The last time I wrote about Pilsen’s Chicago Arts District, in August, it was to chronicle the departure of yet another gallery and note the many empty storefronts along the district’s main drag, roughly 1700-2000 S. Halsted. “Everybody’s leaving,” Robin Monique Rios lamented, as she prepared to move her business, 4Art Inc., to the Zhou B Art Center in Bridgeport, where a livelier vibe has been attracting artists and gallerists alike.
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During its two-and-a-half-year run, 32nd & Urban hosted 17 shows for 70 artists, including the likes of Juan Angel Chavez and Michael Genovese. But when their partners departed to pursue business and law degrees, Pacheco and Kepha decided to take a breather and rethink the situation. They closed the gallery in 2008 and, Pacheco says, “mourned” it for the next year as they watched the economy worsen and opportunities for artists shrivel. Finally, Pacheco recalls, “We said we’ve got to get back to what we want to be doing.” In July she left her job as regional director of Rocket Learning, a tutoring company, to lay the groundwork for a “reinvented” gallery.
Pacheco and Kepha are third-generation Mexican-American Chicagoans and plugged in to a couple of the city’s vital networks. Their older sister, Kristal Pacheco, a muralist and member of the Chicago Public Art Group, was their original conduit to established artists like Chavez, Kerry James Marshall, and Hector Duarte. And Peter Pacheco Jr., their late father, was a precinct captain in Brighton Park on the southwest side, where Lauren and Kepha grew up and still live. (A stretch of California Avenue is named for him.) Lauren Pacheco says they’ve known Alderman Daniel Solis, whose 25th Ward includes Pilsen, for a long time. When Solis heard they were looking for space, he suggested the former home of the Sandler Sanitary Wiping Cloth Company in Pilsen.
Shows will run six to eight weeks, and CUAS will take a 35 percent commission on sales. They’re also selling $20 annual memberships and soliciting proposals from artists who’d like to teach classes in the space. After “Sweet Tea and American Values” come shows by photographer Doug Fogelson (opening in August) and the Post Family (October), as well as a one-day “urban contemporary wares” flea market.
Opens Fri 6/11, 6-11 PM. Through 7/30: Thu-Fri 6-9 PM, Sat 1-5 PM, Chicago Urban Art Society, 2229 S. Halsted, 773-318-9407, chicagourbanartsociety.org.
