Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Yolotecuani en concierto

Meztli Galeria y Organizacion Cultural
Presenta

Yolotecuani en concierto
“Una Noche de Son”

Septiembre 8, 2007

Apertura de grabados 6:30-8:20 PM
“Rostros de Son” de Veracruz, Alec Dempster
Apertura de concierto de ”Pilsen” Chicago,
Fandanguero
Continuando de Guerrero, Yolotecuani 8:30–11:20 PM

Donacion $12

Meztli
556 W. 18th Street Chicago Il
(312) 738-0860
meztlicinema@yahoo.com
www.meztli.net

The Amazing Hancock Brothers in Chicago!


Ladies and Gentlemen... Boys and Girls,
Saturday September 1st, 2007

6:00 to 10:00 pm-ish

at Motherland
1125 W. 31st St.

Chicago, Il 60608

http://www.mutherland.org


For our final show of the Season.....
Motherland is proud to present:
http://hancockbrothers.com/

The Amazing Hancock Brothers -- itinerant printmakers from central
Texas -- bring their carpetbag full of hopes, dreams, dirty britches, prints, and poems to Motherland in bucolic Bridgeport. The Brothers are known for their morbid, scatological and darkly humorous subjects, often printed on a variety of surfaces with wild abandon and disregard for printmaker etiquette. They are sure to please and/or piss someone off. Show opens Saturday September 1st and closes the 30th.

Motherland is open 3-6pm on Thursdays or call for an appt. 312-924-3602
Motherland is accessible via the Orange line
CTA (Halsted station) and the #62 Archer bus (get off at Loomis). There is plenty of parking.

Please see the below blog calendar for detailed maps and directions.
http://www.mutherland.org Please see The Amazing Hancock Brother's recent write up! http://www.timesrecordnews.com/trn/entertainment/article/0,1891,TRN_5654_561486,00.html

Monday, August 27, 2007

Urban Recline


Urban Recline:
new work by

Adriana Baltazar
Miguel Cortez


Opening Friday September 7 from 6pm-10pm

September 7 - October 6, 2007


Polvo begins the fall schedule by showcasing 2 local artists, Adriana Baltazar and Miguel Cortez. Even though their styles are different they find common ground in the influence of the urban environment, its surroundings and how this affects them.


Adriana Baltazar
A sincere goal of mine as an artist is to celebrate and document my time and surroundings in an effort to record history in the making. The late 18th c. French writer Sebastian Mercier recorded life in the streets of Paris in his day to day existence and has given the world a priceless view of a time and place we did not have to live in to know. He captured the type of things that slip out of the pages of history books. With our faces and digits fumbling over one of the plethora of gadgets available to us, I fear we put ourselves at risk as always to lose track of some irreplaceable gems. I feel compelled to record those things which we will undoubtedly miss only after they are finally gone. - Adriana Baltazar

Born in southwest Chicago, Adriana Baltazar has grown up to be a near hermit. By night, she is drawing away and by day working in an office to pay off art school debt. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. As a child she searched for stray pets to nurture and now it appears she is the stray. Find her wandering streets and woods seeking sublime inspiration and escape in vacant lots or other plots of dirt overridden with trees and foliage.

Miguel Cortez
Several years ago I did a series of paintings that dealt with imaginary aerial landscapes. With this new series of work I go to the opposite end and imagine microscopic environments plus imaginary abstract forms and shapes. For inspiration I looked at decaying textures that I came across such as found rusted and cracked objects, paint peeling off walls and buildings, oils stains on the pavement and other examples of urban/nature decay. - Miguel Cortez, August 2007

Miguel Cortez is an artist living in Chicago and born in Guanajuato, Mexico. He has studied at Columbia College and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Miguel also has exhibited his work for more than a decade in Chicago and elsewhere. Recent exhibitions include a show in Dallas at Mighty Fine Arts Gallery, also in Austin at Studio 107 Gallery, Pool Art Fair in Miami, Milwaukee International Art Fair, "Lo Romantico" at Glass Curtain Gallery and "Lies that Bill Gates told me: Exploring the Digital Divide" at VU Space in Melbourne, Australia. Miguel is also one of the founders of Polvo.

Polvo, www.polvo.org
1458 W. 18th St., 1R Chicago, IL 60608
773.344.1940
info(at)polvo.org

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Noam Chomsky coming to town...


In Defense of Academic Freedom
October 12, 2007

2:20pm -7:10pm
Rockefeller Chapel
University of Chicago

Part 1

Event Commence Time: 2:20 pm
Event Closing Time: 5:00 pm

Chair: Tariq Ali, Verso Inc.

1. Dr. Akeel Bilgrami
Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy
Columbia University

2. Dr. Noam Chomsky (Invited)
Institute Professor and Professor of linguistics (Emeritus)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

3. Dr. Tony Judt
Director
Remarque Institute
New York University

4. Dr. John J. Mearsheimer
R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor
Department of Political Science
University of Chicago

Panel Discussion

4:00PM – 5:00PM

Moderator: Tariq Ali (will lead the discussion panel) with Q&A
Break and Book Signing

Part 2

Start Time: 5:10pm
End Time : 7:10 pm

Moderator: Tariq Ali

Speaker: Dr. Norman Finkelstein; Dr. Mehrene Larudee,
Neve Gordon (Ben-Gurion University

Friday, August 24, 2007

The Whole World is Being Watched!

Exhibit expands on the art of surveillance, how it affects today’s world

by Jessica Del Curto
Extra News
Posted on 08-16-2007

When a number of crime cameras began popping up around Pilsen, Miguel Cortez, director of Polvo Art Gallery, found his idea for his latest exhibit.

“I thought I would reach out to other artists and have them react to what is going on,” he said.

The latest exhibit, “Echelon: Who is Watching You,” consists of various art pieces that relate to surveillance, both on a local and international level.

He said all of the artists portrayed surveillance as a negative thing in society.

One piece, created by Drew Browning and Annette Barbier, shows a list of library books projected onto the floor of the studio. These books have been flagged by the government at the Harold Washington Library. As the viewer walks past the artwork, an infrared camera picks up his or her image, placing it behind the text, and tracks whether he or she goes left or right.

Artist Noelle Mason paid Mexican artisans José Antonio Flores and Jonathan Samaniego to create a 6-by-8-foot rug that is a map of the California-Mexico border. Mason paid the artists what it would cost to bring a family across the border. The point, Cortez said, is to show that satellite tracking is also in existence. “You can access any point on Google Earth and access any building. The whole world is under surveillance,” he said.

Cortez said audience members can take with them what they like from the exhibit.

He hopes people at least gain some awareness of the fact that they are being watched everywhere they go. “They can analyze the good and bad of that,” he said. “It may solve crime in some cases, but you also lose your privacy.”

As far as Cortez is concerned, George Orwell got it right in his book 1984. “He predicted it too soon. Now it’s actually happening,” he said.

Las Mujeres de la Caucus Chicana

Sorry----not exactly Pilsen, but Bridgeport...check it out. /mc
-------------
The Institute is pleased to be a co-sponsor of the Las Mujeres de la Caucus Chicana Film Release Party on Saturday, September 1, 2007 at the Hoover Leppen Theatre at the Center on Halsted. Please join us for this event. Details can be found below:



Six Women. Ten Years. One Goal. Equality.

Las Mujeres de la Caucus Chicana

Margaret, Andrea, Ruth, Martha, Pauline and Lupe

Film Release Party 9.01.07 6-8PM
HOOVER LEPPEN THEATRE AT THE CENTER ON HALSTED
3656 N. HALSTED, CHICAGO ILLINOIS

SPONSORED BY:
AMIGAS LATINAS, AFFINITY COMMUNITY SERVICES, THE CENTER ON HALSTED, CHICAGO FOUNDATION FOR WOMEN - LESBIAN LEADERSHIP COUNCIL, MUJERES LATINAS EN ACCIÓN, INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF WOMEN & GENDER IN THE ARTS & MEDIA, COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO


A VOCES PRIMERAS, LLC PRODUCTION
Produced and directed by Linda Garcia Merchant
Cinematographer/Editor: Steven Lemieux Jordan
Still Photographer: Kathryn Haviland

Featuring: Margaret Cruz, Andrea Rivera Cano, Ruth 'Rhea' Mojica Hammer, Martha Cotera, Pauline Martinez and Lupe Anguiano
Length: 90 minutes
Contact information: Gaylon Alcaraz 312.330.5506

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

TRAVELABLE GEOGRAPHIES: Works by Mizraim Cárdenas


Join us for the Opening Reception and meet artist/printmaker from Morelia, Michoacan:

This Friday, August 24 from 6-9 PM


TRAVELABLE GEOGRAPHIES:
Works by Mizraim Cárdenas
(August 24 – September 23, 2007)

The constant passing over a geographic area provokes routes to remain in the memory of everyone. In this geography, we can draw our daily dreams on a piece of paper. Though, the real travelable geography is maybe mankind’s utopia, the one that has clearly marked limitations over the distance. I paralleled the quality of these images with the actual artistic creation since it is the actual act of drawing a search for our own path.

More decidedly, a path that turns clearer when it becomes the contour of something that must be constant.
A visual tour of Mizraim Cardenas body of work allows us to observe a figurative language that does not get on the way of a well defined search. Here he makes the surroundings as his own to create atmospheres and where the characters can freely walk over travelable geographies.

Casa Michoacan Gallery
1638 S. Blue Island Avenue

Chicago, IL 60608
Tel 312/491-9317 312/491-0379

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

“Diálogo” at the National Museum of Mexican Art


A Humble Abode
by Jessica Del Curto, Extra Newspaper

In a new exhibit titled “Diálogo” at the National Museum of Mexican Art, three artists set out to create a conversation between seven mother-daughter pairs in Pilsen and Little Village.

About two-and-a-half months ago artists María Gaspar, Adriana Baltazar and Esmeralda Baltazar took video cameras into the homes of seven local women and videotaped them having discussions with their daughters.

“The conversations touched on identity, love, being a mother, sex, going away to college, being a leader,” said Gaspar. “All of these kinds of ideas and concepts that we form as we are growing and becoming adults and mothers.”
In the art installation exhibit, which runs until Dec. 31, the artists recreated the homes of the women they visited, with a bedroom, a living room, a dining room and a kitchen. Furniture and decorations were actually lent to the museum from the women they interviewed.

“When we interviewed all of these women, we would be really mindful as to how their house looks. Almost all of the items, including refrigerators and stoves, were all donated by friends and families and the women who participated,” Gaspar said. “So the installation is kind of an eclectic mix of all of these different homes that we went to.”

The exhibit was created with the sense that a home is a sacred concept, “Since some of us are trying to get away from home, some of us are trying to return home, and all of us either feel comfortable or uncomfortable at home,” Gaspar said.

The interviews between mother and daughter are then projected onto a wall in the kitchen so visitors can watch the dialogue as they roam through the home.

“In this installation we are trying to present the dynamic lives that these particular women have had, as well as representing women from various stereotypical roles that we have all kind of accepted, showing that these women are housewives, leaders, artists and visionaries,” Gaspar said.

The women’s ages ranged from 5 to 67. The children were prepped with conversation topics, and the adults were, for the most part, free to discuss whatever they wanted.

One conversation in particular, includes a 17-year-old daughter speaking about sex with her 40-something mother.

“I was really surprised, the mother really wanted to talk about it, and the daughter was like, ‘This is really weird,’” Gaspar said. “The mother says, ‘You are going off to college, and you are going to be 18, and it’s going to happen and I just want you to be careful.’ I think, stereotypically, we think mothers are the ones who don’t want to talk to their children about sex.”

Gaspar said she learned a lot while videotaping the mother-daughter conversations, and in a way she felt like a counselor, although she never said anything.

“It was just so personal, and I felt very humble to be allowed to witness the conversations,” she said.

Mostly, it made her want to be closer to her mother.

“I was sitting there filming, and it gave me a moment to reflect on my relationship with my own mother. I thought, ‘Man, life is short,’ and I have a pretty amazing woman in my life, and I really want to be able to share things with her. I think sometimes we get caught up in our lives, especially as young professionals.”

For more information on “Diálogo” go to http://www.myspace.com/refleccionesproject