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2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 21, 2015

IN CHICAGO

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

Editor-in-Chief Bea Malsky Managing Editor Hannah Nyhart Deputy Editors John Gamino, Meaghan Murphy Politics Editors Osita Nwanevu, Rachel Schastok Music Editor Jake Bittle Stage & Screen Olivia Stovicek Editor Visual Arts Editors Lauren Gurley, Robert Sorrell Editor-at-Large Bess Cohen Contributing Editors Maha Ahmed, Lucia

Ahrensdorf, Christian

Belanger, Mari Cohen, Emma Collins Social Media Editor Emily Lipstein Web Editor Sarah Claypoole Photo Editor Illustration Editor Layout Editors

Luke White Ellie Mejia Adam Thorp, Baci Weiler

Senior Writers Jack Nuelle, Stephen Urchick Staff Writers Olivia Adams, Christian

Belanger, Austin Brown,

Amelia Dmowska, Mark

Hassenfratz, Maira Khwaja,

Emily Lipstein, Jamison Pfeifer, Kari Wei, Arman Sayani Staff Photographers Camden Bauchner, Juliet

Eldred, Kiran Misra, Staff Illustrators Jean Cochrane, Lexi

Drexelius, Wei Yi Ow, Amber Sollenberger, Teddy Watler, Julie Wu Editorial Intern

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Webmaster Business Manager

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The paper is produced by an all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring, with breaks during April and December. Over the summer we publish monthly.

Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 1212 E. 59th Street Ida Noyes Hall #030 Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, contact: (773)234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly Read our stories online at southsideweekly.com

Cover art by Javier Suarez.

A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes and wandering eyes of the editors The Reader Refuses to Admit That Studs Terkel’s Working Is the Greatest Chicago Book Ever (Yet) Early this winter, the Reader announced an NCAA-style tournament to declare the Greatest Chicago Book Ever (it’s Working). They scoured the city’s literary history to find fifteen books that were not Working and put them in a bracket with Working, in a futile exercise to challenge Studs Terkel’s wellearned, ear-to-the-ground supremacy. With the first round clear, Working won out against Chris Ware’s Building Stories (good so far), while Richard Wright’s Native Son lost to Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns. Elsewhere on the bracket, Veronica Roth’s Divergent languished and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle surpassed Jane Addams’s Twenty Years at Hull-House for being slightly more readable and slightly less dense. But, as the judges discussed last Saturday at the Seminary Co-op, it’s a futile question. How can we really judge the best Chicago book ever? Are we looking for the greatest literary work about Chicago? Or the book that most embodies the city? What’s up with this dominant Big Shoulders narrative? Where are the women? Reader editors and Chicago lit-folk politely compared the strengths of each book and circled around those questions, all while stubbornly refusing to declare Working the best. Writer, producer, and all-around Chicago music guy Jake Austen gave the book a well-thought-out and personal defense, second only in passion to Bill Savage’s argument for City on the Make, which was emailed in and read aloud. Austen recalled—as Chicagoans over a certain age are wont to do—a chance encounter with Terkel himself: a high school Austen and his girlfriend (now wife) gate-crashed an upscale Michigan Avenue reception and ended up in the next day’s society pages after spotting Studs eating a Chicago-style hot dog. In the Sem Co-op, the Reader editors reminded spectators to vote on the contest results online. Filtering out, the Weekly staff did not chant “Working,” but we thought about it.

Answer key below. lexi drexelius

The South Side Weekly is a nonprofit newsprint magazine written for and about neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. We publish in-depth coverage of the arts and issues of public interest alongside oral histories, poetry, fiction, interviews, and artwork from local photographers and illustrators. Started as a student paper at the University of Chicago, the South Side Weekly is now an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side, and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists.

IN THIS ISSUE from olmsted to ono

garcia for mayor

Garcia knows firsthand that inequality and its associated challenges are more entrenched than an anti-downtown narrative conveys. osita nwanevu...4 five jerks trying to make you laugh

“Oh God—I’m going to tell you this story.” ryn seidewitz...7 off the grid

“Poledna is the first artist to physically alter the gallery, an act that asks viewers to consider both iconoclasm and the nature of material property.” sammie spector...8

a walk in the park

“Watching his feet tremble, I knew he was going to fall off of the wall.” emily lipstein...9

musician and maestra

“The children that I see every day, I call them my musical sons and my musical daughters.” hafsa razi...10

Project 120 partnered with the Chicago Park District to present plans for new plantings, facilities, and even a landscape by Yoko Ono—yes, that Yoko Ono. hannah o’grady...13 shifting spaces

one man, one sandwich

The goat sandwich is so full of flavor, it doesn’t quite feel like it came out of the kitchen of the unassuming Andorka. maha ahmed and jake bittle...11 the city’s hidden backbone

Kindra saw untapped potential in the barge industry, noticing that “really weird people” wanted barges for “really weird things.” maha ahmed...12

“Exodus” accomplishes its best work at the points where codes switch, rules change—where the going gets unexpectedly rough. stephen urchick...10 coltrane to close the gap

“Math, biology, and writing: they’re all the more palatable when music is involved.” emeline posner...16 JANUARY 21, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

Answer key: (1) Working (2) Native Son (3) Boss (4) The Warmth of Other Suns (5) The Adventures of Augie March (6) Building Stories (7) City on the Make (8) The House on Mango Street (9) The Book of My Lives (10) I Sailed with Magellan (11) The Jungle (12) Twenty Years at HullHouse (13) I May Be Wrong, But I Doubt It (14) Devil in the White City (15) The Time Traveler’s Wife (16) N/A

Chuy Garcia Navigates the Past in the Racial Politics of the Present

BY OSITA NWANEVU

A

nton Cermak, Chicago’s first immigrant mayor, was elected in 1931 after a mayoral race that, at its worst, captured much of the ugliness of the city’s early racial tensions. “Big Bill” Thompson, the incumbent and the city’s last Republican mayor, was defeated soundly—but not before mounting a vicious attack on Cermak’s Czech ethnicity.

I won’t take a back seat to that Bohunk, Chairmock, Chermack or whatever his name is.

Tony, Tony, where’s your pushcart at?

Can you picture a World’s Fair mayor?

With a name like that?

In 1890 Anton Cermak and his family settled in South Lawndale, a neighborhood that residents took to calling “Little Village” in the 1960s and a home to many Czech immigrants and their descendants through much of the twentieth century.

After spending his youth building businesses in the community, Cermak would eventually set about building a coalition of minorities disenfranchised by Irish dominance of the Democratic Party. It was this alliance of Czechs, Italians, African Americans, Poles, and others that helped bring Cermak to victory and his place in the city’s history as Chicago’s first immigrant mayor.

His pithy response to Thompson’s slurs has long been treasured as an articulate summary of the immigrant experience: “It’s true I didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but I came over as soon as I could.”

And so, thirty-four years later, would a ten-year-old Chuy Garcia, who joined 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 21, 2015

his own family—a mother and three siblings—on a journey from Mexico to Pilsen.

There he reunited with his father, who had immigrated to the blue-collar community to work at a cold storage plant.

After four years of living in Pilsen, Garcia and his family moved to Little Village, where he has lived ever since. The neighborhood remains a home to immigrants—mostly Latinos like Garcia. The Czech community Cermak and his family joined has long since dissipated. But while the racial makeup of the Southwest Side— and the city—has changed dramatically since the 1930s, the basics of the city’s politics have not. Garcia realizes, like Cermak before him, the importance of establishing his history within a community and using his record to establish trust with voters.

But Jesus “Chuy” Garcia is not quite Anton Cermak, and this is not quite 1931.

As given to repeating itself as history might be, this has been a race defined by the realities of Chicago at this moment. A collapsing budget. Closed schools. Dead youth.

And yet the sidelining of Karen Lewis’s campaign—a candidacy that seemed inevitable until it wasn’t—seems to have shifted the race back in time. Ire and contempt for the Emanuel administration’s approaches to education, crime, the budget, and development all remain potent, but so too does the influence of two forces that have shaped mayoral politics for most of Chicago’s history: race and clout. These are also the forces that have shaped Chuy Garcia’s campaign.

I

n a November appearance at Chef Sara’s Café in South Shore, Garcia spoke about the importance of equity between neighborhoods, a theme that has become central to his campaign.

“Neighborhoods have ceased to be the top priority of this administration, and we quickly need to change course in the city of Chicago to placing neighborhoods at the center of everything,” he told the crowd. “I am particularly troubled by the fact that the focus of the past four years seems to be primarily downtown Chicago, taking too much of our valuable resources and communities in terms of property tax levies and investing them in places that, oftentimes, don’t need it.”

This is an uncomplicated rendering of inequality—in access to quality education, in economic investment, in policing— across the city, a rendering that suggests inequality is primarily a product of poor public administration and, at worst, cronyism. Race and segregation—both historic and residual—are left out of the equation.

And for good reason, at least politically: voters have long been responsive to simple, universally appealing anti-downtown narratives, and Emanuel has garnered himself a reputation as a downtown mayor.

“It’s no secret that Rahm is looked upon as the candidate of downtown and perhaps a few of the wealthier wards where his donors are,” says veteran political consultant and Garcia senior adviser Don Rose. “Compared with Garcia, [whom] Karen called in her first endorsement a man of the people. This has been a consistent

theme and dichotomy in Chicago mayoral races.”

But Garcia’s experiences in Pilsen and Little Village suggest he knows firsthand that inequality and its associated challenges are more entrenched than an anti-downtown narrative conveys.

“It’s really where I came to understand Chicago, where I came to understand the U.S., where I came to grapple with the ABCs of color in America, where I came to understand racism, where I came to understand the struggle for socioeconomic justice,” he says of Pilsen in an interview at his campaign headquarters downtown. “It’s where I discovered Dr. King, listening to black radio. It’s where I learned about Cesar Chavez from a neighbor next door who was a follower and who worked with the United Farmworkers. It’s where I learned about the Black Panther movement in Chicago.”

Upon moving to Little Village, Garcia began working as an organizer and activist before attending college at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he earned degrees in political science and urban planning. After serving as 22nd Ward alderman during the late 1980s and in the Illinois Senate through much of the 1990s, Garcia returned to organizing in the neighborhood and was hired to head up the Little Village Community Development Corporation, now called Enlace Chicago. At Enlace, Garcia took a grassroots approach to addressing problems he calls “intractable”—youth violence and poor education, among others—and that he believes can only be solved by bringing different com-

POLITICS

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zane maxwell

munities together.

“No neighborhood exists as an island,” he says. “[Each] is interdependent with the rest of the city, and unless we start to build relationships—across neighborhoods, across race, across faith, across ethnicity—we’ll continue to be in trouble in the city. The city’s best assets—people—can be best utilized and marshaled when there is collaboration, when there is trust, when there is a sense of reciprocity and common ground that is built.”

“Common ground” is the mantra of consensus candidates, and Garcia wants to be seen as one; his proposals on crime make this obvious. Garcia has pledged to fulfill Emanuel’s promise to put 1,000 new police officers on the streets, a plan that, despite mainstream support and assurances about improved training and community engagement, seems out of sync with the conversations about the role of policing that have been taking place in liberal circles in Chicago and around the country for months. The promise is a key part—the most mainstream part—of what he calls

a “multipronged approach” to addressing violence. It sits awkwardly beside the progressive side of this same approach: his calls for the exploration of “restorative justice,” a community-led approach to crime that emphasizes harm restitution and community support as alternatives to the juvenile and criminal justice systems.

“It’s an alternative and it seeks to keep young people from being institutionalized,” he says. “The risk of institutionalization, as we’ve known, is that it can become a feeder into the criminal justice or juvenile justice industry or complex.” This is, of course, the same risk that putting a thousand new police officers on the street might pose.

Garcia’s stances on other issues are more thoroughly progressive. They are also not terribly unique. On education, both Garcia and 2nd Ward Alderman Bob Fioretti, Emanuel’s other main challenger, have called for moratoriums on public school closings and charter school expansion, voiced skepticism about standardized testing, and endorsed an elected school board and an expansion of pre-K educa-

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uchicago institute of politics

tion. On development, both candidates have criticized the current use of TIFs— Garcia has called for an audit and Fioretti has promised to declare a TIF surplus and redistribute funds—and have called for a minimum wage increase to $15 an hour.

Until recently, the Garcia and Fioretti campaigns even refrained from attacking each other on policy, choosing instead to let the records of the candidates speak for themselves. A voter asking about substantive differences between Garcia and Fioretti is likely to be told by Garcia surrogates, or Garcia himself, about experience—about Garcia’s years of grassroots work in Little Village, his current tenure in the Cook County Board of Supervisors, his service in the Illinois Senate, and his work in City Council during the tumultuous final years of the Harold Washington administration.

That latter role, and the context of Garcia’s election to City Council in 1986, are particularly important to Garcia’s backers and to historians of Chicago politics.

hree years earlier, in 1983, Washington had been elected Chicago’s first black mayor. Soon after taking office, a bloc of twenty-eight white and one Hispanic aldermen—led by the 10th Ward’s Ed Vrdolyak and the 14th Ward’s Ed Burke—coalesced in opposition to Washington’s policies. The resulting period of gridlock, in which the aldermen rejected all of Washington’s proposals and appointments, was dubbed the Council Wars by local media. After a 1986 court order forced the redrawing of ward boundaries to re-enfranchise African Americans and Hispanics, special elections that put Washington allies on the council were held.

Chuy Garcia, then a Cook County Democratic Party committeeman, was one of those allies and would become, as alderman, a key part of Harold Washington’s coalition—a set of alliances that briefly upended the city’s Democratic establishment as Cermak’s coalition had decades earlier. “[Washington] had obviously strong African American support,” says Larry Bennett, a professor of urban politics and policy at DePaul, “but he was trusted by a cohort of younger Latino activists and politicos such as Chuy Garcia in those days, and the constituency that they could bring to support Washington. And Washington also had support among white progressives and what I call white ‘good government’ types.”

That coalition, built in part by Garcia’s clout within the Latino community and his outreach to Latinos on behalf of the Washington administration, would help Washington secure victory in the elections of 1983 and 1987 against the city’s establishment Democrats, divided then by loyalties to the Daley family, Jane Byrne, and Vrdolyak. But Washington’s coalition died with him: the Latino community and the African-American community have been divided constituencies since 1987. Garcia, the bridge-builder, would himself turn to strengthening the Latino community as an independent bloc during his time as president of the Latino Action Research Network, a Latino advocacy group founded in 2005 as an alternative to the Daley-backed Hispanic Democratic Organization, which worked to defeat him in the 1998 Illinois Senate election.

Now Garcia, once again, wants to be seen as a bridge-builder. Much of the support for his campaign is rooted in hopes that he can revive the Harold Washington coalition, both to defeat Emanuel and to cement progressive power in City Hall for years to come.

JANUARY 21, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

POLITICS “His rhetoric is inclusive,” says Bennett. “People who know Chuy, I think, think of him as a genuine coalition builder.

So I think there are a lot of plusses to his candidacy.”

But rebuilding that coalition may well be the work of months or years—not the five weeks Garcia has until the election.

And the nonpartisan mayoral election system the city’s had since 1995, first proposed by a group of white Democrats in an effort to prevent Harold Washington’s reelection, as well as demographic changes and patterns in voting behavior, will make that work more difficult.

“Black registration to vote has declined,” Bennett continues. “Latinos are a large population block in the city of Chicago, but they are less impressive as a voting block. So I think that the challenge that Chuy faces is that to mount something in this nonpartisan world—in which you don’t have any kind of ready party apparatus but you have a lot of little apparatuses that need to be hooked up together—that takes a long period of time. And I’m worried that he hasn’t had enough time to do that.”

Rose, for his part, doubts the Washington coalition is even worth pursuing.

“Don’t forget white people,” he laughs.

“You know, the reason I balk a little bit at the Harold Washington coalition is that at the time, the Harold Washington coalition was an overwhelming black vote with a modest group of whites and Latinos providing the margin. At the time the black population was, in fact, larger and a larger proportion of the city. So what was realistically the Harold Washington coalition can’t win an election because there aren’t enough African Americans. I mean, we’ve lost 200,000 African Americans, among other things. And I know that’s the cliché that a lot of people put in there.”

O

ne of the most reliable promoters of that cliché is Chuy Garcia himself.

At his appearance at Chef Sara’s Café, one of his campaign volunteers, an African-American woman, asked him directly about the apprehension toward his campaign—and towards Latino candidates—she had seen in the African-American community.

“The moment they see a Latino’s name on a petition, they say, ‘I’m not comfortable. I’m not sure I should sign the petition because those guys won’t look out for us,’ ” she said. “So I’m hoping you can respond to the sentiment.”

“That’s a half-hour response at least,” 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 21, 2015

Garcia joked. “I will just say this. When I got involved in politics it was to change the politics of my community to overcome the domination of our community. I was part of an effort of community empowerment that was a part of the movement that elected Harold Washington mayor in 1983.

“That was a very transformative period in the city’s history—one that also caused tremendous polarization,” he continued.

“There was a lot of tension, there were many questions in the air. It’s been over thirty years since that occurred. I think the city and its people have moved forward. That’s why I think that the potential for uniting people like never before in the past twenty-five, thirty years is immense.”

Garcia did not initially mention that the “tensions” he refers to were—and are— racial tensions. He moved on to speak about

“Since Harold Washington died, the idea that there can be a viable, cohesive, strong multiracial ethnic coalition has struggled,” he says. “It’s been challenged. In part because of money entering the political fray and having too much influence, the creation of the submachines in Chicago that have kept down real political empowerment for a long time and created a sense among people in different communities that you can’t fight City Hall, you can’t elect good people to office. It’s all about the money.”

He’s partially right. The power of the Hispanic Democratic Organization that defeated Garcia in 1998—a group used by the Daley administration to co-opt the Latino vote through patronage jobs—was proof that racial politics in Chicago can be partially understood by following the money.

But only partially. The divide between Af-

Much of the support for Garcia's campaign is rooted in hopes that he can revive the Harold Washington coalition, both to defeat Emanuel and to cement progressive power in City Hall for years to come. the African American and Latino divide more explicitly, touting his later membership in the Senate’s Black Caucus and his record on civil rights, support for minority businesses, and other issues. But the caution of his initial remark seems to indicate a strategy. Garcia seems keen on having conversations about race that are not really conversations about race. This, again, is among the benefits of his de-racialized and broadly appealing “neighborhoods” rhetoric. Garcia speaks as if he can increase his chances of bridging the gulf between Latino and African-Americans once again by downplaying the depth of that gulf to voters. And perhaps he can: African Americans could be willing to back Garcia if they believe others in the African-American community will do so in large numbers. This is evident in his remarks to me on the collapse of the Harold Washington coalition, which, despite the doubts of Rose and others, he seems intent on coaxing back into existence.

rican-American voters and Latino voters is not “all” about the money.

It is in large part about the forces that push minority groups—marginalized throughout this city’s history by politics and policy—to vote for candidates who look like them and share their experiences. It is about the security those voters find in doing so— about the trust they can place in candidates that come from their communities. Garcia has been around long enough to know this.

But Garcia also seems to believe bringing the coalition within reach requires distancing himself from the same history—and its racial realities—from which he hopes to draw. And he gets that distance. He touts his record of service on the City Council while obscuring the depth and nature of the divisions that make his record impressive to begin with. He describes his years of grassroots work in Little Village on the “intractable” problems affecting communities across the city without describing the history of

segregation and exclusion that produced that intractability.

Garcia and his campaign seem to think his odds of beating Emanuel and rebuilding a coalition that can reinvigorate progressivism in City Hall could depend on making these kinds of moves—avoiding difficult conversations about race could help Garcia with middle-of-the-road Democrats in the runoff.

Though the dynamics of Garcia’s campaign are not those of Cermak’s or Washington’s, his odds will depend on history and the strength of relationships established in those races. Chicago historian and Columbia College Chicago professor Dominic Pacyga’s certainty about how votes will swing in his own community of Beverly makes this clear.

“I think the 19th Ward democratic organization has worked very well with Rahm Emanuel and the Daleys,” Pacyga says. “And I think they will support him. [In Beverly] we do get a lot of city services. I’m getting a new gas line, I’m getting a new sewer line, we’re getting new sidewalks—so people are not going to be complaining that much.

“Chicagoans are very practical people,” he continues. “‘Pick up my garbage, clean my street, patrol, I’m happy.’ And I think that’s been true in the 19th Ward for a long time.”

It’s been true in neighborhoods across the city since the beginning. The structural advantages of the establishment Democrats—beyond the millions in donations incumbents like Emanuel and Richard M. Daley have been able to pull in—reside in the long term relationships they have built in communities like Beverly. Garcia’s own structural advantages reside in the relationships he has been able to build everywhere else—both in literal neighborhoods like his own Little Village and also in the broader Latino and African-American communities.

These are relationships firmly molded by the past, and there is little any candidate can do to establish deep and abiding trust with voters in the space of a month. But the little Garcia has done – de-emphasizing the racial divisions of the Washington administration and the city’s history while also invoking the legacy of the Washington coalition – suggest that he and his campaign want to build trust and support by reckoning with Chicago’s past in delicate ways.

They hope that Chuy Garcia will make history. It is clear to them that history will make or break Chuy Garcia.

COMEDY

Five Jerks Trying to Make You Laugh

Di Billick puts her life on stage

BY RYN SEIDEWITZ

“W

e hate sports here,” Di Billick said as we walked through Lakeview after this year’s Comedy Sketch Festival. In the last sketch that her group, Dandy Boy, performed at the festival, two sports fans became so excited in their celebrations that they stripped down to diapers and devolved into moaning babies sucking on their parents’ breasts.

Much of Billick’s comedy is based on her life. One sketch had Billick, a one-time Greenpeace canvasser, as a beleaguered activist soliciting signatures for her cause. Drawing on experiences with former classmates, she is writing a musical about a white cop from Mount Greenwood who gets stranded in Englewood, near where Billick grew up in Gage Park.

The cop must then make his way back home, learning about institutional racism through song and dance on the way.

In Dandy Boy, Billick often plays the straight-laced woman to her group-mates’ ridiculous characters. In one scene she casually flips through a magazine as her child and husband wrestle over bedtime.

In another, she is dutifully impressed by

courtesy of di billick

two pot-smoking mimes until she goes into labor and they are forced to deliver her baby.

Billick formed Dandy Boy in May 2014 with four friends. “We had an idea to start a sketch group that was perfectly balanced with tropes,” she said. They describe themselves as “five jerks trying to make you laugh.” The group writes their pieces collaboratively. “We don’t fall short because we have each other’s back,” she said. They performed at Laugh Battle at Stage 773 and won themselves a spot at the festival this year. They’re currently working on a pilot for the New York Television Festival.

Billick’s childhood is a story of gently pushing back against her Catholic upbringing. She tells stories of fishing for crawfish in a bizarre urban swamp and hiding beers in the air pockets of a large salt hill with a mix of excited nostalgia and embarrassment.

“You know how you’re just ridiculously stupid when you’re trying to rebel in school?” she stopped for a moment. “Oh god—I’m going to tell you this story,” she said sheepishly. “Because we hated our

school so much, we took all of the garbages in the bathroom and we flushed all the feminine products that were used down the toilet to try and clog it up. We got in so much trouble.”

By the time she began high school, she moved with her mom to an Indiana suburb, where she spent the next eight years. She shifted from her Catholic middle school on the South Side to a suburban public school. “It was very different, everyone thought I was the greatest person to ever set foot anywhere,” she recalled, still surprised. “They all looked up to me and I was like, ‘Let’s go steal some cigarettes, guys.’ ” Billick wrote constantly, from comedy to a fantasy novel she began two years ago on New Year’s Day. It wasn’t until 2012, though, that she started performing what she wrote. She began taking lessons at Second City, eventually earning a place in their selective conservatory program.

From there she was picked by Brian Posen, the owner and artistic director of Stage 773, where the Comedy Sketch Festival was held, to form Unlikely Company, which became a house team at his theater.

Last year they performed at the festival, where much of Dandy Boy met.

Billick’s Catholic family came to Dandy Boy’s show at the festival. “All of my sketches are the worst,” she said, her voice lowered in mock shame. “I’m a terrible person. I’m going to hell.” But even the most devout Catholic could enjoy her show—it’s satirical without being mean-spirited. Dandy Boy’s comedy is filled with the self-deprecation that mirrors Billick’s own—she’s no longer clogging the toilet with used pads for the sake of rebellion. The sketches range from goofy to biting, but the point of Dandy Boy’s comedy is to poke fun at themselves and the world around them.

“Someone once told me that as an actor or a creator or a writer, every single life experience that you ever had will come out in your comedy or in your acting,” she said. “Before the show today I was thinking, ‘Holy shit that person was right.’ Everything I have ever done has come back out in this world.”

JANUARY 21, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

mathias poledna, substance,

2014 35mm color film with optical sound, 6:40 min 35mm frame enlargement courtesy of the artist and galerie buchholz, cologne

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berlin; galerie meyer

kainer, vienna; richard telles fine art, los angeles

Off the Grid

The Renaissance Society welcomes a new century by demolishing its last

BY SAMMIE SPECTOR

T

he Renaissance Society has been breaking boundaries since it opened in 1915. In keeping with this tradition, artist Mathias Poledna is helping the gallery celebrate its centennial by literally dismantling its structure, making room for the next century of transgression and innovation.

He has removed the gallery’s steel truss-grid ceiling, an emblem (and tool) of the space since 1967. Removing the low ceiling dramatically changes the atmosphere in the Renaissance Society. Now only glimpses of light from the installation, and back offices, illuminate the arching walls and vaulted, white ceilings. Poledna is the first artist to physically alter the gallery, an act that asks viewers to consider both iconoclasm and the nature of material property.

A 35mm film installation will accompany the altered gallery space, creating a dialogue between the historical legacy of the Renaissance Society and the avant-gar-

8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 21, 2015

de artworks within it.

“I’ve been following Mathias Poledna’s practice for a number of years,” says curator Solveig Øvstebø. “It was interesting to work with Mathias here because I knew he would ‘attack’ the institution—go deep into the institutional memory, history, structures—and I was curious about what he would draw out in the new work.”

The grainy 35mm film focuses on the inner mechanisms of a Rolex watch, the analog film mirroring the analog workings of the watch. Without context, the video may feel a little like a Rolex commercial featuring artful shots of the watch’s face and a catchy instrumental soundtrack. However, the film is not all glamor shots. It zooms in on the miniscule cracks and dust on the watch’s face.

“Look at the dust on it, even though it’s this expensive piece of real estate on your body,” a visitor says to his friend.

They are both students of photography at schools downtown. “I know, look at how

much more complex it is as the video goes on, even the soundtrack builds up.” And it does. As more of the face of the watch was shown, I found myself leaning forward in interest, reeled in by the instrumental rhythms. Something about the score is reminiscent of ticking, building in volume and rhythmic depth as the intricacies of this luxury item are showcased.

The Renaissance Society sees Poledna’s dismantled overhanging grates and his film as a way to usher the space into its second century as a leading modern art gallery.

Installed in the 1960s for student exhibitions, the grid has remained a feature that all artists must face—either by engaging or ignoring its imminent presence above their heads. Director of Communications Anna Searle Jones describes its removal as a “positive disruption,” as it frees up space, and allows for artists to engage with the Renaissance Society’s environment in new ways.

Jones discussed with me the Society’s ongoing mission to build an identity independent of the University while acknowledging the aims and accomplishments of their founding faculty. These founders secured big name shows like Picasso, Braque, and Miro back in the day, and Smithson, Gonzalez-Torres, and Kiefer in the latter half of the past century.

“We have a really free space,” Jones tells me. “We value our independence because we are one of few non-collecting museums in the country that allow artists to take large risks, and we’ll support their work. They know to come to [The Renaissance Society] with their uncertain ideas, and new questions to discover.”

The restructuring of the Renaissance Society is a timely transformation. With a new website going up, and a full program ready to fill the first quarter of their second century, the Renaissance Society is just as relevant as ever.

VISUAL ARTS

A Walk in the Park

“HOLDING” at ACRE Projects

BY EMILY LIPSTEIN

W

atching his feet tremble, I know he is going to fall off the wall. Luckily for him, he gains stability on his perch—two rocks bolted a few feet from the ground—and suddenly appears immovable. The other performer stands solidly as well, pressed face first against the wall, gripping a rock just above her head. Half of the gallery space is devoted to this performance, and the other to six photographs and an installation of dirty, worn clothing. After spending some time looking at the photographs, I turn back to the performers, realizing that they are not in the arrangement that I’d left them in, nor are they any less stable.

HOLDING, a collaborative work by Sarah Berkeley and Regin Igloria, exists at the ACRE Projects in this transient yet sure way, exploring ideas of activity, cooperation, and mindfulness through performance and installation. HOLDING is an

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exhibition of the work Berkeley and Igloria produced while in residency at ACRE’s summer home in Wisconsin. The six photographs harken to a warmer time, featuring lush green woodland marked here and there by small orange ribbons.

From the artist’s statement: “With simple household scissors and bare fists, [Berkeley and Igloria] tear and chop the foliage corralled by cheerful orange ribbons.”

The process is documented in the sequence of photographs: from an unworn area, to marking foliage to be cleared, to a carpet of worn grass being traversed by hikers. As in their performance, Berkeley and Igloria never show their faces in the photographs.

Their backs are turned to the viewer in the first photo: they let the product of their actions imply their presence in the project at large.

This is markedly strange, considering that the act of manually clearing a path

seems personal enough to require more than two photos of disembodied hands and fingers pulling up long strands of wild grass. To further document this process, the clothing Berkeley and Igloria wore in the first photograph hang on hooks in the corner of the gallery, proof of the artists’ authentic presence in the pictured scenes.

Hacking away at the wilderness with kid scissors is an intimate way to relate to an environment. So why does the performance by Berkeley and Igloria feel so separate, both from their summer’s work and from everyone who watches them? We all stand back, fenced in by our own voyeurism, watching Berkeley and Igloria grip the walls and each other in poses of varying difficulty. Maintaining their positions doesn’t look easy; the artists’ limbs tremble at times. They describe their collaborative work as “[performing] and [documenting] exhausting self-imposed tasks.”

It is, after all, only them that their work concerns. We never are told why they decide to clear a path in the Wisconsin wilderness. The action itself is secondary to the fact that they are doing it, that they have done it. The impersonality of the performance reflects the artists’ absorption in their task. They are so mindful of what they are doing that they orient their existence around it—faces to the wall—making everything else irrelevant.

We stand back. We could easily put on their clothing and shoes, but we don’t.

We don’t help them, we don’t offer physical support as they arrange and rearrange their “sustained gestures.” The only thing we choose to do is watch their underarm stains darken as the path is forged; involvement is involuntary. As we stand watching, our shadows are projected onto the photographs behind us, almost as if we were there on the path. But we’re not.

JANUARY 21, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

MUSIC

Musician and Maestra

Diane Ellis in the classroom and on stage

BY MICHELLE GAN

D

iane Ellis, the band director at Dixon Elementary School in Chatham, spends most of her weekdays teaching students in both general music classes and afterschool band programs. But on weekends she’s on the stage, a saxophonist with her band, the Jazzy Ladies.

Ellis is one of two recipients of the 2015 OPPY Award for Education, given by the Oppenheimer Family Foundation to recognize educators who make a unique impact on their students and Chicago Public Schools.

The other recipient is Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teacher’s Union.

Ellis has had a long and storied career as a musician and teacher. She grew up in Chicago, in a home surrounded by music—two of her uncles are renowned jazz musicians, the trombonist Morris Ellis and the saxophonist Jimmy Ellis. At age four she started playing piano, and a few years later, she took up what would become her principal instrument, the saxophone. By high school, she knew that music would be her life’s work.

She studied music education and performance at Bradley University and earned a master’s degree in music performance from Northwestern, before spending the next ten years as a professional musician, playing jazz in Chicago and across the country. She opened for prominent jazz artists like Dizzy Gillespie and Jimmy Smits, toured with Jimmy McGriff and Charles Earland, and became the protégé of Sonny Stitt.

“In college it’s about what you play and whether you’re playing it right or correct,” Ellis says, “but that don’t make you a great player. It’s how you play it, how you present it. It’s like talking—it becomes a language.”

Eventually, Ellis found, “things started

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getting scarce.” Life as a professional musician could be precarious, living from one gig to another, so in 1990 she got a job as a substitute teacher to help make ends meet. But soon, she found she had a knack for working with kids, and she got her first full-time teaching position at Ryerson Elementary School, which closed in 2013.

Ellis worked in cramped quarters, in a classroom in the basement and under a principal that restricted the band program. When the opportunity arose, she took a job at Dixon

know about that. And they need to know that the music that they hear today grew out of jazz or blues. So that’s the way I teach them.

Then, even if they’re not performers, they can become appreciative listeners in many different styles of music.”

Ellis also brings her professional experience to the classroom, arranging workshops with experienced musicians and taking students to see live jazz performances.

“I’m always performing with the students, playing for them in short amounts in

“I want to teach them their culture, because jazz is our culture. It is America’s only classic music, that we own. So they need to know about that. And they need to know that the music that they hear today grew out of jazz or blues.”

Elementary in Chatham, which was building a strong fine arts program. She’s remained there for twenty years.

“I teach general music with emphasis on jazz. So the students, before they leave Dixon, will know about the history of jazz, the mechanics of jazz, they learn how to do a little scat singing,” she says.

“I want to teach them their culture, because jazz is our culture. It is America’s only classic music that we own. So they need to

10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 21, 2015

the classroom. You know, you can tell them and they might even see it on the TV, but to actually [perform] in front of their faces, to show them how it’s done—that helps them out a lot.”

Balancing life as a performer and a teacher isn’t easy for Ellis. She tries to keep a majority of her performances in the summer and on weekends, but occasionally she plays on weeknights. At first, Ellis’ principal didn’t react well to the lifestyle, which sometimes

results in her being late to school. “[The principal] said, ‘Ms. Ellis, you’re going to have to stop playing those nighttime gigs,’ and I’m like, ‘What do you mean?’

That’s just like telling an artist to stop painting and just teach. How could you take that away? That’s my passion.”

At this point in her career, Ellis sees music paying off in new ways—in addition to the OPPY award, she also won the Chicago Music Awards’ Lifetime Achievement Award in early 2014.

“I’m just proud that these things have happened to me,” she says. “I’ve always been a hyper kid. You want to know how I get all this stuff done, well, my work is never done, really. I’m always doing something.”

After nearly twenty-five years of teaching, she has seen some of her students grow into professional musicians themselves. One student from her first year of teaching is now a producer in California; another, Marquis Hill, just won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Trumpet Competition.

“When I look back on all these students that are really growing and getting out there, I say I’m building my legacy,” Ellis says. “I’ve already kind of established myself, and I’m satisfied with the things I’ve done—plus, I can still do more.”

But she speaks with equal enthusiasm for her current students—her top jazz band, her “Tiny Tots Jazz Ensemble” of first to fifth graders. She can rattle off a list of names of students whom she knows will go far.

“The children that I see every day, I call them my musical sons and my musical daughters,” she says. “When you’re in a band, you become like a family.”

FOOD

One Man, One Sandwich A review of Andorka’s

BY MAHA AHMED AND JAKE BITTLE

luke white

Luke White

S

ome Pilsen restaurants, like Nuevo Leon and Carnitas Uruapan, have emerged out of storied national traditions or multigenerational sagas; their cuisines have spent hundreds of years developing and marinating in culture and family. Then there’s Andorka’s Sandwich Shop on 21st and Halsted, which opened a week ago. This joint, Pilsen’s youngest sandwich emporium, is the brainchild of just one dude: Matt Andorka. Or rather, as Andorka is quick to point out, one dude and that dude’s fiancé, Jen, who helped him build the restaurant from the shell of a long-abandoned Pilsen cafe and works the counter with him on the weekends.

The Andorka’s establishment, like Andorka himself, is unassuming but inviting, approachable but not flagrant. The shop is announced on the street not by any flashy sign but by an A-frame whiteboard that says “ANDORKA’S SANDWICH SHOP: COFFEE, TEA, SANDWICHES,” and the decor inside is approximately (and appropriately) ninety percent sandwich-themed and ten percent Chicago-themed. There is a dusty tape recording machine and a black zeppelin hanging from the ceiling that says, in block letters, “SANDWICH.” Another zeppelin—Led,

that is—also streams down from the ceiling fairly often, in between Rolling Stones songs and the occasional Hendrix superhit.

Customer traffic is lacking in Andorka’s young, quaint establishment (which nonetheless feels years old with its weathered wood floors and “vintage” furniture), giving lunch-goers the option to stand in front of the counter and watch their sandwich being built, hold a conversation with Andorka about how the beef sandwich he’s making for them was his 5am breakfast every day on a farm in Washington state, crack a joke or two while sipping on the complimentary tarragon and lemon-infused water, and come away from the experience unsure whether Andorka is trying (in vain) to emulate a ma and pa shop or if he has no other choice.

The menu itself is modest: it boasts a total of eight sandwiches, plus a couple of generic salads and homemade potato chips.

With the exception of the braised goat, tempeh, and hummus sandwiches, it reads like a list of things your parent might have packed for your lunch in grade school, save for the fact that most of them are made with inventive, memorable spreads like tomato mayo and horseradish cream cheese.

If you’re feeling something light and

fresh, but indelibly tasty, opt for the turkey sandwich. The first thing on the menu, this layman’s sandwich often feels tried and tired—a last resort option for quick meals on the go—but this one’s crunchy cucumber and arugula combination, paired with the aforementioned tomato mayo, combine in your mouth to taste, oddly enough, like you’re eating a sushi roll, with bread instead of sticky rice. The deli sliced turkey meat is perfectly honey roasted, and is a clear step up from the mustard-slathered days of yore.

Most notable, though, is the goat sandwich. Its tender tomato-braised meat feels fresh-off-the-bone, and the poblano sour cream, made by stewing poblano peppers and mixing them with sour cream, melts into the goat (and vice versa) so well that it’s difficult to discern whether this sandwich’s star power is all meat or all cream.

It’s probably both. The goat is so full of flavor, it doesn’t quite feel like it came out of the kitchen of the unassuming Andorka.

Considerably less extraordinary than the turkey and goat is the roast beef, smothered with horseradish cream cheese—a concept pungent and repelling in theory, but masterful in practice. It’s reminiscent of onion and chive cream cheese, and balances the onion and arugula fixings surprisingly

well, though the sandwich could use some more crispness.

The sandwiches are served stag, but potato chips made in-house can be purchased for an overpriced $2.50. The crunch isn’t quite there, and they’re undersalted and overgreased, so hold off on these unless you truly can’t bear to eat a sandwich by itself.

The sandwiches, it must be stressed, are delicious. The meat is succulent, the bread is made fresh in-house, the sauce combinations are original, and even fixings like arugula and red onion are memorable.

For sandwiches smaller than some versions of the iPhone, $8 and $9 price tags are a little steep, especially considering sides aren’t included (nothing much to see in that direction anyway). But then again, all the ingredients are either made on-site or locally sourced. Andorka’s isn’t a place you purposely venture to Pilsen for, but if you’re in the area and want food that won’t give you gas, come for the sandwiches, stay for the dad rock tunes, and hold off on the potato chips.

Andorka’s Sandwich Shop, 2110 S. Halsted St. Tues-Sat, 9am-5pm. (312)763-6916. andorkas.com

JANUARY 21, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

INDUSTRY

The City’s O Hidden Backbone

Black Diamond Marine keeps Chicago’s past in the present

BY MAHA AHMED

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 21, 2015

n the bank of the Calumet River, a few blocks away from the Indiana border and Chicago’s historic Calumet Fisheries, is a land that speaks of another time. An industrial bridge, the section of the ten-year-old Chicago Skyway that stretches across the river, sits high above the water. Docked on the riverbank are ice- and snow-crusted tugboats and barges, one dating back to the 1940s.

Stepping inside one of these tugs feels like stepping into the gritty, unrefurbished version of a wartime sea vehicle at a history museum: the captain’s cabin reeks of tobacco, the kitchen is arranged like a breakfastall-day diner, andthe measly twin bunks are left unmade as if waiting to continue a moment frozen fifty years ago. It could very well be one such abandoned relic were it not for the two unassuming trailers that sit a few feet away from the dock.

These trailers, tugs, and barges belong to barge enthusiast Jacqueline Kindra and her husband John. Black Diamond Marine, a small offshoot of the Kindras’ less specialized companies like Kindra-Lake Towing, occupies half of one of these trailers.

Black Diamond specializes in niche deals,

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like providing decked barges for city-sponsored fireworks shows or putting a golfing surface on the Chicago River for golfers atop skyscrapers in the Loop.

The Kindras started investing in the Chicago barge industry in 1983, but when Jacqueline saw untapped potential, noticing that “really weird people” wanted barges for “really weird things” and that no one was there to give it to them, she created Black Diamond.

Black Diamond and its sister companies also deal with the structural aspects of the city, providing marine equipment for bridge inspections, construction, and the cross-country transportation of raw factory and construction materials.

The Kindras consider the barge trade a secret and secluded industry, made up of “lunch-pail workdays” and thirty-day “live-aboards” on the water; these days reveal the city’s barely-kept secret—a gritty, industrial Chicago, one that isn’t just of the past. On the bank of the Calumet River, a few blocks away from Indiana, among expanses of ice and smoke stacks billowing in the air, the quiet backbone of the city does its duty.

PARKS

From Olmsted to Ono

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eighborhoods surrounding Jackson Park have been abuzz lately about the possibility of the Obama Presidential Library being constructed on its grounds. But that’s not the only word going around about the five-hundred-acre park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

Last week, Project 120 partnered with the Chicago Park District to present plans for new plantings, facilities, and even a landscape by Yoko Ono—yes, that Yoko Ono. The public meeting was organized by 5th Ward Alderman Leslie Hairston to fill residents in on what’s happening in their backyard.

Project 120 representatives, led by the group’s president, Robert Karr, reviewed work that has already been done on some of Jackson Park’s landscapes—work that aims to balance a concern for community well-being with efforts to honor Olmsted’s appreciation for natural areas. Olmsted, the father of American landscape architecture, was a social reformer who saw parks as expressions of democracy, essential to urban life.

Project 120, a nonprofit organization formed in 2013 to revitalize Jackson Park, will reintroduce indigenous flora and fauna to areas that have degraded over the years.

The Great Lawn, for instance, served as a

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120

foundation

Nike missile base from 1956 to 1971 and currently houses a driving range surrounded by a chain-link fence that makes it inaccessible from the street for blocks on end.

At the same time, plans are in the works to remove some of the taller trees and shrubbery. Project 120 designer and Olmsted specialist Patricia O’Donnell reasoned that a lower plant profile would make the park feel safer, encouraging use.

“When you bring more people to the parks, the illegal and antisocial activities dissipate,” she explained. “More visual connectivity,” she said, will allow people “to see around [themselves] in a fairly open frame.”

And what will be in that frame? At the heart of the plans is a new Phoenix Pavilion, inspired by the one given as a gift from Japan to the U.S. during the World’s Fair in 1893. These will be located on the site of Olmsted’s original outdoor amphitheater.

Designed by Los Angeles-based architect Kulapat Yantrasast, the pavilion is set to feature a café, exhibition space, and a performance venue.

Ono’s contribution is somewhat less concrete. After visiting the Wooded Island in 2013, the multimedia artist, singer, and peace activist said, according to Karr, “I want the sky to land here, to cool it, and make it well again.” Ono, who has spoken of the sky as a source of strength and comfort for her during her childhood in Japan

at the end of World War II, will use it as inspiration for her designed landscape, hoping it will bring this same comfort to South Side parkgoers. Yantrasast, who sported an Imagine Peace T-shirt at the meeting (a Christmas gift from Ono, he said), calls the project “a place for meditation” and “the coming together of different cultures.”

There are those in the community who are not quite on board with Project 120’s vision. One meeting attendant, who lives at 59th and Stony Island and is sometimes kept up at night by music from nearby parties, remarked, “The thought of an outdoor music pavilion does not make me happy.”

Vreni Naess, who has frequented Jackson Park since she moved to Hyde Park fifty years ago, has reservations about the space becoming a hot spot. She often goes cross-country skiing on the park’s wideopen—and frequently empty—fields in the winter. “It’s underused, but it’s used by me,” she said. “I like it to be a little quiet.”

At the end of the meeting, Karr returned to the park’s place in urban life. “What’s been thrust upon us by Olmsted,” he said, “is [the question:] what is a public space?” The answer, of course, is not fixed, but shifts over time as urban neighborhoods change. As Jackson Park enters its third century, Project 120’s task is—ideally—to merge Olmsted’s vision with the needs and desires of the park’s twenty-first-century visitors.

Project 120 and Yoko Ono launch plans to redevelop Jackson Park

BY HANNAH O’GRADY

JANUARY 21, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

Shifting Spaces

“Exodus” at the Arts Incubator

BY STEPHEN URCHICK

A

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14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 21, 2015

lot of good design went into giving the Washington Park Arts Incubator a welcoming and airy street-side façade, with its big, vulnerable glass windows. An artwork like Alfredo Salazar-Caro’s “In and Out, In and Out, In and Out” demonstrates just how easy it is to shut that illusion of openness down.

His chain link fence, sandbagged into place just past the Incubator’s glowing, translucent door, is part of a joint exhibition with Nigerian American artist Alexandria Eregbu entitled “Exodus.” For the most part, the two artists rely on sculpture to interrogate migration, belonging, and the social contexts where these fraught terms hang out. The pair tackles this in a way that’s particularly attentive to how humans actually go about controlling and organizing their fellow bodies these days: through coded systems and processes, often lurking just beyond common sight.

This happens on a couple of levels inside a work like “In and Out.” Salazar-Caro’s fence follows in a long tradition of sculptural objects that actively confront gallery-goers. These objects force folks to think about and then use the space in the room differently. At the very least, “In and Out” obligates a body to move to the left or the right after entering the Incubator. Direct, linear access to the building—something that the Incubator’s architectural style and mission statement proudly advertise—is abruptly arrested at a first encounter with its interior. Salazar-Caro invites a

comparison between this micro-moment and the ongoing harms of U.S. anti-immigration policy. The shining city on a hill— still presumptuously asking for huddled masses—is about as hospitable, once you get past the rhetoric, as “Exodus” itself.

An LCD monitor fixed to the chainlink fence loops a heat-shimmering video of a cluster of people waiting outside a border crossing. The same people who fictively watched you enter into “Exodus” will preside over your departure. Their spatial condition will not change, although you enjoy full mobility. Step around the fence—gain access to the exclusive space—and the technology that keeps the screen hanging to the surface of the fence, running its perpetual loop, is legible and tantalizingly accessible.

The jet-black cable ties used to fasten the monitor’s load to the burnished steel are the same ties used by law enforcement as makeshift handcuffs in mass-detainment scenarios. The symbol of police presence is entirely invisible from outside, but hiding in plain sight from within. The cable ties literally enforce a stasis—acting against gravity to keep the screen from falling to the ground, where it cannot be easily surveilled by the audience. The ties justify their place in the composition just as a border patrol justifies its place in an American polity by practically altering the position of virtual individuals, people may not be credited as equal beings.

“In and Out” makes artistic claims by calling attention to the precise manner,

VISUAL ARTS

the particular style, in which tasks are accomplished: how we enter a space, how we fix bodies. These gestures take on new and special meaning when considered alongside the videogame Salazar-Caro exhibits, “Border Crossing Beta 2.0.” The game is set from the first-person perspective, in the several hundred yards of desert nearest a length of U.S.-Mexico border wall. The monitor for the game is haphazardly halfset in a sandbox delineated with cinderblocks—a ubiquitous material across many prefab fortifications. By itself, a videogame submerged in dirt appears to be a one-off joke on the language of game development: too often, the funding executives appeal to the “immersive” and “gritty” qualities of

demo the game), “Border Crossing” more palpably engages with the psychology of its subject matter than the words “immersive” or “gritty” could conventionally signify.

Alexandria Eregbu comes up with the show’s most poignant formulation of warped rules in “4 Legged Race for a Second Class Citizen.” She’s able to intersect the physical manipulation of bodies, systems, and games, by fastening three athletic hurdles to the gallery walls at ninety-degree angles and varying heights, setting a fourth hurdle at its proper orientation up against the gallery’s far wall. At its core, track and field is as corporally manipulative as any deportation policy and has its rules, as any game.

“In and Out” makes artistic claims by calling attention to the precise manner by which tasks are accomplished: how we enter a space, how we fix bodies.

their photorealistic and hyper-authentic titles.

Salazar-Caro, however, makes his appeal to “immersion” much differently.

He alters the conventions of movement in the first-person perspective, introducing a weird, rightward bias to the character’s forward movement. Unless the player corrects this tendency by pressing both the up and the left arrow keys, the player will frustratingly tack towards the distant border wall.

The desire to approach that point on the horizon is thus hard-coded into the very few rules of the game, and signals a deeper belief that the wall is the be-all, end-all, in both border control debates and the actual act of migrating. Combined with the character’s painfully weak walking pace, the hallucinatory crystal skulls occasionally floating through the game’s sky, the very real sense that you’re being angrily observed from afar (by the line of people wanting to

It asks its practitioners not just to contort themselves expertly in the moment, but radically organize their lives to train for that capacity. “4 Legged Race” poses a problem in three dimensions that no expert athlete could train for. The shimmering gold surfaces of the hurdles’ top crossbars warp and distort the faces of those who’d size this challenge up, mocking them. They are a fool’s gold, teasing viciously with the color of athletics’ highest honor. “Exodus” nevertheless shines the brightest behind these false fronts. It accomplishes its best work at the points where codes switch, rules change—where the going gets unexpectedly rough.

Arts Incubator Gallery, 301 E. Garfield Blvd.

Through March 20. Tuesday-Friday, 12pm6pm; Thursday, 12pm-7pm. Free. (773)7029724. arts.uchicago.edu JANUARY 21, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

MUSIC

Coltrane to Close the Gap

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Woodlawn’s Coltrane Conservatory offers an accessible jazz education

BY EMELINE POSNER

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ne block south of the Cottage Grove Green Line station, the history and the future of Chicago music converge. Woodlawn’s Grand Ballroom, known as the Loeffler Building in earlier years, has played host to some of the greats of American jazz—Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, and Charlie Parker, to name a few.

Today the building leases ground-floor space to the two-year-old Coltrane Conservatory of the Arts, a jazz school founded and run by Joe Pace III. The conservatory functions as a non-

profit, powered by the dedication of Pace and five other volunteers. Specializing in the instruction of all things jazz, it offers lessons for piano, saxophone, trumpet, guitar, and percussion, Pace’s specialty. Those who have never touched an instrument start off with the basics—scales, notation, methods—while more advanced students jump right into complex theory.

Stopping by one Saturday morning, I opened the door to the pulsing beat of hand drums. Behind the closest drum sat a student working on the rhythm from “King

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 21, 2015

Solomon’s Marbles” by the Grateful Dead.

Pace and another instructor sat with drums on either side of the young musician, providing the base beats. The student’s mother and several others looked on, heads gently nodding to the beat.

Although lessons are offered throughout the week, Saturday is the day at 6353 South Cottage Grove. Throughout the morning, students come in from Woodlawn and beyond for the weekly percussion program, which is free after a small registration fee. Saturday evening concludes

with a jazz jam session open to everyone with an appreciation for jazz and their mother, as the website has it (“So, come on out! Bring someone with you. Let’s have a good time”).

But to classify Coltrane Conservatory as a jazz school would be an absurd oversimplification. One can get a sense of the spread of the organization’s objectives and interests from the strata of papers covering Pace’s desk: calculators, biographies (The Echo of Dealey Plaza), booklets on community policing, corners of posters for political

CALENDAR

BULLETIN Students Teach: Racial Profiling...

From the Classroom to the Street candidates peeking out from underneath, a copy of the Bhagavad Gita sitting on a trigonometry textbook.

The conservatory also runs a tutoring program that garners just as many students as the music programs. Pace believes the two go hand-in-hand. “Music seems to be intrinsic to the human, and we believe that it’s also very therapeutic. So math, biology, and writing—they’re all the more palatable when music is involved in the learning experience,” he says.

After a pause he added, “It’s also an attempt, albeit not nearly enough to make up the difference, but it’s an attempt to help to bridge that gap.”

According to Pace, the “gap” is a consequence of the CPS’s disregard for the arts (just this year, the barely existent provision for music education was cut by a whopping fourteen percent), which he calls an “epic mistake” on the part of the city of Chicago.

But it was this same gap that encouraged him to take the initiative to create his own model for music education in the first place.

“Coltrane Conservatory is the brainchild of twenty-five years,” said Pace. It all began decades ago, during his time in the Navy, when he sustained a serious injury to his hand. When he was finally able to pick up his drum sticks again, several years later, he spent time playing professionally before realizing that the classroom was his true calling. Though he had received a B.A. in paleoanthropology from Roosevelt University years earlier, he returned to his studies, this time focusing on music instruction, at Chicago State University. He taught mathematics at the elementary and high school levels before opening the conservatory in 2013.

Pace’s inspiration to open the conservatory also came, in part, from the conviction that he could provide a service to the community. “I wanted to extend to young people an opportunity to plug into something they could say yes to, especially given the many things going on in the community that people find it very difficult to say no to,” he said.

Beyond instruction, Coltrane Conservatory serves as a gathering place for the

community at large. The glass-paned storefront lends itself to this end, welcoming curious glances inward from passers-by; the large white letters on the windows remind them that the space is “Free To The Public” (but also that “Donations Are Welcome”).

Although July marks only the second anniversary of the organization’s existence (and February marks its first full year on Cottage Grove), the space is already developing its presence and programs—on its own time. Pace, whose hands are quite full between music instruction, tutoring, and the finances of running a nonprofit, is hoping to find a volunteer to coordinate art exhibitions and poetry recitals. Equipment is slowly gathering by the back wall of Pace’s office in preparation for a recording studio.

What Pace promises his students won’t see in the course of expansion is any sort of drift away from the conservatory’s initial objective. Above all else, he emphasizes that the current rate for lessons ($15 per hour for saxophone and guitar; $12.50 per hour otherwise) will remain the same.

“We keep it like that because we want it to be a service. We want everyone to be able to afford it. Most people are able to come up with that if they sincerely want to learn to play an instrument,” he says.

The conservatory does not yet have the financial leeway to offer compensated positions, as revenue from lessons goes toward rent and ensuring that the lights stay bright, the space warm. But several sheets of paper lie scattered across Pace’s desk; across each, a name is scrawled, with qualifications and a number at which to phone back below. The papers, otherwise unremarkable, list names of people who have called to express interest in working for the conservatory. If this year’s grant proposals and recording studio find as much success as Pace’s program has in just a year and a half, he may be able to return those calls sooner rather than later.

Aiming to bring ideas and approaches from the “21st century youth movement” to bear on educational settings, the Chicago Teachers Union and a variety of community and social justice groups will host students and teachers at an “after-school event” addressing racial profiling in education and society. The event represents an impressive coalition between labor groups, education activists, and organizations fighting mass incarceration and racial profiling. By subverting the conventional student-teacher classroom dynamic, the event hopes to allow participants to learn from each other and build the basis for longer-term education and activism in the classroom and beyond. SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana, 2229 S. Halsted St. Thursday, January 22, 5pm-7pm. ctunet. com (Benjamin Chametzky)

25th Ward TIF Town Meeting Tax Increment Financing (TIF) is a process through which property taxes over a certain amount are channeled into projects for what the city calls “development”.

These funds go towards businesses and economic development, but take money away from other city services like transit and schools. Proponents argue these projects help fuel economic activity, while opponents argue that, without public oversight, TIF funding may not help district citizens. In cooperation with the Pilsen Alliance, the TIF Illumination Project hopes to shed light on the issue and share what citizens of the 25th TIF Ward can do about TIFs in their community. Rudy Lozano Library, 1895 S. Loomis St. Thursday, January 29, 6pm-8pm. civiclab.us (Akanksha Shah)

Chicago’s School Closings A little less than two years ago, the Chicago Board of Education voted to close 49 neighborhood schools after months of controversy. The closings are the subject of the second event of the School Project, a yearlong exploration of the state of the CPS. The focus of the event is a brief documentary about Rousemary Vega, a CPS parent whose vocal advocacy during the school closings led to a ban from Chicago School Board meetings. The film, Chicago Public Schools: Closed, is the second in a series of six brief documentaries produced by the School Project.

After the screening and a presentation of research about how the closings affected students, a panel of prominent educators and education advocates will speak with the audience about the consequences of the closings. Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Thursday, January 22, 6:30pm-9:30pm. schoolprojectfilm.com (Adam Thorp)

Watching the Watchers

Here in Chicago, the new year could bring major changes: a new mayor, new speed limits, and even the resurrection of the Daley dynasty. A historic stronghold of the Daley political machine, the 11th Ward is set for a tight aldermanic race between community activist Maureen Sullivan, law student John Kozlar, and Patrick

STAGE & SCREEN Rodney King written and performed by Roger Guenveur Smith In 1991, the video of Rodney King’s beating at the hands of the LAPD was leaked to the press. A year later, the officers responsible were acquitted of assault and the use of excessive force by a nearly all-white jury, setting off some of the largest riots in US history. However, King’s story didn’t end there. In Rodney King, Roger Guenveur Smith explores the rest of King’s troubled life through a one-man conversation with the deceased King. As Smith explores and grapples with King’s mixed legacy, he brings the audience towards a more nuanced view of a complicated story, not often told when recounting the story of the LA riots. King was the centerpiece of a defining moment of racial struggle, but Smith shows that the story still resonates. The DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 E. 56th Pl. Saturday, January 24, 7pm. Free. (773)947-0600. dusablemuseum.org (Will Craft)

Laurence Ralph: Renegade Dreams Laurence Ralph aims to put into words the gang violence that many Chicagoans on the West Side of the city experience every day. Often misunderstood and far removed from the public eye, the tragedies that happen in these neighborhoods have become the crux of Ralph’s new anthropological work, Renegade Dreams: Living Through Injury in Gangland Chicago, and on January 29, he will discuss his book at the Seminary Co-op. An assistant professor in the departments of Anthropology and African and African American Studies at Harvard, Ralph has worked tirelessly within this West Side community to bring to light the individual stories of its inhabitants.

His goal is ultimately to paint a different picture of this and many other gang-controlled neighborhoods and show that they are communities with hopes and dreams for change, and not just billboards for poverty, addiction, and violence, while also interrogating the implications of his outsider status for the effects of his work. Seminary Co-op, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Thursday, January 29, 5pm.

Free. (773)752-4381. semcoop.com (Cristina Ochoa)

Untitled (Just Kidding)

In order to aid protests and action that address police violence and create a base of motivated citizens, the organizations We Charge Genocide and Project NIA have organized a day of workshops and discussions titled “Watching the Watchers: Strategies to End Police Violence.” Topics include reparations for victims, sustainable jail support, local rotating bail, the role of art in protests, youth involvement, and the impact of police violence on women and trans people. This program is part of a grassroots campaign advocating the end of oppressive policing, and is intended to be both an informational event and a call to action. Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan Ave. Saturday, January 24, 9am-6pm. wechargegenocide.org (Akanksha Shah)

11th Ward Aldermanic Town Hall Forum

Daley Thompson, grandson of former Mayor Richard J. Daley. On January 25 the ward will host a town hall forum where candidates will assemble for a Q&A, and perhaps duke things out among themselves. The forum will allot equal speaking times for each candidate.

Spanish and Chinese translations will be available. First Lutheran Church of the Trinity, 643 W. 31st St. Sunday, January 25, 3pm. (Lauren Gurley)

Santa Fe-born artist and curator Jesse Malmed is one of those (kinda) funny people who think jumbling mediums in seemingly senseless and absurd ways is a culturally productive method of creating new and relevant art.

He might just be on to something. Taking a cue from avant-garde image culture, his work “Untitled (Just Kidding)”—see, there’s that wit and self-awareness already at play—is a program of experimental video that Jesse’s bio claims is “conceptually engaged, language-intensive, and visually mesmerizing.” Expect a slew of dizzying wisecracks from the kind of person who gets a BA in Film/Electronic Arts and an MFA in Moving Image, meaning the sounds of images mispronounced and other semiotic shenanigans, at a one-night only extravaganza at the Film Studies Center with Malmed himself in attendance. Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Friday, January 23, 6:30pm. Free. (773)702-2787. filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu (James Kogan)

Diversity in Children’s Books Panel Discussion Open up a children’s book and flip through the pages.

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What do the characters look like? Do these books portray a wide enough variety of families, and circumstances? The four local authors comprising the panel in this discussion wouldn’t say so. In an event that will appeal to anyone with a stake in the future of children’s books or education, the authors will speak about writing stories that feature underrepresented characters, navigating the publishing process, and their overall impressions on the progress of the children’s publishing industry. With interest rising in exposing children to diversity, don’t miss the opportunity to engage in conversation with authors at the forefront of the issue. 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th St. Friday, January 23, 6:30pm. Free. RSVP requested.

(773)684-1300. semcoop.com (Eleonora Edreva)

Strangers on a Train Alfred Hitchock’s 1951 film Strangers on a Train introduces viewers to two less-than-happy men, amateur golf player Guy Haines (Farley Granger) and Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker). After recognizing Guy on a train, Bruno begins the two on a conversational exchange about people who burden them the most in life. Next, he offers a solution: that each man kill the other’s burden, so that neither is suspected of either crime. Based on the novel

by Patricia Highsmith and co-adapted with Raymond Chandler, Hitchcock’s work succeeds in suspense and exceeds in its reflection upon the evil that lurks just underneath the surface of human morality. Doc Films, 1212 E. 59th St. Saturday, January 23, 7pm, 9pm, 11pm; Sunday, January 24, 1:30pm. $5. (773)702-8574 docfilms. uchicago.edu (Lauren Poulson)

Waiting for Godot This season, Court Theatre will take on absurdist play Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The story follows two moody vagrant men, who are (you guessed it) waiting for a mysterious Godot. The tragicomedy has been interpreted in countless ways since its 1953 premiere. Court’s interpretation comes from accomplished director Ron OJ Parson, and the cast includes regulars A.C. Smith, Allen Gilmore, and Alfred Wilson. After Parson’s work on Seven Guitars in 2013, audiences will be waiting to see his returning direction at Court, whether or not Godot shows up in the end. Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. January 15 through February 15. $35–$65, discounts available for seniors and students. (773)753-4472. courttheatre.org (Sammie Spector)

Love Is Strange A beautifully written, directed, and acted film, Ian Sachs’s 2014 dramatic comedy Love is Strange explores the relationship of a post-middle aged couple, Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina), as they overcome the years-long hurdle of obtaining a marriage license.

As they enter their newlywed status, they are forced to cope with the struggles of separation caused by economic hardship. Taking a unique intergenerational perspective, Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias’s script takes on a new life onscreen at the Beverly Arts Center. Beverly Arts Center, 2401 W. 111th St. Saturday, January 21, 7:30 pm. $7.50, $5.50 for members. R-rated. (773)445-3838. beverlyartcenter.org (Itzel Blancas)

Critical Historical Studies Launch Party Step into any college library and one might encounter hundreds of theories of yore, kept on life support by the many students breathing renewed life (often unwillingly) into the antiquated ideas of dead writers. These, however, are sometimes seen as stale. For detractors of those traditions, critical theory is an alternative: a grounded—albeit broad—way of keeping one’s ear to the floor and looking ahead, configured through the lens of the social sciences and humanities. Come to Seminary Co-op as it joins the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT) for the release party of its first two issues of Critical Historical Studies, a new journal seeking to contextualize recent changes in global capitalist society.

A member of the University of Chicago Press will speak on the significance of print media in the age of digital information, and editors William Sewell and Moishe Postone will brief you on what’s so cool about critical theory while you inconspicuously try to stuff your face with refreshments and light hors d’oeuvres. Seminary Co-op,

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5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Wednesday, January 21, 6pm. Free.

(773)752-4381. semcoop.com (James Kogan)

Global Voices Author Night with Eric Posner & Geoffrey Stone Human rights law is in a golden age of hypocrisy. Saudi Arabia, which brutally suppresses free speech, and Sudan, both notorious for war crimes and ethnic cleansing, have sat on the UN Council on Human Rights. At the same time, the nations that most vocally champion human rights laws flagrantly violate them. Slavery survives in democracies including India and much of Eastern Europe, and even the United States is not above torture.

On January 27, legal scholars Eric Posner and Geoffrey Stone will examine this state of affairs, discussing Stone’s recently published book, The Twilight of International Human Rights Law. Stone addresses a wide range of relevant topics including the flawed role of international treaties, potential solutions to the current system, and related current events and controversies. Presented by the Seminary Co-op Bookstore in partnership with International House, the dialogue promises a healthy dose of righteous anger tempered with thoughtful analysis. Assembly Hall, International House, 1414 E. 59th St. Tuesday, January 27.

6pm-7:30pm. Free. (773)753-2270. ihouse.uchicago.edu (Kevin Gislason)

Missing Pages Lecture Series Did our high-school history textbooks cover everything we needed to know? The DuSable Museum doesn’t think so. Aiming to reveal the people, places, and events that haven’t gotten proper credit for shaping history, the lecture series “Missing Pages,” which started November 20 and runs through March, is designed to address larger themes of politics, culture, race relations, and personal identity. The largely unknown figures and topics will be presented and discussed by nationally known speakers, and while their subjects never received much recognition in common memory or the media, now they take center stage. All this series asks of its audience members is that they remain open to what they might not have known and be willing to pick up a pencil and fill in history’s forgotten pages. DuSable Museum, 740 E. 56th Pl. Through March. Various Thursdays, 6:30pm. $5. dusablemuseum.org (Emiliano Burr di Mauro)

VISUAL ARTS Nuestras Historias From ancient Mesoamerican artifacts to contemporary artwork from both sides of the border, from neon pink protest art reading “Make Tacos Not War” to a sculpture about laborers made from a lawnmower, the latest exhibit at the National Museum of Mexican Art seeks to challenge the idea that there is a single history that defines Mexican identity in North America. “Nuestras Historias” draws an amazing range of pieces from the NMMA’s world-class permanent collection, creating a display diverse in both medium and narrative. The exhibition also features folk art, ceramics, and items from the colonial period, as well as a section devoted to artists from Chicago dealing with themes such as immigration, gentrification, and incarceration. National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St. Through November 30.

Tuesday-Sunday, 10am-5pm. (312)738-1502. nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org (Akanksha Shah)

Wxnder Wxrds Gallery 5 at the Hyde Park Art Center currently features recent work by Mexico City-based artist Nuria Montiel. Pieces included in the exhibition, titled “Wxnder Wxrds,” were produced during Montiel’s 2014 Jackman Goldwasser residency at HPAC, during which she brought her mobile printing press—La Imprenta Móvil—to various public sites around Chicago, including Sweet Water Foundation, Hull House, and the National Museum of Mexican Art. Monteil engaged visitors at each site in conversations on art, politics, and civic life while making her prints, which transform bits of collected dialogue into abstract visual poems. Through public production and installation of the prints around the city, Montiel’s project explores the relationship

between art and social participation. “Wxnder Wxrds” exhibits Montiel’s prints and installation documents, as well as reflections on the artist’s community-centered creative process. Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Through February 21. Monday-Thursday, 9am-8pm; Friday-Saturday, 9am-5pm; Sunday, noon-5pm. Free.

(773)324-5520. hydeparkart.org (Kirsten Gindler)

The sky is falling. The money’s all gone.

Ever wondered what it would be like to actually manage late-stage capitalism’s assorted problems? Lucky Pierre, a collaborative group working in writing, performance, and visual forms, is out to counter neoliberal economics’s hard belief in the merit of “growth” and face the fragile social, environmental, and economic conditions it has begot. In the interest of reevaluating the ways artists respond to worldly despair, Lucky Pierre is hosting a tenweek, five-session collaborative seminar in which its participants and Lucky Pierre facilitators will troubleshoot what it calls “the new collapse.” Students of the Lucky Pierre Free University will sketch plans for a different future in what can only be expected to be a fantastic multi-disciplinary artistic exploration. LPFU will also be a short academic course, complete with required reading, writing prompts, and a final presentation. So kind of like school, but for another type of real world. MANA Contemporary, 2233 S. Throop St. February 7 through April 17. Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm. Free. (312)850-8301. manacontemporarychicago.com (James Kogan)

Melika Bass: The Last Sun is Sinking Fast Using sound, 16mm video, and architecture, the artwork of award-winning filmmaker and installation artist Melika Bass blends morbid and magical elements to reveal a fractured fictional view of American life. “The Last Sun is Sinking Fast,” currently up at the Hyde Park Art Center, features a spatial narrative that delves deeply into the psyche of characters in Bass’s previous film, while also introducing new characters. By redesigning the gallery space, Bass leads the viewer through a poignant memory of place and transports the viewer into a society of lost souls in a haunted world. Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Through April 19. Monday-Thursday, 9am-8pm; Friday-Saturday 9am-5pm; Sunday, noon-5pm.

Free. (773)324-5520. hydeparkart.org (Adia Robinson)

I Am American

Mathias Poledna The Renaissance Society is currently celebrating its hundredth anniversary. Their most recent showcase, the finale to this first century, not only celebrates the past decades of audiences and artists galore, but also considers, and dismantles, the very structure of the Renaissance Society’s gallery. Literally. Los Angeles-based, Viennese artist Mathias Poledna has removed the gallery’s steel truss-gridded ceiling, an emblem (and tool) of the space since 1967. He is the first artist to physically alter the gallery, asking viewers to consider both iconoclasm and the nature of material property.

This altering of the gallery will be supported by a 35mm film installation. The Renaissance Society’s invitation to Poledna to demolish the iconic grates, as well as the co-production of his film, stems from its readiness to enter its second century as a leading modern art gallery.

Poledna’s work—highly concentrated film stills and their contextual contemplations—creates a dialogue between the historical legacy of the Renaissance Society and the avant-garde artworks within it. The Renaissance Society, 5811 S. Ellis Ave. Through February 8. Tuesday-Friday, 10am-5pm; Saturday-Sunday, 12pm-5pm. Free. (773)7028670. renaissancesociety.org (Sammie Spector)

Ground Floor Marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Hyde Park Art Center, “Ground Floor” features artworks from prominent Chicago MFA programs, creating a biennial showcase of emerging talents so new they haven’t even begun their careers yet. The twenty artists, selected from over one hundred nominations, represent a wide range of mediums, forms, and universities: Columbia College, Northwestern, SAIC, the UofC, and UIC. These artists have also had the chance to exhibit at September’s EXPO Chicago in HPAC’s booth. This unique program, showcased throughout the entirety of HPAC’s ground floor gallery space, offers the chosen artists a helpful push toward a career in the art world; “Ground Floor” alumni include two artists who have recently displayed artwork at the Whitney Biennial. Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Through March 22. Monday-Thursday, 9am-8pm; Friday-Saturday, 9am-5pm; Sunday, 12pm5pm. Free. (773)324-5520. hydeparkart.org (Sammie Spector)

Lands End

This land is your land, this land is my land. From sculpture to paint, from first-generation immigrant to Native American, twenty-five artists explore the different dimensions and definitions of American identity. “I Am American” is a traveling exhibition that, by virtue of its destinations across the U.S., challenges viewers to reflect on their own place in the nation and what it means to inhabit a space with people who may not share the same answer. In Chicago, the exhibition will be housed at the Zhou B. Art Center. Go with questions about the exhibition’s title. Chances are, you’ll emerge with more than twenty-five answers. Zhou B. Art Center, 1029 W. 35th St. Through February 14. Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm.

(773)523-0200. zhoubartcenter.com (Kristin Lin)

Walk to the Point, to the edge of the rocks, where Lake Michigan meets your toes. “Lands end. They all do,” claims a new exhibition, curated by UofC alumna Katherine Harvath and faculty member Zachary Cahill. Starting this Friday, the Logan Center gallery will feature the work of thirteen sculptors, painters, and performance and installation artists from lands across the world, contemplating the role of landscape in contemporary life. On February 16, Logan will host a panel discussion with Brian Holmes, Claire Pentecost, and Dan Peterman, all featured in the exhibition. Come explore old lands through new eyes. Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. January 9 through March 15, Tuesday-Saturday, 9am-8pm; Sunday, 11am-8pm. Opening reception Friday, January 9, 6pm-8pm. (773)702-3787. arts.uchicago.edu/landsend (Kristin Lin)

People at Work

Exodus

Michael Gaylord James has captured the workday tasks of people around the world in photographs taken over the course of fifty years. Beginning in Chicago, James carried his camera everywhere from Cuba to Ireland to the late USSR, snapping pictures of the glamorous and the not-so-glamorous on the daily grind. Though this might seem like a mundane topic, beware of underestimating the intrigue of this show, for these aren’t your typical nine-to-fives. In photos selected from a larger collection, you will see President Kennedy in a motorcade, the unseen kitchen hands of Chicago, Muddy Waters, and James Cotton playing music, dancers, mechanics, and many others on the job, all frozen in an almost eerie moment of monotonous movement. Take a break from your own job and visit “People at Work” to witness first-hand how beautiful everyday life can be. Uri-Eichen Gallery, 2101 S. Halsted St. Through February 6. Closing reception, 6pm-9pm. Additional hours by appointment. (312)8527717. uri-eichen.com (Dagny Vaughn)

Exodus: the triumphant escape from slavery into...into what? Into the desert for forty years? A collaborative new show featuring the works of Alexandria Eregbu and Alfredo Salazar-Caro, “Exodus” plays with and inverts the themes of liberation and migration in vivid multimedia.

Eregbu’s installations employ curious combinations of industrial materials to probe the meaning of identity, belonging, assimilation, and alienation, drawing on her own Nigerian-American heritage. Salazar-Caro’s interactive installation, titled “Border Crossing Simulator Beta,” features a video game narrative of crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. His digital work complements Eregbu’s physical constructions while challenging the viewers with disorienting touches, demanding that the viewer engage with the world presented in “Exodus.”

This installation was chosen as the winner for Arts + Public Life’s 2015 open call for proposals. Arts Incubator Gallery, 301 E. Garfield Blvd. Through March 20.

CALENDAR Tuesday-Friday, 12pm-6pm; Thursday. 12pm-7pm. Free.

(773)702-9724. arts.uchicago.edu (Lillian Selonick)

Free at First The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is an experimental jazz collective founded in 1965 by Chicago musicians and composers interested in developing a radical infrastructure to support their unconventional style. Since its inception, AACM musicians have made monumental contributions to the development of free and experimental jazz.

“Free at First: The Audacious Journey of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians” at the DuSable will take visitors on a journey through the early years of the AACM and the sociopolitical context of the musicians who liberated themselves through their genre-defying musical pursuits. In addition to archival photos, performance artifacts, and a musical soundscape, the interactive exhibition will feature a scavenger huntstyle game and a working recreation of AACM member Henry Threadgill’s “hubkaphone,” an instrument made of hubcaps. DuSable Museum, 740 E. 56th Pl. Through September 6. Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-5pm; Sunday, noon-5pm. $10 general admission; $8 Chicago residents; $7 students. (773)947-0600. dusablemuseum.org (Kirsten Gindler)

Boys Will Be Boys There aren’t many things in this world sadder than the sight of a stripped Christmas tree shivering by the dumpster in January. While the smell of pine may linger on the pillows and curtains for a few days, most would say it’s time to move on from the last month of jolly excess and consumption. With an on-site installation featured at the Ordinary Projects, however, Kasia Ozga brings the Christmas tree back into the New Year with commentary on the events of the year past. Her giant sculpture of fifteen Christmas trees will challenge the ordinary conception of those skimpy green branches to trigger reflection on ties between consumerism and racism in America, including recent events of police brutality. After an encounter with “Boys Will Be Boys,” you might never look at your Christmas tree’s “unchanging leaves” the same way again. Ordinary Projects, 2233 S. Throop St., fifth floor. Through February 6. Gallery hours TBA. ordinaryprojects.org (Amelia Dmowska)

Leftyoutthere A sculpture of a pair of blue legs speckled with red daubs of paint. A green face almost buried in a sea of green, orange, and pink zigzags. With street artist Leftyoutthere, FLATspace’s newest exhibition seeks to explore “the intervention of line and its ability to interrupt and transform spatial and temporal orientations.” Leftyoutthere’s art uses multiple mediums—painting, sculpture—and features busy backgrounds and patterns combined with interjections of solid color. FLATspace’s mission is to aid early-career artists by providing a space for exchange with more established art organizations. The end result of this collaboration is an exhibit investigating the effect of the line in Leftyoutthere’s artwork and a short, twoday opportunity to view it. FLATspace, 2233 S. Throop St., fourth floor. Saturday, January 24, 6pm-10pm; January 25, 11am-4pm. (312)647-6286. flatspace.org (Akanksha Shah)

Level Eater 5.0 Take up thine sword, young hero. The halls of the Co-Prosperity Sphere beckon thee toward a stop on your epic quest to fill your goblet with specialty-brewed ales courtesy of 3 Floyds and Marz Community Brewery, or to feast upon Dönerman Food Truck vittles. Limited-edition Level Eater hoodies will be available and add +15 defense when equipped. Art from all across the realm, curated by Ed Marszewski and Nick Floyd, will be on display for your inner nerd’s pleasure. The dungeon will house a secret band, which is much better than the traditional troll or ogre. Admission price will include a complimentary Level Eater beverage. Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219-21 S. Morgan St. Saturday, January 31, 5pm-10pm. $15. (773)837-0145. leveleater.org (Mark Hassenfratz)

MUSIC The Greedy Bliss What happens when you combine the nuanced musicality of a Chicago performance veteran with the high-energy pizzazz of a bandleader accustomed to playing weddings and corporate galas? You end up with Colby Beserra and Matt Reed’s musical brainchild, Christian jazz-rock act The Greedy Bliss. The duo’s recently released album, This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, features over twenty easy-listening jams with a message. If you’re looking to really mellow out this week, check out The Greedy Bliss at Reggies—they’ll be playing alongside fellow smooth crooning acts Kevin & the Collective, Nonpronto, and Sarah Eide. Reggies, 2105 S. State St. January 22, 7pm. $7. 21+. (312)949-0120. reggieslive.com (Olivia Myszkowski)

112 and ZZAJÉ On January 24, the Promontory will present 112 and ZZAJÉ as a part of Sweet Tea Saturday. Dubbed by the venue “the good boys of Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs bad boy roster,” 112 have been an R&B, gospel, and hip-hop hit-making machine for the last two decades. Known for their clean-cut image, their classic sound is fully rooted in the late nineties and early 2000s. ZZAJÉ has a funkier sound carried by their twelve-piece group, and is known for their live performances and as backers for acts like R. Kelly. The event is sponsored by St. Claire Green Tea Vodka, and attendees will have a chance to taste-test. The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. January 24, 10pm, doors at 9:30pm. $30-$350. (312)801-2100. promontorychicago.com (Elizabeth Bynum)

Kindred the Family Soul If “married people soul” were its own genre, duo Kindred the Family Soul would be at the top. Fatin Dantzler and Aja Graydon put out their first album, Surrender to Love, in 2003, garnering multiple award nominations. They’ve followed their most recent release, A Couple Friends with a long-form music video, a series of songs punctuated with vignettes of family life and friends’ relationships.

The sound is neo soul, and the lyrics speak to long-lasting love, the kind that looks more like putting the kids to bed and stressing over credit scores than it does straight-up seduction. The longtime married couple will be at the Promontory this Friday for what would make a great parents’ night out or a very serious first date. The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. January 23, 7:30pm, doors at 6:30pm; 10pm, doors at 9pm. $25-45. (312)8012100. promontorychicago.com (Hannah Nyhart)

Golden Age of Hip Hop Party The twenty-first century, as we all know, is overrated.

The only good things that’ve come out of the past fifteen years are the Tickle Me Elmo, the selfie stick, and Uniqlo in America. Good hip-hop, you will notice, is not on that list. Lucky for us, the Shrine is hosting a “Golden Era Hip Hop Dance Party” this weekend at which we’ll be able to party like it’s—okay, I’ll say it—1999. Or any year 1990 through 1998, for that matter. Come out for sets from local hotshots DJ Tone B. Nimble and DJ PNS, and for a late-night live show by nineties hip-hop legends EPMD, of “You Gots To Chill” fame. Put down that selfie stick and just chill, man. The Shrine, 2109 S. Wabash Ave. Friday, January 23, doors 9pm. $20. 21+. (312)7535681. theshrinechicago.com (Jake Bittle)

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