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COMMUNITY ART

My six-years as a citizen volunteer for the City of Evanston Arts Council (Christopher Guest-type movie TBD) taught me the needs of the Evanston visual arts community; support, community, connection, celebration and elevation!

Learning what visual artists in my community needed inspired me to work on Community Art Projects with artists, arts institutions, organizations, private citizens.

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Top Image: Ben and Melissa Blount at the Black Lives Matter Witness Quilt unveiling at the Frances Willard House

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Witness Quilt Project: 1100 Florence, Evanston Made and the Frances Willard House partnered with Melissa Blount on the Witness Quilt, bringing together hundreds of community members to create a memorial to black women who lost their lives to gun violence in Chicago. Key partners like the Frances Willard House, Evanston Art Center, Evanston Arts Council and the Block Museum at Northwestern, connected this project to the community through funding, space donations, curatorial assistance and more. To learn more about this impactful and important community art project. SEE IT

Video produced by the Block Museum

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Bottom Image: Vanessa Filley Artist Residency at the Frances Willard House

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Vanessa Filley is a fine art photographer whose work focuses on women's organizing movements. While in residence at the FWHM she will be working on a project that imagines a web of connections bridging the perseverance of women organizing throughout history to women organizing today.

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