March 5, 2014

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Lost Contact ’s public o g a ic h C f o Half e h clinics wer lt a e h l a t n e m The rest may .

2 1 0 2 in d e clos suit. soon follow

STEVEN LUCY, SUITE DUSABLE, OPEN BOOKS, #FOLLOWUS, CHRISTIAN SAUCEDO

&

MORE INSIDE

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¬ MARCH 5, 2014

IN CHICAGO A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes, and wandering eyes of the editors

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is a newsprint magazine based out of the University of Chicago, for and about the South Side. The Weekly is distributed across the South Side each Wednesday of the academic year.

In fall 2013, the Weekly reformed itself as an independent, student-directed organization.

Previously, the paper was known as the Chicago Weekly.

Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor

Harrison Smith Bea Malsky

Senior Editors John Gamino, Spencer Mcavoy Politics Editors Josh Kovensky, Osita Nwanevu Stage & Screen Hannah Nyhart Editor Music Editor Zach Goldhammer Visual Arts Editor Katryce Lassle Education Editor Bess Cohen Online Editor Sharon Lurye Contributing Editors Jake Bittle, Meaghan Murphy Photo Editor Camden Bauchner Layout Editor Olivia Dorow Hovland Assistant Layout Editor Zelda Mayer Copyeditor Emma Collins Senior Writers Ari Feldman, Emily Holland, Patrick Leow, Stephen Urchick Staff Writers Dove Barbanel, Christian Belanger, Jon Brozdowski, Emma Collins,

Isabel Ochoa Gold, Lauren Gurley, Jack Nuelle, Paige Pendarvis, Rob Snyder Senior Photographer Luke White Staff Photographers Juliet Eldred, Stephanie

Koch, Siddhesh Mukerji Staff Illustrators Isabel Ochoa Gold, Hanna Petroski, Maggie Sivit Editorial Intern

Zavier Celimene

Business Manager

Harry Backlund

5706 S. University Ave. Reynolds Club 018 Chicago, IL 60637 SouthSideWeekly.com Send tips, comments, or questions to: editor@southsideweekly.com For advertising inquiries, contact: (773)234-5388 advertising@southsideweekly.com

Cover by Amber Sollenberger.

Ire Glass ACME Hotel Company, a Chicago hotel in the North Loop, is set to become the first hotel in the nation to let its customers check out Google Glass units. Glass is the (still very frightening) futuristic set of goggles that puts the Internet right in front of your eyes and talks to you by vibrating through your skull. The hotel claims it will allow customers to explore the city like never before. They don’t appear to be worried that Glass will turn malevolent and mind-control all their customers into walking off Navy Pier into Lake Michigan.

Chicago Ukrainians Confront Crisis Local Ukrainians convened at the Ukrainian Cultural Center Sunday night to discuss the implications of Russia’s occupation of the Crimea. According to DNAInfo, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt spoke to attendees by Skype, saying that the situation “needs to be addressed as a political and a diplomatic problem and not a military problem.” DNAInfo also reports that Senator Dick Durbin, who was also at the event, is drafting a plan to aid Ukraine’s economic recovery with the International Monetary Fund. “If you’re a Chicagoan and you’re half a world away, you’re going to do the natural thing: decide someone is the good guy and someone is the bad guy, “ DePaul political science professor Richard Farkas told the site. “But we need try to embrace all the factors that play a part in this— keeping emotion to a minimum and analysis to a maximum.”

773 Celebrates 177 Just like its founders did 177 years ago, Chicago will be celebrating its birthday with a Mardi Gras-themed party in Daley Plaza, all day long on March 4. Get two holidays for the price of one at this party, which cityofchicago.org claims will be offering “FREE cake… (while supplies last).” The extravaganza will feature a number of traditions, including an American Indian drum rendition of “Happy Birthday,” readings from an annual essay competition honoring Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable (the city’s first resident), and a food truck rally. At sundown, Mayor Emanuel will light 177 five-foot candles and wait for the wind to blow them out.

MoneyBuns Bruce “MoneyBuns” Rauner is running a fiscal riot this campaign season. His out-of-pocket campaign spending hit $6 million this past week, more than any other candidate in Illinois history. Rauner has been throwing away more dough on this campaign than a baker with a gluten allergy. Out of state Republican donors have helped engorge his largesse as well, with the aim of defeating primary opponents Bill Brady, Kirk Dillard, and Dan Rutherford. The Democratic process is a beautiful thing—and it’s even prettier when gleaming with the sleazy platinum shoeshine of the nation’s wealthiest. ¬

IN THIS ISSUE guilty pleasures

privatized mental health

“I think when people run businesses in their own communities, those businesses serve those communities better.”

“We don’t know where it starts, but we know where it connects.”

jack nuelle................5

“The city is leaving it on us or on the clinical therapists to tell clients that they can’t come anymore.”

suite dusable

open books

“Chaotic improvisation alternated with bursts of unison rhythm before the hand drums returned.”

“We want to get kids really interested in reading.”

#followus

steven lucy

sharon lurye.............4

noah kahrs..............11

olivia stovicek........12

i’m sorry

“He chose to make a video and an apology at the same time.”

jake bittle...............10

josh kovensky............6

“The half-cracked desk drawer is as revealing as the electrician’s-taped glory holes drilled into the ‘Wieboldt Bathroom’ partition.”

stephen urchick.....13

christian saucedo

“...a pixelated cloud, a space-age hammock.”

emma collins...........14

PRODUCE

Farm to Market An interview with Open Produce owner Steven Lucy

BY SHARON LURYE

S

teven Lucy has deep roots in Hyde Park.

When he was born, his parents, currently resident masters at the University of Chicago’s South Campus Residence Hall, were resident heads at Broadview, another UofC dorm. Lucy graduated from the school in 2006. Two years later, he co-founded Open Produce, a high-end, hole-in-the-wall grocery store on 55th and Cornell. Since opening, the store has been committed to financial transparency, posting all of its sales online. Last year it turned a profit for the first time, making $31,000 off $906,000 in sales.

What was your job before Open Produce?

I was a freelance computer programmer. I got really bored of working on other people’s projects and I got really tired of looking at a computer screen all day. I wanted to work on a project that was my own, and I wanted to work with people and visible objects. So a friend of mine and I sort of talked each other into opening a retail produce store.

You were living in New York when you decided to start the business. Why did you decide to move back to Chicago and open the store in Hyde Park?

One reason is that I feel like I know Hyde Park really well, and if I felt like Hyde Park needed something, it probably needed it.

People ask us sometimes, “Oh, did you do any market research for this store?” The market research I did was that I lived here for many years. I think when people run businesses in their own communities, those businesses serve those communities better.

They know what the community needs.

They don’t have to guess.

Why were you interested in opening a produce store?

I think a number of reasons. One is that I’ve lived in East Hyde Park for a while and I felt the absence of that in that part of the neighborhood. You’d have to walk a mile to Hyde Park Produce.

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zoe kauder

We were getting interested in the local farming movement and moving away from the commercial distribution train, so it was our goal from the beginning to work with local farmers and local producers. It turned out to take a little while for us to get around to doing that successfully—at the beginning it was all conventional, because we became overwhelmed with running a store. It took us years to get things under control enough to explore other options.

Where do you get your produce from?

In the summer it’s a good mix; we get maybe half of our produce from local farms and

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half commercially. In the winter it’s more commercial stuff, from California or Mexico, because nothing grows around here in the winter. But that’s just for produce; everything else is a mix. We work with over thirty-five producers. Some of them are local from Chicago, and some are international importers.

It’s important for us to not be too ideological. I feel like a lot of small stores are like, “We’re an organic store,” or “We’re a whatever store,” and we wanted to serve everyone as best we could. So we didn’t want to fall into these ideological traps.

Do you think this could become a wide-

spread movement, with more small stores becoming at least half organic?

Yeah. I don’t think you could exactly open an Open Produce somewhere else. One of the things about Open Produce is that it’s a product of the neighborhood it’s in.

We didn’t just put a cookie-cutter solution down in this neighborhood. It’s built to match East Hyde Park. If you made one in West Hyde Park or Woodlawn or anywhere else, it would be different. But I think it would be successful.

Are you still programming on the side, or working full-time at the store?

MUSIC

For the first three years of Open Produce I wasn’t paying myself at all from the store. I was surviving on programming on the side, but I was still full-time at the store. But the last two years I’ve been able to pay myself.

I still do programming sometimes, but it’s not my main job.

You recently bought Cornell Florist, the flower shop next door. What was the reasoning behind that?

The old owners were retiring and we bought it about a year ago, in December 2012. They approached us and at first we were not very interested, but as we got to know them a bit better and worked a few days at their shop and saw how it was run and looked at their books, we decided it was worth trying to take it over and make it better. We care a lot about the strip on 55th Street next to the tracks, and we wanted to keep what we felt was an asset to that strip, and improve it.

What are some of the challenges of running a small business, especially one that relies on local farms?

Yeah. Oh boy. All right, there are a number of things. I’ll just start with one, which is money. The amount of money it takes to start a small business took me completely off guard. We started with a loan of $30,000 and we blew through that before we even opened. Then we lost money for four years. So by the time we started breaking even and making money, we had lost about $150,000. And that’s not money that’s easy to come by. Banks don’t loan to start-up businesses at all. Venture capitalists aren’t interested unless you’re a technology company. The way most people get money to start their business is they borrow it from family or friends or they put their house up. But I don’t have a house.

What was your motivation to keep going before you broke even?

A couple things. One of them is that we invested not only money but also so much effort and mental energy in it that we really wanted it to succeed. The other thing is that I thought it was a really good thing for the neighborhood. People seemed to really like it and I was happy with what it was doing on the street for the neighborhood.

Certainly if I was just interested in mak-

ing money I would have given up at some point, long before now.

Would you do it again?

I would do it again but I would do two things differently. The first thing is, I would start with more money. There was so much stress from being undercapitalized, and also so many things we could have done earlier if we had access to money earlier. The other thing is I would have gone and worked at a produce store first, as an employee, even for just three months or six months, because we had to learn all of this basic stuff that we could have learned on someone else’s dime. We had to reinvent the wheel a lot.

Why do you think the store is important for the neighborhood?

A couple of distinct reasons. One is just the most obvious, which is that there’s a place people can buy food. Good food. Nearby.

Late at night. It’s very practical access to good food. But another thing is—one of our goals, and I think that we’ve been pretty successful with this—is to make a place where people can buy things, like a store, but also make it a place that’s people buying things from people. I feel sometimes in big stores it’s like you and the cashier are cogs in a giant capitalism machine, and you’re just there to exchange money and that’s it. And I really wanted to not have that feeling at Open Produce. I wanted the people to feel autonomy while they were at work, and I wanted the customers to feel like they were being people while they were being customers.

And I think we’ve been pretty successful at that. We know a lot of customers’ names, they know a lot of our names. People meet, regular customers meet each other at the store. It’s a community social hub, as well as a place where people buy things.

And the third thing is, I think it makes the neighbor safer to have businesses that are open late and people going to and from those businesses. There’s more street traffic, more eyes on the street.

What do you think about the future of the store? Have you got any big plans?

We have a lot of ideas and no plans. ¬

Genre Trouble UofC English faculty discuss white rap and black indie rock

BY JACK NUELLE

P

rofessors Richard So and Adrienne Brown could barely contain their joy. The talk they headlined, part of the Guilty Pleasures lunchtime discussion series—sponsored by the English department at the University of Chicago—was titled “Dirty Projections: White Rap and Black Indie Rock.” It afforded them an apparently rare opportunity to be rabid music fans in public.

Their talk centered on the relationship between traditionally black music, such as hip-hop, and the predominantly white area of indie rock. They also discussed the racial and social undertones of each, exploring the choked channels of appropriation and influence.

For So, the relationship between the genres is a positive one. He understands cross-over acts as a result of shared appreciation and collaborative spirit. “It’s a formal utopianism,” he reasoned. “I like stuff that sounds good—organic, not contrived.”

From this self-described “naïve appreciation of music,” he comes to an understanding of the interwoven reality of American music. He spoke about a circular effect, a rotating series of influence from acts like Timbaland to the Dirty Projectors to Solange Knowles.

“We don’t know where it starts, but we know where it connects,” he said. For So, the popular music scene is collaborative; acts like rapper Danny Brown collaborate

with indie electronic rockers Purity Ring because Danny Brown appreciates Purity Ring as musicians and vice versa.

Brown approached the relationship with a bit more cynicism. Using Jay-Z as an example, she suggests that the root of these collaborations and sharing of styles arose from corporate and economic motivating factors. She suggests that a “business-savvy rapper” like Jay-Z would be served by having his finger to the pulse of what is popular and then moving to capitalize on it. Using examples such as Limp Bizkit’s unfortunate collaboration with Method Man in the late nineties as well as Jay-Z himself and his work with rock/ rappers Linkin Park, Brown presents the other side of the argument. She thinks of music as sometimes corporate and sometimes personal, but, most of the time, as economically driven.

Regardless of motivation, the truth remains that musical crossover is now a calling card of the American music scene.

The discussion following these arguments was centered around this fact. Revolving mostly around the idea of labels, the discussion led to the question, What do we call certain genres today if they are rolled and melded into one another so frequently?

This cross-genre consciousness informed the discussion, but the truth remained: in the changing landscape of American music, it’s adapt or be forgotten. ¬

MARCH 5, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

Lost Contact Half of Chicago’s public mental health clinics were closed in 2012. The rest may soon follow suit.

BY JOSH KOVENSKY

A

fter he graduated from high school, Calvin McCloud began to fall apart. Nineteen years old and a hard worker, he took twelve classes each semester and played on the basketball team. “It was after I graduated,” he says, “that the problems, the racing thoughts, started. I didn’t want to pay attention to nobody. I wanted to go my own way.” He had trouble finding work. “I would try to find a job and I would mess up the application to try to make it correct by scratching stuff out, and I realized that nobody wanted to hire somebody who couldn’t fill out an application. It wasn’t my fault, because I did everything in my power to correct the problem.” McCloud, who turns sixty this year, suffers from depression and paranoid schizophrenia.

From 1987 to April 2012, McCloud was a patient at the city-operated Woodlawn Mental Health Clinic. In 2012, the city closed Woodlawn and five other public mental health clinics in an effort to consolidate services and save money.

More closures may come soon. According to two sources—a veteran therapist and an administrator—within the Chicago Department of Public Health, which operates the city’s mental health system, the city plans to close its six remaining clinics in the next few years. “They’re targeted to be shut down at the soonest possible date,” said the therapist, who has worked at city clinics for more than fifteen years.

In 2012, clinic closures were a response to a $276 million state budget cut to Medicaid, which significantly reduced payouts to mental health programs across Illinois. Now, sources say, the city is using changes from the federal Affordable Care Act to privatize almost all of its mental health services and close its remaining clinics.

The changes are a result of the state Medicaid Reform Act, which was passed in 2011 to expand Medicaid in the aftermath of the ACA. The act mandates that half of Illinois Medicaid holders receive 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MARCH 5, 2014

coverage through privately-operated managed-care networks; before then, Medicaid used a broad mix of managed-care and fee-for-service models, which are widely considered to be more costly than managed care. In fee-for-service, providers charge the state directly for services; under managed care, the state contracts services to networks of providers that are open to those with Medicaid coverage.

City clinics have yet to join these net-

center. “I had a therapist who was wonderful,” he says. “Everything he did was 110 percent. He had a brother who had a studio that recorded events, so when the holidays came around we went around making CDs of people celebrating birthdays, weddings, anything. And then on another note, he was an artist, and when I was forty-five, I learned to do abstract sketching. I have a hobby: I collect model cars. I paint. All of this is because I was at a center that wasn’t

The city is using changes from the federal Affordable Care Act to privatize almost all of its mental health services and close its remaining clinics. works, however. Thus, mental health clinic patients who must now acquire insurance are being turned away from public clinics, directed toward private clinics that are covered by managed-care networks. Chicagoans who have been seeing the same therapist for years are being transferred to new providers, in some cases resulting in a longer trip for mental health services. And sources say that the remaining public clinics, emptied of clients, will quickly become obsolete and expensive; most, if not all, will be shut down.

The issue is divisive. In 2012, the Mental Health Movement, a program within the activist group Southside Together Organizing for Power, led a campaign of demonstrations against the closures. Protestors picketed City Hall and barricaded themselves inside the Woodlawn clinic. A SWAT team was called in, chain-sawed its way inside, and arrested them.

When talking about Woodlawn, McCloud speaks with deep deliberation.

In the twenty-five years he was a patient there, much of his life revolved around the

acting like a center—it was acting like a club, like a day camp.”

A

r ift is opening between city clinics that are being cut to save money and non-profits that aren’t in a position to catch the runoff. Private providers, even if they are non-profits, depend on patient revenue to stay afloat. Thus, areas with large uninsured populations remain underserved, while wealthier areas have a font of providers.

After Woodlawn closed, McCloud was transferred to Community Mental Health Council, a private clinic in Calumet Heights. Dr. Carl Bell ran CMHC until the summer of 2012, when low revenue and reduced Medicaid payouts forced it to shut down. Before it closed, Bell was personally seeing one thousand patients.

One of the main reasons the clinic closed, Bell says, was patients’ inability to pay for services. Most did not have insurance.

But as the ACA goes into effect, more people are getting coverage. Under Illinois

Medicaid expansion, those at 138 percent or below of the poverty line are now eligible for Medicaid, providing an additional 342,000 low-income Illinoisans with access. Additionally, every American citizen is now obligated to buy health insurance or face a steep fine.

Bell does hold out hope for CountyCare, a managed-care network operated by Cook County Hospitals. Since it was implemented in 2013, over 70,000 previously-uninsured Cook County residents have enrolled. “Things might get rectified with CountyCare, which would be helpful,” Bell notes. “But the mental health system on the South Side is in shambles.”

Within the CountyCare network, providers are reimbursed for taking on patients under expanded Medicaid. If the network is successful, providers like Bell will be able to handle large volumes of low-income patients without going under.

But the city itself has not joined the CountyCare network, which means that public health clinics cannot bill services to patients with CountyCare coverage. Instead, those patients must find private providers that accept CountyCare.

Sources say the city is deliberately advising patients to enroll in CountyCare, fully aware that, once they do, they’ll no longer be able to use city clinics.

According to the veteran therapist, the city had seriously considered CountyCare starting last fall. In January, however, it changed its position and decided it would not accept the network. The city, the therapist says, is planning to privatize its mental health services.

A spokesperson for the Chicago Department of Public Health, Brian Richardson, did not respond to repeated requests for comment on whether the CDPH had plans to join CountyCare, or whether they plan to close the rest of the clinics. Officials at CountyCare say that the city was never interested in joining the network.

Steven Glass, executive director for managed care at Cook County Hospitals, notes

HEALTH CARE

luke white

As patients are transferred out of city clinics, people will begin to fall through the cracks. that “if the City of Chicago were interested in being a CountyCare provider we would direct them to PsycHealth,” which operates the network’s mental health services.

When asked, PsycHealth President Dr. Madeleine Gomez confirmed that the city never contacted PsycHealth to become a provider.

Since this past fall, the veteran therapist says, clinics have been directed to recommend CountyCare to their patients, despite the fact that the network would deny them access to public care. The CDPH spokesperson did not respond to repeated requests for comment on whether staff were instructed to recommend CountyCare, in spite of the knowledge that those

patients would have to be transferred.

In an email, he wrote, “Moving forward, we will focus our efforts on serving residents not eligible for new options under the ACA, including many undocumented immigrants.”

Because of the ACA, however, the number of uninsured patients is quickly dwindling.

“It doesn’t take a genius to understand that they knew full well we’re not going to have many uninsured down the road,” says the therapist.

A patient named Gail said she was advised to sign up for CountyCare without being told that she would no longer have access to her clinic, in Morgan Park. Gail

suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. In a video for Mental Health Movement, she said that “when I signed up for CountyCare I did not know that I could not keep my current therapist. The way I found out is a sad way—I found out through the therapist himself. He got a letter saying that he could no longer see me as his client because I am with CountyCare now.”

Last week, one public clinic administrator, who requested anonymity, saw a patient break down in the clinic’s lobby, sobbing. The patient had learned that she would have to switch to another clinic, one that accepted the CountyCare coverage she had been convinced to switch to. A few weeks prior, the administrator says that

eight police officers were brought to remove a patient who had a similar breakdown.

“As we start to turn around these clients who have been coming for such a long time,” says the administrator, “I am fearful that they might lose it in the clinic. We don’t have any guards. The city is leaving it on us or on the clinical therapists to tell these clients that they can’t come anymore.”

And as patients are transferred out of city clinics, people will begin to fall through the cracks. Diane Adams, a patient at the city’s Englewood Mental Health Clinic and an activist with Mental Health Movement, has already noticed the consequences of the transfers. Regarding those who have had to leave because of CountyCare, AdMARCH 5, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

ams says, “[Englewood] had to turn away a lot of them...at least one hundred or more were thrown away.”

Leaving clinics, she points out, will create instability in people’s lives. N’Dana Carter, a spokesperson for Mental Health Movement, agrees. Carter was one of twenty-three protestors arrested while occupying the Woodlawn Clinic in 2012. “So this is someone you’ve been with for ten to twelve years,” Carter says. “This is someone who will care and look out for you, and they say what the city says, that CountyCare is the best.

“But [before I switch to CountyCare] I don’t really get that I can’t come back, so as I’m leaving I’m trying to make another appointment, but that appointment is the last appointment.”

T

he Woodlawn Mental Health Clinic, where Calvin McCloud and many others have been treated, is now defunct, save for a Cook County internal medicine clinic that operates in a corner of the building. In mid-March— as per an agreement with the CDPH— Thresholds, a Chicago-based mental health non-profit, will establish office space in the former clinic.

Instead of the centralized, clinic-based approach for which the city used the Woodlawn space, Thresholds employs what it calls “a community-based approach.” Teams of counselors go into the neighborhoods to treat patients and help them orient their lives. The medical staff works on outreach teams, instead of in clinics. Emily Moen, director of public relations for Thresholds, says, “That might mean visiting our members—that’s what we call our clients—visiting our members at their homes, at a coffee shop, or another setting that they’re comfortable in. The idea is to bring services to where the people are.”

Thresholds made the decision to expand into Woodlawn after recognizing, as Moen says, “a need in the South Side community to have greater and better access to mental health services.”

Expansion into the South Side also means accepting common insurance providers, such as CountyCare. But Thresholds does not provide general mental health services—the clinic focuses on patients whose mental illnesses have reached the point of disability. While it does accept CountyCare, it does not offer the sort of treatments that the vast majority of men8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

adhiraaj anand

“You only see a psychiatrist every three to four months, and if you miss that it gets dangerous.” tally ill require. Although some will be able to receive service, then, many patients who had relied on the Woodlawn clinic won’t be served by Thresholds’s presence in the space.

Former Woodlawn patients are typically directed to the nearest CountyCare provider that matches their clinical profile.

Depending on the severity and nature of a patient’s symptoms, this provider could be miles away.

But even patients who are on Medicaid and don’t switch to CountyCare may lose access to the public mental health clinics. As the ACA takes effect this year, a number of private managed-care networks are coming to Cook County. By July 1, Chicagoans on state Medicaid who haven’t already enrolled in CountyCare will be required to join a private managed-care entity in order to receive their Medicaid benefits. The mandate is part of the state’s overall plan to increase managed-care enrollment among those on Medicaid, but

¬ MARCH 5, 2014

just as the city has not accepted coverage under CountyCare, it has also not agreed to accept coverage under these other managed-care entities.

“If the city doesn’t join those networks, and they’ve expressed no intention of doing that, then we’ll lose most of our clients,” the therapist says. “At the South Side clinics, the vast majority of people have state Medicaid. You can bill for state Medicaid right now, but once it gets to managed care, you’re not going to get paid. If the city doesn’t join the managed network, then we’ll lose all of those patients. And then the city will say, well, we don’t really have any uninsured patients left. And they can close these expensive clinics.”

The gears of these changes have only just begun to turn. Chicagoans with state Medicaid must choose a network by April 14, so that they will have new providers lined up for the mandated July 1 enrollment. Letters about this are already starting to go out.

“We were just told, this week, that we needed to begin to transition out all of our state Medicaid clients,” says the therapist.

“When July 1 comes around, that’s that, and they’ll have their mental health taken care of by someone in the network. So we’ve been told to transition out all of our state Medicaid clients.”

“The network” that the therapist is referring to is a group of six organizations that coordinate managed-care providers within Cook County; the state refers to these organizations as “Care Coordination Entities.” Each will be working with patients who are enrolled in state Medicaid.

The CDPH did not respond to requests regarding whether or not they were seeking coverage from these networks, or whether or not they had joined these networks by press time.

When the South Side Weekly reached out to the six Care Coordination Entities, none confirmed that the city clinics were part of their coordination networks. If the

HEALTH CARE city does not join these networks, people who are enrolled in the networks will not be able to access city health clinics. No one enrolled in state Medicaid, then, would have access to city clinics.

A 2011 report by the Chicago Civic Federation, “Recommendations for a Fiscally Sustainable Chicago,” has already advised the city to “end the City’s clinical activities,” arguing that the cost of operating the clinics could be eliminated by replacing them with private providers.

The CDPH claims that the 2012 closures saved taxpayers $3 million dollars, since it’s cheaper for the city to pay private providers for care than to run community mental health clinics. However, Thresholds released a report last fall estimating that between fiscal years 2009 and 2011, the state’s $113 million in cuts to community mental health services “cost the state and hospitals an estimated $131.4 million through 2012.”

According to the therapist, “the PR strategy has been to say: ‘Our mission is to serve the uninsured, end of story.’ If you try to get them to say something like, ‘Do you have an intention to keep these clinics operating?’ they probably won’t respond.”

W

ith the mass transitions between providers that are taking place now due to CountyCare, and that are set to take place with the arrival of other managed-care networks this summer, patients will likely undergo similar hardships to those experienced in the aftermath of the 2012 closures. Carter has been a patient at city clinics, and remembers the closures as a difficult time.

“What happened,” she says, “is that when the city clinics closed, even if your clinic wasn’t closed there was a disruption because your therapist might have been gone. My clinic wasn’t closed, but the hours and availability for my therapist diminished. It was a difficult time for me.

“For three weeks I couldn’t sleep. I had difficulty seeing my therapist because my therapist was going to be leaving soon.

We used to be able to see them whenever we needed it. Now we can only see them twice a month. You only see a psychiatrist every three to four months, and if you miss that it gets dangerous. People lost contact with therapists that they had come to trust, so it was like starting all over.”

What the city did to help in 2012, and how people reacted to changes in their mental healthcare, can help predict what to

expect from the coming disruptions.

The city made efforts to facilitate the 2012 transition, creating partnerships with over forty private mental health providers. The CDPH claims that it transitioned 429 insured clients to providers in their communities, and monitored them for two months after the transition. As of last April, the city notes that sixty-three patients had decided to return to public clinics.

Bruce Seitzer is the senior vice president of Community Counseling Centers of Chicago, another non-profit that works to help people live with and overcome mental illness. Seitzer notes that the number of patients coming into his clinic did increase after the closures, and that “when the public health clinics closed in 2012, we worked with the CDPH in trying to facilitate the transition of clients to other locations.

Some of the clinics that closed were in areas that had services. We tried to ensure continuity of care to try to make sure that

2012 when the Auburn Gresham city clinic closed. While she made the transition without any real problems, not all of her fellow patients managed as well. “Bus fare stopped [some patients]. They can’t take the bus by themselves. They’re in the streets now.” She remembers Andre and Charles Burns, who “dropped out because they didn’t want to come down to 63rd or go to the other places. But I see Charles Burns and Andre, I see them walking the streets every day on 79th Street.

“You know, when we was out there protesting, we was saying that there would be a lot of suicides, a lot of incarcerations, a lot of hospitalizations, a lot of people not taking their meds. That’s why you see a lot of them out here. Policemen don’t know how to handle mental illness. They not gonna look at you like [you’ve got] a mental illness, they gonna look at you like a regular person. They don’t know the difference.”

The clinics that remain open have felt the strain. As of August 2013, the

“When we was out there protesting, we was saying that there would be a lot of suicides, a lot of incarcerations, a lot of hospitalizations, a lot of people not taking their meds.” folks didn’t fall between the cracks.”

When Carl Bell’s clinic went out of business, Calvin McCloud was reshuffled back to a city clinic, forcing him to change therapists twice in the space of six months.

“I fell through the cracks,” says McCloud.

“I was told that I had to go to the King Center on 43rd and Cottage Grove [where the Greater Grand Mental Health Clinic is located]. And I get there, and when this happened they moved the doctors over from Woodlawn to King Center. It kept me busy for a while, but when the winter came I kind of got behind in my pills, in my things, in my housework. So I started taking too much medicine. And then my doctor from King Center—she was my doctor at Woodlawn—she got transferred over to King Center one day a week, on Tuesday, and I started having problems again.”

Others may have had it worse. Diane Adams, the Englewood clinic patient and activist, was moved to Englewood in

most recent clinic census, the city’s mental health clinics had 2,440 active clients—an increase of seventy-one patients since the 2012 closures. This allots to roughly 406 clients for each remaining clinic. Should the rest close, it is not certain that private providers will be able to cope with the increased loads.

“There are certainly people who’ve fallen by the wayside or had bad outcomes, but there’s been no systematic reporting of what happened,” says Mark Heyrman, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who has worked on mental health advocacy for over twenty years. “It’s been mostly anecdotal so far...But inevitably if you make people go to a different provider and they lose the connection with the provider, some of them will simply disappear.”

O

cial rehab. Teaches us how to live back in the community. They show us how to take the buses. We talk about cooking, laundry, and stuff like that.”

Not all private mental health providers offer the kind of centralized, community-building rehabilitation that Englewood offers, and that Woodlawn offered.

Heyrman notes that “with the most serious mental illnesses, if they’re going to succeed in the community they need to have stability and human connections.” The public clinics have provided such a space for decades.

The losses have already been felt.

Calvin McCloud is still adjusting to his new clinic after leaving Woodlawn. As he talks about what might happen if the clinics close, his voice starts to tremble. “I’m just hoping and praying that they don’t close, because some of the people who fell through the cracks—they decided not to have a counselor, they didn’t decide, but they don’t have a counselor [after the closures, some patients struggled to form new counselor bonds]. And you see a doctor in the center, you have to go to these hospitals where you have to wait six, maybe seven hours just to pick up your medicine.”

The therapist says that “if [the clinics] were seriously going to stay open at all, they would have to get into these insurance networks.” McCloud and Adams both receive coverage from state Medicaid, and thus stand to lose access to their current clinics. McCloud might have to switch therapists again. Adams might lose hers.

Other patients might have to travel long distances to get the care they need. Over the next few months, as the system continues to change, more will undoubtedly fall through the cracks.

When the city cut the Woodlawn Mental Health Clinic from their budget, patients were given a choice of which alternative clinic they would go to. Woodlawn, says McCloud, had “an atmosphere of family. They gave me the choice to make up my mind when Woodlawn closed, which center I was going to. But I really didn’t want to go to no other center.” Additional reporting by John Gamino, with research from Bess Cohen, Spencer Mcavoy, Meaghan Murphy, and Hannah Nyhart.

n Fridays, patients at the Englewood Mental Health Clinic go on field trips. Adams says, “They teach us how to act in public. It’s called soMARCH 5, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

Apology Accepted What did I just watch?

BY JAKE BITTLE

I

was, perhaps, more uncomfortable than I’ve ever been. It was the night of February 28, and I was attending “I’m Sorry: An Apology Party,” a onenight showing of a piece by T.J. Donovan, a graduate of the School of the Art Institute.

The scene was as follows: I entered an apartment in Pilsen to find two men sitting on a couch drinking PBR and talking about art. On a TV in front of them was “I’m Sorry,” a thirty-second SketchUp animation in which a little man stood on a green plane in front of two big black squares that said “I’m Sorry.” A third black square, also labeled with “I’m Sorry,” spun around above the other two like a windmill. The TV emitted a whirring noise, like a wind turbine or a jet engine. In front of the TV stood a small table on which sat a bowl of condoms. Down the hall in the kitchen, three or four people were drinking PBR. “I think I’ve made a huge mistake,” I said to one of the men on the couch. “I thought this was a gallery opening.”

“It is,” said the man, who introduced himself as Levi Budd. Budd is the creator of The Sandcastle, an artists’ organization he started a year ago. He likes to refer to it as “a virtual gallery.”

“I’m interested in collaborating with all kinds of artists,” said Budd. “What I do is, I make architectural models in Sketch-

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¬ MARCH 5, 2014

Up and I invite artists to do whatever they want to it. They can put their work into the model, or alter it however they want.

From there, we decide an opening—where, when, how, what’s in it, and who’s invited.”

Donovan’s “I’m Sorry” is one such manipulation of a SketchUp model, and the random apartment into which I’d intruded was one such gallery opening. Certainly, I did not feel that Budd or Donovan had had me in mind when they decided who was invited. But the discomfort I was feeling, Budd told me, was appropriate: showing the art in a private space creates an intrusive and apologetic feeling in viewers who enter the apartment, fostering the same sort of paranoia that Donovan had used as the inspiration for “I’m Sorry.”

“Donovan’s not here, he moved back to South Dakota because he felt it was more important to take care of his family,” said Budd. “But he feels like he’s lost connections with a lot of people here, and is also a bit paranoid that he made a lot of mistakes, and was a dick to everyone. So he chose to make a video and an apology at the same time.”

“So ‘I’m Sorry’ is literally thirty seconds of this,” I said, gesturing to the screen, “and that’s the art.”

“Yes,” said Budd. “Also, the bowl of condoms.” ¬

MUSIC

courtesy of alvin carter-bey

The Chicago Modern Orchestra Project performs “Suite of DuSable: A Vision of Faith.”

A Journey in Jazz The DuSable honors a founder

BY NOAH KAHRS

T

he DuSable Museum, in Washington Park, celebrates its namesake frequently, but celebrated him particularly loudly last Friday night. “Suite DuSable: A Vision of Faith,” an hour-long orchestral piece composed and conducted by Renée Baker, served as a kickoff to celebrations of Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, founder of Chicago. Integrated with the museum’s ongoing curriculum development project, the piece paid tribute to DuSable through creative jazz music, an artistic embodiment rather than a literal narration.

The piece is part of a series of public events the DuSable is presenting in conjunction with new units on African-American history for Illinois public schools.

In 2005, a state law was passed to put more African-American history in public schools, and the Illinois Amistad Commission was formed to create curricular units and accompanying public events. The DuSable is a major partner in the Amis-

tad Commission’s projects, and has worked on developing curriculum units and public programming in conjunction with the Amistad Commission, according to Pemon Rami, the museum’s director of educational services and public programs.

“Suite DuSable,” combined with Sunday’s “DuSable Day,” was one of these events. Recordings from the concert will be available for teachers to use when teaching classes about DuSable, but the concert was clearly meant to reach an audience on its own.

Jazz might seem an odd accompaniment to mandated curricular reform, but the piece—performed by the Chicago Modern Orchestra Project and members of the Association for Advancement of Creative Musicians—conveyed DuSable’s historic journey in swells of sound. The performance began with hand drums, evoking DuSable’s home of Haiti. As Baker walked onstage, she cued a jazzy trumpet solo. This was soon followed by a vocal duet with pi-

ano accompaniment, one of the piece’s few uses of words.

Baker later explained that the duet represented the voice of DuSable’s dead mother, but with phrases like “Are you getting the message?” and “Hear me now,” it seemed equally addressed to the audience. The trumpet players went out into the crowd in the climax of the piece, which Baker later explained represented DuSable’s arrival in New Orleans.

As the trumpeters returned to the stage, they and the conductor were dancing. Chaotic improvisation alternated with bursts of unison rhythm before the hand drums returned, recalling the opening. The piece reached its conclusion, another carefully controlled cacophony, with textures that let the ensemble members improvise but remain under Baker’s control. It was after several rounds of applause that Baker spoke on the piece. She explained the references to DuSable’s mother’s voice and his arrival in New Orleans, his entry point

to North America, after which he found the “stinky swamp” that is now Chicago. (“Luckily not during winter,” she joked.)

Although DuSable later moved to present-day Missouri and died there, the piece doesn’t end where his life ends; it celebrates his legacy.

Asked why she chose to present the explanation after the piece rather than before, Baker said she wanted the audience not to listen for the specifics of DuSable’s route in the music, “but to follow the sonic journey first. When you attend an art lecture, you see the work first and then you get to hear various schools of thought on what, when, why, and how the presenters come to understand what the artist meant.” The piece provided impressions of DuSable’s travels, but it wasn’t a history book. Exactly which waterways DuSable traveled wasn’t as important as the impact of his journey. ¬

MARCH 5, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

Turn the Page Open Books opens a warehouse in Pilsen

BY OLIVIA STOVICEK

courtesy mary gibbons

E

ntering the Open Books warehouse at 19th and Peoria in Pilsen, you find yourself in the middle of a sea of books. Packed shelves stretch off toward the back wall; dozens of boxes of books lie waiting in corners for sorting or delivery.

It’s an unassuming, no-frills sort of place.

This particular bookstore is the latest project of Open Books, a nonprofit whose efforts promote literacy in “Chicago and beyond,” as their mission statement puts it. The organization runs several programs for students young and old, helping them develop reading and writing skills and cultivate a love for diving into a good book.

The organization finances its work in ways that contribute to its mission. Open Books collects donations of used books and then sells a portion of these donations, using the proceeds to support its programs.

The other books are given away for free through some of those initiatives. Since it began as a single store in River North, the enterprise has expanded to include a booming online business and, in the last 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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couple of months, a warehouse bookstore.

But the Pilsen warehouse—Open Books’s third and largest location—is home to far more than just the new store.

Not only does it house the group’s online inventory, accept donations, and operate a donation pick-up service, but for the last six months, it has also hosted the work of Book Worm Angels, Open Books’ book-grant program. Book Worm Angels primarily donates books to schools, but it also works with other groups that request books, such as the Cook County Department of Corrections and homeless shelters.

Open Books likes to take a handson approach with their programs: Open Books Buddies pairs elementary school students with a one-on-one mentor to work on reading together twice a week, while the Adventures in Creative Writing field trips have third- to twelfth-grade classes visit Open Books’ literacy center for prose, poetry, slam poetry, or even college writing workshops. In these workshops students have the chance to work with writing

coaches, share their work with their classmates, and receive a published anthology of their work a few weeks later.

Book Director Aaron Lippelt says that although there are plans to expand the program’s size, the focus is on quality before quantity. “There are a lot of programs that give books away haphazardly,” he said.

“We sort the books for age-appropriateness and make sure that what they’re getting is really high quality. We want to get them really interested in reading.”

The new store was conceived of as a service as much as a retail venture. Both Lippelt and a coworker (each married to teachers) had heard their spouses discuss the difficulty of buying children’s books for their classes, since new children’s books are often very expensive. Lippelt saw an opportunity. The books in the warehouse store are priced as low as possible, making the books accessible to all and allowing teachers to build up their classroom libraries.

Furthermore, the warehouse allows

the nonprofit to distribute even more books. “We try to use all the books we get, deciding whether they should go to a program, retail sale, et cetera, and we try to get the most out of every book,” Lippelt explained. “Before we might have had a ton of kid’s books sitting around in the warehouse waiting for a big sale, since we’re at our current capacity for giving away books.” This way, he said, books like those could more easily get into the right hands.

All of these programs are staffed largely by volunteers—hundreds work regularly—made up of “college students, retirees, and everything in between,” as Christina Brown, Book Coordinator, put it. The warehouse in Pilsen has drawn many new volunteers to the organization and seems likely to help introduce it to many more. Open Books Warehouse, 905 W. 19th St. Wednesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm.

(312)243-9776. open-books.org/warehouse

VISUAL ARTS

An Animate Archive Chase Joynt and Kristen Schilt populate the Gray Center with the past

BY STEPHEN URCHICK

T

he boilerplate image for “#FOLLOWUS,” a collaborative multimedia installation on display at the University of Chicago’s Gray Center, is a still from the original short film “Urban Renewal.” Focusing the shot on the intersection of 55th Street and Lake Park Avenue, a hand behind the camera reaches forward and holds a photo print over the view. Drawn from the fifties, the five-byseven reveals a thriving boulevard. Drawn again from the sixties, the space becomes sparser, shorter, and grimmer. The rows of cars are dispersed, the multi-storied storefronts blotted away, the makings of today’s squat, square shopping center get grafted onto the corner.

As an exhibition, “#FOLLOWUS” does much the same work as “Urban Renewal.” The show spotlights understated themes from the University’s growth and maturation. It juxtaposes them, gets them to talk to one another, and ultimately propels a paper archive into the warm-blooded world. You can practically trace a straight line from “Renewal’s” wall monitor to the table featuring “Future Nobel Laureates.”

The table’s laid with a grid of unclaimed nametags for the University’s extant laureates, curated by two presentation posterboards. “Renewal” concludes by pointedly quoting the Southeast Chicago Commission’s former director, Julian Levi: “We are either going to have graduate students who produce leadership…or we are not going… to disturb existing owners and populations.” The illustrious ranks of “Laureates” conspicuously realize Levi’s dream, trumpeting the dubiously happy upshot to his leveling program.

Yet by channeling the science fair and the conference booth, the poster boards looming over “Laureates” undermine their own display. They make the accomplishment of eighty-nine total inductees tentative. Titles like “The Impact of the Common App,” or “How Many Chicago Dropouts Does it Take to Change American Culture?” preface abstracts, hypotheses, and methods. They question the likelihood that this number will swell into the

the “Wieboldt Bathroom” partition. The works express two different modes of witty, graphic love. One scratches it out onto paper; the other scrawls it out with varicolored Sharpie. Both facelessly share an unsanctioned intimacy.

Participating artist and UofC Mellon Fellow Chase Joynt doesn’t think these comparisons revise the past. “This is mirroring the way the archive is functioning in the University,” he says. These disparate episodes and their “incomplete folklore”

ponent as a mechanism for helping out folks that “aren’t engaging with conceptual art” too frequently. Ten-minute gallery talks in the guise of “campus tours” road-mapped the room. The tours were deliberately “not didactic and explanative,” claimed Joynt.

“How do we make the gallery space more accessible?” he asked instead. “What are some ways we can gesture to it to encourage exploration?” The tour itself read like a wholesale critique of actual campus walkthroughs, condemning the real tours’

The show spotlights understated themes from the University’s growth and maturation. It juxtaposes them, gets them to talk to one another, and ultimately propels a paper archive into the warm-blooded world. stephen urchick

Student Evan Hernandez leads a gallery tour. future, or make lasting contributions. It’s worth noting that not a single tag is missing from the table. No gaps suggest that no laureates have returned to take up their badges (of honor). “Laureates” accordingly hints at the disinterest of homegrown talent in its hometown context. What’s worse: Nametags like these are a too-common sight at the check-in desks to major fundraising receptions. The symbol sinisterly associates any potential return with lucre.

In 1903, Sophonisba Breckinridge became the UofC’s first woman doctorate. In 1971, the Wieboldt building’s men’s bathroom became the premiere spot in Chicago for anonymous sex. “#FOLLOWUS” asks us to take these facts side by side. The exhibition credibly twins the coziness of Breckinridge’s fireplace with the communality of a toilet stall. The two installations reproduce each location, nestling them together in a corner. “Dear Love” puts Breckinridge’s tender letters to Dean Marion Talbot on display. The halfcracked desk drawer is as revealing as the electrician’s-taped glory holes drilled into

shared the same settings and now inhabit the same shelves, collections, and portfolios. Aiming to literally populate the Gray Center with the past, Joynt worked several distinct performance art routines into the exhibition. “It’s pushing back against the textual presentation of the history,” he says.

The sexual subtexts in the Breckinridge-Wieboldt binary come alive between the Faculty Wives and the WITCHes. Gallery-goers approach four women, animate anachronisms split between two booths: a bake sale conducted by professorial housewives, and a table of agitators from the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell. Two wear modest, patterned dresses, straightjacketing gender in strained smiles. Two militate for the rehire of Marxist professor Marlene Dixon. Approaching living history makes its messiness starker and more persistent. On opening night, both pairs actively solicited collections towards their causes. The activists’ donation jar to “stop female apology syndrome” was considerably sparser than the cash box for the wives’ cupcake sales.

The crowd apparently just couldn’t resist crumbly cookies for the good of the cause.

Joynt also cited the performance com-

pretention to an accurate snapshot of the University. It peppered its audiences with trumped up trivia, rigorously washing the record of the more colorful incidents that “#FOLLOWUS” concentrates and canvases.

As the show attempted to chart out the University’s unfrequented history—to embody questions of progress or violence, public or private, straight or queer—the University’s gallery mapped demands onto the show. A technical requirement to working in the Gray Center involves keeping its center clear. “#FOLLOWUS” became a kind of breathing metaphor for the UofC itself; the displays all necessarily hugged the walls, leaving the middle vacant. Occupied instead by the opening night’s chattering crowd, thinking and drinking, a conversational focal point developed, ringed by a periphery of strident narratives and rumbling challenges. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, 929 E. 60th St. Through March 7. Monday-Friday, 11am-4pm. (773)834-1936. graycenter.uchicago.edu MARCH 5, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

VISUAL ARTS VISUAL ARTS Siblings Through the stacking of her own silhouettes, Valentina Zamfirescu births seven-and-a-half-pound iterations of herself in her aptly named exhibition, “Siblings.” Born in Romania in 1984, Zamfirescu immigrated to the United States at the age of twelve; in 2013 she received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute in 2013.

Each pile of Zamfirescu’s faceless outlines represents brothers and sisters that never existed, as she is an only child. “Siblings” allows for the creation of what could have been, in a way that speaks much louder than her hypothetical flesh-and-blood counterparts might have.

Ballroom Projects at the Archer Ballroom, 3012 S. Archer Ave. Opening reception Saturday, March 8, 7pm-10pm.

March 8-March 16. By appointment only. ballroomprojects. tumblr.com (Emily Lipstein)

Teen Paranormal Romance

courtesy of christian saucedo

Expressing Nature Christian Saucedo brings 4,940 pieces of paper to the Chicago Urban Art Society

BY EMMA COLLINS

A

massive paper airplane poised for flight, a pixelated cloud, a spaceage hammock—depending on where you’re standing, artist Christian Saucedo’s paper sculpture “PLEATS,” which was exhibited last Saturday at the Chicago Urban Art Society in Pilsen, could be any of these.

Stationed in the first floor of a hulking brick building that also houses a medical supply store and a boxing studio, the Urban Art Society boasts a cavernous, loft-style gallery space. Apart from “PLEATS,” suspended from the ceiling of the room, the space was populated only by a sparse array of furniture. The installation was a bright white that seemed to glow beneath the warm gallery lights.

Measuring about nine-by-eleven feet and composed of 4,940 handmade geometric paper forms painstakingly fixed together, it presented an imposing presence in spite of its insubstantial weight. The folded pieces of paper created a series of triangular pockets that together formed the curved, sloping form of “PLEATS,” which was alternately draped languidly and stretched taut. This fluctuation in tension evoked 14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

movement and fluidity in the piece, though it was composed of a series of rigid shapes.

On his website, Saucedo cites a quote from Honoré de Balzac as the inspiration for his work. It reads: “The mission of art is not to copy nature, but to express it.”

“PLEATS,” which is Saucedo’s artistic interpretation of the structure of a whale’s belly, embodies this sentiment. The work distills the essence of this natural structure, capturing its complexity and mimicking its shape without providing a literal depiction of its form. Saucedo’s style is a sort of contemporary sculptural impressionism.

He emphasizes the whale belly’s movement through his undulating paper framework and its biological complexity in the intricate triangular folds. The piece expresses the fundamental aspects of the whale belly with no more than a nod to its real-world anatomy.

Though monochromatic and relatively unadorned, “PLEATS” conveys the depth and complexity of a natural form in its striking simplicity. It is a study in contradictions, at once flimsy and formidable, rigid and yielding, minimal and manifold. ¬

¬ MARCH 5, 2014

Bubble, bubble, werewolves and stubble, heartstrings burn and profits double...Once in a blue moon, artists commune to ponder the most pressing question of our time: Team Edward or Team Jacob? For lo, “Teen Paranormal Romance” is upon us. This group show invites everyone from “Twilight” acolytes to skeptic academics into the Renaissance Society to examine how the surging popularity of the “teenage paranormal romance” genre embodies our cultural moment. It also hopes to examine why Bella is okay with Edward watching her sleep. The Renaissance Society itself says it best: “This exhibition samples artistic production in the wake of a zeitgeist that has rendered the unconscious a derelict playground home to weeds of surrealism.” And who doesn’t like a good playground? Renaissance Society, 5811 S. Ellis Avenue, Fourth Floor. March 9-April 13. Opening reception March 9, 4pm-7pm. Tuesday-Friday, 10am-5pm; Saturday-Sunday, noon-5pm. (773)702-8670. renaissancesociety. org (Cindy Dapogny)

East of Que Village The human eye cannot comprehend six disparate videos simultaneously—this is what avant-garde Chinese artist Yang Fudong is counting on. This multi-screened collection of narratives is intended to be non-linear. The videos presented stretch across more than twenty years of the artist’s career, from the early film “After all I didn’t force you” (1998) to “The Half Hitching Post” (2005). The title film, “East of Que Village,” is centered on the artist’s home village in the province of Hebei. The exhibit itself is intended to work in conjunction with “Envision China: A Festival of Arts & Culture,” which UChicago Arts will run from February to June. Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E 60th St. Opening reception Friday, February 28, 6pm-9pm. Through March 30. Tuesday-Saturday, 9am8pm. Sunday, 11am-8pm. Free. (773)702-2787. http:// arts.uchicago.edu/reva-and-david-logan-center-arts (Sarah Claypoole)

Tentatively Titled This definitely isn’t your grandmother’s art show. For its debut exhibition, Sunday Project gallery’s “Tentatively Titled” shines a light on what might be this generation’s biggest Achilles heel: our ever-growing, ever-changing, fairly constant connection to digital technology and social media, in juxtaposition with the “perceived banality” of everyday, analog, physical being. This conflict very distinctly belongs to those of us who, to varying degrees, live and breathe in virtual reality. Confront the paradoxes of your twenty-first-century existence; connect, or re-connect, with your physical self; maybe even turn off your phone. Sunday Project, 1344 W. 18th Pl. #1F. Through March 29. sunday-project.com (Katryce Lassle)

Visual Ends Ephemerality. Intangibility. The human condition.

Countless artists throughout the course of history have attempted to transform these universal abstractions into something comprehensible through impressive words, grandiose imagery, bold colors, and experimental techniques. Yet one gallery in Chicago has undertaken the task of enabling both local and international artists to make physical these imperceptibles through simple installations of sound, light, and movement. Two single glowing light bulbs suspended in the air. Resonating vibrations in a room full of crystal glasses. “Performative” interactions with nude models. These are just a few

of the past exhibitions displayed at the “Visual Ends: The Edge of Perception” exhibition at FLAT Chicago.

FLAT, 2023 S. Ruble St. Private opening Friday, February 28, 7pm-10pm. Through March 30. Saturday-Sunday, 1pm-4pm. Free. Viewing available by appointment. contactflatspacechicago@gmail.com (Maha Ahmed)

Library of Love As the temperatures rise and the wind begins to subside, the memory of this hellish winter will begin to slowly melt away. It will become easier to feel fondness for our city again. With love on one’s mind after Valentine’s Day and the arrival of spring on the horizon, now is the perfect opportunity to take some time to think about love and Chicago in the same setting. “Library of Love” is an interactive exhibit—hosted by the Washington Park Arts Incubator and a slew of UofC partners—which serves as homage to both love and to Chicago. Members of the community are invited to take some quiet time to reflect on these subjects and materials will be available to those who would like to write their own love letters. Arts Incubator, 301 E. Garfield Blvd. Through March 31. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, noon-3pm. Free. arts.uchicago. edu (Lucia Ahrensdorf)

Performing Images From the late fourteenth to the early twentieth centuries, opera and theater were central to Chinese cultural life at the Imperial Court and in rural villages alike. This flowering of theater produced an inevitable ripple effect far beyond the stage. Operatic motifs are found on ceramics, scroll paintings, books, fans, and textiles. “Performing Images,” a new exhibit at the Smart Museum of Art, compiles a stunning array of such objects from the Ming and Qing dynasties. The show is being launched in concert with a five-month-long festival, “Envisioning China: A Festival of Arts and Culture,” that celebrates Chinese art, history, and culture with over forty events.

“Performing Images” runs alongside another exhibit at the Smart, “Inspired by the Opera: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video.” Together, these two collections form an unbroken narrative of an important field of Chinese visual art from its origins in medieval opera through its present incarnation. Smart Museum of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. Through June 15.

Tuesday-Wednesday, 10am-5pm; Thursday, 10am-8pm; Friday-Sunday, 10am-5pm. (773)702-0200. smartmuseum.uchicago.edu (Lillian Selonick)

Topographical Depictions of the Bronzeville Renaissance Multidisciplinary artist Samantha Hill makes history every day at the Hyde Park Art Center. More accurately, Hill is constantly reshaping history, experimenting with archival and narrative practices to tell the stories of Bronzeville’s storied past in the liveliest of ways. Her first solo exhibition, “Topographical Depictions” is Hill’s attempt to construct a vibrant and ever-changing map of one South Side neighborhood’s history; the exhibition, which encourages audience participation, won’t look the same from one moment to the next. Part of the gallery is set up as an “office” in which Hill will work in real time every Saturday. She will also be creating tintype portraits of prominent Bronzeville community members, which will be displayed at Bronzeville’s Blanc Gallery starting February 28. Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Through May 18. “Office hours” Saturdays 11am-3pm. Monday-Thursday, 9am-8pm; Friday-Saturday, 9am-5pm; Sunday, noon-5pm. Free. (773)324-5520. hydeparkart.org (Katryce Lassle)

Photorealism in the Digital Age For New York-based artist Yigal Ozeri and other photorealistic painters, there is much to be gained by rendering a photograph with paint on canvas. The works they produce capture all of the detail and depth of a photograph, and simultaneously seem to project the image into an ethereal, dreamy world beyond our own. With the quality of digital photography constantly improving, photorealistic painters can capture and magnify intricate details more vividly (and realistically) than ever. Mana Contemporary Chicago explores some of Israeli-born Ozeri’s most recent work in their upcoming exhibition “Photorealism in the Digital Age,” shedding light on an ever-changing form of painting that has fascinated for decades. Mana Contemporary Chicago, 2233 S. Throop St. Through April 15. Call for gallery hours. Free. (312)8508301. manafinearts.com (Katryce Lassle)

ARTS CALENDAR Fragmentos It’s how most of us remember our childhoods: in fragments, abstract bits of memories that we are sometimes surprised we’ve kept with us. We all carry mental maps of our youth; Mexican-American artist Pilar Acevedo lays hers out in full color. She works through poetry, painting, sound, sculpture, and found materials to reimagine not only her childhood, but also the aspects of childhood that many women share. Surreal, uncanny, and even a bit frightening, “Fragmentos” places girlhood in a dream space that might turn into a nightmare at any moment. You survived childhood; “Fragmentos” is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on those years you thought you’d forgotten. National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St. Through July 13. Tuesday-Sunday, 10am-5pm. Free. (312)738-1503. nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org (Katryce Lassle)

Silk Road and Indian Ocean Traders Did you know that archaeologists have found Chinese ceramics in excavations all over the Middle East? Findings like this reveal parts of the story of international trade in antiquity. They provide the basis for “Silk Road and Indian Ocean Traders: Connecting China and the Middle East,” a small exhibit open now at the Oriental Institute. The exhibit includes both Chinese and Middle Eastern artifacts, which, when viewed together, demonstrate the influence of Chinese inventions and innovations on Middle Eastern craft. Guest curator and research associate at the Institute, Tasha Vorderstrasse, will give a gallery talk on May 1 at 12:15pm. Oriental Institute, 1155 E. 58th St. Through June 29. Tuesday-Sunday, 10am-6pm; Wednesday, 10am-8:30pm. Free, $10 suggested donation. (773)702-9514. oi.uchicago.edu (Rachel Schastok)

STAGE & SCREEN Water by the Spoonful A Pulitzer Prize–winning play, “Water by the Spoonful” is the second in a trilogy of plays written by Quiara Alegría Hudes, following the complicated lives of the Ortiz family. Through entwined plot lines, the play follows characters inside and outside the family who have been severely affected by substance abuse, and who have anonymously connected on an online chat forum.

The Ortiz family is beloved within their local Puerto Rican neighborhood, and over the course of the play, their struggles forge accidental ties between many of the characters. Ultimately, “Water by the Spoonful” is a realistically somber play that demonstrates how the personal connections one can make in life can lead to unexpected hopes, even in the most hopeless of times.

Court Theater, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. March 6-April 6. See site for show times. (773)753-4472. courttheatre.org (Cristina Ochoa)

Reading: D.T. Max on DFW The UofC has no journalism department, and for reasons unknown its English department largely declines to acknowledge anything written after WWII. In a colossally fortunate kertwang, though, someone from high above has managed to slip D.T. Max, a staff writer at the New Yorker, past the university’s inspectors of antiquarianism. As part of the Dedmon Visiting Writers Program, Max will be reading and discussing “Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story,” his 2012 biography of the late David Foster Wallace, whose brilliant novel “Infinite Jest” was—improbably—published fifty-one years after the end of WWII. A few revelations from Max’s biography: Wallace made up details in his early non-fiction; liked to write in a room whose walls he painted black; and was, in his own words, “not that into condiments.” Were he alive, he would have turned fifty-two this February.

Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., Room 801.

Reading Thursday, March 6, 6pm. Conversation with English professor Patrick Jagoda Friday, March 7, noon. creativewriting.uchicago.edu (Harrison Smith)

The Wereth Eleven In December 1944, the allied forces suffered their most casualty-heavy conflict of WWII at the Battle of the Bulge. No unit was hit harder than the 333rd Division, an African-American infantry unit in the still-segregated army corps. After they were overrun by German forces, eleven survivors fled toward American lines, taking shelter in a Belgian farmhouse. The rest of their story—

betrayal by a Nazi sympathizer, surrender, torture, and execution—was pieced together when Allied forces retook the region weeks later and found their remains.

“The Wereth Eleven,” an award-winning documentary, traces the path of the eleven soldiers, all of whom have received Purple Hearts and Bronze Stars. The DuSable Museum presents the film with an accompanying lecture this Friday, in conjunction with their exhibit “Beyond the Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges.” DuSable Museum, 740 E. 56th Pl. Friday, March 7, 7pm. Free. (773)947-0600. dusablemuseum. org (Hannah Nyhart)

Romance of the Western Chamber and Two Stars in the Milky Way All’s quiet on the Western Front, but what about the East? The UofC’s Film Studies Center presents a silent-film double feature out of China this weekend.

“Romance of the Western Chamber” is a forty-two-minute tale of martial arts, bandits, and love across class lines. “Two Stars in the Milky Way” presents a (relatively) updated love story, as the camera turns to 1920s, art deco Shanghai. Modernity and traditional values crash when a farm girl is plucked from her country villa and made a city star. The film features opera, infidelity, and worst-date-ever mini golf. The title refers to a myth of doomed lovers turned into stars, so it probably won’t end well. Live-scoring both films is prolific composer and pianist Donald Sosin. Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Friday, March 7, 7pm. Free, with limited seating. filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu (Hannah Nyhart)

Solo Saturdays Still feeling the aftereffects of a lonely Valentine’s Day binge of chocolate and wine? Get your lonesome self to the South Loop this weekend for “Solo Saturdays” at the creatively named performance space, The Venue.

Five actors will stomp the stage solo, and regale your lonesome heart with short tales and personal stories as you laugh and cry away memories of that disastrous day.

But you don’t you have to roll solo just because the actors will be. Grab a date and a bottle of wine—The Venue is now BYOB friendly. If you’re in search of another beverage, Overflow Coffee Bar, located next door, will be pulling espresso shots for caffeine fiends and night owls.

Whether you’re alone or rolling deep, nothing beats back the winter blues like red wine and cappuccinos. Or some harmless schadenfreude served up solo. The Venue at Daystar Center, 1550 S. State Street. Saturday, March 8, 7:30pm. (312)674-0001. (Robert Sorrell)

Rio Playwright Jeremy Menekseoglu’s latest work takes his audience to a small town in Texas by the Rio Grande.

The border village finds itself in the grip of a mysterious mass killer—disappeared bodies keep turning up dead and hacked to pieces downstream. Into the ghost-townto-be wanders Mary Graves, on the run from an abusive husband. Dream Theatre bills the show as “a furious story of love, hope, innocence, forgiveness, mass murder and…karaoke!” The company first performed the play fifteen years ago, but the Chicago cast and the intervening years promise a fresh show. And in the middle of an unceasing polar vortex, Texas, even one plagued by evil and karaoke, sounds pretty good. See review, page 13.

Dream Theatre Company, 556 W. 18th St. Through March 16, Thursday-Saturday, 8pm; Sunday, 7pm. $22. (773)5528616. dreamtheatrecompany.com (Hannah Nyhart)

Anna, in the Darkness Those who like to leave the light on at night might want to avoid Dream Theatre Company’s newest horror.

“Anna, in the Darkness” sheds only shards of light on its title character, a young special education teacher played

by Megan Merrill. The one-woman show keeps tension piqued , casting the stage’s only face in the digital glow of a cell phone or the flicker of a candle. House playwright Jeremy Menekseoglu’s scare ran in 2012 and again last Fall, and now goes up Friday nights as an open run. Anna remains trapped in her house, hunted by a town outside, her guilt or innocence kept carefully ambiguous. The play’s a good bet for anyone who likes a little psycho with their thriller. This house is definitely haunted; the only question is by whom. Dream Theatre Company, 556 W. 18th St. Fridays: March 14, April 11, May 9. $17-20. (773)552-8616. dreamtheatrecompany.com (Hannah Nyhart)

Taming of the Shrew

The English literary tradition owes Shakespeare big time. Pretty much anyone who has ever scribbled in English post-Bard, from storied critic Harold Bloom to storied critic Kanye West, has, at some point, invoked the man’s authority. The Greeks have Plato, the Germans Goethe, and we have the Swan of Avon.

For the longest time, I was under the impression that “The Taming of the Shrew” involved some combination of old English and anthropomorphism. As a firm believer in my pet turtle Julius’ right to conversation, I was disappointed to find my convictions only partially founded. Nonetheless, the Provision Theater’s offering of this classic-—a patchwork quilt of sexism, misogyny and societal discomfort-—is required viewing. Whether you’re looking to carry out a feminist takedown or you simply want to check out Heath Ledger’s source material, swing by, throwing-fruit in hand. Provision Theater, 1001 W. Roosevelt Rd. Through March 30. See website for showtimes and pricing. (312)455-0065. provisiontheater. org (Arman Sayani)

MUSIC Ty Dolla $ign, Leather Corduroys, Mick Jenkins, Saba Brought to you by Chicago hip-hop blogosphere titan Fake Shore Drive, this coming Thursday brings an explosive collection of talent to one of the city’s best music haunts. Signed to Wiz Khalifa’s label, Taylor Gang (or Die!) Records, Los Angeles native Ty Dolla $ign sings, raps, and produces from the sunshine-saturated West Coast; a fitting location considering the name of his January 2014 release, “Beach House EP.” Leather Corduroys is a side project dreamt up by Save Money MCs Joey Purp and Kami De Chukwu—and the material is like nothing you have ever heard. Mick Jenkins, who hails right from home here in Chicago, is riding off the momentum from loaded 2013 mixtape “Trees & Truth” and plans to follow up with something even more dynamic in 2014. Saba, who has been featured on notable Windy City records such as Chance the Rapper’s “Acid Rap,” has also dropped a mixtape last year, his debut “GETCOMFORTable.” Along with his fellow performers, Saba plans to do the hip-hop community one better sometime later this year. Get on your feet, Chi-town, and go witness the next generation taking over Thursday night. Reggies Rock Club, 2109 S. State St. Thursday, March 6. Doors at 8 PM. $3-$10. 17+. reggieslive.com (Kari Wei)

under the moniker DJ “Jacques” Bryl and rechristening Maria’s Community Bar as Maria’s “Caveau Maudit” or the “wretched little dive...located on the historic left bank of Bubbly Creek.” To top it all off, Bryl will be paying special tribute to Gainsbourg’s magnum opus, the Lolita-inspired minimalist funk operette “Histoire de Melody Nelson,” which (even if you don’t speak a lick of French) rewards repeated listens for its idiosyncratic drum recording and lush string arrangements. Also on deck for the evening is live cover band L’Homme à Tête de Chou, performing works from the Gainsbourg songbook. Maria’s Packaged Goods & Community Bar, 960 W. 31st St. Wednesday, April 2, 7pm-2am. Free. 21+.

(773)890-0588. community-bar.com

Jazz X-tet On March 12, the ever changing and rearranging lineup of UofC’s own Jazz X-tet will once again be taking the stage at the Logan Center Performance Hall. The X-tet is directed by legendary AACM saxophonist and bandleader Mwata Bowden, who has dedicated years to mentoring college students, both in the classroom (where he teaches classes on jazz theory and improvisation) and on the stage, where he has pushed the many incarnations of the twelve-to-fifteen member group to explore jazz beyond just the Real Book standards.

The dynamic X-tet will be making full use of its big band versatility when it performs on its home turf next Thursday. Logan Center Performance Hall, 915 E. 60th St. Thursday, March 13, 8pm. Free. (773)702-8484. arts.uchicago.edu (Zach Goldhammer)

Microcosmic Sound Orchestra “Music (vibration) has the power to transform matter” and “the goal of artistic expression should be to leave the listener in a higher state of being than prior to the experience.” Such are the beliefs of Sonic Healing Ministries, which has a weekly worship service in the form of a communal improv jam session at the Arts Incubator in Washington Park. Led by David Boykin, artist-in-residence at the UofC’s Arts and Public Life initiative, the Microcosmic Sound Orchestra of Sonic Healing Ministries seeks to make music that impacts the well-being of audiences and performers alike. Not that there has to be a distinction. Arts Incubator, 301 E. Garfield Blvd. Sundays, 2pm-5pm. sonichealingministries.com (Noah Kahrs)

Serge Gainsbourg The ubiquitous, genre-hopping Chicago DJ, Joe Bryl, and the renegade French chanteur, Serge Gainsbourg, make for an oddly fitting pair. Like Gainsbourg, whose three-decade career was marked by drastic shifts in musical style, Bryl has never been one to get pigeonholed by any one genre. On April 2, he will be spinning tracks

WHPK Rock Charts WHPK 88.5 FM is a nonprofit community radio station at the University of Chicago. Once a week the station’s music directors collect a book of playlist logs from their Rock-format DJs, tally up the plays of albums added within the last few months, and rank them according to popularity that week.

Compiled by Rachel Schastok and Charlie Rock Artist / Album / Record Label 1.Slushy / Candy / Randy 2. D. Charles Speer & The Helix / Doubled Exposure / Thrill Jockey 3. Gino + the Goons / Oh Yeah / Pelican Pow Wow 4. Frankie Cosmos / Zentropy / Double Double Whammy 5. Son Of A Gun / Sun Of A Gun/The Morons / Lo Fi Supply 6. OK Sara / Mutt Tracks / Athletic Tapes 7. Sun Araw / Belomancie / Drag City 8. AJ Davila / Terror/Amor / Nacional 9. Sunn O))) & Ulver / Terrestrials / Southern Lord 10. The Morons Halloween / Racine / s/r 11. Clearance / Greensleeve / Microluxe 12. Bill Baird / Diamon Eyepatch / Moon Glyph 13. TacocaT / NVM / Hardly Art 14. Sultan Bathery / Sultan Bathery / Slovenly 15. Watchout! / Flashbacker / Permanent

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