Name: Just Above My Wall, (To The Right)
Start: 2021-05-01T00:00:00-06:00
End: 2021-06-30T23:59:59-06:00

October 2020
The Forum Clean Up & Neighborhood Walking Tours

October 24, 2020 @ 10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Join The Forum - Bronzeville for a cleanup along 43rd Street followed by neighborhood walking tours, featuring South Side Community Art Center.
November 2020
Bronzeville Art District Virtual Trolley Tours

November 20, 2020 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Take the Virtual Trolley Tour on Zoom to the largest Black Art District in the country.
December 2020
Bronzeville Art District Virtual Trolley Tours

December 18, 2020 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Take the Virtual Trolley Tour on Zoom to the largest Black Art District in the country.
January 2021
Faheem Majeed – From the Center

January 16, 2021 @ 12:00 pm - March 27, 2021 @ 3:00 pm

“From the Center”is a retrospective of works created by Faheem Majeed over the past twenty years
MLK Talk featuring Artist Stephanie Graham

January 18, 2021 @ 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm

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.
February 2021
Chicago Printers’ Guild Fundraiser for SSCAC

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

Duration 6 months
Darryl Chappell Foundation, Artist Talk Series #4: John Simmons, Earlie Hudnall, Jr., and April Frazier

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

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

Featured February 26, 2021 @ 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm

Alexandra Antoine, Paul Branton, and Heather Polk work through collage and mixed media practices in reference to social and political commentaries, the intimacies of Black life, and cultural identity. As […]
March 2021
A Conversation with Artist Kyrin Hobson

March 6, 2021 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

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 […]
An Art Collector’s Conversation with Madeline Murphy Rabb

Featured March 26, 2021 @ 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm

If you missed our talk with Madeline, please watch the video below. In honor of Women's History Month, Executive Director of SSCAC, Monique Brinkman-Hill will be in conversation with […]
April 2021
Artists At The Center: A Roundtable

April 8, 2021 @ 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

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 […]
May 2021
Just Above My Wall, (To The Right)

May 1, 2021 - June 30, 2021

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 […]

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

October 2020

The Forum Clean Up & Neighborhood Walking Tours

November 2020

Bronzeville Art District Virtual Trolley Tours

December 2020

Bronzeville Art District Virtual Trolley Tours

January 2021

Faheem Majeed – From the Center

MLK Talk featuring Artist Stephanie Graham

February 2021

Chicago Printers’ Guild Fundraiser for SSCAC

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

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

March 2021

A Conversation with Artist Kyrin Hobson

An Art Collector’s Conversation with Madeline Murphy Rabb

April 2021

Artists At The Center: A Roundtable

May 2021

Just Above My Wall, (To The Right)

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MIXED MEDIA AND STILL LIFE