3831 HOLIDAY POP-UP!

Join us for our 2nd annual 3831 Holiday Pop-Up, with some of the city’s most talented Black creatives!   Come through to support some of Chicago’s most gifted and talented […]

Bronzeville in Reel Time with South Side Home Movie Project

Join us for an afternoon of South Side home movies, featuring newly preserved films of Bronzeville from filmmaker Ramon Williams!     In partnership with South Side Home Movie Project, with support from the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelly Foundation, SSCAC is thrilled to host a special screening showcasing select cinema reels of Ramon Williams. Ramon […]

Honoring Hunt: Legacies in Chicago Black Metalworkers

Learn about the artistic histories of Black metalworker artists in Chicago!     SSCAC’s Archives and Collections Manager LaMar R. Gayles Jr. will introduce visitors to different metalworkers who have worked throughout Chicago’s artistic landscape. Amongst these makers there will be special attention given to the work of famed, now ancestral artist Richard Howard Hunt […]

Flash, Focus: A Camera Demo Workshop with Latitude Chicago.

Join us for a camera demo workshop to learn the basics of photography! Latitude's Executive Director Colleen Keihm and current Artist in Resident Anwulika Angibo will host a Camera Demo workshop here at the Southside Community Art Center in a special continuing partnership with Latitude Chicago. Guests are invited to bring an analog or digital […]

BLACK WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS AS WORLDBUILDERS

Join us for a conversation with several Black women creative entrepreneurs traversing fashion, vintage, and design here in Chicago.     SSCAC is proud to host a panel of Black women entrepreneurs whose business models have been crafted to be intentionally centered on fashion, style, vintage, design and jewelry - creating worlds and community within their […]

BENDING LIGHT ARTIST TALK: SOUTH SIDE NIGHT x EXPO CHICAGO

Join us for an artist talk moderated by Paul Branton! Paul Branton, artist and curator of SSCAC's current exhibition BendingLight, will facilitate an artist talk with the exhibiting artists of SSCAC's current exhibition Bending Light, detailing the exhibition’s themes and subject matter as it relates to explorations of color and identity.   The artists explore the impact of […]

3831 CINEMA: FOR THE LOVE OF BLACK ARTISTS

Join us for Art After Hours powered by Gertie, with screenings from filmmakers Rachel Gadson and Briana Clearly!     We're thrilled to host filmmakers Rachel Gadson and Briana Clearly for rotational film screenings as part of Art After Hours Powered by Gertie, for EXPO art week!   Sponsored by Arete Wealth & Masterworks, AAH takes […]

The Power of our Ancestors and Re(membrance)

South Chicago Farm 9001 S Mackinaw Ave, Chicago, IL, United States

From Jean Baptiste Point duSable, Ida B. Wells to Chairman Fred Hampton and Late Mayor Harold Washington and so many elders, we will share story, ritual and co-create a series […]

The Power of Our Ancestors and Remembrance

South Chicago Farm 9001 S Mackinaw Ave, Chicago, IL, United States

From Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, Ida B. Wells to Chairman Fred Hampton and Late Mayor Harold Washington and so many elders, we will share stories, rituals and co-create a series […]

Eselean Goree Henderson: A Practice in Clay

Join SSCAC Archives and Collections Manager Lamar Gayles Jr. for a special program on Eselean Goree Henderson.   Join us for a conversation with SSCAC Archives and Collections Manager Lamar […]

Garden Griots: Community Storytelling with Candace Hunter

Bronzeville Neighborhood Farm 4148 S Calumet Ave, Chicago, IL, United States

Local Chicago artist Candace Hunter will unveil a decorative bench depicting stories she gathered from Bronzeville residents about their experiences living in Bronzeville.

Garden Griots: Community Storytelling with Candace Hunter

Bronzeville Neighborhood Farm 4148 S Calumet Ave, Chicago, IL, United States

Join us on August 31st at Bronzeville Neighborhood Farm for a program as part of ReSOURCE: Art and Resourcefulness in Black Chicago.   Artist Candace Hunter will unveil a public […]

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.