“Invisible Labors” is a collaborative project to explore the role that women played in the use of the land, as gatherers, farmers, gardeners, and artists, in the history of the Ridge communities of Beverly and Morgan Park. It is one of five projects currently supported by 3Arts, a nonprofit organization that supports Chicago’s women artists, artists of color, and Deaf and disabled artists who work in the performing, teaching, and visual arts. 3Arts includes a built-in match that helps Chicago artists finance new creative work.
“Invisible labors,” curated by Susannah Papish, the Director of boundary, the art project space in Morgan Park, has several components. It started last fall with a garden of native plants and a paper-making exhibition at boundary by artist and educator Melissa Potter, a professor at Columbia College Chicago.
The next component will be a publication featuring the research and writing of the Ridge Historical Society’s experts on local history. With research assistance form RHS Historian Linda Lamberty, RHS researcher/writer Carol Flynn, who develops all the stories that appear on the RHS Facebook page as well as stories for the local newspapers and other sources, will write about the pre-history days of Native Americans and their use of the land; the coming of the white European settlers and their development of the land; and the history of the early community of Black Americans who settled here after the U.S. Civil War. For the record, Carol Flynn is legally disabled.
The publication, which is still in the planning stages, will include artwork and other contributions from Susannah and Melissa, in addition to the written stories.
Susannah Papish has started a fund-raising campaign to offset some of the expenses of the project through this link: https://3arts.org/projects/invisible-labors/
We hope that if you truly support the arts in the Beverly/Morgan Park community, and/or appreciate the historical stories shared by the Ridge Historical Society, that you will consider putting a few dollars towards this project. We will be very grateful for the contributions.
The RHS page will share some of the highlights of the stories in the coming days.
Artist Louise Barwick lived in one of Beverly’s oldest and most charming houses on 103rd and Seeley. She painted beautiful local scenes in water color, as well as made a name for herself in the academic field with geographic modeling techniques. Her story is one that will be told in “Invisible Labors.”