Last weekend some dedicated Art Center teaching artists took on the big downtown to help out with a publicity campaign. Photo teacher Krystal Meisel, tells us about her adventures in the South Loop with her friend Becky and a chicken named Chicken.
I was taking a mid-day mental break when I stumbled on a website called Wordle. It creates word clouds using text you input.
According to the site a word cloud creates a picture from text by “giving greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.” In other words, whatever words are used more frequently appear bigger, while less frequent words are smaller. Check out what happens when I put the Art Center’s “Who We Are” narrative into Wordle.
What’s your word cloud?
You may have seen the Art Center’s Gallery Guides, and if you’ve ever taken a look inside, you may have noticed our curriculum guides which help walk you through some of our exhibitions. They are now available for download here on the Art Center site! Check them out, and if you’d like more info or are interested in scheduling a school group visit, please contact Program Director, Ray Yang at 773-324-5520 ×1002 or at ryang@hydeparkart.org.
Download Elke Claus - 1
Download Elke Claus - 2
Download Mark Booth - 1
Download Mark Booth - 2
Download Stan Shellabarger - 1
Download Stan Shellabarger - 2
Istria is here and they’re open!
Stop in for some coffee, or perhaps a little gelato? Whatever you’re in the mood for, come on down! Today is opening day, and they’ll be open during all of Creative Move, and at 6:30am every morning until 10:00 pm.
And now, the Art Center is complete (until we think of something else to add)
The Hyde Park Art Center is in an article in the ‘Museums’ Pullout of the New York Times today! That’s right, the Art Center is national news. In a piece about the Hyde Park Art Center and the Spertus Institute, another recent new building project, the Art Center building and Architect, Doug Garofalo are lauded for their creative approach on a small budget (compared with the Art Institute’s new addition). Check out the Times Article online or pick up a copy of the newspaper!
HPAC Teaching Artist Dale Washington was interviewed on the ArtStyle blog. Find out more about how Dale got started, what his work means to him, and what he’s doing now!
If you’ve stopped in at the Art Center in recent weeks then you’ve probably checked out our current show in Gallery 1 and 2, Consuming War. It’s a fantastic look at the ways that Americans consume war in its many forms, and how our culture is innately linked to war. With a full slate of programs and talks, the show provides ample opportunity for feedback and discussion. One component of the show you might also catch are bus and train ads now on the CTA by Adam Brooks. The pieces in Gallery 2 are making their way throughout the city. Take a look next time you’re on mass transit and maybe you’ll see a piece of the Art Center outside of the building!
HPAC’s own Executive Director Chuck Thurow has a contribution on the ArtStyle blog. Check it out here and leave a comment.
The South East Chicago Commission has created a new website to help people learn about Hyde Park and the events, programs, and resources available throughout the neighborhood. Check it out!
A great resource and very much worth the time.
Cool stuff happens in this city! Check it out:
Head over to Milwaukee Avenue, just east of Western Ave, and see several of these parking spaces that have been turned into temporary public parks! The Trust for Public Land is offering free info, cupcakes and even a wishing tree.
Help a valued friend of the Art Center! The South Side Community Art Center is on a list of historic sites in the Chicagoland area, and part of an online voting competition for money through a partnership between American Express and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Now, there are several fantastic sites that deserve money, but we want to make sure that a great place like the South Side Community Art Center doesn’t get left out in the cold. It’s easy to vote. Go to the site, fill in a quick registration, and then place your vote. You even get to see the results in real time! Please participate and help out a great organization!
Another video clip from the Sun Ra Symposium, this time featuring Hamza Walker, Director of Education and Associate Curator at the Rennaissance Society in Chicago speaking about contemporary art relating to the work of jazz legend Sun Ra.
To see more video from the weekend, as well as future video clips, check out our you tube page!
Enjoy!
At the Hyde Park Art Center’s Sun Ra Symposium - Traveling the Spaceways, artist Kerry James Marshall discusses Sun Ra’s artwork and music.
A really cool retrospective which hasn’t gotten nearly enough attention is the Ed Paschke show over at the Chicago History Museum. The description on the CHM website states:
Ed Paschke Exhibition
Through Monday, February 19
The Ed Paschke exhibition celebrates one of Chicago’s most famous and inspired artists. Paschke’s art used pop-culture images and vibrant colors that caught the eye and imagination of audiences for decades. The exhibition features forty-four of Paschke’s paintings spanning his career as well as a recreation of his studio.
There are some really amazing pieces and it’s a really nice overview of the artist’s entire career, as well as an interesting recreation of his studio, plus a video interview filmed just before he passed away. Paschke was an amazing artist who was a key figure in the Hyde Park Art Center’s history. It would be great to support more of these kinds of shows for Chicago artists in different kinds of venues, like the Chicago History Museum. Go see it! It’s well worth the trip, and while you’re there, check out the dioramas, the new Chicago History gallery, and the Dior show. It’s a great looking new building!
There’s a new resource for teachers, collectors, curators, students… just about anyone looking for information on contemporary Chicago artists. Presenting A:List, the Hyde Park Art Center’s curated, online, artist database.
A:List is intended to highlight the many artists who have taught or exhibited at HPAC in our 60 year history. The site is therefore a work in progress (with over 1500 artists who qualify, we’ve got a long way to go!), but take a look at the site and visit again soon to see who has been added.
Artists can easily create their own profile entries for A:List through web forms and may update the content of their profiles at any time. The site now features a range of teaching and exhibiting artists, and we’ll soon be adding the artists from Takeover. We’ll also start to track down some of the people who exhibited with us in decades past, so look forward to learning more about the artists from some of HPAC’s most infamous shows like Hairy Who II (1967) and Marriage Chicago Style (1970).
Enjoy looking through A:List, and let us know your thoughts about it here.
A great group for teaching artists to check out is the Chicago Teaching Artist Collective. They host a monthly meeting with discussions about arts education, the teaching artist field, and community engagement through the arts. 4833 will be host for the May Meeting on Tuesday, May 16th, starting at 7pm.
One of the groups we’ve been working with a lot during the planning process fro 4833 has been the Department of Cultural Affairs and specifically the Chicago Artists Resource. The website is great and chock full of resources designed to assist artists. From how to find space for studios,exhbition and living space, jobs, and cool organizations to collaborate with, they’ve got it all. Check them out!
