Celebrate Open House Chicago with our quarterly Center Days where we open our doors and activate the entire building with a family-friendly filled day with intergenerational art making activities, artist workshops, artist talks, open studios, and community collaborations.

Creative Wing Open Studios with Resident Artists

1-4pm

Come and meet the new artists working in our Jackman Goldwasser Creative Wing! Visit with our Radicle Residents, Eric Perez, Sofía Fernández Díaz, Kushala Vora, and Rhonda Wheatley, and our Guida Family Creative Wing studio artists,Tongi Phillip Qian, Candace Hunter, zakkiyyah najeebah dumas o’neal, Juarez Hawkins, and Malika Jackson.

Exhibition Viewings for Multiples and Multitudes, A Universe of Self-Experience, and Not Just Another Pretty Face

1-4pm

Join us as we celebrate exhibitions, Not Just Another Pretty Face, Multiples and Multitudes: William Estrada, and the final weekend of our Youth Board of Artists exhibition, A Universe of Self Experience.

About the Exhibitions:

Multiples and Multitudes: William Estrada

The Hyde Park Art Center is proud to present Multiples and Multitudes, the first-ever solo exhibition by Chicago-based artist and educator William Estrada. Estrada’s socially-engaged practice has been rooted in Chicago neighborhoods for the last twenty years. Through collaborations with youth, community members, teachers, and other artists, and through his multifaceted art practice, Estrada aims to reimagine public and educational spaces to unite people and amplify local voices. Estrada’s work in the studio and the classroom create space literally and metaphorically for others to express themselves artistically and politically. Multiples and Multitudes will feature artworks in print, photography, performance, and video, as well as works that blur disciplinary boundaries to highlight the diversity of approaches within his practice and his unwavering commitment to political activism through art.

A Universe of Self-Experience [Annual Teen Showcase]

The annual exhibition celebrates new paintings, drawings, photography, ceramics, prints, animation, and multimedia work demonstrated by young adult artists participating in Hyde Park Art Center’s Teen programs. Throughout the 30-week program, teens cultivate their creative voices under the guidance of professional artists. The exhibition is a testament to these young artists’ evolution and dedication, who have taken on the challenge of expressing perplexed thoughts, feelings, and emotions into individual works of art.

Unanimously titled A Universe of Self-Experience by The Youth Board of Artists (a dedicated cohort of teen leaders at Hyde Park Art Center), the exhibition audaciously recognizes the boundlessness and complexity within the time in which these young artists exist. Through a diverse range of media and styles, more than 40 artists investigate the intertwined vastness and intimate side of self-experience. Some teens connect their work to the shared awareness of the universal human experience, tapping into the social currents that are echoing within their close communities. While other teens reveal the intricacies of their introspective, deeply personal inner universe. The collection of work contemplates the myriad ways everyone perceives, experiences, and discovers their own world.

Not Just Another Pretty Face

The exhibition commemorates the 2020 and 2023 iterations of Not Just Another Pretty Face. The triennial program, created by Hyde Park Art Center in the mid-1990s, introduces artists and potential art buyers. This project facilitates a fun and accessible commissioning process that builds lasting relationships between artists and patrons, creates a new base of support for artists, and invests in the vitality of Chicago’s cultural community.

Not Just Another Pretty Face cultivates collectors, who are essential to the “ecosystem” that artists need to thrive, by embracing and encouraging the concept of patronage in contemporary art. Artists need not only consumers (i.e. collectors,) but also a community of people who know, support, and value what they do. Through Not Just Another Pretty Face, 375+ original works of art have been commissioned by 275 new and established collectors interested in investing in Chicago’s artists.

Activation: Just Taking Pictures: A Community Exhibition with Julius Williams

Join us for Just Taking Pictures, an exhibition of amateur photographs, some taken during the Vietnam War, others, award winning submissions with the St Marks Camera Club.

These photographs, like so many taken by amateur photographers, have never before been publicly viewed. They depict stories of life and living during different periods in Julius’ life; as a young soldier in Vietnam, and later in life as a retired teacher. Often, at the end of an amateur photographer’s life, their visual stories are thrown in the dumpster, or languish in estate sales. Today, photography collectors often snap up such work, and tell the stories never shared. Even as methods of “taking pictures” continue to evolve, we hope that young and emerging photographers will keep their collections of visual stories catalogued, and shared with the public in the future. Julius will be available for an informal discussion on amateur photography during the opening.

About Julius Williams

Julius Williams was born and raised on Chicago’s Southside Woodlawn neighborhood. As a youth, he didn’t realize he was surrounded by creative people, particularly in his immediate family. An older brother sparked his interest in playing the saxophone, an older sister, his interest in photography (taking pictures).

Mobile Street Art Cart Art Making with William Estrada

1 -4pm

Multiples and Multitudes exhibition artist, William Estrada, will activate his participatory Mobile Street Art Cart on display in the exhibition. This print based drop-in workshop will touch on print-making as a tool for political activism, education, and highlight local voices and issues facing communities across Chicago. The Mobile Street Art Cart amplifies the creativity that already exists in our communities by addressing relevant social issues through art making in the streets.

Painting with Kool-Aid (Open Arts Studio with Community Engagement Fellow Keny De La Peña

1-4PM

Participants will learn a simple recipe for converting powdered Kool-aid into paint, treating it as a pigment to create watercolors. Thereafter they will have the opportunity to create abstract paintings using household items. They will experiment using these objects to create different shapes and textures or using them as stencils.

Not Just Another Pretty Face Memory Game

1 – 4PM

Participants can enjoy a childhood favorite game of memory using images from our Not Just Another Pretty Face Exhibition. While we play matchmaker for artists to patrons, you can play to find the matching artwork to make a pair. This game can be played individually or collectively and is fun either way!

RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/center-days-open-house-chicago-tickets-731421831387?aff=oddtdtcreator

Official Website

More events on this date

Tags: Candace Hunter, Center Days: Open House Chicago, Chicago Chicago, Eric Perez, Hyde Park, Hyde Park Art Center, Juarez Hawkins, Julius Williams, Keny de la Peña, Kushala Vora, Malika Jackson, Rhonda Wheatley, Sofía Fernández Díaz, Tongi Phillip Qian, William Estrada, Youth Board of Artists, Zakkiyyah Najeebah Dumas-O’Neal