Bronzeville Art District Virtual Trolley Tours
2020-12-18 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | IL
Take the Virtual Trolley Tour on Zoom to the largest Black Art District in the country.

Faheem Majeed - From the Center
2021-01-16 12:00 - 2021-03-27 15:00 UTC
“From the Center”is a retrospective of works created by Faheem Majeed over the past twenty years. As a former executive director and curator(2005-2011) of the South Side Community Art Center(SSCAC), Majeed’s works are especially attuned to the history and legacy of the 80 year old arts institution. The SSCAC has been themuse fora number ofhis series of worksand has been the impetus for hiscontinual exploration and critique of culturally specific institutions. Please join the South Side Community Art Center as it welcomes home one of its native sons.

MLK Talk featuring Artist Stephanie Graham
2021-01-18 17:00 - 20:00 (America/Chicago)
Join a discussion with Stephanie Graham about her most recent special edition print for SSCAC in collaboration with Chicago Printers Guild, her own artistic visions of Black futures and freedom, and the ideas that ground her work.

Chicago Printers’ Guild Fundraiser for SSCAC
2021-02-17 08:00 - 17:00 UTC
The Chicago Printers Guild is rallying its members to support the efforts and contributions that the South Side Community Art Center continues to make in the Bronzeville Neighborhood and community at large. The South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC) is the oldest independently-owned African American art center in the United States. Founded by Margaret Burroughs and other African-American artists in 1940, the SSCAC boasts connections to printmakers Charles White and Elizabeth Catlett, photographer Gordon Parks, and the first woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Gwendolyn Brooks. Today, SSCAC serves as an exhibition space, a venue for film and literary events, and a host for educational talks and panels including: “Black and Informed” a series of discussions and political consultation for Black Millenials in Chicago; “Existing Between Line & Space” an exhibition which featured CPG member Thomas Lucas among others; and, currently artist Jesse Howard’s solo exhibition “The Spirit of Community”. The historic wood-paneled walls of the Margaret Burroughs Gallery at SSCAC contain 80 years worth of holes made by artwork hung there. The space is full of energy and gravitas. The ceiling and lighting, however, are in need of improvement. The CPG and SSCAC leadership have identified this project as the focus for our fundraising campaign. This project is supported in part by a CityArts Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events.

Darryl Chappell Foundation, Artist Talk Series #4: John Simmons, Earlie Hudnall, Jr., and April Frazier
2021-02-20 13:00 - 14:30 (America/Chicago)
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 and photographer, John Simmons, ASC, and prolific photographer Earlie Hudnall, Jr., sit down with moderator and photographer April Frazier to share with a global audience their successes, challenges, how they overcame obstacles and to share parts of their life work.
The Artists Talk Series is a program of the Darryl Chappell Foundation focused on providing a platform for artists to share their work with a global audience of artists, patrons and an interested public – at no charge. The Artists Talk provides a virtual platform for emerging and established artists to not only share their work experiences, but obstacles along their path and how they were able to confront and overcome challenges. Artists also depict their most recent work, highlighting the trajectory of their path and art practices.
Last, there is a moderated question & answer segment where the audience asks questions either through live zoom audio questions or via chat feature on Zoom or on YouTube. Artists Talk Series are live streamed via YouTube and Zoom and a recording is posted to the Foundation’s YouTube channel within one week of airing live.

Past, Present, & Future Moves: Alexandra Antoine, Paul Branton, and Heather Polk in Conversation
2021-02-26 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Chicago)
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 concepts of the past, present, and future overlap within their practice, they will discuss their individual concerns as artists, what pushes their work forward, and how art encourages us to look back to our past, while looking ahead.

Heather Polk is a sales and marketing professional with an active art practice that fills her nights and weekends. She resides in Chicago where she relocated from Atlanta almost 10 years ago.
She is working toward establishing a small art studio that will deliver programming for sufferers of chronic disease so that they, and their caretakers, may utilize the empowerment of artistic creativity as a vital part of their disease management. Her art practice is centered around collage and abstract painting.

Alexandra Antoine is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago, IL. Her work examines traditional artistic practices throughout the African Diaspora with a focus on healing traditions, identity and culture through the use of collage, portraiture, and most recently, farming. She uses the portrait as a tool to re/present individuals of the African diaspora while exploring her relationship to them within the larger narrative of her Haitian identity.
She holds a Bachelor in Fine Arts and Arts Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at Rootwork Gallery, Hyde Park Art Center, Roman Susan Gallery, Chicago Art Department and Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago, IL and is part of the Arts in Embassies program in the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Paul Branton was born in 1973 in Chicago. He was influenced at an early age by the sights & sounds of the South Side’s urban environment. Writing short stories & putting on plays with his sister quickly became a passion and a means of expressing himself. It was this passion that guided his education, which ultimately guided his career.
Choosing visual art as his main focus, he entered Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, majoring in Commercial Art with a strong emphasis in painting. It was at Millikin where he also discovered a love for poetry, a strong desire for painting, eventually putting on a one-man art exhibit displaying his works. During these same years, he also helped his college buddy Skee Skinner with several student film projects, opening up another doorway from which to express himself. Not only taking on writing & production credits, Paul spent much of his time on both sides of the camera playing supporting and lead roles.
He combined the two art forms by creating a series of paintings for the feature film Pieces of a Dream, in which he also portrayed a main character. Also merging visual art and poetry, Paul put together the upcoming coffee table book To Dream In Colour.
The art of Paul Branton is/has been exhibited throughout Illinois, including Millikin University, South Side Community Art Center, Gallery Guichard, University of Illinois at Chicago, Gallery D’Estee, Phoenix Gallery, NYCH Gallery, Chicago Truborn, Legendary Gallery, Gallery na 19, Art Basel Miami and Hyde Park Art Center. Paul served as a Juror for the 50th anniversary of Black Creativity (Museum of Science and Industry / Chicago) in 2020. His art hangs in the homes of private owners from New York to Los Angeles

A Conversation with Artist Kyrin Hobson
2021-03-06 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Chicago)
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 print created in collaboration with our Chicago Printer’s Guild Fundraiser, her multifaceted art practice, and how women and symbolism play a role in her work.
A Los Angeles native, artist Kyrin Hobson enacts her various roles as protector of children, steward of community and keeper of histories through painting, drawing and conceptually engaged social practice focusing on arts education. Hobson’s Chicago studio is a base of operations for art explorations which build upon experiences as a museum professional and scholar of the African Diaspora. Primarily self-taught in painting, the artist has a BA in Fine Art from UCLA and a MA in Museum Studies from NYU. Additional fine art study has included the Women’s Art Institute at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and studio intensives with Steven Assael, Stanka Kordic, and Karen Offutt.
Kyrin is a grantee of the Sustainable Arts Foundation, The Minnesota State Arts Board and AS220. She has been in residence at the Millay Art Colony and published in The Edna Journal and Delicious Line. Recent exhibitions include Between Line and Space (South Side Community Art Center), Secondary Meanings: Figural Diptychs (Zhou B Art Center), Reclamation (Helen Day Art Center, Vermont), Visions of Venus/Venus’ Visions (Zhou B Art Center, Chicago), Black Creativity Juried Exhibition (Chicago Museum of Science and Industry). Hobson’s paintings and commissioned portraits feature in collections in the United States, France and Germany, notably including the University of California, Los Angeles, Tina Knowles Lawson and Dr. Elaine Schmidt and Steven Bennett.

According to Hobson:
My drawings and paintings are acts of intercession—the sharp point of a trajectory of memory. I carry forward a family history of clairvoyance used in ritual; in creating, caring for and sustaining life; and in the resourceful exercise of influence. I am the first in my line to deploy this gift as an artist. A strong commitment to interdisciplinary research in history and cultural studies supports my gift of vision.
Hobson adds:
My art gives shape and form to what it has meant to be a Black or mixed-race person in America. The work is body based, emphasizing gaze and gesture of the figure. The physicality of memory also finds form in symbolic depictions of the limbic system, and other bio-imaging. My imagery combines threads of inherited trauma, rage, caregiving and the instinct to survive and even find pleasure in a brutal world. I frequently center a young Black heroine (or hero) in an imagined landscape, often with the tools of her own agency (medicinal plants, folk charms, weapons) and attended by fantastical animals or natural motifs. Beauty is claimed emphatically as both a necessary element of survival and a lever of femme power. At the same time, these works confront the perilous exploitation of the enslaved female body. The drawings and paintings that depict my visions stand as documents of a pragmatic purpose—to reclaim the humanity of marginalized people.

An Art Collector's Conversation with Madeline Murphy Rabb
2021-03-26 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Chicago)
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 Madeline Murphy Rabb to discuss her career in art collecting, arts consulting, and cultural advocacy work here in Chicago and beyond. With over 50 years of experience, Madeline will share her accomplishments, as well as challenges navigating the art world.

Madeline Murphy Rabb has been actively participating in the art world for more than 50 years as a painter and printmaker, arts administrator, jewelry designer, art appraiser, art consultant, collector, curatorial activist and writer.
Madeline earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1966 and a Master of Science Degree in printmaking from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1975. In 1983, Madeline was appointed by Mayor Harold Washington the Executive Director of the Chicago Office of Fine Arts, Department of Cultural Affairs where she served under Mayors Eugene Sawyer and Richard M. Daley until 1991. She oversaw the Public Art Program and awarded CityArts grants to artists and arts organizations throughout the city.

In 1992 she created Murphy Rabb Inc. a business focused on advising collectors about building African American art collections for their offices and homes. Over the years she has opened her home for private tours of her collection to the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Southside Community Art Center and Art Expo. She has lent works from her collection to exhibitions at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Camden Art Center, London, Exhibitions USA, The Newark Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, The Los Angeles Museum of Art, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Some of her corporate clients include: Ariel Capital Management, Brown Capital Management, Channing Capital Management, Northern Trust Chicago South Financial Center, Cityfront Place, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Harris Bank, personal and Trust, Evanston Hospital, Mercy Hospital, UBM Construction Management, the MacArthur Foundation, Draper and Kramer, the Chicago Park District, the University of Chicago, Department of History, Shorebank, the Parking Spot and Capri Capital Advisors.
She has served on the board of Arts Midwest, the Joseph Jefferson Committee, the Hyde Park Art Center, the Southside Community Art Center, the DuSable Museum, the Alumni Board of the Maryland Institute College of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Woman’s Board and Sculpture Chicago. For 21 years she served on the Board of Columbia College Chicago, and for more than 30 years has served on the Woman’s Board of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Artists At The Center: A Roundtable
2021-04-08 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Chicago)
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 21st centuries.
Artists, Faheem Majeed, Juarez Hawkins, Rhonda Wheatley, Candace Hunter, Tony Smith and more will speak about working through multiple spaces, audiences, and legacies between the our two institutions, moderated by Patric McCoy. Join us for storytelling, conversation, memories, anecdotes, and insight about their work with both spaces and the historical context of working with two 80 year old institutions.
Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83311142139
South Side Community Art Center “From the Center” closed March 27th
Hyde Park Art Center “Planting and Maintaining a Perennial Garden” Opens April 26
Artist Faheem Majeed creates an ambitious new installation that furthers his investigation of culturally specific institutions by focusing on the history and memory of the historic South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC). Majeed will produce a monumental charcoal rubbing of building facade of the SSCAC as the central focus of his first large-scale solo exhibition. In addition to this new fabric work Majeed will also be incorporating his ongoing series of reused wooden planks entitled Planting and Maintaining a Perennial Garden repurposed from the SSCAC’s Burroughs Gallery. For this installation the wooden planks will take the form of a platform that will both raise the massive building sized fabric rubbing on a pedestal and be host to performance and discussion.

Artists At The Center is presented as part of Art Design Chicago Now, an initiative funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art that amplifies the voices of Chicago’s diverse creatives, past and present, and explores the essential role they play in shaping the now.
Generous support for the exhibition, related public program, and catalog is provided in part by The Joyce Foundation, Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Host Committee led by Jack & Sandra Guthman, Cynthia Heusing & David Kistenbroker, and Eric & Cheryl McKissack. Contributions also provided by John Ellis, Julie Marie Lemon & Heinrich Jaeger, Cheryl & Thomas Rudbeck, and Freddye Smith.

Just Above My Wall, (To The Right)
2021-05-01 - 2021-06-30
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, McKissick chose to highlight Black collectors who are invested in the preservation of Black art, much like the South Side Community Art Center’s mission and legacy.
This show encompasses parallelled histories between Black artists within the South Side Community Art Center’s collection, Black artists of today, and what Black art collectors are acquiring.
During a time when Black artists and their work is in high demand, McKissick chose to highlight Black collectors who are invested in the preservation of Black art, much like the South Side Community Art Center’s mission and legacy. Collector, Tracie Hall, describes her collection as “living with the ancestors.”
“I think that it’s important for us to demystify art because for me, the art that I live with charges my space. I think that our homes are almost like our safe harbor, and for me art is very spiritually charged,” Hall says. “I think that for Black people it’s important for us to really charge the space that we’re in, because a lot of times our spaces are so contested, our spaces are sometimes grabbed from us, or we’re displaced — the simple act of collecting art, or placing art in a place that you can see it, and letting it envelop you, is almost like resistance. I think that seeing art puts you in dialogue with something beyond yourself,” she said.

Work by Sylvester Britton from the South Side Community Art Center Permanent Collection.
Selected works from the SSCAC collection include Bill Walker, Ralph Arnold, Sylvester Britton, Yaounde Olu, Hale Woodruff, and Dorothy Higgenson-Carter among other works from the 20th century. Selected work from collectors include both emerging and established artists from the 21st century like, Krista Franklin, Hebru Brantley, Brandon Breaux, Alexandra Antoine, Erin Mitchell, and Lawrence Agyei to name a few.
For the curator, McKissick, who is also one of the emerging collectors featured, it was important to center the exhibition around collecting, and use the Center’s collection as a catalyst.
“Oftentimes when you think of an art collector or you see an art collector, the first thing you’re seeing is a rich white man or couple with money, and if you’re seeing a black collector, it’s someone famous like Jay-Z and Beyonce, Diddy, or Swizz Beats. While I am glad that celebrities are bringing the notion of owning art to the forefront, I think it also creates a misconception that you need to be of a certain caliber to collect artwork, or that it’s an unobtainable thing,” McKissick says. “I ideated the show around the Center’s collection because the space itself was created in that same vein. A group of college art students created this space because they didn’t see spaces that looked like them or represented them. Their collection is a representation of the hard work of those artists, and a sign that they were creating and existing, and so is the work of the artists these collectors are representing today.

Collectors Include: Patricia Andrews-Keenan, Janelle Miller, Stephanie Graham, John Ellis, Martha Wade, Tracie Hall, Drew Enstrumental, Raub Welch, Amanda Williams, Ayanah Moor, Alicia Goodwin, Rob McKay, and Ciera McKissick
Artists Featured From Their Collection: Solomon Adufah, Robert Pruitt/Thomas Lucas, Alexandria Valentine, SHENEQUA, John H. Blanton, Lawrence Agyei, Krista Franklin, Adler Guerrier, Max Sansing, David Anthony Geary, Alexandra Antoine, Hebru Brantley, Zephyr, Brandon Breaux, Paul S. Benjamin, Leasho Johnson, Erin Mitchell

*Image courtesy: Lawrence Agyei from the collection of John Ellis.

Beyond The Wall
2021-06-02 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Chicago)
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 (To The Right), challenges misconceptions about collecting while also centering a diverse range of Black emerging and established art collectors here in Chicago, including works from our own collection.
Alicia, Janelle, and Patricia are not only collectors, but creative leaders in their own right. They each have very specific interests, concerns, and practices relating to why, what, and how they collect beyond their contributions to our current exhibit.
The art and practice of collecting goes well beyond the wall, but can be explored through unconventional spaces, family legacies, and traveling for example. We’re eager to learn what life experiences and influences have been impactful towards their journey as collectors, as well as how their path in the arts have expanded their understanding and re-definitions of collecting art, objects, and more.

image courtesy of Janelle Ayana Miller’s collection.

Bios:
Patricia Andrews-Keenan is the founder of Pigment International, a multi-media arts collective redefining global arts, culture, and innovation. The organization is committed to creating new platforms for the advancement of the modern multi-cultural aesthetic in the visual arts, specifically the aesthetic represented by African descended artists. Pigment serves as a connector for emerging creators, collectors, curators, investors, and other stakeholders. It is a destination for art enthusiasts to experience customized and curated salons, events and exhibitions that spark dialogue and inspire those constituents. Pigment International is the publisher of Pigment Magazine, a publication highlighting Black artists, collectors, curators and all those that champion the Black Art aesthetic.
Andrews-Keenan also led the charge for the creation of Black Fine Art Month, first celebrated in October 2019. Black Fine Art Month is a global celebration of the Black Art aesthetic, an annual recognition of artists, innovators, collectors, curators and those vested in the Black Art tradition, and an opportunity to commemorate these contributions through art programming.
Andrews-Keenan’s background encompasses stints as a journalist, PR manager, government affairs director, communications and corporate affairs executive with media companies including Comcast, the Nielsen Company and AT&T.
https://www.pigmentintl.com/

Janelle Ayana Miller is a grandchild of the Great Migration, a Midwesterner with Southern inflection.
Her artistic practice is rooted within familial and communal aesthetics, looking deeply into bridging self and time as an act of place-making while using modes of collage, found objects, film, food, and photography.
https://janelleamiller.com/

Alicia Goodwin is a jeweler and artist based out of Chicago, Illinois.
A graduate of the metals program at SUNY’s Fashion Institute of Technology as well as a graduate of CUNY’s Hunter College, Alicia creates sculptural work inspired by nature, mourning jewelry of the Victorian era and ceremonial jewelry of the Mesoamericas.
She creates a majority of her work under her eponymous brand, Lingua Nigra, using the ancient techniques wax carving, as well as textural techniques such as reticulation and acid etching.
Her work can be found at select retailers and museum shops around the world.
https://linguanigra.com/

Ciera Alyse McKissick is an independent writer, curator, cultural producer, and the founder of AMFM, an organization whose mission is to promote emerging artists.
She is also the coordinator of Public Programs at the Hyde Park Art Center, and Communications Associate at Ox-Bow School of Art. She created AMFM, originally a web magazine, as an independent study project in 2009 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she studied Journalism and Mass Communications.
Her work since then often involves collaboration through supporting Black and brown artists, local arts organizations, and seeks to stimulate community engagement that’s driven by inclusivity, accessibility, intention, and care.
http://www.amfm.life/

80th Anniversary Masquerade Kick-Off!
2021-06-17 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Chicago)
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 special awards celebration honoring local community partners, leaders, and artists.
$80 tickets include an annual SSCAC Membership, a mask, and specialty cocktail/mocktail recipe for the virtual reception.
$40 tickets include an annual SSCAC membership.
Come join us to celebrate and preserve the house that art built!

Artists and Models: A Tribute to the South Side Community Art Center.
2021-07-10 - 2021-08-29
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) administrative archives to life through a recent exhibition titled, “Artists and Models: A Tribute to the South Side Community Art Center.” The exhibit was previously on display at C33 Gallery (33 Ida B. Wells Dr. first floor).

This student led exhibition celebrates the South Side Community Art Center’s pioneering role in promoting Black art and creativity in Chicago. This exhibition features documents from the Center’s archival records to trace aspects of the Center’s history from its first four decades.
Artists and Models was curated by Charlotte Briskin, Anastasia Murphy, Justin Ridgel, James Ross, Matthew Walcott, and Teanna White in Dr. Melanie Chambliss’s Fall 2020 course Black Artistry and the Archive. The exhibition was designed by Elsa Mae Brydalski, Hannah Davila, Bri Elliott, Raegan Townsend, and Joseph Trezek in Sarah Faust’s Spring 2021 Graphic Design course.

SSCAC is proud to showcase this archive, and we share our thanks to students who brought this to life! We hope you enjoy.

Whitfield Lovell: The Spell Suite | An Initiative of Toward Common Cause
2021-07-17 - 2021-09-25
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 works by Whitfield Lovell!

Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40 explores the extent to which certain resources—air, land, water, and even culture—can be held in common. Raising questions about inclusion, exclusion, ownership, and rights of access, the exhibition considers art’s vital role in society as a call to vigilance, a way to bear witness, and a potential act of resistance. Presented on the 40th anniversary of the MacArthur Fellows Program, Toward Common Cause deploys the Fellows Program as “intellectual commons” and features new and recontextualized work by 29 visual artists who have been named Fellows since the award program’s founding in 1981.
Mining vintage photographs of unknown people for much of his subject matter, Whitfield Lovell (MacArthur Fellow, 2007) aims to, in his words, “illuminate the humanity and richness” of ordinary African Americans who lived between the Emancipation Proclamation and the civil rights movement. Shown here are portraits from Lovell’s Spell Suite, a series name that references a sequence of pieces in music or dance and conjures the mesmerizing quality of enchantment. Lucidly rendered and powerfully expressive, these Black figures contradict the stereotypes of African Americans that have been perpetuated by mass media, such as The Beulah Show recording that plays from Lovell’s installation of radios, After an Afternoon. Together, these works probe the effacement of cultural memory with sensuous tones that activate the legacy of those whose personal histories have been lost.
Whitfield Lovell: The Spell Suite is a collaboration between the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago and South Side Community Art Center. It is an initiative of Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40, which is organized by the Smart Museum of Art in collaboration with exhibition, programmatic, and research partners across Chicago. Toward Common Cause is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and curated by Abigail Winograd, MacArthur Fellows Program 40th Anniversary Exhibition Curator, Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago.
Whitfield Lovell’s artwork is also on view at the Stony Island Arts Bank from July 15 to December 19, 2021. For more information, please visit towardcommoncause.org.

Image courtesy:
Whitfield Lovell (b. 1959). “Spell no. 12 (Richesse Noire),” 2021, Conte on paper with attached found object. © Whitfield Lovell. Courtesy of the artist and DC Moore Gallery, New York

The Balm: Art for Black Women's Wellness
2021-10-08 - 2021-12-23
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 to give vision and form to our healing have contributed work across a variety of media and points of view. Themes emerged organically, with works that stand in both testimony and conversation. Together, they frame inquiry into the experiences of psychological fragmentation, the sustaining value of breathwork, cultural healing practices of the African Diaspora and healthcare disparities affecting maternal fetal outcomes. Themes of kinship and the restorative powers of the familiar, coalesce around memory of home, especially the south, which weaves its way through many of the works presented and finds its way to us here in Chicago. The alchemy of this project—bringing together artists and communities around a subject that concerns us all—demonstrates the power of Black women’s creative ingenuity.
Organized by visual artist and culture worker Kyrin Hobson, the exhibition will showcase artists based in and outside of Chicago, which include Hobson, Alexandria Valentine, Venise Keys, Jasmine Best, Brie Ortega, Janelle Dunlap, and Ashley January.
The exhibition opens for public viewing October 8th, in addition to an opening reception October 22nd, 6-8pm. RSVP here
Learn more about the participating artists below:

Jasmine Best
Jasmine Best is a true Southern Artist, gathering narratives from her Carolinian family and childhood. The North Carolina based artist uses her personal memories and manipulations of her memories to create dialogues about the black female identity in the south and in predominantly white spaces. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Recently was awarded the Artwork Archive Art Business Grant. She works with tangible and traditional mediums combined with digital means of art making. Her work often depicts maternal figures, each depicting the diversity and qualities that make up the black southern women in her life through several generations.
Jasminebest.com

Janelle Dunlap
Janelle is a Charlotte, NC and Chicago based social practice artist, curator and creative consultant who works to generate intentional and transformational change through her practice. She has a ten year background as a nonprofit professional where she worked in several roles that continue to inform and fuel her creative roles.
Janelle’s broad body of work ranges from micro museum exhibitions to performance art installations and continues to generate institutional and community based funding. Some of her previous funders include Art Science Council, the Knight Foundation, The Institute for Museum and Library Services, Z Smith Reynolds Foundation, and the Sweet Water Foundation in Chicago, IL. She is currently a 2020 recipient of the New Artist Society Scholarship through the Low- Residency MFA program at School of the Art Institute of Chicago and also a current student in the inaugural class of Social and Environmental Arts MFA program at Prescott College.
Beekeeping is a meditation on collective effort for survival. Through the use of abstraction, I use the medium of encaustic paint to articulate what is incommunicable between myself and the bees. This co-species relationship seeks wisdom beyond the anthropocene and gains knowledge through observation, care, and engagement with the honeybee. The west African goddess Oxum, is known for her healing powers that transmute pain into honey for her devotees. As one of Oxum’s totems, the bee is a sacred symbol of the healing power

https://www.janelledunlap.com/

Alexandria Valentine
Alexandria Valentine (b. on the South Side of Chicago, in 1996) uses archival practices, writing, collage, photography and textiles to explore themes of Black latent thought, ancestral landscapes, and the Black Romantic. Informed by the legacy of her loved ones who lived in and traveled from the South during the Great Migration, Valentine seeks to explore the past, create pathways to the future and peer at the spaces in between.
Alexandria received a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from Columbia University School of the Arts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They are the co-founder of North Star Memory Project, a transmedia archive that prioritizes Black Chicago and Great Migration histories through counter-archive building.
My art investigates the liminal spaces of Black women’s wellness–what happens when we cease to be well and the process of trying to make our way back to wellness. Being Black and woman means that there are many people and structures actively trying to limit our wellness, my work explores the effects of that and the way we act upon those forces in return.
https://www.alexandriavalentine.net/

Ashley January
Ashley focuses on contemporary portraiture informed by her maternal experience. Due to pregnancy complications that led to her son being born premature, her new body of work addresses the crisis of the Black maternal mortality rate in America. This year Ashley has exhibited work with Dominique Gallery on Artsy, and with SoLA Contemporary in LA in 2020. Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues including, the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, IL; Viridian Artists Inc, New York, NY; Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA; Pacific Art Foundation, Newport Beach, CA; and the Irvine Fine Arts Center, Irvine, CA. She was selected as a first-place award winner at the Woman Made Gallery’s Midwest Open in Chicago, in 2018 and won the Beverly Bank Best of Show Award at the Beverly Arts Center’s juried competition in 2017.
Ashley earned her MFA in Painting from Laguna College of Art and Design, Laguna Beach, CA and her BS in Communication with an Advertising concentration and Minor in Studio Art from Bradley University, Peoria, IL. She lives in Chicago with her husband, son, dog, and works from her studio at Mana Contemporary.
I address the growing crisis of the Black maternal mortality and morbidity rate in America through painting and multimedia. Black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women. Motherhood, for Black women, is not detached from the state of being “Black” in the United States. For us, the decision to enter motherhood involves considerable risk, personal identity, healthcare disparities, burden-bearing and survival. My first pregnancy abruptly ended with a traumatic delivery. I was diagnosed with preeclampsia at 32 weeks and 4 days. Two days later, I delivered by emergency c-section. My baby boy was born prematurely with a low birth weight of 2 pounds and 13 ounces. Mothers who have suffered similar complications that lead to more adverse birth outcomes are considered to be a “near miss” meaning that they suffered severe maternal morbidity (SMM) in which Black women are disproportionately affected.
While uplifting Black mothers and children, the images and sound narratives serve as a call to action for more awareness, research, and eradication of unnecessary maternal and infant death in the United States of America.
https://ashleyjan.com/

Kyrin Hobson
Kyrin Hobson is a visual artist and independent arts professional dedicated to creating understanding and opportunity among diverse cultures. Her distinctive approach to art making and her commitment to building connections for institutions, audiences and artists define a multifaceted career. Studio work and research interests engage Hobson’s role as a cultural signifier and pragmatic change agent. Hobson’s artistic practice includes narrative figurative painting, portraiture, drawing and mixed-media installations. Multi-layered works fuse autobiography with myth and care giving traditions of New Orleans, Haiti and the Black Diaspora. Finding Guinen is a current body of work that interrogates the racial imaginary with regard to the wholeness and histories of women of African ancestry in the Americas.
Hobson is a 2023 MFA candidate at University of Chicago, in addition she holds a Master of Arts degree in Arts Administration and Museum Studies from New York University and a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from UCLA.
These works are part of a series considering Black women’s health and wholeness through the lens of history. I use the body as a symbol of collective experience and hope for reconciliation. Fecundity Trick Card, We Spoke of Vessels and No. Money Man. engage imagery of the body and specifically the uterus to explore how we have maintained our wholeness during times when our reproduction has been hijacked and tied to commerce. Bearing witness to our physical legacies of fecundity, commodification and survival is important in the here and now as we cope with threats to reproductive rights, disparities in women’s healthcare and maternal fetal outcomes, and the scourge of human trafficking.
https://www.kyrinhobson.com/bio.html

Venise Keys
Venise Keys is a visual artist, writer, and educator raised on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. Venise’s art has been exhibited at Front Room Gallery in Brooklyn, NY as well as the Museum Science and Industry, Plus Gallery, Woman Made Gallery, and Intersect Chicago (formally known as SOFA: Sculpture, Objects, and Functional Art & Design Fair) in Chicago.
She has a Bachelors and Master’s degree in Painting with a Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for her research on Black Feminist politics. She served as adjunct faculty of art for Illinois Central College, Bradley University, and has lectured at Dillard University on the role of the Black artist. This work is published in the scholarly journal, Kalfou: Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies.
This year, Venise’s writing on art education has circulated to Norway, and she is recently published in a New York arts and culture magazine, Hyperallergic. Venise is currently a visual art teacher at Art In Motion Creative Arts School and is the program director for the Kappa Chapter of Gamma Xi Phi.
The visual aesthetics and rituals of my studio practice explore personal intersections of race, gender, sexuality, age, and class. I use painting, drawing, craftwork, paper cutting, and found objects to explore art history, popular culture, and my childhood memories. Common themes in my artwork are queerness, generational trauma, the Black Arts Movement, intersectionality, Black feminist theory, rootwork spirituality, identity politics, and empowerment.
theartofvenisekeys

Brie Ortega
Brie Ortega is a photographer, digital artist, non-profit do-gooder, and social worker interested in how art can draw attention to health issues and potential solutions, particularly in Black communities. Her work is informed by navigating complex personal and familial health landscapes involving mental illness, traumatic birth, migration, metabolic dysfunction, breathing trouble, abuse, and neglect. Much of her life has been an experiment in healing from these contexts and reclaiming the health and happiness she believes is our birthright. While Brie has oscillated between California and Atlanta throughout her life, her mother is originally from Chicago, where Brie was last present as a toddler in foster care. Participating in The Balm represents a positive and poetic return to a familial place of origin.
Brie is currently living as nomadically as possible after spending 11 years in Los Angeles, where she was inspired to develop an art practice and also rebel against dominant notions of what it means to be an artist and to create in the social media era. It is important for her to use art as a tool for activism and therapy while disrupting the false dichotomy between artist and “non-artist.”
These portraits were created in 2019 as part of a small community effort with friends Krissy Leahy and Monique Hall called The Black Breath Project. In collaboration with members of the Los Angeles Black yoga and wellness community, we developed a zine called Breathing While Black in which participants submitted portraits or had their portraits made by me while engaged in mindful breathing practice. The focus on breath was inspired by its importance as a taken-for-granted yet integral part of life; the way breath can be interrupted by anxiety, respiratory illnesses, and pollution; the attention to breath given by yoga and meditation practices; and Eric Garner’s immortal last words. Accompanying the portraits are “breath testimonials.”
The time during which I created these portraits is very meaningful. I was on a partial sabbatical and really pouring resources into my own health. For the first time, I was managing depression and anxiety through nutrition and without medication. After a string of unhealthy relationships, I was being extra intentional about seeking people out who treated me with kindness and respect. And, of course, this was shortly before COVID put the act of breathing front and center on the world stage. In many ways, these portraits are an ode to that time of discovery.
@mrbrie
*top image credit: Alexandria Valentine. A Cosmic Anger, A Cosmic Rage. Mixed media collage. 2021

THE UNDERWORLD: George Crump
2022-01-14 - 2022-03-26
THE UNDERWORLD: George Crump articulates a collective, yet intimate expression of his mind’s eye through a body of work that makes social statements regarding life experiences, both subjective and observational.
In his most recent body of work, Crump situates his conceptions of “the underworld” by way of the psychological and social afterlives of oppression, with a tone of the spiritual, often positioning his figures between reality and surrealism. Crump applies the principles of discipline, understanding, and compassion to his work through his specific use of color, rich narrative approach, and form.

“The source material of my work is the truth of my past and present life experiences”, Crump says.

George Crump. I Don’t Know. Oil on canvas. 24″x 20″.

Themes of remembrance and the spirit of determination traverse the scope of Crump’s work as he’s concerned with aspects of universal notions of existentialism, affliction, redemption, and triumph.
The exhibition opens for public viewing on January 14th and runs through March 26th. Please RSVP for our opening day here.

George Crump is a Chicago-based native and visual artist. He attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and most recently held a solo exhibition at Faie African Art Gallery.
George developed his focus on the sensual nature of art, aiming to evoke universality and honesty within his practice. So much so, his strong emotional connection to his paintings are open to a variety of rich interpretations that span a wide range of emotions and forms.

RSVP for our timed viewing HERE.

COVID PROTOCOL

How to visit The Center safely:
– Vaccine verification required for entry
– Beginning January 3, in accordance with City of Chicago policy, all visitors 5 and older will be required to show proof of full vaccination.
– Please bring either your vaccine card, a printed copy, or a digital photo of your card.
– Visitors 16 and older will need to provide identification that matches their vaccination record
– Masks will continue to be required by all visitors 2 and older while in the museum.
We continue to require all visitors, vaccinated or unvaccinated to wear masks that cover both your nose and mouth.

An Unapologetic Dream: A MLK Celebration
2022-01-17 16:00 - 19:00 (America/Chicago)
Hyde Park Art Center in collaboration with South Side Community Art Center and Arts + Public Life, presents a free virtual screening of Unapologetic by Chicago filmmaker Ashley O”Shay, a film told through the lens of Janaé Bonsu and Bella Bahhs, two fierce abolitionist leaders, that gives a deep look into the Movement for Black Lives, from the police murder of Rekia Boyd to the election of mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Opening the program will also be an excerpt from Hyde Park Art Center’s Center Program Artist, Cathleen Campbell’s documentary, Martin Luther King’s Unsung Heros in Chicago, shorts from The Black Archive Project: Chicago Uprisings 2020 by local independent filmmaker and documentarian, Resita Cox, and a poetry reading from Leslé Honore, an AfroLatina poet, artivist, and author of Fist & Fire, a collection of powerful, unflinching poems that confront issues of social justice through the lens of real human lives and voices.
The poetry and films will be followed by a discussion with filmmakers Ashley O’Shay, Resita Cox, and Cathleen Campbell, and activists Bella Bahhs and Janaé Bonsu.
Thank you to our promotional partner the Multicultural Affairs Department at the School of the Art Institute. And special thanks to The Jentes Family Foundation for supporting our Public Programs at the Hyde Park Art Center.

*still image courtesy of Ashley O’shay. Unapologetic (2020).

WE ARE HERE: Honoring Women in the Center's Collection
2022-01-21 - 2022-03-26
WE ARE HERE: Honoring Women in the Center’s Collection, features artworks made by several women artists in the Center’s collection.

This exhibition provides us an opportunity to think about the materiality of Black women’s art, while also expanding biographical and visual information on Black women artists. The curatorial project permits the center an opportunity to reflect on impactful key women artists who have shaped and inspired persons in our institution and beyond. The exhibit will not feature the works of every woman artist in the collection, instead it will focus on developing the biographical representations of several artists who are often obscured in favor of others, while also highlighting artists very well documented in the canon of Black Art like Dr. Margaret Burroughs and Barbara Jones Hogu.
Curated by SSCAC Archives and Collections Manager LaMar R. Gayles Jr

EXHIBITING ARTISTS
Margaret Taylor Burroughs
Espi Eph (Frazier)
Madeline Haydon
Yasmin Sabu

BIOGRAPHIES

Espi Eph Espi (Eph) Frazier, is an artist who is initially from the Chicago Area but relocated to the Baltimore area in 1993, included here are a selection of her works from the Center’s collection ranging from wood graphics to a mixed media composition. In the 1980s Frazier created the wooden pieces featured here by partaking in a process of staining wood with ink drawn graphics and detailing those graphics by relief carving into the surfaces. A great deal of her work explores abstraction but some of it also explores representation of women figures especially Black women.

Dr. Margaret Taylor Burroughs is an internationally known artist and educator who is heavily connected to the historical foundations of both the South Side Community Art Center and DuSable Museum of African American History. Burroughs is well known for her work in printmaking and poetry, but was known to work in a plethora of media. Included here are several examples of her painting work coupled with a reproduction of possible prototype sketches she completed while in Mexico which might have served as inspiration for the two paintings.
Yasmin Sabur is initially from Chicago and now works and lives out of California, her work consists of a range of themes from the environment, to visualizing how Black persons interact with their surroundings. In her exhibited piece titled Private Beach- Keep Out we see Sabur reference discrimination that occurred on Chicago beaches in the 20th century when Blacks weren’t allowed on many of the beaches in the city. Sabur renders the clearly Black figures in a popular expressionless monochromatic motif that is seen echoed throughout Black art in the 20th century which often is referencing issues or stigmas in private and or social life.
Madeline Haydon Born in Chicago and later relocating to Hawaii, exhibited in many spaces throughout her career, including the South Side Community Art Center. Haydon defined herself as a realist working with a heightened awareness for color. This proclivity for color is exemplified in the oil painting still life included here in the exhibition which consists mainly of warm toned objects overlaid on top of a green background moving from warm to cold hues.

COVID PROTOCOL
How to visit The Center safely:
– Vaccine verification required for entry
– Beginning January 3, in accordance with City of Chicago policy, all visitors 5 and older will be required to show proof of full vaccination.
– Please bring either your vaccine card, a printed copy, or a digital photo of your card.
– Visitors 16 and older will need to provide identification that matches their vaccination record
– Masks will continue to be required by all visitors 2 and older while in the museum.
We continue to require all visitors, vaccinated or unvaccinated to wear masks that cover both your nose and mouth.

*image courtesy: Madeline Haydon (American artist, b. 1909) Still Life, 1967 Oil on canvas 20 1/8 x 16″. Collection of South Side Community Art Center

Creative Wellness with Marcus Alleyne
2022-02-19 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Chicago)
FEBRUARY 19
3PM CST ON ZOOM

Marcus Alleyne is a Chicago-based artist working in mixed media, primarily painting and collage. His work explores personal and social subject matter such as religion/spirituality, music and culture. As diverse as his work is, he is equally prolific in each of his genres of media. He is passionate about language as an art form and often incorporates poetry and text into his paintings. Transcending time and space, Marcus’ work speaks to the future while addressing the past and nurturing the present.

Join us for an in-depth guided exchange presented by Marcus about his relationship to creative and spiritual wellness practices, and the ways they influence his work.

REGISTRATION: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYscOusqz4oHNzwnrMerdgwePL_l3TZg0tK

COMING TO THE TABLE: In Conversation with Archivist Skyla Hearn
2022-03-17 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Chicago)
Archivist Skyla Hearn and SSCAC Public Engagement lead zakkiyyah najeebah dumas o’neal kick off our Women’s Month and 3831/VOICES series to engage in an informal conversation that traverses Skyla Hearn’s archiving practice, their intersecting connections to Black women arts workers and SSCAC, and the influences that help sustain them in their work.

Grab a cup of tea – or wine, and join us! All attendees are welcome to join in on the conversation, so come ready to talk!

ZOOM REGISTRATION: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEsdO2hpjMuHt1HVb7ylERiBrz0xeDi5EoQ

Skyla Hearn is a proud Chicagoan (South Side) by way of Mississippi. As an archivist, liberatory memory and cultural worker Skyla is most concerned with supporting a community’s attempt to understand, document and share its own history, particularly those aspects that have not been well recorded. Skyla’s passion and dedication towards the creation, management, preservation and accessibility of archives, with particular focus on BIPOC LGBTQIA+ collections, ephemeral materials, knowledge development, and social justice has provided her with unique opportunities to work with diverse individuals, communities and repositories at various capacities nationally and internationally.
Skyla is also co-founder of The Blackivists, a collective of trained Black memory workers who provide expertise on archiving and preservation practices to communities in the Chicago land area; and the inaugural Manager of Archives for Cook County Government under the Offices of the President of the Board of Commissioners.
As a legacy keeper, she recently (March 2021) co-edited the zine publication Our Girl Tuesday: An Unfurling for Dr. Margaret T.G. Burroughs alongside Sarah Ross and Tempestt Hazel with an introduction by Mariame Kaba, published by Sojourners for Justice Press.

https://www.theblackivists.com/

3831/VOICES is a new program series of conversations and lectures featuring Black artists, scholars, curators, historians, and arts workers that invite our community into their creative practices, research, and conceptual processes, and more! 3831 takes after SSCAC’s exact numerical address in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood. Although we recognize ourselves as an iconic historical site for Black artistic and cultural advancement, we continue to evolve as a contemporary hub for new thought practices, creative practices, and innovative frameworks being developed by a diverse array of amazing folks here in our city, and beyond.

Image Courtesy (above): South Side Community Art Center

PROMPT/ DREAM/ BUILD: Andrea Yarbrough & ebere agwuncha
2022-03-24 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Chicago)
Andrea and ebere’s multidisciplinary practices are informed by acts of care and storytelling, that ultimately become actualized within the objects and projects they build out- individually and collectively. Engaging in practices of co-thinking, designing, and building, they both expand on alternative modes for solidarity amongst Black women, restorative design approaches, and a socially informed process of creating.Andrea and ebere will lead us in to a live call and response, directed by their relationships to dreaming, thought processes, and “the work”.

ZOOM REGISTRATION: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUqcuirqTooE9VNHGJRbDjKaWG2dG5FpvoP

ebere agwuncha (b.1997, Chicago) is a designer, maker, and artist based in Chicago via Anambra State, Nigeria. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design from Iowa State University in 2019. Her dexterous practice aims to hybridize various craft and materials including wood, ceramic, and natural fiber. Through creating functional ‘care filled object(s)’ and speculative installations, they aim to preserve Igbo stories through more expansive iterations using a diverse set of techniques. She pushes the cusp of perfection – or imperfection – while intimately using her hands to physicalize ideas. ebere will be an inaugural artist-in-exchange with the Sculpture Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, this spring of 2022. Part of this residency period will be used to produce work for their upcoming first solo show at the Comfort Station (Chicago, IL) this May of 2022.

https://ebereagwuncha.com/

Andrea Yarbrough is a multi-disciplinary artist, curator and educator based on the South Side of Chicago nurturing sites of care through a blend of urban agriculture, civic engagement, and art praxis. Her praxis is embodied through the collaborative placekeeping initiative in c/o: Black women (in care of Black women), bringing together writers, curators, farmers, mamas, dancers, organizers, teachers, cultural producers, youth, and visual artists, to collectively exhume the (in)visibility of care for Black women. Andrea’s process transforms quotidian materials, slated for waste streams, into designed and utilitarian objects that serve as community resources, and incorporates the impact of solidarity and circular economies at the material, individual, and
communal scales. By constructing functionally designed objects, cultivating land, archiving and documenting histories of Black women, and curating exhibitions and public programs, her socially-engaged practice exemplifies how communities can reclaim and reconstruct their surroundings while navigating agency and ownership over underutilized space. She seeks to engage in an arts-integrated ecological approach, as a way to not only treat blight in particular neighborhoods, but to support the restoration of the entire city, all while negotiating new spatial imaginaries, expanding our economies of care. Ultimately, she engages in a community-centered visual arts production that works to reshape land-use policy by activating vacant space as sites
that heal individuals and regenerate collective imaginations. Andrea believes that participatory social praxis art is one of many ways to rewrite a history of redlining, divestment, and violence.

https://incareofblackwomen.us/

3831/VOICES is a new program series of conversations and lectures featuring Black artists, scholars, curators, historians, and arts workers that invite our community into their creative practices, research, and conceptual processes, and more! 3831 takes after SSCAC’s exact numerical address in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood. Although we recognize ourselves as an iconic historical site for Black artistic and cultural advancement, we continue to evolve as a contemporary hub for new thought practices, creative practices, and innovative frameworks being developed by a diverse array of amazing folks here in our city, and beyond.

Image courtesy(above): Andrea Yarbrough

COLLAGE WORKSHOP WITH CECIL MCDONALD JR.
2022-03-30 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Chicago)
With a curated selection of images from the SSCAC archives, Artist Catalyst Cecil McDonal Jr., and Public Art Manager, Dorian Sylvain invite you to participate in an art making activity intended to encourage conversation about community. Prompts exploring community heroes, language, and culture will guide each participant’s project.

The workshop will be held Wednesday, March 30th at 5PM CST via Zoom.
A toolkit including reproductions from the archives and additional art materials is included in registration. Toolkits can be picked up on Saturday, March 26 from 12PM to 4PM.

ZOOM REGISTRATION: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Vzl6UUAtSPq0GaNPKDN9wA

Cecil McDonald Jr. most interested in the intersections of masculinity, familial relations, and the artistic and intellectual pursuits of black culture, particular as this culture intersects with and informs the larger culture. Through photography, video, and dance/performance, he seeks to investigate and question the norms and customs that govern our understanding of each other, families, and the myriad of societal struggles and triumphs. He studied fashion, house music and dance club culture before receiving a MFA in Photography at Columbia College Chicago, where he currently serves as an adjunct professor and a teaching artist at the Center for Community Arts Partnership at Columbia College Chicago.

Cecil has exhibited both nationally and internationally, with works in the permanent collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art, Chicago Bank of America LaSalle Collection, and Museum of Contemporary Photography. His awards include: Joyce Foundation Midwest Voices & Visions Award, the Artadia Award, The Swiss Benevolent Society, Lucerne, Switzerland Residency and the 3Arts Teaching Artist Award. He participated in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence program in July 2013. In 2016 the ﬁrst edition of his monograph In The Company of Black was published and was shortlisted by the Aperture Foundation for the 2017 First PhotoBook Award.

https://www.cecilmcdonaldjr.com/

BLACK FASHION ARCHIVE: Rikki Byrd
2022-03-31 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Chicago)
Black Fashion Archive was founded in 2018 by Rikki Byrd to offer a digital repository of Black style and Black contributions to the fashion industry. Rikki will share the trajectory of her visual research, Black cultural impacts on the fashion industry, and how an archival approach informs her work.

ZOOM REGISTRATION: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_69LkL96rTTGK9pqRe6bPLw

Rikki Byrd is a scholar, writer, educator and curator with research interests in black studies, performance studies, fashion studies and art history. Her master’s thesis at Parsons, Black, the Color We Wear: Representing Blackness in American Fashion, explored how blackness is centered in popular culture and offered a new approach to reimagining dialogue concerning the black body. Since its completion, her research has led her to creating innovative spaces to engage students, scholars and industry professionals in conversations on race and representation.

https://www.rikkibyrd.com/

3831/VOICES is a new program series of conversations and lectures featuring Black artists, scholars, curators, historians, and arts workers that invite our community into their creative practices, research, and conceptual processes, and more! 3831 takes after SSCAC’s exact numerical address in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood. Although we recognize ourselves as an iconic historical site for Black artistic and cultural advancement, we continue to evolve as a contemporary hub for new thought practices, creative practices, and innovative frameworks being developed by a diverse array of amazing folks here in our city, and beyond.

EMERGENCE: Intersections at The Center
2022-04-15 - 2022-07-02
OPENING RECEPTION:
APRIL 15, 6-8PM

EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center spotlights The South Side Community Art Center’s historical role in supporting a full spectrum of Black artists through an intersectional viewpoint. The first exhibition of its kind at the South Side Community Art Center, EMERGENCE positions the Center as an important anchor for Black LGBTQ artists who belonged to its community from its founding in 1940 to the 1980s. The exhibition features work addressing identity and community, queer spaces and performance, in collage, painting, sculpture, photography, and more.

Ralph Arnold (1928–2006). Love Sign II. Mixed media, 1995.
Collection of the South Side Community Art Center.

EMERGENCE emphasizes the middle decades of the twentieth century, from the 1940s to the 1980s. For much of this time period, sexual orientation was heavily policed, both literally by the Chicago Police Department, and in a variety of other ways through the imposition of norms by society and its institutions, such as church, family, medical institutions, and school. For this reason, many of the artists in the exhibition, especially in the early decades represented here, were careful to exercise discretion in their life and work. Most did not publicly identify themselves as gay, lesbian, trans, or bisexual. At the same time, particularly in Bronzeville, Chicago’s South Side Black community held spaces that were open to participants of differing sexual orientations and identities. Political movements on behalf of Gay Liberation were active throughout this period, gaining strength in the 1970s and 80s.
EMERGENCE features work by Ralph Arnold, Richmond Barthé, Sylvester Britton, William S. Carter, Mikki Ferrill, Jonathan Green, Juarez Hawkins, Berry Horton, Patric McCoy, Charles Sebree, Allen Stringfellow, and Ellis Wilson.

Curated by LaMar Gayles Jr. & zakkiyyah najeebah dumas o’neal

Juarez Hawkins (1962–). Self-Portrait. Oil pastel and acrylic onmuseum board, 1992. Collection of the artist.

EMERGENCE promo image courtesy:
Mikki Ferrill (1937–). Untitled (Portrait of Terry Readus). Gelatin silver print, 1973. Collection of the South Side Community Art Center. Design by Aay Preston-Myint.

EMERGENCE is supported by a major grant from the Re-envisioning Permanent Collections program of the Terra Foundation for American Art and by a partnership with Northwestern University’s Department of Art History.

TOWARD THE CENTER: In Conversation with Patric McCoy, Juarez Hawkins, and Jonathan Green
2022-04-21 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Chicago)
REGISTER VIA ZOOM

Join SSCAC Archives and Collections Manager LaMar Gayles Jr. for a conversation with EMERGENCE exhibiting artists Patric McCoy, Juarez Hawkins, and Jonathan Green for a conversation centering their individual practices, personal knowledge of artists in the SSCAC archive, and their relationships to Black art communities specific to Chicago’s South Side.
This program is organized in conjunction with SSCAC’S current exhibition, EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center, with programming support by Northwestern University.

EMERGENCE spotlights The South Side Community Art Center’s historical role in supporting a full spectrum of Black artists through an intersectional viewpoint. EMERGENCE positions the Center as an important anchor for Black LGBTQ artists who belonged to its community from its founding in 1940 to the 1980s and features work addressing identity and community, queer spaces and performance, in collage, painting, sculpture, photography, and more.

BIOGRAPHIES:

Juarez Hawkins

Juarez Hawkins (born 1962) is a painter, ceramicist, curator and educator from Chicago, IL, whose work explores questions of identity, spirituality and the body. Juarez received her B.A. from Northwestern University and her M.A. from Columbia College Chicago. She has exhibited widely, with solo shows at the 33 Collective Gallery, Concordia University and the South Side Community Art Center. She is co-curator of Gallery Programs at Chicago State University and has organized exhibitions featuring artists in the permanent collection, including artists such as Richard Hunt and Marva Jolly. Other recent curatorial projects include The Love Affair Continues at the DuSable Museum of African American History and Intersectional Touch at the Hyde Park Art Center. Juarez is a member of Sapphire and Crystals, a collective of African American female artists and is a two-time recipient of the Community Arts Assistance Program Grant.
Patric McCoy

Patric McCoy (born 1946) is an art collector, curator, environmental chemist and photographer from Chicago whose art collection contains more than one thousand paintings, drawings, sculptures and collages of work made by African American artists. McCoy went to Englewood High School, the University of Chicago and Governors State University and worked as an environmental scientist for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 1976 to 2006. In the 1980s, McCoy developed his practice as a photographer, focusing on everyday lives of people and the landscape of Chicago. In 2003, McCoy co-founded Diasporal Rhythms, a non-profit that promotes the collection of art by living African-American artists. McCoy’s collection was shown at the DuSable Museum of African-American History in Chicago in 2018.

Jonathan Green
Jonathan Green (born 1955) is a painter and printmaker, from Gardens Corner, South Carolina. Green’s work explores narrative realism through depictions of everyday life, often in rural settings. Green was raised by his grandmother, who taught him about the culture and dialect of the Gullah communities of the U.S. South. Green’s relationship to the Gullah culture remains one of the major influences on his work. After serving in the United States Air Force, he attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, receiving his BFA in 1982. Green began working with the South Side Community Art Center in the 1980’s and had a solo exhibition there in 1987. His work is in the permanent collections of several museums, including Morris Museum in August, GA, The African-American Museum in Philadelphia, PA and The Naples Museum of Art in Naples, FL. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of South Carolina and published the book Gullah Images: The Art of Jonathan Green in 1996. Green has taken part in countless exhibitions, including In the Hands of African American Collectors at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles and Highlights: African American Art from the Norton Collection at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, FL.

image courtesy:
Juarez Hawkins (1962–). Self-Portrait. Oil pastel and acrylic onmuseum board, 1992. Collection of the artist.

EMERGENCE CURATORS CONVERSATION
2022-05-02 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Chicago)
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER VIA ZOOM

In conjunction with EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center, the current exhibition at the South Side Community Art Center, the exhibition’s curators, zakkiyyah najeebah dumas-o’neal and LaMar R. Gayles, Jr., discuss the exhibition and the research that made it happen. The conversation will be moderated by Greg Foster-Rice ON ZOOM.

EMERGENCE spotlights LGBTQ artists who were part of the South Side Community Art Center’s early decades, from the 1940s to the 1990s, and presents the Center’s historical role in supporting a full spectrum of Black artists through an intersectional viewpoint.

Mikki Ferrill (born 1937). Untitled (The Garage). Gelatin silver print, 1973. Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, The Richard Florsheim Art Fund Purchase.

zakkiyyah najeebah dumas o’neal is a visual artist, arts organizer, and educator based in Chicago.
zakkiyyah has been included in numerous group exhibitions and has had several solo exhibitions at Mana Contemporary, Blanc Gallery, Indiana University, and South Bend Museum of Art. Her work and arts programming has been presented in various forms at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, NADA, The Art Institute of Chicago, The August Wilson African American Cultural Center, Chicago Humanities Festival, DePaul University, and Harvard Graduate School of Design to name a few. She has also curated exhibitions at spaces such as Chicago Art Department, Blanc gallery and Washington Park Arts Incubator at the University of Chicago. She was recently an Artist in Residence at Arts and Public Life at University of Chicago and an Artist in Residence at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN.
zakkiyyah is a Co-founder and organizer of CBIM (Concerned Black Image Makers): a collective of Black artists, thinkers, and curators that prioritize shared experiences and concerns by lens based artists of the Black diaspora, through programming, exhibitions, and dialogues.
LaMar Gayles (a native son of the South Side of Chicago) is an archaeologist, independent curator, material culture scholar, and technical art historian. He is currently completing a PhD in Art Conservation and Preservation Studies at the University of Delaware after completing a MA in Museum and Exhibition Studies from University of Illinois at Chicago’s MUSE program while holding two separate positions: Archive and Collections Manager at the South Side Community Art Center and Executive Director at the Union Street Gallery. Gayles earned a Cum Laude BA with a triple major (art history, archaeology, and ethnic studies) from St. Olaf College. He has researched and curated exhibitions on Black American jewelry and its historical progressions from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first century, including the 2021 exhibition “Divine Legacies in Black Jewelry and Metals” at the National Museum of Ornamental Metals. Gayles’s research methodology combines archaeometry, arts-based research, conservation science, scientific instrumentation, art historical analysis, ethnography, historical reproduction, technical studies, and qualitative research to explore material and visual culture.
Greg Foster-Rice (he/him) is an associate professor of the history of photography at Columbia College Chicago. Most recently, he curated The Many Hats of Ralph Arnold: Art, Identity & Politics, which opened at the Museum of Contemporary Photography (2018) and travels to DePauw University in Fall 2022. For that exhibition, Foster-Rice edited and co-authored a scholarly catalogue of essays surveying Arnold’s extensive career (2018). Previously he co-curated The City Lost and Found: Capturing New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, 1960-1980 at the Art Institute of Chicago (2014) and Princeton University Art Museum (2015) and co-authored that exhibition’s catalogue which received the Philip Johnson Award from the Society of Architectural Historians. He also co-edited Reframing the New Topographics (2011) and contributed to the volumes Romare Bearden in the Modernist Tradition (2011) and Black is Black Ain’t (2013). He has a BA from Rice University and a PhD in Art History from Northwestern University.

AN EVENING WITH SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY & CAMILLE BACON
2022-05-12 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Chicago)
ZOOM REGISTRATION HERE

SSCAC is thrilled to invite you into one of many conversations between SHAWNE MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY and Camille Bacon that have activated feelings of remembrance, love, grief, and longing. For this program they will respond to the liminal, but expansive spaces within EMERGENCE that relate to aspects of desire, yearning, and intimacy specific to the Black queer femme/lesbian gaze and ways of being.

SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY is a new media artist and poet. Known for using sound, video, and performance, HOLLOWAY shapes the rhetorics of technology and sexuality into tools for exposing structures of power. She has spoken and exhibited work internationally in spaces like Performance Space New York, The New Museum, The Kitchen, The Time-Based Art Festival at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. SHAWNÉ is currently teaching in the Film, Video, New Media, and Animation departments at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Camille Bacon is a Chicago-based writer who is cultivating a “sweet Black writing life” as informed by the words of poet Nikky Finney and the infinite wisdom of the Black feminist tradition.

This program is presented in conjunction with EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center, currently on view until July 2, 2022.
EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center spotlights The South Side Community Art Center’s historical role in supporting a full spectrum of Black artists through an intersectional viewpoint. The first exhibition of its kind at the South Side Community Art Center, EMERGENCE positions the Center as an important anchor for Black LGBTQ artists who belonged to its community from its founding in 1940 to the 1980s and beyond.

Funding for EMERGENCE programming is generously supported by Northwestern University.

CEREMONIES: A SELECTION OF SHORT FILMS BY MARLON RIGGS
2022-05-19 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Chicago)
RSVP HERE

In conjunction with EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center, the current exhibition at the South Side Community Art Center, CEREMONIES will be screened IN PERSON, in partnership with South Side Projections.

Co-curator of EMERGENCE and SSCAC Public Programs and Engagement manager zakkiyyah najeebah dumas-o’neal will lead a post-discussion with Aymar Jean Christian, associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern University and co-founder of OTV | Open Television. Aymar also served as an advisory panelist during the organizing phases of EMERGENCE.

A filmmaker unlike any other, Marlon Riggs was an unapologetic gay Black man who defied a culture of silence and shame. Riggs used a bold mix of documentary, performance, poetry, and music to confront the legacy of racist stereotypes and the impact of AIDS on the Black community. He died in 1994 of AIDS-related illness, leaving behind a vital, living body of work that wrestled with the very definition of what it means to be Black.
Marlon Troy Riggs (1957-1994) was an American filmmaker, educator, poet, and gay rights activist. He produced, wrote, and directed several documentary films including Ethnic Notions, Tongues Untied, Color Adjustment and Black Is, Black Ain’t. His films examine past and present representations of race and sexuality in the United States.

CEREMONIES directly references poet Essex Hemphill’s groundbreaking anthology of short stories and poetry Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry, which won the National Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual New Author Award when it was published in 1992. The book’s poems and essays expand on many important social issues at the time, such as the white objectification of Black men, as epitomized by Robert Mapplethorpe’s The Black Book; AIDS in the Black community; and the complex dynamics gay Black men experience in both the white LGBTQ+ community and in Black culture – very much in alignment with Rigg’s exploration of these topics as it appeared in his film works. In addition Essex Hemphill’s poetry was also featured in Marlon Riggs’ documentaries Tongues Untied (1989) and Black Is … Black Ain’t (1994).

This program features three short films by Marlon Riggs: Affirmations (1990), Anthem (1991), and Regrette Rien (No Regret)(1993), of which depict the visual, artistic, and political convictions of a transformative and pioneering filmmaker whose work is a historical document of Black gay sexuality from a Black perspective and still deeply relevant today.

This program is generously supported by, and in partnership with South Side Projections.
Founded in 2011, South Side Projections presents films at locations across Chicago’s south side to foster conversation about complex social and political issues. At many screenings, we enlist scholars, activists, and filmmakers to lead discussions, while other screenings offer opportunities to present seldom-seen films of historical and artistic value to the communities of Chicago’s south side.

Black Magic: A Tintype Photo Project with Adam Davis
2022-06-03 12:00 - 2022-06-04 16:00 (America/Chicago)
Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist Adam Davis brings his 1850’s tintype photo practice to the South Side Community Art Center!

On June 3rd and June 4th, South Side Community Art Center will host artist Adam Davis and his ‘Black Magic’ tintype photography project. Through this participatory photo activation, Adam will offer free portrait sessions to members of the Chicago community.

Davis will create 2 portraits per session – one for participants to take home and one for his own archive. Traveling to historically Black cities and communities nationwide, Davis is in pursuit of creating 20,000 tintype portraits of Black Americans with the goal of creating the largest contemporary archive of Black American portraits.

Themes of Afrofuturism, celebrating the Art of Magic, and Queerness have become foundational to Davis’ process throughout the project.
Black historical art spaces, such as SSCAC are critical to Davis’ intent to be in conversation with the legacy of Black artistic innovation, community engagement, and Black archival contributions to the culture.

Please read below on how to participate:

Portrait sessions will take place at SSCAC from 1pm – 4pm.

Each portrait session will take 20 – 30 minutes, which includes a chemical development process. Due to the nature of this process, RSVP time selections are required to participate.

We kindly ask that you select 1 time slot for yourself only, so that we’re able honor each participant per session.

RSVP HERE

Adam Davis (b. 1994) is an American Visual Artist, Educator, and Arts Education Advocate born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Davis obsessively seeks to apply his passion for creativity, communication, and storytelling to assist in finding solutions to problems that hinder diverse and equitable cultural progression at the intersection of the Arts and Education within the Black community. With a degree in Education and 6 years in the classroom, Davis’ work intends to document the lives of Black bodies in a way that educates, empowers, and returns the permission to dictate how they are photographed to the subject. Delving into personal narratives on religion, queerness, mental health, and the greater understanding of the global African diaspora, Davis creates images, both moving and still, from a place of curiosity.

Davis is a resident at the 54 year old Black Owned and operated community arts organization St. Elmo Village in Los Angeles, California. Here Davis developed his darkroom practice on campus in the facilities opened by founder Roderick Sykes. Davis’ second solo exhibition, titled Black Magic, was created at the Village and opened at the Byrd Museum in Los Angeles, where his darkroom practice lies at the center of his practice of making tintype portraits. The exhibition monograph was successfully published soon after by Paper Chase Press and debuted at the New Art Dealers Alliance fair in Miami during Art Basel Week 2021. Davis’ work has been featured in the LA Times, SKEW Magazine, Umber Publications, and AFAR among others.

A Queer History Tour of Bronzeville
2022-06-04 12:30 - 15:00 (America/Chicago)
Join us with Rachael Pierce on Saturday, June 4th for a Queer history tour of the Bronzeville area, as well as learning more about SSCAC’s role in highlighting queer histories as they relate to Black artists!

Rachael will also facilitate a storytelling component on our front stoop with longtime Southsider and elder Sandi Byrd after the tour.

RUN OF PROGRAM:

Walking tour will begin at South Side Community Art Center, and take place from 12:30PM – 1:45PM.

Storytelling back at South Side Community Art Center will take place from 2PM – 3PM.

RSVP HERE

Rachael Pierce is a community builder from the South Side of Chicago. She’s a lover of history, black queer herstory to be exact; and as CEO of her production company, Pi360co, Rachael works to create spaces and platforms for queer BIPOC women to bravely share their stories and explore their spirituality. Her passions meet at the intersection of everything and are influenced by her Queer, Black, Indigenous identity. Rachael believes she is called to empower folks to bravely gather, build community, and share their stories of life and faith.

This program is presented in conjunction with EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center, currently on view until July 2, 2022.

EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center spotlights The South Side Community Art Center’s historical role in supporting a full spectrum of Black artists through an intersectional viewpoint. The first exhibition of its kind at the South Side Community Art Center, EMERGENCE positions the Center as an important anchor for Black LGBTQ artists who belonged to its community from its founding in 1940 to the 1980s and beyond.

Funding for EMERGENCE programming is generously supported by Northwestern University.
