http://www.oakparkartsdistrict.com/

As you all know, I just gave up my status of long-distance-commuter and am settling into a new town. New town, new beginnings. This time around, the town is Oak Park. It’s been a mild case of culture shock, but the family seems to be settling in nicely. Yesterday, we decided to do a little bit of exploring and resale shopping. We set out looking for a dresser at The Brown Elephant, and we stumbled into the Oak Park Arts District!

How exciting! I was already super excited about our new apartment and its proximity to the Farmers Market, a dog park, and to the downtown Oak Park area, but I was shocked to learn that not only was there an Arts District, but it was also very close to our new home. We took our time and strolled the street, looking in shop windows and just taking in the sites. We watched a woman working on a birth-themed painting in one shop/studio. My wife really enjoyed this part of our outing—she’s a doula. It was a little serendipitous.

Next, we stopped into the shop that was our reason for our adventure: The Brown Elephant. The shop had its ups and downs. The furniture was a little on the pricey side, but each piece was very cool and well… artsy. Especially a pair Art Deco dressers that I hope are still there in another month, wink wink… We ended up spending a while in there admiring and wandering. I was even inspired for a few ideas for future projects. We ended up buying a handful of books for us and the kiddos and headed back out to explore some more.

If you can’t tell, I’m beyond excited to be living so much closer to the city and being nearer to city art happenings. As far as happenings, there are a couple that I’m pretty excited about this weekend. The first is a show at the Packer Gallery. Lauren Levato, Andréa Stanislav, Bruce Riley, and Deborah Baker will be on display with an interdisciplinary show featuring drawings, paintings, sculpture, embroidery, and video.

The other show is an artist book show at Spudnik Press, located at:

1821 W Hubbard, Suite 303
Chicago, IL 60622
Opening Reception
Saturday, January 12, 2013
6:00 – 9:00pm

From the Spudnik Press website:

Daniel Mellis’s work explores the instability of language and the poetics of the philosophical fragment; the relationship between memory, photography, historical documents, and the inaccessibility of the past; the physical remnants of things now absent; and the combinatorial potential of letterforms through prints and artist’s books. His constant experimentation in a wide variety of print media including letterpress, offset lithography, and digital printing results in unified expressions of content and form. The show consists of four of his larger projects, some smaller works, and a print triptych created especially for the show at Spudnik Press.

It sounds like its going to be a lot of fun, plus its a book show!

I’ll have reviews of each of the shows next week!