Category: Arts

Chicago Blues Legends: Arts Workshop on July 11th

07/07/2014

Friday, July 11th (4:30-5:30, 5:45-7:00 p.m.)

Mozart Park Fieldhouse
2036 N. Avers Ave.
Chicago, IL 60647

all ages, free & open to the public

You're invited to come to our next "Chicago Heroes & Arts Journeys" workshop, when we celebrate the lives and legacies of these Blues legends -- Muddy Waters, Koko Taylor, Buddy Guy and Etta James:

We listen to and talk about music by those four artists;
We play several songs recorded by those artists;
We create contour poems, blues renga and pattern poetry inspired by Chicago Blues artists.

Borderbend is among the organizations that is presenting programming during the upcoming Armitage Arts Festival, on September 6th. Festival programming happens at four venues along Armitage Ave., including Rosa's Lounge -- which is one of Chicago's great blues venues. So the focus of our next workshop is a nice way to pay homage to the Blues, one of America's original art forms, in anticipation of the festival that will be happening in this neighborhood in less than two months!

Note: There are so many great Blues artists who are associated with Chicago (besides the four listed abovbe), including Big Bill Broonzy, Paul Butterfield, Bo Diddley, Lightning Hopkins, Howlin' Wolf, Pinetop Perkins, Sugar Blue, Melvin Taylor, Junior Wells and many others. We will have more workshops that focus on other Chicago Blues artists in the future, for sure.

These arts workshops are free and open to the public, and all ages welcomed. Participants are invited to bring writing utensils and paper, although supplies will be provided if needed. Sometimes we play music and explore other art forms, so if you have a musical instrument that you'd like to bring, or if you have art supplies (e.g. colored pencils, pastels, etc.) you can bring those. The fieldhouse has an upright piano that we have used during workshops as well.

Location: Mozart Park is in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood. It's on the north side of Armitage Ave. -- several blocks east of Pulaski Rd., just south of Dickens and Shakespeare Streets. Our workshop series happens in the room to the left of fieldhouse lobby; some workshop sessions may happen outside in the park, weather permitting.

Transportation & parking: Mozart Park can be reached by public transportation (such as the #73 Armitage Ave. bus, and not far from the Logan Square and Western Ave. stations on the CTA's blue line. Mozart Park has a parking lot on Armitage, east of Avers.

Registering for Chicago Heroes & Arts Journeys: You can register for this workshop series at the Chicago Park District website.

Additional info: You can contact us by clicking here (if you have questions about this workshop or to RSVP). Click here to find out more about the Chicago Heroes & Arts Journeys workshop series.

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Our Next Workshop: László Moholy-Nagy & Mies van der Rohe

05/04/2014

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You're invited to come to our next Chicago Heroes & Arts Adventures workshop --

Monday, May 5 (6:00-7:15, 7:30-8:30 p.m.)

Mozart Park Fieldhouse
2036 N. Avers Ave.
Chicago, IL 60624

all ages, free & open to the public

During our next workshop we will focus on the lives and legacies of László Moholy-Nagy and Mies van der Rohe. Participants will create artworks and write poetry inspired by those two geniuses who have indelibly influenced architecture and design in Chicago and around the world.

Untitled (Chicago, 1943)
by László Moholy-Nagy

Mies van der Rohe with a model
of the Farnsworth House

above: László Moholy-Nagy's
Diagram of Finnegans Wake

Links:

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Why Make Art? : Interview with Carron Little

02/15/2014

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For my interview project with Borderbend, I set out to explore some of the unanswerable questions that have been squirming to escape my mind, and fired them on Chicago artists in search of some marinated wisdom. I ask why art is important in communities, why humans value art, why artists care, and what makes art art. All of their words have helped me on my path as an art student, and a person making sense of this world. Their challenges to survive in the art world of Chicago are inspiring yet devastating, their passions are strong, and their work is meaningful and genuine. Enjoy, and keep your eyes open for any of their upcoming work. Thanks for reading.
- Hannah Brookman

Carron Little

Why Make Art?

For change.

“When I was a young, I was very political and did a lot of direct action. At the age of sixteen I became a representative for youth CND in Yorkshire and Humberside, in the north of England. I had a big group of fifty young people. One of the first public performances I did was to organize all of these young people and to go to every main station in each major city in Yorkshire and Humberside, and we staged a nuclear fallout in the stations, so suddenly fifty people would drop to the floor, and people would come with theses radiation bins.”

Carron is now using performance to bring awareness to the Chicago public. Her most recent performance took place at Bridgeview Bank for Open House Chicago in October. It was called Unto Each Their Own Safe, and was conducted by Little’s extravagant alter ego, The Queen of Luxuria. “The philosophy of the Queen is to challenge the notions of patriarchal power, hence the celebration of the diamond dust breast plates, I call them gender plates.” On this special day, the Queen, and her lovely assistants were posted up at the bank to play games with the public. “I created this interactive performance where the public went up to these three different stations and either play chess or there was this game, Octagon, based on one of Duchamp’s games, and I created a Jenga/Queen of Luxuria style stacking game.” There was a fourth game, which the Queen herself administered. In this game, the participants would move around ‘gender plates’ and discuss their finances and earnings with the Queen of Luxuria.

“If a person was earning $30,000, according to the Queen of Luxuria, the minimum wage should be $80,000, so I would make up the difference. If a woman was sat in front of me I calculated her working life and multiplied that by the money she hadn’t been paid over her lifetime. One woman earned to $30-60,000 bracket. She was unhappy at work so I gave her an extra $80,000 so she could take the year off and find a job that she really wanted to do. And she was happy in life. If somebody was unhappy in life I would give them an extra $20,00 so they could take a holiday or go to the spa every once in a while. People that were retired were getting over a million dollars which wasn’t what I was expecting how much women would get. It really is a profound statement on the inequality of our lives.”

“We as a society still have a long way to go in terms of creating peace and equality in the world and 40% of countries are still in a state of war. I often think about how women are treated all over the world, and our quality of lives and even in the western world, it went up since last year, it was 73 cents to the dollar and now its 77 to the dollar. I’ve been in positions where I’ve had greater qualifications starting out a job but was still paid less than my colleague that had less educational qualifications.”

“Every time I lose hope or contemplate giving up, which I don’t, I refuse to, I just look at the statistics of how many women have had solo shows in museums or how many are represented by commercial galleries. Even a gallery that I show at, I invited the director over for a studio visit and I asked him ‘how many women have you represented in your gallery over the year?’ And the next year he made a point to show one female artist for every male artist, and just by having that conversation I made him aware , its such a prevalent problem.

“The next big project that I’m starting to work on is ‘The City Alive With Dreams’. From 2012 to 2013 I interviewed one person a week about their dreams and then I wrote poems about their dreams and invited them to select their favorite line. One person I interviewed selected, “the sacred key of ecstasy and orgasmic health opened the door to everything that is a part of me” the poetry really documents the extremes of human experiences as a story or a reflection of the interview. I'm really excited to put those ideas into public space. I’m inviting all of the people who have participated to a meeting to discuss how they would like their stories placed in a public space, but I’m also thinking, how am I going to make it interactive so that theres lots of different things to think about. It’s really part of my artistic practice to create these interactive performance; it’s part of my feminist aesthetic. I think it’s a really critical part of womens practice and the way in which we all parade in the world.”

Apart from creating her own pieces, Carron also runs Out of Sight, a public performance festival in its’ fourth year, and growing. Carron also teaches art in city schools and is looking forward to a new teaching position in the SAIC performance art department. She currently has a piece opening at Fluxus in Minneapolis, is finishing The City Alive With Dreams, and is drawing all the time.

“The rhesus monkeys are the closest monkeys to us, but anthropologists have studied their behavior and said that they have greater empathy and community towards each other than humans display towards each other and my hope is that humans will become more intelligent through culture, and be able to figure out more peaceful ways. Through culture, my hope is that we will eliminate war and eliminate violence. We still have a way to go, and it won't happen in my lifetime but hopefully I can be a part of the train of change” -- Carron Little

Find out more about Carron Little by visiting her website at carronlittle.com.

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Why Is Art Important? : Interview with Lindsay Obermeyer

02/11/2014

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Lindsay Obermeyer

Photo by Samantha Bennett

Why is art important?

“I’m interested in seeing how the arts can reach out to communities that don't generally think of themselves as having access to the arts. I work in the community to create art as a way of trying to connect people together. Because often people don't talk to each other, the work that I do tends to break the ice. With The Red Thread Project, I physically connected them together.”

Lindsay Obermeyer is a textile artist, currently living in St. Louis, Missouri. Her interest in textiles has brought her down many paths. She has published knitting patterns, sewn dance costumes, owned a yarn store, produced ‘craft as fine art’, and most notably, founded The Red Thread Project, a community based performance piece. The project started as a dare from a colleague to connect a university to a town. “I physically connected them together,” said Obermeyer. She hand-knit dozens of hats, and linked them with a knit cord then invited the public to wear them. The closeness and absurdity created by the situation fostered more than simply physical connection; as the troop of hat-bearers paraded through the town, they also created friendships. Obermeyer did the performance multiple times then brought the hats to a homeless shelter to teach the men to sew, before they disconnected the hats and got to keep them.

“It kept growing. It was affective for a lot of people especially for kids, it was about character education, less about art. Because even trained art educators didn’t get what I was teaching about art. They didn’t understand that yarn is a pliable line, that when knitted creates a shape, that when bent creates form of mass that then can be worn, and it has color and texture. Basic elements of art here! But because they're trying to think of art as painting and drawing and sculpture, and textiles and craft, they couldn't make the connection. So I often came in as a character educator, teaching kids about their community; that even though they're in 4th grade, they have a voice and a connection to everybody around them and that they better darn well start paying attention.”

Though Lindsay has now retired The Red Thread Project, she has not stopped bringing her art into the community. She was recently commissioned by the chamber of commerce of St. Louis to do a performance piece to bring attention to an unpopular neighborhood. “We would roll out astro turf, and sit and knit in the parking space. It was a neighborhood that had a lot of gang activity, and here we were benignly knitting. So it was a political statement; like, ‘you know what, we can have this shit go around us, but were just going to knit.’ We had a lot of kids involved. It was a way of driving interest to a blighted area. I was using the arts to make a neighborhood more palatable. And I got paid to do that!”

Lindsay was paid to create an enjoyable atmosphere in a neighborhood. This is because, “economically, art is a machine,” she explains. “Not that it trickles down to the artists often, but it does drive commerce.” Obermeyer gave me numerous examples of ways cities thrive through art. Paris is her favorite example, but she also recognizes the influence of the arts on Chicago. “When people talk about Chicago, they talk about the Bears and the Cubs, but they also talk about the Art Institute and the Sears tower. And thats art.” She mentioned St. Louis’ efforts to establish a larger arts community, as well as Paducah, Kentucky’s new flourishing art scene. Obermeyer sees that as art becomes more accessible, more people are attracted, and the economy grows.

Lindsay has created a successful career as an artist. As she likes to say, she manages herself as a business, and makes sure she gets paid for her work. She is currently knitting almost 600 skeins of yarn for a 12 x 26 knit bomb piece for the Motorola offices, and will be presenting a paper on the relationship between textile arts and the medical arts at a textile conference in Nebraska at the Textile Society.

“It’s not that hard. It just takes tenacity and a willingness to let go of preconceived notions of high art and low art, and fine art and fine craft, and just make.” - Lindsay Obermeyer

To see more of Lindsay Obermeyer's work, visit her site at http://www.lbostudio.com/

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Fred Anderson-Inspired Arts Workshop at Mozart Park

02/01/2014

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You are invited to come to our next Chicago Heroes & Arts Adventures workshop --

Monday, February 3rd (6:00-7:15, 7:30-8:30 p.m.)

Mozart Park Fieldhouse
2036 N. Avers Ave.
Chicago, IL 60624

all ages, free & open to the public

We continue our arts workshop series at Mozart Park with a session that focuses on the music and legacy of the great saxophonist Fred Anderson. We will talk about some highlights of Anderson's life and music, and then watch part of the music documentary Timeless: Live at the Velvet Lounge (Delmark, 2006). Then workshop participants will create collages that are inspired by Anderson's music.

Fred Anderson was an inspiration to generations of musicians -- through the music he created, as well as thanks to the legendary Velvet Lounge which he ran for several decades until he passed away in 2010.

This workshop is all ages, free and open the public. Arts supplies will be provided. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Fred Anderson Trio performing at the Abrons Art Center, during the 2009 Vision Festival. Fred Anderson (tenor saxophone), William Parker (upright bass, kora), Hamid Drake (frame drum). Photos by Peter Gannushkin, used with permission.

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WTFrack 2013

07/27/2013

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Over the past several years we have witnessed examples of how fracking (hydraulic fracturing) can potentially cause a lot of harm to people and the environment. The Borderbend Arts Collective is inviting artists to contribute works in response to fracking. We are looking for literary works (poetry, fiction, hybrid genres), visual art (photography, painting, collage, etc.), new media, and works in other media.

Borderbend has collaborated with many artists and organizations -- to present dynamic arts initiatives via performance, online and other platforms. "Silent Spring" at 50, Charles Mingus at 90, Bloomsday 2012 & "Ulysses" 90th are several such examples. WTF 2013 follows in this tradition.

In particular, WTF 2013 continues some themes that were explored in "Silent Spring" at 50; many people have asserted that some of the same kinds of problems that Rachel Carson exposed in her masterpiece Silent Spring are still present with us today -- including persistent denials that humans have caused environmental problems (climate change, destruction of the Mississippi Delta by oil exploration, dangers regarding fracking, etc.), attacks on scientific evidence that oppose corporate interests, and so on.

WTFrack 2013 contributions will appear in online media galleries, and contributions will also be part of performance events that will happen later this year.

Click here to be redirected to the WTFrack 2013 media gallery. Please send us an email, with "WTFrack 2013" in the subject line, to find out more.

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Bicycles & the Arts

07/12/2012

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The Borderbend Arts Collective has presented two "Bicycles & the Arts" events -- during the Chicago Calling Arts Festival in 2010 and last year. Borderbend is co-presenting a third "Bicycles & the Arts" event, in partnership with Working Bikes Cooperative. That event happens on September 28, during the Seventh Annual Chicago Calling Arts Festival.

Bicycles and the arts have commingled a lot for more than a century -- such as in film, literature, sculpture, and music. Here are some highlights which span more than a century. Alfred Jarry was a French writer who wrote the play Ubu Roi and came up with the concept of pataphysics; he was an avid bicyclist, and bikes appear in many of his writings. Another French artist named Marcel Duchamp created a sculpture entitled Bicycle Wheel in 1913; that sculpture was among Duchamp's many readymades which have changed the way people think about art. Several decades later, Italian filmmaker Vittorio De Sica directed The Bicycle Thief (1948), an iconic Italian film which "works as a sentimental study of a father and son, a historical document, a social statement, and a record of one of the century's most influential film movements." In 1960, Swiss artist Jean Tinguely unveiled a kinetic sculptureentitled Homage to New York, which included dozens of bicycle wheels and other parts, and whichfell apart during a 27-minute performance. Have you seen the video of a 22-year-old Frank Zappa teaching Steve Allen how to play a bicycle, followed by a performance with musical bicycles and the accompaniment of the Steve Allen Show orchestra?

Today you can find examples of intersections between bicycles and art, in Chicago and around the world. Recently a collective in Rogers Park proposed that 15 bike racks be constructed, and that proposal won funding during the 49th Ward's participatory funding initiative; those bike racks are currently under construction. If you've ever seen or participated in a Critical Mass event, you've probably seen some interesting art bikes, including tall bikes. As you travel along North Avenue in the Wicker Park / Bucktown neighborhood, you will pass a colorful bicycle mounted on the side of a building, at the corner of North and Wolcott Avenues. That bicycle, which hangs above the entrance of Rapid Transit Cyclechop, has fans in the bike wheel spokes, so the wheels are often spinning in the air. Local artist Ronnie LoBello built that bicycle 15 years ago.

Working Bikes Cooperative has several amazing bike artworks created by Matt Weber and others. Steven Lane curates an annual winter bike art show; that's always an exciting show to look forward to.

Examples of art bikes and bicycle art abound elsewhere here in the U.S. Artistically designed bike racks are being constructed in Rogers Park, and David Byrne has designed bike racks which have been installed in New York City. A group in Minneapolis has organized several annual Bike Art shows, and Tall Bike Posse in California organizes Art Bike Build events and bike art shows.Bicycle Inter-Community Action & Salvage in Tucson offers workshops where you can make inner tube wallets, tire belts, mobiles, sculptures, and jewelry out of recycled bike parts. In 2010 I saw Gabriel Orozco's Four Bicycles (There Is Always One Direction) at the MoMA, amazing.

photo of artworks on display during the "Bicycles & the Arts" event at Happy Dog Gallery (10.1.2010)

above: photos from the "Bicycles & the Arts" event during the 2010 Chicago Calling Arts Festival

Globetrotters can find plenty of examples of intersections between the arts and bicycles around the world. The Dekochari (Japanese art bike) is a unique phenomenon; here're some interesting pictures. Kunstrad (Art Cycling) competitions are happening in Europe.

Stay tuned for updates regarding the next "Bicycles & the Arts" event.

-- Dan Godston

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summer solstice interfaith arts event

05/08/2012

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Summer Solstice Interfaith Arts Event
Lakeview Center in Gillson Park (Wilmette, IL)
Wednesday, June 20 (6 p.m.)

free and open to the public

This Summer Solstice Interfaith Arts Event is part of an ongoing series of events that is thematically arranged around each of the four seasons.

Click here to find out more about this event -- including photos and audio, and check out this blog post about "Spring, Rebirth & Renewal" -- an interfaith arts event that happened in March.

View of Gillson Park
Photo credit: Wilmette Park District

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Chicago Blues Legends: Arts Workshop on July 11th

Our Next Workshop: László Moholy-Nagy & Mies van der Rohe

Why Make Art? : Interview with Carron Little

Carron Little

Why Is Art Important? : Interview with Lindsay Obermeyer

Lindsay Obermeyer

Fred Anderson-Inspired Arts Workshop at Mozart Park

WTFrack 2013

Bicycles & the Arts

summer solstice interfaith arts event

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