April 15, 2015

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Vacant and Abandoned

The housing crisis lives on in the homes it has emptied— and banks aren’t taking responsibility

PASTORS ON EMANUEL, ANGEL DAVANPORT, THE DEVIL’S CABARET

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MORE MORE INSIDE INSIDE

2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ APRIL 15, 2015

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 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.

Editor-in-Chief Osita Nwanevu Executive Editor Bess Cohen Managing Editors Jake Bittle, Olivia Stovicek Politics Editors Christian Belanger, Rachel Schastok Education Editor Mari Cohen Music Editor Maha Ahmed Stage & Screen Lucia Ahrensdorf Editor Visual Arts Editors Lauren Gurley, Robert Sorrell Editors-at-Large John Gamino, Bea Malsky,

Meaghan Murphy, Hannah Nyhart Contributing Editors Julia Aizuss, Austin Brown,

Sarah Claypoole, Emeline Posner, Hafsa Razi Social Media Editor Emily Lipstein Web Editor Andrew Koski Visuals Editor Ellie Mejia Layout Editors Adam Thorp, Baci Weiler Senior Writers: Patrick Leow, Jack Nuelle, Stephen Urchick Staff Writers: Olivia Adams, Max Bloom, Amelia Dmowska, Mark Hassenfratz, Maira Khwaja, Jeanne Lieberman, Zoe Makoul, Olivia Myszkowski, Jamison Pfeifer, Kari Wei Staff Photographers: Camden Bauchner, Juliet Eldred, Kiran Misra, Siddhesh Mukerji, Luke White Staff Illustrators: Jean Cochrane, Lexi Drexelius, Wei Yi Ow, Amber Sollenberger, Teddy Watler, Julie Wu Editorial Intern

Clyde Schwab

Webmaster Business Manager

Shuwen Qian Harry Backlund

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 Julie Wu

IN CHICAGO 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

Chicago’s “Chicago Epic”: Epic?

Just in time for the true beginning of tourist season, a city-hired advertising agency has released a video launching the latest push for Chicago tourism. The slogan for this new campaign, replacing such past slogans as “Choose Chicago” and “Second to None” (no word on the status of “We’re Glad You’re Here!”), has adopted as its slogan the ambiguous two-word phrase “Chicago Epic.” The incredibly original video, which touts Chicago’s skyscrapers, sports teams, and skyscrapers, makes no attempt to clear up whether the slogan means to say that Chicago is epic or (our preference) invites viewers to join in on a “Chicago epic.” Either way, it’s worth noting that the mission of making a city a “global cultural center” isn’t worthwhile if you leave out all the culture and only focus on the center.

UCPD Comes Clean After hearing the requests of the students and community, the UofC Police Department has decided that starting this June, all stops made by the UCPD will be listed online, along with the reason for the stop. The UCPD will also release records of arrests made by its officers on request. The response has been almost unanimously positive; everyone from UofC law professors to Chicago journalists has praised the move, which comes in conjunction with a more

accessible website and set of online resources. These make it easier to find reports and data that a UofC news release said, while “publicly available,” were “not always easy to access,” apparently nodding to the department’s history of being inscrutable even when it supplies information.

Fewer Free Days at Chicago Museums?

Lovers of museums and free things, start saving your change now: the number of free days at Chicago’s museums is at risk of being slashed in half. A new state bill is being introduced to cut the number of free days at the city’s museums and aquariums from fifty-two to twenty-six. According to the Tribune, lawmakers think it’s ridiculous that museums operate for free for almost a sixth of the year and do not receive any public funds to offset the costs. The income that these museums would receive would allow for more programming and events; however, cutting free days will preclude some residents from being able to visit these institutions and enjoy the added benefits. Additionally, admission fees for many museums provide less than fifteen percent of annual operating costs. Two museums that won’t be directly affected by this bill are the two Chicago museums that are always free to the public: the National Museum of Mexican Art and the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture.

IN THIS ISSUE vacant and abandoned

give in to the devil

“It’s one of the greatest crimes that’s been committed.” john gamino…4

A swing set, video game playing priest, and tattoo artist all encouraged guests to embrace a life of sin. will craft…15

anyone can be a rapper chick

“I’m just a vessel here to teach these children.” kari wei…8 a stage for all

“It’s a community expressing itself by getting together and pretending to be someone else with other people.” lucia ahrensdorf…10

a win and some prayers

“We can support Rahm Emanuel, too—we can be on his side. But he has to show that he is on our side.” isaac stein…12 remembering radicals

“He could look the king in the eye and insult him.” lewis page…14

bronzeville on air

““ Young people run this place. They run the radio, they’re in the studios, they’re making things happen.” zach taylor…16 pieces and players

“[Children] need and deserve big ideas.” arda sener…17

APRIL 15, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

Vacant and Abandoned

julie wu

The housing crisis lives on in the homes it has emptied—and banks aren't taking responsibility

BY JOHN GAMINO 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ APRIL 15, 2015

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322 South Laflin is a brick, two-story apartment building with broken windows and an unlocked front door. It wouldn’t look inhabited save for a few bottles of shampoo visible in one of the windows of the upper floor. It completed foreclosure in June of last year, when, like most foreclosures, it was sold back to the mortgage lender, Selene Finance LP. A woman who lives nearby says that people still live there (“squatters’ rights”).

After the housing crisis, says the woman (she declined to give her name), “people had no place to go so they moved in wherever they could get.” She points to a bullet hole in the basement window just left of the front door.

“Poor people had nothing and they took all their shit.”

“They”—in this case, Selene Finance LP—still haven’t claimed official ownership of the property. That’s because after the auction that completes the foreclosure process, it is incumbent on the new owner of the property to file the deed with the Cook County Recorder of Deeds. At the vast majority of foreclosure auctions in Cook County there are no buyers, and the properties go back into the hands of the mortgage lender. But it is not in the lender’s interest to claim ownership of the property until it wants to make a sale. As long as the deed goes unrecorded, the lender that owns the building can avoid property taxes, vacant building regulations and fees, utilities bills, and essentially all accountability for the property.

A months-long review of city records by the South Side Weekly uncovered numerous properties that are deteriorating and impairing the housing recovery in neighborhoods because lenders fail to update deeds and take responsibility for all the properties they now own.

“People left their homes and were forced out, and the city came in and boarded them up, but the banks don’t take ownership of the property,” says Mattie Butler, the director of Woodlawn East Community and Neighbors (WECAN) and an activist with decades of experience fighting for affordable housing.

“You can’t even negotiate to get that property because they haven’t completed their filings for it,” Butler continues. “The only way you can go and trace the property is through the courts. You can’t go to the Cook County Deeds because the property is still registered [in the previous owner’s] name.”

“It’s one of the greatest crimes that’s been committed,” says J.R. Fleming of the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign.

Fleming says foreclosed, bank-owned homes with unrecorded property deeds are another way buildings become “zombie

HOUSING properties,” typically a term for properties that banks walk away from without ever completing the foreclosure process. The same banks that pushed people out of their homes can step in to claim these homes as soon as it becomes convenient (or profitable)—leaving them vacant and abandoned for as long as that day takes to arrive. “There are years between eviction and the bank putting things up for sale,” Fleming says.

Around the corner from 7322 South Laflin, at 1474 West 73rd, is another bankowned property in Englewood with an unrecorded deed. 1474 was sold back to CitiMortgage almost a year ago, in April, but is still in the name of its previous owners before foreclosure. Although from the outside it looks secure, its interior is filled with debris, and would likely need extensive rehab before it could be sold to a new homeowner.

Nearby, 1474 West 74th is also vacant and through foreclosure with an unrecorded deed. Although both 1474s are boarded up and appear maintained, 5915 South Ada, 658 West 62nd, 6422 South Green, and 7355 South Lowe, to name just a few other vacant properties with unrecorded deeds in Englewood, do not. 5937 South Racine, 5734 South May, 5749 South Aberdeen, and 5931 South Marshfield were also vacant and unmaintained until city inspections within the last few months. The banks haven’t been by since the city “temporarily” secured the properties. 6155 South Loomis was secured by a city inspector in February; the notice is pasted over a red and white “For Sale—Financing” sign.

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hile there were fewer foreclosures in Chicago in the first half of 2014 than the first half of 2013, that does not signal a citywide recovery. The homes made vacant by the housing crisis, like 1474 West 73rd, are now themselves the cause of what experts call “negative spillover effects,” and the people who live in the most affected neighborhoods continue to suffer from them. A single foreclosed, tax delinquent, and vacant home can lower the value of neighboring homes by as much as ten percent, according to a working paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Many blocks in neighborhoods on the South Side have more than one such home.

In Englewood, 11.1% of residences had been vacant for more than two years as of the first quarter of 2014—up from 8.1% in 2010—according to data from the Institute of Housing Studies (IHS) at DePaul. This was the second highest among community areas in the city, after Riverdale. 8.3% had been vacant for more than two years in West

Englewood (up from 5.4% in 2010), and 7.6% had been vacant for the same period in nearby Woodlawn (up from 4.6% in 2010).

Homes that have been vacant for more than two years are often unmaintained and have the worst effects on surrounding property values, although other vacancies, which the IHS does not collect data for, are harmful as well.

“Most of the vacancies [in Woodlawn] are because of the predatory lending stuff and people losing their homes through foreclosure,” says Butler.

The housing crisis first hit homeowners directly through subprime loans. Around the country, subprime loans with high interest rates were disproportionately sold to people in poor, minority communities. At the peak of the housing crisis, almost half of all loans sold to African-Americans were subprime, the Center for Responsible Lending, a research nonprofit, found. Court affidavits reveal that Wells Fargo loan officers called their black customers “mud people,” and the subprime loans they sold them “ghetto loans.” In 2007, Wells Fargo sold black homeowners in the Chicago area the highest-priced loans of any of the nation’s top ten lenders, according to the Chicago Reporter.

(Many of the vacancies the Weekly found with unrecorded deeds also belonged to Wells Fargo.)

But even those residents who managed to stay afloat on their loans continue to struggle with a problem they didn’t create— the vacant properties around them. And as banks take over homes in foreclosure, but don’t file the deeds and don’t maintain the properties, they continue to exacerbate this problem.

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n July 2011, the city passed updated regulations for vacant buildings, instituting the requirement that all vacant residential buildings be registered with the Department of Buildings and tasking mortgage holders with maintenance of properties within thirty days of their owners having vacated them. The ordinance extended the definition of property ownership in Chicago to include mortgage lenders, and required them to take responsibility for the buildings abandoned by those whose mortgages they’d serviced. This was in part an effort to cut down on the number of zombie properties, cracking down on those who would let vacant properties sit in limbo.

The ordinance passed unanimously in City Council and earned praise from Mayor Rahm Emanuel. But questions surrounded the legality of making the mortgage holders the owners of the homes.

“You can’t just make a secured lender an owner because there’s a word changed in the law,” Linda Koch, president and CEO of the Illinois Bankers Association, a lobbying group, told the Huffington Post after the bill’s passage. “The only way that we are and should be responsible is if we are the actual owner and have the title to the property.”

So the law was amended that December—after negotiations with Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and PNC Bank—to make mortgage holders responsible for maintenance without legally considering them the owners until the foreclosure was completed.

But despite the law, the city has been overwhelmed in its enforcement efforts. City officials openly admit that there are vastly more vacancies than can be kept track of, which has made it very easy to hide abandonment. The ordinance is almost impossible to enforce, and while that would still be the case even if the July version hadn’t been changed, the amended version has allowed the banks to avoid the responsibilities of ownership yet again.

“The challenge with the enforcement [of the ordinance] is that there are only a limited number of inspectors who can look at properties,” says David McDowell, a senior organizer with the Southwest Organizing Project, one of the groups that pushed for the ordinance in 2011.

“We stopped paying attention to the enforcement process. We thought that this would be a way to address what was happening in the neighborhood,” he says. “We found that wasn’t effective.”

In the second quarter of 2014, there were 33,073 homes in Chicago that had been vacant for over two years, according to an analysis of USPS/HUD vacancy data by the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul.

Only 18,718 vacant homes were registered with the city as of March.

“Until the neighbors start complaining they don’t get attention,” Butler says of the vacancies in Woodlawn. “It’s not automatic.”

Even among those properties that are registered as vacant with the city, many, if not most, have unpaid fines. 5915 South Ada, 658 West 62nd, and 6422 South Green are among them. Then there are even stranger cases, like that of 5734 South May. Though the house has been registered with the Buildings Department since last June under Wells Fargo (Wells Fargo still isn’t on the deed) and has no unpaid fines, its windows are no longer boarded and secure—although they were when photos were taken for the city’s registry—and it was slapped with a “First Time Vacant” notice on March APRIL 15, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

2.

“Most of the vacant buildings aren’t registered [in accordance with the ordinance] and paying, and they’re not properly secured,” says Cathy Gerlach, who directs the city’s Micro-Market Recovery Program (MMRP), a program working to revitalize thirteen small, distressed areas of the city.

The MMRP partners with community organizations in neighborhoods like Woodlawn and Englewood to reoccupy vacant buildings and keep people in their homes..

“Not only do we have a situation where no one can buy it, but the new owner, which is the bank, isn’t doing what they’re supposed to,” Gerlach says.

“It’s not registered, it’s not secured, they’re not picking up the trash, they’re not mowing the grass, they’re not shoveling snow. You the city are doing your best, because you’re out there writing tickets and sending people to administrative hearings, but you’re sending the wrong person because you’re sending the old owner,” she says.

Working on the MMRP in Woodlawn, Gerlach has seen cases where banks take back properties that complete the foreclosure process but record the deeds “sometimes never, sometimes not for months or years.”

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ousing experts call vacant properties that never complete the foreclosure process “zombie properties” because, with neither homeowner nor bank to account for them, they sit in complete abandonment and disarray. These are the homes with broken windows and rotting boards, the ones in the most severe disrepair. They are the strongest deterrents to neighborhood recovery. Those homes that complete foreclosure but don’t have their deeds recorded by the bank can sit in a similar limbo situation, which some have called “zombie title.”

“It was recognized [by the city] as a significant problem last year, because it started to reach epic proportions,” Gerlach says.

Spencer Cowan, head of research at the Woodstock Institute, a nonprofit housing research organization, says he started to notice the problem when preparing a recent report on zombie properties. “[The banks] had the title for a considerable amount of time before they took the deed to record,” Cowan says. “It was obvious from that that there were instances where the bank got title but didn’t report it promptly.”

Cowan found that some banks were waiting to record the deeds until right before they could sell the properties off.

The Woodstock report on zombie properties, which focused only on those that never finished foreclosure or were still in 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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foreclosure, was released in January 2014.

Cowan doesn’t consider properties that go through foreclosure with unrecorded deeds “zombies.”

“You’ve got a property that’s effectively unmarketable,” he says, “but [the bank] knows at some point the value of that property is going to matter to it, so it has an interest in keeping the property up.”

Yet the line between zombies and other vacant homes can run thin. The average foreclosure in the Chicago metro area, which, as of 2014, took an average of 903 days from the initial filing to auction, is a little less than two hundred days short of a zombie by Woodstock’s definition. What’s more, many homes that finish foreclosure finish it in bad shape, with little value beyond their lot and their potential for often prohibitively expensive rehab.

“A lot of the vacant properties that are for sale are not inhabitable,” Gerlach says.

“They don’t have any plumbing, they don’t have any electricity. You’re going to need to have a contractor do a lot of work before anyone can move in.” Given this fact, there’s often not much reason for the banks to be interested in keeping the properties maintained.

5th Ward Alderman Leslie Hairston says zombie titles are “a very large problem.”

“The fact is that the bank has not taken care of the property,” she says. “They don’t want to spend the money, they figure they’ve already lost money.”

Hairston, who is licensed to practice law in Illinois, is on a committee of the Illinois State Bar Association that was established to look into what can be done about bankowned properties with unrecorded deeds.

“The banks don’t want to take responsibility for weeds, or keeping the city from fining them, or if there are any costs for demolition [around $15,000 to $20,000], so they keep the homeowner in title,” says Erica Minchella, founder and president of the Association of Foreclosure Defense Attorneys, and one of the other lawyers on the committee.

“It ruins communities,” Minchella says.

Hairston said there were “a very significant number” of such properties, but when asked about Chicago and areas on the South Side specifically, she said the committee was looking into the issue statewide and that she could not give a sense of its impact locally.

“Banks that have not properly filed the recording of deeds on foreclosed properties occasionally present obstacles to the City’s Law Department for code enforcement matters as well as for rehabbers,” said John Holden, speaking on behalf of the City and the Law Department.

As long as the deed goes unrecorded, the lender that owns the building can avoid property taxes, vacant building regulations and fees, utilities bills, and essentially all accountability for the property.

“These issues are governed by state law and resolving them can add up to several months of processing time to achieve legal title on properties. These situations occur in a very small number of cases.”

Calls to Wells Fargo and servicers maintaining Wells Fargo-owned homes were not returned.

The only way to get a count of how many properties in the city have gone through foreclosure and have outstanding deeds would be to tabulate every case in which a bank has confirmed the sale but the previous homeowner has the latest deed, which would mean manually searching the pin numbers of each bank-owned property in the Cook Recorder of Deeds.

J.R. Fleming, of the Anti-Eviction Campaign, says he first heard of zombie titles when a former property owner kept getting her water bill. These fines and bills can be dismissed if proof of the sale is brought to court, but that’s assuming they’ve reached a responsive, previous owner in the first place.

The bigger problem lies with the vacant homes themselves, and their effects on the people who live around them.

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941 South May was sold back to its mortgage holder, Fifth Third Bank, in September 2013, but the deed is still in the name of the previous owner, Michael Cornell Ridley. The lots on either side of 5941 are both vacant, although if you look up photos of it on real estate websites, you can still see 5943 South May standing next to it. There are blue and white curtains in the upstairs windows of 5941, and three names taped onto one of the two black mail slots (not Ridley’s).

Jimmy Blake lives just across the street at 5940 South May, in a one-story brick house.

He says the previous owner passed away sometime ago, and that he doesn’t know the people who live there now, although there are some people who do. (Residents are not always evicted right away after foreclosure, although the bank doesn’t have to record the deed for eviction to occur—6421 South

May, just down the street, was sold back to Wells Fargo in September 2013 and hasn’t had a deed recorded since 2011. An eviction notice from September 2014 is still posted on the door.)

“When I first moved here this was a vacant lot,” Blake says, referring to his own house, which he built. “That was in sixty-eight.”

“There were only two vacant lots on this block then,” he says, “here and here,” pointing to his own porch, where he’s sitting, and then to the northeast corner of 60th and May. Now, he notes, there are a number of vacant homes and lots on his block, including a large swath of land above 60th and between May and Racine to the west, where a large tree is lying uprooted on the ground.

“There are a lot of vacant homes,” he says, “but I don’t know who owns them.”

Unsurprisingly, most residents aren’t very concerned with who actually owns and should be responsible for vacant properties.

There are far too many of them to worry about specific instances of abandonment and unaccountability.

When I go to check out 7322 South Peoria, which was sold back to Chase in July 2013 but is still in the name of its previous owner, a group of young men sitting nearby say they were just talking about the banks’ eventual plans for vacant homes, although they don’t know anything about 7322 South Peoria in particular.

“They want to kick all of us out,” says one of the men, who, like the others, did not want to be identified.

“This is happening all across urban America,” he says. “Look at New Orleans.”

He then mentions the area south of Garfield and around Normal, where land has been purchased to expand the Norfolk Southern Railway. He says there will be other local developments that displace African-American people before transitioning to talk about how there’s now a New Balance store on 55th Street in Hyde Park.

The open fields along Normal are just

HOUSING (APP), which used state funds to provide municipalities and counties in Illinois with grants for “securing, maintaining, demolishing, or rehabilitating abandoned homes.” The City of Chicago was awarded $2,045,354 through the program, and the Cook County Land Bank, which was formed by a county ordinance in 2013 to acquire vacant and tax-burdened properties and release them back into the market, $250,000.

That same spring, the IHDA also created the Blight Reduction Program (BRP) to “target blighted, vacant residential properties in specific communities for demolition, greening, and eventual reuse or redevelopment.” The BRP, which is funded by the federal government, requires local governments to partner with nonprofits. It announced its first round of funding on March 20 of this year. The Cook County Land Bank was awarded $280,000 to use in Englewood in partnership with the Greater Englewood Community Development Corporation, and another $280,000 in Woodlawn in partnership with Sunshine Gospel Ministries.

In January, the Land Bank announced plans to acquire 712 parcels of land, more than 500 of them former residential lots, and put them to mostly nonresidential use as green space.

“I’m acting like a fool trying to keep stuff affordable,” Butler says. julie wu

north of the area of Englewood covered by the MMRP. Most MMRP areas only span a few blocks, but the one in Englewood stretches from the Dan Ryan all the way west to Sangamon, and from 61st Street south to Marquette. It’s easily the largest area of the MMRP program, although it doesn’t extend to most parts of Englewood and West Englewood. The city is hoping this area will recover if it can leverage the private market—the MMRP boundaries include Kennedy-King College and the planned Whole Foods—but the MMRP doesn’t include the parts of Englewood and West Englewood where the market is not as strong.

Paula Grantt, who grew up in Englewood on Sangamon and runs the neighborhood’s MMRP area, says she’s familiar with the zombie title issue but that there are too many more urgent problems to address first before a concerted effort into finding the zombies can be made. It takes a lot longer for a house to become reoccupied after it’s become vacant than it does for the next house to become vacant, so there’s a pressing need for current homeowners to get foreclosure prevention assistance. Then there are the zombie properties that never finished fore-

closure and that don’t have anyone responsible for them—not even a bank sitting on the deed—and the spate of building code violations that they and other vacancies produce.

It takes about a year for a building to get through housing court, where building code violations these and other vacancies create can be resolved.

In the first few years of the MMRP program, when the focus of the MMRP was primarily on stabilizing neighborhoods and preventing further foreclosures, a lot of homeowners in Englewood and Woodlawn got neighborhood improvement grants to fix up their properties. Although the MMRP offered grants to purchase and rehab properties, none were received in Woodlawn, although one homeowner received a $50,000 home purchase grant in Englewood last year, at 64th and Harvard. Only two MMRP home purchase grants—totaling $171,500—were given in 2014, according to the latest quarterly housing report from the Department of Planning and Development.

Fifty-one units were granted $536,580 in MMRP home improvement grants, and 362 units across the city were granted $6,928,424 in TIF grants and home purchase, home im-

provement, and foreclosure prevention loans.

The Housing Department’s most recent Five-Year Plan, for 2014-18, said “the city will expand the MMRP.” But the MMRP was budgeted just $772,700 in 2015, the same as the year before, and that gets split between thirteen areas that are each much smaller than their neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, vacancies continue to impair the housing recovery across much of the South Side. The Woodstock Institute estimated that there were 5,800 zombie properties in Chicago by the end of 2013, based on foreclosures from 2008 to 2010, and predicted an additional 3,200 zombies by the end of this year. But that doesn’t include the unknown number of vacancies for which banks haven’t come forward with the deed.

Many long-vacant homes are, of course, demolished. But activists like Mattie Butler are critical of demolition as a strategy for neighborhood recovery.

“Historically, it’s been a way to clear land,” she says. “And that’s the nonprofit and the for-profit system working here.”

In the spring of 2014 the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) launched the Abandoned Property Program

A

s the housing recovery begins in other areas of the city, some residents in Englewood and Woodlawn worry that their neighborhoods, the ones hit the hardest by the housing crisis, will never really get a chance to recover, and that the plans for land reuse won’t include them.

“I see a lot of blacks moving out because they can’t afford it,” says Fred Starks, who lives at 63rd and Western, although he’s sitting in a car on the 7100 block of South Parnell. He points across the street to 7139 South Parnell.

“That’s not a bad building, you know?” he says. It’s a brick two-flat, and of good stock, though the land to its left is completely vacant up to 71st. 7139 South Parnell was foreclosed upon and sold back to Wells Fargo in November 2013, but Wells Fargo still hasn’t filed the deed.

“Look around you and you see nothing but vacant homes,” he adds.

Many of those vacant homes are cases of bank abandonment, places where killer profits were made through subprime mortgages. But those vacant homes with unrecorded property deeds indicate another situation, one slightly more sinister: bank abandonment, but only until things become profitable again.

APRIL 15, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

T

hough heavily associated with multiple crews, Angel Davanport is a force to be reckoned with all on her own. One only has to see her live or watch the videos of her performances to understand why. Not only is she a true talent, she expresses said talent with admirable versatility. She first caught the attention of Strange Music’s Tech N9ne during an impromptu green room singing performance at Chicago’s House of Blues—when she followed up her undeniable vocal talent by rapping a few bars, the prolific, radical underground rapper was hooked. She has since collaborated with Tech and the Game on his album Something Else, released a monster of an EP titled FREEPU$$Y, and dropped a host of collaborations with various members of her respective collectives, Skigh Mob and the Rapper Chicks. We paid Angel and her fellow Rapper Chicks a visit at the Chicago Cultural Center as they were preparing for SXSW, at which they have since performed to much-deserved fanfare.

What’s your music story? I feel like everyone who does music has a progression.

I started performing in grammar school.

I acted in plays until high school, which is when I started getting involved with slams.

That’s how I found out about YCA [Young Chicago Authors]. I was getting into a lot of trouble—my friends were getting in trouble and I was getting in trouble trying to stick up for them. I met with one of my poetry teachers, Ms. Qadir, and she told me, I can’t have you out in the streets fucking your life up; you should be in my honors English class and my poetry class. I started working with YCA through Ms. Qadir, and then I just got sucked into the slam world. After that, I wasn’t really sure where my life was taking me. I was starting college at the University of Illinois, I was working toward becoming a teaching artist with YCA. Unlike a lot of people who were super involved with music when they were younger, I wasn’t really involved with hip-hop—I didn’t even listen to it much until I was about sixteen, seventeen.

I didn’t know what to do with my life, but I knew I was a hard worker, so I went and got a catering job. I did office work at school, I was teaching with YCA and writing...and then I got this form on my desk that said, go work for Disney! I took that as a sign. They accepted me into the program, so I moved to Florida. After working for Disney I came home and felt really lost. I got into rap listening to those of my friends who were rappers—poets too, but mainly hip-hop artists—wanting to freestyle, wanting to write.

I feel like having a writing background helps coming into it. People who write first end up having some of the best bars.

It’s definitely a gift and a curse. I can write stories really well. That’s the part that I like.

Because I’m not really the best at writing 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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cracks and punch lines yet, but I recognize that’s my weak point, my challenge area. I’m getting to be the best emcee I can be.

Why start rapping instead of just sticking to singing? Because clearly you can sing and you’ve always known that.

Why not? You know? I like to sing, I like the challenge of rap. It’s exciting. I’m a woman, so people don’t anticipate that when I get on stage I’m gonna open my mouth and be rapping. I think they look at me and think dirty things right away. But I don’t mind that because nothing really changes. They’re just surprised—a lot of people are. That’s the kicker I get out of it. I feel like I’m versatile as an artist, and I just want to be able to talk to everybody.

Why do you think there are so few women featured in hip hop, especially when there are so many talented and hard-working female emcees?

There are going to be a million guys who are average, but there can only be one woman who is amazing. Some guys aren’t even average. They’re just bad rappers, but they have a lot of steez, a lot of swag. And that’s cool, but I think there is a stereotype, a glass ceiling in hip-hop. You can’t go that far if you’re a girl.

Well, you can go far, but you can’t…

Because there’s only room for one girl in the crew.

Exactly. And every other girl is a ho or a bitch or not good enough. But that’s not necessarily the case! If you put all the raw girls together then you’d realize how raw they are.

You don’t have to have a man validating you, telling you what to do, dictating who you are and what kind of music you make and what your style is and what you look like.

Anyone Can Be a Rapper Chick Angel Davanport weighs in on slam poetry, sexuality, schools, and the South Side

BY KARI WEI Sexuality is something you’ve often talked about and have referenced in your music, especially the recent FREEPU$$Y EP. What do you think of society’s current attitude on sexuality?

I think society’s outlook is that a man could have sex with whoever he wants, and it doesn’t matter because he’s a man. But a woman should only have sex with one person. A friend of mine was talking to another friend yesterday, and he was like, women should live like they’re in the fifties.

And that’s not reality. There’s nothing to be ashamed of as far as sex goes, as far as your body goes. Everyone’s weird, everyone’s gross, everyone has an ass, everyone farts. There are some guys that pretend things like that don’t happen. It’s very admirable when I see other women who manage to just ignore people coming at them, calling them hos, calling them sluts, calling them bitches, telling them that they’re not good enough, they don’t work hard enough, they should be in the kitchen

or having babies or… It takes a lot to stand up and say: “You’re not going to talk down to me, you’re not going to treat me like I’m not human or less of a human.”

I know you teach some of the time, and you often speak fondly of your “kids” on social media. What is education’s role in your life?

I was doing RhymeSchool with the girls [Psalm One and Fluffy] through this program called Innovations, so I started teaching with them. Then I came to Uplift. My kids are amazing, but they’re scared, and they put on fronts. Going to school, being around them all the time, having their friends sit in on practices, it went from being fifty-fifty about me and them to being like, this is not even for me. I’m just a vessel here to teach these children. They taught me to be more open, to be stronger about what I believe in because they are so straightforward. If they like something, they like it. If they don’t, they don’t.

MUSIC It was not all about teaching them to write, it was just teaching them to be real with themselves and to be people. To communicate, and not to be mean to each other. You have to be considerate of everybody. It was like life training as opposed to teaching. I teach for those reasons, and it feels so good. I was very defeated about being a teaching artist. I didn’t believe in myself for a long time at all. So I learned to be secure in myself.

What else besides teaching gave you the strength that you said you found in the last year and a half?

I went through some situations that I felt were not good for me. I felt like I was being taken advantage of, and that I was not ready for certain things. But I’m figuring out how to take all of those moments in my life and instead of reacting to them in a way where I keep it inside, don’t share it, and then explode, I just put them into the things that I like to do. Like teaching, and writing. A friend once asked me, what could you not live without?

That’s probably it—those, performing, and people. People who defeat me and make me at the same time. I’m learning that I’m a vessel and I’m comfortable with that.

How did growing up on the South Side help form you and how does it continue to influence you?

I was born in Cabrini, but I moved out of there when I was very young, so I don’t have too many stories or memories.

So it wasn’t as big of a deal to you when it got knocked down.

It wasn’t for me, but it was for my dad, my aunts, and my grandmother. I didn’t understand it then, but when I lost my house when I was a little older I understood what it was like. So we moved to a place around the Gates Park area, and I was running from it for so long. Everyone at my school would say, look at this light-skinned white little thing trying to come in here and be herself, or not really be herself. I was afraid to be myself for a long time. But I used to hang out at 79th and Wood, 82nd and Hermitage, with my best friends, watching Bakugan and Slender Man, playing Xbox, going into Boystown. I was really weird. But I’ve learned just recently that I had to get back to my roots. I was getting Christmas presents from my mom that I was very appreciative of, but I realized that she didn’t really know what to get me. It just made me realize that I didn’t know who I was as a person, and I didn’t really know where I came from. So I thought, man, I have to go back and dig. And it’s never scary. The scariest part is knowing that my parents are getting older. I only have one grandmother left. So I spend time with them just to know them, to learn about who I am and where I come from.

I was definitely feeling very defeated about not knowing myself. I do to an extent now, enough to be comfortable with a lot of the decisions I make. So now I just think, how do I become a better person? How do I be true to myself, how do I give off these good vibes? How do I communicate with people that I don’t like? I don’t get nervous, but I do overthink. And there’s never a reason to over-

think when we don’t know what anybody else is thinking. You should react, as opposed to acting upon and then reacting. I’m just trying to figure out how to give my blessings away and get my blessings at the same time.

Three songs you’ve been listening to recently—go!

“Legend” by Drake. “Liquorice” by Azealia Banks. “Reach” by Martin $ky and Saba.

What is it like being part of two crews, two collectives [Skigh Mob and Rapper Chicks]?

Skigh Mob is like my family. I’ve been a part of them for nine or ten years. They raised me, they taught me how to rap, they treat the shit out of me when I fuck up, they keep me on track. We grew up together and we’re just real with each other. Rapper Chicks? That was an idea that was brought to me that actually flourished, and it’s going to continue flourishing. I co-made that. I’m a co-creator [laughs].

I hope that doesn’t sound too fucked up. But yeah, the Rapper Chicks are going to go far.

We have a lot of great opportunities. We’re performing at SXSW. We consist of Ill-Esha, Fluffy, Psalm, and myself. We’re welcoming girls everywhere, and we welcome everyone who does something. Because anybody could be a Rapper Chick. That’s what the Rapper Chicks is about. I feel like there are a million girls that could be Rapper Chicks that I respect. But no one’s listening. That’s why we need to band together.

I do have one final question for you. What happened with Strange [Tech N9ne’s record label]? [laughs] You don’t have to talk about it.

I’ll just say this—stay tuned.

“I’m a woman, so people don’t anticipate that when I get on stage I’m gonna open my mouth and be rapping. I think they look at me and think dirty things right away.” kari wei

APRIL 15, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

Hyde Park Community Players prove the importance of local theater

A Stage for All

BY LUCIA AHRENSDORF

A

young mother who works in insurance, Rockefeller Chapel’s caroler, the president of an independent opera company, and an actor who is paid by the CPD to attack their officers (for training purposes): all gather on the stage of the second floor of University Church to rehearse for their upcoming show, The Musical of Musicals. These are the Hyde Park Community Players, a diverse group of Hyde Park residents of all different ages and backgrounds who share a love of performance and community.

“I was just the idiot who went around Hyde Park posting flyers saying, ‘Hyde Park needs a community theater, do you agree?’” says the troupe’s founder, Paul Baker. A University of Chicago graduate student turned

10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ APRIL 15, 2015

lucia ahrensdorf

homeschool teacher for his daughters, Baker was inspired to create the theater group by the love of acting that he shared with his youngest daughter, Rachel. After he first posted flyers around the neighborhood five years ago, Baker was surprised to see half a dozen community members attend the first meeting, enthusiastic and impatient to begin planning their first show. In the last five years, the group has steadily grown in ambition and size. The group of roughly forty has tackled Shakespeare, Stoppard, and now a full-length musical—The Musical of Musicals, with full choreography, five acts, and musical accompaniment.

Though it has only existed for five years, and it has no permanent performance space or steady source of funding, the the-

Amelia Snoblin gets into costume for The Musical of Musicals. ater group has thrived and expanded, fueled by a strong loyalty and Baker’s tireless work and dedication.

Baker explains, “Part of what allowed me to put so much into the players was that I was unemployed at the time. And very much hand to mouth. Eventually that started to become impossible.” Baker now works at Powell’s and has a less intense role in the Players—the group is now self-sufficient enough to not rely wholly on its founder.

The raw energy of the Players stems in large part from its acceptance of all who approach them. In each conversation with the Players, it is clear that what keeps the group

STAGE

“I was just the idiot who went around Hyde Park posting flyers saying, ‘Hyde Park needs a community theater, do you agree?’” says the five-year-old troupe’s founder, Paul Baker. alive and flourishing is the friendship and warmth of the members and the freedom to create without a sense of competition or pressure. Baker is adamant that “this is a community that serves a lot of different kinds of people. If we decided that we wanted to do a professional kind of theater, a lot of those people would not be able to participate. And that would be a shame.”

A large number of members in the group decided to join because they acted in high school and missed it, or sought community, or had never tried acting before and craved the experience. Baker describes the all-inclusive nature of the group and the focus on each member’s personal experience rather than the financial success of the shows as true to the origins of the art. “If we go back to the roots of drama, it’s always this kind of thing,” he says. “It’s a community expressing itself by getting together and pretending to be someone else with other people, in that same larger community, watching them.”

Though Shonte Wesson, an internal customer service agent for an insurance company, works two jobs and has a young child, she still found time to star in the Players’ production of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. On her decision to join the group she says, “I was very passionate about acting as a child, and I just sort of gave it up to be an adult.” Though her life is full of responsibilities, she appreciates the Players’ warmth, understanding, and care for its performers.

“It’s very inclusive, and that’s why I love being here; they’re tolerant of her,” she says, gesturing to her four-year-old daughter

skipping around and laughing by the props closet, wearing a bubblegum pink outfit.

Two of the most dedicated members of the group are Michele and Dan Heinz. Michele joined the players after seeing a flyer calling for actors posted on a mailbox. Remembering, she says, “I thought, ‘Hey, that seems like a great way to meet people, make friends.’ I did theater in high school. I was kind of always on the outskirts, the bit roles and stuff like that, but liked the camaraderie.” After her first performance, her husband decided to join as well, despite their impending move to Baltimore for Dan’s new tenure track position, and the two were cast together in Picasso at the Lapin Agile.

“So we moved there,” Heinz recounts with a laugh, “and we just missed the Players so much that we came back. It’s a good group, it’s home for us.”

Clark Webber has been in four of the group’s productions. An actor who has had bit roles in TV shows based in Chicago, he is also involved in training CPD officers in a program that simulates interaction and confrontation with citizens with mental health problems. Webber enjoys being a part of the players: “It’s one of the better groups I’ve done. There’s no divas here.”

A full set of characters, the members that comprise the theater group repeatedly described the sense of community they experienced, the belonging they found, and the bond formed by creating a product together.

Says Heinz, “Doesn’t matter who has a PhD or who just got out of high school, and for a lot of people you never really know. It’s just about what you do on stage. I wanted that.”

APRIL 15, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

A Win and Some Prayers

With Rahm re-elected, local clergy pray for mindful policy and kept promises

O

BY ISAAC STEIN

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ APRIL 15, 2015

n April 7, incumbent Rahm Emanuel soundly defeated Jesus “Chuy” Garcia in a runoff election to determine who would serve as the next mayor of Chicago. However, a quick look at Rahm’s margin of victory—56.2 percent to 43.8 percent—does little to explain how Chuy, a previously under-the-radar member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, became an overnight political icon, or what the fragmented initial turnout that forced the runoff reveals about the type of policy and civic leadership Chicagoans demand from the mayor’s office. Several leaders and affiliates of South Side religious organizations—who understand how voter sentiment broke down beyond the numbers—often expressed dissatisfaction with City Hall, but held diverse opinions as to whether Emanuel is at fault for neighborhood problems.

In the weeks leading up to the runoff, the election was thrust into the national spotlight, as local and national pundits cast Emanuel as a golden boy of big banks on the verge of becoming unelectable because of his own belligerence, perhaps best embodied by his alleged “Fuck you, Lewis!” to the Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis in 2011. In contrast, Garcia was cast as the underdog, who, while only pushed into candidacy by way of Lewis’ diagnosis with brain cancer late last year, would represent immigrants, union members, opponents of red-light cameras, and others in a broad coalition.

However, neither these representations of the candidates nor traditionally important factors like union affiliation and ethnicity—save strong support for Garcia in the Latino community—proved decisive at the polls. Nor, in all likelihood, did the candidates’ stances on one of the most important issues facing the city: its budget. Neither candidate produced a clear plan to address Chicago’s over $35 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and other debt, largely a combination of a budget shortfall within Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and underfunded benefit plans for retired city employees. As reported by the Tribune, Emanuel intends to lobby for increased financial support from Springfield and roll out plans for a city casino—also to be approved by Springfield—in order to shore up Chicago’s finances.

zelda galewsky

However, Woodlawn pastor Alton Burns is not buying it. Burns is the pastor of the New Paradise Missionary Baptist Church, a small congregation of less than 200 nestled at the intersection of 67th and Cottage Grove. He sees the potential plan to establish a casino as an example of vice profiteering that would harm South Side communities.

“If you get someone who is likely to become addicted to gambling, and that person has a family, you have two sets of problems.

That person goes to the casino, their child doesn’t have food or clothes, and the child turns to sticking someone up,” Burns said.

“It seems to me like [the city government] is more concerned with finding a way to raise funds than with treating the community as an asset.”

While he refused to disclose which candidate he supported, and emphasized that he did not promote either Emanuel or Chuy to his congregation, Burns suggested that Rahm’s tenure, while successful in re-

POLITICS

ducing crime overall, has been marked by a routine failure to recognize the difference between the intent of local government policy and the outcomes that it produces.

“I supported Emanuel early on, because there were a whole lot of positive things that he said he was going to do,” he said. “He said he was going to improve the schools and reduce crime, but shutting down schools [during the 2013 CPS closures] has forced a lot of kids to cross gang lines just to get to school, where gangbangers ask them to join every morning. In the same way, the new city bike lanes cut traffic flow down to one lane, which has caused more traffic, more accidents, and more worry about people losing their jobs.”

While Burns expressed disillusionment with four years of Rahm in office while withholding support for any candidate in particular, at least one clergyman from Chuy’s home neighborhood of Little Village went on the record as decidedly pro-Garcia. Ramiro Rodriguez, Pastor of the Amor de Dios Church in South Lawndale, said that he supported Chuy because he was the only candidate that advocated for the unconditional legalization of undocumented immigrants, whom he said constitute “many of [his] Church members.”

“We supported Chuy because he wanted what we wanted, which is to be legal,” Rodriguez said. “Our people are good and decent people, who only want jobs and houses to raise their families. But that is only possible if they are given [amnesty].”

He added that if the city does not grant amnesty to undocumented immigrants, he believes Little Village will become impoverished to the point of desperation.

“If Rahm does not do [unconditional amnesty], we will only see our community get poorer. In the states of Mexico where many of our people are from, the killing has gotten even more messed up, and they definitely can’t go back at the moment,” he said.

“They are asking, screaming, ‘We want a future!’ They work and they pray to God, but they don’t know who will help them. They don’t want to be against the police or the mayor, but they have families to take care of, both here and in Mexico, and they need employment.”

Like Burns, Rodriguez said that he is not necessarily anti-Rahm, but takes issue

with his seeming ignorance of the needs of particular communities.

“We can support Rahm Emanuel, too—we can be on his side. But he has to show that he is on our side,” he said.

However, other neighborhoods with a high percentage of immigrant residents did not turn out in droves for Chuy. The 11th Ward, which includes Chinatown, was a Rahm stronghold in the runoff, as 61.4 percent of residents voted for Emanuel.

Anthony Chan, the English Congregation Administrative Assistant at the Chinese Christian Union Church in Bridgeport, said that political debate was largely absent from his congregation in the weeks leading up to the runoff.

“Our church was not passionate about

“I felt as though Rahm had better initiatives for shoring up the city budget, mostly because Chuy really had not flipped his hand in any way regarding what he planned to do,” he said. “But the casino, if it does work as a fundraising effort, will not take effect for many years, and gambling may have a negative effect on residents. An increased sales tax may also have the effect of making Chicago less appealing for businesses—both of those ideas are real unknowns.”

While Burns, Rodriguez, and Chan all suggested that the mayoral office itself has a tangible impact on South Side communities, David Pendleton, director of the Door of Hope Rescue Mission in Washington Park, had more doubts about whether

“I don’t really see [the mayor] as necessary. The HUD [Illinois Housing and Urban Development Office] has a lot more to do with our operation than the mayor ever will. Everything I ask for from the aldermen—which isn’t much—I get. The state Representative shows his interest in [the Mission] as well,” he said.

Pendleton said the treatment of the Chicago’s homeless population should depend on the humanity of individuals, as opposed to the public policy of Rahm Emanuel.

“There is a serious problem of residents and local police kicking homeless people out of public parks, or taking down their tents—more so on the North Side, but here as well,” he said. “All citizens should be out-

However, neither these representations of the candidates nor traditionally important factors like union affiliation and ethnicity—save strong support for Garcia in the Latino community— proved decisive at the polls. Nor, in all likelihood, did the candidates’ stances on one of the most important issues facing the city: its budget. the election, and our congregation is pretty much detached from city politics. I’m not saying that city politics doesn’t affect the congregants, but a lot of immigrant Chinese are more concerned with affairs in their own neighborhood. Also, a lot of people who go to our church are from the far suburbs, and do not actually live in Chicago,” Chan said.

He added that he personally supported Emanuel because he thought he presented a more cogent plan to remedy the city’s finances. However, he, like Burns, expressed little confidence in the propositions that a city casino or the hope of more help from Springfield in the form of an increased sales tax and other measures would do much to address budget shortfalls in education and public pensions.

either Rahm or Chuy could make a substantial difference for homeless Chicagoans.

Pendleton, who described his organization as a “Christian based shelter and support program” for homeless men over the age of twenty-five, said he has had an unsatisfactory working relationship with the Mayor’s office since he began working at the Mission ten years ago.

“We used to do a yearly breakfast with the Mayor’s office, which was free, and then they started charging us for it. My response was, ‘Really?’ [But] you really can’t fault the mayor, because he is just one person on a fifty-seat City Council,” Pendleton said.

He added that he has received more institutional support from other arms of state and local government.

raged about these abuses. In the meantime, our doors are open and our beds are full.”

In the aftermath of the historic runoff, it’s clear that the election raised questions not just about the differences between Rahm and Chuy but about the fundamental relationships between citizen and state, and relations among citizens. In the coming months, Emanuel will need to address a mountain of municipal debt through some kind of fiscal hocus pocus. It’s uncertain whether Rahm can instill local communities with faith in public policy and confidence in his office’s capacity to address deep-seated social issues. But he’s likely praying that he’ll be able to.

APRIL 15, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

LABOR

Remembering Radicals Uri-Eichen honors the art of activism with “Joe Hill 100 Years Part 4”

BY LEWIS PAGE

O

n December 6, 1928, an army regiment fired machine guns into a crowd of United Fruit Company workers on strike for a six-day workweek and an eight-hour workday in Santa Marta, Colombia. Somewhere between eight hundred and three thousand workers were murdered in cold blood. Jorge Franklin Cardenas, the cartoonist and painter whose work is currently on display at Uri-Eichen Gallery, was eighteen years old.

“That’s when he started off his life of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Stephanie Franklin, Cardenas’s daughter-in-law, who compiled and curated the collection currently on display at the Pilsen gallery. As the grandson of a prominent family in the Santa Marta community, Cardenas was deeply affected by the cataclysmic culmination of the month-long labor strike. “It affected everyone at the time,” said Franklin.

“Without that experience, he might not have encountered the need to fight for freedom.”

“Joe Hill 100 Years Part 4” is the fourth in a series of shows dedicated to the centennial anniversary of the unjust trial and execution of Joe Hill, an International Workers of the World organizer and the voice behind some of the most influential songs of the early twentieth-century labor movement. The show reflects on the legacy of the mythologized labor activist, honoring his death and the power of radical art. More than simple examples of political art, a series of paintings

by James Wechsler and the Jorge Cardenas collection provide a commentary on history, remembrance, and the role of the radical.

The intensely personal and political work of radical artists like Joe Hill and Jorge Cardenas allows for historical perspective on the present. Wechsler’s “Freedom of Information” series comments on complications of remembering a radical individual. The series 14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ APRIL 15, 2015

is inspired by censored Cold War-era FBI profiles of left-leaning artists like Alice Neel, Diego Rivera, and William Gropper. The works are impressionistic representations of the files released by the Freedom of Information Act, each with a colorful background marred by stamps, type-written text, black bars covering redacted information, and other hallmarks of government bureaucracy.

Wechsler’s series serves as a kind of dissenting voice to Cardenas’s bold, playful optimism. The wall of raw, splattered depictions of bureaucratic files stands directly opposite from a wall of bright, cartoonish depictions of familiar public figures. Cardenas’s caricatures let the viewer look back on history through the eyes of a participant, while Wechsler’s obscured FBI files comment on the suppression of speech and the alienated and estranged relationship between the artist, the historian, and the audience.

Cardenas’s caricatures, paintings, and political cartoons tell the intensely personal story of an outspoken artist in constant critique of his surroundings. “He was always drawing cartoons for the wrong side,” Franklin commented. While in school in Madrid, Cardenas worked for an anarchist union newspaper, drawing cartoons criticizing the totalitarian tendencies of Francisco Franco. When Franco came to power in 1939, Cardenas was imprisoned and sentenced to death for his political cartoons, only eventually released after the intervention of the Colombian Consul General.

A collection of muted, monochromatic, paintings of Cardenas’s time as a prisoner prove to be the most emotionally striking part of show. The paintings of slumped, captive figures and corporal punishment show a personal experience of intense brutality and oppression. The most visually appealing and distinctive part of the collection is the wall

jorge franklin cardenas

of brilliantly colored, geometric, cartoonish caricatures of historical figures, ranging from union leader John C. Lewis to Che Guevara to Pablo Picasso, originally published as covers of the Colombian news magazine Semana.

Franklin framed the Cardenas collection as a lesson on the importance and contradiction of historical memory. “Living through history, you feel it—intensely, emotionally,” she said, referencing her own memory of the Kennedy assassination. At the same time, she emphasized the limiting scope of personal experience, and the perspective that history lends the individual. “History shapes the world we live in,” she said. “We don’t always think of it as history at the time, but ten or twenty years later we learn that it shapes everything.”

Rather than simplifying Joe Hill’s legacy or relying on the appealing visuals on display, “Joe Hill 100 Years Part 4” revels in the subtleties and contradictions of its subject material. At the opening of the show, Uri-Eichen hosted a panel to discuss the role

and importance of the satirist in political expression. The panel emphasized the influence that a single dissenting voice could have on political discourse. In the words of panelist, historian, and journalist Rick Perlstein, “The court jester was the most powerful man in the kingdom because he could look the king in the eye and insult him.”

The legacy of Joe Hill and Jorge Cardenas, paired with the contemporary work of James Wechsler, furthers the discussion of the power of the radical artist. The art on display varies—colorful caricatures, paintings evoking government bureaucracy and censorship, pithy black and white political cartoons, political campaign posters, raw depictions of captivity—but it all conveys an immediacy and vibrancy crafted in opposition to oppression or injustice the artist found worthy of opposing.

Uri-Eichen Gallery, 2101 S. Halsted St. By appointment through May 1. Closing reception May 1, 6pm-9pm. Free. (312)852-7717. urieichen.com

STAGE

Give in to the Devil

Redmoon tempts with a celebration of the seven deadly sins al zayed

BY WILL CRAFT

W

ithin a few minutes of walking into The Devil’s Cabaret, Redmoon Theater’s newest show, I was playing a video game with a priest.

With a skeleton puppet in one hand and a controller in the other he challenged me to a racing game, but quickly began asking me about my porn habits and other topics I’d rather not discuss with any member of the clergy. The oddness of that interaction, though brief, helped set the stage for the entire night.

After fizzling at The Great Chicago Fire Festival in October, Redmoon has produced a triumphant success with The Devil’s Cabaret. The show is a truly interesting and fun spectacle—a return to classic Redmoon.

The theater company has taken a simple concept, the cabaret, and transformed the experience into something far grander.

The premise is simple: the Devil has invited us all to hell to celebrate the seven deadly sins, with an act of the performance celebrating each in turn. The show is staged in the Redmoon warehouse, a large open space with wall-to-wall projections and

an open craft beer bar. There are numerous sideshows to the main event: a swing set, a confessional booth, the video-game-playing priest, and a tattoo artist all encourage guests to embrace a life of sin.

The simple conceit of the show belies the production’s sophistication—behind the sheer spectacle, The Devil’s Cabaret displays an impressive degree of technical mastery. The centerpiece of the performance is a thirty-foot tall multi-story rotating crane tower with a rock band, a DJ, and other performers on platforms. As their motto promises, Redmoon quite literally engineers wonder.

When the show started in earnest, the audience was summoned to the metal tower as it hoisted a piano, pianist, and cabaret singer high in the air. As the piano moved through the air and the cabaret singer belted her lungs out, the audience got the first taste of what the entire show would be like: lewd and hilarious. As the Devil stepped out and encouraged us to drink, dance, and give into sin, the audience (already drunk on the free beer) rolled with laughter.

In the first act, Lust, the crew exchanged the piano for a set of silks hung from the crane. The Devil introduced the

audience to his succubi, and encouraged the audience to masturbate to their beauty. The stage began rotating as the performers took turns performing their routines and the Devil alternated between making fun of the audience and admiring the performers.

After, he began to read the confessions that the audience had made at the confession booth, encouraging the audience to loudly cheer and jeer as the revelation warranted. The most scandalous, a confession from a high school teacher admitting to buying drugs off of one of their students, caused the room to erupt into laughter.

The ordeal with the confessions reveals one of the best aspects of The Devil’s Cabaret: the audience is brought into the performance and made a part of the show. In one of the funnier acts of the seven, Gluttony, the Devil invited a member of the audience onto one of the platforms and had them compete with two of the performers in a hot-dog-eating contest. In few other theaters does the audience get to eat, drink, and yell as one of their own competes against the performers in a feat of eating virtuosity.

Above all, the best part of The Devil’s Cabaret is simply how much fun the experience is. After the hot-dog-eating contest,

the Devil asked if it was anyone’s birthday and brought a few people up onto the platforms. After singing a round of “Happy Fucking Birthday,” the Devil gave them cake and asked them exceedingly personal questions. For the final act, Wrath, the platform rotated while the performers breathed fire and played heavy metal music on a drum set lifted into the air. The act ended with the Devil getting a phone call from God, who called on the audience to keep dancing and drinking. By this point the crowd was more than happy to oblige.

Redmoon deftly avoids a problem common to large-scale spectacle shows, where the quality of the performance is sacrificed to overdone stunts, The Devil’s Cabaret, by contrast, demonstrates a high degree of artistry. In Sloth, the best act of the night, the crew raised a large white screen for a fire-lit shadow puppet routine exploring depression. Even in the middle of a drunken, sinful debacle, Redmoon took a somber moment to challenge its audience.

Redmoon Theater, 2120 S. Jefferson St. Weekends May 1 through May 16, 9pm-midnight. $25; includes open bar. 21+. (312)850-8440. redmoon.org

APRIL 15, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

Bronzeville on Air

RADIO

Urban Broadcast Media amplifies young black voices

BY ZACH TAYLOR

S

ixteen months ago, prominent organizer and minister Leon Finney Jr. decided to ring in his seventy-fifth birthday bash with some big news: the Woodlawn Community Development Corporation was launching an initiative to give South Side black communities a multimedia production center. Just a few doors down from his Metropolitan Apostolic Community Church, Finney packed a historic Bronzeville mansion with the fruits of his networks and resources, creating Urban Broadcast Media (UBM). His vision: to “allow people of color to have a voice.”

Since then, donors such as PNC Bank, ComEd, and Community Trust Credit Union have invested about $700,000 to renovate the brightly colored house on King Drive for UBM, which is now filled with state-of-the-art acoustic equipment, rentable recording studios, and production rooms. Finney sees UBM as a blackowned media enterprise in the same vein as The Chicago Defender, Negro Digest, or any other historical black media insti-

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tution in the U.S., and as a means of regaining control over the way black Chicagoans’ stories are told. In a world where a few large corporations control the vast majority of media outlets, the efforts of local broadcasting centers, especially those for black media, are often overshadowed.

Pointing to a table laden with mainstream media publications, Finney explains, “At this particular moment in history, looking at owned media, blacks do not have a voice.” Central to UBM’s mission is the incorporation of black Chicagoans’ perspectives.

UBM’s founding proved fruitful—it’s emerged as one of the South Side’s premier locations for young broadcasters. Its radio programming spans three branches: UBM Talk, Jamz, and Praise. Interns from schools like Kennedy-King College fill all four stories of UBM’s facilities, working alongside permanent members of the staff. Young interns and students form the majority of the broadcasting and production portions of the center. According to Finney, “Young people run this place.

They run the radio, they’re in the studios, they’re making things happen.”

Finney says the next step is UBM Tech, a training institute for young people from ages sixteen to twenty-four that will train them to understand technology as a producer, rather than simply a consumer.

Alluding to the power of social media in particular, Finney picks up my phone and says, “This thing is powerful. Kids already know how to use it to communicate; why not understand what they can do with it on a business agenda?” He hopes the new institute will help young people understand the business implications of the skills they already possess.

When I asked Finney where UBM hopes to be in the near future, he explained that in a year’s time, UBM hopes to explore new media areas, like commercial advertising, and invest heavily in podcasting projects. Regardless of future forms, the goal will remain the same: to secure representation of the black experience by way of black voices.

Players and Pieces

BOOKS

Hyde Park author Blue Balliett debuts a new novel

BY ARDA SENER

A

uthor Blue Balliett is no stranger to 57th Street Books in Hyde Park.

A twenty-five-year resident of the neighborhood and patron of the store for many years, she proudly claims that it is the “best bookstore in the world.” This past Saturday, the store hosted the release event for her sixth book, Pieces and Players. The event provided an opportunity for Balliett’s young fans to hear from the author during a short talk and reading, to speak with her, and to get signed copies of the book.

Balliett brings together her most celebrated characters (Petra, Calder, and Tommy from Chasing Vermeer, The Wright 3, and The Calder Game, Zoomy from The Danger Box, and Early from Hold Fast) in this book for an adventure and a puzzling mystery involving a museum robbery, a Chicago art tour, and a ghost. The characters collaborate to recover stolen artwork while having meaningful conversations about art.

Pieces and Players, like several other Balliett novels, is set on the South Side, in Kenwood. She describes the South Side as a place of mysteries and enjoys its place in her stories. This newest book draws on Balli-

ett’s interest in the art world and art history education. The fictional Farmer Museum in Kenwood is based completely on the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, which was the site of an art heist in 1990.

Similar to the Gardner Museum theft, one Vermeer, one Manet, and three Rembrandt pieces, along with five Degas drawings, are stolen from the Farmer Museum.

Balliett takes the curiosity of children seriously by presenting them with real mysteries such as the Gardner Museum heist.

Balliett describes herself as a great believer in the “power of curiosity.” She explains, “[children] need and deserve big ideas” in order to remain engaged with the world of the novel.

Balliett’s approach to children’s literature is influenced by her experiences as both a mother of three and a former third-grade English teacher at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. Balliett initially intended her first novel, Chasing Vermeer, to be a “read-aloud” book exclusively for her class. The experience of sharing the book with her students inspired her to publish it.

In order to inspire her young readers themselves to write, Balliett often presents pictures of her own messy notes and handwritten manuscripts when she visits schools.

As the event came to an end, Balliett playfully mentioned an FBI reward of five million dollars for whoever can solve the mystery of the Gardner Museum heist. She called on all of the children in the room to get to work on getting to the bottom of this “real mystery.” “This robbery needs to be solved,” Balliett exclaimed. A wave of excited chattering spread through the room.

CALENDAR BULLETIN Landlord Training Workshop If you’re a landlord hoping to learn how to improve your management, look no further than the Bridgeport Citizens Group’s free landlord workshop for property owners and managers on April 16. Co-taught by the Department of Buildings and Law, Community Investment Corporation, and the Chicago Police Department, the workshop will cover leases, rental agreements, riders, background checks, rental history, and inspections. You can reserve a seat by registering online on EveryBlock (go to chicago.everyblock. com and search the event name), and the registration form offers the option to write questions that will be anonymously answered at the event. 9th District Police Station, 3120 S. Halsted St. Thursday, April 16, 3pm-6pm. Free. (312)508-8852. chicago.everyblock.com (Mari Cohen)

Fourth Annual Bridgeport Clean and Green On Saturday April 18, the Palmisano and McGuane Park Advisory Councils will be leading a clean up of Bridgeport in honor of Earth Day. Volunteers will clean up Palmisano and McGuane Parks, as well as much of Halsted, 31st, and 35th Streets. While various instruments of trash destruction (bags, some gloves, “other tools”) will be provided, participants are encouraged to bring their own sunscreen, though the weather forecast does say it’s going to be “mostly cloudy” and fifty degrees. Breakfast snacks will be served. McGuane Park Field House, 2901 S. Poplar St. Saturday, April 18, 9am-1pm. Children should be accompanied by adults. (773)719-6655. chicago.everyblock.com (Christian Belanger)

Chicago Code Camp Chicago Code Camp is a daylong series of workshops by and for developers. Entering its seventh year, the event aims to take advantage of the city’s vast community of computer science experts, with presenters from places like Microsoft and Groupon. As a polyglot conference, the skills taught at Chicago Code Camp can be used in multiple programming languages.

Workshop topics span the fields of web, mobile, and software development. With titles like “Software is a language—Speak it!” and “Growing up on the job— learning to be a better developer,” the event is sure to be a valuable learning experience for novices and professionals alike. Illinois Institute of Technology, 3300 S. Federal St. Saturday, April 18, 8am-5pm. chicagocodecamp.com (Carmin Chappell)

Bayard Rustin: Celebrating His Time on Two Crosses As a gay black man working during the civil rights movement, activist Bayard Rustin faced discrimination on multiple fronts. Despite attacks from within and without the civil rights community after an arrest for homosexual activity, Rustin made major contributions to Dr. Martin Luther King’s nonviolent movement, most notably as chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. Later, he worked as a labor advocate, promoting the integration of American labor unions and serving as chair of the Socialist Party of America; toward the end of his life he became a public spokesman for gay and lesbian rights. University Church and the Bayard Rustin Society honor his life and legacy with a daylong celebration featuring his partner, Walter Naegle, as well as several community organizations. University Church Chicago, 5655 S. University Ave. Saturday, April 25, 8:30am-4:30pm.

(773)363-8142. universitychurchchicago.org (Andrew Yang)

PRO: Reclaiming Abortion Rights Columnist, author, and “red diaper baby” Katha Pollitt will come to the Seminary Co­- Op Bookstore in Hyde Park to discuss PRO, her abortion rights manifesto. Pollitt, who describes abortion as a social good, frames the “pro­l ife/pro­c hoice” argument as a civil rights issue, writing in PRO: “Abortion is part of being a mother and of caring for children, because part of caring for children is knowing when it’s not a good idea to bring them into the world.” Politt also writes the “Subject to Debate” column for the Nation and is the author of several other titles. Seminary Co­ op Bookstore, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Thursday, April 16, 6:30pm. Free. (773)752­4 381. semcoop.com. (Sam Stecklow)

Act for Ecojustice: D.I.Y. Workshop In part to ease the transition from winter to spring, and in part to continue its April theme of “Act for Ecojustice,” Bridgeport’s Brother David Darst Center is hosting a free evening workshop on bike and botanical matters. The Center will host two workshops: the first, led by Working Bikes staff, will offer instruction on bike maintenance and safety, and the second, led

by Bridgeport’s Benton House, will focus on urban gardening. Head over with your dusty bike and return home with a free plant, courtesy of Benton House, with which you can start—or continue—your backyard garden. The Brother David Darst Center, 2834 S. Normal Ave. Wednesday, April 15, 6:30pm-7:30pm. darstcenter.org (Emeline Posner)

Roots of Justice The Little Village Environmental Justice Organization got its start when parents banded together after school renovations seemed to threaten students’ health. The group’s long fight for a superfund site at a former Little Village asphalt factory began when children who played there began to develop rashes.

Between success at the school and success at the former factory, the LVEJO has especially tried to organize the youth in Little Village. This Saturday, the history of engagement by this now venerable advocacy organization with Little Village’s younger resident will continue through the group’s third annual Youth Summit. Advertising for the event emphasized the organization’s focus on gentrification, environmental racism, and the criminalization of youth. There will be live art, there will be music with “DJ Skyy” (quotation marks original), and there will be workshops.

Little Village Boys and Girls Club of Chicago, 2801 S. Ridgeway Ave. Saturday, April 18, 10am-3pm. lvejo.org (Adam Thorp)

MUSIC Too $hort at the Shrine West Coast rap pioneer Too $hort will return to Chicago for a solo show at The Shrine, one of the city’s premier urban nightclubs. A contemporary of Tupac and Biggie, $hort rose to prominence during the Golden Age of Hip Hop. The licentious adventures with women in his X-rated debut Born to Mack (1987) overshadowed his more socially conscious songs such as “I Want to Be Free” and “The Ghetto.” Yet verses like “[y]ou think Oakland, California is a city of punks/it only takes a second, to pop the trunk,” warning of the perils of gang violence, showcase $hort’s skill as a visceral storyteller. Though he’s going on forty-eight, the native son of South Central will no doubt still go hard on stage. The Shrine, 2109 S. Wabash Ave. Thursday, April 16, 10pm. $25. (312) 753-5681. theshrinechicago.com (Eleanore Catolico)

Record Store Day at Reggies Come ring in Record Store Day, the annual holiday dedicated to celebrating the unique culture of inde-

APRIL 15, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

pendently owned record stores in America and abroad, at Record Breakers, the record store next to Reggies in the South Loop. Arrive bright and early when doors open at 8am for a chance at nabbing an exclusive Record Store Day release, and stay for free performances by local bands like Soddy Daisy, The Sueves, Post Animal, and Pleasure Hammer (plus free hot dogs and soda!). Free music, free food, and fifty percent off all CDs—what’s not to love? Reggies Chicago, 2105 S. State St. Saturday, April 18, 8am-11pm. Free. All ages.

(312)949-0125. reggieslive.com ( Juliet Eldred)

Lisa Fischer at Thalia Hall As a backup singer for Luther Vandross, Tina Turner, and The Rolling Stones, Lisa Fischer has played some of the biggest arenas in the world, but she makes her way to the decidedly smaller Thalia Hall to treat Chicagoans to a special mix of reworked versions of classic songs by her more famous tour-mates, as well as her own material (including her 1991 Grammy­ award-winning smash “How Can I Ease The Pain”).

Fischer is maybe most known for her role in the documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, which profiled several backup singers, the unsung heroes of the music industry. Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Saturday, April 18, 8pm. $34. All ages. (312)526­- 3851. thaliahallchicago. com. (Sam Stecklow)

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Family Festival at the Logan Center Classical music—it’s not just for adults anymore! Well, maybe it never was, but if you had any doubts, the Logan Center plans to appease them with the next in a series of family-friendly Saturday festivals. This upcoming Saturday, string-inclined families (or, probably, anyone string-inclined) will be able to catch “soul violinist” Lee England Jr., who describes his style as a “musical gumbo” of influences from classical, R&B, jazz, hip-hop, and even gospel. The theme is “Embracing the Classics”—in England’s capable hands, hopefully kids will be able to get schooled without dozing off. Logan Center, 915 E. 60th St. Saturday, April 18, 12pm-5pm. $5 single tickets, $20 families of five or more. (773)702-2787. arts.uchicago.edu ( Jake Bittle)

Dusties Party Spring Soul Reunion For many, the WHPK Dusties Party every Thursday night from 9pm-12am might just be a few hours at home next to a radio reminiscing on the good old days of soul, funk, and blues, but this Saturday, the party is coming alive at Hyde Park Records. The popular radio show has hosted the DJ party for the past five years, providing free food, playing music and hosting, according to their video invitation, celebrities. Hosted

by DJs Andy, King George, Pj Willis, Raymond, Stevie, and Gary, the party lands on National Record Store Day, a day celebrating the 1500+ independent record stores in the US, their patrons, and their workers. Deals on 45s, 12” singles, CDs, and DVDs

are available from the venue, Hyde Park Records.

Hyde Park Records, 1377 E. 53rd St. Saturday, April 18, 12pm-10pm. Free. (Clyde Schwab)

Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219 S. Morgan St. Tuesday, April 21, doors 7:30pm. $10 suggested donation. (773)6556769. coprosperity.org (Alex Harrell)

Sanchez at the Shrine The scene is Kingston, Jamaica in 1988—a reggae hub of the world in its prime. This is the year that a young singer named Sanchez drops his first reggae track, “Lady in Red,” and this is the year he immediately becomes a sensation. Twenty-seven years and more than thirty albums later, Sanchez has become a living legend of the genre. In his upcoming visit to The Shrine in the South Loop, he promises to bring vibes from many decades of Jamaica’s rich musical history, having continually diversified his sound to include elements of pop, R&B, dancehall, and gospel.

Well-versed reggae fans probably know his name, but even if you don’t, come discover the work of a seasoned legend who, having entered his sixth decade, is still in his prime. The Shrine, 2109 S. Wabash Ave. Friday, April 19. Doors 10pm. $30. 21+. (312)753-5681. theshrinechicago.com (Addison Barron)

STAGE AND SCREEN Comedian Patti Vasquez

Auden Poetry Reading The Seminary Co-op continues its celebration of National Poetry Month with an evening dedicated to the life of Anglo-American Pulitzer Prize winning poet W.H. Auden, whose terse, energetic style gave voice to the urgency and moral anxiety of the early twentieth century. The show will feature seven of Auden’s poems set to music by Aron Dunlap, a professor of liberal arts at Chicago’s quirky Shimer College, who has a Bachelor of Arts in Music with a specialization in violin performance. He also participates as one half of the husband-and-wife musical duo Good Dust. Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Friday, April 24, 6pm-8pm. Free. (773)752-4381. semcoop.org (Andrew Yang)

VISUAL ARTS Imaginary Landscapes

“Lipstick Mom” Patti Vasquez will be performing stand-up comedy at the Beverly Arts Center on April 24. I know what you’re thinking—who’s watching the kids? Fortunately, Mrs. Vasquez promises that she leaves the car window open while she performs, so her children will definitely get enough air. Granted, Patti tends to stick to more conventional stand-up material—tackling hard topics like relationships, pop-culture, and motherhood—but her lengthy professional resume suggests that audiences have not yet tired of hearing about her son’s love of trains or weighing her breasts on the scales at Whole Foods (“yes, they’re organic”). This show represents the latest in a series of comedic projects, including four solo shows and multiple television appearances. Plus, part of the proceeds will be donated to the Beverly Breast Cancer Walk, so you’ll get to laugh, support the arts, and back an important project. Score! Beverly Arts Center, 2407 W. 111th St. April 24, 8pm. $25. (773)445-3838. beverlyartcenter.org (Morgan Pantuck)

Returning to a space of your past is the best way to wipe away the rose-colored nostalgia tint from your glasses. Through Imaginary Landscapes, Mana Contemporary presents an exploration of the relationship between space, time, and memory. Four Midwest-based artists delve into the uncertain space at the nexus of the three, and the result is a collection of sculptures and images gathered by Chicago-based curator Allison Glenn. Lisa Alvarado’s work features elements of shamanism as she critiques cultural appropriation and assimilation; Assaf Evron toes the line between photography and sculpture; deconstructing the mundane, Robert Burnier explores failed utopia; and, last but not least, Caroline Kent harnesses narrative and storytelling to ruminate on what it means to be an outsider in another country. Delve into the uncertainty that spans space and time. Mana Contemporary, 2233 S. Throop St., 4th floor. April 4-May 31.

Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm. Opening Reception April 4, 6pm-9pm. (312)850-0555. Free. manacontemporarychicago.com (Kristin Lin)

Bad Grammar Theater

Nature’s Matrix

A literary mainstay and cultural institution of the South Side, Powell’s, in its University Village branch, plays host to a reading series every third Friday of the month. Bad Grammar Theater features both established and rising Chicago-based authors, especially in the genres of horror, fantasy, pulp fiction, and sci-fi.

Brendan Detzner, the series’ host and patron, has written Scarce Resources, a collection of bizarre, eerie, and sometimes harrowing short stories. Other authors who were involved in previous iterations of Bad Grammar Theater include Rory Leahy, Maggie Wagner, Lawrence Santoro, and Alexei Collier. An online podcast is available for those who long for tales of intrigue and fear, but nothing could possibly beat the cloistered atmosphere of a Powell’s. Powell ’s Bookstore, 1218 S. Halsted St. Friday, April 17, 6pm-9pm. Free. badgrammartheater.com (Darren Wan)

Like many of their fellow artists, Charles Heppner and Diane Jaderberg have turned to nature for inspiration. Instead of capturing the astonishing might of an ocean, or the tranquility of a peaceful sylvan landscape, they channel elements from nature and turn them into visual motifs, repeating and abstracting them to create pieces which are not just strange but nearly unrecognizable. Also important for their work and their new installation is the interaction between technology and nature, which is mirrored in Heppner’s use of digital media and computer software to create prints. Their joint exhibition, “Nature’s Matrix,” is taking place at the Hyde Park Art Center, where the two have been studying and creating since the mid 2000s. Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. April 5-July 5. Opening reception Sunday, April 19, 3pm-5pm.

(773)324-5520. hydeparkart.org (Robert Sorrell)

Story Club South Side

Joe Hill 100 Years Part 4

One stage. One story. Eight minutes. Go. From New York Times authors to theater majors, narrators grab the mic and spill their guts out to a hungry audience at the live literature performance club, Story Club South Side. Founded in Bridgeport, Story Club has expanded to Minneapolis and Boston after such success in Chicago. Open mic and featured performers will be exploring the theme of epistles during this month’s performance at the Co-Prosperity Sphere. BYOB.

Since his 1915 execution before a firing squad in Utah, Swedish-American labor activist and songwriter Joe Hill has become emblematic of the struggle of itinerant workers in the United States. To mark the hundred-year anniversary of Joe Hill’s death, the URI-EICHEN Gallery in Pilsen will be showcasing the politically charged works of a dynamic duo of social activist artists: the late Colombian cartoonist Jorge Franklin Cardenas and the New York-based

CALENDAR painter James Wechsler. Cardenas’ work, which includes caricatures of Che Guevara, John Lewis, and Francisco Franco, will be displayed for the first time in over forty years, after being released to the public by his Hyde Park-based daughter-in-law. Weschler will showcase his “Freedom of Information” series of paintings, inspired by the FBI’s Cold War era files on artists and writers. URI-EICHEN Gallery, 2101 S. Halsted Ave. Opening reception April 10, 6pm-10pm. By appointment through May 1. Free. (312)852 7717. urieichen.com (Lauren Gurley

LURE Gallery Guichard’s next exhibit, LURE, is encapsulated by its acrostic tag line: Love, Urban, Rawness, and Energy. Featuring six Midwest-based African-American artists, LURE draws upon a wealth of experience and artistic talent. James “Drew” Richardson renders the disparate experiences of young individuals; Derrock Burnett uses figure and portrait to evoke the visual sound of hip-hop; Roger Carter bridges the gap between graffiti and abstract expression; Walter Bailey is a pioneer of aCRYLONIC aRT, a technique of graphic design on acrylic polymer panels; Rodney Wade draws upon his experiences growing up on the South Side; and Just Flo is, among numerous roles, a tattoo artist and a mural painter.

Explore the ways in which these artists probe broad questions of experience and identity. Gallery Guichard, 436 E. 47th St. Opening reception April 24, 6pm-10pm.

Free. RSVP required at galleryguichardsocial@gmail.com.

(773)791-7003 or (708)772-9315. galleryguichard.com (Darren Wan)

Go Away, Ghost Ship!

Ranging across wallpaper, found wood, house paint, photographs, fabric, steel, and plaster, there’s a type of media to please almost anyone in this group show by four 2015 UofC MFA students. This thesis exhibition represents the blood, sweat, and tears the students have put into their work over their two-year program.

Alex Calhoun, Sara Rouse, Zachary Harvey, and Autumn Elizabeth Clark have been working together since arriving at the university, and the show’s name is a cheeky reference to the cartoon mystery they all watched as children, Scooby Doo. Sometimes making

art is a matter of solving the mystery—exploring form, material, and content in order to create a final object.

Let’s hope they have Scooby snacks. Logan Center, 915 E. 60th St., Gallery 107. Through May 14, Tuesday-Saturday, 9am-8 pm, Sunday, 11am-8pm. (773)702-2787. arts.uchicago.edu (Lara Kattan)

Confessions Interpretation is the name of the game in this mixed-media group show. Seventeen commissioned artists were tasked with writing down a confession, something that they’ve never told anyone before.

Visitors will be given a copy of each artist’s written confession on arrival and the show will involve visual interpretations of the written confessions in any manner the artist chooses. The one-night-only show will allow the audience the novel experience of comparing the written word with its visible elucidation. Where art is the translation of some ineffable thought or feeling into something perceptible, this show will allow the audience an even greater insight into the artist’s process of turning ideas into visuals. Chicago Art Department West. 1932 S. Halsted St., #101. Friday, April 24, 7-11pm with after party to follow. (312)725-4223.

Free. chicagoartdepartment.org (Lara Kattan)

Snuff The word “snuff ” conjures up different things for different people, whether it be a video of murder, the 1976 splatter film, or for those of us still into the 19th century, fine-ground tobacco. But next weekend, Slow is taking on the heavy topic in an art show featuring Tony Balko, Todd Chilton, Jeffery Grauel, and Diego Leclery. Slow, an independent exhibition venue, features contemporary art that is “introspective and vulnerable (read slightly nerdy),” demands exploration, and is brutally frank and witty. From Balko’s flashing-color nostalgia to Chilton’s vibrant pattern painting, from Grauel’s seemingly barren work to the over-my-head work of Leclery, if you want a take on snuff, some excellent art, or a chance at free booze, visit Slow next weekend. Slow, 2153 W. 21st St. Opening reception Friday, April 25, 6pm-9pm. Through May 16, Saturdays 12-5pm. Free. (773)645-8803. paulis-slow.info (Clyde Schwab)

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