Early Influences and Education
Andrea Raila was born in Chicago in 1959. The year marked the beginning of the 16 year Vietnam War and the African American Civil Rights Movement. In 1961, Raila's father relocated to Brazil as one of a few volunteer North American doctors to help establish a medical center for the poor under the vision of Sister Irma Dulca's Social Works Organization (Obras Sociais Irmã Dulce OSID).

In 1963, Raila moved with her seven siblings and mother to rural Louisiana, where civil rights and racial conflicts made a personal and lasting impact on her. At age15, Raila moved back to Chicago feeling more connected to her liberal northern birthplace. It was this new city home of Chicago that inspired Raila's early development and artistic appreciation for socio-realism and magic realism.

A predilection for artistic expression runs throughout Raila's family. Both Raila's mother Harry (Bridges) Raila and father Frank Raila, M.D. earned scholarships to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Despite their artistic talents, they pursued fields in psychiatry and medicine. Other artists in Raila's family include her cousin, Loretta Raila Guske, who worked in watercolor and acrylics; and Raila's son, Christopher Andrew Rohrbeck.

Raila began her own formal art studies in 1980 with an undergraduate scholarship at Chicago's Mundelein College, nationally recognized for pioneering women's studies and leadership programs. At the time, it was one of the country's few remaining Catholic liberal arts colleges for women. Drawn to Catholicism's mystical elements in both art and philosophy, and nurtured by the leadership of Mundelein's faculty, Raila began working on a bachelor's degree in fine arts. Her work was influenced by the intricate stained glass windows, statuary and Christian icons of Chicago's highly stylized Catholic cathedrals.

Raila's appreciation of art realism bucked the trend at a time when surrealism was favored within her academic circle. Though this was her first artistic political conflict within academia, it would be followed by many campaigns the intense and passionately opinionated young artist would spearhead.

Andrea Raila works with model Carolyn

While at Mundelein, Raila led the development of the college's first student journal of art, photography, poetry and prose, called Pace (later renamed the Mundelein Review). Raila served as an associate editor and contributor of poetry and art. Her design of the 1982 Mundelein Review cover and inside copy captured the striking Art Déco elements of Mundelein's skyscraper and ornately woven interior structures of the campus's main academic center now owned by Loyola University. These early, simple designs of Raila's enjoyed a long history at Mundelein; for years similar commemorative drawings were incorporated into the school's marketing and fundraising correspondence.

Raila also pursued her passion for artistic and political expression through political cartooning; today she considers these early works reflective of her seamless journey as an artist activist. She formed an unabashed belief that artistic skills should be used for more than aesthetics and could become a tool to persuade, teach and even convert. Her interest in politics, along with financial pressures, caused Raila to change her academic major to Social Economics. This change was inspired by a natural extension of her desire to use art to explore and illuminate social issues.

Raila's early academic influences include two Nobel Prize-winning social thinkers from the University of Chicago, where her oldest sibling, Paula Raila, RN, JD, studied. The first was Gary Becker, a conservative economist under the tradition of Milton Friedman. Becker's Economics of Discrimination and other economic theories provided an academic lens through which to reflect on the real-world racial tensions Raila witnessed growing up in the South. Conversely, Raila was also deeply influenced by the work of author, actor and social commentator Studs Terkel. A blacklisted McCarthy era liberal, Terkel captivated Raila's strong sense of work ethic with Working: What People Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do.

Raila financed two European tours by working as a bartender, housekeeper and waitress during her undergraduate years. Her observations of Russia's Orthodox churches, turned into state owned museums, nurtured her early affection for religious art and her fascination with the dynamics of global economic history as she traveled through Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). An opportunity to live briefly with a French family in Paris, afforded Raila the opportunity to spend long hours at the Musee du Louvre and the Montmartre artistic community -a destination for artists worldwide to live and work in including Monet, Picasso and Dali.

Merging Art with Social and Political Commentary
After graduation, Raila integrated her artistic and political instincts with her interests in social and public policy while employed as a county government real estate tax negotiator. At 24, she used her drawing skills to help organize the expansion of Cook County's American Federation of State, County, Municipal Employee (AFSCME) union. As a community organizer and campaign manager on numerous statewide and local candidate races, ballot initiatives and referendums, Raila also contributed satirical cartoons that sought to give a wider perspective on social and political issues while lampooning political opponents for their buffoonery. Raila initiated a taxpayer organization called Citizens for Fair Assessments & Taxes (CFAT) that simplifies complicated tax and political issues by also adding cartoons with mass appeal for legislative advocacy efforts.

In 1982 Raila's cartoon caricatures caught the attention of political maverick and mentor, Patrick J. Quinn. Their shared political and social perspectives resulted in a unique collaboration between the young artist and an ambitious nascent politician. Quinn employed Raila for her keen and witty cartoon expressions on numerous political causes and initiatives. Raila's cartoons were utilized during press conferences and public rallies, and served as visual persuasive aids in Chicago and other Illinois newspapers for over a decade.

It was during this time that Raila found and developed her deft social and political voice in art. Raila captured the essence of such topics as insurance redlining, political pension abuse, property tax and housing reform, political pension double-dipping, campaign finance reform, utility and health care reform, and judicial reform.

Sample of one of Andrea Raila's stained glass drawings

Conversion at Any Age-The Artist Today
All of Raila's art forms express her strong affinity for social issues and cultural diversity. A British stained glass master commissioned for private creations has used Raila's drawings in Chicago's Swedish and German communities, Andersonville and Lincoln Square.

A narrative of human follies, joys, defeats and triumphs, Raila's body of work captures with strong and vital emotion the elusive and essential in her uniquely individual subjects. She often finds beauty and truth in life's most challenging moments. Her passionate activism across a wide range of social issues imbues her art with a unique perspective of human nature and the human condition as expressed through our culture, in our governments, and more locally and individually in our neighborhoods.

In addition to her illustrative work, Raila experiments with numerous mediums. Inspired by her friends in theatre and politics, she incorporates mixed media in her art. A strong environmentalist and recycler, she integrates both organic and man-made materials into her projects.

Raila started sculpting much later in life and admires late Chicago sculptor, Lorado Taft. Raila is also an ardent enthusiast and patron of contemporary sculptor Susan Clinard who she studied under at the Chicago Palette and Chisel Academy for Fine Art

Whether capturing life through drawing, painting, sculpting, digital photography, or working in other media, Raila describes herself as “an eternal student,” continuing to pursue the evolution of her art and her art education by attending art seminars and workshops. She feels that she has come full circle and now emphasizes creating art that expresses an inner voice.

In 2006 Raila established White Rabbit Studio, a retreat house for women artists, writers and social activists. This 116 year old Folk Victorian home was built in 1891 in Oregon, IL, a small town rich in art history and located two hours from Raila's home in Chicago. An art studio will be established on the property adjacent to the residence and open to members of the White Rabbits to enjoy and use for retreats soon.

White Rabbit Studio
Oregon, IL USA
E-mail: www.artworkandrearaila.com

© Andrea A Raila 2005-2009. All rights reserved. Copy by Figliulo & Whorf