Hyde Park Art Center is hosting an Open House with 3 public activities!

● Explore the exhibition PUBLIC SCHOOL with artists Jim Duignan and Rachel Harper. While settled inside the community workshop space operated by artists engaged in progressive art and teaching practices, designed by the artists in collaboration with the broader local community, participate in an ongoing dialogue about the role of self-education practices in the pursuit of social justice, and create a contribution for the Chicago Read/Write Library archive by Nell Taylor, housed within the exhibition.

● Jackman Goldwasser Artist Resident, Bianca Bernardo will join the discussion sharing her experience as an artist, educator and Pedagogic Coordinator at Museu Bispo do Rosário Arte Contemporânea in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

● Created during a recent workshop led by Project Fielding, Resistance Architecture is: an adaptable structure intended for political encampment; responsive to our current political climate; and can be erected in direct response to the needs of long-term protesters. For this open house, Project Fielding teachers Sara Black, Amber Ginsburg and Miriam Stevens invite you to engage with the structure’s physically adaptive features and to enter the structure for a short workshop where we discuss and draw upon our own resistances. Project Fielding is a collective of women and gender non-conforming carpenters who lead power tool workshops and design/build projects for builders of all levels.

Project Fielding was founded by Sara Black, Billy Dee, Amber Ginsburg, Miriam Stevens and Donesha Thompson and now includes Caroline Robe and Lia Rousset.

This open house is presented in conjunction with Open Engagement, an annual three-day conference discussing the role of social engaged art in contemporary society. Open Engagement 2017 is centered around the theme of Justice, exploring strategies artists use to create justice within their communities as well as the methods utilized to critique injustices within our culture. In our current political climate, and especially in Chicago, a city plagued by gun violence, police brutality and public school closures, the investigation of this theme proves necessary.