“Flirting is all about getting your heart’s desire.”

Burrell is a polished woman, wearing a knee length blue dress with beaded tear-shaped cutouts. Her nails, toenails, and understated bracelet are expertly coordinated. She appears confident and engaging—not too surprising for someone in her profession.

Burrell seems to be a walking embodiment of the characters in her book—young, successful, and armed with a romantic plan. Her novel, “Single Girl Summer,” the impetus for her workshop at Listenbee, is semi-autobiographical. “Single Girl Summer” features a recently divorced woman struggling to find her footing in the dating world. Burrell herself began the story after a painful divorce, and this experience doubtless informed the novel. Like Burrell, the three main characters all have successful careers. One is a lawyer; another owns her own restaurant. Though the novel appears to have more than its fair share of romantic-novel clichés and unrealistic moments, it has an empowering core—strong, successful women, taking control of their emotional and romantic lives.

Many in the crowd at Listenbee last Friday already knew and loved Burrell’s book for this reason; others who wandered into the gallery during the course of their Second Fridays art walks were just hearing of “Single Girl Summer” for the first time. The crowd nodded attentively as they listened to Burrell speak. In the this post-Mad Men era, it may be commonsense that a woman can be successful, independent, and unabashedly flirtatious all at the same time. Still, every now and then it’s nice to have a reminder. This is such stuff as dreams and book tours are made of.

“Natural Selection” features four artists: Jessica Hogberg, Kristen Maniscalco, Grace Scott, and Mark Yee. Although their respective styles vary in medium, texture, and style, all of their works explore ecological themes—a premise powerful enough to make the vibe of the show feel cohesive. Acrylic paintings, ink drawings, and ceramic sculptures create pieces of hazy abstraction and lustrous realism, yet all the works come together under a unifying palette.

The plain white walls and wood floors of the gallery allow colors to shine through the distraction of the evening’s bumping mash-ups and crowd. Shadowy greys, ranging from metallic to clay, merged viscously with feathery greens and blues. Cool shades are so prominent in the works that brighter colors, when they do emerge, are striking. The parallel themes and colors of the artists’ oeuvre are so arresting that it takes a good deal of examination to get to know the character of the individual work of each, to be able to distinguish each artist from another, and to start to understand their distinct purposes and goals.

Hogberg, a young, pretty, tall, and down-to-earth brunette, is concerned with systems—how harmonious, self-contained orders form from the interactions of tiny individual organisms, how even the most minute creature can retain its own unique qualities, but almost become an environment or a landscape when part of a group. This concept of the aggregative clockwork of autonomous living things can be seen throughout her work, in the repetition of donut/bacteria-like shapes in cool greys and teal-greens, each distinctive but contributing to an elegant whole when perusing through her paintings.

Maniscalco is responsible for the exhibition’s intriguing, lifelike, and oft-cryptic ceramic sculptures. She displays bulbous spheres arranged in herd-like formations and a grotesquely realistic and fascinating snake whose head is devouring a human heart and whose body is cut into sections that become maze-like tunnels for mice. Although Maniscalco’s work is perhaps the most impenetrable of the exhibit’s abstract collection, the theme of environmentalism offers a helpful entryway into understanding her pieces. “My work is a reaction to our exponential population increase, and communicates the importance of respectful forethought regarding our natural resources,” she writes in her introduction to her contribution to “Natural Selection.” With this lens, spheres become symbols of subjugated womankind in “Dwindling Matriarchy.” The snake and mice become, perhaps, an emblem of the cyclical and balanced relationships in nature, even between predator and prey.

Scott’s work represents the most diverse and versatile use of media and style of the four artists, with pieces displaying an expertise in both tattoo-style inkings of whales and in glossily surrealistic oil paintings featuring icy landscapes and falling blackbirds. In her introduction to Natural Selection, Scott discusses “integrating the ‘myth’ ” into her work, allowing her to “juxtapose it with the harsh realities of the modern world.” The presence of myth becomes obvious in pieces like “Eden,” an ink print of a female bodied, raven-headed, satyr-footed creature clutching the infamous apple in its beak, a take on the Paradise Lost myth that makes the viewer question the relationship of man and beast and the spiraling after-effects of human nature on nature in general.

Finally, Mark Yee is a stylish and polished ex-financier who makes larger-than-life, cloudy, abstract paintings in mixtures of acrylics, chalk, and oils. His hilly, three-dimensional pieces are reminiscent of landscapes. Like Hogberg, his inspiration comes from the synthesis of “energy and rest, peace and strife, yin and yang.” These notions can coexist “simultaneously in natural phenomena,” he writes on Black Cloud’s website. Simultaneity is visible in works like “Piece 57,” where primordial mists are at the same time flat and highly textured, colorful, and cool—as if each painting coincidentally captures an instant and eon within the borders of its canvas.

Black Cloud Gallery, 1909 S. Halsted St. Through May 30. Monday ,10am-3pm; Wednesday, 11am-6pm. Free. (773) 678 3950. blackcloudgallery.net

So begin the simple directives, shared with the audience members, that guide the stone-faced, barefooted women standing against a minimalist backdrop of ROOMS, a small standalone gallery in Pilsen. Todd and Marrakesh Frugia’s one-night-only performance art piece, “Songs From the Sea of Boths,” came on a warm, inviting evening as gallery-goers streamed along S. Halsted for Second Fridays. During the three-hour period of the show, the women stood in the gallery ringing their chimes as viewers came and went, staying as long or as short a period as they liked.

After turning into the narrow entryway, an unobtrusive white door with a sign asking for viewers to “please enter quietly” opens,  inviting the sounds of the delicate, penetrating chimes and the slow, rhythmic steps of the twelve women. They stand straight-backed, arms raised, the thin silver chimes clasped in their hands and dangling from their wrists, forming angular, geometric traces against the bare white canvas of their simple sleeveless dresses.

The chimes ring out without pattern, as some of the women stand statue-still and others slowly lift an arm to ring a chime. A few women put down their arms and speak: “Each of their own,” they say, following a prescribed script, turning to either the left or the right. “Sometimes one. Sometimes the other,” they continue, stepping according to the instructions.

“We’ve been dealing a lot with sort of random patterns and rules,” Frugia says, describing the piece as a game of sorts for the performers. They can strike one of their chimes, or turn left or right, but can only take a limited number of steps. Drawing from a theatrical and literary background, the artists had given the performers a specific script to follow as they lower their arms and turn.            Frugia says that audience reaction has varied widely, alternately describing the performance as marionette-like, mechanical, or like a sea. “We’re giving a fertile soil for art to grow,” Frugia says, likening the process to a farmer throwing seeds onto a field, not knowing exactly what will sprout. “There’s always someone who just walks in, looks at the piece, and their face just kind of gets stuck…That’s the audience member I’m going for, that person that gets mesmerized or trapped.”

Originally, the piece was commissioned for a wedding, Frugia says—something that was unique in their artistic experience. “We wanted a piece that was about two things that were coming together,” she explained. The “Boths,” then, refer to the two chimes on the wrists of the performers: “through the actor, [the separate chimes] become a both.”

Furthermore, he is interested in the effort driving the choices that the women make. They must hold their arms up throughout the performance, save for the very strict stipulations set in the script. They can ring either chime, as long as each chime is allowed to fully ring out before ringing another. The instructions provide for the inevitable tiring of their arms by allowing them to be lowered when a performer wants to recite the script.

Marrakesh and Frugia drew performers from their theater friends and from connections with actors and models, as well as from regulars who see their pieces and ask to participate—those curious to know what it would be like to stand and ring a bell for three hours. “We do these long, endurance-driven shows,” he says.  “The piece is for them just as much for the audience.”

The women move in the space as if in a dream, the gentle rings and the low murmur of their voices creating a slight hum in the air, as their bare feet pad slowly, methodically, across the floor. The white of their dresses almost glows, and the movement and non-movement of their bodies form an eerie spontaneous choreography. “But a single both in a sea of boths,” they say. “What music.”

835 S. Halsted St. Hours by appointment. (312)733-1356. chicagoartsdistrict.org

Tameka Jones of Pretty in Pink Productions has answers. Her speed dating service, Twenty First Dates, presents the opportunity for love at first (or twentieth) sight to the South Side’s lonely masses in the form of fleeting romantic encounters.

Jones, who also operates under the alias “Miss Pretty Pink,” says that the idea for Twenty First Dates came from repeated viewings of the romantic comedy Hitch. In the film, Will Smith plays a “date doctor” who diagnoses men’s romantic foibles, before curing them with dates of both the blind and sped-up variety. Jones says that the premise, coupled with the perils of the fast-paced life led by most singles, inspired her to launch her speed dating service. She says, with a dreamy gleam in her eye, “There’s just not enough time to find dates nowadays. It’s easy here compared to a bar!”

Twenty First Dates occurs weekly in the rear of L26, an edgy dining hotspot in Bronzeville, and is, without a doubt, an updated take on one of love’s most ancient rituals. Female speed daters sit expectantly on the inside of a ring of tables as each new man cycles by. Dates lasts five minutes, before Jones rings a bell that signals a shift to the next potential mate.

Loosened up by the one free drink included with Twenty First Dates’ $25 admission fee, I decided to try my hand (and my heart) at this unconventional, albeit intriguing, new dating ritual. From the outset my encounters were uncomfortable, undoubtedly due in part to compounded flirtatious anticipation and necessarily dry journalistic inquiry.

An innocent, investigative query of, “Do you come here often?” was met with no sympathy in the eyes of my first partner, so I trashed that angle of attack in favor of something more straightforward.  I decided it might be best to evade, up front, any further shenanigans. I found an escape from suggestive banter in the following mundane disclosure: I’m actually a reporter, do you mind if I ask you a few questions about speed dating?

From there, the conversations grew decidedly cooler, but perhaps more pointed. The women whom I “encountered” throughout the night had come to Twenty First Dates for reasons ranging from the brightly curious (“I wanted to try something new!”) to the somewhat more practical (“It’s a good way to get to know someone safely and non-creepily”). By and large, Twenty First Dates’ clientele said they hoped to meet new people. It felt ironic, considering the decidedly modern nature of speed dating, that most daters seemed to be searching for a “more traditional” alternative to the chaotic and stifling world of meat market–esque bars and clubs.

Though few speed daters considered themselves to be conventional (“I am anything but traditional,” one woman assured me), most seemed to hold views tending toward old-style romance. One young lady affirmed her belief in love at first sight, stating hopefully, “Anything is possible in the first five minutes of meeting someone.” When asked if she might catch that kind of spark at Twenty First Dates, she replied, “It might not be tonight, but someday, definitely.”

Another speed dater took a slightly different view: “I’d like to believe [in love at first sight], but I don’t think I can!” The venue, however, struck her as an opportunity for “instant connections,” a fitting and ostensibly modernized version of first-sighted love.

As for the madame of the evening, Tameka Jones affirmed her belief in the reality of love at first sight. “In the first two minutes of taking to someone,” she said, simultaneously starry-eyed and grounded, “You can form a connection that tells you if you’re compatible for the long-term.” The promise of such an apocalyptic spark powers much of the drive behind speed dating. What better place to find Mr. or Mrs. Right than in a quick and intimate environment? It’s enough time to know.

Though Twenty First Dates only launched at the beginning of the month, a surplus of eager daters, Jones’ gusto, and the encouragement of spring seem to promise success. Twenty First Dates will be kindling the fires of summer flings and lifelong couplings for a long time to come.

Twenty First Dates, L26 Restaurant, 2600 S. State St. Wednesdays, 8-10pm. $25. 

Last Wednesday, Vargas opened his both serious and comical speech at the University of Chicago’s International House by saying, “My name is Jose Antonio Vargas and I look Asian, which means I’m Filipino.” Throughout his talk—which left many members of the audience with damp tissues—Vargas played to his audience’s emotions in order to convince them that the United States immigration policy is racist and in dire need of reform.

Vargas began with his own story. In 1993, as a twelve-year old, he immigrated without his parents to Mountain View, California in the Bay Area. “I got there before Google,” he says jokingly. When he went to apply for a Driver’s License at the DMV in his late teens, he discovered that his green card was counterfeit. Since then, he has managed to evade the authorities while becoming one of the nation’s most celebrated young journalists. He has held coveted positions at some of the country’s most eminent publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post.  In 2007, Vargas won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Virginia Tech Massacre, but the journalist terms his acclaimed profile of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the New Yorker to be the “high point of [his] career.” As a high school student, he says he thought, “Maybe I could write myself into America.” And that is exactly what Vargas has done.

His campaign, called “Define American,” is a mission to fix “our broken immigration system” and to create a “21st century underground railroad for illegal immigrants” to fill in where the government has failed. Vargas is critical of the “show-me-your-papers” bills being passed in Arizona, SB 1070, and Alabama, HB 56. He sees this legislation as the white man’s hypocrisy. “From 1892 to 1954, twelve million Europeans were welcomed into the United States at Ellis Island. And sixty years later, America is faced with the migration of another twelve million people.” The most important question, he says, is not “who, when, where, or how many,” but, “why do people want to come to the United States?” He answers this questions with another. “Why couldn’t I have a better life in Manila?” Vargas’ rhetoric is somewhat oversimplified. He seems to have overlooked the question of whether or not it would be sustainable for the United States to grant citizenship to every individual in the world who wants to become an American citizen.

To this day, Vargas, who has become a sort of celebrity activist, travels through airports in this country without a valid visa, betting each time that the authorities won’t catch him. “‘Why don’t you just make yourself legal?’ people ask me.” He gave the I-House audience his answer with a smirk: “Cause I’m a masochist and this is so fun.”

Behind Ondaatje’s light-hearted demeanor is an enduring history of printed works which have brought complex emotions, empathetic characters, and moving landscapes to inspired readers for decades. His most well-known book, “The English Patient,” centers around a burn victim with hardly any knowledge of his identity, and explores the intersections of several histories and characters. The English Patient garnered the Man Booker Prize for Ondaatje, who explained at his talk that the book started with a simple setting. A patient in bed, a nurse, and the two talking—such situational elements comprise what Ondaatje calls a “keyhole” to the content of his novels.

Ondaatje, white-bearded, looked every bit the part of the authorial sage. He spoke of the writing process, and how his mind spawns a novel from a well-visualized setting—which he relies upon to provide the underpinnings for characters, themes, and plot. He also read a few selections from his poetry collection “Handwriting,” and some new fiction. With gentle intonations and an unstirred focus on his creation, Ondaatje presented three passages from “The Cat’s Table,” which was published in 2011. He shared some excellent insights, expanding on the importance of setting to his writing, and he admitted to having no official process, or formal understanding of how he writes. As evidenced by the precisely constructed work he recited, Ondaatje remains an artist in every sense of the word.

(Anna Fixsen)

Adaeze Okorafor graduated from Northwestern with a degree in Bio-Engineering and a specialization in Prosthetics in 2010. She is now the founder of Dash Me—a Chicago-based company that hosts regular clothing swaps in the city. She explains that “after a few years of soul-searching, my interests shifted.” Her interest stems from her own excursions across the city: “I would go to Plato’s Closet and various consignment shops to drop off unwanted clothing and the idea came to me to develop a process where individuals could swap their items with each other—right then and there.”

Consignment shops like Plato’s Closet offer store credit and sometimes cash for unwanted clothing, accessories, shoes, and the like. However, customers often forget about store credit or can’t find the time to go back to redeem it. Okorafor notes that the immediacy of the exchange is lost.

Her company, Dash Me, takes its name from a West-African slang term meaning “give me” that is used to express one’s desire to receive an object. It is often used as a term of endearment between people when exchanging attractive or fanciful objects. Through Dash Me’s clothing swaps, she hopes to create a more immediate, gratifying, and social shopping experience.  This process of exchanging unwanted items is part of a growing interest in recycled fashion. Shoppers are becoming more aware of the unique path each garment follows—from maker to producer to buyer to supplier to consumer. Okorafor says, “while there are a few other local businesses in Chicago selling recycled fashion, it’s definitely a new trend.”

Dash Me held its first clothing swap at the University of Chicago this past winter, offering university and community members a chance to try out this alternative transaction. Okorafor partnered with Alexandria Batdorf, a fourth-year at the university involved with UChicago Hype, to organize the event in Ida Noyes Hall on a Saturday afternoon. While a Facebook invite detailed how the swap would work, most first-timers appeared somewhat confused though eager to learn as they arrived at the event.

Shoppers brought items from their closet (most of which they hadn’t worn in months), lugging them through the door in shopping bags. A guest handed her bag to a volunteer who checked her in, but told her she was to wait on the side until her ticket was ready. Five minutes later, her ticket was delivered, revealing how much her contribution was worth—she could swap her unwanted clothes for up to nine items. While one could certainly imagine attendees strategizing and calculating, the ferocity with which guests were rushing around the room to make their way to the hanging racks was surprising. The fervor was accompanied by Okorafor’s personal playlist of only the best Rihanna and Beyonce tracks, pumping up the fashionistas with fast-paced beats.

Another girl sorted through a stack of shirts trying to find something that she loved and that fit her well—a challenge, since the clothes were piled by styles and not size.  Shoppers seemed to look immediately for correct sizing over anything else. This strategy worked for two girls in the back who were laughing about how they were jealous of each other for “stealing” one another’s unwanted clothes. Of course, this wasn’t stealing—they had just exchanged their items. But it was still easy to feel a sensation of jealousy, when one watched another try on their unwanted items.

A few shoppers questioned the cleanliness of items at the swap, but as Okorafor says, “you never really know the path an item takes to get to you.” It’s easy to say something in a department store is cleaner than an item picked up at a swap, but this is not always the case: “it could very well be that an item in a department store never went through a sanitary inspection before being placed on a rack in a store.”

Racks filled with sheer blouses, nylon shirts, corduroy blazers, and denim jackets were slowly picked away. The tabletops in the center, which were once covered with pants, belts, and purses, were now visible, their barrenness indicating the many satiated swappers milling about.

This past weekend, Okorafor and Hype teamed up again to host a swap, but this time in the UofC’s McCormick Lounge. At this second event, there were more tables and racks set up for clothes, a wider variety of items (including jewelry), a longer swapping period, more shoppers from the community, a bigger team of volunteers , a photographer, and even some surprise wine.

The event garnered enough attention that there were, in fact,  too many items for the hanging racks, so volunteers filled several suitcases with clothes and placed them around the room. The overall mood was upbeat, but even more friendly this time around. Shoppers exchanged stories, tried on clothes for each other, and shared style advice. A girl from the North Side mentioned that she and a friend came down to Hyde Park for the swap just to have a “girls day.” Okorafor kept on her feet during the entire event, helping shoppers with any style or swap questions they had and directing her volunteers. “I’m lucky that some of my volunteers are my best friends,” she said. “They’ve been really supportive of these swaps.”

Every clothing swap is a learning experience for Okorafor. “I continually refine the process so that it’s more enjoyable and structured for shoppers.” The success of her swaps lies in their ability to get people moving, talking with each other, and having a good time. Okorafor hopes to also hold a mens-only swap in the near future. While there’s a tendency to associate an interest in clothing with women, Okorafor says this is definitely not the case: “Men—just like women—have plenty of unwanted items lying around in their closets.”

Okorafor certainly knows how to dress the part—at one event she donned a fedora-like hat with gold medallion earrings, while at another she wore a vintage floral top with a ballerina bun. But it’s important to recognize Dash Me did not emerge out of her interest in fashion; the company is much more about the practice of conscious consumerism. As Dash Me’s website notes, “Americans throw away 68lbs of clothing and textiles per person every year. With over 300 million people in the US, that adds up to over 10 million tons of waste.”

Okorafor also hosts an online vintage site in addition to her regular clothing swaps. “I go to stores and pick up pieces that I think are unique and sell them online.” Her mission is to promote recycled fashion through classic vintage styles. While she’s not really sure what the future holds for Dash Me, she says, “I’m definitely enjoying the process of figuring things out.”

The event in question was the launch of the SMALL Showroom, a pop-up exhibition designed to promote awareness of a range of local Bridgeport-area artisans and products. Over a hundred companies and individuals were represented through SMALL (Small Manufacturing Alliance), which, according to their website, promotes Chicagoland “companies and individuals who make locally manufactured products.” Items on display ranged in size from a massive, $500 didgeridoo nicknamed “the Elephant Tusk” and hand-carved from an agave stalk, to one-inch cubes of Asiago cheese selected from Giles Schnierle’s Great American Cheese Collection. Among these offerings were free tastings from 18th Street Brewery, Koval Distillery, Bridgeport Coffee, and Katherine Anne, the “founder and confectionista” of Katherine Anne Confections. Non-culinary products included custom-designed bikes, graphic tees, beaded animals, and tables carved into the shape of various American states (the company offered to do any state in the union other than Hawaii, Florida, and Maryland). The space also served as a bulletin board for myriad advertisements for demonstrations and exhibitions, all of which seemed to be occurring concurrently with the showroom proper.

The sprawl of the showroom led to certain limitations on space as well as time for those organizing the show. My conversation with Ed Marszewski, co-director of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, was held in a cramped space between the falafel table and the main display window, leading some passersby to wonder whether or not we were part of some sort of SMALL-sponsored performance piece. Despite, or perhaps due to, the hustle and large number of guests, Marszewski was still very excited. “It’s great that I can bring together all these people—many of them friends who live within a block of this space—and be able to promote them like this.” He also noted, however, that the preparation has been hectic. “I’ve been meeting with hundreds of people every day. I’ve barely been able to learn everyone’s name.”

Herein lies the essential dilemma for the SMALL Showroom: if it is to represent an intimate community of businesses and artists in Bridgeport, how will it adapt as Bridgeport grows into its own as “the community of the future”—as one local publication optimistically christened the neighborhood—where more and more artists and manufacturers are moving everyday? How long, one wonders, will SMALL be able to remain small?

The audience ranged from zany to utterly nondescript. A woman wearing a short leather jacket and stockings patterned with silhouetted houses sat in front of me, while another wearing a beige trench coat and an unassuming dress sat next to me. The room’s thick white walls were blank with the exception of a single panel, where “Fresh Flesh” was spray-painted in a galactic mix of purples, greens, and copper-speckled white. Ed Marszewski, one of the directors of the Co-Prosperity sphere, donned his thick-framed glasses before launching into the plans for the night.

“This is going to be an informal gathering” he explained. “We are going to come up with actionable plans, we’re going to have constructive and generative thought about the cultural plan of Chicago. So, to do that,  you’ll come up and speak for 5  minutes…”

This year, the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) is working on the “2012 Chicago Cultural Plan,” which proposes to first figure out Chicago’s cultural identity and then shape it moving forward. This plan aims to provoke conversation between local artists, community members and anybody aspiring to add to the discussion of Chicago’s cultural identity. In these conversations, participants are invited to put forward ideas and proposals to further the impact of the Chicago arts community. Its aim is to establish an encompassing plan to ameliorate the problems artists face in Chicago through the collaborative partnerships formed in the private and public sectors.

The night began with Marszewski pointing at people to start the conversation. His finger first fell on a stylish advertising agent dressed in red lipstick and high-piled  hair. She stepped forward and spoke about consulting services for artists wanting to spread their image. Marsewski continued to direct the relaxed procession around the room until he abruptly left unexplained—possibly for a bathroom break? However, the floor had already been cleared for passionate debate about reforming the cultural identity of Chicago, and the intensity of the conversation compelled volunteers to step up.

Some of the brainstorming included a proposal for cultural ambassadors, who would be the link between the neighborhoods and the city. These ambassadors would be artists deeply embedded in their neighborhood who could identify problems artists faced and understand the interests and needs of the neighborhood; people who could represent them forcefully, accurately, and passionately about the decline of art production. Many speakers mentioned different systems and programs in other states and in other countries that worked efficiently and effectively to spur artistic creation by providing struggling artists with resources like living and showcase spaces, and materials for creation.

One of the most striking suggestions of the evening, perhaps because it was the only Powerpoint presentation, was the establishment of a space to be called the New Museum. This venue would address the problem that independent artists face today of securing legal spaces to showcase their artwork. Currently, they hold “illegal” private apartment parties out of necessity, always faced with the pressure from the police to shut them down. The New Museum would centralize independent artists in a legal space and integrate artists scattered across the city to increase visibility for emerging artists.

Marszewski, halfway through the presentation, came to a poignant realization: “You know, I’ve been thinking. Let’s face it—the city isn’t going to meet all of our demands. What we need to do is [take this] into our own hands. We need to connect with artists and change Chicago together.”

These community meetings aren’t just a way to communicate to the City of Chicago artists’ needs; they enable networks to form that enrich conversation between artists and about art in Chicago. Theirs is a diverse union, held together by the passion to create, to explore and to challenge; and for future Chicago cultural growth, it is vital to use that common artistic spirit as a means of reinforcing the weakening bonds of art within the city.

Nandini Ramakrishnan

Behind most provocative art one expects to find a big personality and big opinions. But the face behind all of the genitalia, racial slurs, vomit, tongues, human feces, urine, breasts, and crude depictions of “Coco River Fudge Street” is a reticent, mild-mannered, and self-critical man in his early thirties. At the closing of his exhibition last Sunday at the Hyde Park Art Center, David Leggett was dressed in faded jeans, a hoodie, and old Nike sneakers—a guy you would not look twice at walking down Michigan Avenue, nor expect to have an imagination to rival the most hormonally-infused of teenage boys.

A Chicago resident and a graduate of the Savannah School of Art and Design and the School of the Art Institute, Leggett’s work has been showcased at a range of venerable institutions, including the New Museum in New York City and Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Yet during his talk, Leggett had little to say, and almost none of what he did say was positive about the outcome of his exhibition, a collection of colored-pencil drawings created daily in 2011 and posted on his Tumblr. “I was very tired by the end,” he said apathetically, when coaxed by the curator to make a remark. Despite Leggett’s reticence, there is, in fact, a lot to be said about his work.

From Obama’s healthcare policy to teenage pregnancy to hustler culture and a whole lot of sex, most of Leggett’s 152 pieces address some social, political, or economic issue, usually pertaining to the African-American experience. With a quick glance across one of the rows of drawings in the hallway gallery  at HPAC, you’ll see a toilet overflowing with urine; the head of a black man on a rainbow swastika; a possessed  doctor with the words “Obamacare” hovering above a fat, sunburnt white man; and a chubby, unkempt black guy who’s thinking about his penis while a Cyclops stands behind him. The work is accompanied by the text, “All my work is about my mom.”

Most of the pieces contain some text written out in schoolboy penmanship with atrocious grammar, and the majority contain the word “niggah.” Besides colored pencil, Leggett also uses other “low tech materials,” such as glitter and felt. At times, his collection feels autobiographical, at others times it seems controversial purely for the sake of being controversial. “I’m not trying to be a moral compass,” he says.

Although Leggett’s drawings are humorous and brutally honest vignettes about society—in the gallery, you would often hear a patron chuckling under her breath—some of his work verges on complete arbitrariness. The Pablo Picasso stamps that fill a number of his drawings, for example, have nothing to do with the subject matter of the other drawings. Some works seem needlessly provocative; one piece consists of a simple phallic scribble below the word “penis,” and some drawings verge on the pornographic. His collection also seems unedited—this is perhaps the point—to the extent that it looks more like a series of exercises rather than a selection that is ready for show. Regardless, the best of his work sticks to the African-American experience.

It is clear Leggett uses his art and the Internet as a means to express that suppressed teenage boy inside him. His project began on a Tumblr account, where he posted his daily drawings and took requests from the public once a week. Since the inception of his blog, he has amassed a huge cult following of, believe it or not, teenage boys—a couple of whom eagerly waited in line at the closing of his show to ask him questions. This is perhaps the only thing he expressed an inkling of enthusiasm about; “I find it fun to talk to teenagers,” he said, “looking at what fifteen year olds are doing and then there’s me, 31, doing the same thing.”

At the end of his interview, the curator asked him, “Do you have any questions for the audience about their perceptions of your work?” “No, not really,” he said, staring into space. Then a member of the audience asked a question about working on Tumblr.  He paused and said, “Online is great because people think I’m much cooler than I am.”