Name: The Balm: Art for Black Women’s Wellness
Start: 2021-10-08T00:00:00-06:00
End: 2021-12-23T23:59:59-06:00

February 2021
February 17, 2021 @ 8:00 am - 5:00 pm

Chicago Printers’ Guild Fundraiser for SSCAC

Duration 6 months
February 20, 2021 @ 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm

Darryl Chappell Foundation, Artist Talk Series #4: John Simmons, Earlie Hudnall, Jr., and April Frazier

Image by Earlie Hudnall Jr., The Guardian, 1991, silver gelatin print, Collection of The Grace Museum, Museum Purchase with Funds from Alice and Bill Wright REGISTER HERE! Emmy-award winning cinematographer […]
Featured February 26, 2021 @ 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm

Past, Present, & Future Moves: Alexandra Antoine, Paul Branton, and Heather Polk in Conversation

Alexandra Antoine, Paul Branton, and Heather Polk work through collage and mixed media practices in reference to social and political commentaries, the intimacies of Black life, and cultural identity. As […]
March 2021
March 6, 2021 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

A Conversation with Artist Kyrin Hobson

If you missed our talk, please watch the video below. Executive Director of SSCAC, Monique Brinkman-Hill in conversation with artist Kyrin Hobson to discuss her special edition […]
Featured March 26, 2021 @ 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm

An Art Collector’s Conversation with Madeline Murphy Rabb

If you missed our talk with Madeline, please watch the video below. In honor of Women's History Month, Executive Director of SSCAC, Monique Brinkman-Hill will be in conversation with […]
April 2021
April 8, 2021 @ 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Artists At The Center: A Roundtable

Join the Hyde Park Art Center and South Side Community Art Center for a joint program in conjunction with both of our respective Faheem Majeed exhibitions: A roundtable discussion current living artists from different generations who have shown both at the Hyde Park Art Center and South Side Community Art Center during the 20th and […]
May 2021
May 1, 2021 - June 30, 2021

Just Above My Wall, (To The Right)

Just Above My Wall, (To The Right), curated by Ciera Alyse McKissick, brings together Black collectors and SSCAC's permanent collection. Just Above My Wall, (To The Right), showcases Black contemporary artworks from 13 emerging and established Black art collectors from Chicago. During a time when Black artists and their work is in high demand, […]
June 2021
June 2, 2021 @ 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

Beyond The Wall

Join us for a conversation with Patricia Andrews-Keenan, Janelle Ayana Miller, and Alicia Goodwin moderated by Ciera Alyse McKissick ! This program is the first of a few conversations we’ll be hosting as part of our current show Just Above My Wall (To The Right), guest curated by Ciera Alyse McKissick. Just Above My Wall […]
June 17, 2021 @ 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

80th Anniversary Masquerade Kick-Off!

The South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC) kicks off our 80th Anniversary Celebration Thursday, June 17th at 6:30 pm with a virtual masquerade event! The 80th Anniversary theme is "Preserving the House That Art Built" and this kick-off event features special remarks from our co-chairs discussing the historical significance of the Center along with a […]
July 2021
July 10, 2021 - August 29, 2021

Artists and Models: A Tribute to the South Side Community Art Center.

Artists and Models: A Tribute to the South Side Community Art Center July 10-August 29, 2021 Students from across Columbia College Chicago brought the South Side Community Art Center’s (SSCAC) […]
July 17, 2021 - September 25, 2021

Whitfield Lovell: The Spell Suite | An Initiative of Toward Common Cause

Whitfield Lovell: The Spell Suite An Initiative of Toward Common Cause SSCAC is beyond thrilled to be participate in this 19 institution collaborative exhibit and excited to showcase new […]
October 2021
October 8, 2021 - December 23, 2021

The Balm: Art for Black Women’s Wellness

The Southside Community Art Center is proud to host a group exhibition that exclusively highlights Black women artists, and there’s never been a more pertinent time to do so. The Balm: Art for Black Women’s Wellness emerged as a collective artists’ action. Eight women who engage the time-honored tradition of using their artistic practice […]

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.

HOURS

February 2021

Chicago Printers’ Guild Fundraiser for SSCAC

Darryl Chappell Foundation, Artist Talk Series #4: John Simmons, Earlie Hudnall, Jr., and April Frazier

Past, Present, & Future Moves: Alexandra Antoine, Paul Branton, and Heather Polk in Conversation

March 2021

A Conversation with Artist Kyrin Hobson

An Art Collector’s Conversation with Madeline Murphy Rabb

April 2021

Artists At The Center: A Roundtable

May 2021

Just Above My Wall, (To The Right)

June 2021

Beyond The Wall

80th Anniversary Masquerade Kick-Off!

July 2021

Artists and Models: A Tribute to the South Side Community Art Center.

Whitfield Lovell: The Spell Suite | An Initiative of Toward Common Cause

October 2021

The Balm: Art for Black Women’s Wellness

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MIXED MEDIA AND STILL LIFE