An artist collective that started as a way to change perceptions about the West Side now has the money to do that in a more concrete way.
Over the past year, the collective has received a slew of grants and donations — $350,000 in all. The group, alt_ Chicago — pronounced “Alt Space” — plans to use that money to hire staff; open a permanent studio; expand their educational programming; and beautify the area.
It’s a new day for the Austin-based nonprofit that when launched in 2019 couldn’t even afford morning doughnuts — or the staff to eat them, recalled co-founder Jon Veal.
Veal and co-founder Jordan Campbell started the group because they wanted to use art to tell positive stories about the West Side — a part of Chicago where, they say, many residents believe news coverage focuses too much on crime.
“We believe that art can rebuild the city,” Veal, who grew up in Austin, said in a recent interview in a subterranean studio that the collective is renting for now.
A donor who wants to remain anonymous gave them $250,000. The rest came from a variety of grants, including $65,000 from E(art)H Chicago and $10,000 from the Blackivists, a Chicago-based group of Black archivists documenting communities of color.
The Blackivists funds will go toward archiving the group’s flagship venture, “Project Stamp,” a campaign to document the lives of West Siders through portraits taken in neighborhood spaces, such as Hubbard Park. Subjects were photographed sitting in plush furniture, a pose intended to convey a sense of power.
“We wanted people to feel special. We wanted people to feel like royalty,” said Veal, who volunteered his own leather armchair for some of the photos.
In all, about 150 people were photographed. The portraits were printed across several sheets of paper and plastered together on buildings around the city. The works have since faded, but they have now hired a curator to document the project and ensure the people who were represented won’t be forgotten.
The collective has been based out of a studio at 5539 W. Lake St. for the past year and a half but have used some of the new funds to hire an architect to design a better, permanent home for when they find the right property.
In addition to being an artist studio, they want their new home to house the “Alt_ Academy,” a program to help young people from the area learn about possible career paths in art. For now, they offer some programs out of their current studio, but hope to expand.
Toward that end, the collective hired artist Alexandra Eregbu to be assistant director of education. Eregbu is from Austin and previously was with the Chicago Park District’s TRACE program, where she had worked with youth on the South and West sides since 2015.
By the end of her time at the Park District, she was leading programs connecting youth with working artists. She hopes to bring similar initiatives to her new job.
Up first is a collaboration with another Austin-based art studio, Happy Returns.
For that project, the two groups plan to collect plastic litter in the community and recycle it into public benches. It’s part of the collective’s goal of “redeeming the neglected aspects of our neighborhood and communities,” Eregbu said.
On Oct. 15, the collective will begin interviewing people for the project, hoping to find 10 representatives who can soon start leading residents through the process of designing and building the benches.
In the short term, the hope is that installing the benches will spruce up some community areas. In the long term, she hopes the whole process leaves the residents with some thoughts as enduring as those benches.
“The end goal,” she said, “is really to get people more interested in how their consumption habits generally impact the environment.”
Michael Loria is a staff reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South and West sides.
