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HOMECOMING: ON THE YARD

October 1 @ 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm

HOMECOMING: ON THE YARD 2022

HOMECOMING will be SSCAC’s first large-scale outdoor program, intended to be a city-wide call and response to Black artists!

RSVP HERE

HOMECOMING will be SSCAC’s first large-scale outdoor program, intended to be a city-wide call and response to Black artists to further celebrate our legacy as the first Black arts center in the nation, reconnect with past artists, as well as commemorating the new and expansive ways we are moving forward as an organization! We’re calling our community to come back home!

We invite you and your families to celebrate with us alongside live musical performances from Sam Thousand and Team Jukeboxx Mas Band with special guest DJ Rae Chardonnay hosted by “Toaster” (Tim Henderson)!

Sam Thousand (formally known as Sam Trump) is a multi-instrumentalist, singer/writer, producer/composer and a 3Arts Recipient with 15+ years of experience in live performance art, curation, and self-management. Since picking up the trumpet at age 7, his artistry has allowed him the opportunity to perform in all corners of North America as well as overseas.

Sam Thousand has become a fixture in Chicago’s music scene through various stages from the Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park to a cozy nook in a low-lit speakeasy in Fulton Market. He has maintained years of performance residencies and has curated special events from tributes to artist showcases. In addition to performing and curating, he has served as a booking manager to facilitate performance opportunities for other musicians. Sam Thousand is co-founder of multiple Chicago-based organizations and is a business owner and entrepreneur. Everywhere he goes, he brings a sophistication that engages & uplifts.

Rae Chardonnay is a DJ and cultural programs producer based in Chicago. She is the Founder of Black Eutopia, a series of segmented programming intended to cultivate space for marginalized communities; and co-founder of the award winning Party Noire where joy for Black queer, trans and gender non-conforming people is centered.

Since Rae began her DJ career, she’s been noted as one of Chicago’s Top 5 DJ’s by NPR, and Chicago’s Best DJ by the Chicago Reader.

Team Jukeboxx Mas Band is a carnival inspired performance company founded by Stacy “Jukeboxx” Letrice. The mas band first made their debut in 2018 at Windy City Carnival, a not-for-profit festival and colorful parade that takes place in Chicago during the month of August. In just one year, the band took home the title of “Band of the Year” and won the award for “Best Dance Performance”.

This big win opened the doors for the group to perform at various festivals and cultural events within the Chicagoland area and surrounding states. Their mission is to educate their audiences about Caribbean culture while providing a small taste of the beauty and artistry of Caribbean Carnival.

Toaster is the Co creator of Big Kid Slam, a poetry slam invested in centering marginalized voices and terrible prizes. He has competed at every level of poetry slam, most recently competing as an Individual World Poetry Slam finalist.

Toaster has been featured in poetry events all over America, Vancouver and most recently Germany. His work can be found on Button Poetry, All Def Digital, Sofar Sounds and National Public Radio.

Featured Food Vendor

Dozzy’s Grill!

Special Thanks to Pigment International & Department for Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE)!

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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.