Evanston Art Center’s newest exhibition, “Women in Nature: Taking Up Space,” opened Saturday, reflecting on the relationship between femininity and the natural world.
Chicago-based artist and Evanston Art Center’s 2024-2025 Curatorial Fellow Sholo Beverly curated the exhibition, which is open until August 10. Eighteen artists exhibited large-scale canvases depicting bodies and landscapes to showcase themes including connection, spirituality and transformation.
“I’ve always wanted to do a show revolving around women in nature because we’re such an important foundation of the human race,” Beverly said. “We give life. We give community. We give stability.”
This is the fifth year of Evanston Art Center’s Curatorial Fellowship, which recruits emerging curators, with a focus on people of color to highlight marginalized voices, said Emma Rose Gudewicz, the director of development and exhibitions. Applicants must submit an exhibition proposal and accompanying public programming. A group of board and community members votes on and interviews potential curators before awarding the fellowship to one individual.
As this year’s fellow, Beverly, a muralist, said she wanted to challenge the artists she recruited by asking them to produce large pieces that truly take up space. Gudewicz described the exhibition space as something viewers can “insert themselves into.”
The exhibition’s opening reception, from 6 to 9 p.m. on Saturday, hosted dozens of attendees.
Gudewicz said the exhibition’s accompanying programming throughout the year has also been popular. In February, Evanston Art Center offered community members the opportunity to meet Beverly, and in June it held a mural painting event in its parking lot. It will also offer an Artist Talk and a Curator Talk in August to dive deeper into the exhibition’s featured works.
Gudewicz said community events like this are crucial to starting conversations about art in usually impersonal art gallery and museum settings.
“The events are a good way for the general public to really interact with art and the artist and realize that it’s not as inaccessible as they might think,” Gudewicz said.
Beverly did not take on this project alone; she had help from her assistant, Adelina Marinello (Communication ‘24), who handled administrative and marketing tasks. Prior to working with Beverly in December, Adelina had known her from their work in ARTSiE, a local non-profit focused on making art education accessible.
Over the last eight months, Marinello helped facilitate communication with artists, from recruitment and scheduling interviews to relaying Beverly’s vision to the artists and Evanston Art Center. At Saturday’s opening reception, Marinello said she was “stunned and blown away” by how it all came together.
“The prompt was to have people have free reign with this sort of umbrella theme, and the fact that it really feels like one conversation with different dialogs all in that with all the different artwork is astonishing,” she said.
Marinello said the “conversation” explored women’s relationship with the natural world, climate change, political change, their heritage and Indigenous histories.
Many of the artists in the exhibition are people of color, Beverly said, who have important messages that feel very “ancestral” and “universal.” Beverly said she wants the pieces, which include rich history and symbolism, to show that women are here and women take up space.
“It’s whatever people want to take away from it, but it’s definitely a sense of freedom,” Beverly said. “I love protest artwork. I love making people think. I love pissing people off.”
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