fo wilson:
nesting chair for charlie (yardbird), sun ra and the urban thrush

nesting chair for charlie (yardbird), sun ra and the urban thrush, (2014) is a nesting space and resting place in homage to jazz innovator Charlie Parker, afro-futurist icon Sun Ra and is the first in a series of abstract representations of black vocalists and birds as a symbol of migration. The work references the Great Migration that occurred during the 20th-century that included Chicago as one its major hubs. It highlights the intersections of migratory patterns of birds, people and vocalities in regards to the temporalities of home and place.

fo wilson is an artist/maker, educator, independent curator and writer. Using various media, she creates work and experiences that reposition historical objects and/or aesthetics in a contemporary context and offers audiences new ways of thinking about and interacting with history. Fo received a Masters of Fine Art from the Rhode Island School of Design’s Furniture Design program in 2005 with a concentration in Art History, Theory and Criticism and is an Associate Professor at Columbia College Chicago. She has been a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and her design work is included in the collection of The Cooper Hewitt National Museum of Design in New York. She was a Joseph Fellow at Anderson Ranch in Colorado and an artist-in-residence at Purchase College in New York. She is currently curating along with Krista Franklin, Ekphest: A Festival of Art + Word, which invites local poets to respond to work in the collections of Chicago museums and cultural institutions. Festival events take place in October 2014 and April 2015.

For more information on fo wilson visit fowilson.com

(f)utility projects:

Reestablished Return

(f)utility projects, Paola Cabal, Michael Genge and Christopher Grieshalber, responded to the in-between quality of Terrain South: not quite park or play-lot, not (yet) house. When one arrives at Terrain South, what is your destination? F(utility) decided to superimpose another interstitial space onto the site- an Oak Park bus shelter, similarly site and non-site; the place you find yourself while on your way to another destination.

A perspectival illusion presents an opportunity to reexamine how we see things; it reveals the day-to-day shorthand our brains use to communicate things to us, to avoid flooding our receptors with all of the available information. Looking towards Terrain South from in front of Terrain Exhibitions, the viewer sees a bus shelter. As the structure is approached, however, it reveals itself to be an illusion, only cohesive from a distance.

An anagram for “Terrain Bus Shelter”, the title of this piece embodies the sensory reordering that occurs when expectation and reality collide, referencing that temporary disorientation. “Reestablish Return” refers to the process a viewer might need to undertake, once the incongruous reality of the structure at Terrain South is apprehended

Begun in summer 2009 as an offshoot of Drawing Studio: Articulating Space, a course at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, (f)utility Projects consists of Paola Cabal, Painting and Drawing and Contemporary Practices faculty, Michael Genge, recent SAIC Architecture alumnus, and Christopher Grieshaber, recent SAIC Designed Objects alum. The group forged its working paradigm over the course of two major installations in the pedway open studio, a Department of Cultural Affairs Public Art Program space below the Chicago Cultural Center. (ƒ)utility Projects officially debuted on March 19, 2010 with an exhibition at SubCity projects. They have since presented on their integration of electronic visualization and digital production methods at the 2010 “Vers1on” festival, in addition to designing an exhibition pavilion/intervention for Vers10n. (ƒ)utility was awarded a CAAP grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs in retroactive support of their debut project. Accompanied by a catalog from Columbia College Chicago’s Glass Curtain Gallery in Chicago, IL,CoLaboratory was their 6th official effort as a collaborative, alongside the collaborative EDJR.

For more information on (f)utility projects visit www.futilityprojects.com

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