courtesy of the Renaissance Society

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Just before last Sunday’s opening of Cathy Wilkes’s exhibit “I Give You All My Money,” Renaissance Society staff briefly convened to determine where the installation’s borders were supposed to lay. One staff member suggested that gallery-goers should be permitted to step over the small purple roses scattered on the floor. Another staffer agreed, but suggested using the disintegrating pink rubber mat as a limit. Guests could approach the small pile of matted hair and shattered pottery on the floor, but probably should not go behind the abandoned counters of the supermarket conveyor belt.

As anticipated, the boundary between art and gallery space was re-drawn as each viewer interacted with the piece. One man bent down to pick up a rose and was promptly informed that touching was not allowed. Later, a young girl gleefully approached a stovetop and reached for a worn plastic fawn resting atop the burners—only to be reminded by her mother that she shouldn’t grab at the toy because “this is art.”

“I Give You All My Money,” nominated for the Tate Modern’s prestigious Turner Prize in 2008, certainly defies any singular reading. Painted mannequins draped with rags are juxtaposed with food containers with crusty residues of marmalade and porridge, creating a scene with an uncertain narrative. “I am not interested in trying to be objective in a work of art,” Wilkes said in a talk with curator Hamza Walker last Sunday. “There isn’t a point to thinking what somebody else might think as I’m working.”

Though scattered bowls, an old stroller, a stove, and the exhibit’s title certainly address the issues of consumerism and womanhood, the objects in her installation do not insist on a singular interpretation. Wilkes says she was inspired by the notion of attention, “a contemplative openness without any thoughts, a non-aggressive thinking.”

In creating “I Give You All My Money” Wilkes says she drew from her own experience as a woman, a mother, and a Christian. Repeated motifs in the installation raise some objects to icon status, serving as vehicles of communion for their viewers. “There is a type of presence in repeated actions,” she explained in the talk with Walker. The image of a basket, for example, is included both in the form of a birdcage hung over a mannequin’s head and as a shopping basket, which serve as signs of entrapment in the role of a homemaker. Yet, according to Wilkes, it also references the basket Jochebed used to send Moses down the Nile representing the ultimate maternal sacrifice.

As viewers contemplated the installation components of “I Give You All My Money,” three untitled paintings lay on a wooden table on the other end of the gallery, largely ignored. The small canvases, abstract compositions with colorful undulating lines and amorphous forms, displayed a thick buildup of paint, smeared like mud on the image surface. Though these paintings seemed at first a far cry from the other symbolic objects in the exhibition, their placement on a table suggested that they, too, should be viewed as objects rather than fine art. But as Wilkes discussed how her paintings would accumulate layers of detritus from use as impromptu notepads and coasters, the paintings began to emerge as readymades in their own right.

By taking objects out of her own life—whether pots, pans, or paintings—and inserting them into the sterile “white cube” of the gallery space, Wilkes successfully transforms them. A viewer can recognize the objects as functional or sentimental reminders of home, but the desire to touch and use them is blocked by their status as art. “A feeling of alienation or not alienation with objects is important,” Wilkes says, later adding, “I was putting them inside a cosmic space, apart from the physical world we live in.” By suspending quotidian objects in a realm of contemplation and confusion, Wilkes encourages her viewers to reconsider the relationships and borders between people, objects, and the art we often take for granted.

The Renaissance Society, 5811 S. Ellis Avenue. Through Mar. 4, 2012, Tuesday-Friday, 10am-5pm; Saturday-Sunday: 12-5pm. (773)702-8670. renaissancesociety.org

The process of adapting “Invisible Man” for the stage began some years ago when film director and screenwriter Oren Jacoby paired up with Christopher McElroen, a New York-based stage director. The work posed challenges for the two early on—getting the rights to the novel from the Ralph Ellison Trust was not easy. Because of Ellison’s qualms about letting out his work for adaptation, the trust has closely monitored use of the book.

The script is composed only of direct quotations pulled from the novel, which was published 60 years ago this year. Though the work’s first-person narration has been pared down considerably, it has been a battle to whittle down the script to a manageable length. The show runs for three hours with two intermissions, which seems long until you consider that for most of last year, Jacoby, McElroen, and Court staff traveled around the country hosting readings, cutting chunks of the script each time.

The first of these readings was held in November of 2010, and the idea of adapting “Invisible Man” immediately struck a chord with Court and its audiences. “The show represents an intersection of Court’s recent mission—new adaptations and African-American stories,” says Court dramaturge Drew Dir. According to Dir, this story should be especially interesting when told in Hyde Park, both a South Side cultural hub and Barack Obama’s home base.

Both the novel’s content as well as it form proved difficult to rework—its non-linear, first-person narration of the title character’s journey from aspiring professor to radical spokesperson for “the race” is difficult to present onstage. The flashback, the voiceover, the memory, which are all vital elements of Ellison’s prose, might be better suited to the silver screen, where it is easier to rapidly switch between images. Court has taken on the challenge, and the product comes very close to a screen-like adaptation, even if at times the visuals come off more assaulting than arresting. The production is clearly meant to astonish and entertain—the sheer mass of lighting and projection effects make the small theater space shimmer like Times Square.

The design is difficult and intense, incorporating many intricate movements of partial walls and floor props. The effect is a little odd—the design is so technical and sophisticated that it feels slightly over-executed. The director and the designers,  brought in from New York, have had over a year to stew on the project, so every detail has been calculated and checked over. The whole technical component, dubbed “aggressive” by Dir, is so powerful it’s almost blinding. The unfortunate result is that it’s powerful enough to overshadow the acting, which often manages to hit right on target, especially considering the number of roles each actor must play—there are ten actors and twenty four characters. Invisible Man, played by Teagle Bougere, has more lines than you can shake a stick at, and he delivers them flawlessly and with poise. The actor playing Ras the Destroyer and the university president is also a standout.

What’s next for Jacoby’s “Invisible Man?” Dir says that there are many different productions to come. “The book has never not been relevant…we want to reexamine “Invisible Man” in a new epoch,” he states, sharing the sentiment of many other theatres around the nation. The script is expected to develop beyond this stage and emerge within a few years as a more polished work—hopefully with fewer flashing lights. And in case you’re wondering, Court’s master electrician proudly delivers the number of bare bulbs onstage in Court’s design at exactly five hundred thirty-five.

Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through February 19. (773)753-4472. courttheatre.org

Sasha Tycko

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Clad in sequined jackets, thick-framed glasses, animal prints, and the like, Chicago’s hippest 20-somethings came out for a night of art and beer at the Octagon Gallery’s latest show last Friday. Housed at the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Bridgeport, the venue offered an ideal scene for people-watching, which was fitting (and a bit ironic) for the closing reception of “Society of the Spectacular.” The exhibit takes its name from Guy Debord’s 1967 “Society of the Spectacle,” a Marxist meditation on society’s obsession with illusions. His definition of the spectacle as “not a collection of images,” but “a social relation between people that is mediated by images” was an appropriate theme for the night.

The lively show overwhelmed the small space. Vibrant canvases, television sets, and a video game competed for viewers’ attention. The overload of images and sounds underscored the idea that we live in an overblown, spectacular society. Works made by over nine artists were on display, all of which confronted the tensions of living in a digital world and its effect on our perception of reality. Throughout the night videos playing loud rock music were projected onto the far wall. From 7-9pm, two artists played music from turntable.fm and various Internet DJs, followed by a live broadcast of local band American Draft playing from an Andersonville studio. For the final hours of the event, the band Volcano took the stage in front of a webcam that was hooked up to Chatroulette. The digital element of the music was a consistent motif throughout the exhibit.

“I tried to choose artwork that had a skeptical and curious take on our digitally mediated experiences,” said Octagon Gallery curator Jake Myers.

Myers noted that the exhibit wasn’t meant to be a condemnation of today’s society: “Instead of simply pathologizing these digital trends,” he said, “I just wanted people to step back and think about them in a different light.” In one piece, entitled “Mashup,” Doug Smithenry painted still frames of YouTube videos in which individuals came out of the closet. In his work, the Internet is seen taking on a supportive and protective role, qualities not often attributed to the World Wide Web.

Humor played a role in many of the other works. Eric Fleischauer’s digitally altered photograph “Universal Paramount” replaced Los Angeles’s famed “HOLLYWOOD” sign with the word “YOUTUBE.” Several other artists contributed irreverent MS Paint printouts, one simply of a cat saying “Meow.”

Despite the heavy message of Debord’s book, the light mood suggested that the show intended to disorient rather than attack, illuminate rather than disapprove. It encouraged people to be skeptics of society, not cynics.

One of the highlights of the show was “Marco Solo,” an interactive piece commissioned for the show that rendered a startling intersection between digital and analog life. Created by Aaron Orsini and Adam Rux, two wicker basket-turned headpieces were worn by gallerygoers. Inside these odd helmets the wearers stared at an iPad, which streamed a live feed of their surroundings. Literally forced to experience life through a screen, people stumbled around the space, groping at their friends as they tried to orient themselves.

“You put on the helmets and immediately when you’re with another person the first impulse is to look them in the face and try to touch their hand,” said Rux. “In the digital sphere you don’t have that, you don’t have an obvious person to grab hold of.”

The artists began by putting the iPads inside empty PBR boxes and staggering around Orsini’s apartment. They eventually settled on the wicker baskets because, as they explained, an artisanal craft like basket-weaving was one of the most analog tasks they could think of. The idea of a tangible product is nonexistent in a digital world. By producing something physical, they attempted to resolve the gap between virtual reality and our physical lives. “It’s almost like an homage to real life,” Orsini said. Their work uncovered the inhuman aspect of a society consumed with digital spectacle. “After we spent so much time in these helmets,” Orsini continued, “We were like, I hate digital. I hate it all. I just want to be able to look you in the eye, talk to you straightforward, and touch your hand.”

Upon stepping into the exhibit’s space at the back of the gallery, the viewer is at once struck with the skin-crawling beauty of the objects spread throughout the room. Centered on a pedestal in the middle of Marenco’s room is a pretty piece of old metal craft: a small iron resting upright, its petite grip still attached to the body. But the familiar domesticity comes with a dark underside: a litter of metal spikes rise out of its bottom, facing the doorway. This piece, “Homage to Man Ray,” directly recalls the work of the well-known surrealist, who also stuck nails into an old iron and called the new, unusable object “Cadeau” (Gift). Those frightening spikes recur throughout Marenco’s show, throwing off the comfort found in ordinary household articles and inviting dark and disturbing connections.

Deeper into the room, along the dark painted walls and seated on another low pedestal, is an expertly crafted hobbyhorse—or rather, a hobby-bull—titled “The Little Bull for the Baby Pain.” A cute and lovely display of woodwork; but, there again, a host of masochistic spikes jut out from the seat of the plaything. Similar in both prickliness and material, a piece titled “The Last Step,” is fastened onto the dark-blue wall next to the bull. A pleasant match, the inside of this open-faced shoebox is a weathered pair of loafers turned toes-to-the-ground, their insides filled to the brim with the spiny “gumballs” of sweet gum-trees. Perhaps the most discomforting intervened item, though, is “Toothbrush,” a smooth white wooden brush with teeth growing out from where the bristles should be.

Marenco constantly plays with the tension between daily comforts and the uncanny nastiness they obscure. There’s an undeniable, creepy comedy to all of it. In this exhibit, he riffs on puns at one moment (“Toothbrush,” for instance), and revels in absurdity the next, as in “Hairball Machine,” a rusted gumball machine filled with tangles of the artist’s girlfriend’s actual hair). The viewer’s gut reaction to all of these surreal pairings is a combination of a scoff and shudder. But under the surface of these works, which evoke art movements of years past, is also a distinct, personal experience—a story of the artist himself.

Marenco manipulates many childhood staples in “Objetos Intervenidos,” but the ones central to the artist’s own memory seem to be placed in the limelight. “Slingshot for an Altarboy,” for example, transforms a rosary into a slingshot with a leather-strap and a T-bone handle. Next to it hangs “The Voice of Silence,” a corroded tin lid with the silhouette of the Virgin Mary in its center, recalling traditional portraiture in a striking, almost perverse way. Both works reinforce an understanding of the artist’s childhood under Mexican Catholicism, but “Objetos Intervenidos” unfolds for the viewers, allowing them to dredge out buried thoughts. These items of mixed-together elements and odd material house the pains of childhood, both personal and universal, well addressed or still unresolved. With some strange pleasure, they at last pull back the veil on absurd connections that sprout up there. Or so said the umbrella to the ironing board.

33 Contemporary at Zhou B. Art Center, 1029 W. 35th St. Through February 11. Monday-Thursday, 10am-5pm; Friday, 10am-7pm; also by appointment. Free. (708)837-4534. 33collective.com

Fast-forward five years and it seems that this artistic ménage à trois has disbanded.

In preparation for his debut at the Rhona Hoffman Gallery in the West Loop, Butzer gave a presentation last Wednesday at the Cochrane-Woods Art Center that demonstrated a reactionary shift in his style.

In the dim light, Butzer gripped the lectern, a cable-knit cardigan draped over his thin shoulders. “I have something entertaining for you,” he began, “something that is entertaining for both you and for myself.” Appearing before the crowd in round wire glasses, corduroys, and a striped polo shirt tucked conspicuously into Jockey boxer briefs, the artist looked like a more stylish Buster Bluth. He removed a stack of folded paper and explained he would read lines from the writings of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus—first in German, and then in English—in conjunction with slide images of his work. “So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.” The audience perked up their ears in anticipation.

He paused and flicked on the projector to reveal an image of one of his paintings: smoke gray with two rectangular outlines encroaching on one another.

“The sun is wide as a human’s foot,” he read. After clicking for the next slide, Butzer slowly turned over a new sheet from his stack of paper.

“If everything that exists should become smoke, even nostrils would still distinguish it.” The audience squirmed as he deliberately read the phrase forcefully in German, paused for effect, then repeated the phrase in English.

Butzer’s recitation held the audience in rapt puzzlement. Each slide deviated only slightly from the ones preceding it—a slight thickening of the ubiquitous black rectangles, a miniscule variation in the gray hues.

These paintings are nothing like the vibrant cartoon-like work he completed in the mid-2000s. In fact, it seemed as though his work had undergone a complete genre swap: Butzer’s self-proclaimed “Science Fiction Expressionism” now reads as stark non-fiction. But Butzer insisted, “I see [the paintings] as similar to everything I did before. [The audience] should react and be irritated by it.”

The exhaustive exploration of the formal black and gray paintings is essential to Butzer’s artistic process. “If it seems familiar to you then it’s new…[The repetition] is how you can get closer to the birthplace of painting.”

When asked about his shift in aesthetic, he answered without batting a lash: “I wanted to escape the dualism of polychromatic and monochromatic.” He looked at the projector screen, and said, “These works inhabit color. They are primary colors living in the painting inside—not being added on the surface.” The audience gazed blankly at the flat gray paintings, trying to fully comprehend this assertion.

An attendee asked about the black rectangular forms, but Butzer see it that way. “I have never painted a rectangle in my whole life because I do not believe in earth-bound geometry,” Butzer asserted, somewhat opaquely. “I calculate coloristic values rather than geometry. I would call the paintings round, even. I paint over these laws and calculate every bit of it and paint over again and again. It’s about annihilation. It burns away measurements because they are round.”

Continuing the theme of annihilation, Butzer told the crowd that he only draws inspiration from dead artists and cited Raphael as his latest artistic muse. “I cannot accept the [artists] that live,” he said. “It’s not my job to like other artists.”

Room 43, the new home of the Hyde Park Jazz Society, is already more than a venue—it’s a niche social scene. After decades of lacking a regular venue for affordable jazz performances, harmony (preferably of the discordant Miles Davis variety) is within earshot for legions of South Side jazz fans, and the people packing Room 43 on Sunday nights know jazz. An embrace is the most common form of greeting and no one is shy about telling you the size of his record collection. One gentleman couldn’t wait to detail the best of his three-thousand LP library. But before getting there, he had a few questions. “Hold up,” he boomed, by way of introduction. “Do you know who this is?” pointing at a speaker issuing a stand-in melody. By luck, sheer dumb luck, his interlocutor knew the name. “Oh, well I just had to check up on ya’. Make sure you were for real.”

For area resident John Lee (also, like Bernard Scavella, of the pharmaceutical persuasion), the Hyde Park Jazz Society’s return and permanent residence is no minor feat. “I’ve been following Bernard for years,” says Lee, weighing his words carefully, beret slightly askew. “Its an achievement that we can bring people like him in regularly. I’ve been listening to this stuff for over 40 years and I would always come back to hear him here.” He explains that his love for the medium began as a kid in Alabama, back in the day when the Norman Rockwell-vision of the whole family huddling round a radio had already ceased to be a societal norm.

The Hyde Park Jazz Society’s new (or rather, renewed) home is located a good eight blocks beyond the neighborhood’s northern border. If not for the nearby bistro, African art gallery, and the muffled sounds of ’40s ballads, Room 43 would blend seamlessly into this staid section of 43rd Street. The area betwixt Bronzeville and Hyde Park once vied with Harlem as jazz’s national epicenter. Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans, but when his dynamic riffs had become a local legend and he was ready for the big time, Satchmo ditched the Bayou and set up shop on the South Side. The area had a good half-century run until the late ’60s, when the number of clubs dwindled and then—with the help of, as a few audience members put it sourly, “urban renewal”—ceased to exist.

The Hyde Park Jazz Society formed back in 1995 to try and revitalize the scene by regularly enticing musicians to stray farther south of the Loop. Despite the group’s huge success with its annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival, the organization has  had trouble maintaining weekly performances. At long last they found Room 43, offered by local restaurateur Norman Bolden in 2009. But a bureaucratic snafu caused the city to halt performances until Bolden went through the lengthy process of obtaining a Public Place of Amusement license. With amusement legalized on 43rd St., the Hyde Park Jazz Society celebrated its new digs in high style on January 5.

Still, it’s not exactly promising when a building feels the need to advertise itself as “classy.” (But that’s the trouble with classiness: if you use it you lose it.) In the case of Room 43, though, the word presents itself as something of a self-evident truth. The venue sports elegant tables complete with candlelight and black tablecloths, the wait staff is attentive, the bar well-stocked, and the hors d’oeuvres not abnormally expensive. The décor appears to have been lifted from the nearby African art gallery and makes what might have seemed a generically chic layout distinctive and worth pausing over.

But Scavella doesn’t seem to need pauses. As evening wore into morning, the tunes’ tempo and verve steadily increased. Scavella, like any venerable musician, can master any mood, but seems practically transcendent when he slips into classic jazz anthems. The group performed a peerless rendition of Duke Ellington’s “Caravan,” and the song’s Spanish intensity forced one aged attendee to attempt an interpretative dance number without leaving his chair. Scavella is backed up by a crack ensemble, staffed with soloists that can keep pace with his trilling, bar after bar. Guitarist Randy Ford gets so absorbed in the improvisation that he silently scats his killer riffs before he plays them; reading his lips is a preview of the soaring rhythms that are next on tap. Toward the end of the night, the quintet brought the house down with the Herbie Hancock mainstay “Cantaloupe Island.” The tune is an improviser’s dream, an infectious melody that hooks the listener into the extended solo section that mercifully refuses to end. The four-hour format is one of Room 43’s chief strengths.  Jazz is an art form best absorbed live and at length. The call and response needs to be teased out and the harmonies absorbed over time to be cared about.

After quitting Room 43, the fact that many Americans’ exposure to jazz begins at Starbucks and ends with three excruciatingly mellow-minutes of Kenny G. starts to seem like an ongoing national tragedy. Locally, there is an escape route. South Siders no longer have an excuse for feeling lukewarm about jazz. Elevator music has a cure and it just gained a new lease on life on 43rd Street.

The Hyde Park Jazz Society holds concerts every Sunday Evening at 7:30 in Room 43. 1043 E. 43rd Street. $10 adult/$5 students and children. hydeparkjazzsociety.com

Traditionally the music of the Colombian peasantry with a distinctive Afro-Caribbean beat, cumbia has begun to incorporate other music genres, from reggaeton to house as it modernizes. As cumbia evolves, so does its fan base: no longer only a favorite of Latinos and Latin-music enthusiasts, cumbia is drawing in young Chicagoans looking for something to dance to. One of the genre’s virtues is its ability to retain and expand its appeal, incorporating the sounds of the people and places it comes into contact with.

A style less renowned than salsa or bachata—at least in Chicago—cumbia is rarely played in these parts. To make up for this shortage of that signature shuffle, the People’s DJs Collective holds monthly cumbia nights where the lively and danceable music is given its due. When they first started playing, they showcased Maracuyeah, an all-female DJ group from Washington, DC. Maracuyeah’s name is a play on the Spanish word for passion fruit, maracuyá, and denotes how they, like the People’s DJs Collective, are interested in injecting Latin music with the sounds of hip-hop and dubstep.

Earlier in the night, familiar salsa and meringue beats reverberated: a more folksy style of cumbia issued from the turntables, with fewer of the touches that give cumbia its contemporary, poppy flavor. Later in the night NuCumbia came on, a subgenre that infuses elements of hip-hop and house. The DJs played some tried and true remixes, like Juanes’s “La Camisa Negra,” and some pleasant surprises, like a mashup of the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go.”

The People’s DJ Collective got their start playing fundraisers for non-profits. Their promise to serve the community through the fusion music they play remains evident today in their decision to hold cumbia night at Zhou B. While the swank art gallery is not exactly of the masses as cumbia professes to be, Itzi-Nallah says that Zhou B’s location in Bridgeport helps to attract a local crowd—one of the Collective’s primary objectives. “Many times the Latin community has to go north or to expensive places to hear nice music, or just a generic Latin night. A lot of our people don’t want to go to Wicker Park.”

The dancers on the floor included Latinos living on the South Side and young adults with a taste for cumbia’s syncretic sound. There were a few members of the crowd engaging in the kind of sexy shimmying that Shakira removed her bottom rib to do, but most of the attendees seemed relaxed and insouciant, practitioners of a more homegrown groove. Another DJ summed it up nicely later that night: “It’s a traditional kind of music, but anyone can dance to it.”

Tyler Leeds

Bruce Taylor began the first day of class by asking his nine students why they were given their first names. “I was named Joy,” responded one student, “because my daddy said I brought joy into his life.” After two beats of respectful silence a single giggle escaped from someone’s mouth. The class erupted in laughter. Taylor moved on to the next student.

“My grandma and my mom named me Ashley because they didn’t want stereotypes thrown upon the family,” answered another student. “Instead of being called a black name, they chose a common name so that unless I told someone my race no one would know.” This time no one laughed. Instead, a few hands crept toward the book lying on everyone’s desk—Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.” Taylor was unfazed, and moved on to the next student. Ashley’s response was exactly what he was looking for.

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The students all came from King College Prep in Kenwood, one of Chicago Public Schools’ selective-enrollment high schools. They had come to a classroom on the University of Chicago campus to participate in an enrichment program called Living Bookshelf. The program, created by Taylor, attempts to push student engagement with the arts beyond plot quizzes and reviews. In Taylor’s classroom, the students were pushed to emotionally identify with Ellison’s work. In preparation for their first session, the class attended Court Theatre’s production of the “Invisible Man”—the novel’s first theatrical adaptation.

After four two-hour sessions of discussion and collaboration, the students will have produced their own creative response to Ellison’s novel—a two-scene musical theatre piece exploring the identities of two secondary characters. Mary Ann Ivan, a veteran of Broadway musical pits, will be flown in to compose music to accompany the lyrics the students write. Taylor will then hire professional actors and singers to perform the scenes on stage at Court Theatre as part of the Hyde Park Bank High School Performance Festival on February 24. But before lyrics can be paired with notes, the students have to do some work.

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While Ashley’s response quieted the room, Taylor was just beginning to warm up. At age 65, Taylor is a spry man. He has a mess of grey hair and a full mustache. He speaks with the intonation and cadence of someone used to an audience. As his students sat along narrow tables that formed a hollow rectangle, Taylor ran about in the middle. He never waited for his students to raise their hands. Instead, he would rush up to whoever hadn’t spoken in awhile. He would lean across the table and look them in eye and ask, “What do you think?” If they took too long, he would reach across and poke the students gently in the head. Their stunned expressions and indignation didn’t change the fact that Taylor’s enthusiasm was infectious.

Taylor’s first question was intentionally pointed—the history of one’s family and culture are often expressed in one’s name. Taylor’s class contains nine African Americans from the South Side, and he was seeking an emotional avenue into Ellison’s text. “Invisible Man” is the story of an African-American man leaving the South for New York City during the turbulent inter-war years.

After Ashley’s remark, everyone could make out the connection between their own lives and the novel. But how clearly did they see it? While Taylor allowed the power of Ashley’s words to linger in the classroom, he is still, like many great educators, quite demanding. Taylor began to drill his students on the basics.

“Our understanding must begin with context,” Taylor declared. “What is the context of this work?”

“Racism. Those were racist times,” said one student, half as an answer and half as a question.

“Correct, but tell me more,” Taylor pressed. “Tell me specifically. Jim Crow laws have a lot to do with the context of this work. Now, which Jim Crow laws offend you the most, and which offend you the least?”

Taylor marched around the room, passing from student to student. They all had the chance to demonstrate their opinions, with Taylor supplementing their knowledge of history along the way. In this manner, the students not only strengthened their understanding of the text, but also the connection between Ellison’s reality and the South Side today.

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Taylor has a long history with theatres. In the mid-1970s, Taylor was the production stage manager for the Seattle Opera. Under the Carter administration, federal money became available to arts organizations that were willing to bring their programming to public school students. This is where Taylor got his start as an arts educator. To prepare students to experience opera—never an easy task—Taylor was sent to prep classes on what to expect before arriving at the theatre. According to Taylor, “I had done almost everything anyone can do in a theatre, but I found I really enjoyed [teaching] and that I did it well.”

From this beginning, Taylor conceived of a post-viewing session to help students refine their understandings of the performances and to discuss their reactions. But Taylor knew arts education shouldn’t simply work to increase his student’s appreciation of work. He wanted his students to love art with the same intensity he possessed, but he also wanted them to get a job so that they could continue to appreciate the arts. As a result, Taylor claims it is his job to “get kids to really use in their own lives what we in the arts use in our profession. So I thought to myself, ‘What are the habits of mind that artists develop? How do we think? How do we create? How do we work together?’”

The seed of Living Bookshelf was planted, but Taylor still needed inspiration. During this time, Taylor came across the Foxfire Magazine. Created in 1966, “Foxfire” is one of the most prominent examples of 1960s experiential education.

Based out of Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, a private high school in Georgia, “Foxfire” was a student-produced publication that documented the cultural history of the declining Appalachian culture. A collection of the articles was published as a book in 1972, later becoming a national bestseller.

“After reading the Foxfire book,” says Taylor, “I asked myself, Why couldn’t kids do that in the arts?” As a result, Taylor began a program entitled “Creating Original Opera.” As in Living Bookshelf, students were tasked with not only understanding a work—in this case, an opera—but also producing an artistic response to be performed. According to Taylor, “Creating Original Opera” was conducted in over 1000 schools across twelve countries.

But “Creating Original Opera” was always seen as a supplement to his students’ education. While Taylor may wish otherwise, operas never play a central role in primary education. In today’s world, the reaching of national standards in the language arts and mathematics controls school funding. Taylor had to adapt.

“Common Core State Standards dominate primary education. They have been adopted by 46 states. And so I looked at the Common Core requirements, and I thought that I could slightly modify what I do to meet these new requirements,” says Taylor. Living Bookshelf is Taylor’s attempt to meet state education requirements through the arts.

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Taylor recently left the East Coast for Chicago because his wife found a new job. “She makes way more money than I do, so I had to move with her,” he says. “I moved here without a job. I still don’t have a job, but arts education is what I do, so I don’t care if I get paid to do it or not. I like to think that I am my wife’s contribution to the arts.”

Once in Chicago, Taylor got in touch with William Michel, executive director of the UofC’s Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts. Taylor’s current incarnation of Living Bookshelf is being offered through the UofC’s Arts and Public Life Initiative. Taylor had no plans to work with “Invisible Man,” but took advantage of Court Theatre’s production. According to Dara Epison, program coordinator of University and Community Arts Collaborations, “The fact that the students chosen to work with him would have the opportunity to perform their work on Court’s stage with professional actors was simply a result of the stars aligning properly and Court being incredibly supportive.”

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By the end of the first session, the students had had no problem identifying the two characters from “Invisible Man” that they wanted to explore. Selecting the character of Ras, who is loosely based on the Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey, was especially easy. The students were intrigued by the man they interpreted as vengeful, strong-willed, and determined.

In between the end of class and the second session, held last Saturday, the students were tasked with creating a biography for Ras that explained his traits. Whether the result of Taylor’s careful prodding or not, imagination was in strong supply.

“Ras witnessed the murder of his family,” said one student, serious and soft.

“Yeah, his father was betrayed by a white guy involved in the Brotherhood,” whispered another.

As they traced out the source of his anger, Ras’s identity came into focus. He was a poet, and a few years had passed since the time of “Invisible Man.” Ras was now a participant in the Harlem Renaissance—another context for the students to explore.

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Most classrooms don’t work this way. Often, mastering the plot is what matters. It demonstrates a student’s ability to grasp and recall information, as that line of thinking goes. But while Taylor has adapted his project to state requirements, he believes foremost in protecting his students’ futures.

“Plenty of people have iPhones or iPads—if you want to know something, you just look it up,” he notes. “The students of today, if they want to succeed, need to learn how to think and create. They will be paid to be creative. The thing we have to prove, and I want to demonstrate with these kids, is that artists can contribute to student achievement. But we’re not going to succeed by having kids just act, sing, and dance. We have to have them get creative in a way they can apply to an academic subject.”

By leading his students through lyric writing, Taylor hopes to grant his students a command of metaphors—something required for state tests and successful communication. Placing these lyrics atop a melody will be no easy task, but the students still have a few more weeks to prepare. In the end, Taylor’s class will have created something new. This ability—creativity—is at the heart of Taylor’s mission.

“Because of the tests, teachers don’t ask students what they think, they ask what do you know, which isn’t so important. When you ask younger kids what do you think, they freeze. But the jobs out there today are conceptual and creative. The arts can help them think and create.”

Kit Wise, Arcadia, 2011, video still, assisted by Darin Bendall

For an Englishman living in Australia, artist Kit Wise has a lot to say about ecology and sprawl in America. In his new piece “Arcadia,” which is on display at the Hyde Park Art Center through April 8, he uses dynamic high-definition digital collages of aerial photos to explore the relationship between ecology and urban forms.

Translucent photos of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the 2008 Mississippi River floods are overlaid to form a surreal landscape. Dozens of photos are projected across the screens simultaneously. They drift and merge. The superimposition is disorienting and unsettling, as discrete sets of images overlap along the length of the projection screens. Displaced houses float along wind-slapped highways. Down a few screens, cows and cars peer through images of damaged forests. Vast bodies of water suddenly become ravaged subdivisions. The transitory and transitional nature of the projections produces an otherwordly effect that highlights the limits of human control.

The exhibition’s title, “Arcadia,” is an intentional misnomer. The term, which conjures visions of idyllic pastoral life, makes an ironic statement when used as a descriptor for a piece that foremost showcases images of destruction. Wise’s collage harkens back to a work by French classical painter Nicolas Poussin. Poussin’s piece “Et in Arcadia” depicts four shepherds amid tranquil wildlife peering into a tomb. The title, which means “even in Arcadia,” is meant as a reminder that even in paradise, death and destruction are imminent. Wise’s “Arcadia” reflects and reiterates this theme. As skyscrapers and subdivisions merge with inundated streets and ravaged forests, Wise reminds us that at any time nature can break through the veil of civilized order. For Wise, like Poussin, destruction is a constituent part of utopia.

Continuing his tradition of producing site-specific pieces, Wise’s digital collage was created especially for HPAC’s Jackman Goldwasser Catwalk Gallery.  Located on HPAC’s second floor, the Goldwasser stretches, like a bridge, above the larger gallery below. On one side, viewers have an aerial view of the artwork and museumgoers on the first floor; floor-to-window ceilings flank the other side. “Arcadia” is an evening-only exhibition. At 3pm, as the sun begins to set, these massive windows of the Goldwasser Gallery are covered, and the shades become projection screens for Wise’s piece.

Viewing “Arcadia” in this setting is a curious experience. For one, it is difficult to avoid drawing parallels between the aerial nature of Kit Wise’s piece and the aerial view the catwalk provides of the gallery below.While looking down over the gallery conjures feelings of omniscience and control, looking at “Arcadia” spurs a sense of smallness, confusion, and distance. The piece’s translucent, overlapping bird’s-eye-views offer no real perspective of the places it depicts, and instead of the viewer feels a palpable loss of control, as if being consumed by nature. This effect is undoubtedly enhanced by the viewer’s proximity to the piece. Since the Goldwasser is at most three paces wide, visitors are forced to stand close to the vast screens. From this perspective, it is impossible to view the entire piece at once. Instead, the viewer must turn her head and crane her neck to keep up with the shifting landscapes. Occasionally, visitors to the gallery even come into contact with their own shadow outlined against the light of the projector, a subtle reminder that their own action or inaction, too, is implicated by the destruction of Arcadia.

Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Through April 8. Reception February 12, 3pm-5pm. Monday-Thursday, 10am-8pm; Friday-Saturday, 10am-5pm; Sunday, noon-5pm. Free. (773)324-5520. hydeparkart.org

Founded in 1893 near the corner of Van Buren and Michigan, the company supplied its plaster decorations for many of Chicago’s most opulent buildings , including, structures built for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. They also crafted the ornamental plaster for movie palaces across the city, including the Ramova Theater in Bridgeport, the ceiling medallions at the Wynn Casino in Las Vegas, and the decorations for galleries in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Now, much of their work involves producing set pieces and decorations for movies like “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” “The Cotton Club,” and “The Untouchables.”

While the company has changed over the years to meet new demands, their process remains the same. While a recent order of columns and flourishes for a late-night TV set may not be equal to the resplendent White City, the decorations are hatched from the same hand-carved wood molds. Whether it’s a home fireplace mantel, or columns for a scene in “The Dark Knight,” Decorators Supply still creates their pieces from the patterns it used in the late-19th and early-20th century, according to its president, Steve Grage. This is in part because mold crafting is a disappearing art form, he says, but also because the designs are as historically accurate as they come.

“I still hear from customers who I remember ordering from our company 33 years ago,” Grage notes. He also points to the important role that family has played in the company throughout the years. Today, the third generation of Grages runs the business. Steve Grage fondly recalls when he first started at Decorators Supply, he worked and learned alongside his grandfather, who joined the company as a teenager and was still working at age 90.

Grage says that Bridgeport, where they moved in 1909 before settling in their current location in 1963, has been very important to the development of the company. “It made sense to be in Bridgeport—it’s an industrial neighborhood, and being near the railroad, river, and roads, it’s easy to get materials in and out. And it’s a tough blue collar area, where you could find a good workforce.”

There may be a touch of irony in the fact that these elaborate creations were constructed in a district not historically noted for its elegance. But in Bridgeport—once called Hardscrabble for its rough reputation—many local businesses have thrived. Old-school meatpacking plants like Chiappetti’s and Allen Brothers have found a more stable market in upscale restaurants, and while the recession hit 121- year-old Butler Street Foundry hard, it tried to reinvent itself as an artisanal metallurgy business, teaming up with the Art Institute for some projects.  Bridgeporters may not be born with silver spoons in their mouths, but they were probably the ones who made them.

Despite Decorators Supply’s upper-crust appeal, Grage says that they are still struggling to survive in this economy. “Our products go into buildings,” he says, but “even though they’re high end, there just aren’t that many houses that go up.”

When building does happen, Grage notes, the company is still battling a powerful sociological force—changing taste. Their finely crafted ornaments—once sought-after markers of wealth and glamour—have fallen out of fashion after modernism’s “less-is-more” aesthetic. “I’ve seen a change towards a modern style, away from the highly decorated. Every now and then you see people throw in a Corinthian column, as a little splash.”

The company is doing their best to keep up with the changing marketplace, producing and selling “transitional-style moldings” that aren’t overly florid. But without carving new patterns, the most the company can do to accommodate the trend is to find the least ornate templates out of a collection of around 12,000 designs.

But Grage says that the company is ready to adapt. He says he is underlining their biggest assets: the tremendous selection, high-quality products, superior customer service, and the company’s reputation as an environmentally friendly,  family-run business.

His strategy echoes a familiar refrain from a new class of businesses on the rise in Bridgeport—artsy, charming, green, and hyper-local. But while pasty shops, craft-whiskey bars, and organic restaurants have been saying it for months, only Decorators Supply can say they have been doing it for more than a century.

“It’s like classical music. Other music comes and goes, but classical, and its fans, stick around.”

Decorators Supply, 3610 S. Morgan St. (773)847-6300