April 3, 2019

WELCOME

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent 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. The South Side Weekly is dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists.

THE ARTS ISSUE

Volume 6, Issue 23 Editor-in-Chief Adam Przybyl Managing Editors Emeline Posner, Sam Stecklow Deputy Editor Jasmine Mithani Senior Editors Julia Aizuss, Christian Belanger, Mari Cohen, Bridget Newsham, Olivia Stovicek Chief of Staff

Manisha AR

Education Editor Music Editor Stage & Screen Editor Visual Arts Editor Food & Land Editor

Rachel Kim Christopher Good Nicole Bond Rod Sawyer Emeline Posner

Contributing Editors Mira Chauhan, Joshua Falk, Carly Graf, Ian Hodgson, Maple Joy, Sam Joyce, Ashvini Kartik-Narayan, Rachel Schastok Amy Qin, Jocelyn Vega Staff Writer Kyle Oleksiuk

Data Editor Jasmine Mithani Radio Exec. Producer Erisa Apantaku Social Media Editors Bridget Newsham, Sam Stecklow Director of Fact Checking: Sam Joyce Fact Checkers: Abigail Bazin, Susan Chun, Elizabeth Winkler, Tammy Xu Visuals Editor Ellen Hao Deputy Visuals Editors Ireashia Bennett, Siena Fite, Lizzie Smith Staff Photographers: milo bosh, Jason Schumer Staff Illustrators: Siena Fite, Natalie Gonzalez, Katherine Hill Interim Layout Editor J. Michael Eugenio Deputy Layout Editor Haley Tweedell Webmaster Managing Director

Pat Sier Jason Schumer

The Weekly 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. Over the summer we publish every other week.

Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637

Cover artwork by Andrea Coleman

For advertising inquiries, contact: (773) 234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly.com

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here’s nothing quite like spring in Chicago.

Since at least November, there’s hardly been a day when it was not miserable to be outside for any period of time. When the sunset finally moves past 5pm, the temperature climbs into the fifties, and the year’s first dandelions bloom across the city, Chicagoans emerge from their cocoons too. There are more people outside, walking, playing in parks. It’s like the city is itself something that wakes up and stretches out, ready to do things and go places again.

For this year’s Arts Issue, we wanted to showcase a bit of that liveliness and energy that bubbles up after months of suppression. From DIY punk concerts to a list of emerging art galleries, from poet laureates weaponizing words to plays, paintings, and everything in between, this issue’s artists, musicians, and spaces highlight growth and process. Some artists chose to lay low, working consistently until they broke free with shows and exhibits. Others kept up the momentum going, working just as hard if not harder as if the winter weather was no deterrent at all.

Like many of these artists, writers, and other creatives, we all go through different seasons within our work. Sometimes filled with productivity and other times with procrastination; sometimes effortless while other times effortful.

The work we do is about more than just what we create. It’s about how we create it and what it took to get there. In this issue we explore the various narratives and stories that artists have created through their work, their voices, physical spaces, and beyond. This year’s Arts Issue is an ode to all artists in Chicago creating work, pushing through their own personal winters, and emerging into their own springs.

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weapons out of words

“Specificity is where I become a weapon and where my poems can become weapons.” erisa apantaku................................................3 painting the process

These photos illustrate the process of creation that graffiti-writers go through. rod sawyer.......................................................5 into the wild

“Who says that you can’t be an artist and a chemist as well?” natasha estevez..............................................7 portraits

“The rules are no rules.” manisha ar and marina resande santos.....9 catalyzing a new renaissance in the backyard

The project aims to create platforms for artists in environments of respect and community. marina resende santos................................13 court theatre sings a black girl’s song

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf nicole bond...................................................15 summer camp guide

weekly staff..................................................16 brenda linda, linda brenda

“There’s so much jazz out there that I didn’t know was jazz.” kyle oleksiuk.................................................22 know thyself

“Get comfortable being uncomfortable.” nicole bond...................................................24 revisited experiences

“I’m trying to revisit those experiences I’ve had and make them a current situation.” bridget gamble.............................................25 a print gallery..................................................26 from west lawn to wicker park

A Tale of Two Alternative Rock Scenes nikki roberts.................................................36

Weapons Out Of Words Kara Jackson on crafting her chapbook as Chicago’s Youth Poet Laureate

BY ERISA APANTAKU

DAVON CLARK

In September, Young Chicago Authors (YCA) named Kara Jackson Chicago’s newest Youth Poet Laureate. An Oak Park resident, Jackson is the third Youth Poet Laureate after E’mon Lauren and Pat Frazier. In December 2018 and March 2019, the Weekly sat down with Jackson to discuss the process of crafting poems for her chapbook, coming out this fall from Haymarket Books.

In an episode of VS, a podcast from the Poetry Foundation, you mentioned that being a young poet now means saying what a lot of people are afraid to say. What are the things that you think a lot of people are afraid to say?

Youth is tied to so many things. It’s tied to purity. It’s tied to being naive and not really understanding yourself. But I think, for me, being audacious and being young also means talking about

sex and talking about drugs and talking about things that the youth are actually going through. I’m a big fan of Amy Winehouse, and she made her debut album when she was twenty years old.

A lot of people were reviewing it and they were saying, oh, she's so mature, her content is so mature. But she was just talking about sex, and most twenty-yearolds do have sex.

I think I didn't really understand when I was very young how young people actually have really important things to say. Now that I am nineteen, I watch people try to belittle me, like, oh you don’t really know what you're talking about yet. I think that’s what I’ve been trying to get inspiration from—being very loud and wrong, but also loud and correct. Embodying that has been a really big inspiration for my book because I think there are a lot of things I'm going to talk about that I'm afraid to talk about,

but also owning that fear.

Is the “fear of saying things” similar to the youth saying things that people don’t expect them to say?

There are so many things for young people—now, especially—to be afraid of, but also there’s so many things that if we don’t say them, nobody is gonna say them.

I think about the conversations I have with my parents and there’s language that I have for things that they just don’t have. If I don’t share that language with the world, it would be doing people a disservice who don’t have access to that language. If I can articulate something that a nineteen-year-old in a different place is feeling, then I’ve accomplished something, then I feel like my fear isn’t that pressing of an issue. It goes beyond my fear in a way.

Fear is something that I thrive

in almost. I’m constantly afraid of this earth and I’m constantly afraid of what my identity can put me through on this earth. Sandra Cisneros, in The House on Mango Street, talks about doing things because she is afraid, and I’ve always taken that with me.

In our first conversation, you talked about wanting to weaponize your poems so that they do something in addition to being on the page. Since that conversation, do you have any examples of where you feel like you’ve started to do that or how you want to do that now that the book has come together?

I’ve been thinking about that lately in terms of the poems I have that are less rooted in narrative. Sometimes when I’m writing a story that’s already happened, I find that I’m more helpless

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“If I can articulate something that a nineteen-year-old in a different place is feeling, then I’ve accomplished something.”

in that narrative. But I’m also trying to rewrite narratives and weaponize those poems. I have this power to rewrite what happened. I think that’s a really good tool.

Eve Ewing is really good at talking about Afrofuturism, how it’s important for us to envision a future with Black people in it. So I think of rewriting things as also working toward that understanding, that Black people will always be able to shift narratives and make them their own or retell things to make themselves stronger almost in a way. I think I’m trying to make poems that do that more, or at least write poems that are more rooted in myself being very clear of who I am.

I’m definitely thinking more about my body in this chapbook, and not in an abstract way. When I was younger, I would write about myself in these ways that were not myself, and I would talk about myself in terms of my Blackness but not give myself any type of specificity.

I don’t think that I can be general and also be a weapon. I think that specificity is where I become a weapon and where my poems can become weapons. Because then nobody else can write them, and so it kind of becomes my own personal battalion in that way.

In the VS episode, you mentioned that Chicago was always this welcoming city. I’m curious about how long you have been coming to Chicago and how you've learned about the city.

I think everybody in Oak Park grew up going to Chicago for certain things, staycations and stuff like that. I didn’t really start choosing to go to Chicago myself with my own interests and intentions until I went to YCA. When I got to high school and I started going to YCA is when I realized that Chicago is a living, breathing place with living and breathing conflicts and also really great things at the same time.

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Chicago is a place that accepts me but also doesn’t need me. Recently, I was talking to Eve Ewing because we did this performance for Jamila Woods—“Heavn Here”—and they gave us these shirts that had Chicago on them and I was like, well, I don’t really know if I can be walking around with this Chicago shirt y’all, I don't know. And Eve was like, oh we claim you. And I think it's so funny to think of a city as something that has the jurisdiction and the ability to claim certain people. Just thinking of Oak Park as a place, they claim certain people.

We are definitely known for Frank Lloyd Wright and Hemingway. But also Ludacris was from here. I think that's so funny because Ludacris does not claim Oak Park. But Oak Park claims Ludacris.

There’s a lot to unpack for me because I think I never want people to think that I’m not from the suburbs, because it’s just very evident that I'm from the suburbs. But also, Chicago claims me and I guess I recognize that too. I recognize how I understand the city in a different way than my friends who go there to go thrifting and go home or who go there to go to certain events but don’t actually care about what’s happening in the city.

The work that is being done in Chicago is way more important than anything that I’m doing. Understanding that has been helpful for me in terms of my writing: is it trivial for me to write about this, or am I staying in my lane?

Because I think a lot of Oak Parkers will try to take on Chicago as a writing topic, and I definitely have before. But I respect Chicago so much as a visitor.

I want you to talk a bit about your Southern lineage and how you see it factoring into your work.

I have a very interesting family. I grew up going to Georgia every single year. We would get in the car and put all of our stuff in it and drive fifteen hours to

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Georgia. My dad is from there—it wasn’t just like, oh, my grandma was from there, no, my dad is from the South and still returns to the South. My mom is from California, and so my mom always makes fun of my dad for some of the stuff that he does because it is just different. The country is such a very specific place. I grew up eating grits for breakfast every single day. And I thought that’s just what everybody did. My dad makes us Brunswick stew; that’s literally an entire hog’s head. I’d be like, what is that smell?

And he’d be like, look in the pot. And there’s a literal pig’s head, a whole face.

You could see it.

My Southern history has informed me in a lot of ways, but the women specifically. I think of the ways that the women in my family have worked. My grandma worked in a factory for decades and my great-grandma, her mother, was a sharecropper. I think about my family’s relationship with soil. A lot of the work that I’m writing now is kind of investigating how my senses are still a testament to my family’s work, the women in my family, and how [in] the same way trauma is passed down.

How is work and how is occupation generational? If my great-grandma is a sharecropper, then what about my hands are still like her hands?

I think about that a lot. And also, being so far away from them, what did I lose coming here? What would I know how to do with the ground if I lived in Georgia, if I grew up with my grandma?

Not regret, just I’m sometimes salty about it. But then there are customs—I couldn’t live like my grandma. She’ll tell me, now that I’m nineteen, “I got married when I was your age.” I think about how subservient she is, and how her routine relies on the hunger of men and relies on their needs. She gets up at four in the morning and cooks breakfast for everybody, and while she likes cooking, what is that passion rooted in? She definitely likes to cook, but that necessity

and that need for cooking comes from the patriarchy. I think about how I idolized the women in my family, but also how I’m not like them, and finding out ways to be proud of that. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Erisa Apantaku (@erisa_apantaku) is the executive producer of South Side Weekly Radio. Last year, her team completed a multimedia project about the history of Robeson High School.

ROD SAWYER

Painting the Process Finding balance in West Side graffiti

BY ROD SAWYER

R

ecently, I took a Japanese calligraphy class for the first time. As the instructor set up the materials on the table, he showed me a variety of tools, including brushes with thin and fat bristle, handmade fine oil soot Ink Sticks, and my favorite: some of his own collection of calligraphy work. The way the black ink settled into the paper, the strokes thin in some places and bigger in others, the way each symbol resembled his knowledge and control of the brush, struck me as it reminded me of another art form I’ve become interested over the years: graffiti-writing.

At one point, when I was practicing drawing the symbol for the number ten, I asked my instructor how I should go about drawing the straight vertical line, the second stroke of the symbol. The way he drew

it, his brush descended from top to bottom, allowing the bristle stroke to thin out perfectly as it neared the end of the page. I tried again and again to match his example, but unlike his, my vertical stroke was not made in one swift motion, instead full of second thoughts, hesitations, and, simply put, me overthinking the hell out of it.

When I asked, he laughed—initially because another student had just asked him the same question—but afterwards told me that he couldn’t help me draw that straight line.

Like any student, this confused me at first, until he proceeded to explain his answer: calligraphy is about what you create, but not just in the sense of the creation itself.

For every perfect sentence or character, the calligrapher draws hundreds of symbols that are less than perfect.

This answer rang true to me because of my experiences and roots within the graffiti culture in Chicago. For graffiti—an art dedicated to spray-painting, letters, and oftentimes a lack of permission—the work is about so much more than just the paint itself, and simultaneously is about nothing more than just the paint on the wall. To practice drawing, painting, or tagging different styles, utilizing and creating your own fonts, and making work heavily based on space and time over and over again is as much about the process of creation as it is the end result. While calligraphy is very different from graffiti-writing in many ways (especially when it comes to each calligrapher’s process and each graffitiwriter’s process, as they can differ greatly within each community) they both focus

on the importance of the technique of the marks being made, the repetition required to perfect the work, and the process behind the continuation of the art form.

Taking this class led me to re-explore this process through this short photo essay of graffiti murals that I’d shot a few weeks earlier, found deep inside a warehouse on the West Side. These photos illustrate the process of creation that graffiti-writers go through: balancing letters against and with each other; adding in arrows, whips, and extensions that balance against the letters; and finding balance with each color used and figuring out if these colors will stand out or blend into the chosen “canvas” space.

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PHOTO ESSAY

ROD SAWYER

Rod Sawyer is a photojournalist based on the South Side, focusing mainly on covering graffiti and mural art, is and the visual arts editor for the Weekly. He last wrote for the Weekly in March about school uniforms for Betty Shabazz International Charter School designed by streetwear designer DesMoney.

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VISUAL ARTS

Into The Wild

NATASHA ESTEVEZ

Chicago artist Armani Howard reflects on the inspiration for his work and fictional world

BY NATASHA ESTEVEZ

L

ast July, Armani Howard, an artist from Roseland, had his first solo show, exhibiting “Chapter 5: This Kingdom Come” at Mo Faux Studio on the Northwest Side. The gallery was welcoming, and Appleby’s “Lady Sunshine” played from time to time.

On a 36-inch by 48-inch canvas titled “Word is Bond”, four boys stood with arms around each other’s shoulders along with a mouse, glaring at the audience. The upper half had a black background, and the bottom half of their bodies went unseen as they disappeared into a pool of white, which turned out to

be a wormhole.

Howard explained the secret to finding the meaning of the work: “By using two different varnishes, matte and gloss, you can see one or the other in different lighting. Gloss reflects light, where matte does not. With that, you can see [how] the different tones and illusions are created.”

Howard wants people to look at things from a different perspective. The idea behind the work is the frustration of communication. In other paintings, characters stood fierce with eye patches and heads of burning fire, insomniac

scenes with identical girls shooting blue and golden forces at one another, distorted faces, “shadow creatures,” and concrete guardians.

On the debut of this chapter, Howard said “This stage mainly talks about the introduction to the world and the narrative that is being created, primarily focusing in on the first king who is a prominent character within the book and necessary point of discussion.

It’s about getting viewers comfortable with the imagery that comes with it and how that imagery can grow and change.”

As night fell, family members,

friends, and other artists familiar with Howard’s work popped in to see the pieces from “Chapter 5: This Kingdom Come.” They came across not only Howard’s imagination in practice, but also a part of his life. “The work first stems from me wanting to find a way to talk about my personal growth,” he said. “I always take my personal situation into account. This work is, for where its at, and where it continues to grow just a reflection for what I’ve experienced so far in my life.”

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VISUAL ARTS

“In order for me to reflect on that, I had to make something that I could see from the outside standpoint that was pretty true to myself, that I could visualize.”

T

he kids in Howard’s paintings inhabit a fictional world he created that serves as a moral compass for himself and his art. In these works, the children are not just floating but actually ascending toward adulthood.

Howard depicts them in that transition period because “children have a lot more power than we give them, and having them at a central standpoint for the work, I enjoy that it allows them to grow.”

All of Howard’s art comes from his book, Into The Wild, a blueprint for his fictional world. The book is written in a language Howard calls his own, a mix of letters and visual symbols that appear in his work. “There is no name for the language,” he explained. “It is a way for the kids [in my work] to communicate with one another.... It made the world tangible and realistic for me.”

Armani describes his book as something that helped him meditate on his life. “In order for me to reflect on that, I had to make something that I could see from the outside standpoint that was pretty true to myself, that I could visualize.”

The themes explored within his works are based on the morals and ideas given to him by his mother, which Howard uses to guide the children within the world. He said he “wanted the kids to engage with the idea of this compass that I’ve made for my own personal life, and for this fictional world.”

I

n the August after his freshman show, Howard gave a group of students in After School Matters (ASM), a nonprofit organization for Chicago high school teens that he attended himself, an artist talk in the gallery space. Some asked questions while others stared into the work, pointing to details they liked.

It was not until Howard gave them what he called the “real talk” that the students really became focused, as if something clicked and heard something they had been waiting for.

He split the group up between those who were interested in pursuing art, 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

those not sure if they wanted to pursue art, and those not interested in art at all.

As Howard pointed to what seemed to be the unsure group, everyone scattered and joined one of the more definitive groups, leaving one girl in a colorful dress to defend for herself. When asked why she was unsure, she said, a bit hazily “I want to learn how to animate but I also really like doodling in general and digital art and stuff but I also really like science….I’m kind of at this crossroad where I have to be like, science or art?

I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do with it.”

Howard told her and her classmates that they didn’t have to choose; merging different crafts and studies was also an option. “You have options. That’s the thing about college, there’s [usually] an art department in any school you’re in... so who says that you can’t be an artist and a chemist as well?”

When reflecting on the experience of the talk he had given to the class, he remarked, “I remember being that kid... feeling sometimes like a big part of it is you’re used to adults telling you one thing and you should think a certain way or do a certain thing. I think there are key points that I wish when I was younger that someone told me that you didn’t have to just focus on one thing, you should just try to do as many things as you can...you should be open to the people around you because you never know what they can teach you.”

Speaking on his experience at After School Matters, Howard said, “I signed up for After School Matters and saw it as a way to make money,” referring to the stipends students receive in the program.

He eventually realized that the program was more than just a stipend, and it became more about the effect the work was having on him. “It dumped me into this thing that made me feel something for the first time, that made me feel a certain way about myself that was more positive and so as I gained the technical ability, I could execute that idea,” he said.

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E

ach show is a countdown, starting from Chapter 5, of the chapters in his book. “As each show progresses, you’re getting...an introduction to the world,” he said.

Shortly after his first solo show and his talk with the students at ASM, Howard was already back to working on the pieces that would later be included in “Chapter 4” in February.

In the studio space that he shares with Nikko Washington in the Fine Arts Building, Howard was in the middle of making a big skull on a 40-inch by 40-inch canvas. Titled “GOIGO (Growing Old Is Getting Old),” it went into February’s exhibit, which would be centered on breaking down situations and presenting them as ideas, rather than in their actuality. “GOIGO” takes from Howard’s personal experience of getting advice from older generations to find a partner and settle. The painting was not an actual scene of people together and getting tired and old, but rather the idea of it.

One thing Howard wants to teach his audience is that the process of things should never be undermined; the beginning of a project is the foundation for building an idea. According to Howard, every part of the process is equally as important to the final result as the completion of the idea itself. The characters that once begin as escapist thoughts in sketchbooks are the keys that will act as leading roles in his narratives.

He believes in allowing the childlike view of the world to navigate the craft, for instance, because he's right-handed, he sometimes uses his left hand to make drawings as if a kid had done it, stating, “some of the line work and stuff that happens in the background that looks like drawings, [but] sometimes reality doesn’t come as clean.”

At one point, Howard’s mother Lena joined our interview. He went from wall to wall, picking up the paintings that hung on display and explaining them to his mother, a major support system for all of his work. He explained that

part of the reason he wants to discuss communication in his illustrations and narratives is because she always stated it is a key point in life.

Holding “Comeback Kid” on a 60inch by 36-inch canvas, the painting moved with his energy, as it illustrated a one-eyed boy with a patch and another kid with fire for a head, both on a deep red background. “This piece is about becoming friends with your demons and realizing you shouldn’t be afraid of them,” Howard explained.

Next Howard reached for “Budding,” identical characters on a 30-inch by 40-inch canvas. The piece contains a 24-karat gold leaf stamped in the center, giving the illusion that indeed it is burning a light through the canvas.

Blue and black clouds transgress above a forest that lurks behind a girl with an esoteric face beginning to decompose. A similar girl stands next to her with an exposed skeleton.

As he waved this painting to show us, circulating the living room space, it was almost like we existed in the same realm as the characters in the paintings, as if they were portals from which they entered and demanded recognition.

Howard’s “Chapter 4: Shapes us all” arrived on a cold winter night this past February, hosted in the intimate space of Vault Gallery located in South Pilsen. Wooden carve-outs of floating children and falling birds were scattered around the room, and rocks jutted from the canvasses. Everywhere, eyes were watching. Howard’s next show solo, Chapter 3 of the latest installment from Into the Wild, exhibits this Friday, April 5th, at AdventureLand Gallery, 1513 N. Western Ave., from 6pm-10pm.

VISUAL ARTS

Portraits

Profiles of eleven South Side spaces

BY MANISHA AR AND MARINA RESANDE SANTOS

T

he South Side, which has a rich history of contributions to the visual arts, has been gaining recognition in recent years for its experimental, emerging, and DIY-style of artists and art making. Often bringing lesser known artists and styles into the fray, these new spaces challenge traditional notions of what a gallery is with their wideranging programming, choice of artists, and remarkable use of space. For this piece, the Weekly visited and spoke to a selection of makers and art spaces spread across the South Side.

SATELLITE

31st and Throop Streets. @Satellite_chicago on Instagram.

Located in Bridgeport, this home and artist-run space launched last fall with a mission to share space, ideas, and resources and to cultivate collectivities against capitalist individualism. Satellite's main event spaces are their front room, which has capacity for screenings and an elevated platform used as a stage, and the large basement, which has been used for installations and parties with DJ sets. After the multimedia event organized by the Backyard Series that launched the venue in November, Satellite has hosted poetry workshops; open mics; artist presentations with groups such as Pilsen-based Luya Poetry, Surreal Chicago, and the Commonfolk collective; parties with DJs; and visual showcases. Residents Graham Livingston and Charlie Tokowitz have offered design software workshops, and resident Anna Luy organizes the Asian Feminist Reading Group and the Asian film society "Lost In Translation" both hosted biweekly. Satellite residents are in the process of learning what types of events they want to host, and what the space is best suited for—what Livingston calls the "native potential" of the space. "It's a living space. It has little nooks, it has partitioned walls," said Luy Tan. According to Tan, "it's best used for small group discussion" and for celebrations with "a larger purpose."

In May, Satellite will host a panel discussion with indigenous and Native American artists from Ecuador and New York, in conjunction with their exhibition at the Cervantes Institute. In the summer, the space will host the first Chicago edition of Dinner with Designers, a dinner series and podcast that started in New York. The residents are also working on advancing their initial mission. By offering workshops, collaborating with other groups, and transforming the garage into a workshop space, Satellite hopes to cement its capacity to share resources and skills and facilitate new work, beyond just welcoming people to share their practices. (Marina Resende Santos)

ANGELIKI TSOLI

DFBRL8R

1029 W. 35th St. dfbrl8r.org In 2010, DFBRL8R—also known as Defibrillator Gallery or dfb—was formed as a DIY artist-run space to revive performance art in the city’s contemporary art scene.

Over the next eight years, they operated out of spaces along Chicago Avenue. Last February, it was invited to curate and program out of the Zhou B Art Center in Bridgeport, cutting overhead costs significantly. The programming tends to showcase a mix between emerging and well established artists and makers, global and local, often setting the tone for performance discourse in the city.

Joseph Raven, who founded the space and drives a large portion of the curatorial vision, was very open and honest about the administration of the space: it runs on a mix of volunteer work and occasional grants to supplement the shows they present..

Once dfbrl8r moved to Bridgeport, so did Raven. He hosts visiting artists at his apartment, close to the gallery. Later this month the gallery will host the IMPACT Performance Festival that showcases work by students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). (Manisha AR)

GALLERY GUICHARD

436 E. 47th St. Wednesday-Fridays, 2pm–5pm; Saturdays, noon–3pm. galleryguichard.com Founded by Andre and Frances Guichard, Gallery Guichard has been in Bronzeville for over fourteen years. With the aim of bridging the gap between underrepresented artists and collectors, the gallery showcases a range of mediums, including painting, sculptures, ceramics, and furniture. It specializes in the art of the African Diaspora.

Andre Guichard is a self-taught painter and Frances Guichard has been painting under the pseudonym Marlene Campbell since 2004. Sometimes, they show their own work in the space, but they’re committed to finding a variety of artists to showcase, sometimes even traveling abroad to find them. The gallery is located on the first floor of Bronzeville Artist Lofts, Guichard frequently collaborates with other artists in the space to offer art programming to engage the residents of Bronzeville.

“We are a multicultural gallery; however, it is no secret that artists of the diaspora have had a more difficult time being represented in galleries,” Sabrina Johnson said. Their audience has been a mix of Chicago collectors, national collectors, and their neighbors. “A lot of our clients live right here in Bronzeville and support the gallery through attending events, purchasing art, art merchandise or renting the gallery for events,” Johnson said. Later this month, the space will showcase Abstract Expressionist works in the show “Do You See What I See,” opening April 11, and “Stream of Consciousness,” featuring Ethiopian artist Merid Tafesse, opening June 6. (Manisha AR) APRIL 3, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

VISUAL ARTS

062

WORKS BY JASPER GOODRICH

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JULIA PELLO AND DAVID HALL PERFORMING A DOSAGE FORM

LITHIUM

1029 W. 35th St. 062official.com Around the same time that DFBRL8R moved to the Zhou B Art Center, S.Y. Lim, an SAIC graduate, was also offered space at there to open her own gallery. She started out on the first floor, close to the parking but immediately found herself struggling to show work in the small space allotted to her. After some discussion, she was able to move into the basement, allowing her to curate and install a variety of shows that range from performances to group shows. A visual artist, former KPOP singer, and now a photographer, Lim selects artists to show after extensive studio visits.

062 has shown performances, SAIC student group shows, paintings, sculptures—the choices in medium are unspecific. For Lim, “the rules are no rules.” Her goal at the moment is to work with institutions and offer the space to students. Since Lim doesn’t need to pay rent to use the space, she is able to focus on showing the work.

The space is currently showing the work of Jasper Goodrich in a show titled “boat,” chronicling how three of the characters Goodrich created in the process of making his paintings and print meet for the first time. Lim’s choice of artists is sweeping, and each trip to 062 is a good exercise in discovering a new artist. (Manisha AR)

1932 S. Halsted St., Ste. 200. Saturdays 1pm–6pm, and by appointment. lithium. gallery With the mission to offer a space for artists who make time-based work, LITHIUM opened its doors in October 2017. The idea was to build what Nicky Ni, one of the founding members, describes as a “gray space” that sits between a black box and a white cube gallery setting. Ni was able to fund the space with his winnings from of SAIC’s 2018 Make Work Challenge. They chose the Halsted Street strip of galleries in eastern Pilsen because it draws a regular crowd of art-goers on Second Fridays. “The main vision that drives the work we show is this idea of premiering. So if it’s Chicagobased artists, then they are likely to show new work here and if it’s an international artist then they could show older work that a Chicago hasn’t seen before,” Ni told me.

Unlike movie theaters, at LITHIUM there is room to disengage from the work for a brief moment of time before moving onto the next work. There is space to explore the work and view in newer contexts and environments. The space also pushes the definition of time based work to include hybrids like sound and video installations, video collages, or performative video works. Last year in a show titled “Concert Baroque,” the space featured the work of Adela Goldbard, who used a combination of sound, video, and installed objects to talk about the ecological impact of silver mining in Mexico. And unlike white cubes, the interaction and playfulness that comes from projecting videos and using sound is at the forefront rather than an element use to accentuate a still object or image. (Manisha AR)

ROOTWORK GALLERY

645 W. 18th St. facebook.com/rootworkgallery

ROOTWORK GALLERY

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¬ APRIL 3, 2019

Founded by Tracie D Hall, director of the Joyce Foundation’s Culture Program, Rootwork is an experimental space dedicated to showing and sharing artistic expression aimed at healing, reconciliation, or investigation, focusing on folk art, street art, and indigenous cultures. Last July, the space celebrated its three-year anniversary.

For Hall, the location has been sacred, because it came to her in a dream, in which her grandmother sent her an image of a building at the crossroads of a highway. On the crossroads of 18th and Ruble Streets, the space has been home to an array of shows since its opening. In the last month the space hosted Synergy, Chicago’s Latinafounded, interracial women’s hip hop arts collective.

Pilsen is an ideal location, Hall said, because it has allowed for Rootwork to show works of diasporas—Black, Brown, Asian etc.—and draw in audiences who are on the same wavelength. “People are always sending along artists whose work they think would be suited for Rootwork,” Hall said. “I say the community are my co-curators.” The next program in the space, titled ‘I Found God in Myself: Black Women Portraiture, Praise Dance and Testimony” and featuring live painting artist Liz Gomez, is on April 12 from 7 to 9:30 pm. (Manisha AR)

ANNA'S

ANNA’S

629 W. Cermak Rd., ste. 240. annasprojects.com Founded by SAIC alumni Alden Burke and Stephanie Koch, Anna’s is “a generative and reflective space for young makers.” A newer space that opened its door in December, Anna’s has hosted three events to date, which have highlighted collaborations between makers and their use of the space and skills of the founders.

Its first show, “object/item/material/me,” resulted from a partnership between Anna’s and The Overlook, another artist-run space. The long-term goal of Anna’s is to use the space to host three residencies that invite a cohort of artists to work together.

“We were looking for a space that was affordable, in the same space as other artists, and accessible by public transport,” Burke told the Weekly. Both Burke and Koch also treat Anna’s like their own studio lab for generating ideas. In their own individual practices, as curators, writers, and art historians, both Burke and Koch are deeply interested in the networks that exist between art spaces and makers and are interested in highlighting these exchanges. Their more recent show “In front of a trapdoor” was in collaboration with artist Logan Kruidenier, who hosted another iteration of Doodle Jam, where audience members are invited to doodle in response to prompts provided by Kruidenier to generate conversation, dialogue, and a connection with the space itself. (Manisha AR)

TRAP HOUSE CHICAGO 744 E. 79th St. traphousechicago.us

trap house chicago uses streetwear to transform society. Founded by Mashaun Hendricks, trap house, the second in his series of concept stores, is an extension of his practice both as an artist and activist. Hendricks is a conceptual artist who works with screen printing, designs, streetwear apparel, text and wheat-paste installations.

In December 2019, Hendricks opened the doors to his second concept store on 79th Street in Chatham, right next to Haji Healing Salon, a wellness center. Each concept store serves as a physical space for his streetwear brand Trap House Chicago and to engage with the community through workshops and dialogues.

The previous edition of trap house opened in Auburn Gresham in October 2017, and stayed open for a year. The goal of opening a space in different neighborhoods, according to Resita Cox (who also hosted an open mic at the space) writing in Block Club Chicago, is to convey Hendricks’ message: “reduce crime and violence by creating a thriving local economy, educating and healing the community through restorative justice practices.” Another key element of his practice is to offer restorative justice training sessions at the concept store; Hendricks serves as a consultant for the Restorative Justice Community Court in North Lawndale, and has partnered with several schools across the city to host workshops and training. The programming at trap house also includes an open mic series titled “People Say,” every third Friday of the month. This series is open to all ages and skill levels; sometimes you can spot emerging singers like Aye June and artist Davon Clark sharing their work. Sign-ups start at 6:30 pm. (Manisha AR)

Through May 19, 2019

SOLIDARY & SOLITARY

THE JOYNER/GIUFFRIDA COLLECTION Presented by The Helis Foundation

Through May 19, 2019

SMART TO THE CORE EMBODYING THE SELF

Admission is always free.

All are welcome.

APRIL 3, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

VISUAL ARTS

FAT CITY

32nd and Morgan Streets. @fatcityarts on Instagram.

This converted storefront used to function as an apartment gallery, hosting visual art shows and bands. Since last September, it has been the home and workspace of sculptor and performance artist Cameron Clayborn, musician Will Cabaniss, sculptor and dancer Miles Jackson, and fashion designer Vihanga Sontam. Instead of running a gallery, the artists now mostly focus on their own practices, though they still welcome the public in for concerts, parties, and pop-ups. The residents have their studio spaces in the house, in addition to a small woodshop in the garage, partly shared with Future Firm, the architecture firm next door. The front room is an open space that serves as platform for the residents' projects. Occasionally, Fat City Everyone in the house is at an exciting hinge in their work. Sontam and Jackson just released their clothing label, Vihanga, with a first collection, "Arrival," created from fabrics bought in Sontam's hometown in India and entirely made at their Fat City studio. The release party happened on March 23 in the front room, with a sculptural rack made by Jackson in the wood shop, and the clothes are now for sale online.

Clayborn, who was just admitted into the prestigious MFA program at Yale, is hard at work on his side of the studio, preparing pieces for a solo exhibition opening at Simone Subal Gallery in New York City on April 7. In the spring, Cabaniss (a contributor to the Weekly) will use the space to launch his new vocal-instrumental group, for which he has been composing and arranging for the past months.

"Because we come from such different backgrounds," said Sontam, "trying to bring so many different people together, it's almost like a different kind of cultural production." This allows them to work together when they host events, integrating visual art with music, fashion, and dance, and attracting a mixed crowd.

The residents agree that their community has offered vital support in their achievements. They share skills and tools—"Vihanga taught me to sew properly," laughed Clayborn, whose current work involves sewn leather sculptures—but also comfort and clarity amidst the uncertainties of being an artist. "It's all about the people that live here," said Clayborn with affection. "No matter what it is that we want to get done, or someone wants to get done, it can be done. Which is kind of amazing."

(Marina Resende Santos)

BABY BLUE

2201 S Halsted St. Sundays 1-3pm, other days by appointment. babybluegallery. com Caleb Beck is a painter who left Boston to immerse himself in Chicago’s thriving DIY community. He founded the gallery babyblue to showcase the works of emerging artists. At first, Beck was showing work out of his apartment. Visitors would go up a few flights of stairs and enter the space through his kitchen, winding around the counters to the bedroom and living room. During an installation and before an opening, Beck would push his things into a closet to make space for the art and visitors. It was a very Spartan home. In 2017, Baby Blue moved to its current space on Halsted Street’s gallery strip. The new gallery, albeit smaller than his apartment, is housed in a warehouse with daycares, gyms, and hair salons. “Part of the reason I love Pilsen is that the people remind me of Richmond, Virginia,” where he’s from: “down to earth and neighborly,” he told me. “Sometimes a show will be completely irrelevant to people walking by on the way to get their hair cut or work out. Other times it will provoke excitement and curiosity.”

Beck is primarily interested in showing young contemporary art. With Baby Blue, he is offering spaces to emerging artists who struggle to find gallery representation and spaces to showcase their work during the nascent stages of their careers.

Recently, he has expanded his trajectory and had a show in Mexico City in partnership with a local gallery there. At the moment he is in the process of curating an exchange, in which Chicago artists will be shown at Manhattan gallery Super Duchess, and New York artist will be shown at Baby Blue. When Beck first started out at his apartment, the average age of his audience didn’t usually go above thirty-five, but now he says older audiences finding it less intimidating to view the works “because they no longer feel like they are intruding some kind of private house party that’s not for them.” (Manisha AR) 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ APRIL 3, 2019

AMFM

AMFM amfm.life

Art Music Fashion Magazine, or AMFM, is a brand and web magazine that gives emerging artists a platform through curated events, pop ups, collaborations, and web content. In 2009, Ciera McKissick created a web magazine as part of undergraduate thesis at University of Wisconsin–Madison. She gave it life in Chicago in the form of a Pilsen gallery, where she put together a team to curate events across the city, run the magazine, and create opportunities for emerging artists working across all mediums. She aims to cultivate a community based on diversity, inclusivity, and intergenerational interaction.

“We want to be accepted, not tolerated,” she said in an interview. The gallery closed in 2017, and McKissick has taken some time off to reflect on her experiences and rethink ways to keep AMFM growing in a sustainable way. However, despite not having a physical space, AMFM continues to actively program and collaborate across the city.

McKissick likes the idea of bringing people and audiences to new spaces and she embodies this in her programming. Every month, AMFM collaborates with OTV to host movie screenings followed by conversations and panels at Reunion in Humboldt Park. Over summer, there will be another edition of Feast, a three-course festival to raise awareness about food deserts and healthy eating. It kicks off on June 1 with Seeds at Austin Town Hall, a marketplace of community gardens to generate discussion around healthy eating. The second course, an art, food and music festival, will take place on September 8 at Homan Square and the final course will be in December 7 at Humboldt Park as a seated performance based dinner. (Manisha AR) ¬

Manisha AR is the Weekly’s chief of staff and a writer who graduated from the New Arts Journalism program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is interested in film, video, performances and storytelling. Her last story for the Weekly was on David Maljković’s show at the Renaissance Society last month.

Marina Resende Santos is a contributor for the Weekly. She works with art administration and research in the humanitie sand graduated in Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago. Her interviews with artists and organisers have appeared on Lumpen Magazine and THE SEEN. This is her first story for the Weekly.

Catalyzing a New Renaissance in the Backyard

The Backyard Series provides new platforms for art and hip-hop

BY MARINA RESENDE SANTOS

ROD SAWYER

T

hree years ago, Zoe Nyman started organizing successful open mics and backyard events in Bridgeport, but it was only last October that the Backyard Series took shape.

That was when Nyman collaborated with musician and designer Landon Tate to bring around two hundred people to an open mic, poetry, and music event titled “The Backyard Series” located in Nyman’s backyard in Bridgeport. The project grew quickly since its launch in the fall, expanding to institutional venues

such as the Experimental Station in Woodlawn. Over coffee at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Nyman sat down with the Weekly to talk about the project’s origins, accomplishments and ambitions for the future.

The Backyard Series is an eventorganizing project, featuring poetry, visual art, and musical performances, particularly hip-hop. The project aims to create platforms for artists in environments of respect and community, where no gates are kept, and no one

is turned away. “I didn’t understand why it was so hard to make a stage for someone,” Nyman recounted, “and I had the opportunity of a literal stage in my backyard to do it.”

In November, the Backyard Series organized the event that launched Satellite, another new space in Bridgeport. The launch involved four musicians and hip-hop artists, four poets, four visual artists, and various DJ sets distributed throughout the venue and throughout the night. The line-up

was balanced—seventy-five percent artists of color, twenty-five percent white, fifty percent women, fifty percent men—and reached beyond the elite art school circuit. Both Nyman and the Satellite residents recall the atmosphere of respect and celebration that marked the event. For Nyman, the launch meant an expansion of the project, out of the backyard, and into new categories of art.

It was also where she started “50EACH,” a series of flyers featuring the artists on the Backyard Series and distributed for free during events.

In February, the Series scaled further up with two larger events in the context of Black History Month. Nyman collaborated with hip-hop artist Ano Bank$ to host “One Drop: A Celebration of the African Diaspora,” which brought music, visual art, live painting, dance and gastronomy to the Experimental Station. Just a week later, the Backyard Series organized an open mic night and seven main acts with Black performers at the Hairpin Arts Center, located in Logan Square, in conjunction with the exhibition “Don’t be Scurred: Pathways to Liberation.” Since the exhibition had featured so many people related to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the organizers of “Don’t Be Scurred” wanted to work with Nyman on creating an event that brought artists from outside of the dominant art school network.

Nyman is proud of how much the series has grown: “To go from the backyard to the friend’s living room to Experimental Station and Hairpin Arts Center, on two sides of the city, [to the] Woodlawn-Hyde Park area to Logan Square—I mean, it was a feat”.

She emphasizes the importance of other people in this growth. The poet and performer Tyyuhnuh has introduced her to new poets, while other connections have introduced her to new talent— Avantika Khanna facilitates equipment for the events. Her friend Jihoon Woo voluntarily edited the high-quality promotional video documentation for

APRIL 3, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

MUSIC

ROD SAWYER

“To go from the backyard to the friend’s living room to Experimental Station and Hairpin Arts Center...I mean, it was a feat.”

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

the event at the Hairpin Arts Center.

Since October, Nyman has worked with forty-five artists, with twelve more coming for her next event.

Next up, the series is going back to the backyard for an event on April 20, featuring a band, hip-hop, poetry, food, and other acts. Bank$ has become a close collaborator, and Nyman is planning the release for his new mixtape. She will also collaborate with Monarch, an art and wellness fair celebrating femme, queer and non-binary makers at the Hyde Park Art Center in June. According to Nyman, the Backyard Series is moving towards community-building and fullday events that are open to different ages, with food and a variety of activities. For summer and fall, Nyman wants to throw a block party in Bridgeport and to gather open mic and poetry collectives for a festival, what she calls “a Pitchfork for the underdogs.”

¬ APRIL 3, 2019

Nyman also plans to improve the design and production quality of her shows. Her goal is to turn 50EACH into an accessible online publication, where artists and organizers can gain permanent recognition.

Nyman projects closing out her work on the Backyard Series by the end of this year but that will not be the end her work as a creative organizer, nor will it stop the work begun by the project.

“In a lot of ways, Backyard Series is just a stepping stone for all of us,” she says.

The lasting collaborations forged by the Series and the incoming requests that she receives might be a recognition of her abilities as an organizer—but for Nyman, “it is a bit more than that, too.

It is all sort of surreal, right? But I think there is a new renaissance emerging. And I want to be as much a part of catalyzing that as possible.” ¬

Marina Resende Santos is a contributor for the Weekly. She works with art administration and research in the humanitie sand graduated in Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago.

Her interviews with artists and organisers have appeared on Lumpen Magazine and THE SEEN. This is her first story for the Weekly.

STAGE & SCREEN

Court Theatre Sings a Black Girl’s Song

Ntozake Shange’s classic choreopoem finds new audiences who love it “fiercely”

BY NICOLE BOND

B

lack women across the globe of a certain age have either read, watched, auditioned for, or performed in some iteration of playwright Ntozake Shange’s awardwinning classic choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When The Rainbow Is Enuf. Now through April 14, Court Theatre brings to the stage impeccable professional production quality, a director who performed in the original 1976 Broadway production, and a multi-talented cast—plus all the heart one can hold—in the show’s current iteration.

The choreopoem—a genre coined

by Shange in the 1970s when her production first opened on small intimate stages before moving to Off-Broadway and then on to Broadway—incorporates poetry, movement, and music into the traditional stage play. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When The Rainbow Is Enuf, (yes, the work’s full title, not to be confused with the Tyler Perry movie adaption simply titled For Colored Girls) is not a drama, not a musical, not a dance performance, not a poetry reading.

Nor is it a comedy or a tragedy, in the classical sense. It is an amalgamation of all, spun into an experience only to be understood by becoming part of it.

As Shange remarked in the forward to the 2010 second printing of her classic work, “As for me, despite the remarkable experience, exposure and opportunity theater has given me, my roots remain firmly grounded in the fertile hallowed ground of poetry, random poems dictating their own course.” Audiences become a part of that course, driven by the lives of the eight women who comprise a melanated rainbow on stage during each performance. This is not done by some interactive mechanism, but rather by the sheer force of Shange’s stories.

N

tozake Shange was born Paulette Williams in Trenton, New Jersey in 1948, and earned an M.A. in American Studies from the University of Southern California in 1973. She changed her name in 1971 in order to reflect a newfound personal strength, a triumph over difficult years, and a reclaiming of her identity and its African roots. The African Xhosa dialect translates Ntozake to mean “she who comes with or into her own things” and Shange to mean “she who walks like a lion.”

The stories Shange tells do bring their own things: love, honesty, playfulness, sensuality, sexuality, fear, frustration, pain, comfort, joy, and friendship, all told with the bravery of a lioness. They are the grown folks stories, that are told and have been told by women, in the company of women, for generations—earthy accounts that when told, little Black children knew to stay in their places, far away from kitchen tables or beauty shop chairs, when their mothers and aunties and their sister friends were talking, reminiscing, consoling.

The choreopoem’s initial iterations were fraught with pushback from many Black men (and some women) who asserted Shange’s work depicted them unfavorably by publicly airing a dirty laundry of sorts. But the stories are what the stories are, each born from a woman who lived in a womencentered world, taught women’s studies, and belonged to women’s cultural and political groups. Many of the stories were inspired by true occurrences. Had audiences paid better attention during the work’s earliest iterations, some of the self-righteous indignation touted

by Black men over Shange’s subject matter belonged to white men as well.

The nineteenth century Quadroon Balls for example, which Shange describes in the poem “Sechita,” and audiences get to experience through the sultry

choreography of Leah Casey as the Lady in Purple, were cotillion-type soirees held during slavery and post-slavery, for the express purpose of white men selecting fair-skinned mixed-race Black women for long-term, often contracted sexual encounters, despite the legal contracted sexual encounter of marriage between the races being outlawed.

What can be described as the most painful poem in the collection—sorry, no spoilers here—and delivered hauntingly

by AnJi White as the Lady in Red, was inspired by an incident Shange glimpsed while stuck in a traffic jam.

She subsequently read three news stories in the back pages of the New York Post describing identical violent incidents.

Some of the poems are traumatic, and all of the stories are true for someone, somewhere.

Interestingly, the places in the choreopoem which some deemed as man-bashing over forty years ago— when they were spoken of only in private among women, or on the very back pages of newspapers—are the places which detail painful life episodes now making front-page news. Date rape, spousal abuse, child abuse, infidelity, and objectification of the female body are all stories with men often as the villain, but Shange’s work never asks a man to wear a shoe that doesn’t fit. After all, the choreopoem’s chief aim is to sing a Black girl’s song, not the song of anyone else.

Director Seret Scott, who was cast in the original Broadway production and who also directed Court Theatre’s 2011 production of the Zora Neale Hurston play Spunk, brought audiences a final gift from the playwright before her passing in October 2018: permission to add a new character to the rainbow. Shange’s original rainbow, comprised of seven women sharing points of view from outside of various cities, now weaves the poems and their transitions together sometimes using the voice and music

of Scott’s vision of an eighth character.

Lyric, from “outside Chicago Heights” and expertly played by Melody Angel, adds a new fluidity to how Shange’s poems connect to themselves.

All of the ladies are captivatingly brave in their artistic choices. Each woman on stage is quite literally poetry in motion. For audiences who will see For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When The Rainbow Is Enuf for the very first time at Court Theatre, this iteration will be the show they will never forget. And for those who have seen this classic work before, this will be the iteration they will always remember. Nicole Bond is the Weekly’s Stage & Screen Editor. She last wrote for the Weekly in September, reviewing the Court Theatre production Radio Golf.

APRIL 3, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

HALEY TWEEDELL

Once again, we at the Weekly decided to present our guide to South Side summer camps in the spring, so that students and their families can begin planning out their not-so-dog-days well before school lets out. This guide features nearly thirty camps, youth programs, and internships for South Side kids to explore the best Chicago has to offer them. While there are many repeats, we've included some not seen before, like camps at the Adler and even a boat building camp.

COMPILED BY RACHEL KIM & CHRISTOPHER GOOD

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

ÂŹ APRIL 3, 2019

ARTS Art Summer Camp @ Olín Studio Olín Studio Chicago, 1957 W. 23rd St. July 15–August 9 (four weeks), Monday– Friday, 9am–3pm. Ages 7–12. $550 for the full duration, all art materials included.

Weekly rates available upon request. Register before May 1 for $25 off. (312) 874-3170. olinstudiochicago.com/summer-camp Send your young one to a “culturally rich summer experience” at Olín Studio in the Heart of Chicago neighborhood, offering lessons in different visual arts, Mexican folk dances, music, mindfulness, and more. (Sam Stecklow)

SkyWAY at SkyART SkyART Studios, 3026 E. 91st St. July 8– August 30, Monday–Thursday, 1pm–3pm.

Some field trips on Fridays. Ages 7-24.

Free. (773) 731-9287. programs@skyart.org. skyart.org SkyART, the South Chicago community arts center for young people, has its own teaching method it calls SkyWAY, which focuses on handson, creative projects instead of “lesson plans or set projects.” This summer’s eight-week session, free for everyone, will engage participants in a variety of activities—everything from cooking to 3D printing. (Christian Belanger)

The Revival Summer Camps The Revival, 1160 E. 55th St. Week-long camps: June and July are full, weeks 5–8 held from August 5–August 30. Monday– Friday, 9am–3pm. Ages 6–12. $299.

(Financial assistance available; email theater@the-revival.com for information.) classes@the-revival.com. the-revival.com/camps The Revival, the two-year-old comedy club in Hyde Park, is offering weeklong camps all summer. Attendees will participate in improv and music–related activities at The Revival’s theater, the nearby church, and neighborhood parks.

Each week will culminate in a Friday performance in front of friends and family; for shyer campers, participation is “encouraged but not mandatory.”

(Christian Belanger)

ASM Newsroom @ Urban Prep Academy-Englewood Urban Prep Academy, 6201 S. Stewart Ave. June 24–August 13. Monday– Thursday, various times; Fridays 9am–1pm.

Teens ages 14+. Free and paid. (312) 742-4182. Apply on afterschoolmatters.org (no deadline; applicants accepted on rolling basis) After School Matters is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing teens with opportunities in the arts.

The ASM Newsroom is a great opportunity for teens to get hands-on journalism experience and to explore how the media works within their own communities. Teens will explore their interest in media through photography, writing, and journalism. Teens will create a weblog as a final project and will receive a stipend. (Roderick Sawyer)

CREATIVE CAMP 2019

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

O N E A N D T W O W E E K S E S S I O N S D AT ES

www.Hy d ePa r kA rt .org / E du c at i o n /Y o u t h

JUNE 10 - AUGUST 30

Age s 4+ 5 0 20 S . Co r n ell Av enu e 7 7 3 - 3 2 4- 55 20

Intonation Rock and Pop Band Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts, 555 E. 51st St. July 1–August 8, Monday– Thursday, 10am–2pm. (312) 469-0554.

Apply at afterschoolmatters.org or visit intonationmusic.org for more information.

Encourage your teen to join Intonation’s Rock and Pop Band to let them flex their inner rock star. This camp gives participants the opportunity to learn how to play music by picking up the instruments themselves—and will conclude with a showcase performance downtown in Millenium Park. (Michael Wasney)

KLEO Performing Arts and Music Production KLEO Community Family Life Center, 119 E Garfield Blvd. July 1–August 8. Monday–Thursday 9am–1pm. Ages 13–18. Free. (773) 363-6941. Apply at afterschoolmatters.org or visit kleocenter.org for more information.

Washington Park’s communityfocused KLEO Center will become a hub for teen creativity once this program kicks off. Whether they take to the stage, the catwalk, or the mixing board, participants will gain firsthand experience with producing theater and live shows. Opportunities for collaboration and live showcases only sweeten the deal. (Christopher Good) APRIL 3, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

Praize Productions Performing Arts Summer Camp Congregational Church of Park Manor, 7000 S. King Dr. July 1–July 26, Monday–Friday, 8:30am–3:30pm. Ages 4–16. $300 with a $50 registration fee.

Before and after-care services available for $5 per day or a $75 flat rate. Discounts for families enrolling multiple children.

Breakfast and lunch provided. (312) 7752046. praizeproductions.com/summer Students enroll in intensive courses in dance, and an elective course, in this professionally-taught performing arts camp. The summer will culminate in a showcase of students’ acquired skills for friends and family. (Sam Stecklow)

After School Matters Youth Radio Gallery37 Center for the Arts, 66 E. Randolph St. July 1–August 8.

Monday–Thursday, 9am–1pm. Free; stipends provided to eligible participants.

Ages 14+. (312) 742-4182. Apply on afterschoolmatters.org This camp offers students interested in radio or storytelling the opportunity to create their own radio shows and podcasts from start to finish, including the processes of writing, producing, editing, and broadcasting. (Rachel Schastok)

Young Chicago Authors Write to the City UIC School of Art & Art History, 400 S. Peoria St. July 8–12. $200. (773) 4864331. bit.ly/WriteToTheCity A group of more than one hundred young poets, artists, and activists will take field trips to a wide variety of arts and culture institutions across Chicago.

They’ll also build up their body of work through a series of workshops led by poets and artists. (Rachel Schastok)

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¬ APRIL 3, 2019

DANCE Forward Momentum Summer Camp Two locations: Hamilton Park Cultural Center, Hamilton Park, 513 W. 72nd Street, and a second camp in Avondale.

More details forthcoming. June 24–August 8, 9am–1pm. Girls ages 5-14. (312) 4253875. bit.ly/ForwardMomentum Calling all dancers interested in learning everything from Ballet to Hip-Hop! Over the course of six weeks, dancers of all skill levels will join the talented instructors at Forward Momentum for a summer of dancing, performances, and fun weekly field trips around Chicago.

Campers will showcase all of their hard work at an end-of-summer camp performance for family and friends.

(Amy Qin)

Release! AfroFuturism Dance Therapy Hirsch High School, 7740 S. Ingleside Ave. July 1–August 8. MondayThursday, 1pm-5pm. Ages 14+. Apply on afterschoolmatters.org Join this dance therapy class in Avalon Park that promises to help you “create your own language through dance.”

Combining the practices of hip-hop, modern, lyrical, and jazz dance, Release!

AfroFuturism Dance Therapy will allow students to “dance their ideas into existence.” (Rachel Kim)

South Shore International Dance and Performing Arts Program South Shore College Preparatory High School, 1955 E. 75th St. July 1–August 8. Monday–Thursday, 9am–1pm. Free.

Ages 14+. (312) 742-4182. Apply on afterschoolmatters.org Teens will take to the stage in this dance and performing art apprenticeship, with the opportunity to try everything from ballet and hip-hop dancing to acting and public speaking. Teens can apply regardless of experience level—the apprenticeship is ready to accommodate those who have years of dancing experience alongside those who’ve never busted a move in their life. (Michael Wasney)

FOOD & LAND Pilsen Urban Garden Project: Art of Community Dvorak Park, 1119 W. Cullerton St. July 1–August 8. Monday–Wednesday, 9:30am–12:30pm; Thursday 4pm–8pm.

Stipends available. SSN not required for application. Ages 14+. Must be enrolled in high school. Apply on afterschoolmatters. org. (312) 226-7767. elevarte.org Art and gardening go hand in hand.

That's the leading conviction behind this summer program for high schoolers run by the Pilsen-based arts education studio ElevArte. Four days a week, students will learn how to grow, compost, build, and curate. To round out the 6-week program, students will invite family and friends for performances, exhibitions, and a presentation of the work they've done in the garden.

(Emeline Posner)

INTERNSHIPS & FELLOWSHIPS Student Voice and Activism Fellowship Monday–Friday, 10am–3pm. Location and exact dates to be determined. $1200 stipend, lunch, and Ventra cards provided.

For more information, contact Hilda Franco, hfranco1@cps.edu. bit.ly/SVAFellowship This paid internship will help students learn about organizing, policy, research, multimedia—everything that will let them “be heard in the decision-making processes that impact their lives.”

During the summer, students will attend a six-week research institute; during the school year, they’ll participate in Student Voice Committee, which gives students power in tackling problems at their schools. (Christian Belanger)

Free Spirit Media Flash Forward Internship

Shedd Aquarium, and The Field Museum. (Amelia Diehl)

Nichols Tower, 906 S. Homan Ave. Floor 5. Sessions run June 26–August 10. Ages 16–24. Paid $10.25/hr. Applications due April 30 at 5pm. (312) 444-0562. bit.ly/FlashForwardInternship

Youth Connections Pathways Robotics Challenge

Free Spirit media is providing paid internships, fellowships, and assistant positions to young adults this summer through their program Flash Forward.

Students will have the chance to participate in film production, audio casting, work with casting agencies & local news stations, and much more.

Did we mention that the three positions all come with a stipend? Apply today!

(Roderick Sawyer)

STEM A Knock at Midnight A Knock at Midnight. 400 W. 76th St., Suite 206. For more information, contact (773) 488-2960. akamworks.org This community-based nonprofit offers summer programs to teach students how to build a portfolio of web application coding and infrastructure.

Their Plus Program prepares students for employment by teaching customer service, inventory and apparel display through partnerships with Marshalls and Walgreens. (Amelia Diehl)

Adler Kids Adler Planetarium. 1300 S. Lake Shore Dr. Age requirements vary by camp; for students K-5. Register at adlerplanetarium.org/summer-camps.

Tuition varies by camp ($150-325); members receive discount. For questions, contact summercamp@adlerplanetarium. org. (312) 322.0329. adlerplanetarium.org/summer-camps Adler Planetarium offers a variety of half-day, full-day and weeklong camps throughout the season for kids interested in space exploration and technology. Astro Camp focuses on the moon; Astro-biotics teaches students about telescope viewing and robotics; Sky Show explores sky show visualization; Mission Near Space Camp lets students learn from balloon launch fieldwork; Summer Worlds Tour brings students to Adler Planetarium,

New Beginnings Church of Chicago, 6620 S. King Dr. July 1–August 8.

Monday–Thursday, 9am-1pm. Ages 14+.

Apply on afterschoolmatters.org If your student is obsessed with robots, this camp held in West Woodlawn will be perfect for them. Students will be able to be participate in a collaborative team atmosphere in order to take part of every step in the process of making a robot: from designing, assembling, programming, and operating. (Rachel Kim)

heART of Science Camp South Side Community Art Center, 3831 S. Michigan Ave. Two one-week sessions, August 19–23 or 26–30. Early Day Camp from 9am–2pm, ages 5–12, $55/day or $225/week. Afternoon Camp from 2pm– 5pm, ages 4–12, $35/day or $150/week.

Full day camp from 9am–5pm, ages 5–12, $75/day, $350/week. Sibling discount available. Referral discount available.

Bring a lunch with no nuts. Registration closes July 27. (708) 733-2936. bit.ly/heARTprogram Dionne Victoria Studios, INC. is hosting the heART of Science Camp in Bronzeville with an integrated arts and science curriculum focused on geology and geography. Students will study the Earth, its physical features, rocks, resources, climates, and populations.

Activities include art classes, outdoor/ indoor games, and community service.

(Rachel Kim)

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MISCELLANEOUS Summer Boat Building Camp Southern Shore Yacht Club, 6401 S. Richards Dr. June 19–July 2. Monday– Friday, 10am–3pm. Boat Launch Day, Saturday, July 2, 9:30–noon. Ages 11–15. bit.ly/BoatBuilding19 At this two-week boat-building class, campers will assemble a plywood Bevin’s skiff, the boat specifically designed for first-time constructors. (And named after inventor Joe Youcha’s dog, a “Philadelphia alley mutt.”) Parents and friends welcome to jump in as builders, though not ballast. (Christian Belanger)

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Chicago Housing Authority Summer Youth Opportunities Locations and age requirements vary depending on program. Apply at onesummerchicago.org. Applications for most programs due by May 20. Stipends provided through One Summer Chicago.

SSN and DOB required for application.

For questions, contact youthopportunities@ thecha.org. (312) 786-6930.

This summer, the Chicago Housing Authority will offer courses on everything from documentary filmmaking, public art design, game and graphic design, and screenwriting, to a course geared toward career exploration and a course on being a "peace ambassador" for your neighborhood.

There is one essay prompt (150-825 words) for each program application, so make sure you pick your program(s) wisely! (Emeline Posner)

20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ APRIL 3, 2019

Morgan Park Academy’s Summer Camp Morgan Park Academy, 2153 W. 111th St. For students Pre-K to 8th grade.

June 10–August 2, dates and times vary by camp. Tuition varies by camp ($98– $1,653). After & before care provided for an extra fee. (773) 881-6700. Apply on mpasummercamp.org Morgan Park Academy is offering a multitude of week-long programs for any student to explore their interests. Prior offerings include Drone Flying Missions, MasterChef camp, Filmmaking Camp, and Harry Potter Young Wizards Camp—but no matter what camp your child opts for, Morgan Park promises to expand their horizons in a unique way. (Rachel Kim)

Project Pipeline Architecture Summer Camp Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology, 3360 S. State St. July 31– August 4, times vary. Incoming sixth graders through recently-graduated eighth graders. $75; lunch provided. i-noma.org/project-pipeline-summer-camp Enroll your junior architect in this short five-day course from the Illinois chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects, hosted at IIT, a school famous for innovative design, both in its students and throughout its campus. There they will be guided through all stages of design by realworld architects and planners. (Sam Stecklow) ¬

MUSIC

Brenda Linda, Linda Brenda WHPK’s resident Jazz Twins talk jazz history and a changing station

BY KYLE OLEKSIUK KYLE OLEKSIUK

Brenda Phillips and Linda Hall are veteran DJs on WHPK’s Jazz Format. They’re not siblings, but on air they are “The Twins.”

They invited me up to the station for the first half hour of their radio show, while they played CDs from their individual collections. This interview was conducted to the tune of Houston Person’s “I Want to Talk About You,” chosen by Brenda, and Oscar Pettiford’s “Bohemia After Dark,” chosen

by Linda. The Twins’ show, “Journey Into Jazz,” airs on WHPK 88.5FM every other Sunday from 2pm to 4pm.

Have you always been a radio duo?

How did you get started?

Brenda: I started off with Rodolfo Sanchez, playing straight jazz for one hour and then Mexican jazz for one hour.

That was in 1998 in March, and then in 2001 I got my own show called “Journey into Jazz.” In 2005 Linda joined me, and we left the name the same, “Journey into Jazz.”

Linda: Only instead of “Journey into Jazz with Brenda” it was “Journey into Jazz with the Twins,” and we called it “Brenda Linda, Linda Brenda.” But I always say Brenda’s name first, since she was on the air before I came on.

Brenda: And plus, B comes before L. Linda: I didn’t think about that.

Brenda: I did.

Linda: My father was a gospel singer and my mom was a gospel singer too, but she loved jazz, and she loved classical jazz. She used to listen to people like Sarah Vaughan, Dean Martin, Frank 22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

Sinatra, stuff like that.

Brenda: She was a big Frank Sinatra fan.

Linda: And when she put her music on, it played all over the house. So whatever you were playing, you better go in your room. We didn’t like the music back then because we were young and we were into Diana Ross and the Supremes and blah, blah, blah. I didn’t really like jazz, but I didn’t know that it was vast.

All this jazz that’s out here, they don’t all sound the same. So that’s what made me start liking it, when I found out that all of it wasn’t about people who died, and people back in the day. There’s new jazz out here, there’s Latin jazz, there’s—well, people don’t like to say Latin jazz.

Brenda: That’s what Sanchez used to do, Latin jazz—we would do that from 1 to 2pm. So noon to 1pm we would do straight ahead, and 1 to 2pm it would be Latin jazz.

Linda: And so I usually say instead of Latin jazz, I say Mexican jazz, Cuban jazz, or Puerto Rican jazz. I just say what they are, Argentinian jazz or something, unless they’re all fused together.

How do the two of you decide what music to play?

Brenda: Well, we know we have to do straight ahead. But Linda’s started liking other types of music, and I eventually started liking them too. Like the jazzfunk. She plays a lot of Latin jazz, which I don’t, but I’m learning to like a lot of it. I learned to like a lot of it when I was

¬ APRIL 3, 2019

with Sanchez, but because I don’t have a lot of it, I don’t play it. But Linda, she added that in. That’s what made the show more interesting.

Linda: That’s because I travel around every year in the Caribbean on the jazz cruises and stuff like that. And it introduces me to other styles of music that’s jazz, to other nationalities that do jazz, compose jazz, write jazz. And then I get a chance on the ship to sit down and actually talk to them personally, like I’m talking to you now, and I get a chance to ask them questions about the type of jazz that they play. So then they explain it to me and I try my best to understand it, and when I don’t understand, I ask. That’s why I don’t call that jazz ‘Latin jazz’ anymore, because one of the entertainers, Arturo Sandoval, told me, “stop saying Latin jazz. If it’s Cuban jazz it’s Cuban jazz, if it’s Mexican jazz it’s Mexican jazz, if it’s Puerto Rican jazz it’s Puerto Rican jazz.” I haven’t said it again since. So then I listen to Houston Person, the Clayton brothers, the Cookers—you know, there’s so much jazz out there that I didn’t know was jazz. And so I said, well, I like all of it and I’m going to play what I like. I have to play what I like, what moves me when I listen to it.

Brenda: And that’s what I do too—it happens to be different sometimes.

Linda: And when I choose my music, I look to see who’s performing in the next week, or who just performed somewhere, and then I play new stuff that I got that I haven’t heard yet. I try to alternate them so I don’t play the same thing all the time

and what I’ve played already, I won’t play that no more until I get through playing everything else. So, it’ll be a long time before I get back to that again, because we’re only on the air on Sundays for two hours and it goes by very, very, very, very fast.

[After a break to change CDs.] Brenda: Now, you are the first one to interview us as twins. There’s never been twins in jazz together. Never.

Linda: There’s never been a set of jazz twins on the radio, period. Especially on the same show.

Brenda: Not just jazz—any kind of music.

Linda: So you’re fortunate, because you’re the first one that gets to do this.

WHPK is an all-volunteer station.

Has it ever been a problem for you volunteering?

Brenda: No. As a matter of fact, I started going places so people could know about WHPK. A lot of people didn’t know about us, because the DJs didn’t go anywhere.

Linda: We go everywhere.

Brenda: So I started going everywhere, and I had Linda going downtown and [to] the North Side. I went downtown and [to] the South Side. So that way more people found out about what we do. They didn’t even know the station existed.

Linda: You have to get out there

MUSIC and spread the word. And since I am a promoter of jazz, I go around passing flyers to different events. This was one of them. I took a lot of our little cards around with us with our schedules, and we had that at first.

Who’s your favorite musician and what do you like about them?

Brenda: I like Gene Ammons because when I first started, Coop gave me ten CDs and that was the first one, and I fell in love with it. I owed him the money, and I paid him the money, but he got me started—Coop’s Records on 87th Street.

And then there’s Sonny Stitt. But as far as vocals: Nancy Wilson. And then Frank Sinatra as far as the males are concerned.

But I love organs: Jimmy McGriff.

Linda: So she’s got a lot of them.

And me, my favorite—male—is Freddy Cole because he’s history. He goes back a long way and he’s history, and I met him and he’s a very nice man. And then

for females, I’m going to say Cassandra Wilson because she’s different. When you hear her, you can’t say, “I hear her everywhere.” You know, that kind of music and the way she does it, it’s so natural. And the message that she tries to portray when she does her music, it’s different. It’s based on her experiences worldwide and it’s so different, and so adventurous, it puts me in her place. I can kind of see it. The more I know about my artists, the artists that I play—that’s why I read all my liner notes—the more I learn about the artists, the more I try to decipher, try to feel what they were feeling when they made that song, when they chose that selection or the name of it and stuff like that. I even ask them when I see them. Why did you name that that? Why did you name that CD that, you know, this kind of thing.

How has the station changed over the years since you’ve been here? Especially in the way it’s related to the University

of Chicago.

Brenda: First of all, the older ones are not coming anymore. The DJs are much younger now, and the music is more diverse. And a lot of people in the university don’t even know we exist, and they work here, so I’m trying to get them to realize that the station is here. But most people who work here don’t know it.

Linda: Well, it’s changed over the years: first of all, the music and DJs like me who come in here saying, you know, “don’t tell me what I can't play.” “You can’t play Spanish jazz because so and so does that”—I’m going to play what I like and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I’m going to play what I feel on the inside and what I feel that the audience would want to hear me play. I want to play something that’s going to make people at home—even if they’re in a wheelchair— that’s going to make them want to get up and dance. You know, if you can’t get up it will make you want to.

Brenda: This is why I chose these hours. I used to be on from noon to 2pm, and when I first got my own show it was 4pm to 6pm, but I chose these hours, 2pm to 4pm, because I wanted to reach the women coming home from church.

Linda: And as far as the university, they need to become more involved in what we’re doing. Because anything the university does, we advertise it. They need to become more involved and support us more in what we’re doing.

There’s no reason why they can’t support us more, and they’re not doing that. The administration, they need to join us, help us out, because we do need the help. I think this is a team effort. We need everyone involved, and they could be more involved. Kyle Oleksiuk is a staff writer for the Weekly and student at the University of Chicago.

He last wrote about The Charles Heath Quartet at Room 43.

APRIL 3, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 23

VISUAL ARTS

Know Thyself Smart Museum of Art exhibitions contemplate the ingredients of identity.

BY NICOLE BOND

T

his January, the Smart Museum of Art welcomed two new exhibitions which pose important questions about identity and inclusion. The museum’s front gallery houses “Solidary & Solitary” from the Joyner/Giuffrida Collection. It consists of mostly abstract works created by artists of the African diaspora, and serves as a meditation on what it means to be a Black artist moving in solidarity with the race while maintaining a solitary identity. The rear gallery space features “Smart to the Core: Embodying the Self,” which presents provocative ways to contemplate the self-portrait.

Some of the artists in “Solidary & Solitary” relinquish the expectation placed upon them to create works solely depicting Black life, or those that engage some type of cause. Instead, artists like Norman Lewis and Sam Gilliam—who together have eighteen abstract paintings opening the show at the front of the gallery—are free from those constrictions. Nothing about their works speaks to their being Black or non-Black, and everything about them speaks resoundingly to their skill and mastery as artists.

Other pairings and solo artists included continue the show’s nonconformist theme, but the exhibition also includes works that can be considered a detour from this artistic stance, depending on how a viewer chooses to interpret the signs. Take “Stranger #68,” where Glenn Ligon spells out the opening words of the James Baldwin essay “Stranger in the Village” on a canvas of oil-stick, coal dust, and gesso.

The essay chronicles Baldwin’s time spent living in a tiny Swiss village where none of the locals had ever seen a Black man. There’s also Ligon’s unlit neon, “One Black Day,” or the two specially commissioned installations by artists Amanda Williams and Bethany Collins, both of which nod astutely to the representation of Black suffering 24 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

by speaking to the nation’s historical practices of redlining and lynching.

“Solidary & Solitary” inspires honest conversation about the realities of race relations past and present, in ways where even third grade classrooms can join the conversation. (Which they do regularly, as part of the Smart Museum’s work introducing elementary school students to the museum experience.) But a few steps further into the rear gallery space, inside the “Smart to the Core: Embodying the Self ” exhibition, the door is opened for a more mature conversation spanning race and ethnicity; gender and sexuality; and the places where those identities intersect or collide.

“Smart to the Core: Embodying the Self ” is the museum’s first exhibition curated by the Feitler Center for Academic Inquiry. The goal is to develop exhibits alongside the University of Chicago’s undergraduate Core curriculum, which aims to examine the human condition. A brief history of the curriculum is detailed in the booklet The (Un)Common Core, published in conjunction with the exhibition.

Through this exhibition, UofC undergraduates get to experience art along with theory and texts. A few of the undergrad texts are staged inside the exhibition at a seating area, with the invitation to peruse the pages or to personalize them by adding a piece of one’s self using pencils stationed nearby. Among the core curriculum titles available are Black Skin, White Masks

by Black psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon, The Second Sex by feminist existentialist author Simone de Beauvoir, and The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx.

Each piece in “Embodying the Self ” functions as an unsuspecting self-portrait, a large number of which dismantle the notion of binaries by sharply bending historical gender roles and examining notions of race and class.

The exhibition eloquently invites patrons

¬ APRIL 3, 2019

to get comfortable being uncomfortable.

Some works juxtapose Western notions of femininity with historical ideas of feminism, then allow room to consider whether femininity and the feminist can, or cannot, be the same thing. There’s “Self-Portrait/Nursing,” a print from the 2004 series “SelfPortraits & Dyke” by photographer Catherine Opie, which depicts a nursing mother. The piece is positioned adjacent to the naked figure and seemingly exposed breasts of Marilyn Monroe in Japanese appropriation artist Yasumasa Morimura’s folding fan, titled “Ambiguous Beauty/Aimai-no-bi.”

In reality, Morimura himself dressed up, complete with wig and prosthetic implants, as Monroe.

Conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas uses framed canvases in “I Am A Man” to deliver what might be twenty different statements on the identities of men and women collectively. Or it could be translated as one long, punctuated sentence chronicling Black racial identity throughout American history, going as far back as the ThreeFifth’s Compromise and ending with a lofty striving for the equity that is much talked about but still not fully realized.

Influential contemporary artist Carrie Mae Weems draws out questions on the female image, power, slave narratives and cultural misappropriation while leaving space for viewers to factor

“Nothing about their works speaks to their being Black or nonBlack, and everything about them speaks resoundingly to their skill and mastery as artists.” in their own likenesses. In “Some Said You Were the Spitting Image of Evil,” her chromogenic color print, the glass is so crystal that clear each viewer’s own reflection meets their own gaze over the sandblasted text—the piece

AYANA V. JACKSON

VISUAL ARTS is a self-portrait for every person who views it. The print is one of thirty-three photos from the series “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried.”

The photographs were originally taken by a nineteenth-century anthropologist in an attempt to validate a perceived inferiority of captured African peoples forced into American slavery, and were part of the Harvard University archives.

In the 1990s the illustrious university threatened to sue Weems for using them in her series, but reconsidered when Weems agreed that it would be a good idea to have the conversation and all that it would entail inside of a courtroom.

(Artnet News reports that a descendant of one of the slaves in the photos is currently suing Harvard for possession of the prints.)

Four digital works placed throughout the exhibition, from artists Frances Stark, Adrian Piper, Ma Quisha, and Howardena Doreen Pindell, add about an hour of video footage to the exhibition, examining gender roles, race, and the pressure to be perfect.

Other works call into question ideas surrounding fatherhood, death, and Asian and indigenous narratives. Artist Ayana V. Jackson’s stunning pose in motion, “Labouring under the sign of the future,” makes space for Black femme beauty where it had been omitted in historical photographs, and is the visual image branding the exhibition.

“Smart to the Core: Embodying The Self ” asks bold questions in large ways about the countless ingredients that comprise the self, and about how perceptions and expressions of the self change collectively and individually every moment. In “Solidary & Solitary,” the same expressions bypass the questions and go straight to the answers. Both exhibitions run through May 19, 2019, offering visitors a temporary opportunity to see pieces different from the Smart Museum’s permanent collection, equally as rich - if not more. Smart Museum of Art galleries are located at 5550 South Greenwood Avenue, open Tuesdays through Sundays from 10am to 5pm and until 8pm on Thursdays.

Admission is free.

Nicole Bond is the Weekly’s stage and screen editor and is on staff in the education department at Smart Museum of Art. She last wrote for the Weekly in September, reviewing the Court Theater production Radio Golf.

Revisited Experiences Chicago painter Andrea Coleman gives old stories a fresh coat

BY BRIDGET GAMBLE

T

MILO BOSH

he French writer Emile Zola once said, “One forges one’s style on the terrible anvil of deadlines.”

For Chicago painter Andrea Coleman, that rings especially true.

While working toward her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Columbia College Chicago, Coleman found herself working against the clock when her initial plans for a project had fallen through.

With less than twenty-four hours until deadline, Coleman remembered an old photograph of her mother. “I had collected a bunch of pictures from family albums, and I kept this one of my mom because it kind of looked like me,” she said. Though she had never painted digitally before, she decided to make a collage with the old photograph in Photoshop, staying up all night to make her deadline.

“It was an intuitive process,” she said in a phone interview. “It wasn’t like, let me put this pattern here or make calculations based on the colors. I just kept painting and overlaying the stories I was told of this person.”

By morning, Coleman had created a seventy-four-by-forty-four-inch digital print featuring colorful brush-like strokes over her mother’s portrait, titled “Physiognomy” (which also appears on the cover of this issue). When professors praised her painting for its originality, she knew she had created a style of her

own. To date, she has created six large digital paintings using old family photos, including “Physiognomy.”

Coleman, who graduated from Columbia in 2017, finds inspiration for her paintings in her family’s knack for storytelling—and the discrepancies that inevitably appear as anecdotes grow into folk tales. “I was told stories from different people and there’s an overlay,” she said. “You get different information, and some of it diminishes. That’s how I work with the colors.”

She grew up in south suburban Chicago Heights, surrounded by extended relatives. “They kind of always circled around each other and lived a block away from each other. When I would go to my grandparents’ house, I would get different stories than when I would go to my aunt’s house.… I’m trying to revisit those experiences I’ve had and make them a current situation.”

Aside from her family, Coleman counts among her inspirations Marvin Gaye and Toni Morrison, two artists she says have helped her stay in tune with her past and reach beyond words to capture shared experiences.

As a young painter coming of age in the era of Instagram, where some artists quickly gain vast exposure and influence, Coleman says trying to find her own voice has been a frustrating process. “I have to have a lot of patience because I see more established artists that have this

style that everyone responds to,” she said.

After creating “Physiognomy,” she says she essentially had to work backwards to re-learn what she did to create the work so that she could effectively recreate it in future paintings. “You don’t know you’ve found your style until other people respond to it.”

In addition to her digital paintings, Coleman’s work has also been showcased in galleries run by Columbia. She also created a video work filmed with a three-dimensional camera when her grandfather was hospitalized in 2017 that aims to evoke empathy for those in the healthcare system and capture everyday interactions in hospital spaces.

Lately, Coleman finds herself experimenting with fabric, canvas and carpet in favor of print and paper. That work will be on display at the Chicago Art Department in Pilsen this July.

If there’s one element Coleman isn’t likely to experiment with, it’s size.

Large paintings allow Coleman to create an experience for her audience, she says, where they can study the strokes, fragmentation and layers in every piece.

“That’s where the intimacy lies.” Bridget Gamble is a contributor to the Weekly and a communications specialist. She last contributed an interview with longtime Chicago public health nurse Joan Lawson.

APRIL 3, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 25

SARITA GARCIA

PANADERIA REMIX, 2017 SCREEN PRINT ON CANVAS INSTALLED AT ADLER & FLOYD, CHICAGO PHOTO BY STACEY RUPOLO ON LEFT: PANADERIA REMIX DETAIL

ANDREA COLEMAN

DUALITY OF MYSTIQUE, 2017 DIGITAL COLLAGE

FINDING A SEAT AT THE KITCHEN TABLE, 2017 DIGITAL COLLAGE

ZAKKIYYAH NAJEEBAH

TYLISHA, 2018 35MM FILM

TABATHA, 2018 POLAROID DIPTYCH

ROLAND SANTANA

FIELD 2, 2019 GRAPHITE, OIL, AND ACRYLIC ON CANVAS

UNTITLED DRAWING, 2018 ACRYLIC AND OIL PASTEL ON PAPER

KRISTA FRANKLIN

“…TO TAKE ROOT AMONG THE STARS.”, 2016-PRESENT MIXED MEDIA AND HANDMADE PAPER INSTALLED AT THE POETRY FOUNDATION, CHICAGO PHOTO BY JASON BRANSCUM

BLOOD MERIDIAN (OR, DEVANTE AT THE BLOOD MERIDIAN), 2019 MIXED MEDIA COLLAGE ON PAPER

From West Lawn to Wicker Park: A Tale of Two Alternative Rock Scenes

BY NIKKI ROBERTS

MILO BOSH

O

n a bitterly cold night in early February, the reflections of twinkling string lights are dancing across the polished hardwood floors of Galaxie 2.0, a quasi-DIY space in Ravenswood. The night’s all-ages show is a food drive and fundraiser for the Chicago Food Depository, an organization that distributes 159,000 meals daily to Cook County residents.

The five-band lineup has drawn an impressively mixed crowd of suburban punks, hardcore music veterans, and South Side metalheads. Of the five bands playing tonight, four are hardcore bands from around the city and its suburbs. The five members of the one, lonely emo band—Habitats—all hail from either Little Village or West Lawn, neighborhoods on the South Side.

It may seem daunting to perform for a crowd of hardcore fans when your music is melodic and tear-inducing, but Habitats isn’t fazed: these guys are used to being the odd band out on heavier 36 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

hardcore and metal lineups. Even at Galaxie 2.0, a venue eleven miles north of their home, Habitats has drawn a handful of dedicated fans who nod along and know all of the band’s lyrics by heart.

One of these fans is Christian Rojas, of Gage Park. A friend of some members of Habitats who attends every show he can—and occasionally hangs out with the band while they practice—Rojas estimates that, between live shows and private rehearsals, he has seen Habitats play more than eighty times in the past two years.

“I’ve always loved their sound and creativity with their music,” Rojas said.

“They get a sweet spot in my heart, and to see them live gives me this ‘it’s good to be back’ feeling. Their music says a thousand words to me. Multiple stories, multiple emotions. Every song could make you feel as if they were in your shoes at one point...everything is raw, from the heart.”

When Habitats began playing shows with their current lineup in the

¬ APRIL 3, 2019

“In the beginning, we were definitely the oddball on every lineup,” said Habitats bassist Louie Flores. [...] “Well, on the South Side,” added Habitats guitarist Elijio Guel. spring of 2017, their first few DIY gigs were in backyards around Little Village.

Neighborhood musicians, friends, and even former bandmates from past projects helped the band book shows and make connections in South Side metal and punk DIY music communities.

Over the course of one year, Habitats went from being the soft opening act on extreme metal shows to being a band with a solid draw on mixed-

genre lineups—but they remained the lone emo rock band on nearly every show they played on the South Side. Even when Habitats ventured to other parts of the city, they were never booked on bills that featured artists with a sound similar to their own.

It wasn’t until meeting Alan Martinez, the vocalist and guitarist of South Side indie rock band Crystal Killers, that the band realized there were

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MUSIC other South Siders creating music that complemented their own sound “In the beginning, we were definitely the oddball on every lineup,” said Habitats bassist Louie Flores.

“Just because there was no one [playing music] like us.”

“Well, on the South Side,” added Habitats guitarist Elijio Guel. “But maybe on the North Side there was.”

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few days before the show at Galaxie 2.0, the members of Habitats and Crystal Killers are hanging out in Crystal Killers’ practice room at the Rock Spot, a converted warehouse in Archer Heights that rents out small practice rooms to bands and musicians. The room is packed with music gear, comics, a couple of Guitar Hero guitars covered in stickers, and a ring of assorted folding lawn chairs positioned around a 30 rack of Budweiser. Habitats vocalist Erik Salazar offers me a beer as the members of both bands reminisce about how they initiated a friendship nearly nine months before.

“I had met Habitats in the early summer of 2018, and I noticed that we fit very good together on the same show.

We were similar in style. We can get low and clean, but we both have heavy drops,” said Martinez. “Although hardcore is a particular genre that’s big on the South Side, I thought bands like Habitats or Crystal Killers could switch it up a bit with something that’s on the softer side.”

After introducing himself to Flores back in June when their bands played a show together in West Lawn, Martinez began running into the members of Habitats at other shows, usually in Pilsen and Little Village. The two bands formed not only a friendship, but a connection that allowed them to begin playing shows together and discovering other South Side bands, such as Sawbuck and The Duke, that shared their alt-rock sound but were also playing primarily hardcore and metal shows because of their proximity to the local hardcore and metal scenes.

Martinez is well aware that there are DIY rock scenes on the North Side that regularly book entire shows of indie rock bands that Crystal Killers would fit perfectly with. However, one of the reasons Crystal Killers is often the lone rock band on lineups is because the band members’ roots, and networks with other bands and promoters, are in South Side neighborhoods where DIY metal and punk shows are the norm instead—and expanding those networks to the North

Side hasn’t been easy for Martinez. For nearly a year now, Martinez has made it his goal to break through to the North Side indie/college rock DIY scene and begin playing indie rock shows, but he’s not quite sure how to make that goal a reality.

“I want to get into that scene so bad, and it’s so hard,” said Martinez. “I actually had a conversation with a band who plays on the North Side. I was talking to the drummer, and he had been asking me, ‘You guys are from the South Side, right? I want to play shows over there, but I feel like I can’t find any. I’m

said Crystal Killers bassist Frank Torres.

“It’s one thing to meet in person, but it’s another thing to lose that connection with that person without using social media. It can be stressful because I feel like I’m on the grind on social media and on my phone ninety-nine percent of the time. I think it pays off, though, when you get to play shows with the people you made online connections with.”

“Sometimes it does come personto-person,” added Crystal Killers drummer Gio Reyes. “But a lot of times you see something online about needing a band for a show and you answer the

EVENTS CALENDAR 6100 S Blackstone (773) 627-5058 More info online at buildcoffee.org

Sunday, April 7 Screenprinting for Liberation!

12:00 pm — 3:00 pm Hosted by For the People (FTP) Artists Collective and Monica Trinidad, Build Coffee artist-in-residence. Bring your own shirt (or sweater, tote bag, or any cloth really!) and choose a powerful design to share with the world.

MILO BOSH

tired of the North Side.’ I thought it was funny that I was trying to get into his neighborhood scene and he was trying to leave.”

“It’s all really about who you know,” added Flores. “[Habitats] doesn’t usually get asked to play on the North Side, and we don’t know anyone on the North Side.”

It’s not that the members of Crystal Killers and Habitats haven’t tried to make those North Side connections, either. In addition to going to shows and introducing themselves to bands they’d like to play shows with, both bands are active on social media, make posts in online music networking groups, such as DIY Chicago and not diy not chicago, and advertise their shows and music on several social media accounts.

“Social media is really big with anything you do. You always have to keep up with the connections you meet,”

call.”

And sometimes, once you’ve answered that call, new connections are formed, which allows bandmates to propel themselves further into a DIY scene and organize shows with new friends. While Crystal Killers finds social media helpful, they prioritize real, authentic connections with fellow musicians over online introductions and collaboration.

“I tried to get on shows where I thought [Crystal Killers] would fit but, more than anything, I didn’t notice people reaching out to us for shows until I started going out to shows myself and showing that appreciation,” said Martinez. “A lot of people like that, when they can see you bring people and go to shows yourself. That’s the kind of people I want on my show. How can you expect anyone to support you if you’re not supporting others?”

Monday, May 6 The Experiment Open Mic 6:00 pm — 8:00 pm

The Experiment is a free open mic at Build Coffee every first Monday of the month. Bring your songs, poems, music, stories, dances—whatever you can do in five minutes. Sign-ups open up at 6pm! Pre-show writing workshop APRIL 3, 2019 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 37 runs¬5-6pm.

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licia Maciel, a South Side native and the founder of nonprofit booking agency Fifty50 Shows, agrees with Martinez about paying your dues before you can expect your band to appear on a lineup in a new scene.

Although Maciel had always attended concerts around the city, she didn’t break into the city’s North Side DIY indie rock scene until she began attending school at DePaul University. After creating a Facebook group where students could talk about local music, Maciel began to form connections with the nearby college rock scene, which led to her founding Fifty50 Shows during her junior year of college.

As a promoter who books indie rock shows at North Side venues like Schubas in Lakeview and Subterranean in Wicker Park, as well as at DIY venues in Logan Square and Humboldt Park, Maciel finds new acts to book both in person and online.

“As long as bands have at least one social media platform and one music streaming platform, it helps me get to know the band as well as imagine their potential and possibilities in the upcoming year,” said Maciel. “There’s a lot of musicians either too anxious to socialize or put themselves out there. The best way to build yourself up is to reach out with welcoming arms and a warm smile.”

Maciel added that her criteria for booking new bands are: 1) Does the band have an organic sound that’s new and fresh? and 2) Are the members of the band respectful, diverse, and friendly?

If you apply Maciel’s criteria to Crystal Killers, a Latinx indie band that combines Latin influences with their unique style of heavy alternative rock, 38 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

the band seems like a perfect fit for one of Maciel’s shows on the North Side. But regardless of their efforts and the fact the band has played a handful of shows on the city’s Northwest Side, Crystal Killers has struggled to break into any DIY communities other than the punk and hardcore scenes that they already frequent on the South Side.

However, there are other South Side bands that have become regular North Side performers—and on the surface, their story isn’t too different from Crystal Killers’.

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t just fourteen years old, the members of Ex Okays, an indie rock band from Mount Greenwood, began playing bar shows around the South Side of Chicago.

Although the underage band wasn’t a fan of playing these shows, there wasn’t much of an alternative, unless they wanted to play shows in nearby Beverly, where the local music scene consisted of the same thirty to forty people attending shows with the same lineup of local rock bands.

“Honestly, those shows really sucked,” said Ex Okays guitarist Aidan Cahill. “We would play our set and then they would immediately kick us out.”

The five-piece indie band met me at the John T. Richardson Library on DePaul University’s Lincoln Park campus. The library is a fair commute for all of us, but it only made sense to meet these South Siders at a location near the venues where they frequently perform.

At first, the tension was high as the band members reflected on their experiences booking their first few gigs on the South Side.

“I remember one show where it was winter, maybe January,” said Ex Okays

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vocalist and guitarist Johnny Cummings.

“We were allowed to load in, and then had to wait outside until we played. And then we had to load out and leave as soon as we finished playing.”

Ex Okays was fed up with being unable to hang out at their own shows.

Even more concerning, the band had been getting ripped off by crooked “payto-play” promoters while playing the pub circuit.

“Pay-to-play” shows require that bands either make a deposit or buy tickets from the promoter, which they can sell to friends, family, and fans in order to make their deposit back. While a band with a large fan base might not find this a difficult feat, Ex Okays’ small following at the time was comprised of fans their age—fourteen- to sixteenyear-olds who didn’t have the disposable income to buy a ten-dollar ticket, and who certainly couldn’t get into a bar to see a 21+ show.

The band decided it was time to cut their South Side ties and find shows outside of their usual haunts. After joining local networking groups on Facebook—the same ones that Crystal Killers and Habitats frequent—the band secured their first show on the North Side by responding to a Facebook post.

“When we got there, we definitely thought we were at the wrong place,” said Cummings as the rest of his band members laughed and nodded in agreement. “It was just some kid’s apartment in Wrigleyville, way up on the third floor.”

Unbeknownst to Ex Okays, they had stumbled upon one of the many DIY house and apartment venues that make up the North Side’s indie rock scene.

After their first house show, the band knew it had finally discovered the kind of indie-inclusive music community they had been unable to find on the South Side.

Wicker Park, Logan Square, Roscoe Village, and Lakeview are areas where the Ex Okays frequently play and attend shows. According to them, they’re some of the few South Siders to frequent this music scene. They’ll tell you that they’re usually the youngest musicians at the shows they play, too.

In part because of the North Side scene’s proximity to DePaul University in Lincoln Park, its shows are frequented by college-aged fans, according to Cummings—but the band doesn’t see their music scene as an extension of college partying.

“It’s not just a party. People who come to these shows are here for the music,” said Cummings. “I think the reason college kids are drawn to this indie scene is because the music is relatable, at least lyrically.”

The band also added that shows being accessible from the CTA may be a large factor in whether an indie rock fan decides to see a show in a new neighborhood or at a new venue. But even when the band played Club Soda, a DIY venue in Pilsen easily accessible via the CTA Pink Line and several buses, Ex Okays noticed that the show drew a large crowd—but most of their North Side fans weren’t in attendance.

Cummings noted that many North Side fans saw no reason to leave their scene to see a show across the city when there are already plenty of DIY shows occurring each weekend on the North Side. However, when asked if members of their music scene would venture to the South Side to see an indie rock show or to discover bands outside of their scene, the members of Ex Okays all briefly paused before offering a collective “no.”

The Ex Okays are unsure why they were able to make the transition from the South Side pub scene to the North Side indie scene, but it in a scene that depends on who you know—and in a city as divided as Chicago—race and background may have been a factor. The majority of the Ex Okays are white men, but the members of Habitats and Crystal Killers are not. Mount Greenwood is 83.4 percent white, while 80.1 percent of West Lawn and 70.7 percent of Pilsen— the two neighborhoods that all the members of Crystal Killers and Habitats are from—are Hispanic.

While none of the members of Crystal Killers or Habitats felt confident that race had played a factor in their struggle to book North Side shows, they acknowledged that it may be a factor they had never considered.

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f North Siders won’t leave their network of garage and house venues to check out indie rock bands on the South Side, then it seems like the burden of spreading the music of South Side alternative rock bands falls solely on the band members themselves. But, back at the Rock Spot, some of the members of the South Side bands aren’t immediately interested in breaking out of their scene, or even especially interested in playing with bands whose sound resembles their own.

“I don’t really have a preference on playing with bands similar to me,” said Habitats vocalist Erik Salazar. “It’s really good to have some diversity between bands. Everybody gets a little taste of different genres.”

In fact, many of the members of Crystal Killers and Habitats enjoy playing among friends in shows around Little Village and Pilsen as the “oddball” on the lineup. Flores views playing shows on the South Side as an opportunity for other outlier bands to find community with South Siders who may not be playing the same music as each other, but can at least find solace in the fact that there are other alternative rock bands making music that isn’t heavy metal or hardcore.

“We’re starting to see more bands in our scene who are doing something similar to us,” Flores said. “I feel like now we’re still playing mixed genre shows, but it’s more even—there will be three bands like us and then three bands that are heavy. I’m still a fan of it being mixed; I have nothing against it and I like both genres, so why not?”

Martinez, however, is still a bit frustrated that his efforts to break into Chicago’s North Side indie scene have been met with nothing but resistance.

“I do try to reach out to people [on the North Side] but I notice that it’s different. We’re received differently. It’s harder to get on those shows, too,” said Martinez.

Crystal Killers’ drummer, Gio Reyes, added that North Side DIY venues may be hesitant to include unfamiliar acts on their lineups because they don’t know whether a new band will draw a crowd. Like the members of Ex Okays, Reyes has his doubts that South Side fans would travel across the city to see his band play on the North Side, when they could see a variety of other shows happening in their own neighborhoods.

“How many people can you bring, and how far will they go for you? When you’re talking about South Siders, trying to get a whole twenty to thirty people to go north gets difficult,” said Reyes.

On some level, the venues these bands play in and the circles they move in are determined by their fans. For Chicago music fans looking to help out these artists, leaving your neighborhood to see local talent play across the city can have a big impact on the acts talent buyers and promoters choose to support.

“The South Side shows we play will have a good pull—on the North

Side, it gets a little risky. If we play with bands that everyone [on the South Side] knows, then people will go,” said Flores.

“That’s why it’s good to have a fanbase in the South Side and the North Side.” ¬

Due to a lack of space, we’re running highlights from each section of the Calendar in print, and the whole thing online at: southsideweekly.com/events

Nikki Roberts is a freelance journalist and radio DJ working in Chicago. She writes about music, culture, and social justice with a Chicago focus.

BULLETIN

Habitats’ latest EP, Dead Dreams, is available on Spotify, Bandcamp, Apple Music, and Google Play.

Crystal Killers’ music, including their latest single, “ You Don’t Know Why,” is available on all streaming services.

Ex Okays will be playing a house show at CTHouse on April 5 with Misunderstood, Pam Macys, the Hazy Seas, and more. Their latest single, “Involvement,” is available on Spotify and Bandcamp.

Maciel’s next event with Fifty50 Shows is on April 16 at Subterranean with Café Racer, Mia Joy, Claude, and Zilched. All proceeds will benefit Girls Rock! Chicago.

STAGE & SCREEN For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Thursday, March 14–Sunday, April 14. $20–$74. (773) 753-4472. courttheatre.org

Public Newsroom: Reporting on Race and Riots—1919 to Today Experimental Station, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Thursday, April 4, 6pm–8pm. Free. chicago1919.org Author Ethan Michaeli and City Bureau co-founder Darryl Holliday discuss the progress (and lack thereof ) made on race reporting in Chicago since the 1919 race riots, which occurred one hundred years ago. Part of the Chicago 1919 initiative exploring the importance of the riots on the city’s history. Come early to make sure you get a seat. (Sam Stecklow)

Court Theatre welcomes playwright Ntozake Shange’s most wellknown work, from which the genre choreopoem was coined. Director Seret Scott, who performed in the original Broadway production from 1976 to 1978, weaves Shange’s heartfelt, sliceof-real-life poems, with music and choreographed movement to tell vivid stories through the characters of eight women of color navigating womanhood in sometimes painful yet always powerful ways. (Nicole Bond) Sponsored

VISUAL ARTS

FOOD & LAND

Breaking Ground A Cup of Joe, 6806 W. Archer Ave. Friday, April 5, 6pm–9pm. bit.ly/BreakingGround1 Join S.H.E. gallery and A Cup of Joe as they introduce an all-new lineup of their artist members. This exhibit marks their first curatorial partnership art exhibition under new ownership. In addition to the exhibit, there will also be a presentation on saving las monarcas (monarch butterflies) by Pilsen nonprofit El Valor.

(Roderick Sawyer)

MUSIC JazzCity ‘19 – A Journey Through Jazz Arts and Recreation Center at Ellis Park, 3520 S. Cottage Grove Ave. Friday, April 5, 7pm–9pm. Free. (312) 427-1676. jazzinchicago.org In this edition of the JazzCity concert series, blues harmonica player Billy Branch—a living Chicago legend—will perform alongside guitarist George Freeman. (The ninety-one-year-old’s newest LP, “George The Bomb!,” just dropped.) (Christopher Good)

I Heart Halal Navy Pier, 600 E Grand Ave. Friday, April 12 to Sunday, April 14th. General Admission: $10, $5 for children under 13. $50 All-Access pass includes concert, comedy show and film festival. Prices go up at the door. For vending call: 708-8164662. ihearthalal.com All are welcome to the I Heart Halal: Halal Lifestyle Expo at Navy Pier Friday. Enjoy a 3-Day Lifestyle Festival of conscious living, world food, global fashion, education, entertainment, shopping and more! General admission includes: Hi-Def fashion show with top cultural and modest fashions, beauty classes, informative seminars, cooking demonstrations and competitions, an amazing fully stocked kids zone and a grand bazaar with good-foryou products from across the world.

Chicago's own—Lupe Fiasco, Brother Ali and Neelam will headline the IHH concert and the comedy show will feature Azhar Usman, Aaron Kader, Zaynab Johnson & more! (This post sponsored by I Heart Halal)

APRIL 3, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 39