June 3, 2015 | The Arts Issue

2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

WELCOME

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

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

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

Sarah Claypoole, Emeline Posner, Hafsa Razi Social Media Editor Emily Lipstein Web Editor Andrew Koski Visuals Editor Ellie Mejia Layout Editors Adam Thorp, Baci Weiler Senior Writer: Stephen Urchick Staff Writers: Olivia Adams, Emiliano Burr di Mauro, Will Cabaniss, Amelia Dmowska, Eleonora Edreva, Michal Kranz, Lewis Page, Sammie Spector Staff Photographers: Camden Bauchner, Juliet Eldred, Finn Jubak, Alexander Pizzirani, Julie Wu Staff Illustrators: Addie Barron, Jean Cochrane, Lexi Drexelius, Zelda Galewsky, Seonhyung Kim, Wei Yi Ow, Amber Sollenberger, Javier Suarez, Teddy Watler, Julie Wu Journalist-in-Residence Yana Kunichoff Editorial Intern Webmaster Business Manager

Clyde Schwab Shuwen Qian Harry Backlund

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

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

Cover Art by Kriss Stress.

THE ARTS ISSUE After you finish reading this issue, turn back to the cover. Pick up a pen, or markers, or crayons—whatever you have at hand. Draw on the cover.

In this, our annual Arts Issue, the Weekly explores the various ways in which people and communities engage with their realities through artistic creation. Murals, comics, music, film, performance, and architecture—all of these mediums have and have had dedicated practitioners on the South Side. All are given space in this issue.

The cover is your space—the black and white illustration done by Kriss Stress is yours to color in and alter.

This is our small way of capturing the spirit of creativity you’ll find throughout the issue and throughout your communities every day. Feel free to photograph and share your versions of the cover on Twitter and be sure to include the hashtag #SSWArtsIssue.

We look forward to seeing your work and hope you enjoy reading ours. “a

prophet in your hometown”

“to determine the suitability of forming a society to stimulate the love of the beautiful and to enrich the life of the community...” adam thorp...4 between two chinatowns

A new $18 million Chinatown public library branch is set to open this summer. lauren gurley...7 young at

75

“What might have once spoken to freshly-split timbers and a new picket fence is now a fixer-upper.” stephen urchick...9 restoring color

“I wanted to paint a stream of humanity, a river of people.” darren wan...11 the not-so-distant past

“It’s either really pretentious or really deep, depending on how you look at it.” lewis page...13 father of the black age

He didn’t want just a job. He wanted an entire genre. So he didn’t get mad. He got busy. alex harrell...14

a city of djs

a return to wonder

Each display acts as a chapter in the narrative of the South Side and the city as a whole. kanisha williams...16

Implant the enchantment elsewhere and in abundance. miles morgan...26

no longer art, but no longer shelved

This moment of finding the minutest impairment is when the real discussion begins. sammie spector...18 “i’m

still mr. youmedia”

YOUmedia is the origin story of some of the best music to come out of Chicago. olivia myszkowski...20 surf’s out

Our appreciation in print of what you should just go listen to. jake bittle & maha ahmed...21 restoring the south side’s movie houses

The abandoned theater stands as a neglected reminder of what movie theaters used to be. robert sorrell, eleonora edreva, & emiliano burr di mauro...22

the way forward

“The basic question is, how did our cities get this way?” emeline posner...27 all in a day’s work

“America is supposed to be a place of opportunity, yet that opportunity is not there for everyone.” emiliano burr di mauro...28 from prison yard to table

“They don’t have to go back into the same cycle. We can give the opportunity to have a different course.” sammie spector...31 a new home down the block

“If we have five times more space, we’ll have five times more creativity.” cooper aspegren...32 summer music festival guide

From metal to gospel and most things in between.

34 south side summer camps

School lets out soon. What’s next?

36

JUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

“A Prophet in Your Hometown”

I

n 1998, Raymond Pettibon, a punk and cartoon inspired artist, painted a mural—baseball players in motion, under the words “no pepper games”—as part of an exhibition with the Renaissance Society. The mural could not leave with the rest of the exhibition. The legal rights to display the mural are complicated, and the Society does not collect the art it displays. Rather than paint over the mural, they sealed it behind drywall after the exhibition closed. It apparently remains there, in the hallway outside of the Renaissance Society’s gallery. Things like this accrue in a hundred-year-old institution: the Renaissance Society’s history, in the form of its grey-boxed archives, now covers walls within its offices; in the hallway by its gallery, a wall covers part of its history.

The Renaissance Society’s academic founders had an idealistic conception of the role of art in society when they met one hundred years ago to discuss beginning the Society.

An invitation to the June 3 meeting said its purpose was “to determine the suitability of forming a society to stimulate the love of the beautiful and to enrich the life of the community through the cultivation of the arts.”

The seminal Armory show’s arrival in Chicago effectively introduced modern art to Chicago’s public; Jean Fulton, a Chicago-based writer, points out in his contribution to a book covering the Renaissance Society’s first seventy-five years that this show anticipated the foundation of the Renaissance Society, now an aggressively contemporary institution, by two years. Chicago’s reaction to the Armory show was ostensibly aggrieved but apparently interested—Chicago newspapers tore it to pieces, but a huge portion of the city’s population found its way to the show.

The reaction to the Armory show indicated that there might be a place for a showcase of modern art in Chicago.

But it would be some time before the Renaissance Society began to fulfill that role. Its founders’ conception was conservative, in line with the instincts of the city that had vo-

4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

The Renaissance Society celebrates one hundred years

BY ADAM THORP

Promotional Material from Art Deco: Trends in Design (1973); War Art (1942); A Selection of Work by 21st Century Artists (1931); Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prarie School (1972); Contemporary Still Life (1974). Photos courtesy of Renaissance Society; A Selection of Work by 21st Century and Artists and War Art are archived at the Archives of American Art in Boston.

cally objected to the Armory show.

Its earliest exhibitions focused on art history exhibitions; its exhibitions and lectures about then-contemporary art retained a conservative bent.

“When it initially started—I mean, the university was a pretty conservative place—and it matched that. The language around that early starting point... was quite conservative, and even our starters might have

been hostile to modernism; certainly the city was,” said Karen Reimer, Director of Publications and Registrar at the Society. She is editing a book chronicling the Society’s first hundred years, which will be released in conjunction with the centennial.

The University of Chicago was “the community” the Society was initially meant to enrich. Its membership was restricted to “member or friends of the University”; its budget came

from the school, as did its employees (this would continue to be the case up to the 1970s)., The Society is based out of a UofC building to this day. At the Society’s foundation and through its first decades, the UofC’s art programs were underdeveloped or non-existent.

The Society, it was hoped, would fill this gap with lectures and edifying exhibitions.

The program of Eva Watson-Schütze, the Society’s first exhibition director, would define the institution as a home for contemporary art.

A member of an innovative movement in photography, Watson-Schütze had not been satisfied by her traditional art education. By the time she became director in 1929, hostility toward modernism was no longer at fever pitch in the city and the interest that the Armory show had attracted was no longer paired with outrage.

By shifting toward modernism, the Renaissance Society joined other Chicago art organizations like the South Side Community Art Center, the Hyde Park Art Center, and the downtown-based Chicago Art Club, with whom it shared speakers and exhibitions.

Watson-Schütze brought several artists and pieces to the Society for their Chicago debuts, especially through the abstractionist exhibition “A Selection of Works by 20th Century Artists” (1934). The exhibition included Piet Mondrian’s clean, bright rectangles and Alexander Calder’s dangling, wire-framed mobiles (Calder would have his first solo exhibition at the Society a year later), among other now-renowned artists.

Fulton quotes her first bulletin to the Society as reading “part of the program of the Renaissance Society is to stimulate study of the art of the present time, the new Renaissance.”

Watson-Schütze died before her greatest achievement could come together: a logistically complicated display of paintings by the French abstractionist Fernand Léger (1935).

After the time of Watson-Schütze and her successor, Inez Cunningham Stark, the Society saw a drift from the aggressively contemporary exhibitions

VISUAL ARTS that had marked their tenures. Constrained by budget problems, it began to take what it could, often in collaboration with the UofC’s art programs.

The Society’s budget has been limited since its foundation. Watson-Schütze’s Léger exhibit, for instance, incited a confused tangle of telegrams when an apparently over-eager Léger shipped the contents of the exhibition from France to New York, on their way to Chicago; a friend of the Society, James Johnson Sweeney, had intimated to Léger that the Society might be interested in an exhibition, but had not made any commitment or definite plans. The Society did not have the resources to insure and transport the exhibition at short notice. As of Watson-Schütze’s death, it was not clear that the show would go on at all. (It eventually arranged to share the costs, and the exhibition, with other American arts institutions.)

“You look at that middle stretch—through the Depression, through the War—we’re poor as dirt, there’s no money, all the documents say ‘are we going under this year.’ ” said Reimer. “And I think it became much more catch-as-catch-can. I think it was still an important thing in the city, but maybe not the cutting edge of contemporary art.”

Susanne Ghez, who spent forty years as exhibition director starting in 1974, would again sharpen the Society’s focus on the most contemporary of contemporary art. Ghez would often bring over artists for their debut solo shows in America or Chicago, and the Society gained a reputation for anticipating upcoming trends in the art world, according to Reimer and Stein.

“She was really interested in very contemporary art; really the newest stuff, the stuff that hasn’t been seen widely, maybe hasn’t been theorized widely; I think it kind of became a goal to be a very experimental place, and that has kind of been our focus ever since,” said Reimer.

Her curation was particularly important for the early development of conceptual art, which prioritizes the ideas behind the art over its execution or permanence. When discussing Ghez’s tenure, Jordan Stein, the Society’s current curator for special projects and the organizer of an archival

exhibition for the centennial, began enthusiastically tapping one by one at the gray boxes of records, organized by exhibition, that make up the Renaissance Society’s archive.

“Susanne started here—“Contemporary Still Life” [1974] was the first show that she did,” said Stein.

“And then if you trace it just for the next few years: Joseph Kosuth [1976], Robert Smithson [1976], Ideas in Sculpture [1977], Dan Graham [1981], Lawrence Weiner [1978], Hans Haacke [1979]. This is like a murderers’ row of the origins of conceptual art. And I think that origin stories were really Susanne’s bread and butter, when she got here, and it’s shocking to think how young that work was at the time.”

When Ghez took office, the Renaissance Society’s relationship with the UofC was becoming more complicated. The school had just opened the Smart Museum, a more extensive collecting institution that would serve much of the role on campus the Society had originally played. In the 1970s, the Society would separate from the university: its employees no longer worked for the UofC, and financial aid stopped flowing, although they were not paying rent for their space on the fourth floor of Cobb Hall, a much-used academic building.

It would become the Renaissance Society at , not of the University of Chicago.

By the end of Ghez’s long tenure, the Society had become a rare kind of institution on the forward edge of the American art world. Since its beginning, it had been an in-between institution: neither a large museum nor a small gallery nor an artist-run space.

This allowed the Society to provide institutional support for artists without losing “flexibility,” according to Anna Searle Jones, Director of Communications for the Renaissance Society.

This is partially because the Society has avoided collecting any of the art it displays—see the aforementioned dry-walled mural. A permanent collection would force the Society to come to terms with administrative, storage, and maintenance hassles, and tie a forward-looking organization to last year’s programming decisions.

And the Society’s relationship to Chicago? The society was founded by the UofC with what was, at the time,

Promotional Material from Contemporary Still Life (1972) Mirror/Salt Works (1976); Thick Paint (1978); Joseph Kosuth (1976).

Photos courtesy of Renaissance Society.

a contemporary Chicagoan’s idea of the purposes of art; both that founding relationship and conception have changed over the years. Cobb Hall, the home of the Renaissance Society, is apparently a run-of-the-mill academic building. As Reimer pointed out, the gallery is not conducive to street traffic or impulse visits; according to her, some visitors cannot find their way up to the fourth floor even once they have been given directions.

“In some ways it’s been better known in Europe than in America.

I’m not sure why exactly that would be; maybe it’s a prophet in your hometown, or something, but our reputation there has always been very high [there],” said Reimer. “People ask us about our audience, and we sometimes say we don’t have an audience that walks in off the street, we have an audience that comes in from the airport.”

JUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

Before being hired to work on the centennial exhibition, Stein was one of a group of people who were familiar with the Society and its reputation from a distance, without having visited it in Chicago.

“I can say...having lived in California for the last decade, the Renaissance Society is a place that I would always check on, even though I’d never been here. I think a lot of people have that relationship from afar. It’s a very special place, that, in a way, has almost been responsible for predicting the future of contemporary art, which is something of an oxymoron,” said Stein.

The centennial schedule, which will run for a hundred-day period starting in September, will provide opportunities to reflect on the Society’s history in Chicago and its history in the broader art world, among other exhibitions and events. A three-day symposium will recognize the Society’s international profile by hosting an international group to consider the role and conduct of art galleries; a

6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

different panel will gather the art institutions that hosted Gertrude Stein during her visit to Chicago in 1934 in order to reflect upon an important moment in the development of modernism in Chicago.

SELECTED EVENTS FROM THE CENTENNIAL EXHIBITIONS

Seductive Exacting Realism Sep. 10-Oct. 8 at Renassiance Society Gallery, 5811 S. Ellis Ave. Parts of artist Irena Haiduk’s interview with Serbian student activist-turned-consulting-revolutionary Srđa Popović will play in the Renaissance Society’s gallery through September and October; the rest will be shown simultaneously in Turkey, as part of the Istanbul biennial.

Popović teaches non-violent tactics to resistance groups around the world, but has been criticized for his relationship with corporate intelligence contractors. “It’s very dense politically—[Haiduk] draws parallels between activists and artists, in the way that artists actually play the role of consultant as well [by] posing possibility and ideas and ways of being in the world,” said Anna Searle Jones, the Renaissance Society’s Director of Communications.

Ankhrasmation: The Language Scores, 1967-2015 Exhibition: Oct. 11-29 at the Renaissance Society Gallery; Panel: Oct. 24, 4pm at the Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St.; Concert with the Golden Quartet: Oct. 24, 7pm at Logan Center; Solo Concert: Oct. 25, 3pm at Renaissance Society Gallery.This will be the first comprehensive exhibit of Wadada Leo Smith’s striking alternate notation system, which guides improvisation through a colorful set of pictograms. Keeping with a long record of putting on talks and performances, the Society will also host two concerts and a panel discussion about Leo Smith’s notation system. Hamza Walker, Director of Education and Associate Curator at the Renaissance Society, who has showcased audio performances during his more than twenty years at the Society, will return from a two-year leave of absence to co-curate the exhibition.

Paul McCarthy Drawing and Collages Nov. 8-Jan. 24 at Renaissance Society Gallery.

Susanne Ghez spent forty years shaping the programming of the Renaissance Society before ending her directorship in 2013. Ghez is still active in the Chicago art world; she will return to the Society to curate this first-ever solo exhibition of Paul McCarthy’s work in Chicago. McCarthy is best known for his sculptures and performance art—this will be a relatively rare chance to see his two-dimensional work.

Archives 1915-2015

Oct-Dec. For much of its history, the Renaissance Society has wandered from one UofC classroom or campus corner to another: Wieboldt 205, now Romance Languages Offices; Goodspeed 108, now a piano practice room. This exhibition of the Renaissance Society’s archival material will not pretend that its history can be fixed to a single place. The Society is looking into dividing the exhibition between the Society’s former homes.

EVENTS Reading and Panel: Gertrude Stein in Chicago Wednesday, Nov. 11, 7pm. The Renaissance Society, the Arts Club of Chicago, and the Poetry Foundation formed an important part of modernism’s vanguard in 1934, when modernist writer Gertrude Stein was hosted by both the Renaissance Society and the Arts Club. At this panel discussion, historians and writers will put her visit in context.

Symposium: In Practice Friday, Nov. 20-Sunday, Nov. 22. The art institutions most analogous to the Renaissance Society— smaller than a museum, but with institutional strength and history—exist in Europe, not in America. The Renaissance Society is in talks with an international group of experts and practitioners to arrange a symposium that would consider the roles that the Renaissance Society and similar art institutions can play. During the event, a book chronicling the Renaissance Society’s first hundred years will be launched.

DEVELOPMENT

E

Between Two Chinatowns

arly on weekday mornings, immigrants recently arrived from mainland China can be seen gathering by the Chinatown Gate on Wentworth Avenue, chatting in Mandarin over hot tea and buns before dispersing across the city to their day jobs as drivers and restaurant workers.

Several blocks north of the gate, near Tony Hu’s ever-expanding restaurant empire and the Chinatown Square outdoor mall, weekday mornings are quiet. Not until evenings and the weekend does the space come alive with visitors from surrounding neighborhoods and the suburbs, including many second-and third-generation Chinese-Americans, arriving for boba tea, haircuts, and hot pot.

Many residents of Chicago’s largest Chinese community lament this growing divide between the southern and northern parts of the neighborhood, which have come to be known as “Old Chinatown” and “New Chinatown.”

A new $18 million Chinatown public library branch on the corner of Archer and Wentworth Avenues, set to open this summer, hopes to bridge these two Chinatowns. The site of the glassy two-story building was strategically chosen as a midway point between the centers of the new and old Chinatowns, increasing pedestrian traffic between the gap.

The current Chinatown public library branch is housed in the rented bottom floor of a drab two-story retail center on the southern edge of Old Chinatown. It’s one of the city’s busiest library branches with over 21,000 visitors each month, and for years res-

Incorporating elements of feng shui, a new Chinatown library seeks to unite new and old

BY LAUREN GURLEY

idents have complained of overcrowding and outdated technology.

“They were in desperate need for a new space and a new facility. They were in a rented facility for years, which did not meet the needs of the patrons. This will offer the opportunity to provide twenty-first century library services in a twenty-first century building,” said the Public Building Commissions project coordinator Molly Sullivan.

Because of the new library’s location on the triangular block that bisects the new and old Chinatowns, the design does not follow the typical cookie-cutter prototype used by most Chicago public libraries. It is being custom-designed and built by Brian Lee of Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill LLP. The rounded shape of the building was chosen in anticipation of the realignment of Wentworth Avenue, another aspect of recent civic efforts to connect New and Old Chinatowns.

The shape, orientation, and design of the sleek, 16,000 square foot structure adheres to the principles of feng shui, drawing inspiration from

Chinese culture and uniting the architectural modernism of New Chinatown with the traditional architecture of Old Chinatown. According to the Public Building Commission, the library’s open central atrium design emulates the use of lighting and space in a traditional Chinese temple, and follows principles of feng shui by “having openness and a sense of connection to the second level.”

Permeable wooden fins attached to the building’s glass exterior will resemble a traditional Chinese screen, and vertical beams in the library’s garden will resemble bamboo stalks.

Local artist CJ Hungerman will decorate the building with psychedelic art inspired by Chinese mythology.

Up until recent developments such as the new library branch and the realignment of Wentworth Avenue, New Chinatown has been the principal site of commercial and civic developments in the neighborhood.

In the past decade, it has seen the major expansion of Ping Tom Memorial Park and Mayor Emanuel’s $62 million Wells-Wentworth Connector project, which will create a new road between Chinatown and the Loop.

The divide between Chicago’s two Chinatowns may, unexpectedly, point to a reason for pride among Chicago’s Chinese community. While Chinatowns across the nation—including lower Manhattan’s and San Francisco’s large Chinese communities—have been steadily shrinking in recent decades, Chicago’s Chinatown has increased by over twenty-five percent since 2000, and Chicago’s Chinese population is the third-largest ethnic group in the city. Newcomers are largely young, and of many different religious and geographic origins.

Perhaps the influx of a diverse community to Chinatown points to the fact that the neighborhood is thriving now more than ever. At the very least, the city’s investment in a new state-of-the-art library and other developments intended to connect the new and old Chinatowns suggests the entire neighborhood will continue to expand as a site of Chinese commercial and cultural activity in the coming years.

“This used to be an ugly parking lot,” said Sullivan of the future library site. “Now they’re building this beautiful, modern, state-of-the-art building, with views north to Chinatown Square and south to the Chinatown Gates, which has that big beautiful terra cotta arch. It’s being considered a new neighborhood hub.”

julie wu

JUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

Young at 75 The SSCAC’s 75th Anniversary exhibit highlights long histories, new practice

BY STEPHEN URCHICK

Spiders, Nnenna Okore

T

he walls at the South Side Community Art Center are almost as important as the objects that hang from them. The

photos by stephen urchick

stained and pockmarked wood panels were one of the first features Clinton Nichols, program manager at SSCAC, pointed out upon entering into

VISUAL ARTS the main exhibition room. They’re also the web banner on SSCAC’s art historical blog, Art of a Community Speaks.” Nearly a year ago, in a similar exhibition overview, an article in the Weekly also made them its starting point.

It’s been said that each scuff and nail hole is a document in itself.

Visitors appreciate the carpentry because the art center’s exhibition history is written on the building’s surface. (“Margaret Burroughs hung her woodcut here,” they shout.) But the SSCAC’s current 75th Anniversary show, “From the Hearth,” flips this thinking. It shows off objects that are themselves as marked-up and timeworn as the struts and beams behind them.

Take Charles Davis’s “Back Street,” an oil painting on canvas from 1940, as an example. It’s a sketchy, loosely-worked picture of a Bronzeville family behind their house, painted the year of SSCAC’s inauguration. The father’s swinging a mallet near the center; kids are playing on planks next to some unfinished masonry. New redbrick apartment buildings line the horizon. Time, however, threatens to undo the dad’s home-improvement project.

Light and moisture have caused what might have once been a very vibrant palette to sink, darken, and yellow. Blues are greens, and reds are dusty. The painted surface appears to buckle in places. It looks more like Davis went at it with crayons or pastels than with a brush. Areas near the dad have fractured outright. A few flakes of paint have fallen off, revealing the white canvas below. What might have once been seen as a new picket fence is now a fixer-upper.

The same can be said for the Richmond Barthé bust of a shoe shine boy, as well as a few oil paintings by Margaret Burroughs. Barthé’s plaster sculpture has lost small patches from its original coat of acrylic paint; it’s tough to tell what Boroughs might have scraped away herself and what’s been lost over successive handlings.

By exhibiting these works, “From the Hearth” embraces object condition instead of concealing it.

The movement is partly a gesture to donors: the SSCAC has embarked on an “Adopt a Work” campaign to raise money for professional restoration.

An extra line of explanatory text accompanies the labels to pieces that qualify. But the show also reads as a quiet salute to a years-long project by the SSCAC to comprehensively catalog their collection, to which Davis, Barthé, and Burroughs all permanently belong.

“It’s so impressive that the collection, the archives, are still at the center,” said Marissa Baker, a former collections intern. Baker contributed to this project from 2013 to 2014, in the years leading up to the 75th anniversary. “They’re still at the same building, in the same community.

That makes it a remarkable resource.”

Baker teamed with University of Chicago professor Rebecca Zorach to continue the work of previous interns and a consulting conservationist. They were working under a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

“The scope of the project was ensuring that the collection was not just preserved, but well-documented,” she explained. “I would read Board of Trustees notes and documents from the founding days…they had flyers from the exhibitions, they had beautiful programs from the Artists and Models Ball.”

Baker compiled articles about the Center’s specific strengths, and posted them online to a public blog.

She was able to conduct thorough research, based firmly on the works themselves, since the center keeps everything located conveniently on-site.

“Across the hall was the collection. I could read something from the archive and then look at the object!”

During her stay, she honed in on two key areas: first the Center’s founding during the 1930s and 1940s, and then the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Baker considers the art center’s inventory of AfriCOBRA prints to be “one of the more impressive collections in the country,” competing with the Brooklyn Museum or LACMA. “There was a resurgence at the Center in the 1960s, and an interest in it as a place where cultural production could happen,” she said. “That’s a movement in visual art that’s just beginning to be documented. As more art history is being written, now, the South Side Community Art Center will emerge as a site where that creJUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

ative activity was happening.”

This turns out to be the other half of “From the Hearth.” In addition to artists like Davis, Barthé, and Burroughs, the exhibition features more recent artists like Ralph Arnold and Barbara Jones-Hogu, as well as works from contemporary makers like Nnenna Okore, Faheem Majeed, and Krista Franklin. Majeed and Franklin both share close ties to the center itself: Majeed was its previous executive director, while Franklin was a teaching artist who first introduced the show’s two young curators—Kara Franco and Lamar Gayles—to the SSCAC. The presence of Majeed’s or Franklin’s work in “From the Hearth” verifies that the SSCAC is still a nexus for the same kind of undertakings that Baker identified in the 1960s.

Just as the walls display the marks of previous exhibitions, or the Barthé bust marks time in its scratches and abrasions, Majeed’s two bright yellow replicas of that same bust index the Center’s influence on his present-day practice.

Shoe Shine Boy (1938), Richmond Barthé

Majeed essentially updates Barthé’s straightforward, anthropological perspective to speak to current concerns of neighborhood violence.

Majeed identifies the yellow color of the two reproductive sculptures with caution signs. He reiterates the self-care that Barthé’s boy—then as now—has to exercise to stay safe,

10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

happy, and healthy.

In situating his replicas over the exhibition room’s fireplace, Majeed goes a step further. He offers credit where credit is due. The center’s preservation of Barthé’s boy gave him a useful visual shorthand by which he could express one aspect of his larger artistic idea. Each of the two heads, shorn off at the mouth, appears to grow up and out of the mantelpiece.

By making his work actually look like a part of the Center’s material space, Majeed makes clear how his thinking has in part “arisen” from contact with the SSCAC’s robust holdings.

Nnenna Okore’s “Spiders” comes as a coda for the SSCAC’s role as inspiration and incubator. Twisting from ground to ceiling, “Spiders” is a monumental column of individual spider puppets, made from recycled papers. Each is about the size of two fists, sporting spindly, twisted legs.

The spiders follow the contours of the radiator, doorframe, and ceiling.

They all travel, pack-like, in the same direction. The installation makes excellent use of the wooden walls. Met-

al dissection pins, like you’d find in a laboratory room, fix each spider firmly to the surface, defying gravity.

Okore encourages the viewer to think about spiders as spinners, as creatures that pull together various strands and elements. It’s in this light that her art provides a framework for sizing up the SSCAC’s seventy-five year-old collection. Okore’s colored magazine scraps can be considered a kind of archival matter of their own.

Her source materials may not be in the best of conditions, but they’ve been lovingly pulled together into an artistic apparatus that encourages reading and reflection.

Whether at the level of museum or maker, a continual process of gathering, turning over, and reshuffling can generate rewarding and attractive conclusions. “From the Hearth” recognizes that while many of the SSCAC’s objects date back to the 1940s, and very visibly bear the passage of that time, they still have a lot to do for future generations. They are, in effect, still quite young.

VISUALFOOD ARTS

Caryl Yasko restores her mural “Under City Stone” in Hyde Park

Restoring Color

BY DARREN WAN

O

n the first day of restorations, Caryl Yasko never stood idle, not even for a second—clad in cream overalls stained profusely with blots of paint, she scraped off huge tracts of white paint. “They told me they painted over graffiti, but I’ve yet to find any,” she said, chipping away at the whitewash. Yasko painted the mural “Under City Stone” in 1972, enduring under the Metra tracks at the intersection of 55th and Lake Park since then with limited upkeep.

The wall on which the mural sits is 211 feet long. “Under City Stone” consists of 133 distinct figures, including a depiction of Yasko with her daughter on her back.“ I wanted to paint a stream of humanity, a river of people.” Across the underpass, the first stanza of James Agee’s poem “Rapid Transit,” from which the mural’s title comes, spans the length of the mural. It is a poem that paints a grim image of the lives of the multitudes of urban dwellers. Offering her interpretation of the piece, Yasko said, “It really is a poem about how we lose our creativity as we get changed by society.”

The restoration of the mural is not intended to be a mere reproduction of the 1972 piece. Rather, Yasko intends to cover the five missing decades between now and the time of painting. “I want to mix it up, not in a chronological order. I’m not dead, so I can have fun with the piece!”

The mural, however, is not only about the people depicted, but also about those people’s lived experiences. Yasko motioned at the image of

an army tank, explaining that it was an allusion to the militarism that persisted during the Vietnam War. “And now, we have more wars,” she said. “Nothing has changed. We were worried about pollution, now we’re worried about global warming.”

These narratives that underpin human experiences are weaved artfully into the mural, giving voice to the varied figures in her work. “This is how muralists use walls sometimes: to sell thoughts through color, line, and form.”

Yasko’s journey from her hometown of Racine, Wisconsin to Chicago was not a direct one: she took a detour to Japan, where her husband, now a retired Japanese historian, had a Fulbright scholarship. While in Japan for several years with her first

three children, she devoted her time to watercolor, capitalizing on the prevalence of washi, a Japanese paper.

“I’m influenced by the strength of line in Japanese art, and the juxtaposition of different textures and prints next to another,” she said. These techniques still mark her signature style as a muralist.

After a few years in Japan, Yasko moved to Chicago and made Hyde Park her home. For a while, she was auditing Japanese language classes at the University of Chicago, during which time she met a ceramicist. Together, they founded an art school in a brick house owned by and adjacent to the First Unitarian Church of Chicago on 57th and Woodlawn, on the condition that they conduct religious education classes every Sunday.

alexander pizzirani

“We did phone surveys and figured out that nobody was offering any basic drawing, ceramics, and design courses, so that’s how we became an art center,” Yasko said.

During this time Yasko also joined Chicago Mural Group, where she was the only female muralist.

Now called the Chicago Public Art Group, the Chicago Mural Group included Yasko’s mentor William Walker, Mitchell Caton, and John Pitman Weber. It was this group that proposed to help Yasko restore her mural—a project she had been considering for some time.

“Chicago was a catalyst for murals all over the world,” said Yasko. “I came down several times to restore this, in 2005, 2008, and 2009, but it required fund-raising every time. This

JUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

VISUAL ARTS time the Chicago Public Art Group officially proposed its restoration, because this is now history, because this mural was painted in those beginning, exciting, fabulous years during which Chicago muralists led a global movement.”

“I started my career here, and I’ve never stopped,” reminisced Yasko.

She has painted many other murals in Chicago, including “Prescription for Good Healthcare” at 5704 S. Kedzie, a response to the controversial Kennedy-Corman bill. “Razem,” a mural at 4040 W Belmont, is an ode to Pol-

school students as interns who will work closely with Yasko over the summer. Members of the public are also welcome to contribute in any capacity they can, from making monetary contributions to helping paint the figures on the mural.

“It’s really a magnificent opportunity for us to partner with the original artist and bring in university students, high school students, community members, who will all have an opportunity to participate in this restoration,” said Towns.

This project is a part of a stat-

This is how muralists use walls sometimes: to sell thoughts through color, line, and form. ish heritage in America. Apart from Chicago, Yasko paints extensively in Wisconsin. Her most notable work is “The Stonecutters” in the town of Lamont, an homage to painter and muralist Thomas Hart Benton; the piece evokes the Midwestern work ethic among 19th century stone quarry miners.

Now, Yasko has come full circle. Under the umbrella of the Office for Civic Engagement at the UofC, the UofC’s Neighborhood Initiatives team has played a significant role in spearheading this restoration.

“In conjunction with the Chicago Public Art Group, we did an assessment of the murals that were in the Lake Park Avenue corridor, and decided that this was the one that needed the most restoration, that could definitely be salvaged,” said William Towns, Assistant Vice President of Civic Engagement.

In a bid to support Yasko’s mammoth undertaking over the summer, Civic Engagement has brought together various university-affiliated arts organizations, particularly the Department of Visual Arts, the Arts Incubator, and the Arts + Public Life Initiative. Miguel Alguilar, the Shop Program Manager for the Design Apprenticeship Workshop at the Arts Incubator, is hoping to promote public engagement by selecting four high

ed effort by the UofC to engage the South Side through public art. Towns made reference to previous efforts to the University’s support for the restoration of Astrid Fuller’s mural “Spirit of Hyde Park,” in addition to a rotating mural program currently run by Arts + Public Life at Garfield Boulevard. Murals like Yasko’s are ripe for renewal efforts—not only are they public, but more importantly, they are subject to degradation over time.

For Yasko, community is certainly one of the most crucial dimensions of art. She is, at present, still searching for technical assistance that is sorely lacking at the initial stages of her restoration, especially regarding the gaps that have appeared in the mural wall as a result of five decades of erosion.

Despite this, her undying enthusiasm is palpable. Many passersby engaged her in conversation; some even providing unsolicited donations: her mission to re-beautify Hyde Park has not gone unappreciated by those who regularly pass by the mural.

“There is, I think, a different viewpoint that I bring to the table as a female muralist. And it’s healthy to have different viewpoints, because it rounds out the human condition,” Yasko said while scraping the whitewash, slowly bringing swaths of color to light.

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

The Not-So-Distant Past

VISUAL ARTS

I

n 2002, the Chicago Slavery Era Disclosure Ordinance mandated that corporations wishing to do business with the city of Chicago file a report detailing any involvement with the enslavement of Africans in America. Bob Brown, long-time Chicago activist and Pan-African Roots member, noticed that certain corporations were filing false or misleading reports. After four years of research on hundreds of companies, Brown brought a massive lawsuit to the Circuit Court of Cook County. The court ruled that Brown was not the right party to bring this suit to court—for a case like this to be considered, it would have to be filed by the Corporation Counsel. Dismissed on a technicality, Brown’s research was relegated to a warehouse to collect dust alongside old court records.

Recently rediscovered, Brown’s case is the inspiration for a series of photographic compositions by Larry Redmond currently on display at UriEichen Gallery in Pilsen. Titled “The Ghosts of Slavery in Corporate Chicago,” Redmond’s work is the first show in “40 Acres and a Mule,” a summer-long series at Uri-Eichen attempting to create a dialogue about the possibility of reparations for slavery in America.

The series was inspired by Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “The Case for Reparations.” The widely-read article published in The Atlantic last June traced the struggles of Clyde Ross and other black Chicagoans to obtain housing and employment in the midst of racist social and political practices. Methodically researched, the piece paints a clear picture of economic exploitation of black people in America. After reading the article, Kathy Steichen, co-founder and board president of Uri-Eichen, decided to use the gallery’s community and space to foster a dialogue about reparations.

At the opening of the first show in Uri-Eichen’s “40 Acres and a Mule” series, the small gallery was filled to capacity. Larry Redmond spoke at the reception, along with Kamm Howard.

Howard, co-chair of the Chicago chapter of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA), spearheaded the research and compilation of the excerpts from Bob

Considering reparations at Uri-Eichen Gallery

BY LEWIS PAGE

courtesy of the artist

Brown’s case. When Steichen contacted Redmond, a fellow Uri-Eichen board member, about her vision for the series, Redmond reached out to Howard.

“Brother Larry contacted me a couple months ago and told me that the art gallery wanted to do something around enslavement—something about reparations—and asked me what do I think,” Howard explained, introducing

the story behind Redmond’s artwork to the crowded gallery. “So I said, well, right now we’re working on a mobilization around corporations here in Chicago and he said, well, that’d be a great place to start.”

“We had to spend hours and hours and hours sifting through the lawsuit— speed-reading, et cetera—trying to get what we did. And that’s what you have behind me.” Howard gestured towards Redmond’s photographs, below which excerpts from Brown’s research detailed the various corporations’ complicity in slavery.

“Just look at these corporations, just these key corporations that are represented here and the amount of capital that they produced and still produce today—all of these corporations are million dollar corporations,” Howard said. “All that initial capital was built on stolen labor—built on crime.”

Redmond’s artwork emphasizes the inseparable nature of the history of slavery and the structure of the modern American economy—of black bodies and corporate capital. The digital collages combine images of physical locations associated with the accused corporations with pictures of the artist’s naked body. Redmond’s contorted and exposed body, mostly obscured in darkness, becomes a part of the towering headquarters of the Tribune or the Bank of America. The various overlaid parts—images of different angles of the buildings and different poses of the artist’s body—create a cacophonous but carefully constructed whole.

“It was a concept I’d been toying with for a while,” he continued, referring to the distinctive digital collage style. “But I hadn’t really found my voice within it, if you know what I’m saying.

But I was looking to combine these pictures with naked black bodies and it just seemed right to see right through them and see the corporations—like you’re seeing the corporation through the slave. Everything’s obscured, you can’t quite see what you want to see.”

“It’s either really pretentious or really deep, depending on how you look at it,” joked Luanne Redmond, Larry’s wife.

“Really deep. Definitely really

deep.” Larry laughed and nodded. He is modest about his work, despite the gravitas of its mission. The compositions aim to use images of the present to reframe the history of slavery as a foundational facet of the structure of the American economy, rather than some moral transgression that is best forgotten. As patrons milled about the gallery, Redmond joked with a group about the way slavery is frequently discussed.

“Before 1865, mistakes were made!

Let’s let bygones be bygones. It was a typo!” Redmond riffed, mocking a common attitude towards the history of emancipation and recovery.

“We see Africans here in America are really experiencing a cultural breakdown,” Howard added. “We consider that cultural breakdown as a consequence of centuries and centuries of injury, while those who benefited from these crimes are becoming more and more prosperous. And there’s something wrong with that. There’s something really wrong with that.”

N’COBRA proposes that there is a solution to this heinous wrong. They propose that money from corporate and governmental organizations that profited from slavery could be funneled into programs, policies, and projects for the uplift of the ancestors of enslaved Americans.

After the presentations by Howard and Redmond, the audience milled about and made conversation. Ruth Needleman, another board member of Uri-Eichen, spoke with Redmond about the photography she will be presenting as part of the show’s next installment.

As the crowd at the opening reception dwindled, Steichen would occasionally step outside and shout invitations at the passing pedestrians on their way home from Second Friday shows at the other art galleries on Halsted.

Needleman sat down on a bench with Redmond.

“It’s not a nice world out there,” said Needleman.

Redmond shook his head and smiled. “No, it is not. But you do what you can.”

JUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

Black Age of Comics founder Turtel Onli talks past, present, and future

BY ALEX HARRELL

“D

courtesy of turtel onli

Father of the Black Age

o black people read?” It’s 1981 and Turtel Onli is biting his tongue in a New York City office. “When black people read science fiction, do they understand it?” Onli is pitching a revolutionary idea for the industry, but the vice president of a big-name comic book company is confused: What purpose do African Americans have in comic books? No one could possibly want to read about a black Superman.

So Onli leaves, empty-handed and determined. But he didn’t want just a job. He wanted an entire genre. So he didn’t get mad. He got busy.

As Peter Tosh once sang, “We’re sick and tired of your -ism and schism game.” Onli has dedicated his life to preventing “-ism schisms” from defining who he is.

His projects have included coining the term “Rhythmism” to define his stylizations; founding the Black Arts Guild; teaching art classes in Chicago Public Schools; establishing art therapy programs at mental health centers; working as a major-market illustrator for magazines such as Playboy and Ebony; and teaching at Harold Washington College. It’s hard to imagine a

I

grew up in Hyde Park before the Civil Rights Act. My grandfather, who is black, owned seven buildings, including a huge building in Hyde Park. There was an orphanage nearby that had white students in it. And Donny and Tommy were my friends. When we were about nine, they explained to me they had potato soup for Thanksgiving. I sneak them food. There was a wall around the orphanage, we used to jump up and down to play and talk to each other. That’s how we played! A lot of my playmates as a little boy were

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

New York executive disputing the passion pouring out of this man’s mind because of the color of his skin.

With the publication of his first comic, NOG: The Protector of the Pyramides, which focused on his character Nubian of Greatness, Onli pioneered the innovative Black Age of Comic Books. He describes the genre as exploring “material that comes from a black African independent or urban experience.” In 1993, Onli also created the first Black Age of Comics convention, which took place at the South Side Community Art Center. The back page of his comic Malcom-10 reads, “In this time of drift, where lack of integrity, rudeness, discourtesy, education ‘is a white thang,’ and ‘ kicking back with a 40,’ are the definitions of Blackness, in this time where Super rude is cool, we are in dire need of black super heroes, to inspire and guide our youth.”

The Weekly sat down with Onli in his Bridgeport studio to discuss how he became a self-identified black-hippie, what’s wrong with the comic book industry, and how he launched the Black Age. An edited and condensed version of this conversation follows.

black, white, African, Japanese, Polish immigrants, Jewish immigrants.

Because of what I grew up with as a kid, let’s just say my peers, I was a little different than them. I got a job working downtown in the Prudential building.

In 1968, when Martin Luther King got murdered, the city’s on lockdown because there’s riots. We couldn’t go home because the city was under martial law.

I’m up there seeing what they’re not televising. People getting murdered. People getting their ass whooped. Police beating the hell out of people. I’m sixteen.

So I had a little bit of a convergence. I decide America’s falling apart and it’s all going to dissipate into a chaotic revolution. I think in some kind of way being an artist can help that not happen.

Magical thinking. Art to the rescue. So I want to start an artist’s guild.

I form an artist’s guild coming out of high school. The idea of the guild was to, one, help talented visual artists to make the transition from art student to creative professional. And internally, we were going to change the pickaninny into a positive icon, like the leprechaun.

COMICS If the leprechaun could be drunk and claim he has a pot of gold and everybody think it’s cute and wonderful, why can’t the pickaninny chill out and smoke a joint and eat some watermelon and that be cool too, right?

My way of responding to a problem or an opposition is not to get mad but to get busy. I was at the Louvre, and I saw this exhibit. They had engravings from Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign and they had a garrison set up, and the sand of the Sphinx was up to its neck. So the guns were up, and they were blasting the face. Napoleon was offended that anyone could admit that black Africans had a civilization of that level at any time in history. So he, art historians, archaeologists, they don’t show you the black folks. We don’t want to tell THE story.

And I’m sitting there in the Louvre and I’m like, mkay. So that’s when Nubian of Greatness was created.

The power of comic books is that it forces you to digest words and pictures.

It is the process of pictures and words that has made us human. That has given us neurologically a big brain. The more art you did, the bigger your brain got.

And the more your audience checked out your art, the bigger their brain got.

So I looked at the comic book industry and I ran into things. Remember I said I don’t just get mad, I get busy? So I got real busy. I’m like, I’m gonna launch a genre.

I launched a movement. I gave it its name, and they had me come out to Temple University and gave me a lifetime achievement award. On the award, it said Father of the Black Age of Comics, which I’m still getting used to saying in a sentence. It’s one of those humbling honors that is taking a while to digest.

So a lot of things happen and I publish my first book, NOG: The Protector of the Pyramides. I wanted my copyright; I want to negotiate this sucker.

What you’re missing is that back then, I was hard-core vegan. I used to wear sandals in the winter. I used to not use hot water unless I had an injury. I didn’t date meat-eaters—even if they were cute. I used to coat myself with olive oil mixed with special coconut oil resin. That ain’t really what they were expecting on the other side of the desk, least of all packaged as this.

We’ve come a long way. When we can’t say that, we miss everything. But there it goes. It’s so funny because when I conceived Black Age, one part of it was simple language: if you come from

a black background that puts you in the Black Age. I couldn’t believe the pushback. In black circles. In black pan-African circles. In white circles. In Jewish circles. I was like, mkay, this is going to be a long-ass whooping, but I’m in it to take it.

It was new, and they could not conceive of it. No one had put those two words together. I had people from all those points of view tell me those words don’t go together. Because there is something empowering when you call it a Black Age. And how dare you, who gives you the right to call it that? I’m not going to trademark it. You can’t trademark a movement. So I’m just going to throw it out there. I’m just gonna throw it out there, because it’s not a movement if I own it. It’s a movement if you can participate and say, well, I want to do this with it. Well, honey, go for it, and let’s see what you do. That’s a movement.

I could tell the success of the Black Age of Comics, because the industry has responded with hiring more black people, more women, more Asians, with diversifying this product line. [But they’re far behind.] They’re very archaic, very unenlightened. And people haven’t challenged it, so I’ve been taking a hit.

We’ve been growing. It’s been slow. It’s been hard. It’s not like food. Say you go down the street and you see a sign that says “Chinese food,” you don’t turn to your friend and say, “Oh we’re not from China, they must not want our business.” You don’t say, “Maybe they only want Chinese people there.” You say to each other, “Let’s check it out.” But when we call something black, because your mind is messed up, the first thing you say, you think it must only be for black people and they don’t want us there. Who did that to you? Because we didn’t. When we say black, we giving you an idea of what it is. So you can check it out. And not in intolerance, but in appreciation. So we don’t get this “do black people read?”

If I’m gonna take on a fight, let me take on a fight to grow fresh instead of rehabbing stale. I know what you’re doing. But more importantly, I know what I’m doing. And it’s changes like this that I let flow through me, and I keep pushing that ball uphill. Because people don’t like a pioneer. If we have any tradition in this country, it’s called growth and change. We’ve come a long way. When we can’t say that, we miss everything.

We miss everything. But there it goes.

JUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

MUSIC

A City of DJs

T

he sole physical structure of “Windy City Breakdown” stood in the center of the room—a large wooden frame with glass in the center, displaying rows of album covers like a picture frame holding an old family portrait. The personal record collection of Ayana Contreras, artist-in-residence at the Arts Incubator, is exactly that: a family portrait of Chicago’s musical influencers that stands as a lasting representation of the city’s narrative.

The exhibit closed just a few days ago, but its most obviously displayed works were the case of records and large provocative posters. The rest of the artifacts were strategically placed in white cases lining the walls, displaying photographs, 45 rpm records, and documents from Chicago’s musical past.

At her talk on May 19, Contreras explained, “When people ask what I do, I say I collect old stuff to hopefully create new stuff.” Contreras has spent her entire life surrounded and fascinated by what we now call “old stuff.” From rebelliously sifting through her grandmother’s record collection to building her own collection from the inventory of Imports, the record store her mother worked in, Contreras matched the beat of her drum to the sounds of contemporary and past jazz, blues, and choruses.

As she grew older, she began forming her own record collection, often finding her grandmother’s favorites in local shops. She became invested in col-

COURTESY OF THE ARTS INCUBATOR

“Windy City Breakdown” at the Arts Incubator

BY KANISHA WILLIAMS

lecting collections when she began uncovering the collections of strangers; her first bout of secondhand archiving came through discovering numerous records in different shops marked with the initials “S.B.” In the process, she realized that most of the music she was drawn to hailed from Chicago and was from a certain time period—the sixties and seventies, when Black Power in Chicago was alive and well.

“When you find these things, what I’m thinking about is the city of Chicago and our cultural heritage,” Contreras said. “It’s easy to live in my community and think that we don’t have a lot of culture.” While music was at the heart of the exhibition, the display of the culture that the music preserves was its real aim. The large posters hanging from the walls were actually enlarged versions of advertisements displayed during the first Black Expo in 1971, a public fair of black culture aimed at benefiting black businesses and raising awareness about black issues. Each display acted as a chapter in the narrative of the South Side and the city as a whole, holding

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

letters or issues of Jet and Hue from the seventies. It’s an immersion in the South Side as it stood in earlier times, and it draws out the way the climate of the city manifested itself as an inherent characteristic of Chicago music.

The immersive effect of the exhibition stems from Contreras’s deep involvement in current South Side and Chicago music as a DJ on Vocalo, a sister station of WBEZ. As part of her program, Contreras conducts interviews with musicians of the past, and brings them to the ears of listeners in the present. Segments of her interviews are included in her exhibition—a pair of wireless headphones rested on a post to the right of the frame of records. From the music of Syl Johnson to memories of an earlier, more prosperous South Side, the excerpts add another layer to the exhibition: an exposition of the effect that the everyday lives and situations of not only the artists, but also the neighborhoods, had on the culture back then.

Though appreciative of the past, “Windy City Breakdown” is not meant to be nostalgic. Through these archives and interviews, Contreras attempts to use the past to push forward. “There was some serious progress going on, and I feel that this progress has been circumvented,” she said. Even the color of the walls reflects this sentiment—Contreras selected vibrant, but slightly subdued hues because she wanted the walls to “make it feel like there’s an energy.”

She hopes that these works can use

that energy to mobilize today’s youth.

“Working with kids and playing them these records...” Contreras stopped and cleared her throat. “A lot of them don’t have a lot of hope.”

Later in the talk, she stopped, as she had done many times, to play the audience a song: “Motherless Child” as performed by the Operation Breadbasket Orchestra and Choir and Ben Branch. She stopped the track, stating that she and many others in the community at times related to “feeling like a motherless child, where you don’t belong where you are, and you try to create this narrative where black is beautiful and anything is possible…I feel like Chicago is still that place for a lot of people.”

Contreras’s remark explained why the exhibition was at heart a celebration of black advancement through the arts.

Though at times it can be hard to register the stories and events represented by the materials in “Windy City Breakdown” without deep familiarity with the particular subject, the overarching aim of the exhibition is palpable—presenting the cultural influence of the time, understanding it as a mobile force, and restoring that to the present to better the futures of black lives.

“I mean, look at Black Twitter, right?” Contreras added. “I think we’re all still trying to find this place where we feel like we all belong.”

JUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

No Longer Art, But No Longer Shelved The Salvage Art Institute brings damaged artwork back into galleries and museums

BY SAMMIE SPECTOR

J

eff Koons’s Balloon Dog lays shattered in pieces next to a packing sign that matter-of-factly states: “broken.” Its shiny red pieces are now amorphous, unrecognizable as a dog, or even a balloon, for that matter. Similarly, it’s tough not to stare at the gaping rip in Alexandre Dubuisson’s La Moisson, but more difficult to separate the curiosity of the accident from its cost to the original piece. Even more difficult is separating the discussion of artwork, and what its loss means, from this denounced limbo, a second life of sorts, that some pieces inhabit.

“Salvage art” is the art industry and insurance company’s official term for artwork that is removed from circulation after incurring accidental damages, upon which conservators decide recovery efforts are not worth its total market value. Pieces are paid indemnification, deemed devoid of any value, and banished to perpetual storage.

Some believe this is the only just way to say goodbye to a broken piece, free of constant re-evaluation and monetary arguments; yet for the most part, these pieces are not exactly shattered—torn and chipped, maybe—but primarily intact. Nevertheless, no matter their for-

mer value and perhaps still-intact beauty, these pieces are shelved, literally.

Once an artwork is deemed a “total loss,” the Salvage Art Institute (SAI) steps in. SAI considers this formal declaration of worthlessness the turning point for the artwork, transforming it into “No Longer Art.” SAI doesn’t attempt to sensationalize the wear and tear or place added value on the punctured and worn works—rather, it tries to objectively scrutinize its inventory, separating its former value from its status, or lack thereof, as artwork. Elka Krajewska founded SAI in 2012 to save and support “total loss” art, placing it into a circulation of its own. This concept, and the ensuing conversation, is increasingly relevant, as the art world has lately been inundated with questions about whitewashed graffiti, conservation slipups, and astronomical prices for classics and contemporaries alike. SAI will not be a permanent space, but rather a touring exhibition that allows for even more exposure: a longer afterlife enjoyed than the pieces’ first lives, cut or ripped short.

On first glimpse in the gallery space in the Neubauer Collegium Institute for Culture and Society, on

18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

sammie spector

the University of Chicago’s campus, it seems as if the exhibition has not been set up yet and is in the process of being inventoried and mounted. However, this warehouse-esque display is the setup of the pieces, caught in the bittersweet balance between almost mounted and almost thrown out.

The distance between the art and

descriptions, titles, and documents such as official insurance documents and email exchanges between artists and galleries creates a living dynamic across the desperately small space. In a way, it’s similar to doing inventory of the quiet warehouse; the pieces feel distant due to their price and fame, yet familiar and almost homey, as pieces

VISUAL ARTS seem strewn and pushed together to make way for the little foot room necessary for the space to be enterable.

This is the first art exhibition at the relatively new Neubauer Collegium, and one curator Jacob Proctor felt was fitting for an inaugural project. Proctor explains that they came across the SAI through another ongoing conceptual project on campus, “Material Matters.”

Both engage with definitions of space, temporality, and materiality, posing questions that may never have straightforward answers, but which can still lead to rewarding conversations. “From tours with first grade Lab students to conversations with neighborhood residents, we’ve had a good response,” Proctor says. On what people see in the gallery, whether it be trash or art, he says the response differs. “It varies from piece to piece and visitor to visitor.

A lot get into forensic play, figuring out how the damage occurs, or even where it is on the piece. Some are of course obvious to spot, and others much more

statements, relating to not only the worth but also the ownership and sentimentality of a piece. Number eight states: “SAI eschews the aesthetics and sensationalism of damage. Rather, it is devoted to examining the structural implications of total loss across art’s conceptual, material, legal, actuarial and financial identities.” Viewers in the gallery space are confronted with damage uncomfortable to the eye of art-lovers yet, for some, irrelevant to the piece itself.

Number seven not only suggests a way of defining art that has been damaged beyond repair, but also makes its readers question the fundamental basis of the entire project: what is art to begin with? How are we to define it, and when does it stop being art? Number seven says, “SAI conceives the declaration that an object is No Longer Art as the symmetrical inversion of the subjective declaration that any object may be art. The signature of the adjuster meets and cancels the signature of the

This warehouse-esque display is the setup of the pieces, caught in the bittersweet balance between almost mounted and almost thrown out. difficult to figure out.”

This moment of finding the minutest impairment—in one piece, a hardly noticeable water stain—is when the real discussion begins. How can an insurance company designate a work a total loss when the artist has designated his object a work of art? Proctor says this discrepancy is the “anti readymade” version of an object, where the artist and insurance claim lawyer have the same power to make or diminish art.

The walls of the space are barren, listing a quick definition and mission statement and nine no-nonsense “policies.” Policy numbers six, seven, and eight are the most thought-provoking

artist.”

Perhaps most importantly, SAI’s sixth policy states, “SAI approaches the No Longer Art inventory through a non-hierarchical system and aims at democratic principles. Each item of SAI inventory can potentially deliver equally valid revelations.”

Above all else, SAI forces its viewers to actively develop questions and opinions on the definition of art and its implications. Their gallery asks viewers to embody the same qualities in the form of open-minded thoughtfulness in order to truly take away something from the walk through works of art that are busted up and beat down, yet still intrinsically beautiful.

JUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

“I’m Still Mr. YOUmedia” Digital studios at Chicago Public Libraries encourage young artists to create

BY OLIVIA MYSZKOWSKI

I

t’s a typical afternoon at Harold Washington Library Center’s YOUmedia studio, and throngs of high school-aged teens are playing video games, using computers to work on homework, drawing, or sitting around and talking. A group of boys erupt into laughter as one wins the video game.

“Man, you were so close!” one exclaims.

Not much about the relaxed environment in this 5,500-square-foot, twenty-first century teen-learning space would suggest it, but this and other YOUmedia studios around the city have become breeding grounds for Chicago’s freshest artistic talent.

The list of Chicago-born artists affiliated with YOUmedia is impressive: Chatham’s Chance the Rapper recorded his first mixtape, #10Day, at Harold Washington’s YOUmedia studio, and in February, the artist was on-hand for the opening of YOUmedia’s newest site at Woodson Regional Library in Washington Heights. Vic Mensa and Saba used the studio’s recording equipment to develop their earlier work; Bronzeville rapper Noname Gypsy participated in open mic poetry slams at Harold Washington’s YOUmedia studio before going on to take third place at the Louder Than a Bomb poetry slam and releasing her own tunes. In 2013, Noname featured on a track on Chance’s best-selling mixtape, Acid Rap—the two met through YOUmedia programming in 2011. Effectively, YOUmedia is the origin story of some of the best music to come out of Chicago.

“A lot of my friends did YOUmedia. We’d meet at the library and use it to record live,” says South Side rapper and 2008ighties rap crew leader Calez.

“Chance the Rapper, Alex Wiley, lots of SAVEMONEY [rap crew] dudes.

Everyone was at these poetry slams expressing themselves and using [the studios] as a platform to network with other high schoolers who wanted to be within the scene.”

Access to production equipment through the YOUmedia studio, says Calez, has transformed the public library into a convening point for Chicago’s community of young artists. “If you want to get the message out about your show, you use the library. That’s why Chance was able to get such an early fan base.” According to him, by putting up fliers and talking their shows up to fellow YOUmedia program participants, Chance and other local artists have been able to generate a grassroots following among their peers.

Since 2009, the space has been attracting students to socialize, study, use digital media equipment, and create art. Developed through a partnership between the Chicago Public Library, the Digital Youth Network, and a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, YOUmedia’s founders designed the studio to become a place for Chicago’s teens to learn while hanging out. The program has expanded from the original location at Harold Washington to include eleven sites targeted at middle school and high school students around the city.

With access to music production and recording equipment, computers, 3D printers, games, and arts supplies, there is ample room for exploration and production at YOUmedia studios.

Writing, design, and other skills workshops give students the chance to learn how to use the digital media tools in the studio, while unstructured time allows them to hang out, get to know each other, and in some cases, collaborate. Poetry slams and other evening events give participants the opportunity to show off their work in front of an audience for the first time and get feedback.

These studios aren’t only used to make music. Sarah Alexander, the YOUmedia librarian at Woodson Regional Library on 95th and Halsted, says, “Our recording workshops are the most popular thing, but in general [the studio] is a real creative outlet. It’s a lot of equipment that these students

20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

wouldn’t have access to anywhere else,” she says. “Some of the kids are artists.

Several of them are working on their own graphic novels.”

“The twenty-first century digital learning skills they’re learning in these spaces are connected to their lives and to their futures,” says Yvette Garcia, the YOUmedia manager at Harold Washington. We’re giving them a higher level of skill and appreciation, and it’s the same thing with photography, design, fashion. Really, whatever they’re interested in.”

Jeff Lassahn, a local Chicago artist, has been working as a YOUmedia mentor and staff member at Harold Washington Library Center for three years. Lassahn teaches workshops focused on photography and fine arts, and works one-on-one with students to develop their creative skillsets. “It’s a combination of teaching the hard skills, as well as the artistic principles behind them,” he says of the workshops. “We get positive feedback, and very tangible results where we see students getting internships and jobs based on skills that they wouldn’t have had without YOUmedia.”

It isn’t hard for kids to get involved with YOUmedia—after filling out an intake form with basic information like their name, address, and phone number, they’re able to hang out in the space, use digital media tools, and check out equipment like books and mic stands. While studio staff report that the program does use social media, some neighborhood engagement, and advertisements on the CTA as outreach tactics, most students show up because they heard about the program through their friends. Daily attendance varies at each of the eleven sites: Garcia reports between forty to fifty teen attendees at Harold Washington Library Center on an average weekday, while Bravo sees about twenty regulars at Back of the Yards.

Though the YOUmedia program strives to make program entry as easy as

possible, according to Lassahn, transportation can serve as a barrier to students who don’t live in close proximity to a YOUmedia site.

“There are areas of the city where students have a difficult time getting around, where they don’t have access to have reduced fare bus passes during the summer,” he says. With only eleven of eighty CPL sites hosting YOUmedia studios, a significant number of teens served by public library system lack easy access, and with large numbers of students coming in on a daily basis to the Harold Washington branch, Lassahn also cites limited YOUmedia hours as a challenge to student access—the Loop’s branch of the studio is only open until eight.

Still, YOUmedia’s influence and role in teenagers’ creative growth remains clear. A 2013 report from the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research on the impact of the studios confirms Alexander and Garcia’s positive evaluations of the program. Researchers, who spent time studying students at Harold Washington, found that YOUmedia participants viewed the studio as a safe space to explore their creative interests, and where they felt a strong sense of community and support.

As YOUmedia alumni like Chance, Noname, and others stay producing best-selling albums and garner national attention, they continue to give back to the program that gave them their start. Earlier this year, Chance the Rapper and poet Malcolm London organized an open mic event to honor YOUmedia coordinator and their mentor Mike Hawkins, who passed away in December. The objective was to give aspiring artists a chance to take the stage, an opportunity that Calez says is supported by YOUmedia resources, staff, and mentors in Chicago Public Libraries.

“They’re very resourceful,” he says.

“There’s so much you can find at the library.”

MUSIC

Surf ’s Out A peek inside the new mixtape

by Chance and friends

L

BY JAKE BITTLE

ast Thursday the long-teased collaborative album fronted by Chance the Rapper, Chance’s amigo Donnie Trumpet, and their band The Social Experiment was surprise-released on iTunes. Surf, which costs $0.00 and has been described by Andrew Barber of Fake Shore Drive as “vitamin D for the soul,” had been teased by Chance and Donnie for the better part of a year before its out-of-the-blue release. It’s already received an outpouring of positive feedback from Pitchfork, Consequence of Sound, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and everyone else. We at the Weekly would be remiss not to offer a shout-out to this Internet-breaking tape from Chatham’s own, which also features numerous other local super (and some not so super, but still) stars. But if, as Barber says, the music is “supposed to speak for itself,” and if, as Zappa said, “writing about music is like dancing about architecture,” it’s probably best to back off the analysis and just state the facts. Consider this less a review than our appreciation, in print, of what you should just go ahead and listen to as soon as you have time, or probably much sooner.

• Number of songs on Surf: 16 • Shortest song: “Caretaker,” 1:35 • Longest song: “Miracle,” 4:10 • Coincidentally (arguably) the two most beautiful songs: “Caretaker” and “Miracle” • Number of times I have heard Chance the Rapper’s verse on “Miracle”: 8 • Number of times I have teared up while hearing Chance the Rapper’s verse on “Miracle”: 7 • Approx. number of songs on which Chance the Rapper is heard: ~10 • Number of songs on which Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment are heard: 16 • A social experiment: Hype your less-famous friend’s album which you are featured on and watch the entire world assume it’s your own • Approx. number of featured artists: 20 or so • Guest verse most likely to make a kinda-famous person really famous: Noname Gypsy on “Warm Enough” • Guest verse least likely to revive a career that really pretty much is over: Busta Rhymes on “Slip Slide” • Guest verse least likely to make a kinda-famous person really famous though he should be: Jesse Boykins III, “Go” • Best bass line on Surf: “Go” • Guest verse most likely to give an utterly unknown person some kind of career: KYLE on “Wanna Be Cool” • Most uplifting song on Surf: “Just Wait” • Grandma of the year: Chance the

Rapper’s grandma, “Sunday Candy” • Why she’s the Grandma of the year: She’s “pan-fried, sun-dried, South Side, and beat the Devil by a landslide” • Instrumental song released as one of only two singles from Surf: “Nothing Came to Me” • Why this song was released as a single: Maybe a statement about importance of jazz horns • Likelihood of whether Donnie Trumpet cares about what I or you think about jazz horns: Small • Only half of the album that sounds anything like it was made by Chance the Rapper: first half • Best Erykah Badu reference to Toni Morrison’s Beloved of the year: “Rememory” • Approximate number of gospel choirs on Surf: 4 • Best gospel choir: the end of “Sunday Candy” • Outro of the year: Chance the Rapper, “Windows” • Close runner-up: “Just Wait” • Maybe, shockingly, one of the three best verses on Surf: J. Cole, “Warm Enough” • Best Surf-listening weather: Sunny • Weather at the time of writing this: Gloomy • How Surf sounds in gloomy weather: Great • What you probably shouldn’t do with Surf: Think about it too much • What you probably should do with Surf: Love it

javier suarez

&

raziel puma

WHO’S WHO A cheat sheet on some local players in Surf

BY MAHA AHMED B.J. The Chicago Kid, featured on “Slip Slide” and “Windows”: He’s been in the game for more than a decade now, having collaborated with artists like Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, and Stevie Wonder. Following the release of his new M.A.F.E Project, his features on Tracks 2 and 6 are great timing.

Noname Gypsy, featured on “Warm Enough”: This Bronzeville badass has melted all of our hearts before with her smooth Soundcloud singles like “Paradise,” and Mick Jenkins collab “Samaritan.” Involved in the Chicago scene for five years, catch her quick-witted verse on Track 3.

Jeremih, featured on “Wannabe Cool”: By way of Morgan Park, this pretty famous rabble-rouser has, among other things, been commissioned by former Mayor Daley to run a back-in-school campaign, and has collaborated with mainstreamers like Flo Rida and J. Cole. Give his verse a listen on Track 5 with fellow Chicagoan youngster KYLE. King Louie, featured on “Familiar”: Having grown up all around the South Side, going to school in Hyde Park, South Shore, and Little Village, King Louie’s drill sound started with him handing out mixtapes at bus stops—he has since gained attention from the likes of South Shore’s Kanye West.

Saba, featured on “SmthnthtIwnt”:

This Austin native produces the same brand of posi-rap as Chance, Vic Mensa, and Noname. The self-proclaimed nerd’s PIVOT crew is all about taking things “one step at a time,” though his impressively quippy world-play on Track 10 might indicate otherwise.

Jesse Boykins III, featured on “Go”: Unlike most of the other Chicagoans featured on Surf, Boykins specializes in the world of soul and R&B by way of his elementary school choir. Influenced by the likes of Stevie Wonder and Bob Marley, he adds a boisterous, soulful dimension to the project.

Jamila Woods, featured on “Sunday Candy”: Featured on arguably the smoothest song on Surf, she is a self-proclaimed poet and vocalist before anything else. Organizer of Louder Than A Bomb, where many others on this list found preliminary success, her creative endeavors are centered around blackness, womanhood, and this beautiful city itself.

Donnie Trumpet: His real name is Nico Segal. He used to be the bandleader of Vic Mensa’s experimental band Kids These Days. Since then he’s moved on to mixtapes of his own while still retaining close ties to Chance and company, whom he met at Jones High School. Made brass sections cool again.

Chance the Rapper: If you have to ask…

JUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

Restoring the South Side’s Movie Houses

BY ROBERT SORRELL

W

hen it opened in 1927, the Picadilly Theatre on Hyde Park Boulevard could easily seat over 2,000 audience members.

Fifty years after its closing in 1963, restaurateur-moguls Bruce Finkelman and Craig Golden of Empty Bottle, Longman & Eagle, and Thalia Hall scavenged the site for architectural fragments to use in their new Hyde Park restaurant, The Promontory.

In an August 2014 interview, Finkelman told me, “By the time that we got in there, there were curtains all over the place; it was beautiful but it was in such a state of disintegration that any time I went to touch anything it would just fall apart.” They did manage to salvage one piece out of the old 2,000-plus seat theatre—an old cabinet with an attached mirror that now sits on the top floor of The Promontory.

According to Cinema Treasures, a website which aggregates data on movie theaters worldwide, there are forty-three theaters currently open in the Chicago area, and twenty-three of those regularly show movies. There are, however, 500 closed theaters, 211 of which have been demolished— many on the South Side—leaving a large number of them in limbo.

The story of attempted efforts to rehabilitate and reuse various buildings has played itself out across Chicago in any number of spaces: slaughterhouses, stockyards, factories, grain elevators. Yet movie palaces seem to be a strange case.

Before the American movie industry moved west and corporatized, Chicago was home to the first major black American filmmaker, Oscar Micheaux, who created over forty films including 1920s Within Our Gates, which originally played at the Pickford Theatre on 35th and S. Michigan. The Pickford, like many theaters in Chicago, was part of a

22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

family chain. The Hammond family, which owned the Pickford, also operated the Vendome at 3145 S. State St., which could seat over 1,000, as well as the Elba Theater and Fountain Theater, both on the South Side.

A few years later, when most film production had moved west, Film Row was established a few miles north of the Pickford along S. Wabash Avenue from 8th to 15th Streets.

Distribution offices for Universal, Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount, and others lined this stretch along with companies that sold concessions, posters, and other miscellaneous cinema necessities such as theater seats.

Today many of these theaters and their seats have gone the way of silent films, slapstick, and double-breasted suits. Sporadic attempts have been made to restore and reopen theaters, though often the years of disuse and the financial burden of restoration outweigh the perks of developing the land for other uses.

While the one-screen, large au-

dience setup seems antiquated against today’s movie multiplexes—where theaters such as Chatham 14 can show not just one but, well, fourteen different movies at one time—what often gets lost to history is the amazing flexibility of the old spaces. They showed not just films, but staged plays, musicals, and concerts. They were not just places where people could go to watch or listen, but to get out of the hot or cold, kill time, or catch the news.

So many of these buildings are already gone—the Vendome where Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller played in the orchestra was demolished in 1949, and the Monogram where Sidney Bechet played with Ethel Waters and Ma Rainey is now an Illinois Institute of Technology parking lot—but the theaters that remain are physical reminders of the history and culture that both Hollywood and developers are so good at effacing.

BUILDINGS

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF JULIE WU From left: 20th Century Theatre, opened in 1913. Renamed Public Theatre in 1931, theatre closed 1952. Currently Christian Tabernacle Baptist Church. 4712 S Prairie Ave. Colony Theatre, opened in 1926. Also a rock venue in the 1970s. Flea market in the 1990s.Currently unoccupied. 3208 W. 59th Street. Piccadilly Theatre, opened in 1927. Theatre closed in 1963.

Auditorium demolished, building leased by the University of Chicago. 1443 E. Hyde Park Boulevard

RAMOVA THEATRE

BY ELEONORA EDREVA

“Y

ou can tell someone’s not from Bridgeport if they stop and stare,” an old woman whispered to her friend as they passed by me, amused at my wonder as I looked up at the remains of the once-magnificent Ramova Theatre. Just south of 35th and Halsted, the abandoned theater stands as a neglected reminder of what movie theaters used to be. Its deteriorating outside is beguiling, hiding the magic it once contained.

When it opened in 1929, it was majestic: holding nearly 1,500 seats and designed in Spanish Revival style, ornate down to the last detail. In its glory days, thousands of patrons each week saw the night sky painted on the theater’s vaulted ceiling. It was opened as a sister theater to Lakeview’s Music Box Theatre, but met a much crueler fate. While the Music Box is still a functional independent theater, Ramova’s declining ticket sales led to its closure in 1986.

Since then, the theater has fallen into an ever-increasing state of deterioration. After being acquired by the city in 2001, its future has been very much up in the air. In 2005, a group of Bridge-

port residents started up a community group—Save the Ramova—to try to preserve the theater.

“Our interest is as homeowners in the neighborhood,” says Rob Warmowski, a leader within the group.

“Our interest has been purely from the perspective of a general renovation of the neighborhood’s main drag (Halsted St.) from its current doldrums.” The group’s petition gathered over 4,000 signatures in a matter of weeks, and stirred up feelings of support from Bridgeport residents both past and present—those who would benefit from a neighborhood theater now, and those who nostalgically remember what the Ramova used to be.

As of now, however, there’s no definite vision for what a re-opened Ramova would look like. The space has substantial potential for furthering the arts in Bridgeport, both because of its size and central location in the neighborhood; there’s been talk of turning it into a community arts space. The problem is that the estimated restoration cost would be over $12 million, far more than anyone has yet been willing to spend. In 2012, the city used TIF funding to “stabilize”

the building, fixing the most pressing damage in order to preserve the possibility of restoration. Bridgeport residents were hopeful that this move would stir interest and create momentum, but so far no developers have stepped forward with a plan.

While Ramova’s future looks faint, residents are staying optimistic. Although in bad shape, the theater is still standing, and no movements towards demolition have been made. Warmowski communicates this hopeful feeling,

Ramova Theatre, opened in 1929.

Hosted the Chicago premiere of Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator.”

Closed in 1985, currently unoccupied. 3518 S. Halsted Street emphasizing how little change would be needed in order to benefit the community: “We believe that even the appearance of a living theater—a restored and lit marquee alone—would jumpstart this process.”

JUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 23

Left, Avalon Theatre, opened 1927. Theatre closed in 1952, reopened as performance arts venue in 1987, renamed New Regal, closed in 2003. Opened in 2007, closed in 2010. 1645 E. 79th Street. Right, an extension of the Avalon Theatre complex. Haven of Rest Missionary Baptist Church. 7925 South Chicago Ave.

NEW REGAL THEATER

BY EMILIANO BURR DI MAURO

O

riginally opened in 1927 as the Avalon Theater, the New Regal Theater on 79th Street stands as a testament to the grandeur of the movie palaces of the 1920s and 30s. Designed by Austrian architect John Eberson in the Moorish style popular at the time, the movie palace was renamed the New Regal in 1987, paying tribute to the original Regal Theater in Bronzeville, which was demolished in 1973 after being partially ravaged by a fire. The 2,250-seat theater, which now stands in a state of gradual decay without consistent maintenance, was a movie theater throughout the late 1970s; it was used as a church for a brief moment before being closed and put up for sale.

But the New Regal has not been completely forgotten. An unlikely buyer—the 30-year-old head of Community Capital Investment Partners, Jerald “J” Gary—has recently acquired the theater. Having grown up near the New Regal, Gary has committed to restoring the property as well as potentially buying up surrounding properties to revitalize the area. Ultimately, he hopes to reopen the theater as a movie palace and reestablish it as a major performing arts center on the South Side.

In March of this year, Gary launched a Kickstarter campaign to fundraise $100,000 to reopen the theater. “Resumed operations at the New Regal will produce local jobs and reg-

24 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

ular programming will contribute to the creation of a more vibrant economy and safer neighborhood,” Gary writes on the campaign page. When contacted, Mr. Gary and Community Capital Investment Partners declined to comment.

While the campaign did not reach its goal, it is certainly unlikely that this marks the end of Gary’s fundraising attempts. Nonetheless, the campaign for $100,000 is just a small portion of the estimated $5 million that would be required to fully restore the theater—all going towards mechanical repairs to the internal technology and to physical repairs of the façade.

Gary is not the first who has at-

tempted to protect the Theater and its history. Previous owners and founders of Soft Sheen Products funneled an astounding $16 million of their own money towards maintaining the building from the late 80s to 2003. In 1992, the building was protected as a Chicago landmark. But such a status did not give the theater the boost many thought it would, which does not come as a surprise in the changing landscape of recreation—massive movie palaces soon fell out of style, and the New Regal failed to attract the numbers and well-known acts that it had once hosted.

JUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 25

A Return to Wonder The Secret Garden at Court Theatre enchants

BY MILES MORGAN

A

mong the incoherent chatter awaiting the start of the show, one voice laughs and proclaims, “Oh, I will cry. It’s a musical about death.” Darkness descends on Court Theatre, and several dancing figures succumb to cholera behind a shroud on the stripped-down stage.

They remain as shades throughout the show, joining the formidable sextet that provides the score and inviting the audience to broaden its notion of mortality, if only for an hour or two.

The story of The Secret Garden is well known to many. When the loss of her parents in colonial India’s cholera outbreak transplants her to the haunted estate of her uncle Archibald Craven, ten-year-old Mary Lennox must navigate the emotional maze that death presents. A spectral collective, including her parents, her caretaker Ayah, and Archibald’s wife Lily,

michael brosilow

haunts the house, relentlessly tormenting its inhabitants and muddling the line between living and dead. Initially reluctant to embrace the chambermaid Martha, the housekeeper Mrs. Medlock, and her elusive uncle, Mary eventually warms to the property after exploring the rambling moor that becomes her backyard. She befriends Dickon, a free-spirited guide through the wilderness of her new life, and unearths the hope necessary to continue in the life laid before her.

The challenge in staging Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman’s musical adaptation of The Secret Garden comes in acknowledging its inherent faults.

Poignant and sweeping score aside, in dramatizing Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 children’s novel, Simon and Norman prioritized thematic elements over storytelling and intellectualized the grieving process. The affec-

26 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

tive plot brings complex adult sorrow to the forefront; the magic of discovery still exists, but quietly, underneath the emotive discussion Norman’s libretto encourages. The stage rendition provides interiority to the novel’s secondary characters and creates a network of plots rather than a linear tale, and somewhere along the way, the charm of childhood adventure is lost. How do artistic director Charles Newell and music director Doug Peck solve this problem? Implant the enchantment elsewhere and in abundance.

Start with a cast that embraces Norman’s adaptation without releasing the attachment to youthful wonder.

Tori Whaples plays Mary with calculated abandon, engaging each action effortlessly and rendering a tortured childhood relatable. Her mature acting, charismatic and delightful, wants for nothing. Rob Lindley, a Court vet whose credits include Carousel and Angels in America, contributes a harrowing performance cognizant of the widower’s fragility. His voice trembles with genuine anguish over the belief that the loss of his wife leaves his love unrequited. The eleven o’clock duet shared with Jennie Sophia’s Lily is a crippling testament to the show’s emotional power. Jeff Parker provides some of the shows playfulness as Dr. Neville Craven, Archibald’s brother.

He adopts the role of pseudo-villain with careful consideration of the line between laughable and humorous and toes it well. Trent Noor does his best with Archibald’s son, the sickly Colin Craven, who is unfortunately restricted here to more of an agent of theme and never allowed to develop into a sympathetic character.

The supporting cast receives equitable stage time and deservedly so. The chorus of ghosts, particularly Alka Nayyar’s Ayah, occupies its numinous roles with attention to its duties as shades. Only when called upon do their voices harmonize in a haunting reverie that plunges the audience in to their ghostly environment. Elizabeth Ledo and Aubrey McGrath lend sincerity to Martha and Dickon, respectively, and warmly lighten each scene they participate in. Flautist Suzanne Gillen steps out of her orchestral role to embody an audacious robin, whom she portrays convincingly and with grace.

Newell embraced Norman’s departure from the source material smartly, employing each design feature in a capacity suitable for giving the show a resounding heartbeat. Six musicians, including music director Doug Peck on piano, comprise a sextet that gives life to Peck’s original orchestrations, which feature Ronnie Malley and his oud and sitar. “Anytime we’re dealing with the past I want to honor those sounds of India,” Peck said in a Q&A with dramaturg Megan E. Geigner. “Those are the ghosts she’s [Mary] carried with her to Yorkshire.” His attention to India’s distinct musical culture creates an appropriate sense of the Other in the Yorkshire that’s presented. Under Peck, the score becomes synonymous with memories alive and the presence of our dead in the everyday, a notion Norman would surely appreciate. John Culbert’s simplistic staging allows us to attend to Peck’s decisions and the emotive libretto, while Marcus Doshi’s light design casts shadows that permeate the set, further blending the living and dead. The accented eeriness Joshua Horvath provides in echoes, among other effects, immerses the theater in their supernatural world.

The Secret Garden finds its magic in the cohesion of these elements and in Newell’s trustworthy hands. Newell says the show is “based on a beloved book that at its heart suggests that the human spirit when broken can be healed, even in the midst of devastating pain and loss.” Norman’s reworking is confrontational in content and demands the audience engage death seriously and understand rebirth and redemption. Newell, however, also returns attention to The Secret Garden’s heart. What Norman left behind in terms of telling Mary’s evolution, Newell restores in directing our investment toward her journey through naïve discovery. She begins the show isolated and ignored by all, but when Mary turns the key to the garden, she invites us to believe in the unshakable resolve of living things. Her invitation is impossible to refuse.

The Way Forward

STAGE & SCREEN

A retrospective on Urban Renewal at Black Cinema House

BY EMELINE POSNER

T

he camera pans out over blocks of demolition and disarray, dizzying the viewer with a slow, swiveling descent from the top of a construction site. It’s 1953 in Chicago and “urban renewal” has only just become a national buzzword. It’s the proposed solution to the tension between Chicago’s nineteenth-century city plans and the twentieth-century reality of decrepit city-center tenements and white flight to the suburbs, a solution that entailed large-scale redevelopments of entire areas of the city, replacing tenements with public housing high-rises, relocating residents and businesses. Though championed early on, urban renewal was later considered by many to be an irresponsible and discriminatory program— James Baldwin famously referred to it as “Negro Removal.” When the camera completes its descent from the top of one such site of redevelopment, the narrator asks in a slick transatlantic accent, “The basic question is, how did our cities get this way?”

In the next thirty minutes of carefully curated voiceovers and vignettes of urban life, the documentary, The Living City, endeavors to answer that question––Why the urban blight?

Why Chicago?––and to prove that urban renewal is the way forward.

The Living City (1953) was the first of three short films to play at the Black Cinema House earlier this month as part of the South Side Projections screening “Urban Renewal and its Aftermath.” Following The Living City were Inner City Dweller: Housing (1973) and Voices of Cabrini (1999), two films that look at urban renewal more critically, albeit with the advantage of hindsight. The three films, when played in chronological order, trace the reasoning behind and reaction to American urban renewal

marco ferrari

from its inception until today.

In The Living City, the perspectives of the city official and the businessman are featured at the expense of the citizens most affected by urban renewal. The viewer accompanies the factory owner on his hour-long commute by convertible. Later, city officials discuss the benefits of repurposing tenements for factory and office space.

The film comes off as naïve, due in part to how it plays up the inevitability and impersonality of historical phenomena. A resident of Pittsburgh, looking into the camera with a confused frown on her face, complains that the smoke and soot of the industrial revolution were the first causes of urban blight; the air quality was restored, she says, but now the railroad yards and slums are “blighting the city.”

Judy Hoffman, professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago, introduced the films and reminded the audience that the first documentary’s propagandistic

character “provides important context for the ideas that brought about urban renewal.”

Towards the end, The Living City becomes almost farcical. The camera zeroes in on a wrecking ball, and with each strike to the building the narrator announces, “Here is one for all the couples living in rotten kitchenettes.

And here is one for more open spaces and parks.”

Inner City Dweller: Housing takes a more nuanced approach to the effects of displacement, centering on the life of one man whose new house costs more to maintain than he can afford.

The film takes jabs at the city officials behind the new policies––filmed always from the shoulder down, they spend the entirety of the film grappling with the economics of urban renewal. “This is all very confusing,” one faceless official eventually cedes to his colleague.

Only in the last documentary, Voices of Cabrini, does the perspective of those most impacted by urban renewal policy fully come through.

Cabrini-Green was just as much a part of the Chicago urban renewal program as was demolition and the displacement of inner-city residents. It was constructed in 1942 as a mixed-income housing project, but plans for its destruction were announced in 1996, after decades of neglect from the Chicago Housing Authority and high crime rates. It was around that time that director Ronit Bezalel began filming. Bezalel, who spoke after the screening, said she had hoped for her film to serve as a medium for the voices of the soon-to-be former residents of Cabrini-Green. And indeed, it was the voices of residents that came through, both at full volume, as when she films them protesting against the Cabrini demolition, and more quietly, when she films inside the Cabrini halls where children are being raised and adults are discussing the future of Cabrini.

It took Bezalel four years to become familiar with the Cabrini community and to film the thirty-minute documentary. It meant unscripted conversations and years of sitting in the Cabrini barbershop where many of those conversations took place, but also overwhelming emotion that doesn’t come through in the scripted The Living City, or even in Inner City Dweller.

By the time Bezalel finished filming, most residents were beginning to move out, but the film lacks any tone of defeat. As father David Tkac explains to his son that they are moving out of Cabrini, his son asks why he is quitting. Tkac replies, “How am I quitting if I want something better for myself and you all? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with looking for something better…I think we deserve some peace of mind.”

JUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 27

STAGE & SCREEN

courtesy of kartemquin

U

All In a Day’s Work

napologetically boasting a narrative contrary to the ageold “American Dream,” Kartemquin Films, a Chicago-based documentary film company, has created a six-part series exploring the difficulties many Americans face in earning a stable and dependable living. <Hard Earned</i> takes a narrative approach to five families from across the country, following them in their professional and personal lives— bringing viewers into their workplaces and their homes and ultimately demonstrating just how much the amount on their paycheck can truly dominate their every moment.

The series, which was created for the Al Jazeera America network documenting almost a year in the lives of the subjects and encompasses every triumph, pitfall, and endeavor. The subjects of the series span diverse demographics: hailing from both small towns and big cities, different educational backgrounds, and with careers spanning from cashiers to high school advisors.

Though they were not chosen for any specific criteria, Maggie Bowman, the producer of the series, told me when we spoke last week that the stories were chosen to represent a wide range of experiences of those living with low-wage jobs in the United States. “One of the things we tried to do, is find people who came from all walks of life, so that viewers would be able to identify with someone—a

Kartemquin Films’ new series follows the stories of low-income Americans

BY EMILIANO BURR DI MAURO

cashier, a service worker, an advisor, a veteran,” Bowman says.

Two of the stories focus on Chicago-based subjects: fifty-year-old Emilia Stancati, a server who struggles to balance her desire for a higher salary and her inability to acquire formal experience; De’Juan “DJ” Jackson and Takita Atkins, a young couple who travel long distances for minimum wage work and maintain daily efforts to transport their children to and from home. I spoke with Ruth Leitman and Maria Finitzo, who directed Emilia’s and DJ and Takita’s stories, respectively. “I’m always interested in telling the stories of characters who have no political agenda attached to their story. I told a story about someone who didn’t think they had a story to tell,” says Leitman, when asked about how she first approached portraying Emilia’s story.

The diversity of the experiences represented by the series not only reflects the even larger variety of people struggling to earn a living, but also demonstrates accessibility for a wide range of potential audience members.

As is the case with any documentary series, there is no telling what kind of knowledge audience members will enter with. “It’s a human story. These

28 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

stories are based in humanity and the complexity of people and their strengths and weaknesses—and getting to know them personally, helps you understand what it may be like to live in their economic reality,” Bowman says.

The economic landscape of the country has vastly changed since the United States was known as a land of opportunity, where anyone could find financial stability. “We all live in an economic status that is different than it was even just twenty years ago— the middle class is almost completely gone,” Bowman says.

But this reality is twofold: the vastly diminishing middle class, Maria Finitzo says, also means a rapidly growing wealth disparity without much opportunity for class mobility.

“America is supposed to be a place of opportunity, yet that opportunity is not there for everyone,” Finitzo says.

A few of the subjects work under larger corporations like Google or Walgreens, and it is clear that their minimum wage, labor-intensive work, only means a smaller labor cost for those companies. “People now work very hard and they can’t get where they want to be. The reward isn’t there.

The people who work in those mid-

dle wage jobs, make millions for the people who own those business and corporations,” she says.

While the series puts these five families’ faces to the economic hardship faced by millions of Americans, it also echoes the idea that perhaps economic policy reform for lower-income families in the United States seems so out of touch in the twenty-first century because these stories are not being told. “People will often speak openly about very personal things in documentaries, but when the topic of money, and the topic of their fiscal situation, comes up, people become very tight lipped,” Leitman says.

While the predicaments shown in the series are all extremely difficult, some seemingly insurmountable in the near future, the resilience of the familiar in the face of hardship is compelling to say the least. Bowman and her colleagues at Kartemquin have already been struck by the effect that the series has had on its viewers, and considering how immensely influential Hard Earned ’s core themes are on our daily lives, it is evident that this effect will be more long lasting in viewers’ experiences. Bowman relayed one instance in which “One viewer told me ‘well I went [to the supermarket] and I went to check out, and when I saw my cashier, I saw them a little bit differently’ and that was kind of a moment for me to see what this series could do.”

JUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 29

30 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

FOOD

From Prison Yard to Table A10 buys locally, and purposefully, through the Cook County Prison

I

am seated at Matthias Merges’s favorite table in A10, a relatively recent addition to Hyde Park. The decor is tasteful and clean, filled with crystalline glass and warm colors. The space is mostly empty, yet buzzing with espresso machines and blenders as the staff preps for the busy Friday lunch and dinner rushes, when the restaurant will be filled with diners largely oblivious to the local origins of their meals—the Cook County Jail.

Merges buys the majority of his vegetables—around seven hundred pounds of produce a week for use as key ingredients, garnishes, and spices—from the Urban Farming Initiative, a program at Cook County Jail that employs inmates in the cultivation of crops. Many restaurants downtown, including the restaurant company behind the West Loop’s Avec and Au Cheval, have begun to utilize the community initiative, but Merges’s restaurants are the largest purchasers of the farm’s goods.

“There’s nothing more local,” says Merges of his restaurant’s vegetables, as he sips on a very green smoothie.

Merges is the owner and executive chef behind A10 and another recently opened Hyde Park restaurant, Yusho.

The pristine quality of his vegetables and produce, and even sometimes fish, is only surprising in light of the fact that they come from a place that is both just a few miles away and, in some respects, an entire world away from those eating amongst suits and wine glasses.

Each class of inmates in the program is comprised of sixty students—thirty males and thirty females—that work two to three days a week, alternating between cultivating in greenhouses in the winter and out in ever-expanding fields during the

BY SAMMIE SPECTOR

harvesting months. The Initiative educates its inmates in horticulture, gardening, beekeeping, and landscaping, as well as problem-solving, teamwork, and patience. Individuals will follow the growing season of one produce project at a time, giving them the ability to watch and interact from seed to product. After twelve weeks of participation and good behavior, inmates

courtesy of matthias merges

complete the program and can receive early release, plus a Master’s Degree in Gardening.

Inmates accepted to the Initiative are minimum-security, nonviolent individuals with short sentences— most for drug-related offenses. Upon completion of the program, its administrators hope, inmates will have learned new skills that could benefit

them in the workplace.

Merges brings his colleagues and staff to Cook County Prison to cook and talk with the program inmates, believing his cooks can benefit from the Initiative as well. Merges visits the facilities himself once a month, and shows the program’s inmates what their completed work can accomplish: homemade, gourmet meals, which his chefs cook for the inmates upon their visit.

Merges has been involved with the program from its beginning. After hearing about the Initiative while still training at Charlie Trotter’s, Merges began working with the program by buying a few crops at a time, as both his ventures and the Initiative were still expanding. After fifteen years of working closely and successfully with the program’s directors, Merges sees the arrangement as a win-win—receiving valuable ingredients and giving back to his community at the same time.

Merges says he’s hired around ten people after their completion of the program. Some, he says, are still working in his restaurants around the city today. “Inmates get jobs, they support families,” he says. “They don’t have to go back into the same cycle.

We can give the opportunity to have a different course. They can choose what they want to do. We’re not saying you have to do it. We’re just saying you can do that or you can come with us and do this.”

“It’s a way to help people in need,” he continues. “I don’t look at it as a business transaction. We have the ability as owners of businesses to help out where we can for people who might not have the same opportunities that we were given.”

JUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 31

VISUAL ARTS

A New Home Down the Block The South Chicago Art Center is moving and becoming skyart

BY COOPER ASPEGREN

T

he walls of the South Chicago Art Center are lined with artwork and boxes full of materials that are labeled in both English and Spanish. A poster on the wall lists several class rules: “No saying ‘shut up’ ”; “No calling people ‘Boy’ or ‘Girl’ ”; “Respect yourself, your peers, your teachers, and the Art Center!”

On Wednesday morning, Development Manager Billy McGuiness and Operations Manager Laura Trejo are hard at work preparing the room for that afternoon’s class, in which students from across the street at Our Lady of Guadalupe School will learn how to make rhombicuboctahedron sculptures—structures with eight triangular faces and eighteen square faces. They’re also preparing for a hard hat tour of the facility they are moving into three blocks away, at the intersection of 91st and Houston. McGuiness hands me a folder with various documents that explain Executive Director Sarah Ward’s vision for their new facility, which previously housed a dry cleaning service. Ward expects the new facility to allow her organization to “triple its programs and double the number of young people served” by September 2015. When it moves, the South Chicago Art Center will adopt a new name: skyart.

In 2001, Ward left her job providing art therapy to kids on probation at Cook County Juvenile Court to found the South Chicago Art Center. The first eighteen students began class on September 11 of that year.

The program has now grown to provide over 2,000 students ages six to eighteen with free arts programming, with 200 students attending classes at the center. Through its School SmARTs and Street SmARTs programs, the center provides in-school, after-school and out-of-school programs at its current facility, libraries,

courtesy of skyart

and other locations. In addition, the South Chicago Art Center helps students with college admission through its College SmARTs program and offers arts education to parents through its Adult SmARTs program.

With a new building and a new name, Ward plans to continue the organization’s agenda:empowering students through art. According to McGuinness, students can “access a different way of learning” through art.

Ward does not see her organization’s empowerment of kids as limited purely to arts—they are also taught to care for plants in their nearby Community Artists Garden, and learn math skills through art projects related to geometry. “I think if you think myopically about...arts education, you are missing the whole picture of the needs that really exist in the neighborhood,” Ward said.

While the current eight-hundred square foot South Chicago Art Center building has just one (darkened) window, skyart’s new home will be six-thousand square feet and lined with windows along its exterior.

32 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

The new building will house multiple offices, a conference room, three studios, a kitchen, a kiln room, and a computer room. When skyart moves, the art center’s current landlord, the Church of Our Lady Guadalupe, will convert the old facility into a food pantry.

Alva Nelms, who has taught at the art center for about a year and taught the rhombicuboctahedron sculpture class, welcomes the move to the new facility in part because the new cement floor will enable her to teach students how to weld. “This space is full of creativity,” Nelms also said. “If we have five times more space, we’ll have five times more creativity.”

Skyart has raised over $1 million of its goal of $2.5 million—roughly $1 million for the facility and another $1.5 million for capacity building and program growth. They have received money mainly from foundations, but Ward hopes to gain more support from corporate and individual donors.

During the tour, Ward showed some of these potential donors the new fa-

cility and explained how it intended to enhance students’ learning.

Ward believes that moving to the facility three blocks away, across the Metra tracks, will allow students safer and more convenient access to the center. According to Ward, there are twelve active gangs operating in South Chicago, posing a problem for students who live across the train tracks and wish to come to the art center. “It becomes a space where there’s no way a kid would walk over here,” Ward said. “Why would they walk over here if they don’t go to church or school [here]?” The location of the new facility is more gang neutral, she said, in part because of its proximity to a larger shopping district.

Ward saw the move as an opportunity to change the organization’s name and clearly differentiate it from organizations such as the South Side Community Art Center, Hyde Park Art Center, and the Beverly Arts Center. “No one could get the name right,” Ward said. She intended South Chicago Art Center to be only a temporary name. w“I had no idea when you pick a name, it sticks,” she said. “I mean, I’d never run an organization before. I thought I could easily change it.”

In recent months, Ward consulted with board members and allowed the students to vote on potential names. The chosen name was Skyway Art, after the nearby Skyway toll road, but a shortened version of that name was settled on after a board member pointed out that people take the Skyway in order to avoid the neighborhood. For Ward, skyart captured the very essence of her organization.

“Skyart was really catchy,” she said.

“Our whole tagline is realizing the limited potential of youth, and that’s what we really believe in.”

JUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 33

LEGEND good for kids 21+ food provided free

SUMMER ARTS GUIDE

kriss stress

I

t’s no secret that Chicago is a hub for music festivals and festivalgoers; people flock from all over the country (and world) for the experience of seeing the most hyped artists of the year prove their mettle on the stages of Pitchfork, or of embracing neo-hippiedom on the Grant Park lawn at Lollapalooza. The prices for these festivals run hundreds of dollars for some big names, but in the Weekly tradition, we decided to dedicate these pages to music festivals taking place either on the South Side or in the spirit of Chicago’s musical tradition. Below, find those festivals listed—from the beloved, elderly Blues to the newest, exciting Ruido—divided up by genre, and marked for kid-friendliness and price.

BY MAHA AHMED

34 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

summer music festivals

CALENDAR

PUNK/ALTERNATIVE Fed Up Fest Seeking to highlight and celebrate queer and transgender artists in the punk community, Chicago’s Fed Up Fest is a three-day festival featuring punk bands from across the country. Created in response to homophobic and transphobic tensions within the punk scene, Fed Up Fest aims to foster a dialogue directed toward addressing issues of oppression and abuse within punk music.

In addition, the festival hopes to strengthen bonds between members of queer and punk communities, showcasing marginalized voices from the scene. This year’s iteration of Fed Up Fest will welcome artists like Los Angeles author and punk pioneer Alice Bag, Chicago’s own The Breathing Light, and Pittsburgh’s Fun Home. Check the website for location updates. Location TBA. Friday-Sunday, July 24-26. Free. fedupfestchicago.com (Peter Gao) Black and Brown Punk Show The Black & Brown Punk Show Collective’s fifth annual festival this August is designed not only as a show, but also as a safe space for queer and trans punks of color.

The Collective’s mission is “to educate and unify” oppressed groups in the city through music. This year’s lineup is not yet released, but last year’s admission was $5-$7. Check their Facebook page for lineup and location updates. Location TBA. Friday-Sunday, August 28-30. facebook.com/blkandbrwncollective (Lauren Poulson) Villapalooza For the past four years, Villapalooza has brought an eclectic lineup of musicians, artists, and comedians to Little Village, transforming the corner of 26th Street and Central Park Avenue into a vibrant street festival. Aiming to create “non-violent spaces for arts, culture, and community engagement,” Villapalooza welcomes guests of all ages and in recent years has featured kid-friendly activities like carnival games and face painting in addition to the music.

Past concert lineups have included a variety of international and local artists, spanning multiple genres, with last year’s headliners including New York by way of Colombia jazz fusion band M.A.K.U. Soundsystem and Chicago’s own post-punk band population. 26th St. and Central Park Ave. Saturday, September 5. Free. villapalooza.org (Peter Gao)

Riot Fest Riot Fest, Chicago’s largest independent music festival, will be held this year for the first time in North Lawndale’s Douglas Park, after taking place in Humboldt Park for the past three years. Recently voted the country’s best music festival by readers of USA Today and 10Best, Riot Fest features a lineup of musicians spanning multiple genres, from rock and punk to rap and hiphop. According to organizers, the festival welcomed approximately 160,000 guests to Humboldt Park last year, but due to 26th Ward Alderman Roberto Maldonado’s claims that the event caused $150,000 of damages to the park, this year’s iteration will move three miles south to Douglas Park. This year’s headliners include No Doubt, Modest Mouse, Snoop Dogg, and Ice Cube.

Douglas Park, 1401 S. Sacramento Dr. Friday-Sunday, September 11-13. $169.98 for 3-day pass. riotfest.org (Peter Gao)

WORLD Ruido Fest This festival of Latino alternative music will take place in Pilsen’s Addams Park and feature a number of Latin@-fronted and Spanish-language bands from all points on the rock spectrum. The brainchild of the masterminds behind Riot Fest and the hosts of “Rock Sin Anestesia,” the city’s most popular Latin alternative radio show, Ruido will be the first festival of its kind in Chicago. Standouts for its first year include the Grammy-winning Zoé and multilingual rockers Zero Kill, plus many more.

Addams/Medill Park, 1500 W. 15th St. Friday, July 10, doors 3pm; Saturday and Sunday, July 11-12, doors at noon. Single-day tickets $54.99; $75 day of show. All ages. ruidofest. com ( Jake Bittle) Chinatown Summer Fair The Chinatown Summer Fair was started by family-owned Chinatown business Junk Restaurant in 1979, and has been running every year since. The fair brings Chinatown businesses together and honors the cultural heritage of the neighborhood. This year’s fair will feature cultural performers in dance, singing, and drumming, as well as a parade—including a Dragon and Lion Dance procession—plus delicious Chinese

cuisine, and artisan goods. Chinatown Gate, 200 W. Cermak Rd. Sunday, July 19, 10am-8 pm. Free. chicagochinatown.org (Lauren Poulson)

BLUES/GOSPEL Chicago Blues Festival This June, the 32nd annual iteration of the Chicago Blues Festival arrives. The largest free blues festival in the world, this year’s celebration will feature five stages for three days. The festival has a long, rich history of featuring the best blues musicians in Chicago and the country. This year’s headliner is Buddy Guy, a blues guitarist—perhaps one of the best alive—who lives in Chicago and recently won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Other headliners throughout the three-day period include Zora Young, a Chicago blues singer; Clarence Carter, a blues and soul singer from Alabama; Grammy award-winner Willie Dixon; and a tribute to Muddy Waters, the “father of modern Chicago blues.” Grant Park, Jackson Blvd & S. Columbus Dr. Friday-Sunday, June 12-14, 11am-9:30pm.

Free. (312)744-3315. cityofchicago.org (Lauren Poulson) I Have A Vision Community Gospel Festival The larger Chicago Gospel Festival happened this past month in Millennium Park, but those who want a lower-key, locally centered day of gospel music can still get their fill on July 11, when South Chicago’s Bessemer Park will host the “I Have A Vision” festival, a day full of free gospel music and family-friendly activities.

It’s being hosted by Shama Ministries, a nonprofit that aims to improve neighborhood quality of life and awareness of family. There’s no lineup for this festival, but something tells us name recognition isn’t the draw here—nor is that a bad thing. Bessemer Park, 8930 S. Muskegon Ave. Saturday, July 11, 11:30am-6:30pm.

Free. (312)744-3315 ( Jake Bittle)

JAZZ Universal Alley Jazz Jam The Universal alley Jazz Jam is a weekly summer event featuring vendors, performers, and—as one would assume—a

local jam session dedicated to “revitalizing the community through arts & culture.”

Because the “lineup” is created via an open call to artists, you are free to sign up to test out songs you’ve had in the works, hone your stage presence, and sing along to some great tunes. A community mainstay, these jazz jams are sure to brighten up any summer Saturday. Bring a friend and a lawn chair. Black United Fund Building, 1801 E. 71st St. between Ridgeland Ave & Constance Ave, outdoor terrace. Saturdays, 2pm-8pm. Free. (312)953-1075. facebook.com/UniversalAlleyJazzJam (Maha Ahmed) Chicago Jazz Festival A mainstay of the city’s festival scene, the Chicago Jazz Festival will return for its 37th edition during Labor Day weekend, featuring artists like Chicago pianist Muhal Richard Abrams and Minneapolis jazz fusion singer José James. With events taking place in the Chicago Cultural Center and in Millennium Park, the Jazz Festival provides ample opportunity to soak in the last rays of the summer sun while enjoying the sounds of a diverse roster of national and international musicians.

Additional artists slotted for the festival include singer Dee Dee Bridgewater and the band Butler, Bernstein, and the Hot 9, ensuring that the weekend will feature enough variety to please jazz fans of all tastes. Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St. and Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph St. Thursday-Sunday, September 3-6. Free. (312)744-3315. cityofchicago.org (Peter Gao) Hyde Park Jazz Fest The smaller, younger sibling of the larger Chicago Jazz Festival, this two-day fest has a more local- and South Side–focused lineup, but still draws upwards of 20,000 fans to Hyde Park each year. Artists whose fame levels range from “old but relatively known” to “totally obscure” perform all day both days across the Midway and in venues such as Rockefeller Chapel. It’s completely and utterly free, and there’s the added amusement of getting to see bushy-tailed UofC freshmen, who usually arrive on campus just as the festival gets going. 1130 E. Midway Plaisance. Saturday, Sept 26, 1pm-midnight, and Sunday, Sept.

27, 1pm-7pm. Free; suggested donation $5.

(312)744-3315 ( Jake Bittle)

JUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 35

south side summer camps SPORTS XS Tennis Camps XS Tennis, 1301 E. 47th St. Monday-Friday; June 22-Aug. 21; full day 9am-4pm, half-day 9am-12pm or 1pm-4pm. Ages 5-14. (773)548-7529. xstennis. org/summer-programs. $50 for each five-week session This summer, XS Tennis will offer two programs: Tennis and STEM Camp is for tennis juniors who are aiming to reach a district, sectional, or national ranking; the schedule includes drilling, training, and match play. Sports and STEM Camp lets campers try out tennis as well as basketball, volleyball, baseball, and soccer with the help of staff who are professional and collegiate-level athletes. Sports and STEM campers work on skill building in the mornings, and put those skills to use in afternoon games.

Sports camp also includes field trips, weekly trips to the 31st Street beach, and arts and crafts workshops. Both camps include Project SYNCERE’s Science, Technology, Math, and Engineering (STEM) curriculum, which employs project-based learning to engage students in working with engineering and teamwork. You can register for eight weeks at a set price, or pay at weekly rates for additional weeks. To register, contact XS Tennis at 773-548-PLAY. (Mari Cohen)

South Side Junior Tennis Camp South Side Junior Tennis, 1362 E. 59th St. Saturdays, June 6-July 11 (Session 1) and July 18-August 15 (Session 2), 10am-11:45am. Ages 5-14. southsidejuniortennis.org Founded in 2011, the South Side Junior Tennis Camp offers an affordable introduction to tennis with an emphasis on sportsmanship, perseverance, and healthy living. All coaches have experience playing collegiate tennis, ensuring that each student receives one-on-one instruction focused on developing fundamental skills and basic stroke mechanics. This year the organization will offer two sessions of weekly Saturday classes, with three levels of instruc-

tion split between students aged ten and under, beginners aged eleven to fourteen, and advanced beginners aged eleven to fourteen. Class sessions will be one hour for students ten and under, and two hours for older students. Tennis rackets and other equipment will be provided, with junior sized rackets and courts available for younger participants. (Peter Gao)

PERFORMANCE Red Clay Dance Company Summer Dance Intensive at the American Rhythm Center, 410 S. Michigan Ave., 3rd Fl. July 13-17.

Monday-Friday, 9am-2:30pm. Session culminates with an informal studio showing Friday July 17 at noon and company auditions Friday July 17, 2:30pm-4:30pm. (773)624-8411. redclaydance. com/summerintensive. Registration for the Red Clay Summer Intensive is by July 6th; $300 fee must be paid in full.

The South Side-based Red Clay Dance Company is known across the city for its dedication to global engagement and local change, enacted through Afro-Contemporary dance. This summer, young dancers set on something more rigorous than a weekly drop-in class will have the chance to enroll in Red Clay Dance Company’s Summer Dance Intensive. Designed to provide a professional-level training experience, this program builds on the technical rigor and cultural artistry of Afro-Contemporary technique.

Classes range in style from West African to ballet, yoga, and training in Company repertoire.

Twenty-five spots are available for dancers ages eighteen and up. In addition to their summer intensive, Red Clay is running programing for its Youth Ensemble, from July 6 to August 13.

Open to intermediate and advanced dancers ages fourteen to eighteen, the Ensemble provides a pre-professional opportunity for teens at the Gary Comer Youth Center, Monday through Thursday, 9am-1pm. (Meaghan Murphy)

Dynamic Force Dance Summer

36 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

The last day of school for Chicago Public Schools is June 19. What happens next? The Weekly has compiled a list of summer programs for young people across the South Side to fill their days with. Feel free to send information about other opportunities to editor@southsideweekly.com!

Session Dynamic Force Dance at the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club, 5480 S. Kenwood Ave. Multiple styles and ages, see website for details and registration.

(773)932-6230. dynamicforcedance.com Dynamic Force is a performance dance program with a mission to unite youth of all backgrounds and prepare them in the techniques of jazz, hip-hop, and lyrical ballet. Children between the ages of two and five can start off with Tot Ballet and Tumbling, while older dancers can enjoy Dynamic Force’s signature Fusion Dance, a multilevel, multicultural class designed to connect dancers with upbeat drum beats.

Speaking over the phone, Fusion Dance assures the Weekly that big things are happening this summer. “We’re doing performances. They’re coming up for all students involved with the twelve-week summer session.” The summer session includes classes for all ages in hip-hop, jazz, tumbling, and break dance on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at Dynamic Force’s home base of the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club and on the North Side (see website for details).

Dancers between the ages of six and sixteen are welcome to Dynamic Force’s open clinic and company auditions from 11am to 3pm. Contact dynamicforcedances@gmail.com with questions.

(Meaghan Murphy)

Ayodele Drum and Dance Company Sesa Wo Suban, 1301 W. 52nd St. Saturdays, June 13-July 25, 11am-2pm. (773)242-9631. www.ayodeledrumanddance.com. $90 with snack provided.

Ayodele Drum and Dance Company presents Sesa Wo Suban, a six-week program that teaches girls ages five to nine the fundamentals of African music and dance. Ayodele, Yoruba for “ joy in the home,” is a company of twenty performers that seeks to bring women together through African drum and dance. Sesa Wo Suban, or “transform your character,” is their project to cultivate confidence and creative expression in women at a young age, along with developing music and dance technique. The program will also include arts and crafts, storytelling, and history lessons. Sessions are Saturday from 11am2pm at the Sherman Park Fieldhouse. Contact sesawosuban1@gmail.com for more information.

(Andrew Yang)

Camp DJ Master Mix Academy, 6701 S. Crandon Ave., Unit 10a. July 25-August 22, 10am-12pm. Ages 8-14.

(773)501-6797. mastermixacademy.org/camp-dj Camp DJ is exactly what it sounds like—a camp that teaches the art of DJing to Chicago-area youth. It teaches both traditional and technological approaches, including analog and digital sound perception. In addition to educating youth on how to use various technologies needed to DJ, the camp also focuses on hands-on exercises and practices, so students learn by doing. The camp will include a workshop on the "History of DJ" as well as one on how to use DJ audio equipment. The final focus of the camp is "DJ 101," in which students learn how to use time signatures in music transition, cueing, and beat matching and BPMs. To "impact the community one DJ at a time," Master Mix Academy has created a survey course for kids of how to create

an art form that does not seem untouchable.

(Lauren Poulson)

United We Drum Summer Percussive Class Muntu Dance Theater, Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. July 11-July 22, Saturdays, 10am11am. Presentation and family day event July 22, 12pm-4pm. Ages 8 to 17. Ongoing registration (see website). (773)241-6080. muntu.com. $70 for the seven-week program (individual classes are $10 each). Scholarships are also available.

Muntu Dance Theater performs dynamic interpretations of African and African-American dance and music both new and old. This summer, the company continues its commitment to teaching with its percussive camp United We Drum. Master drummers will teach participants how to play instruments such as percussive bells and types of drums from djembe to sangba to kenkeni, but they won’t stop there: students will also learn the history of each drum, why it is played, and what part of the rhythm it carries. After several weeks of creativity, cultural exploration, and fun, the program will culminate with United We Drum Family Saturday at the Logan Center, where participants will present what they’ve learned alongside performances from professional groups such as the musically and ethnically diverse Funkadesi. “This program has definitely piqued my children’s interest in African Drumming,” says parent Terryn Polk.

“Both of my boys are experienced with drumming. However, this is their first experience with African Drumming and they have actually found a new love!” (Olivia Stovicek)

WRITING AND STORYTELLING Young Chicago Authors Summer Writing Institute Young Chicago Authors, 1180 N. Milwaukee Ave., 2nd Fl. Monday-Friday, July 20-24, 10am-5pm.

Ages 13-19. Youngchicagoauthors.org Since it was founded in 1991, Young Chicago Authors has aimed to empower youth to get in touch with themselves through the power of spoken and written word. This year’s summer program will be “Write to the City,” an exploration of the importance of spoken word in Chicago hip-hop and a reflection of working class life and visual arts. Through this programming, the organization hopes to teach youth the importance of their own voice for themselves and society at large, redefining youths’ concepts of who makes art and why. The summer program is augmented by work with professional writers and artists and trips to arts and cultural spaces across Chicago. Ultimately, YCA hopes that the words of the youth they work with can help to break down social barriers and rewrite the world.

(Lauren Poulson)

I Am We I Am We, 8930 S. Muskegon Ave. Tuesdays and Thursdays, June 23-July 30, 10am-12pm. Ages 11-17. Register at iamwecommunity.org. $25 registration fee.

CALENDAR

With an eye on building community and cohesion throughout Chicago, a group of artists, educators, and anthropologists founded I Am We in 2011 in order to study some of the city’s most vulnerable neighborhoods and understand their needs. As Leticia Thomas, one of the organization’s founders puts it, “I Am We aims to give young people a way to share their experiences and to engage meaningfully with their communities.” This summer, I Am We will offer two programs, both located in Bessemer Park.

C.A.K.E.—standing for Communication, Accountability, Knowledge, and Effectiveness—is a journalism program for girls aged eleven to seventeen that focuses on improving communication skills and increasing students’ self-confidence.

The program also hopes to connect its students to women leaders from the local community and to educate students about career opportunities.

I Am We’s second program, Chicago Voices, caters to all students aged eleven to seventeen, introducing them to advocacy through digital media. According to Thomas, the program intends to develop students’ critical thinking skills by encouraging them to discuss solutions to issues in their communities. C.A.K.E. will take place on Tuesdays from 10am-12 pm, and Chicago Voices will take place on Thursdays from 10am-12 pm. (Peter Gao)

StoryArts Summer Camp Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. June 22-July 3, Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm. 6th and 7th grade students. storyartschicago.org. Free.

StoryArts Summer Camp is a free, full-day summer camp for Mid-South Side sixth and seventh graders. The program will guide campers through the process of telling stories about themselves and their communities through different artistic mediums. Students will create comics, a short documentary film, and wheat paste mural posters in three project modules, each led by a different Chicago-based teaching artist. Campers will also take a field trip to Pilsen to discuss the role that public art can play in their communities. There will be a final gallery show and celebration for campers and their families at Currency Exchange Café in Washington Park on July 3. Lunch and snacks will be provided every day. (Maira Khwaja)

OTHER El Hogar del Niño

CHA Summer Youth Employment Project

El Hogar del Niño, 1710 S. Loomis St. Monday-Friday, June 1-September 4, 7am-6pm. Ages 3-12. (312) 563-0644, ext. 262. elhogardelnino. org . Payment is on a sliding scale based on family income.

El Hogar del Niño, provider of year-round supportive afterschool and preschool programs, brings kids a summer full of education, physical activity, and field trips. With help from an all-bilingual staff, kids will work on skills they’ve learned in school the previous year and begin preparing for the upcoming year. According to Early Childhood Regional Director Leo Ortega, the curriculum is customized based on each student’s needs and strengths. Program attendees also will participate in physical activity using the research-based SPARK physical education program, will spend time in the computer lab, and go on field trips around Chicago. Previous field trips have included the zoo, museums, and local parks. There’s food, too: breakfast, lunch, and snack are included in a full day’s schedule. All kids are accepted, including special needs children, military families, and those who don’t participate in El Hogar del Niño’s afterschool programs. However, call to register ASAP, because spots go fast.(Mari Cohen)

BULLETIN “What’s the Future of the Midwest?”

Chicago Innovation Exchange, 1452 E. 53rd St. Wednesday, June 3, 5:30pm-8pm. Free. cie.uchicago. edu.

What made the Twinkie an all-American staple?

And the Robie House a landmark? Guests from design firm IDEO will delve into the Midwest’s history of industrial design, attempting to parse what makes the country’s flattest region also one of its most innovative. (Will Cabaniss)

Lecture on the History of Paint Glessner House Museum, 1800 S. Prairie Ave. Wednesday, June 3, 7pm. $10/$8 for members.

Reservations by phone requested. (312)326-1480. glessnerhouse.org

What’s more fun than watching paint dry?

Learning about its history! Attend the lecture at the Glessner House Museum by painter Mario Guertin on “The History of Paint in America,” and find out about painting in Colonial America and how paint ended up in cans. If you go, the event’s host promises, “You will never look at a paint can the same way again!” (Emily Lipstein)

Black Arts United States: Institutions and Interventions Conference Mary and Lee Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Dr., Evanston, IL. Thursday, June 4, 4pm through Saturday, June 6, 6pm. Free. (847)467-2756. bai. northwestern.edu Northwestern University’s Black Arts Initiative hosts a conference that investigates the idea of interventions in the black arts and their relationship to institutions. The schedule is packed with panels featuring academics from all over the country, as well as performances. (Mari Cohen)

W. 65th St. and S. Peoria St. Saturday, June 6, 8am-2pm. Free. (773)488-2004. nhschicago.org.

Join members of the Englewood community to cover up and decorate vacant homes. Organized

by Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, NeighborWorks Day is also sponsoring projects on June 6 in Auburn Gresham, Roseland, Back of the Yards, and Chicago Lawn. (Will Cabaniss)

Liberation Library Kickoff

Deuce’s and the Diamond Club, 3505 N. Clark St. Wednesday, June 10, 6pm-9pm. $10. liberationlib. com Liberation Library aims to bring books to young people in prisons around Illinois, working under the premise that access to books is a right rather than a privilege. This inaugural fundraiser will feature a raffle, food, and drink, and will help the Library send out its first book shipment this July.

(Maha Ahmed)

Chicago to Greece: Building Social Movements Against Austerity

In recent years, both Chicago and Greece have faced austerity measures, from mental health clinic and school closings in the former to heavy budget cuts in the latter. Christos Giovanopolous, a member of the Greek grassroots collective Solidarity For All, will speak on how to build international solidarity against austerity. (Christian Belanger)

Grace United Methodist Church, 3325 W. Wright-

How are Black liberation and worker liberation related? What is Black Marxism? Come for the collective experience of alienation from labor, stay for the enriching history lessons that will (hopefully) answer these questions and more.

(Maha Ahmed)

Community Forum on Police Accountability

Teamster Office Building, 300 S. Ashland Ave. Saturday, June 13, 1pm-3pm. (312)939-2750. naarpr.org Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority’s first decade is being scrutinized; plenty of people are willing to find it lacking. The Authority has sometimes seemed reluctant to act against purported abuses. Speakers at this forum will propose an all-civilian, all-elected Civilian Police Accountability Council as an alternative. (Adam Thorp)

Urban Farm Open House

Wood Street Urban Farm, 5814 S. Wood St. Saturday, June 13, 11am-3pm. Free. (773)549-1336. growinghomeinc.org.

Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, 800 S. Halsted St. Thursday, June 11, 6pm. solidarity4all.gr

Marxism and Black Liberation Day School

The Chicago Housing Authority is offering the Summer Youth Employment Project through its Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS). The program, part of the One Summer Chicago employment initiative, pairs Chicago Housing Authority residents ages sixteen to twenty-four with employers for paid work and enrichment. Partnered employers include neighborhood and community organizations from across Chicago; the full list can be found on the DFSS website. In addition to employment experience, youths receive mentorship from their organization on financial literacy and career development skills such as résumé-building and interviewing. Applications for the program should be submitted online by June 15. Go to the program’s website for more information.

(Andrew Yang)

wood Ave. Saturday, June 13, 10am-5pm. Free.

Recommended readings on Facebook event page. chicagosocialists.org

NeighborWorks Day in Englewood

summer events

Chicago Housing Authority Summer Youth Employment Project. Ages 16-24. (312)786-6930. youth. thecha.org

Food-focused nonprofit Growing Home will take a Saturday to open its organic urban farm to the public. Cooking classes and tours will be offered, refreshments will be available, and fresh produce will most certainly be on hand. (Will Cabaniss)

The Lincolns in Chicago Second Presbyterian Church, 1936 S. Michigan Ave. Thursday, June 18, guided tours available at 5:30pm, lecture at 6pm. (800)657-0687. 2ndpresbyterianfriends.org President Abraham Lincoln’s son Robert Todd was one of many prominent Chicagoans to attend

JUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 37

Second Presbyterian Church. Attendees of this event will follow in his footsteps and listen to Mark Pohlad, a professor at DePaul University, talk about the Lincolns’ Chicago connections.

(Adam Thorp)

CAKE: Chicago Alternative Comics Expo The Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted St. Saturday and Sunday, June 6-7, 11am-6pm. cakechicago. com A section of the North Side will teem with graphically-oriented minds during this annual exposition, where Chicago-based artists present their work as part of a national gathering of illustrators and presses. Come empty handed— you’ll want to leave with a stack of books and a newfound love for comics. (Will Cabaniss)

So Fresh Saturdays Sherwood Park, 5701 S. Shields Ave. Saturday, June 20, 3pm-8pm. (866)845-1032. ragenglewood.org As part of the Chicago Park District’s Night Out in the Parks series, the Resident Association of Greater Englewood (RAGE) will be hosting an “edu-tainment” series geared toward the community. Come out for workshops focused on youth, entrepreneurship, hip-hop, and much, much more. (Christian Belanger)

Making Farm to School a Reality Jane Addams Hull House Museum, 800 S. Halsted St. Monday, June 29, 6pm-8pm. Free Come to this workshop to learn how to advocate for farm-to-table programs in Illinois, which aim to bring fresh, locally grown food into schools, as well as educational programs about nutrition and agriculture. The goal is to expose kids to healthy food while simultaneously supporting local farms. (Will Cabaniss)

Mass March for CPAC Federal Plaza, Adams St. and Dearborn St. Saturday, August 29, 12pm. (312)939-2750. naarpr.org.

Intensified public reaction to police abuses have clearly laid out a problem; a solution would be the next step. According to the organizers of this march, that solution is an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council, empowered to monitor the police. (Adam Thorp)

VISUAL ARTS CAKE: Chicago Alternative Comics Expo The Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted St. Saturday and Sunday, June 6-7, 11am-6pm. cakechicago. com A section of the North Side will teem with graphically-oriented minds during this annual exposition, where Chicago-based artists present their work as part of a national gathering of illustrators and presses. Come empty handed— you’ll want to leave with a stack of books and a newfound love for comics. (Mari Cohen)

Freedom, Resistance, and the Journey Towards Equality DuSable Museum, 740 East 56th Place. Beginning June 11. Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-5pm; Sunday, 12pm-5pm. Prices vary depending on age and resident status. (773)947-0600. dusablemuseum.org.

The DuSable’s new permanent installation will use complex, chronological storytelling to take visitors through the history of the African-American experience. This exhibit will employ a wide variety of objects and archives, from a 15th century “punishment collar,” through a 2007 Obama campaign poster. (Mari Cohen)

Sugar Foot Rain Dance

.

Arts Incubator, 301 E. Garfield Boulevard. Opening reception Friday, June 12, 6–9 pm. Exhibition June 12 - July 3.(773)702-9724. arts.uchicago.edu/ arts-public-life David Leggett, artist-in-residence at Arts + Public Life, is known for art that addresses issues varying from hip-hop to sexuality, from art history to race. This solo exhibition will display Leggett’s recent works on paper. (Darren Wan)

Reparations: A Walk Through History Uri-Eichen Gallery, 2101 S. Halsted St. Friday, June 12, 6-10pm. (312)852-7717. uri-eichen.com.

Join photographers Farrad Ali and Michael J. Bracey for an exhibition and discussion of their personal and collective histories. “Reparations” charts their journeys through West Africa, as well as through Chicago, their current home.

(Darren Wan)

Opening Reception at Slow Slow, 2153 W 21st St. Saturday, June 20-July 11.

Opening reception June 20, 6pm-9pm. . (773)6458803. paul-is-slow.info A new show at Slow gallery features the drawings of Brooklyn-based artist Matthew Lusk. Also featured is the “sexually combative” work of Chicago native Ryan Michael Pfeiffer and collaborator Rebecca Walz. (Clyde Schwab)

New Projects x New Curator Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Tuesday, July 21 - Tuesday, August 4. Monday-Thursday, 9am-8pm; Friday-Saturday, 9am-5pm; Sunday, 12pm-5pm. (773)324-5520. hydeparkart.org/ exhibitions This series of exhibitions is curated by participants in the Curatorial Practices course offered by the UofC Graham School in partnership with Hyde Park Art Center. Each show will feature work by contemporary artists from a variety of mediums. (Clyde Schwab)

In “Deportable Aliens,” Mexican artist Rodrigo Lara Zendejas explores the history of the Mexican Repatriation—the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Mexican Americans from the United States after the Great Depression. (Hafsa Razi)

veteran when she reappears in her hometown.

(Jake Bittle)

Creatures from the Concrete

It’s no exaggeration to call Ari Brown one of Chicago’s greatest living saxophonists. His tenor sax can move seamlessly from hard bop, to avant-garde, to jazz standards. A member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Brown will show off his versatility for one night only at the Promontory. (Clyde Schwab)

Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Tuesday, August 4-Sunday, December 13.

Monday-Thursday, 9am-8pm; Friday-Saturday, 9am-5pm; Sunday, 12pm-5pm. (773)324-5520. hydeparkart.org Graffiti is moving indoors with this multimedia mural, but its spirit will remain as free and sprawling as ever; the combined work of seven female street artists, the exhibit will focus on social justice issues that loom large in the world outdoors. (Julia Aizuss)

De vuelta National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St. August 21-March 13, 2016. Opening reception Friday, August 21, 6pm-8pm. (312)738-1503. nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org After a five-decade-long career, Errol Ortiz presents his first solo museum exhibit, De Vuelta.

A member of the Chicago Imagists, a group of artists prominent in the 1960s, Ortiz now revisits his work over the years. (Hafsa Razi)

Warm Kitty, Soft Kitty Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Sunday, September 6 through Sunday, December 13.

Monday-Thursday, 9am-8pm; Friday-Saturday, 9am-5pm; Sunday, 12pm-5pm. (773)324-5520. hydeparkart.org Never trust a title—there will (probably) be no kittens in this group exhibition curated by UofC arts administrator Camille Morgan, but the photography, performance, video, and sculpture on display will interrogate another important subject: physical touch, as phenomenology, aesthetic, and social practice. (Julia Aizuss)

MUSIC ADaD LP Release The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave West.

Thursday, June 4, doors 9pm. $8 advance, $10 at the door. (312)801-2100. promontorychicago.com After years as collaborator in such collaborative hip-hop endeavors as Eulorhythmics, MC ADaD is ready to branch out with his own LP, Drifted.

Performing with Chicago-based artists NEAK and Psalm One, ADaD will showcase just why he’s one of Chicago’s “most prolific MCs.” (Alex Harrell)

Yvonne Gage

Deportable Aliens

Mo Better Jazz, 2423 E. 75th St. Friday, June 5, 7pm. 21+. (773)741-6254. mobetterjazzchicago.us

National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St. July 24-February 28, 2016. Opening reception Friday, July 24, 6-8pm. Discussion with artist and tour Wednesday, July 29, 6pm. (312)738-1503. nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org

This four-hour set hosted by South Shore jazz promoters Mo Better will feature Yvonne Gage, a prominent 1980s pop vocalist who has used her pipes to support the likes of R. Kelly and Celine Dion, among numerous other superstars, stars, and almost-stars. Don’t miss this industry

38 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JUNE 3, 2015

Ari Brown

The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Friday, June 5, 8pm, 7pm doors. $15. promontorychicago.com

Songhoy Blues Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Friday, June 5, 8pm, 7pm doors. $12 in advance. Thaliahallchicago. com Brothers Oumar and Aliou Touré living in Gao on the Niger River grew up obsessed with hip hop and classic rock. The duo formed Songhoy Blues after they were forced to Mali due to growing unrest. The group has since recorded with Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but continues to celebrate the history, beliefs, and traditional music of their displaced people.

(Clyde Schwab)

This is Pilsen: Bohemian Past, Latino Present at Thalia Hall Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Wednesday, June 10, 8pm concert, 6:30pm exhibit. $15-$22. (312)5263851. thaliahallchicago.com Eastern Europe meets Latin America in this celebration of global pathways converging inn Chicago. Pilsen will honor its past and present through a concert and art exhibit featuring music and art from both cultures. The lineup includes Ondřej Havelka and His Melody Makers playing popular songs from Pilsen’s Czech past; the fusion band ¡ESSO! Afrojam Funkbeat; and singer-songwriter Vivian García. (Hafsa Razi)

Lil Herb

Reggies Rock Club, 2105 S. State St. Thursday, June 11, doors 8pm. 18+. $3. (312)949-0120. reggieslive. com Along with King Louie, Lil Herb (see “Ballin’ Like I’m Kobe”) is the primary inheritor of Chicago’s drill tradition. He’ll be headlining a showcase of Chicago-centric artists curated by Fake Shore Drive. Oh, also, he is nineteen years old. (Jake Bittle)

Lalah Hathaway The Shrine, 2109 S. Wabash Ave. Thursday, June 11, 9:30pm. First fifty tickets $32.50; otherwise $40.

21+. (312)753-5700. theshrinechicago.com Better known as the First Daughter of Soul, Lalah Hathaway made her first foray into the world of music at the tender age of one, providing background wails for her father Donny Hathaway’s single “The Ghetto.” It would be a shame to limit your experience of the artist who describes herself as “enamoured with colour, space, and the evolution of music” to just her records. (Emeline Posner)

Geto Boys

Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Thursday, June 18, door 7:30pm. $22 advance, $24-$28 at the door.

CALENDAR

(312)526-3851.thaliahallchicago.com Legendary Houston rap group Geto Boys, best known for “Damn It Feels Good to be a Gangsta,” has been around at least as long as most of the Weekly’s staff have been on this earth.

That, along with the fact that this is part of their long awaited reunion tour, should be more than enough reason to go to this show. (Sam Stecklow)

Les Nubians The Shrine, 2109 S. Wabash Ave. Friday, June 19, doors 8pm. $28. 21+. (312)753-5681. theshrinechicago.com Les Nubians are a French duo whose mixture of Afrobeats and hip-hop are described by the group itself as “AfroDance.” The sister act, born and raised in Bordeaux and Chad, were nominated for a Grammy, and have previously collaborated with the Black Eyed Peas, The Roots, and Mos Def. (Christian Belanger)

Bethany Pickens Mo Better Jazz, 2423 E. 75th St. Friday, July 17, 7pm-11:30pm. 21+. (773)741-6254 mobetterjazzchicago.us This jazz instrumentalist is the daughter of the late, great Willie Pickens, a legend of Chicago jazz. She’s made the rounds of jazz festivals in Chicago and around the country, and also teaches music at schools around Chicago. She’ll be hosted by South Shore’s longtime jazz hub, Mo Better. (Jake Bittle)

Father Reggies, 2105 S. State St. Saturday, July 18, doors 10pm. $17-$20. (312)949-0120. reggieslive.com “Please stop making fake Versace.” It’s not the demand itself that places Father against Migos and their brand of ADHD rap, but rather the word “please.” Even in his unbridled hedonism, Father is always polite—his tracks are nervously constrained where his Atlanta contemporaries are sprawling and bombastic. A Reggies must-see.

(Austin Brown)

Avery*Sunshine

The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. West.

Thursday, July 23, doors 7pm. $15 standing room, $22 seats. (312)801-2100. promontorychicago.com Happy and warm like the cosmic orb, Avery*Sunshine’s Joel Osteen-inspired “shining by sharing” music and ministry-operative band hits Chicago during her enduring tour. With her divorce finally in the past, Avery*Sunshine is ready to pour light and love into listeners with sermon-style songs. (Alex Harrell)

SWV The Shrine, 2109 S. Wabash Ave. Friday, August 14, doors 8:30pm. $24 first fifty tickets, $32.50 thereafter. 21+. (312)753-5681. theshrinechicago.com SWV, purveyors of nineties R&B, have been enjoying a recent renaissance off the back of surprising reality show success. Come to the Shrine this August to wallow in nostalgia as they perform vintage hits like “Weak” and “I’m So Into You,” this time, hopefully, without the oversized camouflage jackets. (Christian Belanger)

Ibeyi Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Wednesday, September 23, doors 7pm. $21 in advance, $24 at the door.

(312)526-3851. thaliahallchicago.com The rhythmic and melodic variety that this expert French-Cuban sister duo brings to the table is a mix of Yoruba and R&B culture. On top of that, are the harmonies that at times transcend language—and it helps when you have someone to sing with. (Austin Brown)

STAGE AND SCREEN Annie Sunken Garden, 4500 N. Virginia Ave. Saturday, June 20, 6:30-10:30pm, movie begins at dusk.

(877)387-2251. dusablemuseum.org.

The DuSable Museum is starting its exciting outdoor series Movies in the Park. The first film is the 2014 adaption of the family musical Annie, the story of a foster child from Harlem brought in by a business tycoon. (Amy Harlowe)

Sara Paretsky Book Launch Seminary Co-op, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Thursday July 30, 6pm. (773)752-4381. semcoop.com Come to the launch party for the release of Sara Paretsky’s latest mystery in the V. I. Warshawski series, Brush Back. In this installment, Investigator Warshawski returns to her South Side neighborhood to help a childhood friend while enveloped in a tangle of corrupt politics. (Amy Harlowe)

himself a published author and former cabbie.

(Emeline Posner)

the underground world of Taipei. The 1992 film follows a young model student who falls in with petty thieves. A 35mm archival print, courtesy of the Taiwan Film Institute, will be shown on Sunday. (Zoe Makoul)

SURFACES St. Laurence School building, 72nd and Dorchester Ave. Sunday, June 15, sunset (8:30pm). (773)2703121. rebuild-foundation.org

C.S. Lewis on Stage

Chicago-based artist Marco Ferrari has spent the last several months working with Grand Crossing residents to put together SURFACES, a film about the greater neighborhood. The screening will be outside with free food and music, and will coincide with an open house at the Black Cinema House. (Emeline Posner)

Chicago Dancing Festival Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph Dr., Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave., Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph St. August 25-29.

(773)609-2335. chicagodancing festival.com

Provision Theater, 1001 W. Roosevelt Rd. September 6 thru October 19, times TBA. (312)455-0065 provisiontheater.org This late-summer production will feature the return of a one-man show about the life and times of everyone’s favorite Christian pop-philosopher, the “stuffed turkey” of scholarship (Harold Bloom), C.S. Lewis. Written by Lewis himself, the reprised show will feature Brad Armacost in the central role. (Jake Bittle)

Film at Beverly Arts Center

Established in 2006 by Lar Lubovitch and Jay Franke, the Chicago Dancing Festival is a local tradition, ranking among events like Lollapalooza and the Chicago Blues Festival. In the years since its inception, the festival has showcased more than sixty dance companies to over 70,000 people. (Zoe Makoul)

Rebels of the Neon God at the Gene Siskel Film Center

Beverly Arts Center, 2407 W. 111th St. Various days throughout the summer, 7:30pm or 8pm. $7.50, $5.50 members. (773)445-3838 beverlyartcenter.org The Beverly Art Center will be running a film series this summer to complement film series in Millennium Park and other Chicago arts institutions. The films, which will be showing once every few days, include such family-friendly classics as 101 Dalmatians, Song of the Sea, and Crazy for You. Come and come again. (Jake Bittle)

Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St. June 6-10. $11, $6 for members. (312)846-2800. siskelfilmcenter.org For those who like gritty stories of young misadventure, Tsai Ming-liang’s first feature explores

Everything Must Come to Light Top Studios Hyde Park, 1448 E. 57th Street. Saturday, July 18, 7pm. southsideprojections.org The works of the deceased South African filmmaker Mpumi Njinge explore queer life in South African townships. My Son the Bride examines South Africa’s first same-sex marriage. Everything Must Come to Light follows three lesbian sangomas, or healers, in Soweto. A discussion with Northwestern PhD candidate Andrew Brown will follow. (Amy Harlowe)

Prisoners: Rights and Wrong Toman Library, 2708 S. Pulaski Rd. Wednesday, June 17, 6pm. . southsideprojections.org What does it mean to be home to the largest single-site jail in America? South Side Projections screens this hour-long film, an examination of mass incarceration nationwide and in Chicago in the 1990s, to begin the conversation; discussion with 96 ACRES will follow. (Emeline Posner)

Driving Hungry

57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th St. Wednesday, July 29, 6pm. (773)684-1300. semcoop.com Layne Mosler comes to Hyde Park to discuss her “delicious memoir,” a book chronicling years of wanderlust, cab rides in Buenos Aires, cabdriving in Berlin, eating abroad, and living well. Moderating the discussion will be Dmitry Samarov,

JUNE 3, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 39