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2023 Old Town Art Fair – Chicago

EXHIBIT

A man holding a ribbon in front of paintings.Considered one of the top Art Fairs in the country, the Old Town Art Fair was voted #1 in America for the fourth year in a row.* It takes place the second weekend of June in the heart of the charming Old Town Triangle Historic District on Chicago’s North Side. There are 220 artists, an estimated 30,000 art lovers, a Garden Walk, Live Music, Food Court and Children’s Corner. Gates open Saturday 10:00 am to 7:00 pm and Sunday 10:00 am to 6:00 pm, rain or shine.

Exhibiting Artists often name the Old Town Art Fair as one of their most successful events of the year. The enthusiastic collectors, family-friendly atmosphere, and helpful neighborhood volunteers make it a favorite venue for artists. Hear what they have to say.

PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING CHANGE:

The Old Town Art Fair organizers would like to alert interested Artists to some upcoming changes in this year’s application process. One of our goals for the coming Fair is to attract a more inclusive roster of Artists and additionally include a new Emerging Artist category to support and develop young artistic talent. To that end, our application window for the coming Fair will be October 1, 2022 – January 15, 2023. This timeframe will allow our team to optimize our offering and provide beneficial impact to the depth of our Fair. We’re excited about these upcoming possibilities and the potential to further strengthen one of the best art fairs in the country. 

Apply here through www.zapplication.org

  Artists set up
FRIDAY 4:00 pm – 8:00 pm

The Old Town Art Fair also offers:

  • Artists’ Breakfast – Continental Breakfast is available Saturday and Sunday morning
  • Artists’ Aid – Girl Scouts distribute refreshments to the Artists during the Fair
  • Booth Sitting – available Saturday and Sunday afternoon

We appreciate your interest in the Old Town Art Fair!

Please note: You can apply for up to three categories per application/profile. A separate application and fee is required if you wish to be considered for additional categories.

Two Dimensional Media:
> 2D Mixed Media
> Digital Art
> Drawing/Pastel
> Painting
> Photography
> Printmaking

Three Dimensional Media:
> 3D Mixed Media
> Ceramics
> Fiber
> Glass
> Jewelry
> Metal
> Sculpture
> Stone
> Wood

The Old Town Art Fair is a Fine Art Fair, exclusively. Artwork must first and foremost be an artistic expression; utilitarian purposes must be secondary. All work must be designed and handmade by the accepted artist and the artist must be present during the Fair. Production studio work is absolutely prohibited. The display and sale of commercial reproductions of any kind are not allowed.

The following items are not to be exhibited at the Old Town Art Fair:
> Books
> Buttons
> Calendars
> Calligraphy
> Cards
> Candles
> Clocks
> Clothing
> Desk Accessories
> Hair Ornaments
> Hats
> Lamps
> Leather Goods & Bags
> Mirrors
> Musical Instruments
> Pillows
> Planters
> Posters
> Puzzles
> Stationery
> Toys
> Utensils
> Wearable Art
Click here to download a PDF detailing our full Exhibitor Policies, Artist Rules and Fine Art Requirements.

The Old Town Art Fair is a juried fine art fair. Each year, artists are reviewed and chosen by an independent jury of experienced professionals including gallery owners, artists and museum curators. Jurors are recruited from the Chicago art community and represent a variety of disciplines.

The Jury is convened twice a year, once during the winter and again during the Art Fair. During the winter sessions the jury selects new artists seeking to enter the Fair. Approximately 700 artists apply each year. The Jury meets again during the Art Fair when all of the participating artists are juried on-site. Based on the jury scores, artists are invited back to or juried out of (and eligible to reapply for) the next year’s show.

Painting, Drawing, Pastel, Printmaking
Katherine Harvath
Emmett Kerrigan
David van Alphen
Photography, Mixed Media, Digital Art
Michael Kozien
David Murray
Shawn Smith
Ceramics, Glass, Stone, Fiber, Wood
Anthony Adcock
Jeff Carter
Paul Somers
3D-2 Jewelry, Metal, Sculpture, 3D Mixed Media
Christine Forni
Matthew Hoffman
Helen Tsatsos
Click here to download a PDF with complete exhibitor information and detailed instructions. Click here to download the Tax Reporting Form.
Saturday, June 10, 2023 – 10:00 am to 7:00 pm
Sunday, June 11, 2023 – 10:00 am to 6:00 pm
Where: Old Town Triangle Center Building 1763 N. North Park Ave. (corner of North Park and Menomonee)
When: Friday, June 9, 2023 – 2:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Saturday, June 10, 2023 – 7:00 am to 9:00 am
Friday, June 9, 2023 – 3:00 pm to 8:00 pm (assigned load-in times)
Saturday, June 10, 2023 – 7:00 am to 9:00 am
Click here to download a Map of the 2022 Art Fair, including gate, booth, stage and food locations.
Where: Old Town Triangle Center Building 1763 N. North Park Ave. (corner of North Park and Menomonee)
When: Saturday, June 10, 2023 – 7:00 am to 9:00 am
Sunday, June 11, 2023 – 7:00 am to 9:00 am
Girl Scouts will be on duty to distribute refreshments and smiles to artists during the Fair.

Booth Sitting services are provided especially for artists who are exhibiting alone, but is available to all artists. Volunteers will be available 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm for a 20-minute break on both Saturday and Sunday. If you are unable to leave when your volunteer arrives, you can ask the volunteer to return before they finish their shift.

To sign up, email boothsittingotaf@gmail.com prior to the Fair or you can request booth sitting assistance at check-in. You will be asked to sign a Booth Sitting Agreement/Waiver.

You can like us, follow us and post information and samples of your work on: Facebook.com/OldTownArtFair. You’ll find an OTAF badge here to include on your own page.

Also follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @oldtownartfair to get OTAF news and live updates during the Fair.
Looking for more ways to let people know you’ll be at the Old Town Art Fair? Click here to download a digital version of the Old Town Art Fair post card. You can include the JPEG in an email to use as an invite, reminder, save the date, booth number announcement, thank you card . . .
The following streets will be CLOSED for the Fair starting Friday, June 9, 2023 at 9:00 am. Signs will be posted as NO PARKING – TOW ZONE. Towing will begin Friday morning. Parking in alleys is strictly prohibited.
Lincoln: West side of street from 1900 to 1920
Lincoln Park West: Lincoln to Menomonee
Menomonee: Sedgwick to Crilly Court
North Park: Menomonee to Eugenie
Orleans: Wisconsin to Menomonee
Sedgwick: East side of street from 1849 to 1853
Willow: Sedgwick to Crilly Court
Wisconsin: Lincoln to Sedgwick
The Old Town Art Fair has blocked several locations to provide parking to Exhibitors. For those artists who have already signed up to park through the Art Fair, please click here to make your payment. Click here for a list of parking options in the area.

Chicago has many overnight accommodations including Airbnb, small boutique hotels and large chain hotels. The Old Town Art Fair has no relationship with any provider.

Click here for a list of local hotels and group rates, where available.

*ArtFairCalendar.com

Katherine Harvath is an artist, curator, and art worker based in Chicago. She is interested in finding meaning in color, material, and form.  Quick gestures, familiar objects, the history of painting, and the semiotics of color all play a role in her painting and sculpture.  Having received her MFA from the University of Chicago in 2013 and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009,. Katherine then assembled solo exhibitions including Charms at SPRING/BREAK, Los Angeles, 2019, and Tiny Burnished World at Spears, Chicago, 2016.  Her work has appeared in group exhibitions at Outback Arthouse, Los Angeles, 2018, Produce Model, Chicago, 2016, EXPO Chicago, 2014, and Logan Center Exhibitions, Chicago, 2014.

Emmett specializes in three dimensional painting and sculpture.  He received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1993 and attended summer programs at Chautauqua School of Art and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  He has shown extensively throughout the Midwest, including Linda Warren Projects, the Elmhurst Art Museum, Union League Club, Contemporary Art Center of Peoria, University Club, Hyde Park Art Center, Beverly Art Center and Judy Saslow Gallery among others. His work can be found in numerous prestigious corporate collections, including Wellington Management, Kirkland & Ellis, The Sandor Family Collection, Eaton Corporation and the Canopy Grand Rapids.  Emmett lives and works in West Town.

David is an artist and accidental entrepreneur that lives and works in Chicago. Though David's family was from Holland, he was born in Toronto, and has been in Chicago for decades.  Being a child of the 70's influenced him greatly and is reflected in most of his work.  Juxtaposing images, his color choices and the new modern context comes through his nostalgic collaged imagery and helps to isolate and enhance them into a beautiful montage. David has shown at many galleries throughout the US and sold out his first solo show in January 2008 and recently sold out his last show in 2018.  In addition to his prolific body of work including art, logos and fonts, David is the founder of DvA Games and SuckerPunch Gourmet.

Michael is Chicago-based transdisciplinary artist merging digital media, merging animation, video, sound, photography, painting and installation to create his works.  He has exhibited widely over the course of his career including in both the US and abroad.  Michael has been a resident artist at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, Maine, Takt Kunstprojektraum, Berlin, Germany, The Association of Icelandic Visual Artists Residency, Reykjavik, Iceland and La Macina di San Cresci Artist Residency, Greve, Italy.  His work has been reviewed in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune and The San Diego Union-Tribune. Having earned a MFA in digital media from Stony Brook University and a BFA in painting from Southern Illinois University, Michael is the director of Operation France, a non-commercial creative collective of international artists based in Chicago and is currently an Associate Professor in the Digital Media + Design Department at the College of Lake County, where he teaches courses in animation, video, sound and digital media theory.

David is a Chicago-based artist whose practice spans a range of media including photography, sculpture and design and best known for his iconic series of photographic portraits, ‘I Give You’, in which the subject’s faces are obscured by bouquets of flowers, plants, fruits and vegetables.  In 2018, David co-founded ‘The Department of Things’ as an Art and Design Collective with Kristin Nason and is currently acting as the Director of Graduate Admissions at California College of the Arts.

As the Art Director of Chicago-based online artist community and e-commerce site Threadless, Shawn and his team review publicly scored entries each week from literally thousands of submissions.  They then select 10 per week to print on merchandise through their ecommerce site and facilitate compensation to artists through a royalty based system.  In addition to his work with Threadless, Shawn is also a prolific artist in his own right, having produced designer toys and other licensed collectibles for companies like Kidrobot and Rotofugi, and other works for Mimoco, David and Goliath, and Smash Transit, MailChimp, Basecamp, LiveNation, and Revolution Brewing.  He additionally has produced work for comics and video games for Nintendo, iOS, and Android.

Anthony blends his unique experiences working as a Local #1 Ironworker and as an artist to create works that explore the relationship between labor and value.  Using hyper illusionistic trompe l’oeil painting, sculpture, and installation, he distorts the line between reality and perception to question the importance and relevancy of authorship.  He received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the American Academy of Art with a specialization in oil painting.  His work has been published in New American Paintings, Newcity Art, the Examiner, and has been collected by 21c Museum, the Roy Liechtenstein family, and many other private collectors.  Anthony has exhibited at venues including Volta/Armory Show, Art Miami, the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Logan Center Gallery, Lyons Wier Gallery, among others and has contributed to performances for artist William Pope.L at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and Whitney Biennial.  Currently, Anthony teaches at Harper College and at Vitruvian Studio in Chicago.

Jeff is a multimedia artist living and working in Chicago. He is a Professor of Art, Media and Design at DePaul University.  Jeff earned his BFA at the University of Colorado, Boulder and his MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has exhibited his work in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Renaissance Society, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and the Hyde Park Art Center.  His work has been shown internationally at the Hayward Gallery, London; the Kunsthalle Hamburg, Germany; the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan; and the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, University College Cork, Ireland.  Solo shows include the DePaul Art Museum, Kavi Gupta Gallery and Leipzig, Germany; Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York; and The Mission, Chicago.  Jeff’s work was recently reviewed in Art in America, and profiled in the 7th edition of Bauhaus Magazine.

Paul Gerard Somers is an artist and designer working and living in Chicago.  Paul has exhibited nationally and internationally and his work manifests itself in many forms ranging from sculptural objects to video and live performances.  Having previously worked in graphic design and illustration New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, Paul completed his MFA at University of Chicago Department of Visual Arts (DoVA).  His work explores the proving grounds of manhood, on the court, the mat, the racetrack, and the field.  Through combinations of seemingly disjointed curatorial groupings of objects, material choices and finishes, memories and experiences reside in his work.  Paul is an Adjunct Professor at College of Lake County College teaching digital media and graphic design and past Professor of Art and Graphic Design at Calumet College.  Paul is a renaissance man whose most important collaborators/contributors are his lovely wife Linda and his equally charming son Eero.

Christine is a multidisciplinary artist working in painting and sculpture, alternative photography, drawing, and installation.  She has exhibited at venues such as Ueno Royal Japanese Art Museum, DeCordova Sculpture Museum, Piedmont’s Museo di Scienze Naturali to Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art.  Christine lives and works in Chicago, but in 2015, uprooted her life to study abroad in Paris.  While overseas she exhibited at Academia Romana and was a guest speaker at the international physicists’ conference on Constructal Law in Bucharest.  She had an artist residency at École du Breuil d’Horticulture, where she researched Parisian gardener’s organization of native and non-native plants collected from around the world.  Concurrently, she had a residency at Muséum National d’Historie Naturelle.  Born in Cleveland, Christine spent her younger years in the industrial cities of Pittsburgh and Detroit while living in an apartment complex next to a small forest preserve.  It was there she experienced the dichotomy of industrial backdrops along with time spent in nature — these layered alternate environments inform her practice today.

Matthew is a Chicago-based artist and designer.  He is the founder and custodian of the internationally recognized ‘You Are Beautiful’ project, an art movement which has shared over one million stickers, installations, and exhibitions with the world.  Matthew’s ideas and work have been included in Good, the New York Times Magazine, and Ready Made.  He has been published in a number of books by Gestalten, Droog, and Taschen, and was featured on the Oprah Winfrey network.  Matthew completed his BFA in Graphic Design at Ball State University.  He has created memorable large scale public installations for the City of Chicago, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, Albright Knox Gallery, as well as companies like Apple, Facebook, Zappos, & Cards Against Humanity.  There are close to 30 outdoor installations currently up in the Chicagoland area.

Helen is the owner and founder of Rock Candy by Helen and is an award-winning designer with a passion for beautiful and functional things.  Trained as an architect with a Master Degree from the University of Illinois, Helen combines 15+ years in the fields of architecture and interior design with over a decade of experience running her own jewelry design studio.  She received a diploma in architectural theory from LoPSiA  and conducted post-graduate research in Paris and at the Le Corbusier Unite d'Habitation at Briey-en-Foret, France.   In addition to her work in the Arts, Helen has been at the heart of major fundraising efforts, helping to raise over $2M for public and not-for-profit schools and organizations.  Her personal work is created from gems and pearls along with vintage up-cycled treasures and frequently collaborates with her husband, artist and musician Jon Langford, on art pendants.