BRIDGEPORT — Dibs season is in full swing.
Neighborhood folks all over the city are dragging folding chairs from the garage to lay claim to their coveted, freshly shoveled parking spots.
But is it art? One South Side artist thinks so. Her name is Briana Gaitan Soria, and she's selling canvas paintings of dibs chairs at Hardscrabble Gifts, 3335 S. Halsted St.
Dibs canvases are on sale at Hardscrabble Gifts. [Photos by DNAinfo/Ed Komenda]
Soria, of Garfield Ridge, painted the canvases in July and put them on sale at neighborhood art show, but no one bought them.
The inspiration came from Soria's philosophy as an artist: Find the beautiful, quirky and funny parts of a world that's so often ugly. The dibs concept evokes both laughter and rivalry in neighborhoods all over Chicago.
“We all kind of laugh, but it is a lot of work to shovel that snow out, right?” Soria asked. “If it’s 12 inches, I think I’d put chairs out there, but if it’s like 3 inches, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
The mini canvases are $10 each.
Soria is founder of Artside of Chicago, a host of painting parties all over the South Side.
"Dibs" dates to 1967, but didn't become "an entrenched phenomenon" until the 1979 winter that produced a record 89.7 inches of snow.
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