MLK DAY: VISION BOARDS FOR NEW FUTURES

Honoring the future MLK dreamed of, while also bringing in our own visions for the futures we want to create!     Join us for an afternoon of vision boarding, as we honor the radical dreaming of Martin Luther King Jr.   MLk believed in the dreams of revolution, and creating a society based on […]

The Promised Land: Opening Reception

Eleven artists with ties to North and South of the Mason-Dixon Line respond to just how much Black life has always been in transit.      The Great Migration was one of the largest movements of people in United States history. It has transformed cities like Chicago, Detroit, New York and Pittsburgh between 1916 and […]

Black Adornment & The Found Object

Join SSCAC Archives and Collections Manager LaMar Gayles Jr. for an afternoon exploring mixed media art, our collections, and adornment objects from his personal collection.        In this participatory program, join SSCAC Collections and Archives Manager LaMar Gayles in exploring examples of adornment and mixed media objects from the archives of the South […]

Black Family Portraits with Seed Lynn

Join us with photographer Seed Lynn for a free family portrait session!     For this Black History Month, we're thrilled to partner with photographer Seen Lynn to offer free family portraits to our community!   The Black family portrait, throughout history to the present, has always been an accessible, but vivid practice of self-representation […]

Artwork Documentation Workshop with Colleen Keihm

Learn how to successfully document your artwork!   In conjunction with our current photo exhibition, 'The Promised Land', in partnership with LATITUDE, we're thrilled to offer a free photo-documentation workshop for artists!   If you're interested in learning more about documenting your artwork in an exhibition, for web use, or for your portfolio we'll be […]

A Promised Land On The Horizon: Artist Talk

'The Promised Land' exhibiting artists join SSCAC Exhibitions Manager and Curator Lola Ayisha Ogbara in conversation.    Our current exhibition 'The Promised Land', features eleven contemporary photo and image artists working across a diverse range of visual methods, that re-imagine stories of city life and the Great Migration through the decolonization of the lens, Southern […]

“where the light corrupts your face…” | Opening Reception

Artists Andres L. Hernandez, Tonika Lewis Johnson and Roland Knowlden consider the many definitions of space, site, and home.     Spatial griots Andres L. Hernandez, Tonika Lewis Johnson and Roland Knowlden invite you to consider how socio-economic and geographic oppressions impact the way we see (or don’t see) our environments. Hernandez uncovers embedded histories and […]

BLACK SPACE: Architectural Historiographies & Spatial Landscapes

Artists Andres L. Hernandez, Tonika Lewis Johnson and Roland Knowlden discuss the intersections of space, architecture, and Blackness with SSCAC Exhibitions Manager and Curator Lola Ayisha Ogbara.      Artists and spacial griots Andres L. Hernandez, Tonika Lewis Johnson and Roland Knowlden invite you to consider how socio-economic and geographic oppressions impact the way we […]

Mapping Black Archives: A Collage Workshop with Alexandra Antoine

An invitation to explore Black archives through collage using maps, magazines, ephemera, and images of Black women to make a "marker".   The South Side Community Art Center, in collaboration with Mural Arts presents Mapping Black Archives, a collage workshop hosted by Alexandra Antoine, with Andrea Yarbrough. This is an invitation to explore Black archives […]

BRONZEVILLE TROLLEY TOUR NIGHT!

Please join us  for the 3rd Friday of the month for the Bronzeville Art District (BAD) Trolley Tour 2023! Bronzeville Art District is Celebrating 17 years, Every 3rd Friday between June and September take a ride on the Double-Decker Bus for fine art and entertainment in Bronzeville! Ride the Double-Decker bus that will take you to […]

3831 JUNETEENTH!

SSCAC is thrilled to host artists Eric Von Haynes and Angela Davis Fegan for an on site letterpress print activation, artist Andrea Yarbrough for a viewing of her PACE Mural Arts outdoor installation commission, and John Pendelton of Planks and Pistils!   Participants at our Juneteenth program will be able to print letterpress broadsides with […]

Black Light Cinema Project and Homecoming: Black Craft & Design in Chicago

Join us for an opening reception to celebrate and kick off our summer exhibitions!     In a world rich with diverse cultures and histories, the concept of belonging and homeplace holds profound significance. Within the tapestry of human experiences, one thread stands out with resilience, creativity, and an indomitable spirit – the Black cinematic […]

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.