What’s Your Art?

Celebrating the Art Centers of Chicago

Date:  Saturday, June 4 2011 @ 1:00pm – 5:00pm

Admission:  FREE– Reservations Recommended

Venue: Chicago Cultural Center 78 E. Washington Street  Chicago, IL 60602

Presenter:  Chicago Public Media (WBEZ-Chicago)

From Hyde Park to Pilsen to Ravenswood, there are amazing places of art exhibition, classes and public events fostering the development of art and culture located throughout Chicago.  Each unique location has its own style, feel, and expertise.  These places champion the city’s commitment for local residents to learn and create original art, and are as Chicago as the World’s Fair and Vienna Beef Hot Dogs.

Along side these neighborhood spaces, Chicago hosts the nation’s first free municipal cultural center, which first opened its doors in 1893. It is one of the city’s most popular attractions, considered one of the most comprehensive arts showcases in the United States. Each year, the Chicago Cultural Center features more than 1,000 programs and exhibitions covering a wide range of the performing, visual and literary arts.

In celebration of Chicago’s rich landscape devoted to emerging artists, art education, and the opportunity to inspire and become inspired – WBEZ takes you to the Chicago Cultural Center to culminate the season with a celebration of the city’s Art Centers. We issue a challenge to join us in exploring these spaces and the role they play in shaping the artist in each of us.  Throughout the Spring, visit any of the participating locations: learn to throw a pot or paint a portrait, write a poem or create a collage – and then join us at the Chicago Cultural Center’s Yates Hall for a culminating celebration of this unique and integral part of our city’s legacy.

Participating Art Centers include:

Visit any of the above locations and be sure to pick up the “What’s Your Art?” validation card, then see how many Centers you can visit between now and June 4.  Prizes for those who visit 2, 4, 6, 8, or all 10! And then join us at the Chicago Cultural Center on Saturday, June 4.

We’ve teamed up with Sixty Inches From Center (SIFC) to create “What’s Your Art?” and couldn’t be more pleased with what’s in store. This remarkable Chicago organization strives to document, archive and support art that exists outside the central iconic art institutions in Chicago. With video, audio, photography, writing, projects, and community engagement, SIFC aims to capture and contribute to the most innovative aspects of our city’s peripheral visual culture.  Thanks to their efforts, here’s what you can expect (with a printed program of start times available on-site, beginning at 1pm):

SCHEDULE OF DEMONSTRATIONS

Chicago Art Department will collaborate with the audience on alive video art podcast. The CAD TV hosts will discuss, critique and improvise around audience participation while attempting to create a unique document of the other art centers and of the event itself. Audience members will control the cameras and mixers while learning and collaborating with CAD reporters.

Chicago Photography Center will contribute to the event with a studio set-up including several photographers demonstrating the art of Portraiture. The “models” will be members of the audience chosen by the photographers. Lighting will be covered, as well as tips that will help people to make better portraits.

The DIY (do-it-yourself) approach to art making will be showcased by Chicago Urban Art Society with a presentation by artists Peter Kepha and Kevin Wilson.  Looking at stencil-making and screen-printing using cost conscious and creative methods, this workshop will allow for a hands-on experience.

Little Black Pearl will debut of a photo presentation showing the entire creative process for sculpture making. During demonstration, the artist will show the basic techniques of working on clay creating a bust and basic head shape/volumes with a live model posing and footage from a previous Little Black Pearl workshop of students working on their sculptures as inspiration.

Southside Community Art Center will present photographer Tony Smith to demonstrate the process of digital music production in combination with basic digital photography techniques.

Rumble Arts Center will present an African Drum and Dance Demonstration and Filipino-Indonesian Martial Arts Demonstration.  Markeya Howard presents the dances of Africa and the Caribbean, showcasing the focus of the dance and how to achieve movements to the rhythms. African Percussionist, Da’vid Braswell accompanies this presentation with simple techniques along with intricate rhythms from Mali, Gambia, Guinea, and Senegal.  Filipino Martial Arts (also known as Kali, Arnis, or Eskrima) is thought to be exclusively weapon based, but in actuality it is a complete system of self-defense. Christopher Dino demonstrates this fighting using the stick, knife, staff and using the whole body as a method of defense.

Lillstreet Art Center‘s long-established clay department offers classes for the total beginner, casual novice or advanced student. Watch as one of the Center’s potters demonstrates how to throw large pots and explains the basics of handbuilding and wheelthrowing.

Hyde Park Art Center teaching artist Meredith Eastburn shows us do it yourself techniques for making fabulous creations out of paper. Learn how to make artist books, trading cards and more. Take your creations back to the Hyde Park Art Center exhibition space to trade them, decorate them, or just see what other people have made.

Spudnik Press invites guests to contribute to a collaborative relief printing project. During the demo, participants will learn how to use a gouge to make marks and images on linoleum. Spudnik Press printers will demonstrate how these blocks are inked and printed with a press. After the demo, attendees are invited to work one-on-one at Spudnik’s exhibition space to hand-print their linoleum block. By the end of the event, guests will have collaborated to make a large-scale one-of-a-kind print.

The Fire Arts Center of Chicago will be conducting a thirty-minute demonstration of simpletechniques for stone carving.
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Admission (for Saturday, June 4 from 1-5PM at the Chicago Cultural Center):
FREE – Reservations Recommended

Click here to make your reservation

This event is sponsored in part by: