1 Renegade Craft Fair (Halsted Street between West 18th Street and South Canalport, Pilsen) Founded in Chicago in 2003 and growing into the biggest craft fair showcase in the world, Renegade returns home for a weekend, bringing a wide assortment of artists, designers, makers and entrepreneurs. (May 12-13, 11am-6pm)
2 Wright Plus Housewalk 2018 (Oak Park) Up your dose of architecture and design by touring private homes and public buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and his contemporaries, while exploring his hometown—a perfect excuse to escape the city for a day. (May 19, 9am-5pm: members, $85, non-members: $95)
3 Anime Central 2018 (Hyatt Regency O’Hare Hotel, Stephens Convention Center, Rosemont) Part cosplay experience, part nerdy fun—comics, sci-fi, video games, exhibitions, performances and educational panels—Anime Central is the largest anime, manga and Japanese popular culture convention in the Midwest. (May 18-20, 10am-4pm)
4 Covet Market (Revel Fulton Market) Supporting local small businesses, the one-day, quarterly event brings together over seventy vendors and their handcrafted goods—from clothing, jewelry and accessories, to gifts and homewares, to body products. (May 6, 10am-4pm, $8)
5 Chicago Zine Fest (Plumbers Union Hall) Zines—their themes and formats—come in all shapes and sizes and they meet at the annual festival that celebrates small presses, zine-makers, self-publishers and artists. (May 18-19, 11am-6pm)
Greek-born Vasia Rigou is a Chicago-based art critic and pop culture journalist, largely on the subjects of contemporary art, design, and fashion. She moved to Chicago in 2013 to study Arts Journalism at the School of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC,) where she was awarded the New Artist Society Merit Scholarship. She grew up to appreciate art after years of carefully planned, culture-filled travel itineraries and museum-hopping around Europe with her family. During this time, she received a bachelor’s in English Literature, in her native Athens; a master’s in Media, in Nottingham, UK; and studied foreign languages—English, German, and Spanish at the University of Salamanca, Spain. Her writing—reviewing museum exhibitions, gallery shows, art fairs, fashion shows, and music festivals among others—has been published nationally and internationally both in print and online. In 2017, she founded and now serves as editor-in-chief of Rainbowed.—an independently published website focused on the visual and performing arts, digital media, and popular culture. When she’s not writing about art or looking at art—wine in hand, she keeps up with Chicago’s creative entrepreneurial and startup community, makes lists for pretty much everything, drinks immense amounts of coffee and takes cross-country road trips every chance she gets.
