Elvia Rodriguez honored by LISC Chicago

Heroes: Carmelita Frias, Elvia Rodriguez

Community Heroes are individuals who offer their passion, strength and talent to improve their neighborhoods, benefiting people who may never know them by name, but who will reap the rewards of their work. The Community Heroes for Pilsen are Carmelita Frias and Elvia Rodriguez. They were selected, along with 26 others from across the city, by the New Communities Program lead agencies and their partners. Congratulations to these extraordinary "ordinary" people for their steadfast commitment to improving Chicago neighborhoods.

CARMELITA FRIAS

Carmelita Frias is a loving mom, but it takes effort to get 100 kids ready for a ballgame. The single mother of four created "Carmelita's Kids," the informal name for her neighborhood program for children. The Resurrection Project community leader partners with institutions and foundations to bring resources to Pilsen's youth. She typically is found taking dozens of children at a time to major sporting events or recruiting for Chicago Police Department's Explorers and other programs. Summer nights Carmelita volunteers in Pilsen's streets with the Resurrection Basketball League. She has given away countless books and believes that exposing children to positive options helps them make wise life choices.




ELVIA RODRIGUEZ

Community artist Elvia Rodriguez offers experience, leadership and vision to Pilsen's children and budding artists. She has promoted the arts for 10 years through different neighborhood venues. As a member of the Polvo artist collective, Elvia is a strong advocate for local artists. She helped plan the premier of Pilsen Open Studios, an event showcasing Latino artists in the community. She also involves youth in the arts through the Pros Arts Studio. As a Resurrection Project leader, Elvia is an invaluable member of the organization's El Zócalo Leadership Team, which crafted a vision for healthy creative activity throughout Pilsen. Elvia was an official representative of Pros Arts Studio in the Quality of Life planning process through the Pilsen Planning Committee.

MICHAEL CAPAPAS

MICHAEL CAPAPAS

Opening Reception: Friday, December 8
from 6 pm to 9pm
Exhibition dates: December 8 – December 30, 2006

This will be Michael Capapas’s first solo exhibition in the United States. Capapas was born in the Philippines and resides in Melbourne, Australia. His past work deals with the interweaving of memory, private fantasy, public history and recognition of the past. For his exhibition with Polvo, his new work will tackle the topic of immigration in Australia. He explains: "It is probably because a large part of my life has been spent living in places where I felt I did not belong. Being an immigrant from the North, I have been a stranger in the South." Capapas completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia. Capapas will be a visiting artist and lecturer with the Art Education Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), the Gerber Hart Library, co-sponsored by CAAAELII (Coalition of African, Arab, Asian, European and Latino Immigrants of Illinois) and Polvo (these related events will be free).

Mini-exhibit: Our Stories in Word and Image: Joanna Arellano, Jesus Macarena-Avila and Carlos Terrazo with CAAAELII / CIVITAS

Chicago artists: Joanna Arellano, Jesus Macarena-Avila and Carlos Terrazo with CAAAELII and Citizenship and Voter Training School (CIVITAS) collaborated with their partnering agencies with workshops on immigration. Books and photographs display personal stories, workshops co-sponsored and led by CAAAELII and Polvo. Participants include: Evelia Barrera, Emerita Bernales, Sarah Campion, Nancy Fuentes, Maria Garcia, Kongit Girma, Jenny Ho, AmberJaved, Chodar Kyi, Rosevelia Miramontes, Nitzy Mota, Eleanor Sweeney, Hindeke Tewodros, Negatwa Tewodros and Marcelino Ventura.

Flatscreen DVD: CAAAELII/ CIVITAS

Since 1997, CAAAELII is an organization centered on servicing immigrant communities. This documentary journals their history with over 20 agencies serving immigrants and refugees in the Chicago metropolitan area joined together to form CAAAELII. It began as an avenue for agencies to pool resources and ideas when teaching citizenship classes to immigrants and refugees seeking to apply for citizenship, recruiting and training volunteer citizenship teachers, and advocating for immigrant and refugee rights. Its mission: "To improve the quality of life for immigrants and refugees and to ensure dignity and respect." CIVITAS is a CAAAELII program inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Highlander Center , CIVITAS is a school for immigrants. It is designed to engage local immigrant communities in building their own capacity to engage within a multi-ethnic and multi-issued environment, towards the fulfillment of collective social justice. CIVITAS is also the central research and training arm of CAAAELII, fostering groundbreaking cross-racial, cross-cultural community dialogues and community connections.

FREE Related Events:

• Lecture by Michael Capapas on Saturday, December 2, Gerber Hart Library, 1127 W Granville Avenue at 2 pm
• An Artist Conversation with Regin Igloria and Michael Capapas on Saturday, December 16, Polvo, 1458 W. 18th Street at 2 pm

download press release in PDF format

POLVO, 1458 W. 18th St. 1R, Chicago, IL 60608
polvoarte@yahoo.com or 773 344 1940
http://www.polvo.org
HOURS: Saturdays from Noon-5pm or by appointment

This exhibit program is co-sponsored by and partnering with CAAAELII, Radioarte. Capapas will be a visiting artist with the Art Education Department at SAIC and with CAAAELII. Reception food generously provided by Nuevo Leon Restaurant: http://www.nuevoleonrestaurant.com Special thanks to the partnering individuals, organizations, businesses, exhibitors and ACYD graduate students with Columbia College Chicago.

Pool Art Fair, Miami 2006

Polvo @ Pool Art Fair, 2006

Artists participating:
Saul Aguirre
Candida Alvarez
Hector Arce-Espasas
Candace Briceno
Miguel Cortez
Antonio Guerrero
Amanda Gutierrez
Michael Hernandez de Luna
Gisela Insuaste
Barbara Koenen
Silvia Malagrino
Jaime Mendoza
Jesus Oviedo
Josue Pellot
Edra Soto

	Saul Aguirre is a Chicago based artist whose work is based on the questioning historical events and the recording of them. Taking part of historic mappings and recording them in a traditional media or experimenting with other materials not of common use. Currently he works on bark paper as a surface of choice adding other natural materials to transform the mapping of several city blocks that have a vast amount of religious temples. Saul has studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is continuously exhibiting throughout Chicago, Washington D.C; Huaraz , Peru ; Mexico City . His work can be found is several private and public collections in the US and abroad.
	Candida Alvarez is an artist living and working in Chicago. She is a tenured professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Painting and Drawing Department. Her current work examines how newspaper photos can be used to make abstract paintings.
	Hector Arce-Espasas was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He now lives and work in Chicago, IL. Hector received a B.F.A. from the School ofthe Art Institute of Chicago in 2005. In 2004, he studied abroad in Valencia, Spain, where he completed the piece "CUBO", a live drawing inside a clear inflatable cube in Plaza de los Fueros. In 2005, he was a resident at The Contemporary Artist Center in North Adams, MA. In 2006, he was commissioned to do a piece for a show organized by the Institute of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture. Recently he had a solo show at Lloyd Dobler Gallery in Chicago, IL.
	Candace M. Briceño is a mixed media artist who combines acrylic paint, pencil drawing, sewing and hand dyed processed felt fabric to create 3-dimensional mini vignettes of small artificial landscapes. Briceño earned an MFA degree in painting and drawing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002 and a BFA from The University of Texas at Austin in Visual Arts studies in 1994. Since then, she has been featured in The Austin Museum of Art’s “22 To Watch” show which was on view at The Austin Museum of Art Museum, The Galveston Arts Center and The Dallas Contemporary Museum. Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions in Austin, Houston, Dallas, Chicago for example a group show at David Castillo Modern and Contemporary Gallery in Miami, Florida and Dunn and Brown Contemporary in Dallas as part of their prestigious I-35 biennial invitational show. The past few years Briceño was a nominee for the Joan Mitchell Award, the Texas Art Prize, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation biennial nominee and is currently short- listed for the 2006 ArtPace residency. This past year Briceño has two solo exhibitions, one in April at MFA space in Dallas, TX. and another in June at Women and Their Work Gallery in Austin, TX.
	Miguel Cortez is an artist/curator living in Chicago and born in Guanajuato, Mexico. He has studied filmmaking at Columbia College and fine art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Miguel is a founding member of Polvo, an art collective since 1996, and has organized various shows throughout the years at the Polvo space and other cultural alternative spaces. The most recent one being at Unit B gallery in San Antonio september 2006. Before that it was at Commerce Street Artists' Warehouse in Houston, Texas. There he brought artwork by local Chicago contemporary artists. Miguel also curated a show July 2006 in San Antonio as part of their Contemporary Art Month. Miguel also has exhibited his work for more than a decade in Chicago, Mexico, and Spain. Recent exhibitions include a show in Austin at Studio 107 Gallery, "Word" at Rudolph Projects in Houston, "Reencounter" at Prospectus Art Gallery in Chicago, "Lo Romantico" at Glass Curtain Gallery in Chicago and "Lies that Bill Gates told me: Exploring the Digital Divide" at VU Space in Melbourne, Australia. Future exhibitions include a two person show in 2007 with Edra Soto at Mighty Fine Arts.
	Antonio Guerrero received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he currently resides. Guerrero's mixed media work has been shown internationally including a Latin American invitational in Rotterdam. Guerrero's work draws from the Mexican-American experience and has been highlighted in several national publications.
	Amanda Gutierrez born in Mexico City in 1978. She studied philosophy for one year at UAM (Metropolitan University). In 1999, She received a Bachelors degree at ENAT (National School of Dramatic Arts) in Stage Design and currently she is pursuing her MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has been working with media performance projects in which sound art is present as the fundamental element. It was from this experience that she came to understand the melodic basis that radio samples processed with a variety of computer programs, may provide. By becoming acquainted with the use of video, audio and lightning software to hardware her work was able to get in touch with the acoustic characteristics of space. This experience led her to do more complex installations which involved elements of programming to control audio, for instance, these projects had evidence an interest in issues related to the analysis and study of mass media, using media technology as a tool for the exploration of different formal and conceptual solutions.
	Michael Hernandez de Luna is a Chicagoan and artist of Mexican decent. He holds a BFA degree from the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. His work can be seen through out the internet, and in the galleries of Pierogi 2000 in Brooklyn, New York and Augen in Portland Oregon. MHDL has authored three coffee table books on art and stamp art Sextablos: works on metal, 1999; The Stamp Art and Postal History of, 2000; and the Axis of Evil: Perforated Praeter Naturam, 2004. Hernandez de Luna and his artwork have been featured in a number of international media publications and news articles as in Newsweek Reason, PLAYBOY, Print, Art Forum, Art in America, Blab, Juxtapoz , the Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Hoston Chronicle, Linns Stamp News. and the Associated Press to name a few. MHDL has been included in art exhibitions in the countries of Mexico, South Korea, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, France, and the USA. For the last 12 years, his primary focus as an artist has been creating fake postage stamps that he attaches to recycled antique envelopes, and sends through the postal system for cancelation markings and delivery to a designated recipient. In short, his stamps must go through the postal cancelation process for the envelope to become a completed art object. The postage stamps he creates commemorates individuals, topics, and events in question of moral misconduct, social disorder, civil disobedience, and global concern. His work can be viewed as subversive, political, and satirical. One can learn more of his work at www.badpressbooks.com
	Gisela Insuaste's work is based on memories of real and imagined landscapes that are precarious yet beautiful.By playing with scale, line, imagery, and diverse materials, she creates drawings, paintings and large-scale installations that map out and emphasize the subtle and quirky topologies of urban spaces: they are shifty, unstable, and ambiguous, and reflect the physical, emotional, and socio-political charged spaces we live in. Gisela received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her B.A in Anthropology & Studio Art from Dartmouth College. Exhibitions include the Chicago Cultural Center, Gallery 400-UIC, Thomas McCormick, Bucket Rider Gallery, Polvo, 3Arts Gallery, NIU Gallery, Betty Rymer and several group shows in Chicago, IL, Kansas City, MO, Washington, DC, and Ecuador. She is a recipient of the 2004 Richard Driehaus Emerging Artist Award and a 2005 Illinois Arts Council Finalist Award in Visual Art. In 2005 and 2006, she received MacDowell Colony Artist Fellowships to complete new work. She was also recently nominated for a 2006 Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Sculptors and Painters.
	Barbara Koenen is a Chicago-based artist who creates unlikely combinations of cultural practices around the world as influenced by war. Her recent projects include spice war rugs -- installations and transfers inspired by Tibetan sand mandalas and Afghani war rugs -- and Grenade Cosies, hypothetical illustrations of the evolution of a traditional American craft. Koenen's work has been exhibited in Europe as well as the US. A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Koenen is a cultural planner for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and director of the Chicago Artists Resource ( www.chicagoartistsresource.org). Her work may be seen at www.barbarakoenen.com
	Silvia Malagrino is a Chicago-based artist, native of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her innovative interdisciplinary work in multiple media – including photography, installation, and digital video, - amalgamates critical thinking with poetry, and metaphor with documentation. Malagrino has exhibited internationally and her work is included in the collections of the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago, and La Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, France, among others. She is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including The CINE Golden Eagle Award for her first film Burnt Oranges- a feature length experimental documentary about the long-term effects and repercussions, personal and social, of Argentina's 1970’s state terrorism. In 2005, her digital video animation The Stream of Life received the prestigious Lorenzo De Medici First Prize Award in New Media at the 5th Edition of The Florence Biennale. Malagrino is a Professor at the School of art and Design of the University of Illinois at Chicago.
	Jaime Mendoza is a Chicago based artist/curator. His work is concerned with issues of immigration, ethnicity and borders, Mendoza uses a variety of mediums such as video, photography, and mixed media installations—all of which fuse the politics of contemporary urban culture with idealistic meditations on aesthetics, history, and identity. Mendoza has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. and abroad. Most recently, Mendoza presented a workshop on Self Liberation through Self Identification at the 2nd Annual Educating for CHANGE Curriculum Fair in St. Louis, Missouri in conjunction with the University of Missouri St. Louis College of Education -- Division of Teaching and Learning. Mendoza was also awarded a one year grant from The National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) to publish a book of drawings, “La Chamba: Drawings by Jaime Mendoza” which will be released this fall. Currently Mendoza is an instructor in the Art Department at Northeastern Illinois University.
	Jesus Oviedo is a Chicago-based artist whose work is based on the recording of such things as marks, imprints and occurrences. His work encompasses painting, printmaking installation and three-dimensional objects. He is currently working on a series of work entitled "I Swept My Floor" in which he is making hand-made surfaces out of the detritus of floor sweepings. Jesus received his M.F.A. from the school of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003 and has exhibited his work throughtout chicago as well as a couple of shows Vermont. His work experience consists of many teaching positions including; residencies in Chicago Public Schools, Hyde Park Art Center and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Jesus currently lives in Chicago's Lower West Side and works as a Studio Coordinator at Chicago Commons Association, a social service agency.
	Josué Pellot Gonzalez Having been born in Puerto Rico (Mayaguez - wearing bell-bottoms) but raised in the U.S. since the age of five, traveling back and forth from the Island and Chicago, Josue feels that he's somewhere between these two cultures, probably in the Bahamas. Josue (ho.sway, ho.sue.ehh) - grew up between Humboldt Park and Logan square where he was introduced to art thru Graffiti and Hip Hop. He went to Kelvyn Park High School on Chicago's northwest side and then received a BFA with a minor in Biology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Despite all this, he was awarded an MA from Northwestern University in Art Theory and Practice (the theory being if you practice, you'll improve - thus he keeps trying!). He's now a Chicago-based artist and works in various mediums.
	Edra Soto was born in Puerto Rico in 1971. In 1995 she received the Alfonso Arana Fellowship to work in Paris, France for a year. In 1997 she moved to Chicago to attend the Art Institute of Chicago where she obtained her Masters degree in 2000. Her most recent presentations include a live performance at El Museo del Barrio in New York, as part of the travelling show Don't Call it Performance, curated by Paco Barragan. She will be presenting a solo show in 2005 at UIC Gallery 400 and at Polvo.

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Friday, Dec. 8
4PM Press Preview begins
5PM – 11PM Opening Night Party

Saturday, Dec 9
3PM – 8PM and by appointment

Sunday, Dec 10
3PM – 8PM and by appointment

Cavalier Hotel
1320 Ocean Dr, Miami Beach, FL 33139
(305) 531-3555
www.cavaliermiami.com

Worthy alternative art transcends pop culture

By MARY LOUISE SCHUMACHER

mschumacher@journalsentinel.com
from JSOnline

Polka dancing in the aisles is not your everyday international art fair occurrence, but then the Milwaukee International Art Fair was not your everyday fair either.It was, in fact, an alternative to even the alternative international art fairs, which have proliferated around the globe, becoming showcases for the "emerging" art that's got the art market revving at a rapid fire pace.

With an unusual blend of sophistication and beer-on-tap, bowling-in-the-basement Milwaukee-ness, the fair was a modest variation on similar fairs like Scope in New York or the Stray Show in Chicago.

The merrymaking in the air at the Falcon Bowl, the Riverwest beer hall and "nest" of the Polish Falcons fraternal organization that served as home to the local show in October, was evidence that the weekend-long event accomplished its goal of being offbeat.

A blithe and jaunty sensuality reigned in much of the art. It is a playful, do-it-yourself aesthetic that has been the mainstay of alternative fairs for some years now.

Artists working in this vein specialize in varying forms of lo-fi mash-ups of pop and high culture.

Just about everywhere at the fair was the ephemeral stuff of a fourth-grade arts-and-craft class - Elmer's glue, glitter, paper, bright acrylic paints, pencils, crayons and cardboard. Everyday objects, like rubber ducks, abounded, too.

A childlike curiosity drives them more than weighty compositional or conceptual choices.

That there is a certain similarity in the overall look of the art seems both a positive and cautionary sign. On the one hand, it means that there is a global conversation going on between emerging artists who are represented by smaller, less commercial spaces and that a movement, of sorts, exists.

On the other hand, that sameness in this particular style of art making raises questions about originality and whether there's much of it to be had in this particular strata of the art world.

I love the idea of wonderfully disarming art, art that uses as a starting point a visual style as universally familiar as the Thanksgiving centerpieces we made from construction paper in elementary school.

But I have to confess, I love the idea more than the reality.

In truth, when artists go to great lengths to shrug off art-world seriousness the art they make is sometimes just that - not serious. Making anti-art can actually get in the way of making art.

I found myself looking for beauty and ideas and often wondering if there were some secret handshake that I was missing.

Perhaps most sad is that this carefree style may have become the antithesis of what it set out to be. It's a style that allows some artists to hide out, so to speak, to avoid the fundamental challenge of making something meaningful, poetic or beautiful. What was certainly daring at some point in the past can now be predictable and even safe.

But this is true of the alternative scene all around the globe, a fault that can hardly be laid at the feet of this particular fair.

In fact, this fair was arguably smarter than many because of its more manageable size. And it had its share of redeeming moments, too.

The two large-scale paintings by Christine Streuli, brought to the fair by Karma International in collaboration with Galleria Mark Muller in Zurich, were certainly among the better works in the show. Streuli does what lots of artists do - but better than many.

In her paintings, she selects imagery from a seemingly endless array of sources. A lattice pattern of a fence. The silhouette of a bird. An antique photo of a can-can dancer. Rorschach ink blots. Expressive dribbles of her own paint.

With electric color, she layers her obviously flat images into quasi-abstract paintings that mysteriously seem to develop depth before your eyes and become lighted from within, like surreal landscapes that might envelop you with a single step forward.

The jumbo eyes in the characters of Eddie Martinez' paintings are sweetly arresting, eyes with inky pupils that have gone wide from some unknown source of bliss.

In "Mr. Garcia McDonald," the figure's hair and beard are plump, blob-shaped swaths of luscious white paint that dominates the petite artwork, created in a naive style. Crammed in around the edges - for landscape and maybe a shoulder or two - are expressive strips of olives, sky blue and reds. Martinez was shown by Zieher Smith in New York.

That Gisela Insuaste has spent a great deal of time in places with visible and dramatic landscapes and is now making art in a pretty flat place - Chicago - makes perfect sense when you look at her art. She creates landscapes that seem a fragile balance between the natural world and the urban and manmade.

In them, flat sheaths of green are propped on giant, toothpick-like stilts, creating an intentionally artificial mountain range. She also creates fantastical bits of urban landscapes on planks of wood, using the wood grain to add a topographical element.

Insuaste's paintings are only hints at her installations, which appear to be her stronger work, but it's still a good introduction to what she does. She was shown by Polvo in Chicago.

Nate Page, a former Milwaukeean, had work up in the Hotcakes Gallery. He uses a technique that falls somewhere between drawing and carving, transforming women's magazines into topographical, sculptural forms. He slices concentric shapes in page after page, drilling down to find and isolate eyes in various advertisements, bring them up to the surface.

Hotel, a Portland, Ore., gallery, had works by Megan Whitmarsh on view. At a distance they look like solid blocks of color with specks of other colors. At close range, the tiny scenes with elves and Eskimos that she's embroidered onto stretched fabrics become visible. There is something very homey about her work, but it is Minimalist and modern in its spareness, too.

ONLINE

To see online videos about the Milwaukee International Art Fair and to see a selection of the art on view there, go to www.jsonline.com/links/artfairvideo.

LINDSAY OBERMEYER: ODDS

LINDSAY OBERMEYER: ODDS

Opening Reception: Friday, November 10 from 6pm to 9pm
November 10 – December 2, 2006

Lindsay Obermeyer’s “Odds” project will be exhibited for the first time at Polvo! Obermeyer employs the history and metaphors surrounding textile practices to study issues as diverse as medical ethics, mental illness,and gender. She explains: “My ‘skins’ or garments will reflect the impact of disease on the body. It will investigate the point at which the decorative elementcrosses over to the grotesque and uncanny, when a beauty mark becomes a tumor.” This project is partially supported by a Community Arts Assistance program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.

Obermeyer has exhibited her work throughout the United States at venues such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Museum of Arts and Design (formerly known as the American Craft Museum). Her work has been included in three traveling exhibitions and several international exhibitions. It has been featured in numerous books and publications including the “Chicago Reader,” “American Craft”, “Fiberarts”, and “Reinventing Textiles: Gender and Identity”. Obermeyer has instructed studio and art education courses at National-Louis University, Northern Illinois University, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago among others. She is the recipient of two grants from the City of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs. She holds an M.F.A. and B.F.A. in the fiber arts and an M.A.T. in elementary education.

Mini-exhibit: Juan M. Villanueva (New York City) Juan M. Villanueva will be showing his small paintings from his series entitled: "Seasons of Development". It is Villanueva’s search as described by the artist as a "...search for personal identity and sense of community drives all my art, whether the medium is oils or acrylics, public art and/or natural elements." He studied the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and currently resides in New York City where he is also actively involved with the Groundswell Community Mural Project, based in Brooklyn, New York.

Flatscreen DVD: Sita Moyo (Johannesburg, South Africa)

Sita Moyo was born in 1981, in South Africa. In 2004 she received her B.A Honors Degree in Visual Art from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, and 2000-2003 B.A. Degree in Fine Art and English Literature from the University of Natal. Moyo will show her animation piece, "Fall From Grace" depicting a metaphysical anatomy of the female body, using archaic and modern symbols in atmospheric landscapes. Last year, this piece was included in the 2005 Tehran International Animation Festival.

Download Press release in PDF format
Download Brochure in PDF format

POLVO
1458 W. 18th St. 1R
Chicago, IL 60608
polvoarte@yahoo.com or 773 344 1940
http://www.polvo.org
HOURS: Saturdays from Noon-5pm or by appointment

Lindsay Obermeyer’s ”Odds” project is partially supported by a Community Arts Assistance program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.