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Kate Bowen

@katembowen

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all day every day. but not on here. (text or email me plz)
@acreresidency
@pilsenalliance
@chicagoartscensus
🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫⛰🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫🌫

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Wedding weekend begins…

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Had the sweetest time with these beautiful humans and artists at @acreresidency 🥹❤️‍🔥

Highlights include
-cold creek plunges
-shooting stars
-5am sunrise hikes
-late night card games
-doing my first foundry pour!
-cleaning a deer skeleton
-casting parts of said skeleton
-outlandish party themes
-the world’s best cornbread
-so much laughter
-and sharing space with some of my favorite people 🫶🏼

It’s truly such a privilege to be a part of this creative community and to witness a moment of each of other’s practices. My heart is full—thank you @acreresidency

Also second pic photo credit to @katembowen

P.s. sorry i couldn’t tag everyone—instagram only lets me tag 20 people 😅

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Missing @acreresidency extra hard today. We were hot and bug bitten, but we were happy.

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Acre, not just an artist residency, pero a place to make connections. Connections with the wind, the bugs, cows, the sky, plant life, food, and new friends. My first session was last year and it brought me this sense of peace that cannot be replicated. This year I came back as staff, being the on call person and a tech in the ceramics studio for half the session. It was a pleasure, even if the mosquitoes almost successfully killed me.

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💦🍓 ACRE Angels 2026 🍓💦 two weeks here gets me through the other 11.5 months

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utopia doesn’t exist but we have
❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥 @acreresidency ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

what a dream to bravely attempt to model what an alternate reality rooted in love and care could be like. to consider community safety emotionally and physically with continued covid safety protocol !!! and testing upon arrival !!! 🥲 living laughing loving coming back as AV Staff for 2 summery weeks of being outside in the present and making troll art 🫆

catch you all on the flippidy flip 🚨SESSION01🚨 angels 🫦

// & ty @mata.flores for the cute dslr pics 📸

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wet, wild, and whiskied.

It’s so beautiful watching people I met in separate chapters of my life finally meet. From different eras, different versions of me, and by the end of the weekend they become close and love each other, too. 😭

The best bachelorette this horse girl could have asked for 🥃🌹💕🐴 😛

(Not pictured: my love Alden, who was there via ghost proxy 👻 but home sick.)

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Dear Chicago arts community, this report is for you.

Over the past six years, I’ve been part of a small team working on the Chicago Arts Census, a project that began in the early days of quarantine and has grown into a citywide effort.

We’ve just launched the public reporting phase!

The Census brings together what arts workers across Chicago shared about housing, healthcare, wages, caregiving, and the conditions that shape whether a life in the arts is sustainable. The launch includes a written report, an interactive dashboard, and a series of town halls across the city.

This has been a long, collaborative process, shaped by years of organizing, data collection, peer review, and community work. I’m grateful to have worked alongside Kate Bowen, Alden Burke, Tiffany Johnson, Anthony Stepter, and Adia Sykes, my beautiful co-organizers 💞

The GIF here is made from 482 screenshots from our meetings over the years, and it still doesn’t include the larger sessions with advisors and peer reviewers.

If you’re in Chicago, take a look at the report, explore the data, or join an upcoming session. If you’re an arts practitioner interested in data collection, it offers considerations you can adapt for your own work!

More to come! Chicago, ilysm🤓🫶🏽👩🏽‍🔬🧚🏽

@chicagoartscensus

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We’re launching the public reporting phase of the Chicago Arts Census!

Arts work depends on housing, healthcare, wages, caregiving, and access. These conditions determine who can sustain a life in the arts, and who is pushed out by instability and lack of support.

Arts workers need each other. This is part of our collective story. The Census data reflects what arts workers across Chicago shared about these conditions and how they affect their lives and work. On its own, data is not enough. But when it is shared in context, and taken up in community, it becomes knowledge we can act on together.

This is just the beginning. We are kicking off a year of programs and reporting.

This phase includes a written report, an interactive dashboard, and a series of public programs. Throughout the year, we will return the data to the community through presentations and conversations with arts workers across Chicago.

REPORT: Our Work Our Worth: The Lives and Labor of Chicago’s Arts Workers. The report shares the process and methodology, key insights and observations, and a series of recommendations generated from the stories and data arts workers shared with us.

DASHBOARD: Take A Deep Dive And Visit The Interactive Dashboard. Featuring over a hundred graphs and charts, along with a special filtering tool, users can drill deeper to gain more specific insights about the lives and working conditions of arts workers in Chicago.

TOWN HALLS: Join us for one of the initial presentations in a series where we will share the process of developing the Census, analyzing the data, and introducing some of the insights we gathered throughout. Each Town Hall session will end with an opportunity to connect with fellow arts workers on issue areas that matter to you most.

Upcoming Sessions:
April 30: 5:30-7:30PM | Walls Turned Sideways
May 1: 5:30-7:30PM | ACRE Projects
May 9: 2:00-4:00PM | Blackstone Branch Library
May 27: 5:30-7:30PM | Hyde Park Art Center
Would you like to host a Town Hall presentation? Send us an email we would love to bring this reporting to you!

You can find more information and a link to register for an event at the link in our bio.

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Thanks for all the love and support at last week’s Halloween fundraiser for ICIRR. Grateful for everyone who showed up and jumped in last minute to make some good trouble together!

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How can I begin to describe @thegamacollective retreat? Phew. It was a time. A gathering of talented artists, all beautiful souls, coming together to enjoy being in nature, off the grid, and simply be together without any particular output driven purpose.

We were hosted by @acreresidency in Wisconsin and everyone was absolutely incredible. I felt so cared for and honored to be held in their space. Thank you @katembowen especially for coordinating, working with us and all our needs, for beautiful photos and the intentional care and consideration. Oh and the food?!! I’ve never had such delicious meals at a residency …ever. Every single meal was a complete culinary experience thanks to @yejinyoon. I mean smoked and braised lamb for the last meal?! And the fermentation workshop? Perfection. I also loved being able to make chai with @asewonder for everyone.

I got to make a cyanotype @tazeen.lufuki tote with the help of @kangmankey and it turned out so so perfect. And Tony did an awesome synth workshop, setup sound for our incredible jam session, and held it down on the drums. We celebrated our Beloved’s mawlid pbuh under the full moon with so much joy and artistry.

I think my favorite part though was the artist share sessions. I felt like I got to know everyone at a much deeper level through hearing their stories, intentions, inspirations, and learning about folks’ evolution of self and artistic practice and work. It was inspiring. There’s a lot of Muslim artists out here yall! And we’re all doing the thang mA.

So much more I could share but here’s a start.

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This year marked my 10 year Acre anniversary! I returned back this time as a program coordinator and felt myself part of a large wild ecosystem of passionate, loving weirdos, devoted to finding ways to be together and make art. So many of us queers dream of moving with friends to an art farm commune in the woods and through Acre, I actually get to practice that, to grow skills and capacity to LIVE that dream.

To be real with y’all, my first time around at ACRE in 2015 was not great to put it lightly. With any utopian/ cooperative project (I define a utopian project loosely as any attempt to be together with other humans cuz that shit is hard) there is a lot of failure. There’s a lot of messing up & mistakes.

ACRE has gifted me a restored hope in the ability of something to change for the better. I mean, how often do we get to see an organization in the span of a decade actually improve its capacity for access intimacy? actually develop systems of accountability, care and mutual support? actually commit to harm reduction? Actually grow even more loving overtime? ACRE is still the only residency I know of in the US that has openly committed to PACBI in the midst of the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people’s. What is more loving than principled action?

Witnessing the way that ACRE has grown into itself through the loving care of so many people is a gift. It is the type of gift that is needed to remain hopeful in a time where there’s so much that could lead me to despair and for that gift I am so so thankful. I love you ACRE, and hopefully see you next year! It won’t be another decade til I’m back again best believe ❤️

📸 @celestes.wrld @yoursweetlittlelovemaker @/Anna not on insta

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