by annette coffee | Apr 1, 2023 | Blog, Uncategorized
By Kelly Pollock, feature writer for The Buzz Cafe
It’s spring in the Oak Park Arts District! The weather is getting better every day and it’s the perfect season to check out some of these businesses that have opened in the last few years. If you haven’t been on Harrison Street in a while, you don’t know what you’re missing.
Valdo’s Barbershop
Valdo Leo
n first started barbering as a child when he cut his uncle’s hair in exchange for being allowed to take over the kitchen on Sundays. It’s been more than thirty years, but he finally realized his dream of having his own shop when Valdo’s Barbershop opened in September 2020 at 128 Harrison Street.
After years spent in the military, barbering, working for UPS, and then back to barbering, Valdo became fixated on opening his own barbershop. He took his wife’s advice and drove down Harrison Street one day after dropping his son off at school. “I started seeing multiple storefronts that were available and checked out each one to see what would best accommodate my needs. I hit 128 and thought, ‘This is it.’”
Valdo is known for his versatility and can manage anything from a basic gentleman’s cut to the tightest fade and graphics. And while many people tend to forget that esthetics are taught in barber school, Valdo believes that it’s time to highlight those services. “We’re losing that essence in modern barbering. People get caught up in being a chop shop. There are very few barbershops that offer pampering services.”
Purple Sun Arts
Ann Viernes recalls loving both science and art from a young age. “I can remember in kindergarten always wanting to paint on the easels, but I don’t think I ever actually did it. I was very, very shy. But all through school my two loves were science and art. The gifts I always got from my parents were things like a microscope or art supplies.”
Anne chose to study biology in college and worked at Rush University Medical Center for more than 30 years. After several years of retirement, Ann took a sabbatical to contemplate her next step. “I went up to my hometown of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, with all my painting supplies and stayed for ten days right by the lake. Then, when I returned, I was walking through the Arts District and I saw this space for lease and I thought, ‘This is it. I’m not in healthcare anymore. I’m an artist now.’”
Anne opened Purple Sun Arts at 142 Harrison Street in the fall of 2020. The name was inspired by her love of “purple sun glass.” In addition to her paintings, Ann makes jewelry and greeting cards. She also sells some of the vintage glassware and jewelry that she has collected for years.
Taco Mucho
As a child growing up in Indiana, Ron Aleman loved watching his mother and grandmothers in their own kitchens. After college at Purdue University, Ron worked in sales. But he had always really enjoyed cooking and was considering culinary school. It was the events of September 11, however, that gave him the push he needed. “Life is too short,” Ron told himself, eventually graduating from Le Cordon Bleu in Chicago. It took twenty years, but in August 2021, Ron opened his own restaurant, Taco Mucho, at 220 Harrison Street.
When asked what he hoped for for the business, Ron said, “We want to be a casual, neighborhood taqueria—a place parents can bring their kids and a casual date-night spot with great food and cocktails. We see Taco Mucho as an extension of our home and want you to feel like a guest when you come in to eat.”
The menu is focused on tacos that are all served on handmade corn tortillas. They also offer nachos, tortas, bowls, and quesadillas. Sides including “abuela’s” rice and beans round out the menu. Taco Mucho is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11:30am to 8:00pm and also offers carry-out and delivery.
Steve Fisher Arts
For years, Steve Fisher’s art studio had been in the basement of his home behind the Friendly Tap in Berwyn. “I’d been thinking of getting a dedicated studio space, and I finally said, ‘If not now, when?’” said Steve. “But I needed a place that was as quick to get to as my basement.” That “place” ended up being 301 Harrison Street where Steve opened shop in the fall of 2022.
Steve has been painting since he was a child and was particularly influenced by his family’s visits to the Art Institute of Chicago. He always liked the Impressionists, and then, in the mid-1960’s as he was about to start high school, Steve took in his first Picasso exhibition. “It was a wake-up call. I walked from one end of that show to the other and back again. From then on, my art was never really the same. Before, I had done the kind of art kids do to get a pat on the head. After, I went my own way. The experience opened doors for me.”
Steve compares his work as an artist to a physicist working on equations on a giant blackboard. “They start with a hypothesis and different ideas. But then things start to mesh. That’s what I do with my artwork; I push things around until my ideas crystallize.” While Steve uses his new space as a studio, he also plans to display a rotating collection of paintings that will be available for purchase and to have tie-ins with Arts District events.
by Oak Park Arts District | Dec 31, 2022 | Blog, Featured, Uncategorized
By Kelly Pollock, feature writer for The Buzz Cafe
Jamilla Yipp has honed her craft as a photographer for fifteen years. Now, after four years in the Oak Park Arts District, she is moving to a new space just down the street. When Jamilla first considered moving her business out of her home, she wanted to be on Harrison. “I live on Taylor and I wanted to be able to walk to work and to be available to my kids. The Arts District was where I wanted to be. And now this new studio is in my dream location.” Jamilla is excited to be moving to the heart of the Arts District and hopes to have the new Jamilla Yipp Photography studio up and running at 136 Harrison Street in January.
Growing up on the southside of Chicago, Jamilla took an interest in photography at a young age. Then when she and her husband had three children in less than four years, she felt that she wouldn’t make enough money at a traditional 9-to-5 job to justify putting them in childcare every day. So she became determined to turn her passion into a career. “I told myself that this hobby had to become something real or these kids weren’t going to eat,” says Jamilla.
While she had always loved photography, she wasn’t a professional. Jamilla contacted her wedding photographer and asked her if she would take Jamilla on as an apprentice. She agreed and Jamilla spent the next eighteen months learning everything that she could. After that, she focused the first five years of her business on wedding and newborn photography. But weddings were exhausting and took up her entire weekend and Jamilla realized that her true love was photographing newborns.
“When I first started my business, I told myself that I would never shoot families because it didn’t seem like me and then it became my niche,” Jamilla laughs, “I found that I liked shooting families over weddings.”
But being a lifestyle photographer has taken a toll on her body and Jamilla is now looking to transition to more branding and corporate work. “I will still keep working with my families, but I’d like to supplement that with more corporate clients. Families are wonderful, but my 40-year-old knees can’t keep chasing toddlers through parks. After fifteen years, I have a ton of injuries. During outdoor shoots, you’re carrying equipment, you’re bending, lifting, and lunging. People don’t realize how physical it is.”
The years of the pandemic have also taken a toll on Jamilla. She moved into her first studio in 2018 and spent the next year working in the space and fixing it up. Just as she got to the point of being ready to promote it more, it was 2020 and COVID hit. “I paid for a space for two years for a business that was going nowhere.” Jamilla survived by using her savings to pay the bills and because of a corporate client who still needed work done during the pandemic. Finally, in 2021, lifestyle photography picked up again and this year, “I am finally breathing easier,” says Jamilla.
Jamilla has seen a lot of changes in the industry since she started fifteen years ago. “Newborn photography was just becoming a thing,” says Jamilla. “Anne Geddes was the one who started the trend. Her style was really posed babies with props. That’s how I started, but about eight years ago when my fourth child was born, I transitioned to the way that I shoot now.”
Jamilla describes herself as a hybrid photographer. “I tell people that I’m not 100% posed and I’m not 100% lifestyle. I’m both. I pose my clients, but then I have them interact so that it comes off as a lifestyle picture. I’m a coach. I don’t leave my clients to their own devices.”
In her newborn shoots, Jamilla believes in baby-led posing. “I still wrap newborns, but if a baby fights the wrap, then I will only try a specific pose one more time. I’m not going to force a newborn into a pose because that can lead to injury. At the end of the day, the baby is in charge of the session.” Although she no longer does birth photography (“too stressful”), Jamilla does do Fresh 48 sessions in the hospital that capture a newborn in its first few days of life.
When asked about the explosion in lifestyle photography in the years since she started her career, Jamilla points to the shift from film to digital photography as a major factor. “When DSLR cameras became more accessible and affordable, women could tap into that. And because a woman is more willing to let another woman photograph her birth or her newborn, lifestyle photogaphy took off. And women photographers are now a huge part of the industry.”
To see a gallery of her work, visit www.jamillayipp.com.
Jamilla Yipp Photography is located at 136 Harrison Street and Jamilla can be reached at 773-320-7558.
by annette coffee | Oct 31, 2022 | Blog, Uncategorized
By Kelly Pollock, feature writer for The Buzz Cafe
Bead in Hand, located at 145 Harrison Street in the Oak Park Arts District, has two reasons to celebrate this November: the kickoff of their 30th anniversary celebration year and the 10-year anniversary of Kim Humphrey owning the store.
As a child, Kim was taught to do things with her hands. She remembers being five years old and her mother sitting her at the sewing machine to practice stitching on paper. “My grandmother lived with us until her death. She was an artist and it was considered a valuable skill. I realized later in my life that not all families see it that way.” But it wasn’t until she was a mother with young children that Kim started beading. “I had little kids and I needed something that didn’t talk back and didn’t move and it really fit the bill,” she says with a laugh.
Although she can’t pinpoint the date, Kim thinks she started patronizing Bead in Hand within a few years of their 1993 opening. She took a few classes and was soon working at the store on weekends. As her kids got older, she was able to add more hours. When Doris Weinbaum, the then-owner, announced that she was planning to retire and wanted to sell the store, Kim worried what it might mean for her future. “I loved the shop, the customers, the beads, my job, all of it. I didn’t want that to change.” And so ten years ago, Kim took a leap of faith and purchased the store.
Kim is honest that being the owner of a small business has its challenges. “People today have so many ways of spending their money that I think it lessens the amount they have for any one place at any one time.” But Bead in Hand also has a unique market niche which draws people into the store. “It’s a tactile business. It’s so much more helpful for people to see the product in person before they buy. We’re one of very few bead stores in the area so we draw customers from all of Chicagoland.”
They can also offer more personalized service than a chain craft store. “It’s nice to be able to provide that service. To be able to explain to people what their options are. We aren’t just scanning items at a register. Most of our items don’t have a price tag so all our employees have to know our inventory and be able to answer questions.” Jewelry repair is another unique service that Bead in Hand offers. “There are very few places where you can take your favorite necklace from your grandmother and have it restrung,” says Kim.
Classes are one of the best ways to educate potential and current customers. Prospective students can view the current schedule and register for classes online. Classes are taught by Kim or by employee Kate Linne and include Basic Earring Design, Basic Stringing, Beginning Bead Weaving, Bead Embroidery, Knotting, and Kumihimo: Japanese Braiding. Classes vary in length from 1½-2½ hours and in cost from $35-45. Materials are generally not included.
Bead in Hand is kicking off their 30th anniversary year with special events throughout the month of November starting with a November 11 trunk show of semi-precious beads. On November 18, the staff jewelry show begins, and on November 25, the traditional snowflake ornament drop-in event returns for the first time since before the pandemic.
On October 11, Kim was honored by the Oak Park-River Forest Chamber of Commerce as a Community Titan “for championing the small business community … with might and ferocity.” The Community Titan Awards were presented to individuals this year in lieu of the traditional Spotlight Awards that focused on small businesses. The Titans were nominated via online submission and according to the Chamber of Commerce are “those who have worked tirelessly, relentlessly and whole-heartedly for the well-being of our business community. Their strong and wide shoulders support the rest of us to grow and flourish.”
Being a small business owner is a tremendous responsibility, but Kim is still passionate about the art she discovered almost 30 years ago. “One of the great things about beads is that it is a never-ending learning experience. You can string beads on wire, you can do bead weaving, you can embroider with beads. There are so many different ways to incorporate them that you are never really finished learning. There’s always something new. It’s amazing.”
Bead in Hand is located at 145 Harrison Street. They are open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from 11-6, Wednesday from 1-6, and Saturday from 10-5. They are closed on Sunday. They can be reached at 708-848-1761 or [email protected].
by annette coffee | Oct 4, 2022 | Blog, Featured, Uncategorized
By Kelly Pollock, feature writer for The Buzz Cafe
For years, Steve Fisher’s art studio has been in the basement of his home behind the Friendly Tap in Berwyn. “I’d been thinking of getting a dedicated studio space, and I finally said, ‘If not now, when?’” says Steve. “But I needed a place that was as quick to get to as my basement.” That “place” ended up being 301 Harrison Street in the Oak Park Arts District, the new home of Steve Fisher Arts.
Steve has been painting since he was a child and was particularly influenced by his family’s visits to the Art Institute of Chicago. He always liked the Impressionists, and then, in the mid-1960’s as he about to start high school, Steve took in his first Picasso exhibition. “It was a wake-up call. I walked from one end of that show to the other and back again. From then on, my art was never really the same. Before, I had done the kind of art kids do to get a pat on the head. After, I went my own way. The experience opened doors for me.”
While he has focused throughout his life on different art forms, primarily painting and printmaking, Steve is interested in how these different mediums can coalesce into something new. “Instead of working in different compartments, I want to put them together and see what happens,” says Steve. He’s excited by the possibilities of his new studio space where he’ll have more room to work the way that he likes to—bouncing from one project to another instead of staying focused on one piece at a time.
Steve compares his work as an artist to a physicist working on equations on a giant blackboard. “They start with a hypothesis and different ideas. But then things start to mesh. That’s what I do with my artwork; I push things around until my ideas crystallize.”
Other artists continue to be an influence too. “I love the artist Matt Lamb. He dipped his canvasses in a proprietary emulsion to create textured, multi-colored surfaces. I’m creating the ‘poor man’s version’ by pouring polyurethane, floating acrylic on top, and sandwiching glitter in between. The result is a standard painting that takes on a different quality.”
Steve talks a lot about influential artists who opened doors and how today’s artists shouldn’t see those doors as shut but should continue to walk through them and expand upon their ideas. He references Robert Henri who wrote in The Art Spirit (1923), “When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature. … Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it, shows there are still more pages possible.”
While Steve intends to use his new space as a studio, he also plans to display a rotating collection of paintings that will be available for purchase. He is tentatively planning to have regular hours on Wednesdays and to have tie-ins with Arts District events. “I’ve been flying under the radar for a while, but I’m trying to get into more shows and branching out online. But it all starts with doing art that you have a connection with. If you do that, then the work speaks for itself.”
Steve Fisher Arts is located at 301 Harrison Street. Steve can be reached at 708-788-1709 or at [email protected].
by annette coffee | Feb 28, 2022 | Blog
By Kelly Pollock, feature writer for The Buzz Cafe
Dima Ali doesn’t usually have things come easily for her. “I spent the first 28 years of my life in a war zone. So when something comes together easily, I think that it was meant to be.” And while Dima is still marveling about how quickly her new studio space materialized, she is excited about what lies ahead for her at Dima Jewelry Atelier + Boutique at 41 Harrison Street in the Oak Park Arts District.
Dima was born and raised in Baghdad, and she came to the United States in December 2002 just three months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Although she has a master’s degree in Family Law, Dima could not practice after immigrating. She worked on and off doing English to Arabic and Arabic to English translation, but after having her children, Dima focused on being a mom to Luna and Sam.
It was the 2016 election and the subsequent Muslim Ban which ignited her passion for activism. “I am culturally Muslim. It’s my culture and my identity, and the former President’s attacks on immigrants and on Muslims made me feel that I needed to do something.” Dima had always enjoyed making jewelry, but she lacked the self-confidence to think that her pieces were good enough to sell. But she wanted to make a difference and so she started donating her jewelry to causes she cared about and giving public speeches about her immigrant experience and her journey to U.S. citizenship.
“People loved my work and I started getting orders. I wanted to support a cause so I chose to donate a percentage of my sales to RefugeeOne,” says Dima. Bit by bit, her sales increased. She focused on pop-up markets and her Etsy shop and last year when things really took off, she realized she needed a separate studio space.
“My studio was in my basement, but at home, the lines between work and family are blurred. There are constant interruptions and creativity is not concentrated.” So it was serendipitous when a friend forwarded a Facebook post about a space for rent on Harrison Street. “I responded to the post, I stopped by, and I left with keys,” Dima marvels. With the help of friends, she was able to put the space together in just a few weeks, and on February 12, she celebrated her soft opening. “Sometimes when opportunity falls in your lap, you take it and run.”
While the space is her full-time studio, she will also be keeping some regular hours for customers to stop by. And she’s hosting “Sundays at the Studio” from 2pm-6pm to give other people working on projects a space to find some concentrated creativity of their own. “Productivity is infectious,” says Dima.
Dima describes her jewelry as “very dainty and feminine,” “made with good quality materials,” and “well-priced.” Nothing costs more than $75. “I’m selling to my neighbors, to my friends, to my community,” says Dima, “Good quality and affordable prices are my priority.”
“I love to work with gemstones. What is really in right now is pearl and gold. Earrings have been selling like crazy. Everyone wants earrings so they look good on Zoom calls,” Dima laughs.
Dima also feels strongly about supporting and promoting other crafters in the community. “When I started, nobody wanted to give me an opportunity.” She’s determined to break that cycle and has set up a small area in her boutique for other crafters to sell their wares.
Dima is proud of her journey and her new venture. “The hardship I lived through made me the woman that I am today. I went through trauma after trauma after trauma, but I carry my scars with pride. I reached a point in my life where I needed to prove to myself and to my kids that, like air, I’ll rise. For a long time, I was just a mom, but now, I’m a mom with a business.”
Dima Jewelry Atelier + Boutique is located at 41 Harrison Street. Dima Ali can be reached at [email protected]. Visit her Etsy shop at www.etsy.com/shop/dimajewelrydesigns or follow her on Facebook and Instagram.
by annette coffee | Feb 20, 2022 | Blog
It all began in 1972. To be factually accurate, it began several years before as NMC Discount Records, but for what we now know as Val’s halla Records, this July marks the big 50.
Celebrate with them:
The first item up is our SHARE A MEMORY project. If there is one thing Val was known for, it was telling stories. Please share a memory or two from the last 50 yrs. Val stories, music stories, pet stories, whatever you’ve got! We can’t think of a better way to honor Val than by telling stories. CLICK HERE to share.
Next, they are compiling a list of the Favorite 50 albums of Val’s halla customers from the last 50 years, so they need your input! Please nominate an album (or many) to be considered for this list. Later in the year, they will compile all of the nominees and take a vote, so CLICK HERE and get nominating!
A photo was taken on the last day at the old store and it was amazing. They are hoping to create a little photo magic again this year. If you were an employee of Val’s halla Records, a friend of Val, or anyone who has been impacted by this amazing place (they are going to need a wide lens), they’d love for you to join them. Tentatively, they are hoping to take a picture in the morning on Sat, Jul 30th before a huge day of festivities. To start, they want to start gathering contact information for everyone, so please CLICK HERE to sign up and they will keep you posted! Please forward this to anyone you can think of and don’t assume they have already contacted someone!
They are having a kickoff party – ‘Cue the Record in partnership with our friends from Fitzgerald’s and BABYGOLD BARBEQUE. How does this sound? Your $39 ticket gets you:
- All You Can Eat BBQ
- A BABYGOLD COLDBEER
- A night of amazing music spinning on sweet, sweet vinyl. All selections curated from Val’s staff will be from the year it all began…1972.
- The Val’s halla shop inside of BABYGOLD BARBEQUE will be open for business and just might have some specialties to add to your collection!
The event will be held at BABYGOLD BARBEQUE located at 6613 Roosevelt Rd, Berwyn, IL 60402. This amazing event may sell out, so CLICK HERE and get your tickets today. It’s time to treat yourself.
