Lillstreet Art Center marks 50 years of enabling the love of craft
Strolling along the corridors of the former gear factory at Montrose and Ravenswood is like peering into an unfettered mind or taking a ride with the wildest of imaginations.
Writhing tentacles poke from the top of a clay vase, giving the impression that the vase is alive, and trying to flee from an unseen predator. A cluster of toadstools sprout from the head of a woman’s ceramic bust — a commentary, the artist says, on the indignities of aging.
A model of a hooded wrestler bends over, revealing too much of his butt crack.
Overseeing this explosion of artistic creativity is a lanky, soft-spoken man in his late 70s, wearing black jeans and a gray vest.
“Ask that woman what her name is, will you?” he said on more than one occasion during a recent visit.
It should not be a surprise that Bruce Robbins can’t remember everyone who comes to Lillstreet Art Center, in December celebrating its 50th anniversary. Each year, about 10,000 students take classes here — everything from pottery and jewelry making to painting and textiles.
Robbins, a Columbia University dropout who grew up in Glencoe, started the arts center with his partner Martin Cohen with the vague idea of selling materials for ceramic artists while also offering a handful of ceramics classes. What started in an 8,000-square-foot former horse stable at 1021 W. Lill St. with six classrooms, has since expanded to a 40,000-square-foot space with 27 classrooms.
“I love it when people come up to me and say, ‘I was a student here and now my kid is a student here, too,’” Robbins said. “A lot of that has happened here. When you last long enough, that will happen.”
Robbins can’t quite explain Lillstreet’s longevity, other than chalking it up to “serendipity and luck and a lot of hard work by many people.” And, despite youth’s addiction to screens, kids apparently can still be persuaded to put down devices and dig their fingers into clay or pick up a paintbrush, if only for a short time.
“We’re an alternative space to being on your phone, and kids usually love it once they start,” Robbins said, noting that summer youth camps are a big part of what Lillstreet does, offering 17 camps each week for children ages 4 to 18.
If time doesn’t exactly stand still here, it certainly seems to slow down. Students, teachers and resident artists can and do spend hours upon hours at Lillstreet, losing themselves in their art.
“There’s just something special about Lillstreet,” said Laura Marmash, who created the woman with the sprouting fungi. People “go there for decades. They take a class, they are perpetual students. They will take the same teacher over and over and over because it’s their opportunity to have access to kilns and glazes and all that stuff.”
Marmash started coming to Lillstreet in 2008, back when it was located at Lill Street and Sheffield Avenue, first taking classes in painting and drawing, then taking the plunge to become a full-time professional artist working with clay.
She said she has always been fascinated with mushrooms, often foraging for them across the Midwest. When, as middle-aged people often do, she started noticing her own unwanted blotches and skin tags, she decided to turn the annoyance into art.
“The idea morphed into this idea of aging and mushrooms and decay and cycle-of-life-type stuff,” Marmash said.
But you’re just as likely to see a tattooed 20- or 30-somethings working with clay, metals, textiles or paints at Lillstreet.
Caleb Rodriguez, 35, of Uptown, was there on a recent weekday making one of his “cephalopots,” a vase with squid tentacles poking out of the top.
Rodriguez said he is “heavily inspired by the horror genre — in writing, games, movies, etcetera — and weird creatures that crawl around on too many legs are a staple there.”
Rodriguez, who also works as Lillstreet’s morning opener, previously worked remotely in quality assurance for Apple for about 11 years.
“I quit and started coming here [in April 2024] as a student just to figure things out. One of the first things I noticed was, oh, I love actually being around people,” he said. “There are people here who I would never in any other circumstance have an opportunity to speak to, hang out with, learn from. That is one of my favorite parts about being here, that sense of community among different generations. … It’s fantastic.”