Soft and shiny gold-flecked papers are carefully arranged on nearly completed painted canvases by artist Kristen Williams on Thursday. Williams’ painting studio is tucked in the back of the newest addition to Chatham and “Mahalia’s Mile” on 79th Street.
The artist is the manager of the area’s new retail store Mahalia’s, named for the former Chatham resident and legendary singer Mahalia Jackson.
The canvases Williams has been poring over for a year form a painting series called “Unsung Heroes,” which will be unveiled Feb. 24 at a reception at the store at 735 E. 79th St.
The paintings, whose particulars Williams hopes to keep a surprise before the reception, include “Chathamites” who are Black business owners currently living in the neighborhood.
“It’s portraits and paintings of some of the notable dignitaries and people who have owned businesses and community leaders who have made a difference in Chatham,” Williams said.
The “Unsung Heroes” art installation, in the works for a year, was initially scheduled to be done earlier, but Williams decided Black History Month would make a good time to celebrate beloved Chatham residents.
“People love their historical notable [people], but this is able to honor these residents while they are still living, here and now,” said Nedra Fears, executive director of the Greater Chatham Initiative.
The canvases will hang in the store facing outward so they are visible from the street. Prints will hang around the community too.
The storeopened Feb. 2 and was made possible by a $200,000 storefront activation grant given to the Greater Chatham Initiative.
Before the grant, the leased space held occasional pop-ups for vendors. The building next door, also rented, was used as an art gallery.
“We decided to bring them together as sort of a synergy,” Fears said.
Twenty-five vendors representing Black businesses, nearly all female-owned, fill the space. The vendors are carefully curated, Williams and Fears said.
“We have a point of view,” Fears said. “We wanted to have things that look like us. And so we definitely wanted to have products that look like and are reflective of the community.”
Some of these quality and handmade items include children’s books, natural candles and body products, artwork and brightly colored one-of-a-kind clothing items.
The grant is only active for one year, but they hope to make enough profit to make the store self-sufficient, Fears said.
So far, the store has been welcomed with open arms by the community, the two said. They hope to increase the number of vendors from 25 to 50, which shouldn’t be hard — they’ve received many phone calls from potential vendors, Williams said.
Mariah Rush is a staff reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South and West sides.
