Tag Archive
Creative Ecology: Environmental artist Nancy Klehm tries to keep up with her own work
“My work is context specific. It’s about social context. It’s about place. Place refers to more than land; place is about land that has history. It feels more alive,” explains Nance Klehm, an artist and activist based on the South Side. This particular morning, Klehm is in a motel room in Tucson, Arizona. It’s... »
Criminal injustice
Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” was supposed to discuss her book last Wednesday evening in the large central room of the Experimental Station, but the heating went out. So instead, about a hundred of us packed tightly into a small, multi-purpose room next door,... »
Fever to Tell: The Chicago Storytelling Guild’s thirteenth annual festival shows stories aren’t just for kids
When asked about being a professional storyteller, Judith Heineman consistently fields the same question: “Do you read stories to children?” As the activities of Heineman and the Chicago Storytelling Guild show, this question hardly brushes the surface of the art, a skill that appeals to the young and the old through a wide variety... »
Puppet Mastery
Alaskan puppet troupe Reckoning Motions’ performance of “The Great Ziggurat,” held last Tuesday at the Experimental Station, was challenging, elegantly evocative, and all-around enjoyable. The piece, based loosely on the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, explores the concepts of humanity’s penchant to build up and tear down, making use of tower allegories... »
Best of the South Side 2009: South Shore and Woodlawn
South of Hyde Park stretch two lakefront neighborhoods with very different histories. Woodlawn was once a prosperous neighborhood, helped along by the World’s Fair of 1893 and the El tracks that connected it to downtown. In the 1940s and ’50s, integration brought a sudden demographic shift, and after the 1968 riots that raged across... »
Dramatis Personae: Hyde Park Community Players present their first show at the Experimental Station
Early last winter, Paul Baker realized a long-time dream of bringing a community theater company to Hyde Park. Inspired by his teenage daughter’s passion for theater and the neighborhood’s need for quality theater produced in a spirit of collaboration, Baker hit the streets of Hyde Park, posting yellow flyers emblazoned with an emphatic call-to-arts:... »
Little House in the City
The topic of the presentation was billed as “urban homesteading,” but speaker Erik Knutzen is dissatisfied with that label: “It’s a little too ‘Little House on the Prairie,’” he told the thirty or so listeners gathered at Woodlawn’s Experimental Station last Thursday evening. Though the book he recently co-wrote with his wife Kelly Coyne... »
Artist Games
Strange contraptions greet revelers who come to try their hand at King Ludd’s Midway Arcade, housed at the Experimental Station on 61st Street and Blackstone Avenue. Don’t expect to see Pac-Man, and leave your quarters at home. This arcade is different. Here, gaming meets art, and basic mechanics trump the digital age. The Experimental... »
