Land Acknowledgment with American Indian Center Bibliothēca in various Public Libraries Movement Studies for Berger Park Cultural Center Your Gift at MdW Fair Be Happy (SMS) via text messages Consonance in the streets of Rogers Park It makes me wanna at MirrorLab Birchbark, Wiigwaas + Property at Rogers Park/West Ridge Historical Society Restraint at Leather Archives & Museum Without Within at Experimental Sound Studio Streetlight + Slideshow at Wedge Projects One Thing Leads to Another at Ralph Arnold Annex, Loyola University Chicago Water Music on the Beach from 6018North to Lane Beach Woman’s Club at 7077 N Ashland Blvd 777 at Kim’s Corner Food Sungold Pastiché at Salon Pastiché Be Happy at Estes and Glenwood Avenue Be Happy (Street Fair) on N Glenwood Ave Blueprints at Chicago Industrial Arts & Design Center Cold In All The Sunshine + Dog Days + Starkfield, Massachusetts at W Birchwood Ave Plants to Prints at Howard Community Garden Streetlight + Parade at 1629 W Howard St Draw a line —> Relay + Peanut Colada + u.127 + The Wide Open + Draw a line —> Trial and Failure, Trial and Practice + Thresh/hold at 1637-1643 W Howard St ANNEX Map
The video above has been compiled from materials and archival images generously shared by the American Indian Center and Rogers Park/West Ridge Historical Society. During Winter 2021, narration of the video was recorded with Grayson Alexander, Isabella Chamberland, and Edelawite Sasahulih of the 49th Ward Youth Council.
The video has been shared at 1224 W Loyola in Spring 2020, and was subsequently on view as a part of the Summer 2020 exhibition Birchbark, Wiigwaas at Rogers Park/West Ridge Historical Society, featuring new work by Nora Moore Lloyd. The video was also featured as a part of Moore Lloyd’s installation for human / nature: the weight of our actions on the natural world at the Illinois State Museum in 2021-2022.
Please let us know if you would like to add your voice.
- Lengths by Jisu Lee
- Untitled by Thomas Kong
- HOLD THAT SPACE FOR ME by Soheila Azadi
- Four Drawings and My translation of essays from Lee Ufan’s Yohaku no Geijutsu by Aya Nakamura
- Microbookmarking by Megan Nugroho
- Untitled by Alicia Craft and David Craft
- Re • sil • ience by John-Michael Korpal
- vs A SIGN IN SPACE by Matt Martin
- Le rêve de chauve-souris by Emanuele Druid Napolitano
- Blurred Vision by Sr. Dorothy Forman and Jean L Smith
- Pattern for Diaspora by AP Vague
- Real Stories by Jennifer Mannebach
- Fortune Cookie by Harald Busch
- Peace by Abdoul-Ganiou Dermani
- Dance 8 by Jin Lee
- Paroxysm by Forrest Brandt
- 13 Notes on Creativity by Matthew Lawson Garrett
- unknown author by Enrique Alvarez Aguilar
Past events: *between the tongue and the taste* 4.19-5.17.23 The Collective Mending Sessions 3.25.23 Reading the Landscape 9.28-11.02-12.07.22 + 1.11-5.31.23 Ende, Taul, Yu 10.18.22 Screen Test 9.21.22 BOUNDARYMIND 5.28.22 Drift 9.25-10.16.21 In-betweening 7.23.21 Twin Cities 3.29-5.9.21
Berger Park Cultural Center
6205 N Sheridan Road, Chicago IL
Call for Art-Writers Waitlist
Sessions Wednesdays April 19, May 17, June 21, July 19, August 16, September 20 from 6:30-8:30 PM
The third assembly of the art-writing group *between the tongue and the taste* is now in session. The group meets to read, discuss, and offer helpful criticism of the writing of its members for six meetings, April through September 2023.
Joining the group at Berger Park are Lichen Bouboushian, Maddie Brucker, Deirdre Colgan Jones, Eliza Fernand, Laura Goldstein, Millicent Kennedy, Maya Lea, Annette LePique, Craig Neeson, Caroline Preziosi, Robin Reid Drake, Taylor Rogers, Sara Zalek, with guests Kayla Anderson and Amber Ginsberg.
The group interprets the idea of art-writing loosely, serving as a space for its members to receive feedback on writing that constitutes part of their artistic practice. The group encourages diverse forms, including but certainly not limited to: pieces of writing meant to be artworks in their own right, performance scripts, poetry, fictocriticism, statements, studio logs, etc. The purpose of this group is to give its participants access to an audience of critical readers—a rare resource outside academic institutions—as well as to further develop Chicago's strong community of artist writers.
Each monthly session features a guest art-writer, and three members volunteer to share a piece for the following session. Pieces are anywhere from loose ideas to final versions, and writers include a brief statement with each piece about the type of feedback for which they’re looking.
*between the tongue and the taste* is led by Mel Keiser and Matt Martin. The upcoming events are being shared at Berger Park Cultural Center as part of Movement Studies – a programming series investigating social and environmental transitions. Previous iterations of the group in 2018-2019 were hosted at Wedge Projects.
The Collective Mending Sessions
Berger Park Cultural Center
6205 N Sheridan Road, Chicago IL
Workshop Saturday, March 25 from 1-4 PM
The Collective Mending Sessions is a series of socially engaged workshops led by artist Catherine Reinhart, centered on collectively mending abandoned quilts. This project cultivates care for cloth and community through the meditative process of slow stitching. Since 2018, Reinhart has led over 40 workshops both in-person and online, repairing seven quilts with hundreds participants from around the world. These workshops resemble a quilting bee where participants learn basic mending and textile care, while building community in a warm, inclusive environment. They cultivate care for cloth and community through mending together and discussions centered around the value of repair. The resulting quilts are transformed from unwanted textile objects into contemporary fiber artworks through the work of many hands, moving toward a more egalitarian model of work. Shared alongside the workshop is an extensive library of resources, ranging from instructional texts on mending to textile history to cultural and craft theory.
Catherine Reinhart is an interdisciplinary artist living in Ames, IA, U.S.A. Reinhart creates fiber work and conducts social practice with abandoned textiles around themes of domestic labor, connection, and care. She received her BFA in Integrated Studio Arts in 2008 from Iowa State University. In 2012, she completed her MFA in Textiles from the University of Kansas. Her works have been exhibited locally, regionally, and nationally. Catherine is the recipient of numerous grants and residencies. She was recently honored as a 2020 Iowa Artist Fellow, a 2021 Artist-in-Residence at the Terrain Residency in Springfield, IL, and an inaugural recipient of the Alex Brown Foundation’s Artist-in-Residence in Des Moines, IA (2022). The Collective Mending Sessions was recently selected for the "Mending and Making" Workshop presented by Endangered Material Knowledge Programme, The British Museum (London 2023). For more information, please visit collectivemendingsessions.com.
This event is being shared at Berger Park Cultural Center as part of Movement Studies – a programming series investigating social and environmental transitions.
Berger Park Cultural Center
6205 N Sheridan Road, Chicago IL
Next Gathering Summer TBA
Reading: Undrowned by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
and/or Chapter 8 Watching the Islands Go By
Join us for an evolving reading group, named after our seed text Reading the Landscape by May Theilgaard Watts. The 1957 edition of this work carried the subtitle: ‘An Adventure in Ecology’ and this is what we wish our group reading and discussion to be – purposefully following where the text/landscape takes us.
You do not have to read a particular book to join or participate in this group. With Reading the Landscape as a starting prompt, we will chart and document the unpredictable path of ourselves reading, as the group spreads out to follow individual curiosities, and gathers together to share field reports on what we have learned. Broad themes under discussion are related to Chicagoland, Ecology, and Art. We have started a small give-a-book, take-a-book shelf in the library of Berger Park Culture Center to reflect and share related texts.
May Theilgaard Watts was a naturalist at The Morton Arboretum, and many of the ecologies examined in ‘Reading the Landscape’ are in close proximity to the City, including the Indiana Dunes, Rock River, Wisconsin lakes and forests, Wheatland prairie, Chicagoland highways, and elsewhere. For additional biographical information about May Theilgaard Watts, and to view samples of the diagrammatic and botanical drawing style which are found throughout her published texts, please visit The Morton Arboretum online archive.
Roman Susan will aim to have a handful of copies of Reading the Landscape we can loan to anyone who would like to participate. Right now we are reading the second edition of this work, Reading the Landscape of America, which was published 18 years after the first publication. This edition includes postscripts to chapters that revisit landscapes described decades earlier. You can start wherever you want – first version, revised, or something else entirely, in the spirit of ‘An Adventure in Ecology’ – let us know what you find!
This event is being shared at Berger Park Cultural Center as part of Movement Studies – a programming series investigating social and environmental transitions.
Berger Park Cultural Center (Coach House)
6215 N Sheridan Road, Chicago IL
October 18, 2022 at 7 PM
Join us for a screening of films by Shir Ende, Paige Taul, and Cherrie Yu at Berger Park. The program features short works that reference and reframe canonical moving image by Bruce Nauman and Yvonne Rainer, alongside new narratives, choreography, and personal storytelling.
Shir Ende is a Chicago-based artist and educator. Ende received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has shown at University of Illinois Springfield, Riverside Art Center, Comfort Station, Chicago Artist Coalition, Hyde Park Art Center, Heaven Gallery, Gallery 400, Terrain Biennial, Mana Contemporary, Woman Made Gallery, and was a sponsored artist at High Concept Labs. She has participated in the Center Program at the Hyde Park Art Center and was a 2018 - 2019 Hatch Resident at the Chicago Artist Coalition. For more information, please visit shirende.com.
Paige Taul is an Oakland, CA native who received her B.A. in Studio Art with a concentration in cinematography from the University of Virginia and an M.F.A from the University of Illinois at Chicago in Moving Image. Her work engages with and challenges assumptions of black cultural expression and notions of belonging. Her interests lie in observing environmental and familial connections to concepts tied to racebased expectations and expose those boundaries of identity in veins such as religion, language, and other black community based experiences. To view more work by the artist, please visit paigetaul.com.
Cherrie Yu is an artist born in Xi'an, China and lives in the US. They work in choreography, moving image, writing, and installation. They have been an artist in residence at ACRE, McColl Center, Yaddo, Monson Art, and Kala Art Institute. Their works have been exhibited at Contemporary Calgary Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Mint Museum, Links Hall, Wassaic Project, and Roman Susan. For more information, please visit cherrieyu.cargo.site.
This event is being shared at Berger Park Cultural Center as part of Movement Studies – a programming series investigating social and environmental transitions. The first image above is a still from How to Make a Structure with the Horizon/How to Make Windows for the Horizon by Shir Ende, 2019; second image: still from What’s good bruce? by Paige Taul, 2018; third image: still from Trio A Translation Project by Cherrie Yu, 2022.
MdW Fair
2233 S Throop St, Chicago IL
September 9, 2022 to September 11, 2022
10 years into the process, Roman Susan is becoming a real nonprofit – we have tote bags for our supporters! If you’d like to share your Roman Susan love with the world through tangible swag, make a personally significant donation via romansusan.org/support.
We know there are too many totes already in the world – and maybe too many nonprofits? Reusable bags are only worthwhile if they are actually used, and reused, and reused, without necessitting more new material production, more accumulation, and more excess.
All of our totes are hand-constructed by RS founder Kristin Abhalter with thrift store fabrics – or printed directly over the top of existing token bags. The work behind this includes many folks – importantly: Kit Rosenberg devised the original reverse ‘Roman Susan’ design; Vida Sačić helps us look sharper in all things graphic-designed; and John Lacefield is doing the printing.
Do you have excess tote bags we can use in this project? Reach out to art@romansusan.org and we’ll make them newly new and reused. Want a tote but can’t donate right now? We are live screen printing bags on Saturday, September 10 in the Printing Zone on the 2nd floor of MdW. BYOTote and then share the Roman Susan icon wherever you go grocery shopping, gathering, foraging, prepping, or hoarding other things. . . .
"An organic cotton tote needs to be used 20,000 times to offset its overall impact of production, according to a 2018 study by the Ministry of Environment and Food of Denmark. That equates to daily use for 54 years — for just one bag."
––Grace Cook, The Cotton Tote Crisis
Be Happy (SMS)
(773) XXX-XXXX to (312) XXX-XXXX
March 19, 2022 - April 15, 2022
At the end of Winter 2022, Thomas Kong began sending text messages of daily work to Roman Susan director Nathan Abhalter Smith. After a few days and many collages, the pair decided to share this work in an online project, highlighting daily compositions until this was no longer what they were doing. The correspondence lasted about a month, and more work in this mode by Kong are available daily via @thomaskkong. These images are best viewed on a phone.
Saturday, March 19, 2022 at 1:15 PM.
Sunday, March 20, 2022 at 2:34 PM
Monday, March 21, 2022 at 11:19 AM
Tuesday, March 22, 2022 at 7:41 PM
Wednesday, March 23, 2022 at 9:18 AM
Thursday, March 24, 2022 at 3:09 PM
Friday, March 25, 2022 at 8:16 AM
Saturday, March 26 at 1:38 PM
Sunday, March 27 at 10:41 AM
Monday, March 28 at 3:14 PM
Tuesday, March 29 at 11:22 AM
Wednesday, March 30 at 12:28 PM
Thursday, March 31 at 1:58 PM
Friday, April 1 at 3:16 PM
Saturday, April 2 at 9:54 AM
Sunday, April 3 at 10:09 AM
Thursday, April 7 at 12:53 PM
Saturday, April 9 at 12:15 PM
Sunday, April 10 at 10:29 AM
Monday, April 11 at 10:51 AM
Tuesday, April 12 at 12:39 PM
Wednesday, April 13 at 10:21 AM
Thursday, April 14 at 2:05 PM
Friday, April 15 at 9:39 AM
Consonance
September 1, 2021 - December 21, 2021
Consonance is a series of photographic street posters that explores the nature of public speech. Using the graphic forms of the alphabet to inspire prototypes of objects for use in street demonstrations (such as bullhorns, flags, and barriers), the work depicts language as the tools for ongoing collective action.
Consonance is shared by Roman Susan Art Foundation as street posters on buildings, construction sites, and common infrastructure across Chicagoland, as a partner program for The Available City of the Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Julietta Cheung is an interdisciplinary artist who works with language and everyday objects. Her themes and approaches are informed by her experience as a second language user and her background in graphic design. Through her textual appropriations, typographic experimentations, reading performances, and sculptural explorations, Cheung's body of work work examines collective attitudes and common assumptions. For more information, please visit juliettacheung.net.
