Join us for the first Center Days of 2022 as we celebrate our new block of exhibitions: Dream, Touch Points, Malika Jackson: Whispers of a World Without Words, and Continuous Span. The family-friendly day includes intergenerational art making activities, artist workshops, artist talks, open studios, a curatorial tour of the Dream exhibition, which features work by artists who recently participated in our critique-based Center Program. Don’t miss activations by exhibiting artists Percy Lam, JeeYeun Lee, and Sarabeth Dunton.

Continuous Span presents work from the Bridge Program fosters generative dialogue among a select group of artists in a seminar-style course. Artists work in an intensive, small-group setting to refine project ideas, better articulate the central concerns of their practice, deepen the conceptual grounding of the work, and situate their practice within a wider art world context.  Bridge artists, Annissa Zak, Bhagya Ajaikumar, Bishop C. Knight, Eric Nix, Michael Gallagher, Rhonda Gray, Tanya Tipton-Greene, and Program Curators, Megha Ralapati and Devin T. Mays will be present to talk about their work.

Touch Points, curated educator, independent curator and gallerist, Claudine Isé presents work from participants in New Edition, a program developed by the Art Center for artists to learn and make work in a medium with which they have had little to no previous experience. Featured artists include, Christine Forni, J. Kent, Rita Koehler, Haerim Lee, Kathryn Trumbull Fimreite, Melissa Weber and Mark Yee.Touch Points, Malika Jackson: Whispers of a World Without Words

Malika Jackson: Whispers of a World Without Words presents emotional narrative works in painting, drawing and sculpture inspired by her lived experience as well as texts by writers like Langston Hughes and Sonia Sanchez.

Register to Attend here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/center-days-dream-tickets-244583976257

Learn more about our activities below.

1-4pm: Art Making Activities from Sarita Garcia 

Join Teaching Artist, Sarita Garcia (She/Her), this Center Day in making fun and exciting hand bound zines. Garcia will be demonstrating various ways to make an 8-fold zine and a staple bound sketchbook using scratch paper, drawing tools, and scissors. Use the zines to create a small comic, a how-to book, or take your sketchbook home to draw your artwork.

1-4pm: Open Studios 

Come and meet our new yearlong Radicle Resident Artists, Flex Residents, and our Exhibition Development Resident Artist in our Jackman Goldwasser Creative Wing! New Radicle Residents include Regina Agu, Joseph Lefthand, and Robert Earl Paige. Flex Residents include, Ariella Granados, and Jennefer Hoffmann, and our Exhibition Development Resident Artist, Edra Soto.

1:30pm: Exhibition Tour withTulika Ladsariya, Center Program Coordinator and Center Program Alumna

Learn more about our Center Program and our current Dream exhibition from Center Program Coordinator and Alumna, Tulika Ladsariya. The half hour tour will give insight on featured works and include activations by Percy Lam, JeeYeun Lee and Sarabeth Dunton. The exhibition is guest curated by Asha Iman Veal, and will introduce strong, new work that often determine bold new directions for local artists. From conceptual multiplicity, to the body as a monument. This year’s Center Program cohort of twenty tremendous artists collectively and boldly proposes their artistic authorship of a better world.

2pm: Percy Lam “Use PEZ Wrapper to Make Word” Activation

Lam will lead a short ceremony to complete his installation, Use PEZ Wrapper to Make Word to express the full message of his installation, Free Hong Kong, Revolution Now (光復香港，時代革命), as a way to speak to the political struggles of native Hong Kong and protest from a distance.

2:30pm: JeeYeun Lee and Sarabeth Dunton Activations

JeeYeun Lee will activate Lee’s installation which is inspired by her public art project Whose Lakefront that foregrounds the occupation of Native land by marking the boundary of unceded territory in the heart of Chicago’s downtown. Sarabeth Dunton will activate her installation The Dirty Books, which is an ongoing series of hand-bound and embossed books that are installed in pools of loose graphite powder. The books investigate the complicated feelings that arise with human intimacy. Guests will be able to flip through the books wearing gloves and ask the artist questions.