Hi, we’re Third Estate Art!

TEA is a group of artists and activists living and working in Chicago. We host events that aim to bring together our two favorite things, art and social justice. We’ve hosted workshops, done public installations about social issues, published an online magazine, and partnered with city parks to bring art to kids’ events and into field houses. Stick around and see what we’ve been working on!

Check out Decapitate every Sunday!

Decapitate is Third Estate Art’s online art and writing social justice magazine. We publish new work every Sunday.

As some of y’all may remember, Quaranzine started as a pandemic project during our darkest social distancing days to take the place of our in-person events. And while the world has opened up again, we wanted to keep this magazine going. This year, we decided to choose a new name—Decapitate—that better reflects our time and place in the world, as well as who we are as an organization. We encourage you to see how far we’ve come and take a look back at our previous publications - Quaranzine: Volume I, Volume II, Volume III, and Volume IV.

***Please note that we are currently closed for submissions. If you submitted work during our open submission period, we are so excited to see what you sent us!***

Spend time with TEA

You may have noticed that we’ve moved most of our operations online because of the pandemic. We really miss seeing you in person, but the good news is that you can still hang out with Third Estate Art virtually every week. We’ve created this online space for us to hang out, nurture our collective community, and make some art together.

Every Monday night at 7:30 PM Central, we host Third Estate Art Club on Zoom. Here's how it works--log in, work on your art projects, and chat with us. Everyone from casual crafters to professional artists are welcome. Some weeks will have a moderated discussion or group game and some weeks will have a suggested project or skill share. We all take turns hosting, and the topics are as varied as our interests—but they all center on some aspect of social justice or art. And anyone who hangs out with us can volunteer to host a week.

You can find specific event info each week on Facebook and Instagram. In the meantime, here are the upcoming hosts and themes:

May 6 - Cortney - Anger!
May 13 - Neil - Chicago Dojo Wars
May 20 - Sarah - Desert Island Albums and Changing Cultural Values
May 27 (Memorial Day) - Free Hang
June 3 - John-Michael - Zoot Suit Riots
June 10 - Sarah - Equal Pay Act
June 17 (Eid) - Sonny - TBA
June 24 - Connie -TBA

Artists of the Wall 2023

We did it again, folks! In our longest-running tradition, Third Estate Art was once again delighted to run the kids art tent at Loyola Park’s Artists of the Wall festival. This year’s 30th anniversary theme was “Stories of the Wall.” To honor that, we leaned into the idea of free play and letting kids experiment with materials to create their own stories. We had so much fun seeing all the amazing things the kids and their families created, and we can’t wait to do it again next year.

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