On Black Presidential Portraits, Punchlines, and Power with Ross Stanton Jordan
Reflections on nearly a century of fictional and speculative Black president portrayals, artists’ responses to the Obama era, and the power of comedy.
Archives
Everything And More: On the Makings of Bunny McKensie Mack
Bunny McKensie Mack discusses growing up in Chicago and becoming a trilingual facilitator, educator, activist, researcher, artist, and founder of the MMG EARTH.
Time and Time Again: An Interview with Farah Salem
A conversation with artist Farah Salem on how she uses her art and art therapy practices to honor, challenge, and reimagine rituals and psychologies across generations and geographies.
Memoir, Mythos, and the Maximalist Practice of Cecilia Beaven
Artist Cecilia Beaven on international comic artists, Nickelodeon cartoons, the limitations of labels and how we shake them off or shape them.
Memorias, mitos y la práctica maximalista de Cecilia Beaven
Artista Cecilia Beaven sobre artistas de historietas internacionales, dibujos animados de Nickelodeon, y las limitaciones de las etiquetas, cómo las sacudimos o les damos forma.
In the Pages of Fleeting Monuments for the Wall of Respect
Fleeting Monuments for the Wall of Respect, composed by editor and art historian Romi Crawford, is a meditation, offering, and homage for the Wall of Respect.
To Speak For Yourself: On the Many Lives of Dorothy Burge
Dorothy Burge is a fabric and multimedia artist and community activist who is inspired by history and current issues of social justice.
For the Land and Love of Freedom Fighters: Erin Sharkey, Zoe Hollomon, and The Fields at Rootsprings
Zoe Hollomon and Erin Sharkey co-run The Fields at Rootsprings in Annandale, MN, a site of healing and rejuvenation that centers queer and melanated artists, organizers, and healers.
The Peoria Guild of Black Artists, a testimony on home and nurturing a chosen family
A conversation with Alexander Martin, Erick Minnis, and Brenda Pagan, founding members of The Peoria Guild of Black Artists.
Sixty Inches From Center and Dreams of Future Canons
A transcript of the keynote address delivered on August 6, 2020 for the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Council of State Archivists and the Society of American Archivists.
Tricia Hersey, a testimony on liberation theology and rest as inheritance
A long read and interview with transdisciplinary artist, activist, theologian, community healer, and creator of The Nap Ministry about her upbringing and what has influenced her rest movement.
Korra, a testimony on Black Girlhood
Korra, a.k.a. ZP, speaks about some of her biggest concerns as a Black girl in the world, including what it’s like navigating 6th grade and the wonderful world of wash day for Black people.
Tracy Drake, a testimony on Black Motherhood
A first-hand account from mother and archivist Tracy Drake on the challenges of caring for Black children and the conversations she recently had with her daughter, as part of a series of testimonies by Black trans, Black women and girls, Black femme, and Black non-binary artists and cultural workers.
Maya-Camille Broussard, a testimony on invisible disability
Maya-Camille Broussard gives a glimpse into some of the challenges she experienced as a child and continues to experience in her daily life, and reminds us of why now, as always, Black Disabled Lives Matter and need to be uplifted when we talk about police violence.
Ireashia M. Bennett, a testimony on tenderness
A conversation with Ireashia M. Bennett, a Black queer new media artist from Suitland, Maryland who now calls Chicago home. Their work takes the form of photography, multimedia essays, short documentaries, and experimental films that poetically harness and affirm Black queer disabled perspectives and realities.
Rashayla Marie Brown, a testimony on (not) giving up
Rashayla Marie Brown weaves together elements of her past and present experiences, then connects them to the call for accountability and long-term commitment to addressing systemic anti-Black damage and misogyny within and beyond the arts sector.
Talking Culture and Taking Chances with Urooj Shakeel
Like many people who move to Chicago, Urooj Shakeel made the decision to relocate from a suburb of Detroit after realizing that if she wanted to try her hand at a career in the arts, now was the time. She doubled down and left long careers in healthcare and marketing to study arts administration and policy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Prior to her move, she took a moment to reflect on her love of Detroit and the ways in which it seeded her love for art. Urooj wrote on her website, “I could go on forever talking about Detroit and all the artworks I’ve come across, interacted with and studied. How each one of them inspired me in my own art projects and where my ideas originated from. I can never be thankful enough for my colossal beginnings in Detroit. Everything I’ve learned from this city will inspire me in everything I plan to do in Chicago.” Her words foreshadow how she would shape her practice after landing in Chicago …
Sampada Aranke on Care, Black Visual Culture, and the Radicalized Body
Sampada Aranke discusses her current work, reading the colonized body and Western Enlightenment through a feminist lens, and what it means to be in and not of the institutions of academia.
Un/Published with Andrea Alessi and Joel Kuennen of ArtSlant
Running an arts publication is not easy. Often a labor of love and volunteer energy, many platforms are started by those who recognize a gap in coverage for art being produced by the artists whose work often misses the pages of local newspapers, global arts magazines, and online cultural publications. Although many of us can name several publications doing this work or have been featured in their physical and digital pages, the efforts that make these platforms possible go largely unseen. Un/Published was created as a way to acknowledge the minds behind the platforms, to illuminate the role they play in propping up the corners of cultural production that are largely undercovered, and call attention to the back-end challenges of sustaining an arts publication at a time when the media is in crisis, with decreased mainstream coverage of culture and a decrease in jobs available for those writers. Un/Published will act as a place to dig into this work and will include a series of interviews highlighting arts publications that critique, document, archive, and support …
The Art of Adaptation: An Exit Interview with Elliot J. Reichert
In 2013, just days into his position as the Assistant Curator of the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Elliot J. Reichert was doing what curators often do. After being thrown into the installation process of a new exhibition, he was flexing his ability to fuel wildfires while demonstrating his resourcefulness in locating unusual materials at the very last minute in service of an artist’s vision. In this case, the artist was the late musician and sculptor Terry Adkins and the wildfires were the brand new works that had been sitting on the back shelf of Adkins’ mind for years that he now had the opportunity to bring to life. When Elliot took this role, the museum was preparing to mount Recital, a substantial solo exhibition of Adkins’ work which had traveled from the Tang Teaching Museum in Saratoga Springs, New York to Chicago. When Recital was being mounted, there was no way of knowing that this mid-career retrospective would, in fact, be a definitive moment in Adkins’ career and would also be marked …
Dance Manifold: A Conversation with Tara Aisha Willis
“…completely new yet familiar territory.” These words echoed after I revisited the accompanying publication for Relations, a performance that brought together pioneering artists Bebe Miller, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Ralph Lemon on the MCA Stage in November 2018. In her introduction for the publication, curator Tara Aisha Willis offers a series of questions and propositions that draw from the historically-anchored yet generative tone set by Miller, Houston-Jones, and Lemon, while also honoring the shapeshifting and indefinable nature of Black dance and movement practices. When considered in full, Willis, too, is the “new yet familiar” manifested in many ways. As a returning Chicago native whose dance career has developed largely outside of the city, there’s a fresh familiarity to her perspective. The new is also visible through her role as a curator of performance and when considering the artists and projects she is bringing to the MCA Stage. Then, an additional familiarity is present within her work due to an awareness of historical context, a body of knowledge that is harnessed, in part, through her work as …
Art + Love: On Collaboration, Practice, Space and Relationships
In 2012, Sixty writer Zachary Johnson challenged “the image of the lone artist toiling away in their studio” with Art + Love, a series of interviews that asked artists and their partners to share how they make art, love, and partnership work. Every couple years we continue to revisit the conversation with a new group of artists, writers, designers, educators, and curators whose love for one another helps to fuel their life and work within and outside of the studio, exhibition space, stage, or page. This year we’re hearing from interdisciplinary artists Ayanah Moor and Jamila Raegan, Houston-based artists Lovie Olivia and Preetika Rajgariah, artists Will Bishop and Grace Needlman, curator Jennifer Sova and musician Tiana Jimenez-Srisook, artist Andrés Lemus-Spont and writer Marya Spont-Lemus, and designer Dan Sullivan and artist Edra Soto.
Art + Love: Ayanah Moor + Jamila Raegan
As part of our Art + Love series, interdisciplinary artists Ayanah Moor and Jamila Raegan reflect on the ways that their distinct practices influence one another and the ways in which their relationship influences the work they make. On where it all started: Jamila Raegan: Ayanah and I met a little haphazardly during a visit she made to Brooklyn in April 2014 with a mutual friend of ours. Funny enough, they were crashing with me at my home. I remember so vividly the moment Ayanah and I met. I was working and Ayanah and our dear friend Alisha were picking up keys. Ayanah would say–which is true–that we met in front of the Biggie Smalls mural at the corner of Fulton and South Portland Avenues. It was a rare experience. I remember every little detail–the sun on her face, her eyes were stars, her smile (her gorgeous smile), and her tattoos. A first sight kind of love, truly. Ayanah Moor: I used to live in Pittsburgh and during that time I became really close friends with …
Art + Love: Marya Spont-Lemus + Andrés Lemus-Spont
As part of our Art + Love series, Marya Spont-Lemus and Andrés Lemus-Spont reflect on their experiences collaborating with one another and the ways in which their relationship has and continues to influence their individual practices. On where it all started: Marya Spont-Lemus: We met at Maria’s in Bridgeport, at a goodbye party for my co-worker. Though I liked my co-worker very much, I was only planning to go for a polite 15 minutes, and then continue on home to get work done on a Friday night. Andrés Lemus-Spont: I was biking around and wanted to hang out with Marya’s co-worker, who was my friend from architecture school. At the party, I started talking only to my friend, but pretty soon I noticed Marya. At first I didn’t see her as much as sense her. She just had this beautiful glow that I’d never experienced. M: I actually remember that you arrived right at 6 o’clock, because that’s when I’d been planning to leave. But something told me to stay—I saw your glow, too. A: When …
Art + Love: Jennifer Sova + Tiana Jimenez-Srisook
As part of our Art + Love series, Jennifer Sova and Tiana Jimenez-Srisook reflect on the ways in which they share space, share ideas, and hold deep admiration for one another’s work. On where it all started: Jennifer Sova: We met in a class at Columbia College in 2016. The class was called Women in Art, Music, and Literature which we think is hilarious being that we are women in art and music. It seems like a modern-day queer romantic comedy. We became fast friends and fell in love quickly, too. The things that first bonded us; music, laughter, books, soaking up the small things, and general curiosity are still the things that we stay up too late talking about. Tiana Jimenez-Srisook: Jenn and I met in college–– a fact that we both find quite silly given the cliché. We were in the same women’s studies course and coincidentally sat next to each other only to spark up a seamless bout of quick witty banter and conversations about big ideas, art, culture, politics, literature, food, …
Art + Love: Edra Soto + Dan Sullivan
As part of our Art + Love series, interdisciplinary artist Edra Soto and fabricator/designer Dan Sullivan talk about their distinct practices, the places where their ideas merge, and the ways their relationship has influenced their work. On where it all started: Edra: Dan and I met at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998. I was a grad student and he was working at the registrar’s office. I remember seeing him for the first time and wondering to myself who he was. I looked at him for a while but he didn’t see me until later. I was standing in line to register for some courses and I remember he asked me to step over. I wasn’t fully aware, but soon enough I realized he pull me off the line asked me to have a seat at his desk. Nothing further than that. Some days later, I was walking all frazzled up down the admin office hallways and he saw me and immediately stopped me. He asked me what happen and I …
Art + Love: Lovie Olivia + Preetika Rajgariah
As part of our Art + Love series, Houston-based artists Lovie Olivia and Preetika Rajgariah discuss the early days of their once long distance relationship and how it feels to now be reunited in their home town while also sharing a studio space. On where it all started: Lovie Olivia: In May 2013 I found myself at a dance performance/rehearsal by Jasmine Hearn and Jon Shronks, two dear friends in the performing arts scene in Houston. Preetika was there as an event photographer and I connected with her presence immediately. We were introduced at the end of the performance. A few months later we learned that we were both instructors at the locally popular non-profit gallery and school, Art League Houston. Sometime after one of our our exhibitions, (I think mine) Preetika slipped in my DM on Facebook inquiring about my process of choosing models for my paintings, explaining that she was a model and available if I needed more (brown) subjects. We had that initial meeting at my studio about 6 months after because …
Art + Love: Grace Needlman and Will Bishop
As part of our Art + Love series, interdisciplinary artist and educator Grace Needlman and theater artist Will Bishop share a little bit about how being partners influences their practices and their origin story. On where it all started: Grace: We met at Redmoon, a spectacle theater company that operated in Chicago from 1990 to 2015. I had just moved to Chicago and was interning at Redmoon for the summer. Will was the Associate Producer. So, he was kind of my boss–not directly, but close enough to joke about it. On our first date, we went to a concert at the Lincoln Hall. We were biking home together after the concert, and I hit a pothole under the bridge on Halsted just south of Milwaukee and took a nosedive. I was really embarrassed, so brushed it off like it was no big deal. I biked all the way back to Hyde Park, where I was living, with a quarter-sized hole in my knee. I couldn’t walk for 3 days, including my first day of work at …
Artists Gotta Eat and Other Things We Forget to Remember
In partnership with Common Field, here’s a look into ways that cultural workers can advocate for fair pay for artists, illuminate invisible creative labor, and create an ecosystem that forefronts ethical compensation practices for artists.
The Vessels that Marva Made: An Interview with Members of Sapphire & Crystals
“I am a strong woman; my strength as a Black woman pays homage to what I call the Sapphire Spirit. A woman who is sassy, jazzy, spiritual, brainy, the healer–she is Mother Earth in its grand splendor. I salute this spirit in all Black women everywhere. The recognition of my own Sapphire Spirit provided me with the knowledge I needed to speak. My name is Marva and I speak through my art, my voice extends all the way back to the first known human being who was a Black woman. Going forth, through my ancestors, I am creating new symbols and new directions, moving from my own individual voice to that of the collective voice. I now join with sixteen other African American Women Artists and form the Sapphire & Crystals group. As a collective we step forward to the world.” –Marva Lee Pitchford-Jolly In 1986 artists Marva Lee Pitchford-Jolly and Felicia Grant Preston started meeting in Pitchford-Jolly’s home to discuss how to continue supporting women artists after the group Mud Peoples Black Women’s Resource …