Fifteen years after graduating from Columbia University, Anna Stark lived in the South Loop near the farmers market she always visited when she lived in the nearby dorm.
But now she chatted with customers, laughed with them, shared childhood memories and sold them all kinds of artwork, from small and medium-sized oil paintings to stickers made from crumpled soda cans.
“I couldn’t stop smiling yesterday, and I can’t stop smiling today,” said Stark, who is from the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area in Minnesota.
Stark was one of 95 artists who gathered near campus in the 700 block of South Dearborn Street for the kickoff of the Printer’s Row Art Fest.
The first day of the Printer’s Row Art Fest was August 10. Passersby browsed booths selling painted canvases, clothing, and other artistic trinkets.
The free weekend event took place around 701 S. Dearborn St. and stretched from the block of West Harrison Street and South Dearborn Street to West Polk Street.
The block was packed with artwork, food stall tables and tents, face painting, a children’s art zone and live music on two stages set up at the north and south entrances.
Stark’s tent booth was covered with oil paintings of colorful flowers, games, candy and sodas. She also had a display of prints, magnets, keychains and stickers that swirled like confetti onto the sidewalk with every gust of wind.
“One of my main themes is (nostalgia), finding subjects that touch everyone deeply,” Stark said. “I love rebuilding those connections from decades ago.”
The Printer’s Row Art Fest is Stark’s first art festival outside of Minnesota. She has previously participated in the Uptown Art Fair and the Stone Arch Bridge Festival, both in Minneapolis, as well as about 10 other art fairs in the Twin Cities area.
Stark said she’s become familiar with the people who have stopped by her booth at art fairs in Minnesota, making Chicago feel like “totally new territory.” She’s excited to share her art with new people, as she already feels connected to Chicago through living in the city and living in Columbia.
She described the energy of the Printer’s Row Art Fest as “vibrant.”
“The energy here is different than any art fair I’ve ever been to,” she said. “I want to pinch myself, I can’t believe it. My life is coming full circle.”
When Stark attended college, she first studied photography, then switched to novel writing, and eventually landed in marketing with a minor in public relations.
With her degree in marketing, Stark got a job in fundraising for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, a nonprofit organization.
“I’ll never forget my nonprofit classes at Columbia,” she said. “We had to organize our own fundraiser, and I really enjoyed that.”
“So I have these different interests and preferences, and I devote them to both at the same time.”
During her entire time at Columbia University, Stark took only one drawing class. She remembers being happy in the class, wandering around Chicago and sketching everything she could. “If I had just listened a little better, I probably would have studied fine art.”
She wished she could contact her art teacher and say, “I took that one class, only for one semester, but I still have all my drawings from that class, and it definitely planted a seed for what moves me today. The love was there deep down.”
Stark said she started painting when she was about 28 years old with her daughter and a set of paints from Target.
“It just happened that I started teaching myself how to paint,” she said. “Over the last four years, I’ve spent thousands of hours teaching myself everything from watercolor to acrylic to oil painting. It’s been a long, long journey of self-study.”
She describes her style as photorealism, with influences from CJ Hendry and Erin Hanson.
She also said that her story as a self-taught artist is an inspiration to herself as well, quoting Leslie Knope from Parks and Recreation: “I’m big enough to admit that I’m often inspired by myself.”
Stark says the development of her art style was very organic. She took time to learn and practice drawing and using different colors. She started by painting things around the house, such as fruit, then candy bars and paper bags.
She said one painting would inspire the next, and her recurring theme had become nostalgia — trolls, Furbies, Pez dispensers and other “little things from childhood.”
“The past and just those funny things, but a lot of people kind of forget, and then it’s really funny to see their reaction, like, ‘Oh my God, I remember that! I had 20 of those when I was four!'”
Isabel Morales, a South Loop resident who works in media relations, was browsing through Stark’s stickers and gummy bear keychains. She noticed the Surge soda stickers, which reminded her of the ’90s.
“It’s like hanging out in a friend’s basement or at a pajama party, there’s just soda and candy – it was very nostalgic,” Morales said.
Stark said she also begins painting current objects “that everyone can identify with and that everyone may have a common memory with.”
Summer Bialek, a Seattle Pacific University student from a northern suburb of Chicago, said, “She has La Croix-themed art! I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Bialek also mentioned that Stark painted all of La Croix’s best flavors, and that she got to talking about the limoncello flavor with her friend Matthew Eshaya, a DePaul University student who is also from the northern suburbs — both of her favorites.
Eshaya also liked how many different types of art Stark sold. “It’s nice to have a lot of things,” he said. “If I can’t spend $20 on a piece of art, I can buy a little sticker or something for $5 so I still have it.”
Stark often described herself as a late bloomer, whose passion for art developed later and who came from within.
“The whole experience, the school, the city, the students, the teachers, gave me this confidence that I definitely didn’t think I had before I came, and when I left there I felt like a completely different person,” she said. “I left my heart there, but I came home with confidence.”
Stark remembers one of her first days at Columbia, when she attended a writers’ meeting where anyone could stand up and read whatever they wanted. She said she was not the type of person to speak publicly. “The energy of the students and teachers, the kindness of everyone, it just inspired me, I was the first one to stand up,” she said.
“The things I studied, the professors I worked with were just so inspiring. And I know that’s in my work, in everything I do and who I am today,” Stark said. “From seed to flower, that’s what it feels like. My heart is just bursting.”
Edited by Trinity Balboa
