School of the Art Institute of Chicago Magazine, Spring 2019

SPRING 2019

A BIANNUAL MAGAZIN E

SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

I N TH I S I SSUE: ARTISTIC PRACTICE YOU CAN TASTE (AND FEEL, SMELL, SEE, AND HEAR)

SPRING 2019

A BIANNUAL MAGA ZINE

SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO 1

FROM THE PRESIDENT

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MY CHICAGO

Eric Leonardson’s Favorite Places in Chicago

5 NEWS 8

ON VIEW

Art and the Senses 16 CONTINUING STUDIES

Uncompromised 17

WHERE I WORK

At Mott St with Nate Chung 18 STREET STYLE

At Sullivan Galleries' Fall Shows 19 CAREER CONVERSATIONS

Expert Advice from Erin Toale 20 ABOUT A WORK

In the Museum with Nenette Luarca-Shoaf 21 EMERGING WRITER

Justin Howard Rosier

School of the Art Institute of Chicago magazine Published by the Office of Institutional Advancement 116 S. Michigan Ave., 6th floor Chicago, IL 60603 communications@saic.edu Vice President Institutional Advancement Cheryl Jessogne (MA 1999) Executive Director Marketing and Communications Scott J. Hendrickson Director of Marketing Sarah Gardner

22 MY OBSESSIONS

Amy Honchell on Her Obsessions

23 FIELD TRIP

Exploring Belonging

24 THE MEDIUM IS THE MENU

Artists Use Beverage and Food as a Medium 30 SONIC WORLDS

Artists and Designers Transform Spaces and Perception with Sound 36 DESIGNING WHAT’S NEXT

Students’ Future Careers Emerge at the Design Show 40 WHY I GIVE

Suellen Rocca 42 ART SCENE 43 THE PROCESS

Matt Morris on His Process 44 MEET THE GRADUATING CLASS

Director of Public Relations Bree Witt Editor-in-Chief Scott J. Hendrickson Editor Bridget Esangga besang@saic.edu Contributing Editors Doug Kubek Ana Sekler (MA 2016) Bree Witt Project Coordinator Ethan G. Brown (Post-Bac 2019)

45 CLASS NOTES 48 EVENTS 53 FROM THE ARCHIVES

Goat Island

Design Riley Brady Jenny Halpern Jeffrey Sanchez Studio Blue Illustrator Patrick Jenkins (MFA 2013) Contributing Writers Ethan G. Brown (Post-Bac 2019) Zoya Brumberg (MA 2015) Micco Caporale (MA 2018) Cat DeBacker (MA 2019) Bridget Esangga Jason Foumberg (MA 2006) Doug Kubek Brontë Mansfield (MA 2017) Ana Sekler (MA 2016) Kaycie Surrell (MFA 2019)

Wu Tsang (BFA 2004), Sustained Glass, 2017. Image courtesy of the artist and Antenna Space Shanghai Cover: Arthur Hon, Paris Manning Pryor, and Gabriel Gonzalez at the Gramercy Tavern

Raksha Thakur (MA 2019) Bree Witt Photographers Francesca Bottazzin Grace DuVal (MDes 2015) William Harper Tom Harris Hilary Higgins Tim Knox (cover) Stephanie Murano (MA 2020) Kevin Penczak Stacey Rupolo Production Ethan G. Brown (Post-Bac 2019) Printing Graphic Arts Studio Inc.

From the President

AS A COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN, almost everything we do at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) has a primarily visual aspect.

However, anyone who has had a significant encounter with contemporary art knows it is about more than sight.

The warm humidity of an Apichatpong Weerasethakul (MFA 1998, HON 2011) film, the metallic tang of a silverpoint by Crown Family Professor of Painting and Drawing Michelle Grabner, the earthen redolence of black soap and shea butter in a Rashid Johnson (SAIC 2003–04, HON 2018) collage, and the percussive fibrousness of bound hair in a work by Professor Anne Wilson each remind us how art and design can engage all of our senses.

This issue of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago magazine explores the poetic and visceral experience of the senses in making and viewing art. Just as all of our senses are delighted as audience members, the makers of art and design must marshal all of their senses

to produce their work.

Faculty and alums who make sound art, mix perfume, explore architecture and landscape through the senses, and work with people whose disabilities limit their sensory perception are profiled in this issue. And for our main course, “The Medium is the Menu,” we take an in-depth look at those working in food and drink, including Arthur Hon (SAIC 1999– 2004), who was recently named Sommelier of the Year

by Food and Wine magazine and is pictured on our cover.

Also included is the work of 2018 MacArthur Fellowship recipient Wu Tsang (BFA 2004).

Along with 2015 recipient Professor LaToya Ruby Frazier and 2017 recipient Trevor Paglen (MFA 2002), Tsang is the third member of the SAIC community to receive the “genius” grant in four years!

Tsang’s work in performance and video finds fluid identities in the corporeal sensation of nightclubbing, casting the discotheque as a space to meditate upon the intersections of self and others. In this way, Tsang’s work belies the fallacy that the biological and the intellectual are discrete zones of activity.

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As a site of contemplation that is accessed through engaging the senses, art demonstrates that what we think and what we feel are indivisible. This capacity for art to communicate ideas through sensation evokes one of the School’s core values, “meaning and making are inseparable,” and underscores, as do the stories in this issue, art’s power to shape our experience of the world.

ELISSA TENNY PRESIDENT, SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

Follow President Tenny on Instagram at @saicpres.

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SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

5 The American high plains have intrigued explorers and fossil hunters for centuries.

In an expedition of their own, SAIC students set off with faculty members William Harper and Beth Wright through the Red Cloud Buttes of Nebraska and the South Dakota Badlands where they used state-of-theart technology like aerial drones to capture images of the colorful mountain ranges below. Students earned studio or science credit for the trip, documented native wildlife, and studied extinction theory and sustainability in the region. Ceremonial dances held by local Lakota Sioux tribes and meetings with local fur traders, ranchers, and miners gave students a chance to immerse themselves in the rich cultural history of the region. Read more at saic. edu/magazine.

Photo by William Harper

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Eric Leonardson’s Chicago

MY CHI CAGO

West Ridge Nature Preserve

If anyone can describe the sound of silence, it’s Eric Leonardson (MFA 1983). As founder of the Midwest Society of Acoustic Ecology and adjunct associate professor in the Sound department at SAIC, he teaches listening as a whole-body experience. In a fastpaced, technology-driven city, Leonardson consciously slows down by turning his ears to the environment.

This is his Chicago.

WEST RIDGE NATURE PRESERVE

THE SHORELINE IN ROGERS PARK

I went out one night in the rain to scout a site before [leading a sound walk there].

There were toads on the sidewalk. They didn’t make any sounds, just sat there like lumps of clay. But the sound of a coyote running through the grass startled me. I was surprised by that: a hidden entity, such a close encounter with a coyote. It jumped out of the grass, then ran away as I got closer.

The soundscape changes with the seasons. When there was ice on the edge of the lake, waves would slap against these ice mounds and send water up into the air with ice chunks. You can hear the water and ice tumbling down the edges of the mounds.

When the air’s really cold, it freezes to the mounds and builds them higher. If you’re close, you can hear little bits of ice in the water tumbling down the edges like little miniature avalanches.

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ELASTIC ARTS

LEGION PARK

It’s an artist-run space in Logan Square. Artists identify a need, pool their resources, and do all those things together that you don’t learn to do in art school.

The people who run it are very accessible. And there are different interests—Chicago house music converging with Chicago experimental music, jazz, electronic music. They all come together there, and people have poetry events, too. Elastic Arts has a multidisciplinary attitude that makes it special.

The North Shore Channel flows through this park on Chicago’s Northwest side, which connects to the Chicago River. There are a lot of birds there that you don’t normally see in other parts of the city. Some of those birds, like the kingfisher, you might hear over there, but you’re not going to see them in other places except along the river. ▪ To hear a podcast of this and other My Chicago interviews, visit saic.edu/magazine.

News

N EWS

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Wu Tsang (BFA 2004) received a 2018 MacArthur “genius” grant. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Wu Tsang Received 2018 MacArthur “Genius” Grant

SAIC Dominated Newcity’s Art 50 List

Filmmaker, performance artist, and SAIC alum Wu Tsang (BFA 2004) was named one of the 25 MacArthur Fellows for 2018 by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Every year the MacArthur Fellows Program provides unrestricted fellowships to individuals doing transformative work across a wide range of disciplines.

Tsang has been a visiting artist working with Low-Residency MFA students since 2014.

Newcity ʼs annual Art 50 issue was released featuring “Chicago’s artists’ artists—past, present, and future.”

Seventy-six percent of the list featured SAIC community members, including alums, faculty, and honorary degree

recipients. SAIC alum and lecturer in the School’s Photography department Rashayla Marie Brown (BFA 2015) was featured on the cover and selected as the publication’s “artist of the moment.” Other part-time faculty members who made the list include Alberto Aguilar, Alex Chitty (MFA 2008), Matthew Goulish, Richard Rezac, Edra Soto (MFA 2000), Mathew Wilson (MFA 1993), and Dan Devening.

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N EWS

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Amanda Williams, SAIC’s Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor, gave a Visiting Artists Program lecture on September 10.

Amanda Williams Named Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor

SAIC Awarded 2018 Organizational Grant from the Graham Foundation

SAIC’s Visiting Artists Program lecture series featured a diverse group of artists including Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor Amanda Williams, who is teaching a course in conjunction with her visiting professorship. Williams’ work with art and architecture draws attention to the political complexities of race, place, and value in cities.

SAIC and the University of Chicago were among the recipients of the 2018 organizational grants from the Graham Foundation. The two institutions will use the grant to continue their work from the Venice Architecture Biennale on what it means to be a citizen.

SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

Dimensions of Citizenship Comes to Chicago SAIC and the University of Chicago were selected by the US State Department to commission the US Pavilion’s exhibition Dimensions of Citizenship at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. The exhibit, which makes its US debut in Chicago from February 15 to April 27, will be on view at Wrightwood 659, a new gallery space designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando.

This presentation is made possible by Alphawood Foundation Chicago.

SAIC Hosted AICAD 2018 Symposium

SAIC hosted the 2018 Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD) Symposium Artists/ Designers/Citizens, from November 7 to 9. Artists/Designers/Citizens positioned the practice and study of art and design as central to the meaning, acts, and affinities known as citizenship.

SAIC students enrolled in Seems Real, On the Surface, a summer Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects course, had the opportunity to exhibit their work during the inaugural exhibit, Ando and Le Corbusier: Masters of Architecture, of the Tadao Ando-designed exhibition space, Wrightwood 659.

SAIC Made Waves at EXPO CHICAGO 2018

Romi Crawford Received the 2018 Jean Goldman Book Prize The recipient of this year’s Jean Goldman Book Prize is SAIC Professor Romi Crawford for her work The Wall of Respect: Public Art and Black Liberation in 1960’s Chicago. This annual prize goes to the author of the best book about the visual arts (art history, cultural studies, theory, or criticism) or to an editor who also contributed a significant essay to a book-length collection. It was presented by SAIC President Elissa Tenny and James Rondeau, president and Eloise W. Martin Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, at the annual Literary Lions Luncheon on November 29 at SAIC’s LeRoy Neiman Center.

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N EWS

Student Work Exhibited in Ando Exhibition

Gene Siskel Film Center Hosted Black Harvest Film Festival

Newcity’s Film 50 Celebrated SAIC Faculty and Alums

Newcity’s October 2018 “Film 50” issue celebrated the work of 50 individuals or collaborators who have helped shape Chicago’s film scene. SAIC community members featured include: Film, Video, New Media, and Animation faculty Melika Bass (MFA 2007) and Frédéric Moffet, chair of the department; Deborah Stratman (BFA 1990); Jennifer Reeder (MFA 1996); Lori Felker (MFA 2007); Laura Ann Harrison (SAIC 2014–17); Shengze Zhu (MFA 2017); Emily Esperanza (BFA 2014); and Molly Hewitt (SAIC 2010–14).

SAIC community members were once again an integral part of EXPO CHICAGO, Chicago’s international exposition of contemporary and modern art. Faculty and alums presented work at the SAIC booth, with galleries throughout the exhibition, and participated in a variety of EXPO programming. The School continued its partnership with EXPO to present /Dialogues, a series of panel discussions, conversations, and discourse.

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SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

THE SENSES are integral to making and experiencing artwork as shown in the work of SAIC alums like MacArthur Fellow Wu Tsang (BFA 2004), Robert Andrew Parker (BA 1952), and Alex Stark (BFA 2016). In her 2017 Sustained Glass exhibition at Antenna Space in China, Tsang explored touch in a video featuring choreography based on the communication between two moving bodies in physical contact. The exhibition also featured a performance and a series of stainedglass and light-box works.

Wu Tsang: Sustained Glass Wu Tsang’s first solo exhibition on mainland China, Sustained Glass, was a spatial installation. A filmmaker and visual artist, Tsang traverses a rich array of sites and weaves poetic sensibilities into her socially engaged practice.

What sustains her fluid movements between documentary, fiction, and activism are her genuine concerns for disparate modes

of sociality and the hope that marginalized people gain survival in their collective loss through new forms of communion and resistance.

Opposite and below: exhibition views of Wu Tsang’s (BFA 2004) Sustained Glass at Antenna Space in China

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We hold where study, a twochannel video developed in collaboration with the poet Fred Moten, stands in dialogue with a series of stained-glass and light-box works. Spooky Distancing II is a performance by Tsang and collaborator boychild, which holds the artist’s rumination on animacy and movement.

As Parker slowly loses his sense of sight, he continues to create paintings of real and imagined places and objects. Meanwhile Stark uses his unique double vision and color perception to create paintings that share his vision with viewers.

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Above: Wu Tsang (BFA 2004), Window #1, stained glass, 2017. Opposite: Window #2, stained glass, 2017. Images courtesy of the artist and Antenna Space in China

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SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

Left: Robert Andrew Parker (BA 1952), Dog Fight with Bug, 2017 (post-macular), watercolor and ink on paper, 18 × 14 ¾ inches. Center: Capt. Lt. David Reid’s 2nd Victory, 2001 (pre-macular), hand-colored etching, 24 × 18 inches. Opposite: Plane Disappearing into Fog, 2017 (post-macular), watercolor on paper, 18 × 13 ¾ inches

Robert Andrew Parker Despite losing much of his vision to macular degeneration, Robert Andrew Parker continues to paint at age 91.

He still brings a spirit of play to his work. Though he can no longer see well enough to read, go ice fishing, or draw from a model, he still paints in his Connecticut studio every day, summoning the subjects that have long held his fascination: real and imagined creatures, warplanes, warships, faces, and landscapes from his many travels.

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Alex Stark Alex Stark sees the world differently than most people.

After experiencing a brain tumor as a child that partially paralyzed him, he uses his double vision and unique perception of color in his work, turning his squiggly lines into natural forms like bushes, rocks, and trees. He creates spaces that depict exterior moments and incorporates them into a cerebral space.

He identifies with birds’ unique perspective of flight, allowing him to consider different ways of seeing. He depicts elements symbolizing transformation, like portals and pools of water, often underneath starry skies. His narratives convey moments of sensitivity, selfreflection, and curiosity. ▪

Opposite: Alex Stark (BFA 2016) In Exploration of the Existential, 2018, acrylic on paper, 30 × 22 inches.

Top: With Aspirations at the Utmost, 2018, colored pencil and gouache on 30 × 22 inch paper. Bottom: In Moments Unwinding, 2018, acrylic on paper, 30 × 22 inches.

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Uncompromised Continuing Studies course inspires Zosia Alexandra Carden to pursue graduate studies

CONTI N UI N G STUDI ES

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“IN MY COUNTRY, if you tell your father that you want to be an artist, you will be a big drain,” Zosia Alexandra Carden explains. “He didn’t allow me to go to art school. I had to study engineering. But I didn’t give up.”

Seeking political asylum, Carden and her husband moved to the United States more than three decades ago. “At that time Poles lived with curfews, dead phone lines, censored personal mail, and armed troops on the streets,” she explains.

Born in Poland in the 1960s, Carden says that many people In Chicago she worked and there wanted to make art, raised her two sons. but “we knew that the art Recently, she watched them might be compromised because pursue graduate education. it could be regulated by the “I was so jealous.” Then government. When you make she realized she could have art, you want to feel free the same opportunity. to do or say anything.”

In 2016, Carden enrolled in SAIC’s Continuing Studies program and began working with instructor in the Contemporary Practices

SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

department Megan Euker (BFA 2005, MFA 2007).

At the beginning of each class, Euker asks why students are there. “The answers from the older population are ‘I always did art,’ and then they either had to work or have kids, and they always felt like something was missing,” Euker says.

This was an opportunity for Carden—who was typically reserved—to fill up a room with her art and her presence.

“She was very quiet some of the time, but when it was her chance to have a platform, she’d bring in these giant

paintings and fill an entire room with them. She had a fearlessness about her,” says Euker. “[Euker] was the right person to push me a little bit farther,” Carden says. “And then I would explode.”

After her experiences with Euker and Continuing Studies, Carden enrolled in SAIC’s Low-Residency MFA program, where she is surrounded by students of all ages, nationalities, and life experiences. For Carden, the time before art school was a countdown until her creative life and daily life could become one and the same. ▪ Learn more about Continuing Studies courses for youth, teens, and adults at saic.edu/cs.

At Mott St with Nate Chung (MFA 2009)

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“We celebrate the process. We open up the walls so you can look into the kitchen [and see] the raw material. In a sense, you participate in your own meal, in your own experience.”

WHERE I WORK

“The vision of the space was to use the momentum that’s here. When you walk in, it’s like a garage or someone’s basement where you have band practice.

It’s comfortable. When you have that, when you have good music, then you have that energy, that vitality.”

FOUNDED BY NATE CHUNG (MFA 2009) and three partners in 2013, Mott St has become a standout in the competitive fine dining scene in Chicago.

But with its humble roots as a former hot dog stand, the 2017 Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant is a stark contrast from many of its peers. Chung and his partners seek to create a sensory experience. Guests are transported from the busy, concrete sidewalk of Ashland Avenue, one of Chicago’s biggest arteries,

into a warm but industrial space with exposed vents, white brick walls, and views of the kitchen and the food.

Mott St is intentional in activating the senses. From the bold street art covering the 72-seat restaurant to the soft, maple tables to the dim, sexy lights and loud, energetic music, Chung and his team put on a performance, and in doing so, diners come away with an experience made better by each guest. “They take it beyond what I can, and then we dance together, and then it’s magic,” says Chung. ▪

Street Style At Sullivan Galleries’ Fall Shows

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STREET STYL E

ORANGE? Yeah, that’s right, orange. The color was sprinkled throughout the opening reception of the Sullivan Galleries’ four shows this fall. Here are our editors’ picks of some of the best street style from the night of September 28.

Cherrie Yu

JINLU LUO

MFA 2020

CHERRIE YU

MFA 2019

Why this outfit?

I was at an audition, so I wanted to wear something comfortable.

What is your personal style?

High school.

Jinlu Luo Why this outfit?

It was up to the weather, so I chose warm tones.

What is your personal style?

Always slightly overdressed.

BLAIRE BROWN

BFA 2021 Why this outfit?

This Peruvian alpaca sweater is warm and reminds me of New York, where I’m from. I got it at a craft fair there.

Why this outfit?

The sweater is sentimental. It’s from my great-grandma who passed.

Whenever I wear it I feel connected to her.

Favorite part?

The back of my jacket; my friend made it.

What is your personal style?

As many patterns and colors as will reflect the sun.

GABRIEL CHALFIN-PINEY

MA 2020

SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

Favorite part?

The jacket because it’s one of the first that I cut up and the sweater because it’s sentimental.

What is your personal style?

I find a way to make statement pieces come together. ▪

EXPERT EXCHANGE, hosted by SAIC’s Career and Professional Experience (CAPX) office, gives students a chance to engage individually with alums, creative professionals, and Chicago business leaders to gain industry insight and career advice. Erin Toale (Dual MA 2013) is a curator, writer, arts administrator, and artist who works to make contemporary art accessible to all audiences. She was the guest curator for the Hyde Park Art Center’s Center Program, organizing The Art of Being Dangerous — an exhibition focused on Chicago artists who take risks and push boundaries. This is an excerpt from our conversation with her.

What did you study at SAIC? I studied Art History, Theory, and Criticism and Arts Administration and Policy in the dual MA program. I had been organizing shows in Philadelphia and Seattle, and I decided I really wanted to take the next step with my writing and communications development to qualify me to work in museums and arts organizations.

Which skills are most necessary for arts professionals?

Writing in different contexts. I wrote and still write for Newcity, which is great because it’s short-form pop culture versus writing a master’s thesis in art history, another skill set that has served me in different ways.

Writing is a muscle. You have to develop it, and you have to keep going to the writing gym, or it will atrophy.

Describe your latest curatorial project.

The Art of Being Dangerous was a unique show in that the artists were preselected by the Center Program, and then I organized the show. Normally a curator selects specific artists and creates the exhibition based on their work. It was a great challenge to work with 19 different artists. Over the course of six months, we spent a lot of time together as a group, and that’s really where the show congealed—where the ideas came together and where our value systems and what we prioritize as makers started to align.

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CA R EER CON V ERSATI ON S

Expert Advice from Erin Toale (Dual MA 2013)

What is important about the work you do?

To work in the arts, to be given a voice, to be given a platform is a great gift.

I value relationships, civic engagement, and social progress. I try to work with people regardless of age, gender, ability, sexual orientation. I choose to lift up and give voice and platform to queer artists, women, and people of color.

What advice can you give to aspiring curators?

Show up on time. Prepare. Don’t have a narrow vision of what success can look like. Don’t discount the smaller organizations and the work that they do. You get to do a lot more at the smaller places, not just for yourself, but for the artists you’re working with. ▪

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A B OUT A WORK

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In the museum with Nenette Luarca-Shoaf Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled”

(Portrait of Ross in L.A.) YOU REACH YOUR HAND into the mass of candies piled in the corner of the Art Institute of Chicago museum gallery. You pull one out, running your hands over its smooth texture. As you bring it to your lips, its faint aroma awakens your senses before you taste its sweetness. You swallow more than just the candy; the other museum goers, the curator, the artist, and his lover all become a part of you.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) is no ordinary piece of art. One-hundred and seventy-five pounds of hard candies represent the weight of Gonzalez-Torres’ former lover, Ross Laycock, who died of complications of AIDS in 1991.

Visitors to the gallery are invited to take pieces from the pile of candy; the loss of its weight mirroring the wasting away of a sickly body. The sweet and colorful joys of candy paradoxically express the artist’s pain of continuing to live beyond Laycock, though he too passed from the same affliction just a few years later in 1996.

SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

According to Nenette Luarca-Shoaf, director of adult learning, associate curator of interpretation at the Art Institute of Chicago, and lecturer in the Museum Education Graduate Scholars Program, Portrait of Ross in L.A. is an intrinsically multisensory and participatory work of art. Every visitor to the gallery has the power to transform the work of art, the choice to take from it or leave it alone. You do not need to have an in-depth knowledge of the artist or art history to engage with the piece. As LuarcaShoaf notes, “there’s always this kind of joy, common joy, that people have in being able to eat a piece of candy.”

The many layers of Portrait of Ross in L.A. make it an ideal example for Luarca-

Shoaf’s lessons in object-based learning.

She invites her students to “sift their hands in the pile and feel how heavy it is.” They take in the work with sight and touch, finding meaning in its placement on the ground and the visual impact of its brightness. They question what it means that “the weight of this work changes depending on how many people have taken the candy that day and that week,” and how that might be “a metaphor for the ideal weight of Ross, Gonzalez-Torres’ partner.”

Works like Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) exemplify the many ways that art expresses history while evoking personal feelings from its audiences. The “multisensory access of smelling and tasting and touching is a wonderful way to access memory, to reflect on one’s relationships over time and people that are important to you.” ▪ Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), 1991

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E MERGI N G WRI TER

Emerging Writer Justin Howard Rosier (MFA 2018)

public editor for critics. “So much of THE BEAUTY OF AN MFA PROGRAM journalism is becoming more opinionis time. Time to work on your writing. based, so there’s no public apparatus Time to work with other writers. Time to other than letters to the editor to contend develop and strengthen your craft. Justin with opinion pieces,” says Rosier.

Howard Rosier (MFA 2018) made the “The idea of it is to hold opinion makers most of his time in SAIC’s MFA Writing accountable, so if we don’t like a critic program by launching a magazine and or if we have an issue with the coverage expanding a short story into a novel that asks what it means to be Black in America. around a certain topic, we write longform essays about them.”

One of two $10,000 James Raymond Following the launch and debut of Critics’ Nelson Fellowship recipients, Rosier has Union at this year’s EXPO CHICAGO, used the award to foster his practice as a writer and a critic. In his final year in the Rosier plans to complete his novel, which deals with the death of a young man MFA program, Rosier along with SAIC from Chicago’s south suburbs. “It’s about classmates created Critics’ Union, a race and class,” says Rosier. “Is it possible magazine that aspires to serve as the to really know a person, or is it possible to grow and change past a community’s perception of you?”

If there’s a code, Rosier is cracking it.

Time spent working diligently in the MFA program led to two fellowships; he also received the Alan Cheuse Emerging Critics Fellowship furthering his opportunities to publish. The James Raymond Nelson Fellowship has allowed Rosier the time to focus on the completion of his novel, and time to work on Critics’ Union—now available at SAIC’s Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection and Quimby’s, a Chicago bookstore. ▪

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Amy Honchell on Her Obsessions (MFA 2002)

MY OB SESSI ON S

Suculents

Baking

‘80s Pop AMY HONCHELL (MFA 2002), associate provost of academic planning, is obsessed with rocks, plants, and particles. The Fiber and Material Studies alum applies her creativity to everything she does from innovating new curricula to tending to the succulents that have overtaken her office. Her own art practice is rooted in photography and sculptural installations, but has evolved in recent years to include painting and drawings that shine. “Right now, I’m really interested in gold leaf and glitter,” says

SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

Honchell of her paintings, which she recently exhibited at Oh!klahomo performance space in Chicago. When she’s not making art or supporting faculty, Honchell is perusing the basements of rock shops or baking her nectarine and berry mascarpone tart with a gingersnap crust. Here’s a look at what energizes her in and outside the office.

COLLECTING I took a vacation to the Upper Peninsula and stayed on the shore of Lake Superior.

There’s a big agate region up there where you can find these stones that, to me, are natural incarnation of the shapes I was always making in

Twin Peaks

my art. In my office, I have a lot of succulents and I have a lot of rocks. They go together.

I realized that I do well with plants that thrive on benign neglect.

WATCHING I finished the most recent season of The Great British Bake Off because I love baking. I recently rewatched the first two seasons of Twin Peaks, because I felt like it was time.

I really like sports, too, which is my secret art school confession. There was a secret SAIC fantasy football league that I won a few years ago. I do think there are a lot of problems with the

sport and criticism that I understand, but there’s something that I enjoy about it.

LISTENING I am an unashamed ‘80s pop fan. I love Wham!, and I remember crying the day I heard they broke up back in ‘86.

My husband is a musician who has been involved with the Chicago-based band, the Lesser Birds of Paradise.

So, I listen to them, but I still really love Duran Duran, Prince, Erasure, Dolly Parton, and Madonna. I have a widereaching eclectic musical taste, but for some reason when I’m in my studio, ‘80s pop really works for me. ▪

Exploring Belonging Students exhibit work in response to 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale

FFI IEL ELDDTRI TRIPP

A COHORT OF 20 SAIC students was among the international community of architects and designers who flocked to Venice this past spring for its renowned architecture biennale. Not mere tourists, the students lived in the City of Canals for three weeks to install a satellite exhibit in response to the School’s first-ever commission of the US Pavilion and its curatorial theme, Dimensions of Citizenship, which included SAIC Associate Professor Andres L. Hernandez (MA 2004) and world-renowned architect Jeanne Gang (HON 2013). For many of the students, it was the first time they exhibited their artwork outside the School, a prestigious debut.

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Called Designer Artist Citizen Site: Exploring Belonging, the studio class taught by Ann Lui, assistant professor in the Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects (AIADO) and co-curator of the US Pavilion and Iker Gil, the US Pavilion’s associate curator and AIADO lecturer, met with the students the semester before the trip to prepare the exhibit.

Lui and Gil recall their plan was ambitious: to develop and build an entire exhibit in a single semester. “The stakes were high,” reflects Lui, “but the compressed timeline became a catalyst for really creative thinking by the students.”

They selected the Cultural Flow Zone at the Università Ca’Foscari to house the exhibit, and focused each student on creating a large hanging banner to show their work, including maps, drawings, and slogans, and a new “artifact” of cultural significance. The catch: it had to fit in each person’s suitcase. Projects addressed diverse contexts of belonging, from national and gender identities to citizenship in the art world.

“I’ve been to Venice a few times before the class but always within the tourist infrastructure,” says Andrea Hunt, a second-year master’s candidate in architecture. “This time I spent two weeks there with the students, my closest friends. It was really revelatory. It freed me from my prejudices.”

By day the students attended panel discussions and programming at the

US Pavilion, and by night they explored Venice’s ancient nooks and canals.

Sometimes they would picnic by the water, talking for hours about art and life until the Italian sun set over the red-tiled rooftops. After their stay, the students left Venice with both cultural and professional souvenirs. ▪ Photo: Reception at Designer Artist Citizen Site: Exploring Belonging, a student exhibition at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale SPRING 2019

Th e M e d i u m I s th e M e n u

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by Jason Foumberg (MA 2006) SPRING 2019

THE MED I UM I S THE MEN U

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THE RECENT FOODIE REVOLUTION taught us that a wine pairing, snifter of scotch, or a pint of beer can be as heady as an expressionist painting.

In this environment, a new artistic role has emerged: the curator of taste, one who cultivates sensual, thoughtful, and social experiences beyond the glass.

Unsurprisingly, many of today’s top sommeliers, mixologists, and brewers found their start in the art world—but the conversation around art and alcohol has come a long way since absinthe was the spirit du jour for ToulouseLautrec and his hedonistic entourage.

“You can sit down with a nice cocktail that was made with care, and it can really transport you,” says Joseph Hernandez, deputy editor of food and dining at the Chicago Tribune, who has observed a shift in local cocktail culture toward “slowing down and enjoying complexity.”

Celebrated as sommelier of the year

by Food and Wine Magazine in 2017 for being a “perpetual student” of his craft, Arthur Hon (SAIC 1999–2004) composes climactic, surprising, even emotional moments in his wine tasting menus at Union Square Café in New York City, where guests can follow fried chicken with champagne—“but you can’t have an intense moment all the time,” says Hon; “there needs to be a duality at play and a return to something familiar during the tasting journey. I get really into creating reactions for my guests. ‘What do I want them to feel?’” he asks himself.

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“[Conceptual art] asked ‘why is it art, and what defines art as art?’ That is the same way I think about wine. Everything is purposeful, and I find that very freeing.” –Arthur Hon Hon knows that aesthetic experiences begin with the senses but end with the mind. Conceptual art was a favorite subject for Hon at SAIC. “It asked ‘why is it art, and what defines art as art,’” he reflects. “That is the same way I think about wine. Everything is purposeful, and I find that very freeing,” he says.

While studying visual communication and graphic design at SAIC, Hon worked at restaurants by night. He soon realized that the problem-solving techniques practiced during studio critiques with his teachers and peers translated well to wine, a business that values social acumen and creative intentions. Hon worked as beverage director and sommelier at the Michelin-star rated Sepia in Chicago for 10 years before relocating to New York in 2017.

“I have always felt I was an outsider looking in,” reflects Hon, “because being a wine professional was never really what I planned on doing at all.” Having studied painting, drawing, and classical piano from an early age, Hon was headed toward an artistic life. “Composition

came naturally to me,” he says, which today translates to matching wines with food, and even the unique palates of diners with individual varietals. “In my heart I’m still an artist,” says Hon. Contributing to a field with thousands of years of history means one must acknowledge that history while championing its contemporary issues.

This is how Annie Beebe-Tron (MFA 2015) approaches cocktail mixology at the renowned Macanese restaurant Fat Rice in Chicago where they are beverage director. After interning in the studio of New York artist Janine Antoni, who has famously sculpted chocolate, Beebe-Tron says their own artwork was often rooted in sensations of touch and texture. They studied time-arts like film and performance which, they say, are forms of empathy: “A great film helps us live someone else’s life for two and a half hours.”

Previous page: Arthur Hon (SAIC 1999–2004), assistant wine director, Union Square Café

Annie Beebe-Tron (MFA 2015), beverage director at Fat Rice SPRING 2019

THE MED I UM I S THE MEN U

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Gabriel Magliaro (BFA 2003), founder of Half Acre Beer Company

Beebe-Tron took a second job as host to make ends meet while working at an art gallery. “To be honest,” Beebe-Tron reflects, “when I traveled around the world, I would be more interested in restaurants than the galleries. I really understand a place through its food and beverage. And I would connect to people that way by striking up a conversation.”

Now Beebe-Tron’s cocktail program at Fat Rice is inspired by those travels. They highlight spirits from India and China, countries that are not traditionally canonized in the martini-centric history of cocktails.

Working with the chef, Beebe-Tron gathers kitchen odds and ends, like unused herbs and citrus peels, to infuse house-made herbal spirits, thereby limiting the restaurant’s waste

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stream. Even their cocktail names are playful, like the International Mr. Leather, a nod to Chicago’s LGBTQ leather subculture. “It’s smoky and soft,” Beebe-Tron says of their invention.

A recent favorite find of theirs is sotol, “a cousin of mezcal that tastes like a hot dusty road from where I grew up in Arizona,” says Beebe-Tron. Seeking ever richer and deeper evocations of place through taste, they say, “I call them cocktails with an opinion. They have a mind of their own.” Beebe-Tron was recently featured in Bon Appétit magazine for their one-of-a-kind cocktails.

When Gabriel Magliaro (BFA 2003), founder of Half Acre Beer Company, began experimenting with home brewing after graduating from SAIC, little did he know that his pale ale would

become one of the most popular craft beers in Illinois. The creative process often stimulates Magliaro, a former glass blower who likens a perfect beer recipe to the discipline of documentary photography. “With a camera,” he says, “you directly convey what you see, and you get out of the way for your viewers.” The raw ingredients shine in Half Acre’s varietals like Daisy Cutter, known for its hoppy bite and prairielike aroma—Magliaro recommends drinking it in his outdoor beer garden.

Sketchbook Brewing Co. had a similar grassroots beginning. Cofounded by longtime SAIC professor and sound artist Shawn Decker, the Evanstonbased brewery initially took the form of a community art project, bringing together neighbors around live music,

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“We do a lot of sensory evaluation and trial and error, which is also what I do in my studio.” –Shawn Decker

conversation, and small-batch beer made with local ingredients. “Beer is our Art,” reads Sketchbook’s motto.

Decker credits the growth of his brewing business to adventurous drinkers seeking ever-stranger flavor combinations, like Sketchbook’s sour and sweet gose made with freshly pureed peaches.

“Our taproom becomes a testing ground because we can see what peoples’ responses are,” says Decker. “We do a lot of sensory evaluation and trial and error, which is also what I do in my studio.”

Decker, like Hon, is no stranger to conceptual art. Whether a work is seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted, art takes on new meaning when it is experienced by others. ▪

Professor Shawn Decker, founder of Sketchbook Brewing Co. SPRING 2019

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Sonic

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Worlds Artists and designers transform spaces and perception with sound.

BY BRONTĂ‹ MANSFIELD (MA 2017)

Parallel Studio, Exchange, 2016, interactive light installation at the Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon. Photo: Reina Solunaya

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SON I C WORL DS

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Nicolas Collins, trombone-propelled electronics in action, somewhere in Europe, late-1980s

famous novel. The composer John Cage THERE’S TECHNOLOGY IN Ray Bradbury’s created a piece titled 4’33” in which a 1953 science fiction novel Fahrenheit 451 that predicted something unimaginable in pianist sat at his instrument at a concert the era of turn-dial radios and black-and- hall in Woodstock, New York, for four minutes and 33 seconds without playing white televisions. “And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped a note. To Cage, the silence and all of the tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of sounds in the room–the shuffling of feet, music and talk and music and talk coming the wetting of lips, the nervous whispers– were the music, were the art. in,” Bradbury writes. Over a half century later, electronic sound is all around us: “Coming up in a world immediately after in our wireless earbuds, booming from Cage [made me realize] basically anything movie theater speakers, and stirring was possible,” says Professor Nic Collins, our emotions in retail and corporate chair of SAIC’s Sound department. environments. Bradbury’s imagined Collins is known for creating new world is here, and today’s artists and sounds by making his own instruments designers are taking us even further into and hacking into existing hardware. In the future by shaping the immersive his book, Handmade Electronic Music, sound experiences all around us.

Collins teaches readers how to create sound and music with things like selfSound has always been at the vanguard of new and alternate ways of experiencing constructed microphones and circuits.

Seeing the potential for breaking new the world. The medium of sound art has sonic ground all around, he even hacks its roots in a single performance in 1952, electronic children’s toys, turning them a year before Ray Bradbury published his

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Above and right: Parallel Studio, Exchange, 2016, interactive light installation at the Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon. Photos: Reina Solunaya

into instruments. Speaking about his own Nike, Adidas, and Nokia. The company is currently building audio for workspaces. work as a sound artist, Collins says, “I “A problem within open-office floor plans– never had to think about ‘Is it art? Is it which are ubiquitous now–is you can music? Is it for galleries?’” hear everyone talking around you, and This breakdown of the boundaries it’s distracting,” Rose explains. In the between artistic media paved the way past, offices would pipe in white noise to for the arrival of sound art in the ‘70s and mask the aural clutter, but Parallel Studio its flourishing in the ‘90s. It continues to creates sounds that move through a space. encourage sound artists to take new sonic “We can spatialize the sound so that ocean experiences outside the concert halls and waves crash across the floor plan galleries and into everyday life. of the office,” says Rose. “In one area, you might hear a bit of a light breeze “There’s a sense of sound surfacing in through grass. We can put a little creek culture,” Ethan Rose (MFA 2013) says. through the space and have a gentle “[Sound] is very conducive to the way sound of birds coming in and out at people are living at the moment. You can different times of day.” listen to a podcast while you’re working.

You can listen to sound while you’re on In contrast, Rose’s company also helps public transportation or walking down create immersive sensory experiences. the street.”

For the launch of a new Nike shoe, Rose collaborated on a pop-up: “You walk Rose runs Parallel Studio, a soundin, put on these shoes, walk over this focused design studio based in Portland, floor, and clouds are exploding under Oregon, that works with clients like

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Above and right: Austen Brown (MFA 2015), Left Blank for a Work Expressing Modern Feeling, 2018, embossed metal and sound

your feet on an LED screen. You turn a corner, and there’s a room full of feathers hanging from the ceiling. You go run on a treadmill in the next room, and there’s animated characters that are emulating your movements. Super over the top!” He laughs. “But our part was to bring in spatial audio and create unique soundtracks for each of those experiences.”

Another Sound department graduate, Austen Brown (MFA 2015), is interested not only in building sound for specific spaces, but transporting an audience to a particular time and place through his multisensory installations. “I’ve always been interested in notions of geography and urban planning and more theoretical ideas of space,” says Brown.

During graduate school, Brown traveled to North Dakota to record the sounds and stories of oil fields and the people who

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work them, then designed a multimedia installation capturing the socioeconomic ramifications of oil drilling in the rural state. With experience in building or installing sound in a variety of environments, Brown now works building exhibitions for SAIC’s Sullivan Galleries and continues to make his own work in a studio he built in his backyard.

His current project includes 30 metallic panels embossed with designs inspired by the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier.

They will be exhibited with recordings made in federal housing projects.

These visual and sonic experiences point to the future of sound as a medium.

Rose predicts that immersive sound experiences coupled with our culture of headphones, “[will] lead to a more augmented reality, a place where sound is going to very much become stronger in its media presence.” n

“[Sound] is very conducive to the way people are living at the moment. You can listen to a podcast while you’re working.

You can listen to sound while you’re on public transportation or walking down the street.”

—ETHAN ROSE

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Sound artist Austen Brown (MFA 2015) in his studio

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STUDENTS’ FUTURE CAREERS EMERGE AT THE DESIGN SHOW.

by Micco Caporale (MA 2018)

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DESI GN SHOW

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G R ADUATE SCH OOL AT SAIC is a time when students refine the themes and craft that drive a lifetime of work. For master’s candidates in Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects (AIADO); Design for Emerging Technologies; and Fashion, Body and Garment, the Design Show is where they envision their futures.

Over the course of their second year, students in these programs work with a team led by esteemed curators and three graduate curatorial assistants to build the Design Show, the culmination of their time at the School.

While SAIC gives students the skills and opportunities to prepare for the next phase in their creative lives, the Design Show is where they declare who they are as designers. It’s the moment when they begin their transition from the comforts of art school into the mature realities of designing for a broad audience.

After all, design is the art of everyday life. It’s the visual language coding our bodies, our landscapes, and our living spaces. That’s why the show is held at Block 37, a mixed-use space in the heart of downtown’s State Street shopping district. That’s also why the two-and-a-half-week event kicks off with public critiques, where students

present their work to an international audience of guest critics from the art-and-design world, as well as lay people. “ The students learned through conversations with the curators and exhibition staff to embrace that we live inside the web of design that comes out of our need for purpose— which can feel both like a constraint and a calling,”

“ The students learned through conversations with the curators and exhibition staff to embrace that we live inside the web of design that comes out of our need for purpose— which can feel both like a constraint and a calling.”

—Arnold J. Kemp

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Work by 2018 Master of Architecture recipients: Lina Alsharif (top) and Tyler Giroux (bottom)

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says Arnold J. Kemp, curator of the Design Show 2018 and dean of graduate studies.

of architecture and what’s important to people on both sides of the discussion.”

For Sarah Aziz (MArch 2017), those public critiques affirmed her work has meaning in the real world.

For AIADO Lecturer Ceci Gomez (MDes 2011), sharing her work with the public highlighted the interdisciplinary nature of her education. Coming from a computer science background, she thought of herself as a traditional designer.

“ The conversations I was having [in school] were very esoteric,” she recalls.

During visits home, she’d struggle to explain her studies to friends and family.

“When we were able to move the conversation to a public area in Chicago and engage with people outside of the profession, I felt like the concerns [we discussed in the classroom] were concerns everyone has to some degree.

Those public critiques gave me a well-rounded view

To complete her graduate project, she collected interviews from more than 600 Mexicans in both Mexico City and Chicago and made an assortment of items for spurring conversations about what it means to be Mexican.

She called the collection Objects of Identity.

Following the Design Show, the National Museum of Mexican Art invited her to add the work to its permanent collection. She was being recognized as an artist. While Gomez works as a senior UX designer for IBM today, she’s still designing around questions raised in her thesis research.

Master of Fine Arts students who demonstrated exceptional merit and creative potential.

Upon winning, Teague used the money to start BLKHaUS Studios, a firm where “design is an agent of change to uplift and transform marginal communities.” Now he’s part of the design team working on the Obama Presidential Center.

Norman Teague (MFA 2016) used his work in the Design Show to reflect on growing up Black in Chicago.

Because SAIC’s design programs don’t subscribe to any one aesthetic or philosophic position, graduate students are given room to take risks that can have great rewards. “The plasticity means faculty are very receptive to any radical ideas,” says Aziz. When the Design Show 2019 opens in May, graduate students know they’re doing more than celebrating expressions of their time at SAIC. They’re looking ahead to lifetimes of meaningful experiments.

“There were a lot of police and gang killings happening in the city at the time,” he says.

“It was a very emotional time for me, and I felt like there needed to be more positive Black stories told.”

That work was part of his application for the Edes Foundation Prize for Emerging Artists, a $30,000 award that was given to graduating

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Work by Darrel McKinney (MDes 2018)

SPRING 2019

Why I Give Suellen Rocca (BFA 1964, HON 2016)

WHY I GI V E

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SITTING ON A BENCH in the center of The Figure and the Chicago Imagists last fall, Suellen Rocca (BFA 1964, HON 2016) seemed right at home. Not only did she curate this exhibition at the Elmhurst Art Museum, she was one of the exhibiting artists and a founding member of the Hairy Who?, a group of SAIC alums whose work helped define the Chicago style of painting in the late ‘60s and influenced generations of artists who followed. With this exhibition and another dedicated to the Hairy Who? showing concurrently at the Art Institute of Chicago museum, Rocca was having a moment and loving it.

career as a painter and curator, Rocca always found ways to give back to the artistic community and others in need of expression and inspiration. She founded an organization called Art Excel to work with foster children through an Illinois Department of Children and Family Services program called Pathways to Development, which developed children’s interest in the arts by holding classes in churches, park houses, and other accessible locations. Rocca personally taught classes to foster children in the psychiatric unit of the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center Hospital.

“It’s been a wonderful gift, really, to have spent my life making art and being an artist,” says Rocca. “And I think it’s a gift to share that with other artists, and it’s a gift to share it with the public because I think artists bring a different kind of awareness to the public and help people see things in different ways.”

Her generous spirit extends back to SAIC as well where she is a longtime contributor to the Fund for SAIC (formerly the Annual Fund) which supports student financial aid, academic innovation, and cutting-edge technology for students. Reflecting on why she gives to SAIC, she says, “It’s very important for one generation to support the next generation. It’s generations and generations giving to each other, being influenced by each other through making work. It’s really your artistic family. And I feel that very much: this has been my artistic family.” ▪

Rocca’s career has been exceptional. From the time she was eight years old, she knew she was an artist, and was encouraged by a teacher to follow her passion. In addition to building a successful

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From tees to totes to pins with inside jokes, snag SAIC-branded apparel and accessories at our new online store.

saic.edu/store

S P or R I Nmore G 2019 Free domestic shipping on orders of $50

A RT SCEN E THE PROCESS

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Art Scene

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5 1. STEFFANI JEMISON (MFA 2009)CONVERSATIONS AT THE EDGE

SCHOOLOctober OF 4 / Gene Siskel Film THE ARTCenter INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

2. BEAUTIFUL/WORK THANK YOU CELEBRATION AND DONOR WALL UNVEILING

September 20 / SAIC campus

3. FALL OPENING RECEPTIONS

4. ALUMNI BREAKFAST AT EXPO CHICAGO

September 28 / Sullivan Galleries

September 28 / Navy Pier

5. ASSOCIATION OF INDEPENDENT COLLEGES OF ART AND DESIGN SYMPOSIUM HOSTED BY SAIC

November 7–9 / Chicago Loop

Matt Morris on His Process

THE PROCESS

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ARTIST AND PAINTING AND DRAWING Lecturer Matt Morris makes custom perfumes to conjure olfactory memories of family, friends, and personal events. Although his perfumes can be worn on the body, Morris prefers to place his scents within exhibitions that comprise atmospheric installation art. His intention of creating an “invisible art,” says Morris, is to evoke the experience of people who recently left a room, so their smell lingers.

He says the perfumes can conjure identities “that often fail to be represented in other ways,” a similar approach Morris takes as an abstract painter.

In a corner of his painting studio is a perfume organ, the historic term for an arrangement of essential oils, tinctures, and other aroma chemicals on shelves within easy reach of the perfumer. Morris sits among a hundred or more small bottles, what he calls “an elaborate palette of materials to work from,” and blends small amounts of the concentrated liquids using a

pipette and scale, precisely measuring his mixtures in grams. “I work on these in much shorter bursts than I do paintings,” says Morris, because the nose gets easily exhausted, and it can take hours for the mixtures to develop in the bottle.

Meanwhile, he researches the symbolism of certain scents across world cultures.

A particularly stirring perfume is Copycat Killer (A16), which Morris presented at Julius Caesar Gallery in Chicago in 2017, one of four fragrances “based on my memories of fragrances worn by me, my sibling, my mother, and my father,” he writes in the smelling notes. Its bouquet is a subtly sweet mix of food, like apricot and milk on a warm bed of sandalwood. The fragrance is boldly gorgeous, especially considering Morris uses it as a container of his own memories.

“How do we imbue something with meaning?” he reflects. ▪

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MEET THE GRA DUATI N G CL ASS

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Meet the Graduating Class

ASIYA TOORAWA (BFA 2019)

PASCALE JARVIS (BFA 2019)

Hometown: Ithaca, New York

Hometown: Longmeadow, Massachusetts and Phoenix

Three words that describe you: Caring, assertive, trustworthy Favorite class or teacher: Aram Han Sifuentes for the invaluable advice she gave me, and all the work she did as a person of color and faculty member in the Fiber and Material Studies department.

Most memorable moment at SAIC: The moment I felt completely comfortable being myself.

One thing you learned at SAIC: How to make political art.

What inspires you?

Reflection, grief, travels, memories, books, arguments One sentence that describes your work: A series of interdisciplinary efforts to reach some understanding about how to navigate the space that I occupy in this country as a Brown, Muslim woman.

Dream job: Running my own boutique hotel/artist residency program with my sister, because it would be a combination of all of my passions in life.

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Three words that describe you: Taurus-sun, Cancer-moon, Libra-ascending Favorite class or teacher: SAIC’s entire Writing department has been instrumental in my creative practice.

One thing you learned at SAIC: Now I know that a human body cannot carve wood for more than nine hours at a time without cramping up in all sorts of unexpected ways.

What inspires you?

I’m impacted by the ways people band together in the face of oppression.

One sentence that describes your work: My work combines minimalist text and imagery of the body to investigate the ways in which we inherit trauma from generations before us.

Dream job: A food critic. I love flavors, and I love words; getting paid to do both things would be the dream.

CARLOS SALAZAR-LERMONT (DUAL MA 2019) Hometown: Caracas, Venezuela Three words that describe you: Friendly, participative, reliable Favorite class or teacher: Kate Dumbleton, Rachel Weiss, Jim Elkins, Joseph Grigely, Lori Waxman, Daniel Quiles . . . you can tell they are having a blast when they teach.

Most memorable moment at SAIC: Receiving the Student Leadership Award in 2018 was amazing.

One thing you learned at SAIC: How artists in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, like Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres helped to develop awareness on important issues like the LGBTI community’s civil rights and HIV in the United States.

What inspires you?

Discontent.

One sentence that describes your work: A powerful encounter with the other.

Dream job: I would choose exactly what I’m doing right now: I would be an artist, curator, and producer. I would love going back to teaching as well.

GIANNELLA YSASI TAVANO (MA 2019) Hometown: Mexico City Three words that describe you: Passionate, disciplined, determined Favorite class or teacher: I loved participating in the Museum Education Graduate Scholars program at the Art Institute of Chicago museum.

Most memorable moment at SAIC: I loved the night at the museum when it was open only for grad students at orientation and realizing I’ll have two more years of having the museum as a backyard!

One thing you learned at SAIC: So much about social practice in the arts! And also getting multiple examples of the vast possibilities of being an artist and creative professional in the world.

What inspires you?

Being surrounded by creative minds and passionate people.

One sentence that describes your work: My work advocates for performing arts education, looking at ways in which the body can become part of the conversation to create new ways of thinking about citizenship and social justice.

Dream job: Ballet dancer, always!

Class Notes

Rashayla Marie Brown (BFA 2015), Yvette Mayorga (MFA 2016), Leonard Suryajaya (MFA 2015), and Raelis Vasquez (BFA 2018) were announced as creative ambassadors for Art Design Chicago.

Jasmine Chong (BFA 2012) celebrated her third successful show and the debut of her fall/ winter 2018 line at New York Fashion Week this past fall.

Stephanie Cristello (BFA 2013) was featured in Michigan Avenue magazine discussing her new role as artistic director for EXPO CHICAGO and her time at SAIC. The Propeller Fund’s 2018 grant awardees included Sky Cubacub (BFA 2015), Lindsey French (MFA 2013), Ivan Lozano (MFA 2011), Compton Q (BFA 2015), Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez (BFA 2009), Greg Ruffing (MA 2017), Willy Smart (MA 2016), Samantha Spencer (BFA 2002), Ruby T (MFA 2016), Jake Vogds (BFA 2014), Sadie Woods (MFA 2016), and Latham Zearfoss (BFA 2008).

The University of Illinois at Chicago’s Gallery 400 exhibition, Chicago Disability Activism, Arts, and Design: 1970s to Today, included work

by Sky Cubacub (BFA 2015), Riva Lehrer (SAIC 1993– 95), Jude Conlon Martin (BFA 1993, MFA 1998), Bill Shannon (BFA 1996), Andy Slater (BFA 2015), and Sandi Yi (SAIC 1996).

Grace DuVal (MDes 2015) was awarded the Dame Suzie Moncrieff Award at the 2018 World of Wearable Art awards ceremony in Wellington, New Zealand.

Kate Hampel (MFA 2011), Haerim Lee (Post-Bac 2015, MFA 2018), Frances Lightbound (MFA 2016), Kellie Romany (MFA 2011), Nancy Lu Rosenheim (MFA 2006), Brittney Leeanne Williams (SAIC 2008–09), and Udita Upadhyaya (MFA 2016) had work in the group show The Art of Being Dangerous at the Hyde Park Art Center in October, curated by Erin Toale (Dual MA 2013).

Sophie Lucido Johnson (MFA 2017) did a reading at Women & Children First bookstore from her new book Many Love: A Memory of Polyamory and Finding Love(s).

Minjung Michelle Kim (MDes 2016) launched Mizel Kids, a program offering fashion accessory design classes for kids in her home studio in Chicago.

Yvette Mayorga (MFA 2016).

Photo: Kevin Penczak

Chicago magazine recently featured Yvette Mayorga (MFA 2016) who discussed her work and exhibition at Roman Susan in Chicago.

The Birmingham Times included Erin Mitchell (BFA 2011) in its “Birmingham Artists to Watch” series.

Mitchell recently participated in the Birmingham Art work Festival, and two pieces from her Kinship collection debuted on the Fox television network’s fifth-season premiere of Empire.

Guadalupe Rosales’ (MFA 2016) solo exhibition Echoes of a Collective Memory, which celebrated ‘90s Latin culture, took place this winter at the Vincent Price Art Museum in Los Angeles.

Cassie Tompkins (BFA 2010) is the featured artist for Mana Contemporary Chicago’s Five Works project series.

Daily Sabah Arts released an article featuring Sarp Yavuz’s (MFA 2015) solo exhibition, Curse of the Forever Sultan, at the Hüsrev Kethüda Hamam in Istanbul.

Xiaorui Zhu-Nowell (BFA 2014) was promoted to assistant curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

CL ASS N OTES

2010s

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2000s Newcity’s 2018 “Film 50” issue celebrated individuals who have helped shape Chicago’s film scene. Among those featured were Melika Bass (MFA 2007), Emily Esperanza (BFA 2014), Lori Felker (MFA 2007), Laura Ann Harrison (SAIC 2014– 17), Molly Hewitt (SAIC 2010–14), Jennifer Reeder (MFA 1996), Deborah Stratman (BFA 1990), and Shengze Zhu (MFA 2017).

Eric Garcia’s (MFA 2009) book, Drawing on Anger, was unveiled during an event at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.

Joshua Grotto (BFA 2000) was among a group of artists selected to provide artwork for the Annex | Murals initiative at Hotel Chicago West Loop in association with its one-year anniversary as a dual-purpose arts venue.

Irena Jurek (BFA 2004) curated the exhibition Alive with Pleasure! at Asya Geisberg Gallery in New York City.

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Above: George Kokines (BFA 1959), Labyrinth Wall, c. 1993, oil on cement and steel mesh.

Courtesy of Anna Miller Below: Camille Collins (MFA 1999),The Exene Chronicles, cover design

by Danikqwa Rambert and cover art by Crystal White

James Kao’s (BFA 2004, MFA 2006) solo exhibition, James Kao: Starlight, was held at boundary gallery in Chicago this past September.

Annie Novotny (BFA 2004, MA 2019) was a participating artist in the Beverly Art Walk in Chicago.

Angel Otero (BFA 2007, MFA 2009) and Nyugen Smith (MFA 2016) had their work featured in Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago at Columbia University’s Wallach Art Gallery in New York City.

PBS Newshour reported that Trevor Paglen’s (MFA 2002) Orbital Reflector sculpture would be launched into space from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California in midNovember.

Karen Tam (MFA 2002) had work featured in the group exhibition OMG, it’s a Party! at Vtape in Toronto.

Scheherazade Tillet (MA 2005), cofounder of Chicagobased national nonprofit A Long Walk Home, moderated a town hall at SAIC with #MeToo movement founder Tarana Burke to discuss the safety and freedom of Black women in Chicago.

Natalie Wood’s (BFA 2004) solo exhibition Natural Phenomenon opened last July

SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

at the Andrew Freedman Home in New York City where she was an artist in residence.

1990s John Bankston’s (MFA 1990) solo exhibition The Sky Above Us at Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles was reviewed by Art and Cake magazine.

Amy Butts (MFA 1998) was announced as a new teaching artist at the Marco Island Center for the Arts, which is celebrating its 50th year in Marco Island, Florida.

Camille Collins (MFA 1999) was interviewed by Color Lines about her recently released debut novel, The Exene Chronicles.

Lora Fosberg (MFA 1991) had work in the exhibition What Is Not Is Isn’t Is at Linda Warren Projects in Chicago.

Jacob Hashimoto’s (BFA 1996) installation The Eclipse was featured on Governor’s Island in New York City.

Jessica Jackson Hutchins (Post-Bac 1997, MFA 1999) participated in the group show Mother Sky at Boesky West in Aspen, Colorado.

Michelle LaFoe (Post-Bac 1992) and partner Isaac Campbell’s groundbreaking building design for Scott Hall at Carnegie Mellon University was featured in the book Form and Dichroic Light.

Sharon Louden (BFA 1988) was named the artistic director of visual arts at the Chautauqua Institution in New York.

Curator Monique Meloche (SAIC 1991–94) and artists Sanford Biggers (MFA 1999) and Rashid Johnson (SAIC 2003–04, HON 2018) were featured in artnet News about Meloche’s role in nurturing many well-known artists.

Damon Reed (BFA 1999) was featured in an article by the Chicago Tribune for his new mural at the GibbsMorrison Cultural Center in Evanston, Illinois.

Jason Salavon (MFA 1997) and Jan Tichy (MFA 2009) are among four artists involved in a Riverwalk-facing video wall along the Merchandise Mart facade as part of Art on theMART’s inaugural project, which was curated by Cynthia Noble (MA 1996).

The New York Times highlighted the podcast, Adventures in New America, created and written

by Stephen Winter (BFA 1991) and collaborator Tristan Cowen.

1980s Catherine Edelman (MFA 1987) was interviewed by Chicago Gallery News.

In Memoriam

Ellen Holtzblatt (BFA 1983) had an exhibition, Prairie and Tundra: A Stranger in the Land, at the Jewish Federation of St. Joseph Valley in South Bend, Indiana.

Michiko Itatani’s (SAIC 1983–91) solo exhibition Shadows of the Mind was held at Gallery Y in Chicago.

Dread Scott (BFA 1989) contributed to a New York Times op-ed about the aftermath of confederate statues titled “Monuments for a New Era.”

1970s Nancy Bowen (BFA 1978) had her solo exhibition, For Each Ecstatic Instant, at the Kentler Drawing Space in New York City in September.

Ellen Sandor (MFA 1975, HON 2014) co-edited New Media Futures: The Rise of Women in the Digital Arts, and participated in Herstory: Digital Innovations Symposium in celebration of the book.

1960s Elizabeth Murray (BFA 1962, HON 1992) was the subject of American Masters, a one-hour documentary series on PBS.

1950s Late alum, George Kokines (BFA 1959), was honored with his first retrospective, George Kokines: Layers Revealed, at the National Hellenic Museum in Chicago this past September.

The exhibition was curated

by Jacqueline Wayne Guite (MA 2010) and installed by Bryce Walborn (BFA 2015).

The second episode of WTTW Chicago’s four-part series Art and Design in Chicago, “The Black Metropolis of Art” featured the work of several SAIC alums including Jae Jarrell (SAIC 1959–61), Wadsworth Jarrell (DIP 1958), Kerry James Marshall (HON 2017), Archibald Motley Jr. (SAIC 1918, HON 1980), Kiela Smith-Upton (BFA 1993), and Gerald Williams (BFA 1951), among others. The final episode of the series “Off the Grid” was hosted by Miguel Aguilar (MA 2011) and included Audrey Niffenegger (BFA 1985) among others.

1920s Late alum, Todros Geller (SAIC 1918–23), had his first solo exhibition, Strange Worlds, at the Spertus Institute in Chicago.

Photo by Elyse Benenson

Irving Petlin (BFA 1956) was an internationally renowned master pastel artist, painter, and activist. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

Petlin exhibited in the Paris Biennale (1961), the Whitney Biennial (1973), and the Venice Biennale (1982).

Rita Price (BFA 1982) was an accomplished printmaker who taught at the North Shore Art League for 20 years.

She also led SAIC’s alumni association for several years.

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Elizabeth “Betsy” Rupprecht (BFA 1954, MFA 1965) was professor emerita at SAIC where she taught from 1960–2014 in the Department of Painting and Drawing. Her paintings have been shown at the Illinois State Museum, the Grand Rapids Public Museum, the Lubeznik Center for the Arts, and Roots and Culture among other venues.

Fred A. Akard (SAIC 1952) Kate Lindholm (MFA 2009) Beatrice “Buddy” C. Mayer (HON 2012) Rosemary T. Michalec (BFA 1981) Dorothy T. Replinger (BA 1945) E. W. Ross (MFA 1980) Richard E. Savin (BFA 1952, BA 1960) Mason M. Seglin (BFA 1953) Robert Lee Skaggs (DIP 1953) Margaret S. Watkins (SAIC 1945) Raymond C. Weir (SAIC 1964–75)

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Exhibitions

Exhibitions at SAIC are a significant resource for the School community and the city at large. The Sullivan Galleries, SITE Galleries, and other temporary locations on and off campus are engaged as sites of interaction, experimentation, and dialogue among students, faculty, and alums, as well as places for collaboration with Chicago’s artists and other cultural institutions. Exhibitions are free and open to the public

Lectures

Spring Undergraduate Exhibition March 9–29 Reception: Saturday, March 9, 12:00–6:00 p.m.

edu/sitegalleries.

MFA Show April 27–May 15 Reception: Friday, April 26, 7:00–9:00

SULLIVAN GALLERIES 33 S. State St., 7th floor saic.edu/exhibitions 312.629.6635 Gallery Hours Tuesday–Saturday, 11:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.

Master of Arts in Art Therapy and Counseling Exhibition: The Art of Connection and The Spaces Between January 26–February 9 Reception: Friday, January 25, 7:00–9:00 p.m.

Henrik Vibskov and Ingri Fiksdal January 26–February 9 Presented in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

p.m.

MFA Show 2018. Left: Jenna Boyles Right: Tsailing Tseng

Low-Residency MFA Show July 12–28 Reception: Thursday, July 11, 6:00–8:00 p.m.

SITE GALLERIES Founded in 1994, SITE is a studentrun organization at SAIC for the exhibition of student work. SITE has two gallery spaces: SITE Sharp and SITE Columbus.

In addition to curating 11 exhibitions per year, SITE hosts installation workshops, proposal reviews, and a summer residency among other programming.

SITE Sharp 37 S. Wabash Ave., suite 106 SITE Columbus 280 S. Columbus Dr., room 103

Ingri Fiksdal, STATE. Photo © Anders Lindén.

Costumes Henrik Vibskov

SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

Gallery Hours Monday–Friday, 11:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.

Saturday, 11:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.

Alternate hours by appointment For a schedule of exhibitions, visit saic.

VISITING ARTISTS PROGRAM

Aaron Williamson, Demonstrating the World, 2014.

Photo: Manuel Vason

Aaron Williamson Tuesday, March 19, 6:00 p.m.

The Art Institute of Chicago, Rubloff Auditorium, 230 S. Columbus Dr. Rodney McMillian: Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series Wednesday, April 3, 6:00 p.m.

The Art Institute of Chicago, Rubloff Auditorium, 230 S. Columbus Dr. Presented in partnership with SAIC’s Office of Alumni Relations Newton Harrison Tuesday, April 9, 6:00 p.m.

The Art Institute of Chicago, Rubloff Auditorium, 230 S. Columbus Dr. Presented in partnership with SAIC’s Conversations on Art and Science Series

Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison, Portable Orchard (installation view), Walker Art Center, 2016

Martha Rosler Tuesday, April 16, 6:00 p.m.

The Art Institute of Chicago, Rubloff Auditorium, 230 S. Columbus Dr. Presented in partnership with the Art Institute of Chicago

OTHER LECTURES Writing Department Visiting Artist: Tarfia Faizullah Tuesday, February 5, 7:00–8:00 p.m.

Poetry Foundation 61 W. Superior St. Fiber and Material Studies Mitchell Lecture Series: Camille Ann Brewer: Why Knot?

Thursday, February 28, 4:15 p.m.

Sharp Building 37 S. Wabash Ave., room 327 Writing Department Visiting Artist: Rodrigo Toscano Monday, March 11, 7:00–8:00 p.m.

Poetry Foundation 61 W. Superior St. Fiber and Material Studies Mitchell Lecture Series: Surabhi Ghosh: Carrying Culture: Material, Myth, and Mediated Identities Tuesday, March 12, 12:00 p.m.

Sharp Building 37 S. Wabash Ave., room 1005 Fiber and Material Studies Mitchell Lecture Series: Tanya Aguiñiga Thursday, April 4, 4:15 p.m.

Sharp Building 37 S. Wabash Ave., room 327 Fiber and Material Studies Mitchell Lecture Series: Jennifer Huang Wednesday, April 17, 12:00 pm Sharp Building 37 S. Wabash Ave, room 1005 Writing Department Visiting Artist: Danez Smith Monday, April 29, 7:00–8:00 p.m Poetry Foundation 61 W. Superior St.

Image courtesy of Fraser Lab

CONVERSATIONS ON ART AND SCIENCE

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Under the leadership of President Emeritus Walter Massey, the Conversations on Art and Science series launched in 2011 as a forum for exploring interdisciplinary and critical perspectives on art, science, design, and technology.

Lectures and panel discussions bring noted artists, designers, and scholars to campus to discuss myriad perspectives on art, science, design, and technology and sustain the diverse conversations within the work of SAIC students and faculty. All events are free and open to the public. Learn more at saic.edu/ artandscience.

Responsive Color: Imaging Bodies, Sensing the Environment Thursday, February 7, 4:15–5:45 p.m.

The LeRoy Neiman Center 37 S. Wabash Ave., 1st floor Presented in partnership with SAIC’s Department of Liberal Arts THE GRAYCE SLOVET AND WILLIAM BRONSON MITCHELL LECTURE SERIES Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects (AIADO) The Mitchell Lecture Series bring leaders and emerging voices in architecture, design, and other disciplines from around the world to SAIC for lectures, workshops, and studio visits. For the spring 2019 schedule, visit saic.edu/aiado.

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Screenings

CONVERSATIONS AT THE EDGE Organized by the Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation in collaboration with SAIC’s Gene Siskel Film Center and SAIC’s Video Data Bank, Conversations at the Edge is a dynamic weekly series of screenings, performances, and talks by groundbreaking media artists.

For more information, visit saic.edu/cate.

Gene Siskel Film Center 164 N. State St. 312.846.2800 siskelfilmcenter.org ADMISSION $11 general public $7 students $6 members $5 SAIC faculty, staff, and the Art Institute of Chicago staff Free for SAIC students Jodie Mack: The Grand Bizarre Thursday, February 7, 6:00 p.m.

Naeem Mohaiemen: United Red Army (The Young Man Was, Part I) Thursday, February 14, 6:00 p.m.

Presented in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago as part of the exhibition Naeem Mohaiemen: Two Meetings and a Funeral

Eric Baudelaire: The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years without Images Saturday, February 16, 12:30 p.m.

Presented in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago as part of the exhibition: Naeem Mohaiemen: Two Meetings and a Funeral Laida Lertxundi: Landscape Plus Thursday, February 21, 6:00 p.m.

Morgan Fisher: Another Movie Thursday, February 28, 6:00 p.m.

On Watching Men Thursday, March 7, 6:00 p.m.

Presented by Rachael Rakes Evan Meaney: We Will Love You Forever Thursday, March 21, 6:00 p.m.

Presented in collaboration with SAIC’s Video Data Bank Disorienting Diasporas Thursday, March 28, 6:00 p.m.

Presented in collaboration with Queer Media Database Canada-Québec Dawn Chan and Mary Flanagan: On Power and Play in Virtual Worlds Thursday, April 18, 6:00 p.m.

Presented in partnership with the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation OTHER SCREENINGS Stranger Than Fiction: Documentary Premieres January 4–31 Gene Siskel Film Center 164 N. State St.

SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

Screening/Lecture Series: Orson Welles, The Other Side of Argument January 25–May Gene Siskel Film Center 164 N. State St.

The Image Book February 1–21 Gene Siskel Film Center 164 N. State St. 29th Annual Festival of Films from Iran February 2–28 Gene Siskel Film Center 164 N. State St. 22nd Annual Chicago European Union Film Festival March 8–April 4 Gene Siskel Film Center 164 N. State St. 24th Annual Asian American Showcase April 5–18 Gene Siskel Film Center 164 N. State St. 18th Annual Chicago Palestine Film Festival April 20–May 2 Gene Siskel Film Center 164 N. State St. Film, Video, New Media, and Animation Thesis Screenings May 8–11 Gene Siskel Film Center 164 N. State St. Gene Siskel Film Center Annual Gala Spring 2019

Q&A with Jodie Mack (MFA 2007)

JODIE MACK’S (MFA 2007) handmade films use collage to explore the relationship between graphic cinema and storytelling and the tension between form and meaning. Her works unleash the kinetic energy of overlooked and wasted objects and question the role of decoration in daily life.

On February 7, Mack returns to SAIC for the Conversations at the Edge screening series.

What are you screening for Conversations at The Edge?

I’m screening my first feature film called The Grand Bizarre, which is a 60-minute travelogue dealing with patterns in music, fabric, and language as a result of the global economy. The film is an original musical with no words that has been shot in about 17 countries over a period of five years.

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Why did you choose that film?

I think it chose me. I started making the film as a result of the last program I showed at Conversations at the Edge, which was called Let Your Light Shine. That film received international attention, so I was invited to many different places. And as an animator, you often can’t sit still, so I began bringing my camera with me. I’d already made a few films with textiles, so it seemed like a good place to start.

What’s it like coming back to Chicago?

I still have a pretty strong relationship with Chicago.

I often mix my films at the Experimental Sound Studio, which was founded

by Assistant Professor Lou Mallozzi from the Sound department. I’m still very much in contact with a lot of my professors and former classmates. I was lucky enough to be part of a very special class at SAIC. ▪

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Other Events

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Visiting Designer Lecture: Henrik Vibskov Wednesday, February 6, 4:15 p.m.

SAIC Ballroom 112 S. Michigan Ave. Dimensions of Citizenship: Architecture and Belonging from the Body to the Cosmos February 15–April 27 Wrightwood 659 659 W. Wrightwood Ave. Special Event for Prospective Undergraduates: Presidents’ Day at SAIC Monday, February 18, 10:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m.

Columbus Drive Building 280 S. Columbus Dr. Spring Art Sale Friday, April 5, 11:00 a.m.–7:00 p.m.

Saturday, April 6, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.

SAIC Ballroom 112 S. Michigan Ave. IMPACT Performance Festival April 12–14 Zhou B Art Center 1029 W. 35th St. Historic Preservation Thesis Night Reading Thursday, April 18 The LeRoy Neiman Center 37 S. Wabash Ave. Roger Brown: Virtual Still Life May 2–September 15 Museum of Art and Design 2 Columbus Cir. New York, NY

Fashion 2019 Friday, May 3 Exhibition: 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.

Runway Show: 6:00 p.m.

Venue Six10 at Spertus Institute 610 S. Michigan Ave. Art Education Graduate Symposium Wednesday, May 8, 9:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.

Gene Siskel Film Center 164 N. State St. Apprentice Teaching Showcase Thursday, May 9, 6:00–8:00 p.m.

Sharp Building 37 S. Wabash Ave., room 404 Design Show May 11–28 Reception: Saturday, May 11 Post-Baccalaureate Annual May 11–13 Reception: Saturday, May 11, 4:00–7:00 p.m.

Visual and Critical Studies Undergraduate Thesis Symposium Saturday, May 11, 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.

Sharp Building 37 S. Wabash Ave., room 327 BFA Writing Program Reading Saturday, May 11, 5:00–8:00 p.m.

The LeRoy Neiman Center 37 S. Wabash Ave. MFA Writing Program Reading Tuesday, May 14, 4:30–7:30 p.m.

SAIC Ballroom 112 S. Michigan Ave. For all SAIC events, persons with

SAIC celebrates our talented students completing their undergraduate and graduate degrees this year. All events are free and open to the public.

March Spring Undergraduate Exhibition Art History MA Thesis Presentations April ArtBash 2019 MA Visual and Critical Studies Symposium IMPACT Performance Festival Historic Preservation Symposium MFA Show May Fashion 2019 Film, Video, New Media, Animation, and Sound Festival Department of Art Education George Roeder Master’s Symposium Apprentice Teacher Presentations Visual Communication Design Show BFA Writing Program Reading Design Show New Arts Journalism Symposium Visual and Critical Studies Undergraduate Thesis Symposium Post-Baccalaureate Annual MA in Art Therapy Presentations and Exhibition MFA Writing Program Reading

Visit saic.edu/shows for dates and details.

Virtual Still Life #15 Waterfalls And Pitchers, 1995, oil on canvas, wood, glazed ceramics, 37 1/2 × 50 × 9 in. Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan. © School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Brown family.

Courtesy of Kavi Gupta

From the Archives

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OVER THE COURSE of nine performances, Goat Island created immersive experiences that explored and challenged the traditional format of performance art.

Founded in 1987, the group combined Professor Lin Hixson’s physically exhausting choreography with elements of narrative, dance, theater, writing, and movement to create a singular vision of what performance could be. We Got A Date, performed by founding members Adjunct Professor Matthew Goulish, Tim McCain, and Greg McCain along with Joan Dickinson, premiered in 1989 at the Wellington Avenue Church gymnasium in Chicago. The performance explored concepts of private shame and public reckoning over the course of three narratives and would go on to tour internationally through 1992. Before disbanding in 2009, Goat Island taught a generation of performance artists to approach their art with the same interdisciplinary thinking that made each of its performances so influential. The Chicago Cultural Center will be hosting a retrospective exhibition in 2019. Speaking on this retrospective, Goulish says, “I’m very interested in seeing whether [our] spirit can transcend the actual, historical moment of the work and translate across—temporally across— the years.” As a featured exhibition in the Year of Chicago Theatre, goat island archive—we have discovered the performance by making it, will be on display at the Chicago Cultural Center from March 30–June 23, 2019.

The exhibition will include new performance works developed during the IN>TIME 19 festival from February 1–28. ▪ Top (left to right): Matthew Goulish and Joan Dickinson. Bottom (left to right): Tim McCain and Greg McCain

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Office of Institutional Advancement 116 S. Michigan Ave., 6th floor Chicago, IL 60603

ON SAIC.EDU/MAGAZINE This issue of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago magazine underscores the importance of the senses in art and design. In the cover story, alums like Arthur Hon (SAIC 1999–2004) apply art and design thinking to elevate the food and drink programs of some of the top restaurants and breweries in Chicago and New York. SAIC takes a field trip to Italy to understand how a group of students viewed the seven scales of citizenship as featured in the US Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. The US Pavilion exhibition, commissioned

by SAIC and the University of Chicago, will be on view at the Wrightwood 659 art space in Chicago beginning in February. Learn more about the people and stories featured in this issue, view slideshows of additional photos, and access previous issues by visiting saic.edu/magazine.

Amanda Williams + Andres L. Hernandez (MA 2004), in collaboration with Shani Crowe, Thrival Geographies (In My Mind I See a Line), 2018. Photo © Tom Harris

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@saic_news Beatriz Santiago Muñoz (MFA 1997), still from Oneiromancer, 2018

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