A hallway on the second floor of the Hyde Park Art Center contains a little piece of nature, tucked away. Turning the corner into the space outside the Black Box Gallery, the viewer sees what at first appears to be large photographs of verdant, leafy trees covered in vines. Upon closer inspection, the foreground of vines and leaves turns out to be mostly thick globs and lines of paint. For her exhibition, “They Call Me Theirs,” artist Catherine Forster printed out video stills of natural scenes, painted them, then digitized and reprinted them. In some of the inkjet prints, the paint closely mimics the natural contours of the image, while in one spectacular triptych from the “Hanging Garden Installation,” “Hearts,” a giant smear of paint with rich yellow, green, and orange streaks covers up almost all of the duller green scene behind it. Somehow the colorful smear seems more natural than the mostly obscured trees. Read the rest of this entry »

“Disinhibition: Black Art and Blue Humor,” a new exhibition at the Hyde Park Art Center, is, as the title promises, without “inhibition” in its attempts to force the viewers to interact with difficult issues—specifically race and racial taboos—through various artistic media. Video, drawing, and photography enable participating artists to express their points of view in what can only be considered a rather blunt fashion. Read the rest of this entry »

The Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC) celebrates its third annual 24-hour festival, Creative Move 2008, this Friday and Saturday. Creative Move is a free event created specifically for an audience interested in and curious about art, where open mics, lectures, cocktails and activities abound. HPAC’s festival is an excellent opportunity for Chicago residents to mingle in an interactive setting; in fact, Creative Move is described as “24 hours of hands-on art-making,” where a do-it-yourself approach to understanding contemporary art is enthusiastically encouraged. Read the rest of this entry »

Development in Hyde Park has been a contentious issue since the urban renewal of the 1950s, and judging by the crowd at the panel discussion “Making Hyde Park: Development in our Community,” it’s as hot a topic as ever. Over one hundred students and Hyde Park residents crowded into an undersized room in Ida Noyes on Tuesday, March 4, to listen as a diverse group of panelists put forward their visions for the future of Hyde Park. It was an occasion for “conversation, not debate,” as moderator and University Community Service Center director Wallace Goode emphasized, but that didn’t mean voices were not raised as the panelists argued about issues like retail, density, architecture, and the University’s involvement in development. Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe someday a University of Chicago PhD candidate will become famous on the Internet. That day may not be too far off. In fact, it could be close for any of us. A 25-year-old PhD candidate at University of Minnesota, Tay Zonday, has become fairly well known since the release of his song and video, “Chocolate Rain”, on the video site YouTube. He has been featured on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” VH1, CNN; he’s also appeared in People magazine and a Dr. Pepper commercial. More than 13 million people have watched his video on YouTube. Read the rest of this entry »

“Consuming War,” which opened Sunday, November 4 at the Hyde Park Art Center, uses the limited space at its disposal to make a clear statement against consumerism and its implications, both in the present conflict in Iraq and all other U.S. involvements in the Middle East in the past few decades. The exhibit’s title is not only a reference to the overwhelming structure of war as a conflict that consumes soldiers and civilians, but it is also a direct reference to consumerism. Read the rest of this entry »