Community members gathered on Friday, June 12, at the Brookfield Shops by Eight Corners for the unveiling of a second round of locally created paintings commissioned by the village.
Twelve paintings by five artists were showcased at the event, centering on two themes: the “Art of Home” and “Stories from Brookfield.” The first prompt asked artists to interpret the meaning of home, be it a place, a memory or a feeling, through their own creative lens, while the second directed them to take inspiration from Brookfield itself.
Vivian Piña, a lifelong Brookfield resident, created a series of four paintings titled “Four Seasons” that will be displayed on the outside of the Shops structure. Each painting depicts a scene from one of the four seasons in Brookfield, she said — from residents cleaning up the town during Project NICE in spring to kids playing Little League in the summer and going to school in the fall or residents sharing a hot drink in the winter.
“I was so excited to make more pieces [of art] for Brookfield,” said Piña, who created a work inspired by Kiwanis Park in the fall during the Brookfield Shops’ first go at commissioning art. “This work took about three weeks in my attic. I really wanted to make the color palettes perfect to match each season.”
Piña said she was inspired by the breadth of activities of the community each season in Brookfield.
“I’m so happy that Brookfield is supporting local artists and human-made arts, especially in this time of AI” and artificially generated images, she added.
Artist Mary Beth Zwolfer said she lives in Palos Heights but watches her young granddaughter in Brookfield every Friday. Her two paintings, “Dreams Begin at Home” and “Home is Where Everyone is Celebrated,” feature a young child meeting a dolphin in their dreams and a scene of a resident celebrating their dog in their home, respectively.
Zwolfer said she heard about the call for artists from her daughter, who found it on social media.
“She sent me a thing that said, ‘Calling all artists,’ and I thought that meant neighborhood hobbyists. I’m not an artist; I don’t know what I am. I’m just a grandma,” she said. “I was like, ‘I’ll try.’ Last year, I was like, ‘Oh my God, these are real artists.’”
She said she was shocked when she learned she’d been selected to turn her first-draft watercolor into a full-sized painting, a medium she hadn’t yet ventured into.
“I had to go to Michael’s [arts and crafts store] and buy paint brushes and paint,” she said. “[I went] YouTube crazy! I know how to do YouTube; I [was searching up] how to paint.”
She said her works took disparate inspirations. The first, featuring the dolphin in a dream, was inspired by her and her family’s visits to the Brookfield Zoo over the course of her life, she said.
“When I was a kid, when my kids were kids, and now with my grandkids, we go to the zoo all the time. We just walk there, and we always go see the dolphins,” she said.
Her second painting drew on her past career as an interior designer, she said.
“I wanted to do a room with wallpaper. I wouldn’t have those real colors in my house, but it’s art,” she said. “My daughter and my granddaughter have a dog, and I had to put a dog in there. She has birthday parties for their dog, so I thought, maybe some people who don’t have kids could celebrate their dog, too.”
Other works were created by artists Aria Ramos, Joanna White and Haylie Skripac.
The artists were commissioned with stipends of up to $300 by Brookfield officials using funds granted to the village by Cook County and the Local Initiative Support Coalition. The village used much of the grant, totaling nearly $200,000, to pave the interior courtyard at the Brookfield Shops and build out its infrastructure to turn it into a community space for shopping, gathering and performing.
Libby Popovic, Brookfield’s community development director, said the village received at least 20 applications from local artists with renderings of their visions inspired by the two themes.
She said it’s been “incredibly gratifying” to see the transformation of the Brookfield Shops from beginning to end with the help of the grant from LISC and the county.
“From the beginning phases through the middle, it was a little tough, and then all the way to this culmination of the actual artists here with their art is just amazing,” she said. “As they were dropping them off at Village Hall, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, these look even better than they did on the renderings. The renderings were great, but the actual pieces are on a different level.”
