For more than two decades, Vida Radick has taught ceramics in a Chicago Park District studio, working as a ceramics facilitator at Ridge Park Cultural Center in Beverly. This fall, for the first time, the work on the pedestals will be hers. Luminaria de la Vida, presented by the Park District's Culture, Arts & Nature Department, opens at the South Shore Cultural Center with a reception on Sunday, October 18, 2026, from 2 to 5 p.m., and continues with free gallery hours on three Wednesdays: October 21, October 28, and November 4, each from noon to 2 p.m.
The exhibition gathers recent ceramic work by Radick, whose practice, as the Park District describes it, intertwines the useful and the totemic and favors organic forms. The centerpiece is a series of luminaries, vessels built to hold light and to throw it, and the show is organized around the quietly dramatic interplay between light and shadow they produce.
The setting suits that idea. The South Shore Cultural Center, at 71st Street and South Shore Drive, began life in 1905 as the South Shore Country Club, a suburban-style retreat for Chicago's elite, and its Mediterranean Revival clubhouse, designed by the architecture firm Marshall & Fox, was built in 1908. A theater followed in 1909, and the building was remodeled again in 1916. The club's fortunes changed over the decades, and in the 1970s the property passed to the Chicago Park District, which now operates the clubhouse, grounds, and beach as a public cultural facility. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and designated a Chicago landmark in 2004. Its 70-plus acres include a nature sanctuary and a butterfly garden, and the interior holds a solarium, a formal dining hall, and a theater.
Radick's route to that gallery ran through the Park District's teaching studios. The district operates ceramics studios across the city, offering programs for all ages that range from casting to wheel throwing to hand building, and Radick has been one of the instructors holding those classes together for over two decades. She has worked for the Chicago Park District for more than 25 years, most of them at Ridge Park, a roughly ten-acre park in Beverly that houses a gymnasium, auditorium, indoor pool, fitness center, and woodshop alongside its arts programming.
The opening falls under the umbrella of Night Out in the Parks, the Park District's citywide cultural series. The program partners the district with local artists and organizations to bring free performances, films, dances, and exhibitions into neighborhoods across Chicago. A ceramics teacher's first solo show, staged in a landmark building on the lakefront and open to anyone who walks in, is very much in that spirit.
Admission is free and the exhibition is open to all ages. The opening reception runs Sunday, October 18, from 2 to 5 p.m. at the South Shore Cultural Center, 7059 S. South Shore Drive. Gallery hours follow on Wednesday, October 21, Wednesday, October 28, and Wednesday, November 4, from noon to 2 p.m. each day.