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Support the Legacy

The South Side Community Art Center depends on the generosity of supporters to fulfill its mission to conserve, preserve and promote the legacy and future of African American art and artists while educating the community on the value of art and culture. Donate today to keep the legacy of SSCAC alive and to ignite its future.

How Donations Help

As a nonprofit organization that does not receive any government funding, every donation SSCAC receives matters.

When you donate to SSCAC, you help fund programming that engages, educates and connects community members to African American art and artists. You help ensure that the prolific legacy of the center lives on to inspire and enrich

“Every individual wants to leave a legacy, to be remembered for something positive they have done for their community.”

-Dr. Margaret
Taylor-Burroughs,
famed and founding SSCAC artist

SSCAC Community Renovation Fund

The SSCAC Community Renovation Fund- seeks to raise $100,000 from our community by june 30,2025 to support this exciting project. Contribution to the community Fund can be made on this website or by contacting Monique Brinkman-Hill, Executive Director of the SSCAC at monique@sscartcenter.org.

If you would like to consider a gift of over $5,000 to support the project, please reach out to our development advisor: John Pfeiffer john@opendooradvisorsinc.com or Linsey Foster linseyfoster@gmail.com

Ways to Give

Aside from direct monetary donations, using the form above, there are a variety of other ways to make an impact on SSCAC’s mission.

  • To sign up to volunteer your time, click here. 
  • To become a member of SSCAC, click here. 
  • To inquire about volunteering and membership, contact our Membership and Audience Development Manager, Marti Worell at marti@sscartcenter,org
  • To discuss major gifts or legacy bequests, contact our Executive Director, Monique Brinkman-Hill at monique@sscartcenter.org
  • To make a greater impact, ask your employer about matching donations.
  • To learn about fine art acquisitions and schedule a private appointment at our Sales Gallery, call (773) 373-1026.
  • To contribute to our evolution and expansion, support SSCAC as an artist, advocate, enthusiast or curious observer. Stay updated on exhibitions and events by filling out our Contact form, here.

Supporting Foundations

Hours: Wed – Sat, 12pm – 4pm
3831 S. Michigan Avenue

Phone: +1.773-373-1026

E-mail: info@sscartcenter.org

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MIXED MEDIA AND STILL LIFE

Works in EMERGENCE are diverse in their subject matter and media, but a few themes reappear throughout. Working in abstraction or in the traditionally peaceful genre of still life, artists like William Carter, Allen Stringfellow, and Jonathan Green express themes of interiority or sociability, history or modernity. Notably, Stringfellow and Ralph Arnold both experimented with media and materials and worked extensively in collage, which allowed them to combine abstract design, figurative imagery, and on occasion political ideas.

Viewers typically expect Black artists to focus on particular aspects of their social and political identities within their work. Where might those expectations come from? Still life, abstraction, and collage may express many different things about artists’ interior lives and their visual and social observation, whether connected to public manifestations of identity or not.

William Carter’s mid-century still life Untitled presents a group of vibrantly colored bottles that invite the viewer’s gaze, set against a similarly colorful background with floral elements like grapes and leaves. They give evidence of conviviality and might be interpreted as symbols of social gatherings, but they could also just be a collection of pleasing forms. We might put Carter’s still life in dialogue with that of Jonathan Green, who became close friends with Carter while living in Chicago. Green’s close-up view of an eloquently simple composition presents oranges, a pear, and a lemon in front of two vessels. Works like this piece call the viewer to examine the objects the artist chose to include, to consider how they interact with each other like bodies in space, and to reflect on their meaning within the traditional genre of still life painting.

Collage might suggest the piecing together of identity from different components that might not usually coexist, giving room for more expansive imaginations of meaning than a straightforward representational image might allow. It could also just be an inventive way of combining colors, shapes, and textures. Allen Stringfellow’s Untitled, a collage from 1962, brings familiar motifs from still life—fruit and flowers, desserts and glassware—together with imagery of artist’s models and performers. Layered with paint and tissue paper that frustrate the viewer’s attempt to get clarity on the subject matter, the bursts of form and colors hint at the splashy abstraction of Stringfellow’s untitled, textured painting made from house paint and particulate on cardboard. Here the artist tests commonly found materials to create new textures and plays with the creation of colors and finishes that diverge from “Western” academic painting methods.

In The Waiting, Arnold constructs a large collage from different paper components, lace, and paint. In the piece, elements of European and African art are placed in dialogue with one another, while some figures appear alone and isolated, others in large groups. Without giving easy answers, Arnold implies questions about social issues. Who is waiting, and for what? In his Love Sign II, which bears the words “Love is Universal,” Arnold asserts the equal validity of all types of romantic affection and love, utilizing collage to convey a more straightforward political message.