Illinois artist of the month - Sarah Kaiser

• Arts & Culture
• Artist of the month
• Women
• Chicago
• Landscapes
• Paintings
• Oils
• The University of Chicago
• Sarah Kaiser

Sarah Kaiser is an Evanston based artist and teacher who received her MA in Art History and MFA from the University of Chicago. Her work focuses on the juxtaposition of figures, animals and patterns unified by a nature-inspired color palette.

She mainly works in oils, using gestural brushstrokes to convey universal themes such as the transience of life, the persistence of time, and the relationship between humans and nature.

ILI: How long have you been an artist or when did you start? Was there a single incident or moment when you realized this was your passion and if so, tell us about it?

Kaiser: My earliest recollection of making art comes from a photograph my mother took of me when I was three or four years old. I was painting with watercolors, and I remember that there was a picture of Donald Duck on the tin paint box. At the moment in which the photo was taken, I told her that I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. I’m glad she encouraged me. Since I was an only child until age 13, I also needed to fill the time, so I turned to drawing and painting. Mom and I moved often because of her job. I went to 7 different schools between kindergarten and the 12th grade. As a result, I was often the new kid at school, and had to make new friends. This meant that I often had to play alone. When I was bored, I would make art.

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TBT: Gwendolyn Brooks becomes first African-American to win Pulitzer Prize

April is National Poetry Month and in Illinois, a state with a rich literary history, it is the perfect time to celebrate the life and cultural achievements of Illinois Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks. Brooks was the first black author to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1950 for her book of poetry Annie Allen. Because of her long and decorated career as a writer and professor of poetry, Gwendolyn Brooks has earned her place among the literary titans of Illinois and the United States.

Born in Kansas in 1917 to parents who encouraged her creativity and intellectual curiosity, Brooks and her family moved to Chicago when she was very young. Brooks was an avid reader and writer as a child and her talent was evident at a young age. She was first published at 13 when American Childhood published her poem “Eventide.” By the age of 17, her poems were frequently published in the Chicago Defender, a newspaper serving Chicago’s black population.

Brooks’s community and upbringing are important threads that run through all of her work. Her first collection is titled A Street in Bronzeville, a nod to her neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. Her poems celebrated, examined and portrayed urban black culture in the mid-20th century, a time when such representations were extremely rare. Literary critic Richard K. Barksdale described the poems in Brooks’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Annie Allen as “devoted to small, carefully cerebrated, terse portraits of the Black urban poor.” The author herself once described her style as “folksy narrative.”

Annie Allen tells the story of a black girl growing into adulthood. The work addresses social issues of the time, including the role of women in society. Starr Nelson of Saturday Review of Literature calls the book “a work of art and a poignant social document.” The book was published in 1949 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1950 at a time when the American literary community had not yet awarded the Prize to an African-American and had honored very few women with the Prize.

Brooks had a long writing career during which she also taught at Illinois institutions of higher learning including Columbia College, Northeastern Illinois University and Elmhurst College. Because of her contributions to the American literary and cultural landscape, Brooks succeeded the great Carl Sandburg as poet laureate of Illinois in 1968. She served in that position until her death in 2000 after a long and prolific career. She left behind a substantial body of work and a long list of contributions to American culture.

Pequod’s named best pizza in Illinois

• In the News
• Pequod's Pizza

Are you in Chicago and looking for some good deep dish pizza? Are you looking for the best deep dish pizza? Then look no further than Pequod’s on Clybourn Avenue. Recently named the “Best Pizza in Illinois” by The Daily Meal, Pequod’s has been serving up Chicago’s signature pizza for 25 years.

What sets Pequod’s deep dish apart from the others you might ask? Pequod’s famous “caramelized crust,” which the Daily Meal described as “chewy, crusty, quasi-burnt cheese crust that forms the outer edge of this cheesy casserole.”

The Daily Meal set out several criteria for their rankings. The rankings looked at over 800 restaurants across the nation whose menu was entirely pizza or had a section completely dedicated to pizza. They then had a panel choose the best location in each state.

This isn’t the first time Pequod’s has been recognized, either. In 2015, the Food Network named Pequod’s one of the top five pizza places in the entire country.

Whether you’re in the mood for pizza, pasta or an Italian beef sandwich, Pequod’s is the neighborhood place to fill up with family. For more information about what Pequod’s locations have to offer, you can visit their website here.

Flashback Friday: First Europeans arrive in Peoria

Tomorrow marks the 343rd anniversary of European involvement in Illinois. On Good Friday in 1674, Jesuit priest Fr. Jacques Marquette declared possession of a Kaskaskia village near present-day Ottawa and named it the Mission of the Immaculate Conception. It was the first Catholic mission in Illinois.

Fr. Marquette and his guide, Louis Jolliet, were the first Europeans to have contact with the Illiniwek nation Indians when they met with leaders in a village on the Illinois River in 1673, about a year prior to founding the mission.

After initially meeting the leaders of the Peoria and Kaskaskia tribes, two of about a dozen tribes in the Illiniwek Confederation, Marquette and Jolliet left the village to return to their base near Traverse City, Michigan. Local leaders sent the two Frenchmen off with a feast of corn porridge, fish, buffalo and dog (which the Europeans declined). The tribal leaders wished them well and encouraged them to return.

When they returned the following April after having waited out the winter of 1673-74 in a small hut near what would become Chicago, they were welcomed with open arms by the Illiniwek villagers. Historians suspect that the Illiniwek were so gracious because Marquette and Joliet told them that the French had vanquished their enemies, the Iroquois, with the help of the Christian God.

The establishment of the Mission of the Immaculate Conception is an important event in the history of Illinois. Only a few years later, the French established Fort Crevecoeur near the mission on the east bank of the Illinois River. A permanent settlement would later spring up around the fort and the mission and grew into what is now the city of Peoria.