Halloween has lost its bite. That’s where Mischief Night comes in.

Taking a cue from a lost Irish tradition, the Hyde Park Art Center hosts Mischief Night each year: a free, day-long, collaborative community arts festival that allows all of us to be a little (or a lot) playful, mischievous, and imaginative.

ADDITIONAL PARKING AT KENWOOD ACADEMY, 5015 SOUTH BLACKSTONE AVENUE.

ALL-DAY EVENTS

The Exquisite Corpse by Art Center staff
1-10pm
Surprising spaces throughout the building

A Big Draw Chicago affiliated activity, The Exquisite Corpse invites visitors to create and alter large collaborative drawings of Frankenstein-ian beings by adding to and peeling away body parts drawn by those who came before, resulting in an ever-changing kaleidoscope of monstrous beasts and freakish creatures.

Study for a Pocket, a Cue, a Shot by Anna Campbell
1-10pm
D’Angelo Art Library

Participants are invited to play pool on a modified sculptural form, constructed from a single mattress supported by a frame of 2x4s. Tube socks sewn into carved out pockets catch bumper pool balls. Grab a cue, take a shot!

DAYTIME EVENTS (Kid-friendly)

Looking and Telling by Vicki Fowler and Trevor Martin
1-4pm
Cleve Carney Gallery

Vicki and Trevor invite ghouls, goblins, ghosts, and good people to sit for a monster portrait and putter with poetry.

Fog Ring by Ben Driggs
1-4.30pm
North Entrance Plaza

Fog Ring uses spectacle to alter the viewer’s perspective of space by shooting rings of theatrical fog over 50 feet before its toroid shape deforms and it comes to a dead stop in midair.

DJ Science Workshop with MasterMix Academy
1-5pm
4833rph Conference Room

Drum, shake, and spin! MasterMix Academy will lead interactive workshops with youth, teaching the basic fundamentals of DJ performance and its relationship to science and technology. Youth participants get to design sound instruments like drums and tambourines out of everyday household products and participate in audio experiments.

Public Space by Ricardo Phillips
1-5pm
Studio 2

Drop in, make art! Found objects will be used to create artwork with the intention of exposing, enriching, and empowering local youth to experiment with art making.

Monster Mash with Sara Holwerda
2-5pm
Ceramics Studio

In this family-friendly activity, you’re invited to make skeletons and other monsters and take them home with you!

Mischief Mask Making: Draw Your Heart Out with Makeba Kedem-DuBose
2-5pm
Studio 3

Mischief Mask Making: Draw Your Heart Out is an interactive activity that connects audiences with their emotions and each other, as individuals are invited to explore Halloween themes through mask making. With one person beginning a mask and several others secretly adding to the process, individuals’ contributions are spliced together to create outrageous masks that comprise visual representations of visceral emotional reactions. Participants are encouraged to meditate, remember, or imagine their scariest Halloween experiences, favorite costumes, wildest tricks, and sweetest treats, as each successive contributor changes the original piece by adding mischievous elements. This event is presented in conjunction with Big Draw Chicago.

Poetry Readings from Oyez Review of Roosevelt University
2-5pm
Reception Entrance

Staff from Roosevelt University’s literary zine, Oyez Review, will dress in costume and present Halloween-themed and humorous poetry readings, including perennial Halloween favorites like Edgar Allen Poe and Edward Gorey.

Pour Your Sugar on Me by Sarah Beth Woods
3-3.30pm (kid-friendly)
Reception Area

Play with your food, for art’s sake! Each audience member will pick up flour, sugar, cinnamon rolls, whipped cream, frosting, doughnuts, and sprinkles, and spread everything over the artist’s body in layers until she’s completely covered in food. Make a delicious mess!

WJMK / 104.3 K-Hits Chicago Presents
4-6pm
East Plaza

WJMK will raffle off prizes, host games, and play everyone’s favorite jams from the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Dance Libs & Remote of Control by Renee Murray from Matter of Reaction Movement Project
4-7pm
Reception Area

Dance Libs is a 30-minute workshop for kids culminating in a performance, which focuses on sourcing movements through unconventional exercises and draws inspiration from stories, words, our environment, and people – an interactive, Mad Libs style dance performance. Remote of Control is a 15-minute interactive performance/dance piece for adults that will take place multiple times over the course of the day, where the audience can control what they’re watching as if changing TV channels by pulling tasks, instructions, and directions from a bucket for the dancers to perform.

EVENING EVENTS (for ARTventurous adults)

Beautiful Sad by Brywn Arlwyn Johnson and Ensemble Mystique
5-6pm
Gallery 1

This dance performance presents the stories of haunted characters from Celtic mythology: the Teine Sidhe who are the fairy fire lights that lead travelers astray; the Ban Nigimeach who appear on battle fields washing the bloody clothes of the fallen, and the Cu’ Mhorrigan werewolves.

The Act of Drinking Alone (+ Karaoke) is the Highest Form of Art by Alex Rauch
5-10pm
Cleve Carney Gallery screening room

This performance features the artist drinking and singing karaoke by himself as a means to interrogate how societal mores hinder adults from vocal catharsis outside of sanctified spaces and events; i.e. karaoke at bars.

Conversations with Dead Artists with Alice Bucknell
6-10pm
4833rph Conference Room

Alice will gently guide you to the other side, where you can connect with iconic artists of the past. Have you ever wanted to ask Salvador Dali where he found the inspiration to sculpt his facial hair like that? Or, have you ever been curious about the name of Paul Klee’s cat? Here’s your chance to ask the questions that keep you up in wakeful wonder at night.

Chest Strip(e) by Mario Castillo
6-6.30pm
Reception Entrance

This interactive performance piece invites the audience to take turns shaving a strip of hair off an artist’s chest. Shave the man. Tame the beast.

by Art Center staff & teaching artists
6-10pm
Oakman Clinton School & Studios

Roll up your sleeves, grab a drink from the bar, rock out to some tunes, and feel inspiration flow as your inhibitions fall away. If you liked Cocktails and Clay, Prints & Pints, and Shots in the Darkroom, you’ll love ARTBAR, where all three come together in a big way to get your creative juices flowing. A new ARTventure for creative adults, ARTBAR features art making workshops like clay hand building, screen printing, and darkroom photography, all set to music with a cash bar provided by Maria’s Packaged Goods and Community Bar. Plus, the first 100 participants will receive a free goodie bag of mischievous treats!

Dissolution Communion – or – I Drink, Therefore I Am by Dao Nguyen
6-10pm
Second Floor Landing

This event pairs a social text game with computational-holistic mixology to trick audience members into engaging in existential discussions. Cocktails are constructed from prepared mystery ingredients using predefined mathematical formulas based on holism in conjunction with a menu/questionnaire that participants fill out to assess their psychological states. Participants then relax, enjoy their cocktails, and play “What is it?” – where players ask the question and then take turns constructing and speaking aloud phrases given to them on bar coasters.

Danse Macabre by Phoenix Rising Chicago
6.30-10pm
Gallery 4
A tribute to the bizarre and haunting images of dust bowl era traveling sideshows and the neo-Victorian aesthetic, juxtaposed with modern musical artists, this piece appeals to the darker nature in all of us, the curiosity about the cruel oddities of human nature, and our innate desire to explore one’s diabolical nightmares.

Richard Rioux July 4, 1926 – July 11, 1995 by The Spooky Action Ensemble and Mikey Rioux
7.30-8pm
Reception Area

This 20-30 minute piece was conceived and performed as an improvisational performance/ritual as a wake for Richard Rioux, Mikey’s grandfather. Rioux dances blindfolded on a wet painting of his grandfather and takes a shot of vodka every two minutes. Meanwhile, the musicians —also blindfolded—play improvised music timed to echo the dancer’s drinking. The Spooky Action Ensemble will include: Dan Mohr: voice, harmonium; Carol Genetti: voice; Jeff Kimmel: clarinets.

Low End Theory
8-9pm
Gallery 1
This high-energy drum ensemble will pound out beats and rhythms that will make you want to dance!

Earthworm by DMonk – the vexed molecule
8-9.30pm
Reception Area

DMonk takes an Afrofuturistic approach to music and art making, creating hypnotic, repetitive, trance-inducing music that fuses electronics with ancient instruments and recycled objects.

Click here to download the one-page Fact Sheet about Mischief Night. Click here for the press release.

Mischief Night is held in conjunction with:

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