Hyde Park Art Center, the renowned non-profit hub for contemporary art located on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, will host its latest Center Sunday, an all-ages program filled with art-making activities, workshops, and artist talks, held on the first Sunday of each month, March 7, from 1-5 p.m. virtually, via Zoom. This month’s program will feature a fabric patch art-making workshop led by Lucia Calderon-Arrieta, a visit with resident artist Moises Salazar, and two programs illuminating current Art Center exhibitions: a symposium for emerging artists in conjunction with the Ground Floor exhibition of MFA graduate work, and a talk with one of the young artists featured in the Teen Program exhibition Next Window, Please! The event is free and open to the public virtually via Zoom link .

Monthly Center Sundays are curated by Ciera McKissick, Hyde Park Art Center Public Programs Coordinator, as a means of introducing the community to the myriad ongoing offerings at the Hyde Park Art Center for all ages, interests and skill levels; the March Center Sunday programming includes:

Create Your Own Humble Fabric Patch with Lucia Calderon-Arrieta
1-2 p.m.
The humble fabric patch is a powerful garment intervention: it can be a simple, subtle means for mending, or a brave declaration of self-determination. In this workshop, participants will learn three embroidery techniques to express their identities through fabric patches. The workshop will begin with written brainstorming about the groups and communities that the participants belong to—or that others might assume they belong to. Through combining disparate aspects of their identities, participants will invent new words to describe themselves. Materials needed: A writing tool, an erasing tool, an embroidery hoop (can be purchased at Michaels or one can learn how to create their own DIY hoop here), fabric for creating the patch (can be old scraps or an old tee shirt), a needle, thread, some yarn/fabric scraps, and scissors.

Residency Visit with Flex Resident Moises Salazar
2-3 p.m.
A look into Moises Salazar’s artwork and studio practice in their current Flex Residency at the Art Center, a focused seasonal residency program where artists receive free studio space to make work. Salazar is a non-binary queer artist from Chicago with a primary focus on ceramic sculpture and painting. Being born queer and to immigrant parents has cemented a conflict within Salazar’s political identity, which is the conceptual focus of their practice.

Chicago As Ground Floor Symposium Part 2: Chicago As Teacher
3-4 p.m.
The ‘Chicago As Ground Floor Symposium’ is in conjunction with the Art Center’s Ground Floor exhibition, the current iteration of the biennial program showcasing select work by recent graduates from each of Chicago’s five MFA (Master of Fine Art) programs, open now through April 3. This symposium consists of three parts and explores the many paths available to emerging artists to push their practice in Chicago. Part 2 attempts to articulate the obscure but impactful networks of Chicago artists, and answer the questions of how artists mentor and support other artists in Chicago, and how one can find an experienced advisor to help navigate the art world. Director of Exhibitions and Residency Programs, Allison Peters Quinn, talks with three generations of artists at Columbia College Chicago, who actively pay it forward when it comes to assisting other artists’ careers: Art Center’s Board Member and award-winning artist Dawoud Bey, Ground Floor artist Jonathan Castillo, and former Youth Art Board artist, Tiara Coleman.

For more information on the other parts of the symposium, check out the event calendar on www.hydeparkart.org. The artists in Ground Floor were selected from a competitive pool of applicants by the Art Center’s Exhibitions Committee, chaired by internationally recognized artist and Art Center Board Member Dawoud Bey.

Artist Talk on Next Window, Please!
4-5 p.m.
One of the young artists represented in the current Teen Program exhibition Next Window, Please!, open now through April 3, will share more about their multi-disciplinary work and provide insight into their practice at the Hyde Park Art Center and at home.

About Center Sundays
Every first Sunday of the month and pre-COVID 19, Hyde Park Art Center was activated throughout the center for the public, neighbors, and families, with intergenerational art making activities, artist workshops, artist talks, open studios, curatorial tours of its exhibitions, community collaborations, music and small bites. Since the pandemic lockdown, Center Sundays have switched online, continuing with virtual interaction, engagement, and exchange with the public audience on the same day of each month. Center Sundays are free and open for all.

About the Hyde Park Art Center
Hyde Park Art Center, at 5020 South Cornell Avenue on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, is a hub for contemporary arts in Chicago, serving as a gathering and production space for artists and the broader community to cultivate ideas, impact social change, and connect with new networks. Since its inception in 1939, Hyde Park Art Center has grown from a small collective of quirky artists to establishing a strong legacy of innovative development and emerging as a unique Chicago arts institution with social impact. The Art Center functions as an amplifier for today and tomorrow’s creative voices, providing the space to cultivate and create new work and connections.

For more information on Hyde Park Art Center’s public programs such as Center Sundays, please visit www.hydeparkart.org.

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Tags: Chicago, Ciera McKissick, Hyde Park, Hyde Park Art Center Center Sunday, Lucia Calderon Arrieta, Moises Salazar