This Saturday, recently relocated OhNo!Doom gallery hosts the 'Torn Pages' group show, a series of artist/writer collaborations focusing on imagined children's tales and the illustrations they've inspired. I spoke with art blogger and show curator Josh Lucas, and we touched briefly on the themes behind the show as well as Chicago neighborhoods, fairy tales, and the trials and rewards inherent in running a large group show.
"The Following are Pages Torn from our Most Favorite Imaginary Books", takes place on Saturday, February 13th, 2010, and runs through the end of the month. OhNo!Doom gallery, 1800 N. Milwaukee Ave., 6-10pm.
What's the Torn Pages Show all about?
The Torn Pages show is about a few things. Bringing people together who don't normally work together. in the creative world people tend to congregate together in what they do. writers will have readings, artists have shows, etc. but they rarely do things together. I believe the things that connect people are more powerful than the things that make them different. The creative process, and act, is a very beautiful and personal thing. And at the core, it's that feeling, and need to do so that every artist understands.
It's also about that feeling you got reading a story as a child. And wanting to get back to that place. The full show name expresses this "the following are pages torn from our most favorite imaginary books", it's about that story you always had in your head, or maybe just an image. But it was yours and now we get to share those things with the public.
How did the idea/theme happen? How were the artists picked?
The idea for the show was just a quick thought at first. My girlfriend was telling me about a story she was working on, and as she was telling me about it I saw it in my head, illustrated by a friend of mine. So i sat on it for a month or so and then started sending out emails to see if it would work. And it just kind of evolved from there.
The artists and writers were picked from names I'd seen around, and a few people I already knew. My girlfriend suggested some great people. I also got some help from Jason over at "Orange Alert": http://orangealert.net/blog he sent me some great suggestions. I got really lucky with the people who are now the lineup for the show.
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— Rose Lannin /
Art Tue Jan 26 2010
Chicago writer James Kennedy's 2008 young adult fantasy book, The Order of Odd-Fish has not only gotten a lot of attention lately, it's inspired a slew of fan art. The artistic mediums seem to be just as creative as Kennedy's story, from a Belgian beer named after the villian to a cake depicting a fish vomiting out a high-rise. There are also a bunch of lovely cut-paper illustrations by high-schooler Max Pitchkites-- one for every chapter of the book, in fact.
Kennedy is so impressed with all the fan art he has decided to organize an art show/costumed dance party to celebrate and exhibit it, in collaboration with Collaboraction, which he says will most likely open on April 17. People will dress up as gods and do battle-dancing in the Dome of Doom, and then the fan art as well as the elaborate installation itself with stay up for a while. If you'd like to make something to be included in the show, you're in luck-- he's accepting submissions through March 1. Visit his incredibly entertaining blog for more information about submissions as well as the multitude of interesting anecdotes and Odd-Fish-related events going on around Chicago over the next few months.
— Kelly Reaves /
Hey everybody, just a quick note to let you all know that Chicago Tribune Books editor Amy Guth, Heather Momyer (303 Magazine, Exquisite Corpse, wordriver, PANK, Robot Melon), Make Magazine co-founder Mike Zapata and Fiction editor Tom Mundt--and little ol' me, Ramsin--will be reading at Cafe Wha Who?, 228 W Chicago Ave., on Friday. Doors open at 8pm.
— Ramsin Canon /
When social reformer Henry Ward Beecher famously labeled words as "pegs to hang ideas on," he likely didn't know the effect it would have on writers and scholars all over the world. The desire to view language as fluid, to disrupt and dismantle words at their core, is at the heart of many artists, and they have no larger enemy than the dictionary. The Rec Room plans to take the good book on, one word at a time.
Tonight at 8pm, The Rec Room, a collection of artists determined to mess with accepted modes of expression, will be rehashing, revisiting, reusing and wrecking many of our favorite words at the Black Rock Pub (3614 N Damen). The event is free and open to the public, so there's no reason for you not to come and hear our language mangled beyond recognition. "Fun" comes to mind, but I'm finding myself at a loss for words. Huh.
— Randall Colburn /
National, non-profit storytelling show, The Moth, is like karaoke for writers. Only, members of the audience, many nervously clutching their five-minute-long stories are chosen at random to take the stage, and well, there's no singing. As a matter of fact, it's forbidden to read from a prompt at all.
The idea is to tell a conflict/resolution story within the time allocated based on the night's theme with the goal to captivate. Typically successful stories are the ones that don't sound like you're reciting a memorized essay. So, less of a disposition and more of a conversational tale you'd tell at a dinner party, The Moth suggests.
And audience members don't necessarily have to participate either. Many come for the simple appreciation of spoken word. Can't make it to The Moth readings? Check out the weekly podcast. Stories range from the tumultuous to the joyful with a lengthy backlog of stories from writers like Malcom Gladwell, Erica Jong, Moby, Andy Borowitz, Jonathan Ames, and more, to keep your ears enthralled.
The next Chicago chapter of The Moth StorySLAM will be on Dec. 29 at Martyr's, 3855 N. Lincoln Ave. The theme for submission is "Cars" (previous themes have been "firsts" and "blunders"). The story slam begins at 8pm and there's a $7 cover at the door.
— John Lendman /
Design Wed Dec 02 2009
Nick Disabato is writing a style guide for interaction design. This was not a sudden thing: Nick's interest in making things work and look better intertwined with computers early on. Growing up in a self-described "really wired household", he was exposed to technology and the internet at a young age. Born in Park Ridge, Nick earned his master's in Human-Computer Interaction at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before returning to Chicago. He currently resides in Logan Square, and works as a user experience designer at Groupon.com. I had the opportunity to talk with Nick about his book, Cadence & Slang, the process and ideas behind it, and how he's using Kickstarter to make it a reality.
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— Rose Lannin /
"Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals changed me from a twenty-year vegetarian to a vegan activist," Natalie Portman wrote for the Huffington Post. Tonight Foer spoke about his new book, Eating Animals, at Harold Washington Library in the packed Cindy Pritzker Auditorium.
Famous for his novels Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, this is Foer's first venture into non-fiction. Wavering back and forth as a vegetarian since he was nine, Foer felt with the birth of his son a sense of urgency about decisions: his own and the one's he would make for his son.
He read a short excerpt from his book about his grandma and used the bulk of the time to facilitate audience questions and discussion. He answered every question thoughtfully and respectfully making sure the audience understood he wasn't there to persuade anyone.
His strongest and most enlightening thought was the idea of a vegetarian spectrum. Foer dismissed the notion that one is either a vegetarian or they're not. He told a story many people are familiar with in which someone says they are vegetarian for so many years. Then one day they ate meat and that was the end of it. This binary ideal is detrimental because people feel they either need to do be a vegan activist or be completely careless. He counteracted with the point that if everyone replaced just one meal a week with a vegetarian one, it would be like taking 5 million cars off the road.
Listen for the talk on Chicago Amplified on Chicago Public Radio.
— Whitney Stoepel /
Wednesday, November 11 at 4:30 in the Sullivan Galleries (7th floor, 33 S. State St.), F Newsmagazine and the Art Institutes's MFA Writing Department are hosting a roundtable discussion about Chicago's burgeoning new literary community. Featuring novelist Kyle Beachy, playwright Chris Bower, blogger Jac Jemc, Assistant Director of the Neighborhood Writing Alliance Mairead Case, Quickies! founder Lindsay Hunter and Featherproof Books founder Zach Dodson. Moderated by MFAW Department head Sara Levine.
— Whitney Stoepel /
Art Sun Nov 08 2009
The Torn Pages Show is a Chicago collaboration of artists and writers teaming up to write and draw "pages torn from our most favorite imaginary books": eleven children's stories of their own invention. Artist-writer pairs include Joe Meno & Cody Hudson, Amy Guth & Pea-Be, Zach Dodson & Allison Dunn Burque, and more.
The show is set to open at OhNo!Doom Collective in early 2010, but curator Josh Lucas hopes to immortalize the original tales in a small, full-color book. Like many other creative types, he's using Kickstarter. Help the Torn Pages show reach their $2,100 goal by December 5th -- they're currently a little under halfway there.
Donate here. Preview images and excerpts from the show after the jump.
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— Rose Lannin /
Art Thu Oct 15 2009
Golden Age, an innovative and niche bookstore on west 18th Street, has and interesting show of works opening on Saturday Oct. 17th. The show consists only of works previously published by Medium Rare. Founded in 2008 by Milano Chow, Medium Rare works with young emerging artists to publish works in an affordable and accessible format.
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— MartinJon /
Tuesday's Chicago inaugural of The Moth's StorySLAM at Martyr's was sold out to a crowd of eager listeners. I arrived early and installed myself at the bar, where I scanned the notes I'd prepared in case my name got pulled from the hat. When I looked up, I saw other storytelling hopefuls doing the same. The slam was focused around the theme of "school". Hosted by Dan Kennedy of The Moth Radio Hour and sponsored by WBEZ, this was the first time the 13-year old storytelling institution conducted a StorySLAM in Chicago. Later this week they'll be in Detroit, and then back in New York.
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— J.H. Palmer /
Theatre Sun Sep 27 2009
Fear is a fantastic hour of anxiety. The Neo-Futurists' season opener dredges up unease, tension, apprehension and concern but does it in such an interesting and well-executed way that even the most lily-livered of ticket holders will love the thrill.
Creator and curator Noelle Krimm -- and the countless people involved in the production -- do great work to "put the fun back into being completely creeped out." Tours of about 20 are led from room to haunted room of The Neo-Futurarium, from a forlorn boudoir to a raving slaughterhouse. There are three hosts who lead the tours, which start at set times throughout the night. Sophie Ostlund plays up tragic honesty as a gauze-masked, makeup-smeared bride, and Aimee McKay and Rawson Vint put their own spins on human affliction.
Fear leads the audience through the world of Edgar Allen Poe, but doesn't rest on "gotcha" gimmicks to make the audience squirm. Its horror profile, from anthropomorphized pigs to frigid rooms and unsettling illuminations, is layer upon layer of madness and sin and horror.
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— Michelle Peterson /
John Hospodka's South Side Trilogy goes a little more than the extra mile and not just because it's a three-parter.
The literary project, which debuts July 23 at bohemianpupil.com, is a multi-sensory literary experience.
The stories and poems are compelling. Hospodka introduces us to characters that share lonely monologues, sing-song lyrics and narrative story-telling. Chicago is more than just a setting in these scenes. It is a character unto itself.
Reading the trilogy is certainly enjoyable, especially for any self-identified Chicagoan who, like any Chicagoan (whether a baseball player or politician or writer) just wants to be taken seriously.
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— Margo O'Hara /
Read all about it: The Kriti Festival, a biennial celebration of South Asian and diasporic literature and arts, takes place June 11-14 at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Roosevelt University. Hosted by the national non-profit organization DesiLit, the Kriti (pronounced "kree-thee") Fest offers an action-packed schedule of readings, panels, live performances, writing workshops, and Q&As with literary agents and editors.
Special guests at the 2009 Kriti Fest include acclaimed authors Romesh Gunesekera, Bapsi Sidhwa, and Amitava Kumar. Among the 30 or so participants--including poets, novelists, actors, editors, and agents--are four major Sri Lankan diaspora authors (one of whom is Romesh Gunesekera). These participants will discuss, among other topics, the decades-old Sri Lankan civil war, which ended on May 18, 2009.
This year's fest also includes the Rasaka Theatre Company's performance of a monologue cycle called Yoni Ki Baat (loosely based on Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues) and a performance by Mithya (the Indian Dramatics Group from UIUC) of Chimeras, an adaptation of Shashi Deshpande's short stories.
To register for the four-day literary extravaganza, visit the festival website or email info@desilit.org. You may also call (312) 846-6878. And be sure to follow DesiLit's Twitter updates.
— Laura Pearson /
Dan Rybicky of Columbia College shared these photos of Marjane Satrapi, an author and filmmaker who is best known for her graphic novel memoir Persepolis. Ms. Satrapi was in town to speak to Columbia's New Millennium Studies Department and Dan reports that "like her work, [she] is bold and beautiful."
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— Jamie Smith /
Writer and Chicago expat Arlene Tribbia shared the following poem as something to "resonate .... now in the new year - a time when most of us are unusually contemplative."
Chicago in Winter: a bluelove rush
You must walk Michigan Avenue in the snow, the heroic South to North mile
over the Bridge of Angels and cross ancient Chikagou Creek for the street shop
bookstore where the café is warm and the cups filled strong and lovely with lemon
grass and coconut tea three stories above the crowd and watch as the after work day unwinds and sweetens into twilight, your book of poems open on the table left unread
for the real love stories of lives unfolding below on the street under flurries of stars falling onto the heads and faces of the people - how purposeful they look there at the light waiting and ready to cross over to the other side as the moment splits, the light changes and in a single flash of bravery they simply step off the curb together and rush forward into their moonlit destinies as the blue eye of a breeze off the lake sweeps past.
— Andrew Huff /
Theatre Mon Nov 17 2008
Well, the star part isn't guaranteed, but you have an opportunity to play a walk-on role during a performance of Wicked. To be eligible, go to the Oriental Theatre lobby on November 19 or December 3 from 5:30pm-6:30pm and make a $20 donation to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. As a bonus, you'll get $20 off that evening's show. Full details at Broadway in Chicago's website.
— David Schalliol /
Chicagoan Jerome Pohlen is a Congressional Green Party candidate for Illinois’ 3rd District and author of the recent book Progressive Nation: A Travel Guide with 400+ Inspiring Landmarks and Left Turns (Chicago Review Press, 2008). The guide breaks down all 50 states, highlighting districts, shops and other specific landmarks that reveal the influences of the Progressive Movement. His guide is enormous (422 pages) and thorough. In Illinois alone Pohlen covers Mother Jones’ burial site in Mt. Olive to Farm Aid in Champaign. In this way Pohlen dredges up information from both the more obscure locations with the most visible signs of Progressivism to the more widely-known but less-recognized roots of the movement.
Pohlen isn’t a first time travel guide writer, either. In addition to his political career and commentary contributions to WBEZ, Pohlen has written more than 10 travel books in "The Oddball Series," which feature a consciously-wacky look at state travel. Pohlen’s current guide is in the same organizational vein as this work with The Oddball Series, yet while Progressive Nation also borders on zany historical blips at times (featuring Omaha, NE - When Bright Eyes Talks to George W. Bush), the guide always connects back to the age-old Progressive influences (Chicago, IL- The Haymarket Riots). These connections show the impact that United States' Progressives made, and continue to make, in all 50 states. In fact, it is in these tiny, seemingly irrelevant mentions that Pohlen’s point of the continued connection between the Progressive movement and modern life appears most clearly. In Progressive Nation: A Travel Guide with 400+ Inspiring Landmarks and Left Turns, Pohlen’s historical roots run deep.
— Laura Mayer /
Starting this September, aspiring Dreisers and Dickinsons can earn a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) degree at Northwestern University, studying under the likes of Alex Kotlowitz and Stuart Dybek. The part-time, evening program, which complements Northwestern's existing Master of Arts program (begun in 2003), will enable students to write a nearly book-length thesis, and position graduates for creative writing teaching positions. Interested? You have until July 25 to turn in your application for the upcoming September quarter.
— Lauri Apple /
The deadline to enter the Guild Complex’s annual Gwendolyn Brooks Open-Mic competition is coming up on June 6. Write and submit a poem that you can perform in less than four minutes and you may take home the $500 prize. Of course there are other reasons to write poetry but even Shakespeare didn’t mind a little financial compensation.
— Jamie Smith /
If you haven’t cleared your calendar for the MCA’s upcoming Hip Hop Live + Reel, you might want to get on that. Born of New York City’s Hip Hop Theater Festival, Live + Reel is a four-day bonanza of hip hop culture. Artists from both coasts – including New York’s Reggie Watts and Bay Area lyricists The Suicide Kings – will be joining forces with local performers like Deja Taylor, whose work from Louder Than a Bomb has been recorded for Chicago Public Radio, and Teatro Luna, Chicago’s all-Latina theater company.
“This new format – two days of film and two days of live performances – creates a mini-festival atmosphere,” says MCA House Manager Surinder Martignetti. “The strength of combining local artists with national performers offers people such a great opportunity to see what’s happening out there and to really get involved.”
With all four days boasting a packed line up of spoken word performances, outstandingly original films and, of course, music (and only $5 for tickets to the films! Five! For the whole night!), the MCA is encouraging everyone to try to make the whole series. If you can only make one, though, I recommend aiming for Saturday, when The Suicide Kings’ In Spite of Everything, a startlingly timely play revolving around a school shooting, will be performed. Louder Than a Bomb 2008 winner Kuumba Lynx will also perform, and beatboxer Yuri Lane will close the night with an excerpt from his show From Tel Aviv to Ramallah: A Beatbox Journey.
Film night tickets are $5 for all screeings; performance nights are $16 member/$20 non-member. Student pricing is available. To see the full list of performances or to buy tickets on line, visit the MCA’s website, or call the box office at 312.397.4010 for more information.
— Jaime Calder /
