A giving annual meeting for the 
Oak Park Area Arts Council

By ERIC LINDEN

Much was given out at Monday's annual meeting of the Oak Park Area Arts
Council. There was $55,000 in Arts Funds grants to local arts
organizations, other special awards, praise for Oak Park's own Harmony
composer and applause for a guest pianist, but the highlight was the
2000 patron of the arts Award to sculptor Geraldine (Gerri) McCullough.

"She gets her own artwork," Arts Council board member Margot McMahon
said in presenting McCullough with the Joseph Randall Shapiro award that
is given each year, according to the Arts Council, "for exceptional
contribution to the arts in the Oak Park area." McCullough had designed
the sculpture when the arts council decided to rename the award to honor
the late Shapiro, an Oak Park resident who had supported the arts
extensively at all levels.

McCullough also is "an artist of international importance" and "a
trailblazer," said McMahon, an Oak Park resident, herself a sculptor and
someone who has long admired McCullough. The honored Oak Park sculptor's
works appear throughout the country and in places ranging from
Springfield, Ill. to a spot outside of Oak Park village hall.

McCullough, who has been in poor health of late, said only, "Thank you
again" when accepting the Shapiro award at the Arts Council's annual
meeting, which was held March 13 at Pleasant Home, the national landmark
historic home and tourist attraction that is owned by the Park District
of Oak Park at 217 S. Home Ave., in Mills Park. Interviewed for the
State of the Arts newsletter published by the Arts Council, though,
McCullough said, "I'm so honored to receive this award for so many
reasons. First, because Joe Shapiro was such a great person and a
staunch supporter and friend when I was working on the Pathfinder.
Second, I created the Shapiro sculpture and to win it now, I feel as
though I have come full circle."

The Pathfinder is the McCullough-designed sculpture that sits on the
Madison Street side outside Oak Park village hall, Lombard Avenue and
Madison Street in Oak Park and is part of a vast body of work that has
earned countless honors for McCullough, who for years was chairperson of
the Arts Department at Dominican University in River Forest. Her statue
of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is on display in Illinois' capital city.

Born in Arkansas and raised in Chicago, McCullough taught Art in the
Chicago public high schools in the 1950s. Her late husband was a welder
who taught her the field, and McCullough soon began producing welded
pieces. Her first major piece came in 1964, a welded sculpture called
"Phoenix." Major works and awards followed, and in the 1980s she opened
her welding sculpture studio in a former CTA building on Lombard Avenue
in Oak Park.

"The universal timelessness of the art-object," McCullough told the Arts
Council, "has established in me the idea that it has spiritual
essence--an inner life of its own--that it has a subjective power that
is all-encompassing."

In other business at the Arts Council's annual meeting, Kathryn McKee,
who chaired the ArtsFunds committee, announced grants to 32 local
organizations. Using funds it raises from benefits such as the annual
Artful Object event, a contribution from Oak Park village government and
money from the Illinois Arts Council, the Oak Park Area Arts Council
each year takes applications from and awards grants to arts
organizations in its service area of Oak Park, River Forest and Forest
Park. The ArtsFunds program "leads Illinois" in support for local arts
and artists, said Leslie Ann Jones, president of the Oak Park Area Arts
Council board.

The council's ArtsFunds committee gave shares of that $55,000 pie to the
following organizations in the three villages in the Oak Park area. The
Arts Council declined to reveal how much each organization received.

* The Art House
* Association of Young Artists and Musicians
* BRAVO at Emerson Junior High School
* CAST at Percy Julian Junior High School
* Chicago a cappella
* Chicago Choral Artists
* Chicago Sinfonietta
* Circle Theatre
* Community Support Services
* Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park
* Expressions Graphics
* Fra Angelico Art Foundation
* Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio Foundation, which is now called the
Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust
* Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest
* Longfellow School PTO, which is planning for an outdoor sculpture to
be done by students
* MOMENTA Performing Arts Company
* MPAACT
* Oak Park Art League
* Oak Park and River Forest Children's Chorus
* Oak Park Education Foundation's Art Start program
* Oak Park Festival Theatre
* Open Door Repertory Company
* P.I.N.G. at District 97, a program that arranges to give students
donated musical instruments if they are needed
* Pleasant Home Foundation
* River Oak Arts
* Sense of Urgency
* Senior Citizens Center of Oak Park and River Forest
* Spectrum Choral Society, or Heritage Choral
* Steckman Studio of Music
* Symphony of Oak Park & River Forest
* Unity Temple Concert Series
* Windy City Arts League

The Arts Council this year initiated new awards for "Best in Class." The
citations accompanied by smaller grants than the ArtsFunds are designed
to give special recognition to specific outstanding achievement. These
grants went to the following list.

* Arts Organization Excellence: Circle Theatre
* Community Organization Excellence: P.I.N.G.
* Emerging Arts Organization: Association of Young Artists and Musicians

* Mature Arts Organization: Oak Park Festival Theatre
* Economic Impact: Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park
* Community Outreach: Open Door Repertory Company
* Collaboration: River Oak Arts

The Arts Council members at the annual meeting also heard remarks from
James Kimo Williams, the composer now working on the Continental Harmony
project, a national program that Oak Park's Arts Council won by applying
to the American Composers Forum. Under the program, Williams, whose
works have been performed by the Joffrey Ballet, the Steppenwolf Theatre
and other noted companies, will be among only about 50 composers around
the country to conceive an original musical composition to illustrate a
particular community. Oak Park's experience with fair housing and other
aspects of the village's history of address racial integration are to
form the basis of Williams' upcoming work about Oak Park.

In preparation for the creating the composition, Williams has been
interviewing Oak Park residents and officials and doing other research.
He said Monday, "I'm so intrigued by this community. ... There's an
honesty here that blows my mind. People talk about the good and the
bad.  My approach (in conceiving the new musical selection) will be
based on what a lot of people have said, `We've come a long way and we
have a long way to go (in regard to racial matters).'"

"We're hoping," Jones said, that Williams' composition will be performed
in January 2001 during a concert at Oak Park and River Forest High
School. "I wrote the first notes a couple of days ago," Williams said.

Also introduced Monday were the Arts Council board members, including a
new one to be approved next month. John Lukehart, who has long involved
in Oak Park civic affairs and who works as a vice president of the
Chicago fair housing group the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open
Communities, is to be named to the Arts Council board at its April 13
meeting, said board vice president J. Dennis Rich. In addition to Jones,
Rich and McMahon, others on the decidedly diverse board are William B.
Sullivan, Ed Doherty, Rae Kalin, Sarita Smith Childs, William Fillmore,
Michael Fry, Roberta L. Raymond Larson, Barbara Suggs Mason, John Mayes,
Fadge Flowers Pincham, Susan Rakstang, Pamela Risher and John
Troelstrup. The executive director is Camille Wilson-White, a former
board president, and Charity Piet is assistant to the executive
director. McKee is a consultant who was hired to direct the ArtsFunds
process this year.

The council's annual meeting closed with a performance by master pianist
Joseph Cisar, who was introduced by Rakstang, a former Oak Park village
trustee who now lives in Chicago and who is studying piano with Cisar.