Last Fall I started volunteering for the Young Artist Program (YAP) at the Chicago Children’s Museum. In addition to documenting the YAP projects I also started photographing other art studio spaces for children. So far all of these photos have just been taking up space on my phone but now that the YAP program is on a two month hiatus I am going to write a series of posts on the projects and on museum art studio spaces.
The art studio space at the Chicago Children’s Museum had only recently opened when I arrived to volunteer this Fall. It had previously been located in two other spaces at the current museum on Navy Pier (the museum itself also has had several locations).
The YAP projects designed by awesome educator Liz are long term and collaborative. The initial weaving project involved large looms built by museum staff. Several of the looms descended from the ceiling each day via a pulley system.
Liz in front of the descended looms
Several different materials including rope and fencing provided the warps of these looms. Strips of ribbons and webbing were provided for weaving. During November we suggested that children write what they were thankful for on the weft pieces before weaving them.
My oldest granddaughter writing on and weaving one of her strips
There were also looms whose warps consisted of branches with yarn provided for weaving or simply adding. These looms worked best for the youngest artists. And for even younger guests two looms had been attached to make a space for infants to crawl under and interact with the weaving.
All of the looms are now hanging high on the walls of the studio to provide beauty and some sound absorption.
You can see a bit of how the looms looked undescended in this photo. The tree yarn looms, temporarily stored on the pulley apparatus in this photo, have now joined the others on the wall.
The YAP program runs on Monday through Thursday mornings and the looms were available during October and November this year. This project was a perfect one for me as a volunteer as weaving with children has always been one of my interests. Many years ago when I was a family child care provider I did a large room weaving with children in a downtown gallery space. As a teacher I had also done many weaving and fiber projects with children and have amassed a large collection of relevant children’s books which I was delighted to share.
This tiny little church replica caught my eye in Madison and when I walked closer I discovered it was a Little Free Library. When I opened the stained glass door on the other side I found a book by Deanna Raybourn in the Lady Julia Grey series – a great find because I have really been enjoying her Veronica Speedwell mysteries.
As a voracious reader who could never afford to buy or store all the fiction I consume I have always loved public libraries. So of course I love the Little Free Libraries that have been cropping up around the world since the first one was built in Wisconsin in 2009 by Todd Bol as a tribute to his mother. Little Free Library is a 501c3 organization and people who want to become a volunteer steward of a box can buy one on the Little Free Library website. There are several different models of them. I snapped a picture of this purchased one on my way to the Uptown branch of the Chicago Public Library.
While it is not as unique as the church it does have an original painted bird decoration on top. Now I think I may have to be on the lookout for these tiny libraries not just to borrow the books inside them but to start a new photo collection of the Little Free Libraries themselves.
“Sugar Maple, isn’t that redundant?” quipped Brennan Leigh during her set with Noel McKay at the music festival we went to last weekend. It is a fitting redundancy because sweet is exactly what the Sugar Maple Music Festival at Lake Farm County Park in Madison, Wisconsin was. It was kind of like stepping back in time for us to the early years of the Green River Festival in Greenfield, Massachusetts. It started on Friday evening with four sets and continued on Saturday midafternoon with six sets. We were allowed to bring coolers of any size and there wasn’t even a cursory search as we entered. There were also a few food and beverage vendors so it was really the best of both worlds!
And we didn’t have to worry if it rained a little, which it did during Eilen Jewell’s set, because there was a large tent. We had been worried that the large tent might affect the sound since that had been the case at the tented Mississippi Stage at the Chicago Blues Festival. But the green and white tent which reminded me of the Heath Fair Music Stage Tent had open sides and the sound was great. It did leak a little so we were glad we had our rain ponchos and umbrellas which we used to shield us from the drips.
The music was wonderful, there wasn’t a set I didn’t enjoy. On Friday night Leigh and McKay treated us to awesome dual guitar picking and a mix of funny and poignant songs. The Garage Sale Song was absolutely hysterical. Hubby Jenkins, who we had only seen before when he was in the Carolina Chocolate Drops, turned out to be not only an amazing musician but very funny and conciousness raising as he spoke at a very fast tempo about the link between slavery and capitalism between songs.
In addition to Lula Wiles and Eileen Jewell who lured us to the festival we also enjoyed a lot of bluegrass! We were sad to miss the Saturday night cajun and zydeco music of Jeffry Broussard and the Creole Cowboys because they were probably the perfect closers but with a threatening thunderstorm expected we headed back to our motel happy with our ears full of music!
One of my favorite summer activities in Northampton was going to the sidewalk sales that happened the last weekend of July. So last year I was eager to find some here but kept being disappointed as events that sounded like they might be similar definitely were not. Market Days, for example, turned out to be a street festival with music, drag shows, and lots of partying in Boystown. There are a lot of street festivals in Chicago and many of them do have vendor booths but not with sidewalk sale pricing.
So I was pretty excited when I found the Main Dempster Mile Sidewalk Sales in Evanston. We went last year and we found enough stores and bargains to make me happy. We returned this year and were pleasantly surprised to find, while searching for the Chalk Art Contest that we had heard was going on during the sidewalk sales, that there is also a downtown Evanston. It’s funny that while they’re both parts of Evanston and they were having sidewalk sales on the same day that they are marketed as seperate events. In fact, the woman with a booth near Dempster street who told us the Chalk Art Contest was downtown seemed doubtful that they were also having sidewalk sales.
Even more exciting was that the Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago was also having sidewalk sales this weekend. We had originally intended to go to both Evanston and Andersonville on Saturday but when Evanston turned out to be so much larger we postponed Andersonville to Sunday.
We found so many bargains to purchase that I’ll write about most of them in separate posts throughout the year but for starters here are some of our Evanston Ten Thousand Villages two dollar table finds. These bottle cap musicians from South Africa originally sold for sixteen dollars each.
They found a home on the CD bookcase.
And this bike riding zebra from Kenya that rode right on over to the top of the entry wall boxes originally cost $14.99. And that is why I love sidewalk sales!
The Parade magazine in today’s Chicago Tribune has an article titled “Murals Across America”. “Travel Expert” Kristen Luna was given the assignment to choose one mural from each state. Some are featured in the magazine they all can be found on the website parade.com/acrossamerica.
Luna says it was hard to pick just one per state which is not hard to imagine since another insert in the paper Splash’s cover promises “Mural Alert! Our guide to the newest public art”. The article “Wall Pass” features some of the newest murals in Chicago. The article notes that, “Chicago is home to hundreds of street murals, from celebratory explosions of color to cerebral pieces that make you think. The selection is so vast, in fact, that Chicago recently launched a public mural registry. (on the city’s website Chicago.gov) It’s a searchable database for tourists and locals as well as a guide for city workers who sometimes are unable to differentiate between art and graffiti.” Last year there was a particularly unfortunate example of this when a piece of art the city had comissioned got painted over.
Here’s one I found last year when I attended the Intuit “Art Against the Flow” summit in the Fulton Market neighborhood.
I stopped in at a Stone Creek Coffeehouse the other day and was fascinated by a display of coffee production steps featuring clothespin dolls.
I especially liked the woman with the basket of harvested beans.
And check out the quality control guy’s clipboard.
I made some clothespin doll ornaments for Christmas many years ago. A Little Red Riding Hood is one I look forward to hanging on the tree each year. And every year I look at the ballerinas whose skirts need an update. I had used doilies but think I need to switch to tulle. I’ve been thinking about making more and pinning ideas to my Peg People Pinterest board. I think this coffee display might just be the impetus I need to get started!
The first chalk festival we went to was one we stumbled on in Saratoga Springs many years ago during a visit to one of our college daughters. It was a fundraiser and artists, businesses, and organizations could purchase the large sidewalk squares on a city block close to the college. So children from local schools were casually drawing next to artists who were meticulously recreating famous artworks. I remember being most impressed by a replica of a vintage cigarette package.
A few years later Northampton had it’s inaugural sidewalk chalk festival. About eight to ten artists were invited to draw in different locations around town during the day and their creations were showcased during the evening Arts Night Out. The first year featured nationally known sidewalk chalk artists. In subsequent years it became a juried selection process with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd prizes.
So I was curious to see what the inaugural “Chalk Howard Street” here in Chicago would be like. I knew from the publicity that it would feature nationally known 3D and 2D artists. And that local artists could apply for a spot, that businesses could buy a square, and that children could come to the festival and draw as well. Like other Chicago street festivals it would also include bands and food booths.
The festival was taking place between 11:00 and 8:00 and even though it was over 100 degrees we headed up by bus and train around 1:00. I hadn’t thought about whether the drawing would be done by then and we found some completed art and some in progress. Two partial blocks were closed off and the featured artists had areas at either ends of the street.
Artist: Nate Baranowski
Artist Anat Ronen
In order for these to be 3D you had to stand in a specific place and look through your phone camera. I’m going to have do some research on that because I know artists can create pieces that are 3D to the naked eye. They probably use some sort of fixative on these too since people were allowed to pose on them for photos.
The other professional chalk artist had a sign saying “all chalk, do not touch” and some rolled up plastic behind it that I guess could be used to cover it if it rained. It did rain after we left but we didn’t get to see it in action or how the others faired.
Artist: Jennifer Chaparro
This artist apparently also does 3D creations at times since there is one featured on the Howard Street website.
There were also four “Professional Artists”. Craig and Jamie Rogers were still working on what was going to be another 3D piece.
Artist: Elizabeth Niemczyk
These two unfinished ones are by the other two professional artists Jessi Queen and Chelsey Austin.
There were also 4×4 squares that local “emerging” artists could apply for or that sponsors could purchase. These were all in one area and the squares had been taped off and painted black. Some of them were finished and some artists were hard at work in the hot sun. I noticed that some squares were labeled but empty. It was probably too hot for some!
There was also a large rectangle set aside for children to draw in but children had actually covered the streets and sidewalks of the whole festival.
It was so hot that we didn’t stay long but I’m glad we made the trip since if we hadn’t, I don’t think we would have gotten to find out what it was like. One of the things that we have been having to get used to in Chicago is the fact that everything that happens here doesn’t get covered in the newspaper the next day! (Population of Northampton, MA: 28,549 vs. Population of Chicago, Illinois 2.7 million)
Since I have always been fascinated by seeing the same subject portrayed by different artists, I have always loved it when cities have artists decorate multiples of an animal or object. Since I also love to research my interests I’ve long known that allthough I don’t think I became aware of this phenomenon until the first time Easthampton did bears, it started years before with the Chicago cows. So it was fun to find out that for the twentieth anniversary of that seminal event some of the original cows are being displayed again. There is a small herd of them hanging out in a small park on Michegan Avenue. Here are a few:
We used to live in a house that was built in the early 1900’s and it was impossible to get the window frames (especially those that faced the hill that led down to an open field) clean. No matter how many times I sprayed them with cleaner and wiped them the paper towels would come away covered with black grime. And then we moved to a brand new condo with windows at the ends only and we were amazed by how easy it was to clean and keep clean. But of course eventually we got used to it so when we moved here to our sixties high rise condo with it’s entire walls of windows we couldn’t believe how often we had to dust. There are surfaces that literally need dusting daily. I guess that’s city living!
Getting to see a rainbow over the lake makes up for all the dust.
This bank may only think that it is a month of celebration but I wasn’t surprised the other day when I heard a man who was looking at the tshirt display at the Gap say, “You can tell it’s Pride Season”
The neighborhood school has been adorning the fence since early May.
Even the macarons have been celebrating pride since May.
Some of the rainbows have begun to disappear. I noticed the subtle small flag being “sewn” by the sewing machine in the minimalist tailor’s window was gone today. But Boystown will have the new rainbow crosswalks on Halstead year round.
I was surprised that the stripes were on the cross streets rather than the main street and that they go the long way. Quite different than the one in Northampton.The parade was a lot longer, too! Happy Pride Season.
Collections and Other Stuff I Like 