Chicago Alliance
of Visual Artists
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CAVA is a volunteer not-for-profit organization founded in 1988 to serve artists aged 50+. We're dedicated to giving our over 300 members throughout Chicagoland the opportunity to exhibit artwork in at least three exhibits annually in such notable venues as the Chicago Cultural Center, Evanston Art Center, Bridgeport Art Center, Beverly Arts Center, and the Leslie Wolfe Gallery in Old Town.
Creating art can be a solitary occupation—CAVA organizes and presents events for older artists to come together through its exhibitions, salons, member luncheons, workshops, annual Symposium, and special events. For more information, visit our CONTACT page, and sign up for our e-newsletter.
CAVA MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS:
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Exhibit in the Annual Members Show;
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Enter the juried Later Impressions exhibition;
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Engage in various group and media-focused exhibitions
we organize throughout the Chicago area; -
Participate in membership social and educational programs, including our Salon/Critique Events; CAVA Studio Visits; and the annual CAVA Symposium.
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FEATURED CAVA ARTIST
ALEXANDRA STEVENSON
Alexandra Stevenson’s paintings are inspired by the natural and built environment she encounters every day: the intersecting triangles of neighborhood rooftops, the gardens and forest preserves that provide an oasis for city dwellers, and the shifting light outside her third floor windows.
Whether observing her environment or painting, she's interested in the formal relationships between shapes and lines,
colors and textures, light and shadow.
Each painting comes from layers of looking, starting with a quick glimpse of something in her surroundings, distilled through memory, and transformed by the physical properties of paint.
Untitled, acrylic on canvas
"Paintings have a life and language of their own," says Alexandra. "In my experience, painting is a kind of negotiation: the painter and the paint go back and forth, sometimes with the push and pull of a heated debate, until a composition feels confident and speaks to my initial inspiration, or, offers an entirely new vision to share."
Nocturne, acrylic on canvas
Since 2021, Alexandra has focused on house shapes, lodged in her mind’s eye after hours of neighborhood walks during the pandemic. Initially, the houses were silent and protective, perhaps a response to their role during Covid, but as activity resumed in 2022 and 2023, her compositions became busier and more saturated. The objects and viewpoints that inspire a painting are not the subject, however. Like many painters, Alexandra finds her actual subject in the process, while working through the compositional puzzles and physical pleasures of layering paint on a surface.
Untitled, oil on canvas
Alexandra taught literature, drawing/painting, printmaking, and art history for 33 years at a northwest suburban high school, while maintaining a weekend painting practice in her Ravenswood studio. Currently, she supplements her art practice with part time work as an ESL teacher through Literacy Chicago and as a Teaching Artist for Art Encounter.
To learn more about Alexandra, and see more of her artwork, click here to visit her website, and follow her on Instagram at @astevensonart.