Why Are We Called 6018North? 

When the Chinese artist, designer and urbanologist Jiang Jun first visited the house, about its historic street numbers 6018, he said:
        6 is “lucky/fortunate” and represents flow.
        0 is “you.”
        1 is “are going to be.”
        8 is “prosperous.”
6018 extended to artists and neighbors alike, is a collective you that is fortunate, flowing, and prosperous.

Our Location

6018North's dilapidated mansion is located in Edgewater, one of Chicago’s most diverse neighborhoods. Located in Edgewater’s Kenmore-Winthrop dense corridor of apartment buildings home to CHA, Section 8, trans-gender residents, and international refuges, as well as single family homes and condos, this neighborhood is diverse on multiple levels -- economics, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, and education. Yet diversity does not necessarily create a diverse community. Therefore 6018North asks how artistic encounters can connect neighbors and create a space to meet through art, food, architecture, and/or performance?  

6018North is also itinerant. We create exhibitions and events in storefronts,  on the beach, streets, gardens, and in classrooms. Wherever we are, we invite artists to transform spaces through art while drawing people together. 

6018North Artistic Director: Tricia Van Eck

Tricia Van Eck is a curator with over 25 years experience, first at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago for 13 years, and then as the founder of 6018North, which empowers multidisciplinary artists to work together and with the public to nurture creativity, build community, and enhance Chicago’s quality of life. 6018North fosters innovation, challenging what art is, whom it’s for, and where and how it is created. Her work at 6018North and across Chicago ranges from large-scale Chicago Architecture Biennial installations to Chicago’s Year of Public Art’s community engaged experiences. At the MCA, Van Eck organized more than 70 exhibitions and programs that encouraged artists to be experimental, audience engaged, and interactive, all of which are the backbone of 6018North’s work.

6018North has consistently received numerous local, national, and international press. Water received a lovely review from The Reader. In 2021 WBEZ’s Natalie Moore focused an entire segment on RAISIN.  In 2020, Art Newspaper featured Justice Hotel at 6018North and Departures Magazine praised Windows to the World. In 2018-2019 Living Architecture was critically acclaimed by The Chicago Tribune, WBEZ, and NewCity.  2013 Swiss Wohnenreview and 2015 Le Monde Magazine listed us as top 10 Chicago highlight and Best of Year exhibition accolades from New City in 2011, 2012, and 2018, and The Chicago Tribune in 2012 and 2015. Even our fundraiser Black Out Dinners received accolades in Forbes and Crain’s. 6018North’s exhibitions offer unique, intimate encounters between art and audiences, a hallmark of Van Eck's programming.

Van Eck’s last project at the MCA was the Chicago presentation of Mark Bradford's retrospective and his community residency exhibition. At the MCA she presented over 70 exhibitions much of which were audience engaged, interactive, or extended the MCA's reach into the community such as Interactions: A Four Month Series of Artist and Audience Activations as a companion to Without You I Am Nothing: Art and Its Audience; Jan Tichy's Project Cabrini Green; Theaster Gates: Temple Exercises; Tino Sehgal’s Kiss; Here/Not There; and Hide and Seek: An Out of Gallery Experience. She curated the MCA Chicago presentations of various traveling exhibitions such as Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe and curated numerous exhibitions of Chicago artists including Mapping the Self and Kerry James Marshall: One True Thing Meditations on Black Aesthetics, as well as many artists’ book shows and UBS 12 x 12: New Artists/New Work exhibitions, which showcased the work of emerging Chicago artists. About the connection between the MCA and 6018North Tricia Van Eck has said, "I am indebted to the remarkable artists with whom I have collaborated with at the Museum of Contemporary Art and I bring that experience to create a new and experimental cultural space that increases opportunities, visibility, and audiences for Chicago artists."

Tricia Van Eck has lived in the Edgewater neighborhood for more than 25 years and has worked with the community in various capacities, most notably in co-designing the Harmann and Lotte Shaalman garden on Sheridan Road, as an oasis of calm for the multiple groups that gather together in nature. She is the co-director of the Edgewater Environmental Coalition and in 2019 Edgewater Historical Society named her an Edgewater Living Treasure. 

Awards & Grants

6018North is an Illinois not-for-profit corporation dedicated to the promotion of culture and the arts in Chicago. 6018North projects are partially supported by 3Arts, the AD3 Innovation Bootcamp Grant, an anonymous donor advised fund at The Chicago Community Foundation, Builders Initiative, a CityArts Innovation Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, the Gen Ops Plus Grant from the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the Field Foundation of Illinois, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, IL Humanities, the Illinois Arts Council, the Illinois Arts Council Youth Employment Grant, the Joyce Foundation, The MacArthur Funds for Culture, Equity, and the Arts at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Puffin Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, an anonymous donor, in kind support from Quarles and Brady, and individual donations.

• 3Arts

• AD3 Innovation Bootcamp

• Alderman James Cappleman and the 46th ward aldermanic office

• Alderman Harry Osterman and the 48th's ward aldermanic office

• Builders Initiative

• The City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE)

• Cedar Flats

• Chicago Architecture Biennial

• Chicago Park District

• Columbia College

• Richard H. Driehaus Foundation

• Edgewater Chamber of Commerce (SSA 26)

• Field Foundation

• French Consulate of Chicago

• Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation

• Illinois Arts Council Agency

• Illinois Humanities

• Joyce Foundation

• The Kochi-Muziris Biennale

• MacArthur Funds for Culture, Equity, and the Arts at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation

• National Endowment for the Arts

• National Endowment for the Humanities

• Propeller Fund

• Puffin Foundation

• School of the Art Institute

• Terra Foundation for American Art

• Theatre de Ville, Paris, France

• Uptown United (SSA 34)

• and individuals like you!