Lillstreet Art Center

Lillstreet Art Center is an art school, gallery, and artist studio space that offers classes, workshops, birthday parties, and more to adults and kids. 

DePaul Prep student Ivy Frater sat down with Director of Student Services Tikal Rivera to talk about Lillstreet. 

What does Lillstreet do? 

We are a Community Arts Center with a plethora of classes across five different departments: ceramics, metalsmithing, printmaking and book arts, textiles, and drawing and painting. We also have a digital department and a kids department. A lot of our offerings are just meant to be recreational, a fun way to teach people new art skills. We also have a community lounge area with a rooftop garden and a bunch of beehives. At its core, Lillstreet is a community art center for people in the area, so we are pretty well integrated within the neighborhood. 

What are some of the classes that you offer?

Lillstreet has always been known for its ceramics program, so some of our most popular classes are Beginner Wheelthrowing and Handbuilding. Our first time metalsmithing classes are also very popular, as we are one of the few art centers in the city that has an actual metalsmithing studio. We have a wide variety of textile classes including natural dye and tie dye. Within our printmaking department, we have started branching out into different kinds of prints like cyanotypes, relief printmaking, and first time bookmaking.

How do you choose which classes to offer?

It really depends on what’s popular with people. We run lots of first time classes, because there are many people who want to get their first chance at understanding a medium. Our ceramics classes are pretty consistent, as they’re always very popular. Other than those, if people really liked a certain class in a previous session, we will probably choose to run it again. 

We also like to have new classes as well depending on what our teachers are interested in teaching. Sometimes we’ll bring a new teacher on, or we’ll have an artist in residence, and they will have a completely new idea which we’ll try out. 

Of course, we’re always trying to expand our departments. Like I said, we have a small digital department that we want to expand into something bigger down the line. And I know people have expressed interest in woodworking and glassblowing. We’re always looking to try something new! 

Could you talk a little bit about your birthday parties? 

Since our summer camps take up so much space, we usually have them whenever summer camp is not running. They're typically two hours long and run by an instructor and a teaching assistant. Most of our birthday parties feature ceramics, but we are starting to expand into having other kinds of birthday parties with drawing and painting or metalsmithing. Since a lot of our teachers within the ceramics department focus on a younger age bracket, we generally stick to younger age groups and don’t usually run birthday parties for teenagers. 

What sets Lillstreet apart from other art centers?

We're always looking to become the best version of ourselves. We have a lot of really lovely and talented people on our staff that are dedicated to making Lillstreet a welcoming, diverse, and inclusive space. 

Even outside of our classes, there are a lot of things that make the school community-oriented.  Our rooftop garden grows vegetables and fruit that we share amongst our staff. We have a beekeeper who takes care of the bees on the roof, and we sell the honey in our store. We have a really nice gallery space that hosts gallery showcases for artists, residents, teachers and students within our community, including an end of camp showcase for kids. We also have a lounge space that we are expanding into an event space and a cafe. 

Overall, we are really trying to not only be an artist space, but also a community space within Chicagoland.

What do you have coming up? 

Here are two events that are currently going on:

• Lillstreet Lounge Gallery Student Showcase: Susan Slogoff 9/1-9/30.  

• Main Gallery Space: Cohort '23: Lillstreet Artist in Residence 9/5-9/27 

If you would like to learn more about Lillstreet Art Center, visit their website!