Adrianna, one of our EAC Interns, writes about his first day at the Art Center and artwork by Ken Minami in the Evanston + Vicinity Biennial, on view from August 23 - September 21, 2025:
The Evanston Art Center is currently holding its 2025 Vicinity Biennial, which is one of the Midwest’s largest and most prestigious exhibitions, and I had the pleasure of seeing it on my first day as an intern here. Most of the work is either hung on the wall, hanging from the ceiling, or at floor level, which can make it an interactive experience. Each piece has a story of its own, which can bring the whole exhibition to life. Walking through the space, I noticed different pieces ranging from different mediums like oil to sculpture brought the exhibition to life. Being able to explore multiple forms of art in one space is a powerful thing and can help inspire others to pursue their own work.
Ken Minami is a still life and figurative oil painter who studied at the Ingbretson Studio in Boston, Massachusetts, and he has taught at the Evanston Art Center in the past, mostly doing drawing and painting classes. He says he “enjoys the unique experience of having students in his classes for several years and watching their development. The sense of community at the art center comes from the many returning students who form lasting friendships.”
When I noticed Ken Minami’s “Walk-Thru” from afar, I thought it was a photograph. I saw something that reminded me of a faint memory. When you get closer up, you see the details in the portraits of the main figure, and you notice other things like the bus’s
information being blurred, and the man sitting on the bus. Landscapes where you notice more the more you look at them are always an interesting time, like a game of iSpy, except these landscapes feel familiar. You feel like you’ve been there before, and that is a part of Minami’s goal.
In the artist statement for Walk-Thru, he says, “I attempt in my work to create a dream-like urban landscape of strangers waiting for a train or bus, walking by restaurant windows and peering in, and or silently meditating on their own lives in the transition period between destinations. The implied emotion of these very brief moments is what I’m after. The places in my paintings are based on real places, but I will freely eliminate, invent, and add architectural elements to enhance my compositional and narrative objectives.” On my first view of it, I felt very attached to the fact that it felt so real. I wanted to try to recognize which train station she was at, and I wanted to find a personal connection to the figure, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It made me feel like I had been where she was, and I walked her exact path. A lot of Minami’s other works involve the same imaginary urban landscapes involving movement and or traveling, which makes you think about moving from one place to another, even if the painting is in a still image. You can still feel their movement.
View “Walk-Thru” at the 2025 Evanston Vicinity Biennial from August 23rd to September
21st in the Evanston Art Center’s first-floor gallery.
