Evanston Printmakers, a newly formed art group, hosted a social event at Lorraine H. Morton City Hall on Friday night to celebrate its first exhibit, titled “Visit Evanston.”
Nine artists, all of whom live or work in Evanston — Julie Cowan, Socorro Mucino, Leslie Riley, Joseph Taylor, Ben Blount, Beth Adler, Chris Froeter, Carol Neiger and Melissa Blount — each contributed one print to the exhibit, located on the walls of City Hall’s lobby.
Printmaking is an artistic process that involves taking images from a matrix and transferring them onto another surface, usually paper or fabric. There are several ways to make prints, and each artist at the exhibit used a different technique, Cowan, the founder of the group, said.
Cowan said she received an Evanston Arts Council Special Projects Grant for Evanston Printmakers in 2024.
Also the founder of Artruck, an event that temporarily displays art in trucks, Cowan leveraged her mailing list and scoured the Evanston Made website to find potential candidates for the group. Ultimately, eight artists responded to her call and agreed to create prints for the theme Cowan came up with: “Visit Evanston.”
“I think I liked the idea of these old, sort of vintage postcards that were printed and just sort of had that as an idea,” Cowan said.
The artists had about 12 weeks to complete their prints, which were hung in City Hall on Oct. 23 and will remain there through Jan. 23.
At the event, community members — including the artists’ friends and family — talked with the artists about their work, studied the prints and ate snacks.
Mucino, one of the artists in the exhibit, praised Evanston’s art community for providing many opportunities for artists to meet and connect. Cowan contributes to that dynamic, Mucino said.
“She’s really wonderful,” Mucino said. “She’s just someone who has a real passion for bringing artists together here in Evanston.”
Mucino’s piece for “Visit Evanston” fuses bright, warm colors with various abstract shapes. She said she was inspired by the sun and Evanston’s natural environment.
She wasn’t planning on putting the sun in her piece, she said, but needed to “give it a punch.”
“It was very intuitive, the way I worked,” Mucino said. “I like working with shapes and colors and patterns, and so I would say that that is reflected in my work.”
Cowan created a print of Abraham Lincoln with a multicolored background and the text “Lincoln slept here” at the top.
During the pandemic, she completed an artist residency about Lincoln through the University of Illinois Springfield. Through her research, she said she learned that Lincoln slept in Evanston for one night.
Juelle Daley, Evanston’s arts and cultural engagement specialist, said she loved how each artist communicated their relationship with Evanston in a unique way.
“I have this tagline … that I had since I arrived here in Evanston: ‘Something dope is happening in Evanston,’” Daley said. “The artist community is creating incredible work, whether it’s visual work, like the work that we’re creating here, but also dancers, musicians, actors.”
Cowan said she hopes Evanston Printmakers will eventually grow beyond the original artists and develop into a larger community of printmakers. There’s no concrete plans for future events, she said, but she does hope to do more with the group.
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