South Side Community Art Center

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/

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bronzeville Art District Virtual Trolley Tours
2020-12-18 19:00 - 21:00, 2020-11-20 19:00 - 21:00 UTC
Take the Virtual Trolley Tour on Zoom to the largest Black Art District in the country.

The Forum Clean Up & Neighborhood Walking Tours
2020-10-24 10:00 - 12:00 UTC
Join The Forum – Bronzeville for a cleanup along 43rd Street followed by neighborhood walking tours, featuring South Side Community Art Center.

Jesse Howard – The Spirit of Community
2020-10-20 00:00 - 2020-12-31 23:59 (America/Chicago)
October 2020-December 2020
Jesse Howard’s first solo exhibition at South Side Community Art Center explores the Black American community as more than a singular philosophical concept of a culture, but rather a more diversified community of multifaceted voices through a body of charcoal based works. Howard’s socially concerned work is informed by his own lived experiences growing up on Chicago’s west side and the collective societal challenges faced by Black Americans today.
Utilizing charcoal, watercolor, and collage, Howard’s figures are typically warped, transcending time and space in their presentation, yet very attuned to the social realities and hardships experienced by Black Americans in urban environments. With close attention, Howard’s striking portrait drawings also reveal moments of glory, honor, and elevation.

Existing Between Line & Space
2020-08-07 - 2020-09-25

Cosmic Yoga: Smai-Tawi
2020-03-01 - 2020-03-31

Resonance Artist Talk
2020-02-29 15:00 - 17:00 UTC
SSCAC welcomes you to meet the artists of Resonance. Do not miss out on the conversation.

Conjuring Black Histories in Jewelry Closing and Artist Talk
2020-02-28 18:00 - 20:00 UTC
Join us for the exhibition closing and a discussion.

The Business of Art
2020-02-22 12:00 - 14:00 UTC
Join a panel of experts for a discussion of best business practices and strategies for artists and members of the creative community.

A Conversation with Timuel D. Black Jr.
2020-02-16 15:00 - 2020-02-22 17:30 UTC
Landmarks Illinois invites you to a special Black History Month event at the South Side Community Art Center featuring noted civil rights leader, educator, historian, author and WWI veteran Timuel D. Black Jr.

Resonance
2020-01-31 08:00 - 2020-02-20 17:00 UTC
This group show featured art that evokes emotions of reflections and creativity. The show featured the work of Marcus Alleyne, Keith Conner, Ladipo Famodu, Reynaldo Ferdinand, Felicia Preston Grant, Alvin Hawkins, Zhana Johnson, Raymond Mays, Miguel, Yaounde Olu, Mary Qian, Patricia Stewart, Patrick Thompson, and Krystal Grover Webb.

Divine Presence!
2019-12-01 - 2020-01-31

Conjuring Black Histories in Jewelry
2019-12-01 - 2020-02-29
