May 6, 2015

Examining the migrations of Chicago’s birds and people

On the Wing

CHICAGO URBAN ART SOCIETY, THELONIOUS MARTIN, PROTEST,

&

MORE INSIDE

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

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

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

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

Clyde Schwab

Webmaster Business Manager

Shuwen Qian Harry Backlund

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

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

Cover art by Lexi Drexelius.

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

Unstacking the Deck Indiana’s efforts to draw Chicagoans over the border may come off as aggressive—highway billboards offer constant reminder that we are all “Illinnoyed,” or at least that we should be. But as talks about a Chicago-owned casino progress, reasons to head over to the Hoosier State dwindle. The most recent proposal from the city would allow for not just a city-owned casino, but also new casinos in the south suburbs and video gambling at five Illinois horse race tracks. There are still legislative and financial hurdles to clear, and a location to pick; potential spots include McCormick Place, the area by the United Center, and the vacant Michael Reese hospital lot, which has been a burden to taxpayers’ pockets since the failed Olympic bid.

The proposal as it stands could bring in an extra $457 million per year, and maybe even a couple Indianans for a Chicago gambling experience. Casino expansion has faced serious opposition for years, however, and it’s far from clear that this latest push will ultimately be successful, or that it will take the form Rahm hopes. We’ll see if casino proponents are left “Illinnoyed” or not.

Having Fun Isn’t Hard…

When the President of the United States of America gives you a library card. And that’s exactly what he’s doing. The effort to put a

Chicago Public Library card in the hands of every Chicago Public Schools student is part of a 2013 White House initiative called ConnectED, which seeks to make educational technology and digital content more accessible to K-12 students. Announced last Thursday, the library card initiative is being rolled out in thirty-one cities across the country, though according to CPL Commissioner Brian Bannon, reaching every CPS student may take a few years.

The initiative was announced just in time to get kids thinking about Rahm’s Readers, Mayor Emanuel’s attempt to get CPS students excited about reading over the summer.

Detox In addition to a shiny new Jeanne Gang boathouse (coming eventually to 28th and Eleanor), it looks like the South Branch of the Chicago River, colloquially known as “Bubbly Creek” due to its notorious toxicity, could be getting a real cleanup. According to an Army Corps report, a thorough spring cleaning, with an estimated cost of $2.65 million, could increase water quality and thus, incidentally, improve the “outdoor experiences” of residents in Bridgeport, Pilsen, and McKinley Park. It could also protect a few endangered species whose riverbank habits have been eroded. See this week’s feature for more on the dynamics of migratory birds in Chicago.

IN THIS ISSUE produce man on the wing

“...boundaries get pushed over and over again. We see that mimicked by [birds].” emily lipstein…4

“It’s all about keeping them happy right now—keeping them excited to come here.” eleonora edreva…9

Carol Vieth managed to tease a rich and personal history out of rows of data. lewis page…13

reconstructing the census

mitchell attacks rauner budget

production value

“We need to go downtown with an agenda.” christian belanger…7

the south side’s endangered buildings

“‘Who’s Thelonious Martin?’ He’s the soul producer, from Chicago, Illinois.” austin brown…10

“What do you do with something that is part of your history but can no longer really function in the same way?” zach taylor, andrew yang…14

chicago to baltimore

gates to open bookstore

“They worked tirelessly to keep us from this property. That’s the only shit they care about.” christian belanger…8

in washington park

can mckinley park

Theaster Gates will open Chicago’s first arts-focused bookstore as the newest addition to his “arts bloc” on Garfield. eleonora edreva…11

become an art hub?

“A community needs an art space.” julia aizuss…16

MAY 6, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

alexander pizzirani

On the Wing Birdwatchers tackle

outreach and conservation

BY EMILY LIPSTEIN

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T

wice a year, birds cross innumerable boundaries in their voyages south to warmer areas during the fall and back north again in the spring. This week brings the heaviest influx of birds to the area during the spring migratory period, which spans from March to May, with peak migration during April and May. Chicago is a major stop on the Mississippi Flyway, a route for migratory birds that extends from northwestern Canada, over the Great Lakes, and down through the Mississippi River Valley. Over five million individual birds fly through the area each year, making this route one of the most important in America for songbirds and their eagle-eyed observers.

Birding has been a pastime since people have thought to look at the sky, and has been organized in Chicago more recently. Two of the city’s larger organizations, the Chicago Ornithological and Audubon Societies, have been around since 1912 and 1971, respectively. These organizations, in recent years, have been more inclusive, expanding their focus past the North Side. The April 12 bird walk at Washington Park sponsored by the park’s Conservancy attracted twenty-six birders who spotted forty-three different species. Nonetheless, the birds were overwhelmingly more diverse than the birders who spotted them. The

WILDLIFE

Migratory birds in South Side parks. From left: yellow-bellied sapsucker; song sparrow; Canada goose. group was primarily—if not entirely—white and old; the median age seemed to be around sixty-five.

“Birding traditionally has been a hobby that is a little bit exclusive for older, retired, rich people,” explains John Cawood, an education program coordinator at Openlands, a Chicago regional environmental advocacy and outreach organization, who runs Birds in my Neighborhood (BIMN), a partnership program from Openlands and Audubon Chicago. “And [birding is] not necessarily the most diverse hobby, either, culturally or ethnically or financially.”

The path followed by the songbirds that make their way to the area every year roughly parallels the itinerary of another mass migration that brought multitudes to the city: the Great Migration of African-Americans from

the rural south northward during the early twentieth century.

The histories of both migrations are interwoven in the work of Englewood native Sherry Williams, founder and president of the Bronzeville Historical Society. Williams, the first of her family to be born in the city, describes herself as a descendant of former slaves from the Mississippi Delta region and says her roots are what drive the mission of the Afrobirders, a group she founded in 2006 that explores the connections between the Great Migration of the 20th century and the yearly migration of birds. Williams had always loved birding, but it took her a long time to identify why it felt so important. “It’s sharing the narrative about how my mother and grandmother came from Mississippi in 1942 and that their experience leaving

the segregated South and coming to Chicago did not just bring them here as permanent residents: they continue to go back and forth to learn about family history. On those trips back home, my mom and grandmother would then introduce me to what they did and where they lived in Mississippi. They picked cotton—we were a family of sharecroppers. Coming back and forth really mimicked the back and forth movement of migratory birds.”

Since 2007, Williams has been leading bird walks that use the narrative of African-American immigrants during the Great Migration to talk about migratory birds and conservation. “Those parallels are so great and so rich,” she says. “It’s so valuable that we continue to share and tell the fortitude, the tenacity, to uproot from the South and move

to Chicago. Migratory birds mimic that same migration…[the parallels] became a valuable way for us to talk about the need for conservation.”

One of the main goals of the Afrobirders is education and outreach, always framed within the historical context of the Great Migration. Through her work with the Bronzeville Historical Society, Williams has visited grade-school classrooms around the city, where she has discussions with students about the parallels between the two migrations. These lessons teach kids about different species of birds and trees and have even been integrating urban coyotes into these discussions over the past two years. She says that several local elementary schools have even introduced it as a thematic unit.

MAY 6, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

WILDLIFE

W

hat fascinates Williams about looking at social issues through birds is their ability to cross lines and racial boundaries that they do not see, nor understand. She says, “Areas with written and unwritten racial lines, boundaries... get pushed over and over again. We see that mimicked by [birds]. They’re pushing the boundaries that seem to be static.”

Jennifer Johnson and Nambii Mangun are coordinators with Wild Indigo, a Calumet-based project established by Chicago Region Audubon (different from the Chicago Audubon Society); they too want to break boundaries, particularly those that may keep many South Siders from interacting with nature. In their mission to promote interest from South Siders about the natural world, they’ve learned that oftentimes, the trepidation about going to green spaces in the city lies in accessibility. But not always—the sites that Wild Indigo operates out of are forest preserves and other green spaces on or near the South Side and are accessible by public transit.

“We also try to give people a sense that it’s really their land,” Jennifer says. “These are people that haven’t felt welcome [in nature], or that there is some kind of fear around those spaces. What Wild Indigo does, is kind of dispel those myths about the land and try to have people overcome those fears. Most people that come out are African-American and the history of our people in those spaces has not always been positive, so we offer a positive experience.”

Youth education and outreach has become important to many nature organizations, including Openlands. John Cawood’s BIMN has helped acquaint CPS students from all over the city with their schools’ gardens. The program is divided into three events: a classroom visit, a bird walk around the school grounds, and a trek to a local park.

Between the visits, the kids are given journals and choose a bird from a checklist to research and write about. “It’s a hook to get students interested in nature in their neighborhoods,” Cawood elaborates. “[Birding] is one of the most accessible nature-related hobbies.”

Afrobirders, Openlands, and Wild Indigo all reach out to youths around the area in order to get them hooked on birding at a young age. “We are excited to see bird-watchers across all generations, [but] you typically see them as retired and mature. We have a multigenerational approach.”

Cawood agrees with this method, explaining that it is difficult to get an individual adult involved in birdwatching events. That’s why he sees school involvement as imperative.

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“If I find out about [an event] and send the info to a teacher, and she puts a note in the kids’ backpacks, maybe they will go. For us, connecting students with birds, nature...we want the next generation to care about the outdoors and natural areas. We are trying to create a generation of conservation stewards.

The birding community is taking a look at itself and is saying, ‘Wow, it doesn’t have to be like this. We don’t just have to have ten of us.’”

F

or Williams, there’s a direct link between her life and the lives of migratory birds. When she speaks, it’s apparent that she has thought deeply about birds, and their resonance with her cultural and familial heritage. She talks in detail about the importance of crossing boundaries, remarking that birds like turkey vultures or peregrine falcons (Chicago’s official bird) tend to nest in unlikely places, just as people move into communities that may not want them: “My family integrated West Englewood. We were the third black family on the block,” she says. “I was born in 1960 and I am very aware of the social constructs that African Americans have had to endure and still endure. And although I’m a generation away from those who sat at the back of the bus…I am that generation who has clearly firsthand…experienced what it’s like to integrate a community. Animals and humans have had to push past boundaries and create safe places and meet the needs that they have.

Again and again, families have had to move past unwritten and understood racial lines in Chicago to be able to have the American dream of a nice home or better schools. We see that with birds and the coyotes, coming into the spaces not identified as spaces they should be in. But this is what happens when in your own desperation or desire to go beyond your boundaries. The risks for many animals [are] injury or death. And the risk for black people who migrated from the South to come to Chicago was the same.”

While the connection between African American residents of Chicago and migratory birds is the backbone of the Afrobirders, being African American–or even an avid bird-watcher–has never been a requirement to tote the Afrobirder name. “In order to talk about the divisions within neighborhoods with Chicago being so polarized, I did not ever want people to look at the Afrobirders [as] a specifically African American group.

Those who come are from all walks of life.

They are all Afrobirders, whether they are Baptist, Catholic, of European descent, whatever. The ‘afro’ part is how we speak in terms of birds, but the entire conversation

is about the rich narrative, whether they are black or white.”

Williams champions this idea, explaining that conservation is in her blood, and that every living creature on the planet needs to be celebrated and protected. She believes in the importance of educating both young and old people “about space, care of the land, of ourselves, protection, and freedom.” She connects this idea not to the Great Migration, but to the present-day struggles that African Americans face.

“Freedom needs to be a conversation that we re-engage in and in our homes and classrooms,” she says. “Not for one moment do I consider our nation having accomplished all it can do. How do we get young people to have a voice, push for equity across the nation? If it means that we share space in our lives with birds and coyotes, I’m all for it. I would never tell a coyote that it can’t find a new space for itself, and neither would my grandmother think that anyone would tell her she couldn’t come to Chicago to make a life.”

The Dangers of Migration Illinois sits nearly at the midpoint of the annual migration that birds make through the Mississippi Flyway. Because the state’s fields of soybeans and corn fail to provide adequate food and shelter, Lake Michigan’s shoreline is invaluable to migrating birds utilizing the Flyway. Consequently, five million birds (from over 250 species) migrate through Chicago each year; many are set to arrive in the city this week, during the peak of spring migration.

Bird migration has been happening for longer than human history can detail, but the past hundred years have seen great changes in the local landscape. Chicago rose from its ashes to become a national center of manufacture and industry as the first skyscrapers were erected in the 1870s and 1880s. Animals are fairly adaptable—according to a recent DNAinfo article, coyotes in the area have learned to look both ways when crossing the street—but a century is a short time for the immense changes that urbanization makes on a landscape.

“Birds are coming this way, as they have been for hundreds of years,” explains Annette Prince, the director of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors (CBCM), a volunteer organization dedicated to the protection of Chicago’s migratory birds. “We have added a large amount of lighting and glass buildings over one hundred years,” she says. “Any building that is dangerous or has a lot of glass—near the river, a park, the Lake—is in the path of a bird arriving in the city...They’ve traveled hundreds or thousands of miles only to be killed by a window here in Chicago.”

Once collected by Prince and other volunteers, dead birds are sent to the Field Museum to join their ever-growing collection of migratory bird specimen. Any birds that are found injured are transported (usually in brown paper lunch bags) to animal rehabilitation facilities around the area. Prince notes that volunteers find six thousand birds downtown every year, with an added two thousand outside of the immediate downtown area. But that count is low: it’s limited by the number of volunteers they have in an area and amount of people who know that they should report any birds–injured or dead–they find to CBCM. Annette Prince says that people estimate that over one million birds die every year during migration, though not all of it is a problem. It’s the Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest, meaning that only the strong survive. This is good for nature, she explains, but it’s not the only reason birds die during migration. “It’s often the best birds that make it to Chicago...but being fit and healthy doesn’t stop them from making the collision.

This is not working how nature works and this could be catastrophic for some species that lose important, successful, members that would represent the strongest [birds]. We are worried that we’ll find that out too late.”

But the substantive risk doesn’t stop birds from making the trip to Chicago, nor does it stop locals from enjoying these flying tourists.

POLITICS

carrie chui

Mitchell Attacks Rauner Budget

BY CHRISTIAN BELANGER

S

tate Representative Christian Mitchell hardly minces words when talking about Governor Bruce Rauner’s new budget. At a town hall meeting about the budget on April 27, Mitchell, whose 26th District runs from South Shore to the Near North Side, said that Rauner’s appeal to shared sacrifice was “bogus,” especially in light of his unwillingness to raise taxes on corporations or the wealthiest members of society. He also tore into Rauner’s claim to be a very pro-African-American governor. “I don’t know if the word ‘pro’ means what you think it means,” Mitchell said.

It was hardly surprising, then, that much of the town hall meeting, which took place in the auditorium of Bouchet Math and Science Academy in South Shore, was devoted to ripping into the (to use Mitchell’s word) “draconian” budget proposal. Mitchell began by explaining how in March, Rauner passed an emergency measure that cut state spending for fiscal year 2015, which ends June 30 of this year, by 2.25 percent. In essence, this meant that a years’ worth of cuts were squeezed into just three months. These included cuts to both education and social services, including $150 million from the General State Aid that goes to Illinois public schools, money that is distributed on the basis of property wealth within each school

district. Mitchell emphasized that schools in cities like Chicago and East St. Louis are already being hit the hardest by budget cuts.

The outlook hardly got brighter when Mitchell moved on to examining the proposed budget for 2016. The budget cuts $1.5 billion from Medicaid—Mitchell pointed out that Medicaid paid for more than fifty percent of births in the state—while the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), together with DCFS services for youth aged eighteen to twenty-one, would have more than $300 million cut from its budget. In the education sector, $387 million would be cut from higher education, including scholarships and grants, while CPS would lose $16 million. A number of social service organizations, such as Teen Reach, an afterschool program, would see funding eliminated entirely. Teen Reach is now ending its Chicago-area program, which included such services as tutoring and substance abuse education, and served about seventy-five children.

Mitchell also lambasted Rauner on his stance toward unions, pointing out that his proposed creation of right-to-work zones, in which employees can opt out of unions, would create lower wages for workers and negatively affect small businesses. Instead, Mitchell opined, larger corporations stand to benefit, especially with the additional help of $100 million in corporate tax breaks.

Throughout his presentation, Mitchell interspersed personal anecdotes designed to show how he and his family benefited from many of the programs being downsized or eliminated. To that end, he recounted how his grandfather had kept him out of trouble as a youth by taking him to boxing, as part of an outreach program that would no longer exist under the new budget, and said that decreased access to mammograms and screenings for women could have been disastrous for his mother, whose breast cancer was caught early enough to be properly treated.

After Mitchell spoke, there was a question-and-answer session. One resident asked why Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives Michael Madigan couldn’t be more assertive in calling for taxes to be raised on the wealthiest cohorts. Mitchell’s response was that Illinois has a constitutional amendment barring a graduated income tax, and that in fact, the taxation scheme often works such that working people pay a higher share of their income than the top one percent.

Mitchell also pointed to several alternate proposals he had crafted or supported in place of cuts in order to cover the state’s deficit (two to six billion dollars, “depending who you talk to”), including a financial services tax that would levy a three-percent surcharge on services used by high-worth individuals, such as private equity funds, or a tax on financial

transactions that, besides raising revenue, would hopefully make financiers slightly more risk averse.

Of course, it is unlikely that Rauner would accept these sorts of proposals. That is why Mitchell’s town hall meeting was not meant simply to inform residents and answer their concerns; it was also an attempt to encourage locals to appeal more strongly to their politicians. After Mitchell’s presentation, he invited up Reverend Corey Brooks, who spoke briefly about the Clean Jobs Initiative, a proposal designed to create about 32,000 jobs a year and improve energy efficiency by shifting the state’s energy consumption toward renewable energy sources. Much of his presentation, however, attempted to impress upon residents the importance of organizing in order to have their views heard. “We need to go downtown with an agenda,” he said, emphasizing how useful it is to have strong, specific goals when speaking with one’s representatives.

Still, Mitchell seemed hopeful, if somewhat cautious, about the chances that the effects of the proposed budget could be mitigated. In response to one resident expressing disappointment at the atmosphere of spinelessness surrounding House Democrats, he responded, “I can’t defend the lack of political will in the House. I do think that this budget proposal, though, it’s waking some people up.”

MAY 6, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

POLITICS

Chicago to Baltimore

Protesters rally for Freddie Gray, Rekia Boyd, and other victims of police brutality

BY CHRISTIAN BELANGER black youth project

“W

e won’t stop until this building is a fucking community center.”

Gesturing furiously toward the headquarters of the Chicago Police Department looming behind him at 3510 South Michigan, Ethan Viets-VanLear, an organizer with We Charge Genocide, spat out the words to a crowd of around 500 people who had gathered to protest police brutality last Tuesday, April 28. The event was an “emergency action” in support of Freddie Gray, a twenty-five-year-old black man killed by Baltimore Police officers after being arrested last month, and the protesters who have since rallied in response to his death, as well as the many Chicagoans who have been killed by police.

This included Rekia Boyd, a twenty-two year old killed by Chicago police officer Dante Servin in March 2012. The recent acquittal of Servin was the focal point of the rally; furious speeches calling for his dismissal were made in front of a regiment of stone-faced police officers. As the evening wore on, however, it became clear that the disaffection felt by the protesters encompassed something greater than simply a single event, or even a single political issue. It was impossible to attend the rally or march south to Hyde Park that night and not sense a number of issues—the South Side’s lack of a trauma center, minimum wage, divestment in black communities, and, yes, police brutality—intersecting and coming to a head.

Boyd’s brother, Martinez Sutton, was one of the first to speak at the rally. When he first stood up, Sutton was drowned out for more than a minute by the cheers from the crowd; several times during his speech, he tearfully had to pause, remarking, “I’m an emotional person.”

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He gave insight into the process behind the trial, revealing that the office of Anita Alvarez, state’s attorney for Cook County, had initially told Boyd’s family that the Servin would be charged with second-degree murder, only to surprise them later with an involuntary manslaughter charge. Ultimately, Judge Dennis Porter dismissed the trial because, he said, the shooting had been intentional, not involuntary, and that he could only have considered a murder charge.

“We have no remorse for him,” Sutton said of Servin, in response to Servin’s claim, made in a documentary about violence in the city, that he felt no remorse for what he’d done. Sutton added that the family had not given up hope that justice would still be administered in some form.

“There’s twelve rounds in a heavyweight bout, and we’re just getting started.”

Along with Sutton, the mothers of Ronald Johnson and Dakota Bright—two other young black people killed by police— also spoke, in front of posters carrying their sons’ black-and-white pictures next to the words “Impeach Anita Alvarez.” Together, they presented a stark picture of the mix of grief and anger felt by those who witness loved ones killed at the hands of the law.

Malcolm London and Page May, young, energetic organizers with We Charge Genocide, led the speaking portion of the event, bounding up between speakers to lead the crowd in chants—“Hands up, don’t shoot,” “No justice, no peace”—no less powerful for their familiarity. In their moderation of older civil rights activists (Emmett Till’s sister was in attendance), grieving relatives, and intersectional activist groups, the pair were the face of the nascent, blossoming brand of black activism: channeling the legacy of the civil rights movement—including

its more disruptive facets—in order to confront the many problems black communities face currently.

May and London both told stories of surprising contact with police brutality in their everyday lives. May recalled a recent conversation she’d had with an Uber driver (the mention of the company elicited a few snickers from the crowd), in which he recounted to her his own experience growing up with police in the 1960s in Hyde Park, when they would pick him and his friends up at night and drive them into rival gang territory. There, the police would drop them off and shout out the name of the rival gang.

May used the anecdote as an example of how pervasive and long-standing the culture of police abuse was in the city.

Almost two hours after the rally began, the group readied to march. “I’m not gonna tell you where we’re going,” London said, presumably in an effort to prevent the police from cutting off the route. “It’s a surprise.”

Initially, police officers on bikes attempted to keep protesters confined to the sidewalks; the result was a long sinuous line stretching down 35th Street, in which demonstrators and cops continuously jostled at one another. Eventually, the protesters succeeded in breaking into the street, and the march soon spread across both lanes, cutting off traffic. One person was wrestled to the ground and arrested by five or six policemen; a crowd, phones out and filming, gathered around the scene, almost all of them chanting “shame on you” at the officers in question.

The protest turned south along Cottage Grove. Cries of “come outside” were directed at residents waving from their windows and balconies, asking them to join. A few obliged. As the crowd neared Hyde Park,

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there was a brief stop at a McDonald’s in support of those pressuring the fast-food giant to raise its minimum wage to fifteen dollars. Soon after, a group of officers from the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) joined the CPD force. The police cut off eastward streets, firmly cordoning the march away from the University of Chicago.

When the protesters finally managed to break eastward it was on the Midway Plaisance, a piece of parkland in between 59th and 60th Streets. They gathered, arms linked, in a circle.

“They worked tirelessly to keep us from this property,” said London, standing in the middle. “That’s the only shit they care about.” Then he invited Veronica Morris-Moore, a community organizer with Fearless Leading for the Youth, to speak on the lack of a trauma center on the South Side, which culminated in her leading the crowd in a chant of “UofC is wack, bring our trauma center back.”

It was yet another reminder that the anger fueling the night stretched further than the deaths of Freddie Gray or Rekia Boyd. And while protests of this sort have been conducted before in the wake of events such as those in Baltimore, the quick and extremely effective mobilization of this one—organized on social media the night before—suggests that such demonstrations in Chicago may be on the rise. As protesters dispersed from the grounds of the UofC, many still chanting as they walked toward the Cottage Grove Green Line, it was clear that the night had not brought closure or peace to anyone, but perhaps it had created a renewed awareness and energy around the range of issues affecting Chicago’s, and America’s, black communities.

FOOD

Produce Man Hyde Park Produce owner Larry Damico talks about his family business

BY ELEONORA EDREVA ellie mejia

L

arry Damico is a self-described “produce person.” He comes from a long line of produce people—three generations’ worth—and he’s been involved in the family line of work since the age of eighteen, when he started driving trucks for his father’s wholesale produce business.

After years of working the wholesale trade, first with his father’s business and later as a salesman, he made the foray into retail with the opening of Hyde Park Produce in 1996.

This jump wouldn’t have been made without another longtime Hyde Park figure: John Frangias, the owner of Hyde Park restaurant Salonica, who called him up with a business proposal at the time of a market salesman union strike that Damico was participating in.

Frangias was then the owner of a produce store located in the space another Hyde Park restaurant, the Sit Down, currently occupies. “He actually offered me partnership for a year with the arrangement that if I liked the work I’d buy it, and if I didn’t I’d walk away,” Damico recalls. When the year was up, he bought the business from Frangias, and in 2008 moved the store to its current location on Kimbark Plaza, into a space nearly three times larger.

When Damico’s family acquired the new property, they tore down the existing internal structures and created the interior from scratch. It took them over a year to create the space they wanted, a process that Damico admits was difficult as a first-time grocery store owner. “When the store first opened, I didn’t know how to do groceries,” Damico recalls. “We didn’t have enough items to fill the dairy section of the cooler, and two days before opening we were scrambling to fill it up.”

In the seven years since, he’s adjusted to his new role in the world of food distribution, and found his niche within the community of Hyde Park as one of the neighborhood’s most popular grocery stores.

Produce is still Damico’s main interest, however; he calls himself a “produce man at heart” and declares that the cooler holding the produce in the back of the store is “the heart of Hyde Park Produce.” He selects all of the store’s produce himself, making the trip to South Water Market every morning at 3am to buy it, and depending on the quantity of the day’s purchases, either sends trucks to pick it up or gets it delivered to the store later in the day. When I jokingly ask how he’s managing to stay awake during

our mid-afternoon interview, he replies seriously that he got his daily five hours of sleep in—all he needs before arriving in the store to face the rest of the day’s work.

Another thing that hasn’t changed is the family aspect of the business: Damico’s partners in the store are his father and cousin, and his son works for them as well. “I don’t think there could be anything better than working with my father and my son,” Damico tells me. He’s worked with his father his whole life, and is clearly excited that his son is showing interest in the family line of work.

The family-oriented nature of the store is also reflected in the way that Damico views the neighborhood it supplies. While he’s not a native Hyde Parker, his knowledge of and dedication to the neighborhood show in everything he does. The family has been serving Hyde Park for over two decades, and Damico says that this has made opening and running the store much easier.

“After working here so long, I kind of knew what was available and what was needed in the neighborhood—what people wanted,” he said. He’s proud of being a neighborhood store, proclaiming that most of his customers are Hyde Parkers.

At the conclusion of our interview Damico led me out of his office, and asked if I had ever seen the back of a grocery store.

My interest in the warehouse-like space and the people bustling all around had given me away, so he offered a tour of the behindthe-scenes world of Hyde Park Produce.

The pride he takes in his store was evident as he took me around the cooler, freezer, and unloading dock, explaining the specific function of each component. He told me about the importance of creating a balanced ratio between the front and back of a store, the specific functions of the workers in each section, and what he thinks is the biggest mistake they made in the store’s design: not planning for a big enough freezer.

When I asked about his future plans for the store, he had to stop and think. After a while, he looked up and admitted that it wasn’t something he’s thought about much.

“I’m just concentrating on keeping my customers happy right now, and then we’ll see what happens and what we have to do from that point on,” he said. “It’s all about keeping them excited to come here.”

MAY 6, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

DEVELOPMENT

Gates to Open Bookstore in Washington Park Theaster Gates expands his 55th Street arts block

ian moore and ellie mejia

BY ELEONORA EDREVA

T

heaster Gates has a new project: Bing. The high-powered local artist and developer will open Chicago’s first arts-focused bookstore as the newest addition to his vision for an “arts block” on the stretch of Garfield Boulevard directly west of Washington Park. Bing—the name comes from a broken bingo sign Gates found—is due to open within the next few weeks. As with last year’s opening of its next-door neighbor, Currency Exchange Café, details and specifics have not been disclosed to anyone beyond Gates’s inner circle, and no concrete opening date has been announced.

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Gates attributes the inspiration for Bing to his realization that apart from museum-affiliated stores there are no bookstores in Chicago with a specialty in art books. The store is the result of a partnership between Gates and Hamza Walker, the director of education and associate curator at the Renaissance Society. Walker is leading the curatorial side of the project, locating and acquiring the art and books to be sold at the store. “The one part of this project that feels like art is this really deep collaboration with Hamza,” says Gates.

Gates has been a somewhat controversial local figure since becoming the direc-

tor of the University of Chicago’s Arts and Public Life initiative, a position he’s held since 2011. He’s been developing a cultural hub on the stretch of Garfield between Washington Park and the Dan Ryan, consisting so far of the University-affiliated Arts Incubator and Currency Exchange, which is owned by Gates but held in a space leased from the University. Bing’s building will also be leased from the University.

These developments have been criticized as the beginnings of University-led gentrification in Washington Park, and are viewed by many as an attempt by the UofC to expand its cultural influence on the South Side be-

yond Hyde Park’s borders.

When asked about these criticisms, Gates is quick to point out that his is a blackowned business, and that it is “emerging out of a deep desire for artists on the South Side and around the city to know more about art.” These sentiments echo the arguments of his supporters, who say that Gates is creating spaces for black art on a level that no one else in the city is attempting.

Gates is also critical of the term “gentrification” itself, saying, “We need to develop a more sophisticated vocabulary around the growth in our neighborhoods. The reality is, new resources have come to Washington Park that have not been there before,” he continues, “and new opportunities have to come from somewhere. I’m really honored that the University would take an active role in making something happen that benefits both them and the community that they’re around.”

The University has a recent track record of tense relations with the surrounding communities; residents in surrounding communities have complained about rising rents due to UofC-led development in and around Harper Court on 53rd Street, as well as the continued lack of an adult trauma center at the UofC Medical Center.

Nevertheless, Gates hopes that Bing can help blur some of the rigid lines between Hyde Park and its surrounding neighborhoods. The bookstore will be positioned on the border of what is now considered to be the University’s territory of influence; it will also be adjacent to one of two potential

MUSIC

Production Value Hip-hop artist Thelonious Martin takes up a jazz tradition

sites for the UofC-led Obama presidential library. Gates believes Bing’s location puts it in a prime position to bridge the gap between those affiliated with the University and not. His dream is to turn the stretch of Garfield Boulevard into a cultural destination, a place where people can come to spend a whole day, and he views Bing as an important step toward achieving that.

The debate around the gentrifying effect of Gates’s projects in Washington Park quickly brings up the question of Bing’s accessibility to the South Side community.

While Gates speculates that the bookstore might have “the burden of a complicated price structure,” that structure seems like one of the most interesting—and potentially successful—parts of the project. As in most art bookstores, there will be some items that are rare and expensive. This is done in the hopes of attracting people who are interested in collecting expensive art books, and bringing their business to a place they might not otherwise frequent.

In addition to the pricier items, however, Gates says there will also be “ephemera, overstock, and donated books that can be given out as free copies.”

In this way, the support of wealthier buyers has the potential to let Bing make art accessible to all its customers. The system is an expression of Gates’s ambitious philosophy for the store: “A bookstore has to pay for itself but also has to be generous.” The compatibility of these two ideas remains to be tested.

alexander pizzirani

BY AUSTIN BROWN

J

azz informs both the music and the mindset of Thelonious Martin. From his favorite types of samples to his very name (“Thelonious,” from classic jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, whose music Martin’s dad played to get him to go to sleep as a child), Martin is nothing if not a jazz aficionado. He cites BADBADNOTGOOD as a favorite new artist, a trio who, like Martin, works with both jazz and hiphop. Contained in Martin’s interest in jazz is an immense respect and admiration for the professionalism and specificity of the greats.

“With Miles Davis you hear all the wild crazy stories,” says Martin, “but you also hear stories about how meticulous he was.”

The meticulousness of jazz, and the competitiveness that informs it, are prominent concerns for Martin, a twenty-twoyear old producer finishing up his degree in music business at Columbia College Chi-

cago. “I grew up playing sports,” he says, “so there’s a very serious element of competition I always have.” As a result, Martin is constantly looking to improve himself both as a musician and as a businessman.

As he finishes up his degree, the musical aspect of Martin’s drive is complemented by a growing sense of business and social savvy. “I know how to send a beautiful email,” he says with a smile. Whether it’s watching interviews for tips and advice or learning how to best acquire an ad placement, Martin’s attention to detail is a huge asset in the rapidly-moving world of hiphop.

Even Martin’s attitude towards sampling has its roots here. He describes the process of finding and flipping a sample as actively discomforting, in the way that a certain sound or riff gets under your skin. “You hear records, and it’s a challenge, instantly.”

The feelings that classic records evoke in just a few seconds compel Martin to figure

out how he can do the same, or even better.

As a result, the production on Wünderkid bubbles over with carefully chosen details.

Album highlight “Corners of Your Mind” grounds its R&B/horn sample conceit with a synthesizer that enters the song halfway through, while other songs (“Jazzercise”, “September”) brighten a 4/4 rhythm section with melodic bass lines.

On the other hand, though, Martin is aware of the dangers of getting lost in the details. He feels that so many rap records in this age are still stuck on the mindset of who the song “belongs” to, be it the producer, rapper, or even the label head—something Martin hopes to avoid by maintaining a certain pragmatism. “Nowadays, we think of the producer as the beatmaker. We don’t think of him as the producer who brings everyone into the room to bring the idea to fruition,” says Martin, citing classic eighties producer Quincy Jones as a glowing example of the latter.

This attitude—if you can’t do it best, bring the best guys into the studio—makes it easy to think that Martin is focused entirely on sacrifice, on doing work for the sake of some abstract kind of “art.” And that’s not a bad understanding. But it doesn’t mean he’s not aiming for success or notoriety. It just means that he doesn’t need to be the only talented one in the room.

Martin’s position as producer allows him to work with rapping collaborators if he wishes, and to go solo if not. Indeed, he asserts that despite the numerous rappers featured on Wünderkid, it’s the beats that play a greater role, evoking moods rather than constructing a narrative per se. This is most apparent on tracks like “September,” where an intoned vocal sample is chopped and MAY 6, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

MUSIC

“Money doesn’t bother me. Money will come.

What I want is for…my children to be proud, for me to leave something behind for them to admire.” screwed as per the melodic requirements of the track. By taking this top-down approach, sometimes even using the vocalist as another instrument (check the auto-tune on “Jazzercise,” or Mac Miller’s attention-grabbing drawl on “Malcom Interlude”) rather than the focus of the entire song, Martin gives himself (and his collaborators) more room to work.

Of course, with all the attention to the technical aspects of his music, it’s easy to forget the very real sense of feeling that pervades Martin’s work. Martin notes that as personal playlists replace radio, people become more inclined to construct their own “soundtracks to their day,” which is where his interests lie. While rappers make music that tells you a story (usually their story), and even producers like Flying Lotus approach the music with an abstract concept or message in mind, when Martin makes a song, the first thing he has in mind is the physical location where it would be playing, whether that be a car, a café, or a bedroom.

He even peruses architecture blogs in his spare time, searching for houses and thinking, “What does this building sound like?”

This doesn’t mean the music is simply aural wallpaper. While Martin’s non-pop referents are often instrumental (he says he wants to score films someday in the future), a quick listen to Wünderkid dispels any images of soft piano scores. This is still hiphop music, even when Martin is at his most abstract or ambient, and by tying himself to that tradition of music he prevents the previously described pragmatism and de-

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tail-driven aesthetic from escaping into the ether. His samples are, as many of his idol J Dilla’s were, culled from deep soul, R&B, and jazz cuts from the seventies (and earlier) and Martin is extremely aware of that legacy.

“People ask ‘Who’s Thelonious Martin?’ He’s the soul producer, from Chicago, Illinois,” says Martin. “[The music] touches your soul.”

The legacy of Chicago, as one of the worldwide hubs of hip-hop, holds a special place in Martin’s mind; even though he moved to New Jersey for a long period during his childhood, he still prefers to call Chicago his home. Of course, as Martin grows more and more well-known in hiphop circles, the temptation is often to switch up as soon as the opportunity presents itself (Vic Mensa recently signed to New York’s Roc Nation). However, Martin resists. “If you can build it up so that you’re able to put out your album and do everything yourself,” he says, “you’re the major label, really.”

Martin doesn’t see his current associations holding him back—rather, they form the core of his collaborative perspective: work with who you know. These people motivate him and gel with him on both a personal and professional level, and he sees no reason to sacrifice that. But perhaps Martin’s most powerful motivator is his consciousness of where he might someday fit into that Chicago legacy. “Money doesn’t bother me.

Money will come. What I want is for… my children to be proud, for me to leave something behind for them to admire.”

alexander pizzirani

HISTORY

“ You Were Here” at the Hyde Park Historical Society

Reconstructing the Census

BY LEWIS PAGE

T

his past Saturday the Hyde Park Historical Society, housed in a restored cable car station on Lake Park Avenue, opened its doors to look back at a spring day in the neighborhood seventy-five years ago.

Beginning on April 1, 1940, census-takers across the United States were paid eight cents per house and two cents per name to collect information such as the names, home addresses, and occupations of every citizen. Seventy-five years later, the individual responses from this census are the latest available, due to a law that prevents the release of data for seventy-two years after it’s collected. Carol Vieth, HPHS’s volunteer chair, sorted through these records to reconstruct what Hyde Park might have looked like on that day.

Census data was often far from precise.

The answers on the cramped, handwritten charts were self-reported and unverified, and much of the employment information was, in Vieth’s words, “aspirational” at best. Still, she managed to tease a rich and personal history out of the rows of data, forgoing generalizations and sweeping statements in favor of the stories of the people and place they reflected.

Vieth presented these stories on Saturday. A few long-time Hyde Park residents, whose names Vieth had found scribbled on the census records, presented memories of their homes and families in 1940 as well. Together, the stories formed a picture of a very different Hyde Park—a neighborhood shaped by racially restrictive housing covenants, populations of Jewish and Russian refugees, trolley cars, and ample parking.

To most of the audience, the Hyde Park of the 1940s was the familiar—if distant— locale of childhood memories. Anita Jones Garrison recounted a dream she’d had while three years old and living at 5624 S. Lake Park, the year before a census-taker jotted down her name. She recalled a red tricycle that she was allowed to ride up and down the block, but never across the street.

hyde park historical society

“But I always wanted to go across the street because of the man who sold roasted peanuts over there,” she explained. “I distinctly remember this dream—I was on my trike and I crossed the street and was buying peanuts under the train tracks on 56th, and I heard the

sound of traffic coming north. I woke up just in time.”

“The visitor of today would have found the Hyde Park of twenty or thirty years ago an exciting, if alien, place,” Vieth read from a Daily News piece by Jared Shales, a 1978 re-

flection on changes in the neighborhood. “The congestion, the conflict, the cultural bustle and the plain human dirt of 55th Street had a charm that never can be compensated for by green grass, yellow lights, and flashing private patrol cars.”

MAY 6, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

Preserving South Side Architecture Two buildings in E Englewood and Bronzeville are named some of Preservation Chicago’s “Most Endangered Buildings” of 2015.

IIT Main Building ZACH TAYLOR

T

he Main Building, completed in 1893, was one of the first buildings on the campus of the Armour Institute of Technology, and now that the school has become the Illinois Institute of Technology, it is perhaps IIT’s most historic. When Philip D. Armour, member of a prominent family of meatpacking moguls, began building in the area, he had no idea he would soon be starting a college; he had originally sought only to create a nonsectarian Sunday school. But when the school’s librarian, 14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 6, 2015

julie wu

Julia A. Beveridge, developed curricula in tile-making, wood-carving, drawing, and other skills in engineering and design, she built the foundation of the Armour Institute of Technology.

After the merger of Armour with the West Side’s Lewis Institute into IIT in 1940, architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created a master design, envisioning fifty buildings to occupy 120 acres of land. One of the only university campuses in the United States designed by just one architect, IIT is renowned for its historic architecture, and the Main Building is officially designated as a Chicago

Landmark.

The last tenants of the Main Building moved out in 2012, when the building was barred from further use. Jeanne Hartig, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at IIT, considers the building’s Romanesque exterior a staple of IIT’s original aesthetic. The building was once heavily used and contained classrooms, a library, a basketball court, and administrative offices, including Hartig’s. Still, she could sense the building was falling behind the times.

“When I became head of marketing and communications, my office was on the fifth floor of Main Building. I logged into my laptop, went to connect via wireless, and nothing,” she recalls. “That was my first inkling that this building was never again going to be used as a modern building.” By 2012, students and faculty were impatient with the slow elevators and nearly nonexistent wireless Internet, not to mention that the building was hardly accessible for disabled students and faculty. For Hartig, a question emerged: “What do you do with something that is part of your history but can no longer really function in the same way?”

She says she was not surprised to see the Main Building on Preservation Chicago’s list of endangered buildings. “It’s not like we’re abandoning it by any means,” she explained. “But it’s a tough dilemma! How do you spend money wisely for a university? Do you put money into a building that is historically important but can’t serve the same function, or do you put it into a new computer lab?”

very year, activist organization Preservation Chicago releases “Chicago’s 7,” a list of the city’s most endangered buildings. In doing so, they hope to raise public awareness about Chicago’s architecture and the threats these urban treasures face. This year, the Englewood Masonic Temple and IIT’s Main Building both made the list.

Taking a closer look at these structures reveals the complex ways communities fight to preserve their architectural relics.

According to Hartig, the university is deeply invested in preserving the history of its campus, and the Facilities Department and Office of External Affairs at IIT is working with the Chicago Department of Planning and Development on upkeep to make sure the structure is stable and preserved.

Still, speaking with current IIT students, opinions may vary as to how precious the school’s historic architecture history really is.

“No one really cares about architectural history except the architecture students,” Rachel Starr, a first-year undergraduate student in the College of Architecture, remarks. “I learned a bit through a class here called ‘Introduction to Architecture,’ but the most I got was from a campus tour, when we briefly passed by Main Building and were told not to go near it because it supposedly ‘wasn’t safe.’ ” IIT is currently looking to developers for ideas on what to do with Main. Proposals have included condominiums, a boutique hotel, and a conference center, but Hartig says the structure is far from ready in its current condition. According to her, Main Building requires an immense amount of interior work, including on the stained-glass windows made to honor the Armour family, the grand wrought-iron staircase, and a mechanical railroad model on the top floor. In any event, Hartig says, “You’re not likely to see a casino, you’re not likely to see a strip club—we’re trying to find a developer who is experienced in historic restoration to see what the next chapter of Main Building will be.”

ARCHITECTURE

T

ANDREW YANG

he South Side Masonic Temple at 64th and Green Streets in Englewood has been on and off the “Chicago’s 7” list since 2004. It is currently boarded up and has not been in use or developed since the mid-1980s, but it has a rich history as a community space, and some think it could be such a space again.

The temple was originally constructed in 1921. Then just steps away from the former Englewood Shopping Center, it was central to the neighborhood’s bustling commercial and entertainment districts. The Masons were an active presence in the Englewood community, hosting events and parades in the neighborhood through the 1950s. After the temple’s membership dwindled, the building was transferred to municipal control and housed the Department of Human Services. It continued to serve as an important community center, offering adult education and senior services and hosting lectures in its 1000-seat auditorium. But in the 1980s, the Department of Human Services relocated, and the building fell into disuse. Many of the surrounding structures have since been demolished.

In 1997, the temple was acquired by Prologue Schools, a network of alternative high schools. Prologue had hoped to rehabilitate the temple and develop it into an Englewood outpost of their school network. There were also plans to partner with Kennedy-King College, whose campus is located across the street from the temple. The college, which at that time had not yet opened, would house some of its students on the upper floors of the redeveloped building. Administrators at Prologue hoped to develop the campus as a feeder school to the pre-professional programs at Kennedy-King.

“We knew that there was such a great need, and there were so many dropout youths surrounding that building,” explains Prologue CEO Dr. Nancy Jackson. The hope was to provide “a place where they could play safe together, they could learn together, they could get employment and training in career development skills together, and when we got them to graduation, they could matriculate right across the street to Kennedy-King.”

But over the seven years during which Prologue owned the building, they were unable to cobble together the seven to nine million dollars in expected development costs. A combination of private money and TIF funding proved insufficient, and the organization was also embedded in an ongoing struggle to save the building. “We worked probably for

South Side Masonic Temple

six or seven years or more going in and out of court for every quarter of that time, trying to save the Masonic Temple from being condemned and being demolished,” Jackson said.

The company they partnered with to rebuild the school left to work on a lower-cost project, and Prologue ultimately sold the building to a real-estate developer. Though there were plans to convert the temple into housing or retail space, those projects never materialized. Since then, the building has been slowly deteriorating under exposure to the elements.

“Unless you’re developing housing, peo-

julie wu

ple just don’t want to put the kind of money into it that’s necessary to bring it back to life,” says Jackson. Still, other developments have followed Kennedy-King’s entrance into the area, including low-rise housing development New Englewood Crossings and the anticipated Greater Englewood Development Center just a few blocks south. Perhaps the temple will soon have its day as well. “Even in its horrific state, you can see that it has great bones,” Jackson says. “It was such an important anchor in that community and really could be again.”

MAY 6, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

Can McKinley Park Become an Art Hub? The Chicago Urban Art Society seeks to broaden arts accessibility on the Southwest Side

BY JULIA AIZUSS

courtesy chicago urban art society

L

auren Pacheco needed a drink. Clad in a crisp white blouse and dark jacket, she’d just returned from presenting her thesis for a master’s in arts administration and policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. But it was only Monday, and the week was far from over.

On Friday, Chicago Urban Art Society, the arts organization she and her brother, Peter Kepha, founded nearly ten years ago, would debut its new space in McKinley Park.

“We hope to put McKinley Park on people’s radar,” Pacheco said. Right now, it

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isn’t. Like Brighton Park next door, where Pacheco and Kepha grew up, and which is also majority Latino and middle-income, there’s not much in the way of an artistic community.

“Our area was always devoid of arts and culture, of anything, pretty much,” Pacheco said. “We’re just trying to give it what we’ve always wanted.”

This homecoming meant giving up their old gallery in art-rich Pilsen for a cheaper space tucked away in the stockyard district, surrounded by rumbling trucks and

industrial buildings, and across the street from a packaging manufacturer. The sense of isolation is easily broken: the heart of Bridgeport is only a mile away, the Bridgeport Art Center less than half a mile, and a 35 bus stop is right around the corner. Still, Kepha admitted they were a “destination spot,” and their social network promotion leading up to the opening had become, Pacheco said, more aggressive than ever before.

The space itself is a step up. The old Pilsen gallery, which they left in November, was 3000 square feet. Now they have 8000

VISUAL ARTS

square feet to play with. It’s “big, open, raw, and intended to be that way,” Pacheco said, perhaps a little wryly as she passed a Little Caesars box perched on a small ladder and stepped on floors still splattered with paint.

“I just really like that industrial look. It kind of has that New York feel, you know?”

To make the size more manageable, Pacheco and Kepha put up white walls that divide the room into five exhibition spaces, not counting the two rooms they’ve set aside for programming: two four-walled main galleries and several three-walled “micro-galleries” orbiting them. (Kepha prefers calling them “cubbies”) One, Pacheco said, might be reserved for visual exhibitions, one for sculpture, one for performance. The back room might become a screening room; one room might become a “sharing library” with drafting tables and studio space.

What Pacheco and Kepha are sure of is their commitment to making their gallery accessible to the surrounding community.

While Kepha is an artist and CUAS’s main curator, Pacheco’s background is in social work. Together they’ve long been interested in the intersection of social justice and the arts, and have previously partnered with arts advocacy organizations like Arts Alliance Illinois and Illinois Humanities Council.

Although Pacheco referenced the “rich cultural traditions” of Latino communities on the Southwest Side, neither sibling knew if there were local artists in McKinley Park to engage with, and Kepha remarked, “It’s important for a gallery to reach out and bring people in.” (CUAS’s main exhibit that opened this past Friday was “Mirrored Infinity” by John Whitlock, an artist from Brooklyn, NY who had never visited Chicago before he exhibited in a CUAS group show a couple years ago.)

But critical to fostering an arts community in a neighborhood is fostering the creation of art within the neighborhood.

Pacheco’s first instinct towards that end was to work with local community-based orga-

nizations, but there aren’t many except the basics: churches and schools.

“You’re still dealing with an old model,” Pacheco said, “and you’re like, ‘Hey, we’re a contemporary arts organization that works with [SAIC] and the University of Chicago, and we want you to come in here.’”

That’s one of Pacheco and Kepha’s firmest plans: “cross-institutional partnerships” with local universities that let art students engage with a community rather than just snagging coveted exhibition space in the Loop or Wicker Park. SAIC, the UofC, and UIC have all shown interest in such a partnership, and Pacheco’s working on a funding model.

“If youth and young adults are interested, how great would it be for them to engage with an institution in a space in their neighborhood?” Pacheco said, envisioning the relationship also as a possible pipeline for local talent to enroll in the universities.

Churches and schools, however old a model they might be, are likely ready to return the engagement. McKinley Park church pastor Seth Hammond said his church “would be thrilled to see the arts flourish here.”

“I can think of a few adults and children who might be interested,” he said, referencing workshops and panels that Pacheco envisions, though he added CUAS had yet to reach out to his congregation. Outreach, he said, would be a must, especially because of CUAS’s proximity to Bridgeport.

“Rather than drawing people over from Bridgeport, they will have to be focused and intentional on reaching the existing residents of McKinley Park and Brighton Park, who are definitely a different type of community than what Bridgeport has been becoming,” Hammond said.

Of course, Pacheco and Kepha are those residents—Kepha lives ten minutes away from the gallery, and considers their greatest strength to be that they are in fact insiders. “Just because we’re Latino doesn’t

mean we need a Latino-centric space,” said Pacheco. “We don’t need to pander.”

“It’s just because a community needs an art space,” she added, grouping it with other neighborhood necessities: healthcare, groceries, a theater, a Boys & Girls Club. (The closest Boys & Girls Club is in Bridgeport.)

Striking a balance between destination spot and community art space may be delicate, but dedication to the latter is essentially why Pacheco and Kepha do what they do.

That’s why Kepha has been selling records for the past three years and will be opening a vintage vinyl store in Pilsen this summer, that’s why Pacheco will soon be heading to grad school again while she simultaneously goes “chasing grant, grant, grant” for CUAS—so they can make rent as well as do what they love. So that there can be art, and a community can access it.

“I started doing this work when I was twenty-six,” Pacheco said. “It means a lot because looking at organizational longevity and other interests, ten years is a long time, but I feel like we’re just kind of beginning in some ways…This space is more authentic to our interests and original intentions.”

This week, though, art was the immediate concern. On Friday night, at the gallery opening, the metal sheets that covered the wooden floors had been sanded, no longer paint-splattered, and the old cracked windows had been replaced by sleek ones that actually allowed a view outside.

The art on display was a little overwhelmed by the space’s immensity, since there were only John Whitlock’s collages in the main galleries and, spread throughout the micro-galleries, ceramics by SAIC MFA student Taehoon Kim, whose work was being exhibited as part of CUAS’s new Case Study Residency Program for emerging artists.

This sparser setup would not be the norm, Kepha said, adding, “I’m just happy the lights are on.” What was important was that the art was good, and that wherever art

couldn’t fill up the space, people did: clusters of viewers, diverse in both ethnicity and age, chatted in the galleries and on benches, meeting with hugs of recognition and parting with farewells of “nice to meet you!”

Collectors had come, Pacheco said, and the usual people “just making the rounds,” but also “new folks,” and even, she was excited to note, people whom the intense online promotion had reached: workers at South Side nonprofits who wanted to support South Side art spaces. Close to fifty people were milling about by 8:30pm, even a couple kids running underfoot, and Pacheco figured they would hit over one hundred by the time the open house closed at 11:30.

“I’ll worry about sales tomorrow,” she said. In moments like these, it is unclear what will define the success of the new CUAS: the quality and reception of the art exhibited within, or the impact on the community outside. They can align, but they don’t have to.

On Monday, the siblings had made much of the riskiness of CUAS’s latest direction. In the gallery that Friday, as people periodically entered and peered at Whitlock’s video projection of collage photos overlaying abstract sculpture, or discovered anew one of Kim’s small ceramic popsicles on the back of an obscure column, it was easy to forget all these people had arrived by very purposely walking a quarter-mile down a narrow, pebble-strewn sidewalk and up a flight of stairs onto the second floor of an old industrial building. It was also easy to realize many of these people came from outside McKinley Park.

“We’re so close to being something for our neighborhood,” Pacheco had said on Monday. Whatever that something is, to make CUAS’s arrival a true homecoming, CUAS will have to be more than a destination spot for those outside McKinley Park; they’ll have to be one for those inside it as well.

MAY 6, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

BULLETIN Safety Beyond Police: Creative Brainstorming Session In 1951 the Civil Rights Congress submitted a report to the United Nations contending that police actions in black communities constituted genocide. More than sixty years later, advocacy organizations like Project NIA and We Charge Genocide (whose name was inspired by that report) are still skeptical about the police and outspoken about police abuses. But what is the alternative? That is, what would “safety beyond police” look like? The groups hope to lay out their alternatives to policing and promote a “broader idea of safety” through a city-wide campaign over the month of July. People interested in imagining how that campaign could proceed can join members of these groups Saturday for a brainstorming session. Access Living, 115 W. Chicago Ave. Saturday, May 9, 1:30pm-4:30pm. Free. wechargegenocide.org (Adam Thorp)

#TrainTakeover #TrainTakeover is back. On May 15, dozens of local performers, artists, and activists will gather at Roosevelt station to board Red Line trains going to and from the loop and fill them with songs, chants, and, hopefully, dialogue. Billing itself as a creative counterpart to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, the takeover aims to engage CTA riders, and confront racial inequality and police violence against black and brown people. This is the fourth such takeover to be organized in Chicago. The first occurred in December in response to the grand jury decisions not to indict the police involved in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. This one comes on the heels of the protests in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray via injuries he sustained while in police custody.

All Chicagoans are invited to join—be sure to wear red.

Roosevelt Station, 24 E. Roosevelt Rd. Friday, May 15, 5pm.

(Andrew Yang)

Leopold and Loeb Walking Tour Seeking to commit the perfect crime, Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb, two UofC students, kidnapped and murdered fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924. Their trial and eventual conviction became a media spectacle, with celebrated lawyer Clarence Darrow, an opponent of capital punishment, taking up Leopold and Loeb’s defense to help them avoid the death penalty. This two-hour walking tour of Kenwood, sponsored by the Chicago History Museum, will stop at the crime scene and other local sites related to the murder. The tour will be led by Paul Durica, organizer of Pocket Guide to Hell tours, which focus on true crime, labor history, and social justice in Chicago.

49th St. and Ellis Ave.. Saturday, May 9, 5pm-7pm. $25.

(312)642-4600. chicagohistory.org (Peter Gao)

#Coding and Cocktails Who says coding can’t be classy? STEM Girl Social Network, a group aiming to increase the number of women entering STEM fields, brings you #Coding and Cocktails, a “ladies night in” where you can learn HTML and CSS basics and have a drink, too. These classes are appropriate for beginners and will feature a presentation, handouts, and time to practice. Come bearing snacks and a desire to meet other women, and you’ll be well on your way to joining this “Beautifully Brilliant” community. All proceeds go to other programs for women in STEM. Chicago Innovation Exchange, 1452 E. 53rd St, 2nd floor. Friday, May 8, 7pm10pm. $15. Buy tickets on eventbrite.com (Mari Cohen)

MUSIC D-Erania at Mo Better Jazz This upcoming show at Mo Better Jazz, South Shore’s (self-appointed) “premier” jazz club, will feature the music

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of pianist-saxophonist-songwriter D-Erania (the stage name of Chicago-born Donella Stampley). Stampley describes her music as fusing the influence of funk legends like George Clinton and Stevie Wonder with the gospel tradition she encountered through her mother, a gospel musician, at an early age. D-Erania has released a number of jazz albums, including the recent “Native Beauty,” which incorporates elements of Brazilian jazz; she has also served as the weekly-featured artist and maestro at Chicago’s Home of Chicken and Waffles. Mo Better Jazz, 2423 E. 75th Street. Friday, May 15, 7-11:30pm. 21+ (773)6426254. mobetterjazzchicago.us ( Jake Bittle)

hit. Need a dinner plan as well? Mother’s Day dinner will be available in the Promontory restaurant by reservation both before and after the show from 5pm-11pm. The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Sunday, May 10, 7pm, doors 6:30pm. GA $15, tables $25. (312)801-2100. promontorychicago.com (Dagny Vaughn)

STAGE AND SCREEN HerStory to Tell: Femmes de la Force

Lovers in May at Arie Crown Theater It is spring, the sun is (finally) shining, and love is in the air. Right on cue, Keith Sweat, Mint Condition, and Donnell Jones are descending from their respective thrones of R&B to croon foundational slow jams and catalyze the bloom of relationships, new and old alike. From Sweat’s classic “Nobody” to Mint Condition’s “U Send Me Swingin’,” the slick, effortless harmonies and sensual bass form a timeless soundtrack to the season. Jones’ take on Stevie Wonder’s “Knocks Me Off My Feet” is a sweet, tear-jerking proclamation of love that’s solidified couples since 1996, and hasn’t lost its charm over the past nineteen years. These sleek and dance-inducing refrains will all be in one place on May 15 and are the perfect introduction to spring. Arie Crown Theatre, 2301 S. Lake Shore Dr. Friday, May 15, 8pm. $80. (312)791-6190. ariecrown.com (Kanisha Williams)

Ayodele, a Yoruba word that translates to “joy in the home,” is a diverse sister-circle of performing artists who use the African drum and dance as a healing element. What started with seven women in 2007 has now expanded to over twenty self-identified Queens who are dedicated to educating and motivating young women and children through a feminine perspective. For the past five years, Ayodele Drum and Dance’s annual spring concert has sold out. Don’t miss this season’s “HerStory to Tell: Femmes de la Force,” co-sponsored by the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, this Friday and Saturday night at Logan Center’s Performance Hall. Be sure to get there early to shop at the Village Marketplace. Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E 60th St. Friday, May 8 and Saturday ,May 9, 7:30pm. $20 in advance; $25 door; $15 for seniors, students, and children under 12. Group discounts available. (773)7022787. arts.uchicago.edu (Alex Harrell)

New Millennium Orchestra

The 50-Year Argument at Logan

If listening to live performances of Schubert, electric violin concertos, and Olga Bell’s original alternative songs all without leaving your seat appeals to you, then this versatile, genre-bending showcase is for you. New Millennium Orchestra, which has steadily been gaining acclaim in Chicago for its talent, has a versatile repertoire that includes live remixes, improvisation, world music, and multimedia performances. Olga Bell, who will be sharing the spotlight with the orchestra in this performance, has a sound that has been described by Pitchfork as “some gnarly middle ground between Russian folk song, chamber music, and avant-garde rock music.” After the show, Bell will DJ from the stage and the concert hall will be turned into a dance floor. Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Friday, May 8, 8pm, doors 7pm. $22 in advance; $25 and up at door. (312)5263851. thaliahallchicago.com (Lucia Ahrensdorf )

Ah, the New York Review of Books. Has there ever been another publication as garishly designed, as comfortably kinda-liberal, as this intellectual bastion? Nay, says acclaimed director Martin Scorsese in his new film The 50 Year Argument, a ninety-minute tribute to America’s most dependable publication, and Bob Silvers, who has been editor-in-chief since the NYRB’s inception. Sadly, the film features no Scorsese-esque action shots of Silvers hurrying in and out of the 92nd Street Y, but it’s far from a snoozefest, at least as far as movies about newspapers about books go. You can watch a showing of the film this Saturday afternoon. Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Saturday, May 9, 3pm. Free. (773) 702-2787. arts.uchicago. edu ( Jake Bittle)

For Fucks Sake, Elle’s 40!

The earliest known feature film with an all-black cast was made, abandoned, and then rediscovered recently by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Set in the Bronx, the film follows a cast of black performers and Caribbean comedian Bert Williams as they work to increase their visibility during a time of segregation. Featuring famous performers and commentary on the times, the film reveals an interesting perspective on that period’s climate through the lens of the advent of film. The screening at the Logan Center on Friday will include musical accompaniment by Theaster Gates and the Black Monks of the Mississippi. Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Friday, May 15, 7pm. Free. (773)702-2787. arts.uchicago.edu (Lucia Ahrensdorf )

Hosting “For Fucks Sake, Elle’s 40!”, Reggies will bring together the Dirty Femmes and Soddy Daisy. The performance, sponsored by Deep Eddy Vodka and Lagunitas, casts the two bands as Violent Femmes and Pixies, respectively. The Dirty Femmes, a Violent Femmes cover band, started up in 2012 and features Jen Korte on guitar and vocals, Andy Bercaw on bass, and Neil Mitchell on Drums.

While the origins of Soddy Daisy are unclear, the power behind their music, which falls under the self-described genres of “space, whisky, Mexican jumping beans, swayze, 4am, partytimes, boppin,” is undeniable and perfectly matched to the surreal, smooth jams of Pixies. Also performing at the event will be Kool Thing (aka Rabbid Rabbit) as Sonic Youth, and Satan’s Boner playing hits from the ’80s and ’90s. Join them for an evening of “slap n tickle,” whatever that means. Reggies Chicago, 2105 S. State St. Sunday, May 10, 8pm, doors 7pm. $10. 18+. (312)9490120. reggieslive.com (Clyde Schwab)

Mother’s Day at the Promontory If you love your mother and your mother loves jazz—or if you’re a mother who loves jazz—think beyond the singing greeting card and treat her (or yourself ) to a night of Zemrah’s Songs of Love this Mother’s Day. Zemrah, a local contemporary jazz artist, will be performing songs dedicated to the meaning of love and appreciation for all women, mothers, and non-mothers alike. Known for her smooth and sultry sound, Zemrah has been perfecting her music style since childhood and is guaranteed to be a

Smart Museum of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. Thursday, May 7, 6pm. Free. (773)702-0200. smartmuseum.uchicago. edu (Lewis Page)

Redmoon Theater’s The Devil’s Cabaret In Dante’s Inferno, the third circle of hell is characterized by its never-ending rain. Cold and unrelenting, it extinguishes hope and happiness. After a brief experience with this circle earlier this year on the Chicago River, Redmoon Theater is determined to take back control of hell and orchestrate the fantastical fiery spectacle it has been working to create. This spring, Redmoon presents The Devil’s Cabaret, a spectacle recognizing “the Devil’s ‘greatest accomplishments’—The Seven Deadly Sins,” housed in the Redmoon warehouse. In the middle of the room, a rotating thirty-foot-tall crane equipped with stages for performances will serve as the centerpiece. Always ambitious, Redmoon promises aerialists, puppets, and craft beer, and a “special appearance by God.” Whether you want to take advantage of the Lagunitas beer bar, or seek an experience with the Great One, the event is sure to be memorable.

Redmoon Theater, 2120 S. Jefferson St. Fridays, April 10-May 16, 9pm-12am. $25. Tickets available online. 21+. (312)8508440. redmoon.org (Lucia Ahrensdorf )

Susan Giles: Scenic Overlook In Susan Giles’ new exhibition, “Scenic Overlook,” one can view some of the world’s tallest buildings from above. Giles’ installation consists of large wooden sculptures modeled after the four highest observation towers in the world, the Tokyo Skytree, Canton Tower, CN Tower, and Ostankino Tower, all held up horizontally by steel structures. Giles takes advantage of the two-floor gallery space to allow observers to view these famous architectural wonders from above. Giles, a professor of art at DePaul University, got her MFA from Northwestern in 2009 and is known for her large-scale installations in venues across Chicago, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Elmhurst Art Museum. Visit the Hyde Park Art Center to witness Giles’s exploration of the power of perspective, tourism, and architecture. Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S Cornell Avenue. Sunday, April 19 through Sunday, July 26.

Monday-Thursday, 9am-8pm; Friday-Saturday, 9am-5pm; Sunday, noon-5pm. Free. (773)324-5520. hydeparkart.org (Clyde Schwab)

Bert Williams, Rediscovered

Pocket Guide to Hell British labor leader John Burns once called the city of Chicago “a pocket edition of hell.” This Thursday, the Smart Museum of Art and Pocket Guide to Hell—an organization that runs tours and reenactments of the glorious and gritty micro-histories of labor, social justice, and true crime in Chicago—will co-present a cocktail hour and film screening. The event will serve as a guided tour deep into the hellish world of middle-class life in the sixties, when the Chicago sociologist Erving Goffman was busy examining what lurked beneath the surface of everyday life in his 1959 sociological classic The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Come for the cocktails and the special screening of the 2014 documentary Smiling Through the Apocalypse: Esquire in the 60s; stay for the interactive exploration of the sociological hellscape of mid-century polite society.

Loo Presents: We Martha Clippinger’s art is loud, colorful, and, often literally, off the wall. Her work hangs in the space between painting and sculpture, exploring the effects of color, as well as shape, in three dimensions. Fittingly, the piece that is being used as a promotional image for her new exhibit, “Loo Presents: We” at Slow gallery, is bright orange and yellow, countered by a serene blue wave pattern, the corners of the paper curling away from the wall and projecting into the space beyond it. “Loo Presents: We” is a group exhibition featuring Clippinger’s work alongside pieces from video and performance artist, painter, and musician Guy Richards Smit and Chicago-based fibers artist Allison Wade. In the words of the gallery, “It’s not a competition, but they’re all number one.” Slow, 2153 W 21st St. Saturday, April 25 through Saturday, May 16. Saturday, noon-5pm. Free. (773) 645-8803. paul-is-slow.info (Robert Sorrell)

Project 1915 In 2012, artist Jackie Kazarian executed an intensely painful, personal exhibition in a hospital. Entitled “Breast Wallpaper,” her work drew on her own experiences with breast cancer, publicizing a personal trauma and offering an empathetic hand to others dealing with the disease.

This year she is working to address another kind of trauma: the 1915 Armenian Genocide in which one-and-a-half million Armenians were massacred. One hundred years after the genocide, Kazarian, who has Armenian heritage, has created a massive mural to commemorate the event and to explore the intersections of memory and trauma, again in a deeply personal way. The comparisons to Picasso’s

CALENDAR “Guernica” are apt, but the artist is taking on this difficult subject in her own style. The piece will premiere in Chicago at MANA before touring nationally and internationally.

Mana Contemporary, 2233 S. Throop St. Through Friday, May 29. Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm; Sunday, noon-5pm. Free.

(312) 850-8301 manacontemporarychicago.com (Robert Sorrell)

Old Wicked Songs First produced in 1996 by Jon Marans, Old Wicked Songs is the story of an aging Viennese music professor and his prodigal but burnt-out piano student. In a story that takes teacher and student to emotional extremes while discussing the ramifications of the Holocaust in Austria, Old Wicked Songs shines as a valuable lesson that reflects the importance of healing, music, and remembering one’s past. The play closely follows the “Dichterliebe” (A Poet’s Love), a collection of songs by Robert Schumann. The play is presented by Provision Theater, a Chicago company that broke into the scene in 2004 with an acclaimed production of Cotton Patch Gospel. Provision has since followed with productions including Smoke on the Mountain, the Boys Next Door, and Gospel. Provision Theater Company, 1001 W. Roosevelt Rd. April 29-June 7. Fridays, 8pm; Saturdays, 8pm; Sundays, 3pm. $10-$32. (312)455-0066. provisiontheater.org (Clyde Schwab)

VISUAL ARTS Cosmosis Though most visibly a muse for artistic creation in the last few years with feature films and literature, outer space has mystified and inspired humanity for centuries. In the new exhibit at the Hyde Park Art Center, artists attempt to visually represent the deeper resonances of the cosmos through its intersection with different fields such as philosophy, anthropology, and physics. The exhibition examines the significance of space travel to modern culture as well as the role Chicago-based artists have had in interpreting this significance. This event promises to be full of thought-provoking discussion and haunting images of another world. Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Through August 23. Monday-Thursday, 9am-8pm; Friday-Saturday, 9am-5pm;Sunday, noon-5pm. Free. (773)324-5520. hydeparkart.org (Lucia Ahrensdorf )

LÁLDISH Much of Noelle Garcia’s work is mired in questions of family, identity, and the Native American experience.

Working with paint as well as fiber media including bead work, soft sculpture, and basketry, Chicago-based Garcia received her Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Painting & Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her show, LÁLDISH, is set to open at Ordinary Projects, where Garcia is currently a resident artist. Ordinary Projects, 2233 S. Throop St. Saturday, May 9, 6pm-9pm. Free. ordinaryprojects.org (Clyde Schwab)

de.ma.rc.at.ed.

The main idea of this month-long showing in a new Hyde Park gallery is this: art does not exist in a vacuum, and neither does anything else. The work of Alberto Aguilar, presented at the 4th Ward Project Space with support from the UofC’s Arts + Public Life Initiative, explores the way different boundaries—art and artist, home and world, owner and object—work, both in themselves and in relationship to one another. This particular show, titled “.de.ma.rc.at.ed.,” decontextualizes functional household objects and presents them as “monuments” for the viewer to interpret. 4th Ward Project Space, 5338 S. Kimbark Ave. Enter on 54th St. Opening reception Sunday May 3, 4pm7pm. Through May 31, 1pm-5pm on Saturdays and Sundays.

(773)203-2991. 4wps.org ( Jake Bittle)

Gabriel Sierra

Nature’s Matrix

Swing by the Renaissance Society right after breakfast to see Gabriel Sierra’s “Monday Impressions” at ten in the morning. Visit right before your midday nap around two to experience “In the Meantime, (This Place Will Be Empty after 5:00 pm),” or maybe take in “Few Will Leave Their Place to Come Here for Some Minutes” around four, right before the gallery closes. The title of the exhibit changes each hour, but the work of the architecturally-trained Colombian artist will be consistently compelling. An interactive exploration of the ways in which the human body relates to and experiences temporal and spatial environments, Sierra’s installation consists of a series of constructions made with natural materials that have been isolated, processed, and domesticated. The exhibit emphasizes the presence and experience of the visitor, begging to be walked over, stood in, and experienced firsthand, whatever the time of day. The Renaissance Society, 5811 S. Ellis Ave. May 3-June 28, Tuesday-Friday, 10am-5pm; Saturday-Sunday 12pm-5pm. Free. (773)702-8670. www. renaissancesociety.org (Lewis Page)

Like many of their fellow artists, Charles Heppner and Diane Jaderberg have turned to nature for inspiration.

Instead of capturing the astonishing might of an ocean, or the tranquility of a peaceful sylvan landscape, they channel elements from nature and turn them into visual motifs, repeating and abstracting them to create pieces which are not just strange but nearly unrecognizable. Also important for their work and their new installation is the interaction between technology and nature, which is mirrored in Heppner’s use of digital media and computer software to create prints. Their joint exhibition, “Nature’s Matrix,” is taking place at the Hyde Park Art Center, where the two have been studying and creating since the mid-2000s. Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. April 5-July 5. Opening reception Sunday, April 19, 3pm-5pm. (773)324-5520. hydeparkart.org (Robert Sorrell)

Mirrored Infinity Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim,” visual artist John Whitlock inquires into existentialism, spirituality, and reproduction through black and white collages that are scanned and crafted into mixed media compositions. These are accompanied by a video feed of evolving geometric patterns on an infinite loop. The work uses simple shapes to create elaborate and semi-religious iconography, gold—with its connotations of preciousness and implication of age—and geometric distortions. Whitlock works primarily in collage and assemblage and is influenced by the surplus of stimuli in our culture and society, particularly in popular graphic images. Join Whitlock at the Chicago Urban Art Society’s debut in its new McKinley Park space in a show “about finding yourself in the search for another.” Chicago Urban Art Society, 3636 S. Iron St. Friday, May 1, 6:30pm-11:30pm through Saturday, June 27. Free. (773)951-8101. chicagourbanartsociety.com (Clyde Schwab)

ARC 40th Anniversary Exhibit A 40th Anniversary show in honor of ARC, one of the oldest female-run art galleries and exhibition spaces in the country, will begin this Friday at the Beverly Arts Center.

The show features over 120 current and former artists from the co-operative gallery in Chicago. Founded in 1973, ARC provides exhibition opportunities for emerging artists based on “excellence of artwork” and without discrimination regarding gender, race, class, and other factors. While ARC is an internationally recognized exhibition space, it also serves as an educational foundation, providing opportunities for emerging artists. Beverly Arts Center, 2407 W. 111th St. Friday, May 31, 7pm-9pm through Friday, May 1.

(773)445-3838. beverlyartcenter.org (Clyde Schwab)

Joe Hill 100 Years Part 4 Since his 1915 execution before a firing squad in Utah, Swedish-American labor activist and songwriter Joe Hill has become emblematic of the struggle of itinerant workers in the United States. To mark the hundred-year anniversary of Joe Hill’s death, the URI-EICHEN Gallery in Pilsen will be showcasing the politically charged works of a dynamic duo of social activist artists: the late Colombian cartoonist Jorge Franklin Cardenas and the New York-based painter James Wechsler. Cardenas’ work, which includes caricatures of Che Guevara, John Lewis, and Francisco Franco, will be displayed for the first time in over forty years, after being released to the public by his Hyde Park-based daughter-in-law. Weschler will showcase his “Freedom of Information” series of paintings, inspired by the FBI’s Cold War era files on artists and writers. URIEICHEN Gallery, 2101 S. Halsted Ave. Opening reception April 10, 6pm-10pm. By appointment through May 1. Free.

(312)852 7717. uri-eichen.com (Lauren Gurley)

LURE Gallery Guichard’s next exhibit, LURE, is encapsulated by its acrostic tag line: Love, Urban, Rawness, and Energy.

Featuring six Midwest-based African-American artists, LURE draws upon a wealth of experience and artistic talent. James “Drew” Richardson renders the disparate experiences of young individuals; Derrock Burnett uses figure and portrait to evoke the visual sound of hip-hop; Roger Carter bridges the gap between graffiti and abstract expression; Walter Bailey is a pioneer of aCRYLONIC aRT, a technique of graphic design on acrylic polymer panels; Rodney Wade draws upon his experiences growing up on the South Side; and Just Flo is, among numerous roles, a tattoo artist and a mural painter. Explore the ways in which these artists probe broad questions of experience and identity. Gallery Guichard, 436 E. 47th St. Opening reception April 24, 6pm-10pm. Free. RSVP required at galleryguichardsocial@gmail.com. (773)791-7003 or (708)772-9315. galleryguichard.com (Darren Wan)

Imaginary Landscapes Returning to a space of your past is the best way to wipe away the rose-colored nostalgia tint from your glasses.

Through Imaginary Landscapes, Mana Contemporary presents an exploration of the relationship between space, time, and memory. Four Midwest-based artists delve into the uncertain space at the nexus of the three, and the result is a collection of sculptures and images gathered

by Chicago-based curator Allison Glenn. Lisa Alvarado’s work features elements of shamanism as she critiques cultural appropriation and assimilation; Assaf Evron toes the line between photography and sculpture; deconstructing the mundane, Robert Burnier explores failed utopia; and, last but not least, Caroline Kent harnesses narrative and storytelling to ruminate on what it means to be an outsider in another country. Delve into the uncertainty that spans space and time. Mana Contemporary, 2233 S. Throop St., 4th floor. April 4-May 31. Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm.

Opening reception April 4, 6pm-9pm. (312)850-0555. Free. manacontemporarychicago.com (Kristin Lin)

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

Free. (773)645-8803. paul-is-slow.info (Clyde Schwab)

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