Welcome to the Williamson Street
Art Center!
The Williamson Street Art Center offers art instruction for people of all ages and abilities in a variety
of settings:
- Art classes and camps at the Williamson Street Art Center
- Art instruction elsewhere
- Community art projects throughout the Midwest
- Artist-in-residencies at schools and community centers
Works of art for individuals and groups are also available.
We believe that when people make art, they participate in the process of transformation.
Artistic activity allows each of us to engage in the most profound universal activity: creation. At the
same time, we are able to experience the most basic childhood impulse: play.
We also believe that everyone has the ability to express herself or himself artistically.
Everyone has the right to find joy, wonder and a sense of discovery through their own artistic creation.
We promise to do our best to help each person who works with us, experience art in a way that enriches
their life.
Thank you for visiting the Williamson Street Art Center!
Sharon Kilfoy
Director
The mission of the Williamson Street Art Center is to use artistic activity as a means of
offering inspiration which will facilitate the growth of the creative spirit.
The Williamson Street Art Center strives to support individual and collective artistic expression by
encouraging an exploration of material, form, content, connection, and approach.
The vision of the Williamson Street Art Center is to be more than an art school.
As an organization, it serves as a hub of artistic activity that reaches into the larger community
through artist-in-residency programs and community arts projects.
As a place, it is a destination for people who hopefully return for inspiration, stimulation,
and renewal.
Visitors to the Williamson Street Art Center first discover art in the form of colorful paintings and
found art sculpture in the front garden. As you enter the main building, you encounter the classroom spaces
that periodically double as exhibition space. At times you will see instructor artwork on exhibit, as well as
artwork by students. Next you can wander amid the gardens and ponds in back. At the rear of the property
you will come upon the studio, partially hidden by trees, and marvel at the murals covering all 4
sides of the building.
We hope that your visit to the Williamson Street Art Center will brighten your day and enrich
your life.
Our intent is that you feel as if you have discovered an oasis on Williamson Street, and that this experience
of art will be carried with you into other areas of your life.
Sharon Kilfoy, Director of the Williamson Street Art Center, is a local artist whose murals, fabric pieces,
collages and assemblages are widely collected.
Sharon has extensive experience teaching art to people of all ages and abilities. She has been a guest artist
through numerous artist-in-residency programs in schools, neighborhood centers and communities throughout the
Midwest.
Her background as a community artist combined with her formal training as a studio artist ensures that
students have fun while they learn.
Sharon specializes in bringing divergent people together through community art projects which focus on
shared aspects of history and culture. In the classroom setting, she utilizes an endless variety of
materials in a curriculum she has developed to bring out students’ innate artistic capabilities while
they build confidence.
Sharon’s reputation as an art instructor is proven and respected.
For more than 20 years she used art to build resiliency in troubled children at the Respite Center, a
24-hour emergency/crisis child care center in Madison Wisconsin. There, she developed a curriculum that
uses art to help children recover from trauma. She continues to serve the Respite Center on a part time
basis. Sharon uses the knowledge she gained using art with troubled children, to ensure that all people
who work with her experience art in a positive way.
In founding the Williamson Street Art Center, Sharon combines her joy of making art with her ability to
offer inspiration to others.
She is enthusiastic about providing a positive experience for those who choose to work with her or visit
the center. Sharon is one of Williamson Street’s most long-standing artists. She embodies the spirit of
hopefulness, inclusion, and generosity for which Williamson Street is known.
Read Sharon's resume...
Enjoy the great art in these places and projects that we know and love!
When the empire crumbles around you, half your city moves away, your
neighborhood is burned out, bombed out and given up on, what else is there to do
but make art? Visit the Heidelberg Project in Detroit and see for yourself.
Diego Rivera credited the Detroit Industry Murals he painted at the Detroit
Institute of the Arts as his finest. "Motor City" accumulated a fabulous
collection of art in its hey-day.
Isaiah Zagar is a mosaic mural artist whose work can be found at
the Magic Gardens and on over 100 public walls throughout the city of Philadelphia.
Also check out the Philadelphia Museum of Art - home to the largest collection
of works by Marcel Duchamp.
Jose Clemente Orozco is the mural king of Guadalajara. His"Man of Fire" mural
at the Instituto Cultural is spectacular. His mural of Hidalgo at city hall, the
Palacio del Gobierno is also not to be missed. Included here are a few murals in
San Blas and San Pancho, and a hotel in San Pancho with notable art.
A little visit to a Chinatown fish market is followed by an afternoon at the
Museum of Modern Art. We end with a swing through the high line elevated park
constructed on an old railroad line, and catch a glimpse of a public school
mural.
In 1936 Leon Trotsky and his wife were granted asylum in Mexico. They settled in Coyoacán, on the
outskirts of Mexico City, on a peaceful, tree-lined street a few blocks from
Casa Azul, Frida Kahlo’s house. Now a museum maintained by a non-profit
organization that helps other political dissidents seeking asylum in
Mexico, the house is where Trotsky was killed
and is buried.
The Museum of Modern Art
in Mexico City
is known for having the best permanent exhibition of painters and sculptors from
the modern Mexican art movement. Representing the Mexican muralist movement are
significant works by the three greats: Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and
David Alfaro Siqueiros.
Most of the murals here are by Diego Rivera. The majority of them are in the
National Palace, but we've also included ones from Bellas Artes, the performing
arts palace, and the Hotel Reforma mural, which was later moved to the Museo
Mural Diego Rivera. The museum was built to house the mural after the 1985
earthquake destroyed the hotel, but not the mural.
Most of the murals here are at the Ministry of Education building. We were lucky
to gain admittance during the restoration process. It was quite interesting.
Fearing that we would be asked to leave, we tried to shoot fast. Now we regret
not having taken more time - not knowing when these murals will be accessible to
the public again.
All of these figures were photographed in Mexico - except the last 5 which are
from Brazil. A slide show of these Latino figures was used in an
artist-in-residency at Eagle School in Madison, WI to show children how the
human form is depicted in art.
Sharon says, "I went to the junior school at the Art Institute of Chicago during
high school. This is my first visit to the new contemporary wing. I love seeing
so many old and new favorites in one place. I love the light, but I am not happy
about the random placement of work. I am especially displeased that Joseph
Cornell's boxes are displayed so high children cannot see them. They were some
of my greatest inspirations growing up."
You can see more favorites by visiting Sharon Kilfoy on flickr.
A City Uses Murals to Bridge Differences
The New York Times reports on Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program, which has won praise for building civic pride and helping to heal racial divisions.
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