Local Art For Your Shopping This Holiday Season
By CGN Staff,
There are any number of art gifts you may give at any given time of the year, but this season, the pressure is on a little more than usual and you may need to spread your budget around to several recipients on your list. To give you a few hints in the right direction, we have rounded up a few of our favorite local art gift sources for you - there are some affordable works of art as well as items that are not actually works of art but are art-themed.
We will be continuing our gift round-ups in the coming days, but for now, this round up gives you the gift of arty things.
If you want to buy art for someone this season, we are ALL FOR IT. Art makes the best gift! Please browse CGN's in-depth, helpful art listings for more than 100 area galleries, artist studios, museums and art centers. They all have websites. They're all small businesses. Many are offering free shipping! Click away from home and shop art right now...
Don't forget that today, December 1 is Giving Tuesday, which is when many worthy area nonprofits invite you to consider sharing your financial generosity with them in a year of major need. Shop and donate today!
Happy shopping!
In 1987, Steven Berkowitz had a dream to educate and inspire Chicago’s young people from under-resourced communities and schools through free visual arts programs. Marwen provides free visual arts, college and career programming for Chicago’s young people from under-resourced communities and schools in middle through high school.
You can buy holiday cards by young artists online now. All card designs were created by a young Chicago artist who was commissioned as part of Marwen's Design to Print Program, sponsored by Helen and Sam Zell. Card sales directly support Marwen's no-cost programming for Chicago youth.
HEAR THE STORY OF 2020 ARTISTS, who completed their designs during the pandemic, and watch their reactions as they see their cards for the first time!
Buddy is a shop, a hub for making connections between friends we have and those we have yet to meet. We are committed to giving artists and small manufacturers in Chicago a place to showcase and sell their goods and artworks to a vast audience of Chicagoans and visitors at the Chicago Cultural Center. This collaboration between Public Media Institute and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) furthers both institutions’ goals of providing visibility and opportunities to artists across the Chicagoland area.
Street artists get ready: SmellyChalk is made and distributed by Zag Products LLC, a small family business located in Chicago, Illinois. Ten vibrant colors that each have a different fun scent. We hope you and your sidewalk artists enjoy using it as much as we enjoy making it!
You can shop more local goods, publications, music and art in person through December 20 at 3219 S. Morgan
Manneken Press publishes and exhibits original, limited edition and unique prints, portfolios, artist’s books and drawings by significant contemporary artists. The press was founded in 2000 and is owned and operated by Jonathan Higgins and Sarah Smelser. Invited artists come to our studio in Bloomington, Illinois to create original works of art in intaglio, relief, lithography and monotype. The prints are made by the artists working in close collaboration with master printer Jonathan Higgins, and are hand-printed on our Takach etching press. We are committed to traditional, time tested techniques and use only the finest papers and inks to produce our prints. Manneken Press has exhibited these works at fine art fairs in Chicago, Cleveland, Miami, Boston, Baltimore, Houston and New York City, and in many galleries and museums.
Pictured above: Rhea Edge is a Bloomington, IL based artist who often uses images of birds in her paintings and prints. Edge is Associate Professor of Art at Eureka College, Eureka, Illinois, and President of the John Wesley Powell Chapter of the National Audubon Society.
Museum of Contemporary Photography
Collect the work of renowned local, national and international artists through the Museum’s Fine Print Program along with some illuminating Publications, that document the work of exhibiting artists and advance a critical dialogue on art and culture.
Shown here: a print by Lucas Foglia. Foglia’s project Human Nature (2006-17) reflects the artist’s interest in the impact of humans on the natural world and the ways we have altered the seemingly unalterable. This print is for sale for $400 and helps benefit MoCP.
The EAM store offers a lot of art and architecture themed gifts to support the museum and local artists. You can buy a set of mini yard signs, a You Are Beautiful necklace, or Frank Lloyd Wright pencils or a wood puzzle.
The gallery's annual holiday show is a great chance to find unique and affordable art for the season. They're also offering free shipping.
The Golden Triangle is moving after decades in its space on Clark St. They're having a HUGE sale with phased discounts to clear out the old and make room for their move...