Name: A CELEBRATION OF ARTISTS, COMMUNITY AND CULTURE – SSCAC 85TH ANNIVERSARY
Start: 2025-10-16T17:00:00-06:00
End: 2025-10-16T21:00:00-06:00
Location: Haven Entertainment Center

February 2025
February 15 @ 11:00 am - 3:45 pm

Between Sound & Sight Symposium: Mapping the Sonic Imprints of Charles White’s Vision explores sound, image, and history.

Logan Center for the Arts 915 E 60th S, Chicago, IL, United States

The South Side Community Art Center, Hyde Park Jazz Festival, Logan Center for the Arts, and University of Chicago Presents invite you to Save the Date for Between Sound and Sight: Mapping the Sonic Imprints of Charles White’s Vision, a FREE day-long symposium offered in conjunction with the February 14th performance by pianist/composer Gerald Clayton […]
February 22 @ 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm

Official unveiling renovation & expansion designs, project updates, and how SSCAC will remain a beacon of Black art & culture

Apostolic Faith Church 3823 S Indiana Ave, Chicago, United States

About this event Be a part of history! The South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC), the country’s oldest continuously operating Black arts institution, is thrilled to announce its upcoming renovation and expansion project. Join us for a special Community Design Unveiling and explore the exciting future of SSCAC. This event will showcase the transformation of the […]
March 2025
March 28 @ 4:00 pm - April 26 @ 12:00 am

Beyond Frames: Black Women Collectors Shaping Cultural Heritage in Chicago

South Side Community Art Center 3831 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL, United States

Curated by Bethany Hill and rachel dukes This exhibition highlights a trailblazing group of Black women collectors in Chicago, exploring their practices through care, memory work, and cultural heritage preservation. “Beyond Frames” celebrates an intergenerational group of women who continue this legacy today. Viewers can experience artworks from the personal collections of fourteen different Chicago […]
March 29 @ 11:00 am - 3:30 pm

Black Women Collectors Shaping Cultural Heritage in Chicago Symposium

South Side Community Art Center 3831 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL, United States

Join us for Beyond Frames Symposium: Black Women Collectors Shaping Cultural Heritage in Chicago! Collecting is an act of care, a means of shaping history, and a declaration of presence. Beyond Frames: Celebrating and Empowering Black Women Art Collectors is a one-day gathering designed to inspire and equip Black women with the resources, knowledge, […]
August 2025
August 15 @ 1:00 pm - August 17 @ 4:00 pm

Black Art Rising: The Art Sale

South Side Community Art Center 3831 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL, United States

COLLECT THE LEGACY OF SSCAC Honoring Our Legacy | Building Our Future Friday, August 15: 1:00 PM – 6:00 PM Saturday, August 16: 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM Sunday, August 17: 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM As we make room for our future, take a piece of our past home. From original artwork and archival prints to books, posters, […]
September 2025
September 27 @ 11:00 am - 4:00 pm

SSCAC Salvage Day: Artist Appreciation & Moving Giveaway

South Side Community Art Center 3831 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL, United States

Take What You Can Saturday, September 27 from 11 AM – 4 PM On Saturday, September 27 from 11–4 PM, SSCAC will open its doors one last time before construction begins — inviting our artist community to explore and collect pieces and materials that can support their practices, while also taking home a […]
October 2025
October 16 @ 5:00 pm - 9:00 pm

A CELEBRATION OF ARTISTS, COMMUNITY AND CULTURE – SSCAC 85TH ANNIVERSARY

Haven Entertainment Center 932 E 43rd St, Chicago, IL, United States

Celebrate art, culture & community with delectable cuisine, live art, soulful music & more—support our $100K Community Renovation Fund! _________________________________ Honoring Our Legacy | Building Our Future Join the South […]

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 2025

Between Sound & Sight Symposium: Mapping the Sonic Imprints of Charles White’s Vision explores sound, image, and history.

Official unveiling renovation & expansion designs, project updates, and how SSCAC will remain a beacon of Black art & culture

March 2025

Beyond Frames: Black Women Collectors Shaping Cultural Heritage in Chicago

Black Women Collectors Shaping Cultural Heritage in Chicago Symposium

August 2025

Black Art Rising: The Art Sale

September 2025

SSCAC Salvage Day: Artist Appreciation & Moving Giveaway

October 2025

A CELEBRATION OF ARTISTS, COMMUNITY AND CULTURE – SSCAC 85TH ANNIVERSARY

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MIXED MEDIA AND STILL LIFE