Dear friends, supporters, and neighbors,

I’m pleased to share with you all Comfort Station’s 2022 Annual Report! We’re excited to give an overview of what we accomplished last year, all of the artists and partner organizations we worked with, and how we continue to evolve as an organization in our twelfth year of offering free public programming in the heart of Logan Square.

Like many small arts organizations, 2022 was a unique and transitional year for Comfort Station as we continued to navigate the uncertainties and complexities of the pandemic, while also beginning to pivot back to what “normal” programming would have looked like pre-COVID. We returned to regular programming inside our building for the first time since 2019 (hard to believe!), having focused the majority of our programmatic efforts in 2021 on outdoor programming on our public lawn, and having suspended our regular programming in 2020 in order to make our building available as a resource hub for mutual aid efforts at the outset of the pandemic. It was immensely gratifying to return to familiar territory indoors while we also continued to expand the scope of what happens outside, as the unique character of this particular building has played such an important role in Comfort Station being what it is.

My own involvement with Comfort Station began in 2011 as an artist when I was invited to exhibit my work as the building was activated again after its renovation. One month later, I stayed involved as a volunteer programmer, founding the weekly Comfort Music concert series, and I eventually took on the role of director as we became a 501c3 in 2016. When I first set foot into this unique building, I couldn’t have predicted that it would be such an important part of my life over a decade later, nor could I have imagined the array of incredible artists and programmers that would interact with the space over the years. A lot of what happens now at Comfort Station still looks the same as it did twelve years ago, as we have consciously held onto the organic and informal aspects of our early years experimenting with the potential of what this space could be. A lot has also changed and grown as we’ve tried to fully explore that potential, expand the range of programs we offer, and build a sustainable organization. I’m excited to continue to watch it grow and change even more in the years to come. 

Thank you to all who supported Comfort Station in 2022, our programmers and staff, all of the artists and performers who presented their work with us, all of our partners and neighbors, and everyone who attended our programming over the year!

Warmly,

Jordan Martins

Executive Director

Annual Report

During our 2022 programming season, Comfort Station curated and hosted more than 100 free public events. Our programs included 8 monthly exhibitions, 28 concerts in our weekly Comfort Music series, 25 screenings in our weekly Comfort Film series, as well as a variety of other performances, workshops, installations, and lectures programmed by our staff and in collaboration with outside curators and partner organizations. Our total revenue for the 2022 fiscal year was $111,080, up from $80,165 in 2021. Our total expenses for the year were $111,617, up from $79,795 in 2021.

Our return to regular indoor programming in 2022 was accompanied by efforts to maintain and grow much of the outdoor programming that we had developed out of necessity on the public lawn next to our building. In 2021, a grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) allowed us to build a structure we call SCAFFOLD, designed in kind by Via Architects + Diseñadores as a modular platform for other artists and programs to adapt for outdoor performances and installations. We began our 2022 season with this structure already in place, allowing us to plan a variety of activations on and around it over the year as our core programs re-emerged inside. In 2022 we invited over twenty artists to make work responding to SCAFFOLD, in addition to numerous special projects, collaborations with partner organizations and pop up events on the lawn that utilized the structure. 

Our two largest special projects in 2022 reflected this expanded effort to activate the lawn. Force and Motion is an eclectic month-long performance program originally conceived of in 2017 as a way to activate the inside of our historic building, reserving one month of the year to use the space for more active performances rather than having an exhibition. After a four year hiatus this program returned primarily as an outdoor program, primarily utilizing SCAFFOLD as a backdrop or staging for a variety of performances by artists such as Kezia Waters and Yiwei Leo Wang.

We also collaborated with Palenque LSNA on our second annual Dia de Muertos celebration, VIVA LA VIDA, utilizing SCAFFOLD as a platform for invited artists and community members to create unique ofrenda altars in each of the sections of the structure, featuring Sophie Lopez, Marylu Herrera, Sara Prado, Keny Sánchez, Juan Molina Hernandez, DePaul Professor L.A. Saravia & the students of her course LSP 200: Race, Power, Resistance, and AnySquared. Additional performances included a drag showcase organized by Xitlali Celesté, and Aztec ceremonial dances led by Susana Ollin Kuikatl Tekpatzin Banuelos.

Our capacity to reconstitute our regular programs while also investing energy in our outdoor programming was bolstered by another significant milestone in our history, hiring two part-time salaried employees–our executive director and a new artistic director position. Payroll for these two positions amounted to 25% of our operating budget in 2022.

Since our founding in 2011 all aspects of our organization have been operated by volunteers carrying out the administration, programming, marketing, fundraising and other operations, with no salaried staff. As our budget grew we began paying ourselves small stipends, usually as end-of-year payments to everyone who played a role in keeping Comfort Station running during the programming season. These stipends continued to grow as we allocated resources to have core administrative duties handled on a more consistent basis, and by late 2021 our board concluded that we had the budget capacity to commit to our first official employee. It was also decided that we should split up the duties of the executive director, carving out the curatorial duties for an additional hire to expand our capacity and bring in a new voice in the leadership. We finalized our interviews for this position in early 2022 and hired Katie Rauth as our first artistic director in March, hitting the ground running that spring as they oversaw the planning for SCAFFOLD, Force and Motion and Dia de Muertos, as well as gestating a new lecture series called Soapbox.

We have been steadily moving toward this goal since becoming a 501c3 in 2016 in order to build a solid foundation for the organization’s operations, as well as creating sustainable conditions for any future turnover in leadership; having salaries in place for these roles will allow us to carry out a full search and application process with professional compensation rather than asking someone to step into a director position on a volunteer basis. Splitting up these roles also allowed our executive director to proactively grow our fundraising efforts, which is reflected in our budget increase from 2021 to 2022. 42% of our income came from foundation grants. In addition to our longstanding support from the Driehaus Foundation and Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, we also received significant funding from The Builder’s Initiative and The ArtsWork Fund in 2022, both of which helped to fund our Force and Motion and Dia de Muertos projects. 

REVENUE

Foundation Grants: 42.3%
Fundraising Events: 31.1%
Government Grants: 12.9%
Individual Donations: 6.4%
Corporate Contribution: 2.7%
Other: 3.1%
Board Giving: 1.6%

Total Revenue: $111,079.93

Our own fundraising events revolved around three initiatives spread across the year, collectively amounting to just under 31% of our revenue for the year. Our annual benefit dinner with Lula Cafe (which started in 2013) was back for the first time since the 2020 edition was canceled at the outset of the pandemic. We brought back our Home Comforts auction for a third year, raising money not only for Comfort Station but the participating artists (who received 60% of the final bid). We also launched a new fundraiser in 2022, a Native Plant Sale offering five different kits made for various gardening conditions, selling nearly 200 kits in our first year and raising enough money for us to feel confident about repeating the event in 2023. Diversifying these fundraising approaches has been a key component of our navigating a period of uncertainty as well as the projected growth in our budget in recent years.

Individual donations amounted to 6.4% in 2022, both from donations that we collected during events and from generous contributions from donors in our community wanting to support what we do. We see potential and a need to expand this source of revenue in the future.

EXPENSES

Artist Fees: 34.0%
Payroll Expenses: 25.2%
Independent Contractors: 18.6%
Fundraising: 9.4%
Production and Event Costs: 5.8%
Occupancy Costs: 4.1%
Admin Costs: 2.4%
Marketing: 0.4%

Total Expenses: $111,616.84

Our largest expense category for 2022 was artist fees, 34% of our overall budget. These payments included: guarantees offered to all artists invited to present, perform, or exhibit at Comfort Station; donations made during events and paid out to anyone performing (we pay 100% of what comes into our donation box directly to artists after the event); stipends for SCAFFOLD, Force and Motion and Dia de Muertos programs; and payments to all artists whose work sold in our Home Comforts auction. Since the very beginning of our programming in 2011 we have prioritized all of our programming being free to the public and paying the artists we work with, relying on contributed income to balance out the lack of earned income from charging a cover at our events. As our budget has grown, so has our capacity to pay artists. We intend to increase our payments to artists even more as our budget continues to grow in the coming years.

Payments to independent contractors comprised 18.6% of our expenses in 2022. The majority of these payments were to programmers who run core programs (Comfort Music, Comfort Film, our exhibition program), helped marketing efforts in different areas or otherwise played a consistent role in some aspect of our organization over the year. We are in a transitional phase where we remain “volunteer run” insofar as most of these programmers are not being paid a set hourly wage for every aspect of their work, while at the same time everyone involved in our organization in 2022 received stipends in some form through one of the payment structures we have in place. Starting in 2021 and continuing in 2022, we instituted a set $50 “hosting fee” for every event, paid to the programmer who was responsible for running it.

We see this as a baseline pay structure that aims to build pay equity at the fundamental level of what it takes to run Comfort Station’s events (i.e., someone showing up at the space to make it happen). For certain projects funded by project grants–such as Dia de Muertos and Force and Motion–we were able to offer professional rates to everyone involved in the production, including curator stipends, payments for marketing and graphic design, and event staffing. Additionally, we paid out end of year stipends to all staffers who actively contributed to our operations over the year, with the largest of these stipends being paid to those who managed our core programs. 

2022 Exhibiting Artists…

April - Natalia Villanueva Linares

May - ebere agwuncha

June - Rob Sohmer and Andy Hunt

July - Annabelle Dunstan and Lily Szymanski

September - Jesse Malmed

October - Chris Reeves

November - Bun Stout and Brittany Sowacke

December - Hale Ekinci

Comfort Music Performers…

Adam Shead

Alex Brinkman

Andrew Tham

Anthony Burton

Ben Zucker

Beth McDonald

Coupler

DAVi MUSiC

Deidre Huckabay

Donny Mahlmeister

Em Spel

Emily Beisel 

Eric Capper

Erica Gressman

Fieldmates

Flux Bikes

Ghost Voice Classical Trio

Hali Palombo

Hideaki Noguchi

HLDAY MAGIK

Jakob Heinemann Quartet

Jeff Kimmel

Jeff Swanson

Jenna Lyle

Kyle Gregory Price

Lykanthea

Martin Yam Møller

NadNavillus

Nick Broste

olula negre

Pinson String Band

ragenap

Sam R Scranton

Tim Midyett

Toby Summerfield

Tonal Masher

Weston Olencki

Will Yager

Zach Moore

Zachary Good

Comfort Film Screenings…

Alexander Kluge – Short Films from 1960 TO 1970

Chicago International Film Festival After Dark

Comfort Film Halloween Presents: Animated Forgotten Horror Shorts

Comfort Film Halloween Presents: Eyes of Fire (1983)

Comfort Film Halloween: Live-Action Forgotten Horror Shorts

Despiser (2003)

DON’T LET THE RIVERBEAST GET YOU! (2012)

Films of Irving Gamboa: Death and Transfiguration

First Nations Film and Video Festival: Once upon a time in Huasco Alto

Former Prairie: Alternative Views of Chicago on Film

James Fotopoulos TIMON (2020)

Kino x 3: In the Name of Scheherezade or the First Beer Garden in Tehran

Released and Abandoned Forgotten Oddities of the Home Video Era Presents: Hawk Jones (1986)

Released and Abandoned: Forgotten Oddities of the Home Video Era presents: Nightmare Weekend (1986)

Released and Abandoned: Forgotten Oddities of the Home Video Era presents: STAR TIME (1992)

Rubén Galindro Jr. Frights! 

Silent Film and Loud Music Present: A live music score for A Page Of Madness (1926)

Silent Films and Loud Music Series Presents: The Blue Bird (1918)

Silent Film and Loud Music Present: Coupler with a live score of The Bat (1926)

Silent Film and Loud Music Present: Mukqs with a live score for An Optical Poem and more.

Silent Film and Loud Music Present: The Cat & the Canary (1927) with a live score by LNR TMB

Soft Cage Films Presents: Resistimos

The Alley Cat (2015) by Marie Ullrich

The Great Chicago Conspiracy Circus

The Timekeepers of Eternity (2021)

The Unicorn Tales of Nick De Noia (1978)

Partner organizations and collaborators…

AFSCME / AICWU

AnySquared Projects

Art Design Chicago Now + Terra Foundation

Chicago Democratic Socialists of America

Cinnamon Davenport’s Assembly Room

Columbia University

Dominican University

First Curve Apothecary

First Nations Film & Video Festival 

Goethe Institut

Homeroom Chicago

Industry of the Ordinary

Kenning Editions

Logan Square Arts Festival

Logan Square Chamber of Commerce

Logan Square Preservation

Meekling Press

Mezcla Collective

Orbit’s Spell

Palenque Logan Square Neighborhood Association

Parlour Tapes

Sacred Harp

Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center

Soft Cage Films

Southside Projections

Stretch Metal

The Bridge

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Tiny Table Gallery

United Musicians and Allied Workers

Wild World Gardens

Zinemercado