By Jenny SongThe Daily Northwestern

For Evanston artist Sara Piepmeier, things are never what they seem.

Piepmeier – one of dozens of artists, musicians and performers participating in Evanston Arts Week – is influenced by Buddhist teachings and questions reality in her work. Her paintings address the relationship between “who we are and how we perceive things,” she said.

One portrait, based on a photograph of her step-daughter in Nashville, Tenn., is on exhibit at the Globe Cafe, 1710 Orrington Ave.

“It’s about a young person at the cusp of her life,” she said. “She’s very solid, but the world around her is just forming. The ground around her is kind of abstracted.”

The week kicks off tonight at Davis Plaza, 909 Davis St., with performances by local music groups, including a barbershop chorus, an Evanston Township High School pep group and Northwestern’s Dolphin Show.

The event, which runs until Oct. 15 and coincides in part with Illinois Arts Week, has been an annual event since 2000. The idea originated in the 1980s but lost steam, said Evanston Cultural Arts Director Jeff Cory.

More than 100 separate exhibits, recitals, workshops, tours, lectures and other events will take place during the 10-day “week” organized by the Evanston Arts Council.

Almost every type of art is represented, from traditional oil painting to Native American flute music to square dancing.

The Evanston Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring an art gallery tour Saturday from noon until 5 p.m. Free trolley buses running every 20 to 30 minutes throughout downtown Evanston will shuttle art enthusiasts to different galleries and shops around Evanston.

Throughout arts week, painters will also be taking part in a ‘Plein Air’ challenge, in which they will do open air painting all around Evanston. As the week closes Sunday, the arts center will host an awards ceremony for the artists.

Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes St., will exhibit works by Evanston artists and will open up some of its studios Saturday for people to take a peek at the creative process.

Piepmeier, whose Noyes studio will be open Saturday, said there is an emphasis on figurative painting among her colleagues.

“A lot of us really love portrait work because … it isn’t as much about the painting as about the person, who the person is,” she said.

Piepmeier’s colleague, Loyce Moskow, also will show figurative oil paintings that are realistic but not photographic with their loose brushstrokes and somber colors.

Moskow said she is drawn to painting because of the spontaneity of the medium.

“You’re able to see a result more quickly,” she said. “I did etching for a while, but I got a bit frustrated because etching is a very slow process and you don’t get an immediate result.”

Her two pieces at Noyes are a reclining nude and another portrait of a woman wearing a vintage hat.

Also on Saturday, at the Mather Place, 422 Davis St., Evanston artist and Northwestern alum Ann Wasserman will be displaying her art quilts. Wasserman, Weinberg ’77, began quilting after taking a mini-course at Norris University Center in the ’70s.

“My mom sewed clothes and saved scraps from it all the time,” Wasserman said. “She kept saying, someday we’ll make a quilt. And I was looking for something to do after class and took a little class at Norris. I got started and never stopped.”

Wasserman’s quilts are often of landscapes but also have abstract themes like joy, spirituality or transitions.

“Lately, it’s dream images that have come into them fairly often,” she said. “Sometimes it’s a particular fabric or particular concept.

Reach Jenny Song at [email protected].