historic art and contemporary. I think it’s going to be a good exhibition.”
Reitmeyer recently received a $1,700 grant from the City of Evanston and the Evanston Arts Council for an exhibition.
“It’s a really good way for Evanston to encourage cultural activity for its residents,” she said. “I can apply for Evanston grants, and I can apply for Chicago grants. It helps me out; I wasn’t expecting it.”
As well as having its own artistic flavor, Evanston benefits from its close proximity to Chicago.
Evanston’s artists consistently flock to the city for shows, openings and galleries. But living in the city can mean long hours spent commuting- a waste of precious time for artists.
Reitmeyer, who painted the “Moovin and Groovin” cow on top of Soldier Field two years ago, was house-sitting for a friend last year in Chicago and commuted every day to her job in Evanston. In May, she got a new lease – in Evanston.
“It was a drain,” she said. “It was just an hour’s worth of time sitting in a car or on a train. That’s an hour you could be painting.”
Painter Mark Murphy prefers living in Evanston rather than Chicago in part because he feels it is a better place to raise his one-year-old twins boys. Still, there are drawbacks to suburban life.
“(Chicago) is where everything happens,” he said. “It takes a lot of time to go out to the gallery district. It’s a trade-off between quality of life versus access to art.”
For some, art alone is not enough to make ends meet. Alt has been a professional social worker for 27 years. Murphy says he has “the equivalent of two full-time jobs and one part-time job.” He teaches six classes and is a technician at NU, and also works at a running shoe store.
“If you want to make art, you find a way to make the time,” said Murphy, who balances his jobs with family time and 10 to 15 hours a week in a studio. “Everybody I know has to do it; you don’t get rich. There’s a satisfaction with the feeling of wholeness you can’t get with working in a bank or dealing cars, whatever.”
But creating still remains a passion for these residents. Sculptor Danielle Gustafson-Sundell loves art so much she got together with three other artists and founded the gallery “Deluxe Projects.” The non-profit entrepreneurship has just a rented space in Chinatown.
“We started that as a (do it yourself) thing,” Gustafson-Sundell said. “It was like maybe if we start our own band, people will come see us. And they did, which is kind of amazing.
“We have a lot of energy at our age. It’s either do that or become depressed- and there are a lot of depressed artists. So we got moving.”
