There is always plenty to write regarding Universities and Education, could probably fill a book or two- but my hand gives me plenty of trouble these days ... dammed hands. So, I write here and there online to remind myself of what is good. Privately, I am slowly –very slowly, rewriting a story titled Blau. And one day I may be finished with the story. Unfortunately I have to be very selective at what I chose to use my valuable hands for these days. But for today –I want to remind myself of what is good about 2010 and what will be great in 2011.
In February of 2010- I was in Chicago and it was really wonderful. Next year I’m completing a short exhibition film about my week there and all the nice people I met and reconnected with while I shot photographic work for an exhibition sometime in the future.
While in Chicago, I revisited the train stop that I fell from the top of. I climbed the cement steps of the train stop arriving at the top- I looked back down to the side walk below where I landed so long ago. It was a long way down. Four cement flights really. Really… I couldn’t believe that I fell so far. I couldn’t remember the actual distance after the fall. No wonder I was in pain for months and lost words for what had happened. No wonder I lost my way then. No wonder my friend bought out the drug store of pain killers for me, and none of them worked.
In 2010, I looked down the stairs –I remember
-my head –it hit the top stair of the massive and solid cement stair case, and then, I awoke at the bottom step on the side walk actually -standing up I should have seen tiny cartoon birds circling around the crown of my head.
When I arrived in East Tennessee to live –it took a while but I jumped back into life. I was made very welcome here very quickly by the nicest people.
I was voluneering for the local museum and was invited to a cocktail party. Still very loopy from my tragic fall that I had actually forgotten, and I arrived at the party not knowing what to wear. I actually brought a second dress with me, and arrived early. When I asked a very nice woman if my dress was okay? She made me feel right at home and invited me to become a member of the guild. I'll never forget how nice people were to me... at the museum, we had a young man who managed the museum shop -one day I walked in and he said,"I have one of our elder members here working the shop today as a volunteer." He said: "I won't be leaving the shop today -our elder member might need me to help her run the cash register as she is in her 80's." "We love having her though and I'll get to complete some work in the office."
It was very nice being apart of the ongoings at the museum. It wasn't about time and money -just the value of spenting important time together was all.
One day I arrived at the museum and our voluteer coordinator said: "We have a member of the museum from France. She is in the hospital and some of us are going to visit." She said: "If you have time?" "Would you like to stop up at the hospital with me and deliver some flowers?"
It was so nice and just because. After my fall off the train stop -I don't think that I could have found a better group of people to just be loopy around. They were all extreemly wonderful to me.
I have a great deal more to say but will finish this article latter.
Later in the story: "though still incomplete"
In 2010 right after reconnecting with some old friends in the city of Chicago -my friends sent great humor and opportunity among other things in my e-mails box and it’s made all the difference in the world in 2011- I left so many friends behind in the windy city and though I do not have any direct stories about them to share with you, I do have direct stories about the general kindness of people... and how thankful I am to know that we're not so bad as a human race in the 21 century.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Saturday, September 11, 2010
BLACK SHEEP
"Words Were Spoken" SEPTEMBER 11 2010
It was the year 1998, and I was about to take off for the train into the loop. My usual routine around summer months then was to awake at 6 am and walk a half a block to the beach -past the public tennis courts and bicycle paths and walking trail as I walked by miles and miles of mammoth sunflowers which a woman in the neighborhood cared for and grew herself.
There used to be a street sign there a block from the beach that said: "Watch out for dangerous waves"
I loved it there, watching the sun rise, up, high. Many people who lived near by: walking their dogs, and saying a friendly good morning. Dogs were only allowed on the beach until 9 am or was it 8 am,..? and then the life guards rowed their boats in for the day of swimmers. There was one woman who was in there in her 90's that swam there every summer day. She was glowing and old and beautiful as she lead the way in her own life every day. I alway thought she should be a face that lead the way to our many photographic advertisments and even film iconography in the issues of beauty for women in a modern thoughtful world..
The water was tested for pollution every day of every year in many places in the more than 30 mile stretch of public beach front. One part of the beach front even contained a play house, though I never did get to see a performance there.
Each morning I'd walk the beach for five minutes while stretching. I'd fill my pockets full of tiny pebbles of sand washed sea glass before long. Green and blue mostly. Then I'd find the same giant slab of rock out into the water just enough,. which I climbed upon to sit for another five minutes in the sun as I gazed out into what the seems an ocean, though it was a, vast, expansive, great lake full of fresh water, no wales or poka-dotted tails .. "never seeing anything more than blue sky" and "the multitude of fantastical colour" reflected in facets of water which cut light and bend it into prisms of a world unknown completely.
Back at my English Basement Flat with beautiful courtyards, with a garden, and clay tile roof tops, and a crew of building attendance, which I knew like brothers -I ate breakfast and polished myself up for a long grandeur of a day. Off to the train stop, pick up coffee, and; say hi to a woman standing on the street selling flowers that people like to buy to brighten their day at their desks, some times cubicals, and also people really liked flowers to simply give to friends to spriten a friends day and throughout their week.
I'd also say hi to Yessmin, who was working behind the coffee counter to put her son through school. There was a man there some mornings -I'd buy him a sandwich as he was really going through hard times on most days and didn't really want to talk about what plagued him and really didn‘t ever speak to anyone..
If I took my car instead of the train and parked in the loop, there was a man at the other coffee shop up the road who was a doctor of medicine and served me coffee from behind the counter. Some days he’d surprise me with a special something to eat that he knew I liked. Like a Half Moon Cookie. He was from India and could not work as a doctor in the United States, and well, at least he had a reasonably priced place to live and work that paid for his life. I was trying to help him get into a program with one of the hospitals so that he could use his knowledge again in what was a foreign land to him, where the language of English and a decree from an American Universtiy was very important.
and well, let me add: that perhaps he should have been paid a doctors fee for the healthy feeling he brought to my heart and my thoughts for just simply being thoughtful and continuing to treat people in a very spirited human way. We need more of that everywhere.
Hundreds of people on the platform @7:15 am.
“There are 9 million or more people in the city and surrounding areas of Chicago. It is a large number of people but not a very large place at all really. Yet the hearts of people are as broad shouldered as is spoken of in fine literature.”
On this day, like every day, we loaded the train together and most times it was so full that people actually touched each other -pressed together rather tightly, and well. -often shoulder to shoulder.
-and when the train stopped abruptly there were enough of us to hold each other up from falling. "no need for a trip to 6 flags" the fun was all right here..
and then -
I looked to my left where there was a man trying to say something to me. Surrounded and always talking to people on the train, I looked at him curiously and with kind question. He was a man that was not too tall and very proud,. his clothes were very plain and he had a very nice face. His thick eyebrows turned down and I listened. He spoke Spanish. I didn't understand a word of it except to count to seven that I learned in grade school with many other words forgotten, but I continued to listen. The minute I began to listen, he broke out
-talking and talking and as a minute passed, "job" espanial, children, food…? I didn't know what to do, as it seemed that he was pleading with me. And just then, a tall, and very polished, kind, soft spoken, man, turned his back from us, all the way around to say something.. he looked at the nice man from Mexico’s face and said -"Here" -writing down an address and phone number. The tall mans pen pointed -and kept pointing towards the paper with intent .. "they will give you a job!" "work"! The tall man said very firmly. Everyone in our train cab smiled with great relief. Including me....
BLACK SHEEP
It was the year 1998, and I was about to take off for the train into the loop. My usual routine around summer months then was to awake at 6 am and walk a half a block to the beach -past the public tennis courts and bicycle paths and walking trail as I walked by miles and miles of mammoth sunflowers which a woman in the neighborhood cared for and grew herself.
There used to be a street sign there a block from the beach that said: "Watch out for dangerous waves"
I loved it there, watching the sun rise, up, high. Many people who lived near by: walking their dogs, and saying a friendly good morning. Dogs were only allowed on the beach until 9 am or was it 8 am,..? and then the life guards rowed their boats in for the day of swimmers. There was one woman who was in there in her 90's that swam there every summer day. She was glowing and old and beautiful as she lead the way in her own life every day. I alway thought she should be a face that lead the way to our many photographic advertisments and even film iconography in the issues of beauty for women in a modern thoughtful world..
The water was tested for pollution every day of every year in many places in the more than 30 mile stretch of public beach front. One part of the beach front even contained a play house, though I never did get to see a performance there.
Each morning I'd walk the beach for five minutes while stretching. I'd fill my pockets full of tiny pebbles of sand washed sea glass before long. Green and blue mostly. Then I'd find the same giant slab of rock out into the water just enough,. which I climbed upon to sit for another five minutes in the sun as I gazed out into what the seems an ocean, though it was a, vast, expansive, great lake full of fresh water, no wales or poka-dotted tails .. "never seeing anything more than blue sky" and "the multitude of fantastical colour" reflected in facets of water which cut light and bend it into prisms of a world unknown completely.
Back at my English Basement Flat with beautiful courtyards, with a garden, and clay tile roof tops, and a crew of building attendance, which I knew like brothers -I ate breakfast and polished myself up for a long grandeur of a day. Off to the train stop, pick up coffee, and; say hi to a woman standing on the street selling flowers that people like to buy to brighten their day at their desks, some times cubicals, and also people really liked flowers to simply give to friends to spriten a friends day and throughout their week.
I'd also say hi to Yessmin, who was working behind the coffee counter to put her son through school. There was a man there some mornings -I'd buy him a sandwich as he was really going through hard times on most days and didn't really want to talk about what plagued him and really didn‘t ever speak to anyone..
If I took my car instead of the train and parked in the loop, there was a man at the other coffee shop up the road who was a doctor of medicine and served me coffee from behind the counter. Some days he’d surprise me with a special something to eat that he knew I liked. Like a Half Moon Cookie. He was from India and could not work as a doctor in the United States, and well, at least he had a reasonably priced place to live and work that paid for his life. I was trying to help him get into a program with one of the hospitals so that he could use his knowledge again in what was a foreign land to him, where the language of English and a decree from an American Universtiy was very important.
and well, let me add: that perhaps he should have been paid a doctors fee for the healthy feeling he brought to my heart and my thoughts for just simply being thoughtful and continuing to treat people in a very spirited human way. We need more of that everywhere.
Hundreds of people on the platform @7:15 am.
“There are 9 million or more people in the city and surrounding areas of Chicago. It is a large number of people but not a very large place at all really. Yet the hearts of people are as broad shouldered as is spoken of in fine literature.”
On this day, like every day, we loaded the train together and most times it was so full that people actually touched each other -pressed together rather tightly, and well. -often shoulder to shoulder.
-and when the train stopped abruptly there were enough of us to hold each other up from falling. "no need for a trip to 6 flags" the fun was all right here..
and then -
I looked to my left where there was a man trying to say something to me. Surrounded and always talking to people on the train, I looked at him curiously and with kind question. He was a man that was not too tall and very proud,. his clothes were very plain and he had a very nice face. His thick eyebrows turned down and I listened. He spoke Spanish. I didn't understand a word of it except to count to seven that I learned in grade school with many other words forgotten, but I continued to listen. The minute I began to listen, he broke out
-talking and talking and as a minute passed, "job" espanial, children, food…? I didn't know what to do, as it seemed that he was pleading with me. And just then, a tall, and very polished, kind, soft spoken, man, turned his back from us, all the way around to say something.. he looked at the nice man from Mexico’s face and said -"Here" -writing down an address and phone number. The tall mans pen pointed -and kept pointing towards the paper with intent .. "they will give you a job!" "work"! The tall man said very firmly. Everyone in our train cab smiled with great relief. Including me....
BLACK SHEEP
Saturday, January 30, 2010
MORE ARTS I
March 23rd, 2010...
there is much more to write though I have several deadlines to meet.
I will say this for now: My trip to the city of Chicago was magnificent as I shot more than 2,000 photographs and have a new exhibition for 2011 in store. While I was away, a friend of mine from Europe had been reading my blog and that was a great surprise... upon my return, I found this photo in an e-mail with no words written, and that was an even greater surprise. It took me several days to figure out that it was in reference to my entry below and was very sweet really... THANK YOU!
I am also thankful for my many other great events (big and not so big, like daffodils in the spring outside the door) , and even more thankful for my many nice friends from around the world................ read the entry below
_______________________________________
It's January 2010
It snowed today and the cold white blanket covered everything in East Tennessee including my memory of the Lake Front near the loop, right out side the doors of the school of the art institute of Chicago in the winter. Sometimes it's so cold for so long that the lake front begins to look like frozen parts of Alaska where the ocean becomes a mile or more thick in ice caps. I used to walk outside the school during breaks from classes just to catch a glimpse of the magnificent Canadian Geese who crowd beautifully french influenced park scapes, and the geese flew in by the thousands. Digital photographs were not big then and terribly expensive, and would have been nice, as I had always wanted to shoot pictures of the gorgeous plentiful geese. I did have a great camera then, which I had owned for twenty or so years, though was stolen after I had shot some of my completed work at the school.
It was unfortunate that I never took those pictures of the geese, but soon, next week, I have a great digital camera and will be in the magnificent mile for a week for a fine arts conference at SAIC. I hope for plenty of snow and I'll be ready to shoot everything in sight.
When I moved to the Chicago area, I didn't know a soul, though I knew, that for some reason I was supposed to be in Chicago at that time for the arts scene and of course to attain my schooling at the age of 30.
I had left a whole career behind and just went for it.
Well, you know the old saying: "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times." / For me really, it was the best of times, as even driving into the loop everyday on Lakeshore Drive was amazing then, as my eye followed the skyline of the great city and I thought, "only a city of artist could have created this skyline, and of course created this city." I learned very early on that if there was something that you were interested in, that there was surely a large group of people somewhere in the city that converged to talk about / create / be active in / or celebrate, what ever the subject was you had interest in. It's a fantastic city in that regard, and in most regards really as the artist are: political, scientific, activists, organized, theatrical, musical, and even religious about what they (including me, myself, & I) do and who they are in relationship to the world.
Even if you don't know anyone and your sitting in just the right cafe', it isn't unusual to join into the group and become apart of life at that moment in time and make great friends. It wasn't long after I moved to the city that my phone machine was jammed with messages from just meeting people on the train as I met people with common interests nearly everyday and exchanged numbers. Once, when I was working for a brokerage firm, I was given tickets to the symphony and I didn't know anyone to ask to join me that evening, so, I treated myself to a good meal out near Symphony Center in a sort of medium range eatery, and there was a group of people that I met that invited me to there table that also were going to the symphony that evening.
My first few month in Chicago, I worked briefly for David Brenner the actor. He lived several blocks up the street from me and often I'd drive him to the airport as he was flying in and out of LA. He has wonderful children and an adorable wife. They took quite a bit of interest in your career I remember. I was class mates with a director at FOX News, as she was finishing up her degree after beginning at DePaul University. The Director was finishing up her degree with her last classes at Columbia College and I was just starting out in my first year in school. And there we were in the same class. In the arts, some of the finest teachers are creative people who have built their reputation in the area they teach by working at their skills, knowledge, and expertise within their careers outside of teaching, and they bring with that worlds of knowledge and applied experience. Within the city of Chicago, there are great things to learn....
there is much more to write though I have several deadlines to meet.
I will say this for now: My trip to the city of Chicago was magnificent as I shot more than 2,000 photographs and have a new exhibition for 2011 in store. While I was away, a friend of mine from Europe had been reading my blog and that was a great surprise... upon my return, I found this photo in an e-mail with no words written, and that was an even greater surprise. It took me several days to figure out that it was in reference to my entry below and was very sweet really... THANK YOU!
I am also thankful for my many other great events (big and not so big, like daffodils in the spring outside the door) , and even more thankful for my many nice friends from around the world................ read the entry below
_______________________________________
It's January 2010
It snowed today and the cold white blanket covered everything in East Tennessee including my memory of the Lake Front near the loop, right out side the doors of the school of the art institute of Chicago in the winter. Sometimes it's so cold for so long that the lake front begins to look like frozen parts of Alaska where the ocean becomes a mile or more thick in ice caps. I used to walk outside the school during breaks from classes just to catch a glimpse of the magnificent Canadian Geese who crowd beautifully french influenced park scapes, and the geese flew in by the thousands. Digital photographs were not big then and terribly expensive, and would have been nice, as I had always wanted to shoot pictures of the gorgeous plentiful geese. I did have a great camera then, which I had owned for twenty or so years, though was stolen after I had shot some of my completed work at the school.
It was unfortunate that I never took those pictures of the geese, but soon, next week, I have a great digital camera and will be in the magnificent mile for a week for a fine arts conference at SAIC. I hope for plenty of snow and I'll be ready to shoot everything in sight.
When I moved to the Chicago area, I didn't know a soul, though I knew, that for some reason I was supposed to be in Chicago at that time for the arts scene and of course to attain my schooling at the age of 30.
I had left a whole career behind and just went for it.
Well, you know the old saying: "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times." / For me really, it was the best of times, as even driving into the loop everyday on Lakeshore Drive was amazing then, as my eye followed the skyline of the great city and I thought, "only a city of artist could have created this skyline, and of course created this city." I learned very early on that if there was something that you were interested in, that there was surely a large group of people somewhere in the city that converged to talk about / create / be active in / or celebrate, what ever the subject was you had interest in. It's a fantastic city in that regard, and in most regards really as the artist are: political, scientific, activists, organized, theatrical, musical, and even religious about what they (including me, myself, & I) do and who they are in relationship to the world.
Even if you don't know anyone and your sitting in just the right cafe', it isn't unusual to join into the group and become apart of life at that moment in time and make great friends. It wasn't long after I moved to the city that my phone machine was jammed with messages from just meeting people on the train as I met people with common interests nearly everyday and exchanged numbers. Once, when I was working for a brokerage firm, I was given tickets to the symphony and I didn't know anyone to ask to join me that evening, so, I treated myself to a good meal out near Symphony Center in a sort of medium range eatery, and there was a group of people that I met that invited me to there table that also were going to the symphony that evening.
My first few month in Chicago, I worked briefly for David Brenner the actor. He lived several blocks up the street from me and often I'd drive him to the airport as he was flying in and out of LA. He has wonderful children and an adorable wife. They took quite a bit of interest in your career I remember. I was class mates with a director at FOX News, as she was finishing up her degree after beginning at DePaul University. The Director was finishing up her degree with her last classes at Columbia College and I was just starting out in my first year in school. And there we were in the same class. In the arts, some of the finest teachers are creative people who have built their reputation in the area they teach by working at their skills, knowledge, and expertise within their careers outside of teaching, and they bring with that worlds of knowledge and applied experience. Within the city of Chicago, there are great things to learn....
Saturday, October 11, 2008
More Arts
Recently, I was writing about the arts and my involvement with the arts on an interest page in an online resume. As the writing developed, I began to realized how much I used to know about the arts in the Chicago area where I schooled and lived for a good while. The excitement grew as I began to write and remember more as I went back in time and realized how many great art venues I used to be involved with. Then I realized how valuable it would be to someone who either lived in Chicago or just wanted to visit:
My Bucket List or I always
referred to it as My Life List;
MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES
First off, you must know that the major museums have a free day either Monday or Tuesday.? You'll have to check the Internet for that info, but it is well worth it to check into it. If you know someone who lives in the Chicago area or has a library card with the city of Chicago, you are entitled to check out a museum pass for up to two weeks and you can take up to 12 people. One museum pass will get 12 people into one museum. Sometimes you have to call around the libraries to find a library that has not checked out all of their passes... and for an annual fee you can have a library card when you're from another city. If you're visiting Chicago with many people, it could be well worth the annual fee.
THE HAROLD WASHINGTON LIBRARY
This is the greatest library really. Often times there are performances of classical music or a lecture or book lecture in the library and is worth looking into. You can listen to many of the lectures and even concerts online at the library podcasts (correction: pod-cast are available with-out a card and are very worth the listening) if you have a library card / I still have mine and I love getting the option of thousands of great books on tape, online. And the lectures online are great.
The library offers gazillions- of news publications and has an entire floor devoted to them. They also have sound-proof rooms to practice violin or other instruments that are essential to practice whole-heartedly and without disturbance/ I had many friends with the Evanston Symphony and such and it is a nice feature.
The library also has a gallery on the first floor and has access from the loop train. It is really very nice as you can hop off the train and just about walk right into the library doors... and in the winter you can visit the cafe in the library and grab a coco. Make a day of it! It is quite worth it!
Columbia College
The South Michigan Avenue building has a lounge /sandwiches and soft drinks/ and a student gallery/ on one side, (the E. Wabash entrance) and on the Michigan Avenue entrance, you can enjoy their, small, but amazing photograph gallery. Columbia College Chicago has at least 17 buildings in the LOOP of busy Chicago and there is much to explore.
www.colum.edu/About_Columbia/Maps_-_Building_Directories/623_S._Wabash_Building.php
If you get a chance to visit, take some time, and go up to the Columbia College Chicago Library: They have a large film department and you can watch a movie in the library.
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
They are just a stones throw away from Columbia College on Michigan Avenue, and also have a great library, but their student gallery is always great and is well worth the stop. The School walks right into the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago and that is always a treat. Don't forget to visit downstairs in the museum in the children's area where kids can paint all day and take something home!
Across the street from the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago is the Symphony Center. If you're looking for a part time job-call / they are always looking for professional phone sales and reception. But that is not the fun of it all there- it is the symphony orchestra practices. You have to be a student or talk your way through... the practices of all of the symphony players and the grand conductors is wonderful. Occasionally, you might see Yo-yo Ma or Bernard Haitink / I was lucky enough to meet the late George Solti, and that practise was pure magic and never to be forgotten.
I've only just begun to tell you
of it all. I'll write more later.
Drawing Class @
The Palette and Chisel:
If you're an artist and like to draw outside of your studio and the university setting, you might try Palette and Chisel. http://www.paletteandchisel.org/ It is a wonderful drawing center with good solid instruction. I feel that, when you’re warming up your skills as an artist, it is more often a delightful inspiration to work live in a studio setting with others who draw and like to create to feel more connected to people and to what you like to do.
The Palette and Chisel is a beautiful center with great character in its teaching and in its environment as it is centrally located near the Chicago loop and borders the Gold Coast area of galleries, bookstores, shopping and inexpensive but extraordinarily scrumptious foods from many ethnic backgrounds.
I tell you of the Palette and Chisel today as thoughts of this story came back to me:
It was in 1996 when I was on Clark Street at a shop with a dear friend of mine as she needed a dress she could wear to her graduate recital, at NWU School of Music. She was completing her doctorate and was about to perform a work that she had written for cello.
The shop was tiny, maybe in a twenty foot by thirty foot space with a large attractive abstract oil on the wall and a sofa set in the middle of the floor. There was a sculpture of a beautiful hand, carved in marble laying on the floor and only two large racks of clothes. We shuffled through the racks that were all one of a kind and exceptionally made. As I further examined the marble hand, a man appeared from the back room. And then a woman appeared... He began to talk about the marble hand and how it was made at length as he revealed that he was the artist of the sculpture. Then he quickly denounced himself and spoke of the women next to him who was his wife. They both worked in the back of the shop designing and making the wonderful clothes. As we continued, I they told me of their journey.
She was a young girl, and they met as he was with his father who was in the military and they had visited communist China. And then, the young boy and his father left China.
She said: as she grew older, she escaped tenement square and moved to the states to find him, she spent several years in the United States before she knew where he was. And, then she found him in Chicago. There they were, years later, both artist and both in a magnificent shop of exquisitely designed cotton clothes that they worked at creating together.
That is when I found out about the Palette and Chisel.
My friend and I left the shop that day and knew that we had found endearing friends. They shared many little stories on that first day and days after as they had spoken of the Palette and Chisel which the clothiers loved, and attended as they worked with the human figure in a class room setting.
I called a few days later after I received a call from my graduating friend who was a bit nervous. We still had not found a dress for her and she was unsure as to what to wear. I said to her on the phone that I had seen the perfect dress at that little shop and that I would call and have it held.
As the graduating friend of mine stopped into the shop to pick up the dress, she had to be fitted. The woman of the shop just ran her hand down the back of my friend and then took the dress and disappeared into the back. Shortly after, she returned with the dress that she had altered without a tape measure and the dress was perfectly fitted.
Laurence and Tonge owned the shop for many years later and did very well as it completely paid for their home and their retirement. They even gave me lessons in the back as to how to cut a dress pattern and put it all together. It was more than a quaint experience to meet them as later, I attended many Sunday events at the shop enjoying small catered brunches with goodies sent from the Swedish and Middle Eastern Bakeries down the street. On those mornings we almost always enjoyed a string player too. But it was always with great company and an exchange of stories that would fill my memories for a life time and satisfy my heart for more than an eternity to know that such people of the world do exist….
Anyway, that's the latest memory and
I'll tell you more in the New Year of 2009...
My Bucket List or I always
referred to it as My Life List;
MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES
First off, you must know that the major museums have a free day either Monday or Tuesday.? You'll have to check the Internet for that info, but it is well worth it to check into it. If you know someone who lives in the Chicago area or has a library card with the city of Chicago, you are entitled to check out a museum pass for up to two weeks and you can take up to 12 people. One museum pass will get 12 people into one museum. Sometimes you have to call around the libraries to find a library that has not checked out all of their passes... and for an annual fee you can have a library card when you're from another city. If you're visiting Chicago with many people, it could be well worth the annual fee.
THE HAROLD WASHINGTON LIBRARY
This is the greatest library really. Often times there are performances of classical music or a lecture or book lecture in the library and is worth looking into. You can listen to many of the lectures and even concerts online at the library podcasts (correction: pod-cast are available with-out a card and are very worth the listening) if you have a library card / I still have mine and I love getting the option of thousands of great books on tape, online. And the lectures online are great.
The library offers gazillions- of news publications and has an entire floor devoted to them. They also have sound-proof rooms to practice violin or other instruments that are essential to practice whole-heartedly and without disturbance/ I had many friends with the Evanston Symphony and such and it is a nice feature.
The library also has a gallery on the first floor and has access from the loop train. It is really very nice as you can hop off the train and just about walk right into the library doors... and in the winter you can visit the cafe in the library and grab a coco. Make a day of it! It is quite worth it!
Columbia College
The South Michigan Avenue building has a lounge /sandwiches and soft drinks/ and a student gallery/ on one side, (the E. Wabash entrance) and on the Michigan Avenue entrance, you can enjoy their, small, but amazing photograph gallery. Columbia College Chicago has at least 17 buildings in the LOOP of busy Chicago and there is much to explore.
www.colum.edu/About_Columbia/Maps_-_Building_Directories/623_S._Wabash_Building.php
If you get a chance to visit, take some time, and go up to the Columbia College Chicago Library: They have a large film department and you can watch a movie in the library.
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
They are just a stones throw away from Columbia College on Michigan Avenue, and also have a great library, but their student gallery is always great and is well worth the stop. The School walks right into the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago and that is always a treat. Don't forget to visit downstairs in the museum in the children's area where kids can paint all day and take something home!
Across the street from the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago is the Symphony Center. If you're looking for a part time job-call / they are always looking for professional phone sales and reception. But that is not the fun of it all there- it is the symphony orchestra practices. You have to be a student or talk your way through... the practices of all of the symphony players and the grand conductors is wonderful. Occasionally, you might see Yo-yo Ma or Bernard Haitink / I was lucky enough to meet the late George Solti, and that practise was pure magic and never to be forgotten.
I've only just begun to tell you
of it all. I'll write more later.
Drawing Class @
The Palette and Chisel:
If you're an artist and like to draw outside of your studio and the university setting, you might try Palette and Chisel. http://www.paletteandchisel.org/ It is a wonderful drawing center with good solid instruction. I feel that, when you’re warming up your skills as an artist, it is more often a delightful inspiration to work live in a studio setting with others who draw and like to create to feel more connected to people and to what you like to do.
The Palette and Chisel is a beautiful center with great character in its teaching and in its environment as it is centrally located near the Chicago loop and borders the Gold Coast area of galleries, bookstores, shopping and inexpensive but extraordinarily scrumptious foods from many ethnic backgrounds.
I tell you of the Palette and Chisel today as thoughts of this story came back to me:
It was in 1996 when I was on Clark Street at a shop with a dear friend of mine as she needed a dress she could wear to her graduate recital, at NWU School of Music. She was completing her doctorate and was about to perform a work that she had written for cello.
The shop was tiny, maybe in a twenty foot by thirty foot space with a large attractive abstract oil on the wall and a sofa set in the middle of the floor. There was a sculpture of a beautiful hand, carved in marble laying on the floor and only two large racks of clothes. We shuffled through the racks that were all one of a kind and exceptionally made. As I further examined the marble hand, a man appeared from the back room. And then a woman appeared... He began to talk about the marble hand and how it was made at length as he revealed that he was the artist of the sculpture. Then he quickly denounced himself and spoke of the women next to him who was his wife. They both worked in the back of the shop designing and making the wonderful clothes. As we continued, I they told me of their journey.
She was a young girl, and they met as he was with his father who was in the military and they had visited communist China. And then, the young boy and his father left China.
She said: as she grew older, she escaped tenement square and moved to the states to find him, she spent several years in the United States before she knew where he was. And, then she found him in Chicago. There they were, years later, both artist and both in a magnificent shop of exquisitely designed cotton clothes that they worked at creating together.
That is when I found out about the Palette and Chisel.
My friend and I left the shop that day and knew that we had found endearing friends. They shared many little stories on that first day and days after as they had spoken of the Palette and Chisel which the clothiers loved, and attended as they worked with the human figure in a class room setting.
I called a few days later after I received a call from my graduating friend who was a bit nervous. We still had not found a dress for her and she was unsure as to what to wear. I said to her on the phone that I had seen the perfect dress at that little shop and that I would call and have it held.
As the graduating friend of mine stopped into the shop to pick up the dress, she had to be fitted. The woman of the shop just ran her hand down the back of my friend and then took the dress and disappeared into the back. Shortly after, she returned with the dress that she had altered without a tape measure and the dress was perfectly fitted.
Laurence and Tonge owned the shop for many years later and did very well as it completely paid for their home and their retirement. They even gave me lessons in the back as to how to cut a dress pattern and put it all together. It was more than a quaint experience to meet them as later, I attended many Sunday events at the shop enjoying small catered brunches with goodies sent from the Swedish and Middle Eastern Bakeries down the street. On those mornings we almost always enjoyed a string player too. But it was always with great company and an exchange of stories that would fill my memories for a life time and satisfy my heart for more than an eternity to know that such people of the world do exist….
Anyway, that's the latest memory and
I'll tell you more in the New Year of 2009...
It's February 1st 2009 and I'm still thinking how lucky we are in the United States and it brings me to a memory I treasure because I know that I am fortunate and how glad am I to know it.
Where Did All the Art Go: It was the year 1999. I had put away my steel-toed boots and blue jeans that they insisted I purchase for the foundry at one of the schools. Working in the sculpture department meant that you would be working around molten bronze and iron, with welding tools, table saws, miter saws, band saws, and well every piece of equipment that it takes to create a sculpture large enough to put in front of the Sears Tower. Some saws were even equipped with Freon spilling from it to keep the blades cool as you cut thick large sheets of steel into noticeably fine details of your proposed drawing or imagined imagery for the new work at hand. I remember spending a lot of extra time in the sculpture department and dreamed of creating a monumental work of art one day.
I spent my evenings in my studio in Chicago, that was not small, but small compared to the amazing sculpture studio in the foundry. Though, I continued to work on paintings and even small scale sculpture in my spare time. No need for the boots because, it was my suites that I wore during the day to meet and greet clients in the financial district as was the dress code through all most all of my schooling during full time work in Winettka while attending full time school.
My days now were filled with high profile executive assignments from what was, The Choice For Staffing, now / http://www.mackltd.com/index.html. I was focused and busy, but Saturdays were mine and I went down to Devon Avenue to the Jewish/Indian market to buy great breads and exotic fruits as well as all of my vegetables. Then I would return home to unpack the kitchen and go back out to walk over to Clark Street to buy some goods from the Mexican market. There coco was especially good and you could buy actual sugar cane still in the cane form and delightfully fresh to eat.
It was during this walk that a woman approached me. She wanted to know how to catch the train. I could not understand her at all but as many people in Chicago helped me to find my many assignments in the loop, I too stopped to help this woman who seemed desperate. After just a minute, she said the words "Bank One". I said, oh, Bank One! She said, Cleaning...
and I thought for a moment. She was assigned to clean Bank One on Saturdays I thought? We talked more and as she spoke an English word or two, I began to realize that I was right. I took her on the train to Bank One in the loop that day because I feared she would get lost. As we rode the train together, I learned many things about this lovely woman who couldn't speak English. She was a refugee from the Croatian war and living at a center full of displaced people in the same circumstances. We finally arrived in the loop where I took her to the Bank One Building so she could begin her work and have pay to live. I managed to get her to try and meet me in front of the store we met at so that we could brush up her English, and then I traveled 45 minutes back home by train.
We agreed to meet the next day, and there she was. We walked to a coffee shop, ordered and then, got to work on her English. I found out many things throughout the next few weeks and I was glad to have met her.
She was very brave and very smart, but knew little English. She had lost most of her family from war. She was alone in the world, yet she was surrounded by a city who really cared and she found some comfort in that. She met me once a week, and I felt as though I was the one getting the lesson. And then, one day, after her English had improved at rapid speeds, she did not show up anymore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatian_War_of_Independence
She never knew that she had fullfilled a dream in which I had to temporrily move to China to teach English / a coleague of mine was from China and she went back after receiving her Masters in Business from Kellogg University. My friend and I spent many evenings at tea and conversation about China and the US.
This woman from Croatia was going to be okay. I knew it. And that makes me happy. Later, as years went by, I taught a great deal in the arts and during that day I learned the importance of what just teaching meant to this woman life and to the world. It would have been nice to have had funded programs for these people and all people really, because funded classes provide assistance in the aid to making sure people begin to thrive and have tool to thrive. Which means our communities thrive too. And if we all have time to assist people or teach people, inside or out side of the arts, then who would choose war....
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Art Schools:
Let me begin with schools I've personally attended.
Columbia College for it's media-arts / art education, especially the schools cross-disciplinary approach to arts education. The school is a very strong educational institution of film as well as dance and broadcasting. Many of the teaching professionals are not just instructors, they are successful professionals in their field of art in Chicago and sometimes from other Major cities.
This is a great school after you leave because of it's student population. Our alumni go all over the world, they are a well organized, and a very large support of creative people to connect to after you leave. It was nice when you were still getting tons of news and opportunities from Columbia College many years after you've attended with plenty of meetings scheduled throughout the year to meet business people and creative people/often one in the same, and then connect.
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is small population of students but a very nice community of generous artists as a whole. The class time is intensive and amazingly comprehensive and well, wear running shoes, and eat your Wheaties. As an adult student, I actually interviewed schools from all over the United States. Some were ivy league and top art schools like Yale in New Haven not far from New York City.
"The School" at the Institute in Chicago is in one of the most beautiful locations of the city, close to the water front, near the amazing parks, located directly on the East side of the cities business district. It's center field in the loop and is located right down the street from Columbia College Chicago, so make use of both schools libraries. You get to know everyone, and the student support is great. Many of the students are a bit older, and are working professionals, which was nice for me personally. There are visiting artist from every where, some famous, and some not so famous, and the disciplines of the fundamentals of "the arts" as a whole, at "the school" are strong. The School holds evening events for students right inside the museum, often meeting famous people up close and personal, along with many other highly creative and wonderful people. They also have many social events during breaks in the 7 hour class day, (not three hour classes like other schools)... like, a cook out, served up complete with ice-cream. At those events you get to know the instructors and the students very well and it is great fun, however, the school, is alot of hard work, so be prepared.
The artists of Chicago, like many major cities, are 95% employed in all areas of business and most of the firms, (many executive offices of corporations) have quite large creative departments, sometimes covering the entire floor of a major building. The city also holds one of the skyscraper's to one of the largest advertising firms in the world: Leo Burnett. PLAY HERE- www.leoburnett.com/
I'll stop there for now. Yet I can't say enough about both schools, their methods, and their philosophies of teaching. I will say, ask lots of questions before you decide on the school you choose. The experience at both schools is at the very least, exciting.
Let me begin with schools I've personally attended.
Columbia College for it's media-arts / art education, especially the schools cross-disciplinary approach to arts education. The school is a very strong educational institution of film as well as dance and broadcasting. Many of the teaching professionals are not just instructors, they are successful professionals in their field of art in Chicago and sometimes from other Major cities.
This is a great school after you leave because of it's student population. Our alumni go all over the world, they are a well organized, and a very large support of creative people to connect to after you leave. It was nice when you were still getting tons of news and opportunities from Columbia College many years after you've attended with plenty of meetings scheduled throughout the year to meet business people and creative people/often one in the same, and then connect.
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is small population of students but a very nice community of generous artists as a whole. The class time is intensive and amazingly comprehensive and well, wear running shoes, and eat your Wheaties. As an adult student, I actually interviewed schools from all over the United States. Some were ivy league and top art schools like Yale in New Haven not far from New York City.
"The School" at the Institute in Chicago is in one of the most beautiful locations of the city, close to the water front, near the amazing parks, located directly on the East side of the cities business district. It's center field in the loop and is located right down the street from Columbia College Chicago, so make use of both schools libraries. You get to know everyone, and the student support is great. Many of the students are a bit older, and are working professionals, which was nice for me personally. There are visiting artist from every where, some famous, and some not so famous, and the disciplines of the fundamentals of "the arts" as a whole, at "the school" are strong. The School holds evening events for students right inside the museum, often meeting famous people up close and personal, along with many other highly creative and wonderful people. They also have many social events during breaks in the 7 hour class day, (not three hour classes like other schools)... like, a cook out, served up complete with ice-cream. At those events you get to know the instructors and the students very well and it is great fun, however, the school, is alot of hard work, so be prepared.
The artists of Chicago, like many major cities, are 95% employed in all areas of business and most of the firms, (many executive offices of corporations) have quite large creative departments, sometimes covering the entire floor of a major building. The city also holds one of the skyscraper's to one of the largest advertising firms in the world: Leo Burnett. PLAY HERE- www.leoburnett.com/
I'll stop there for now. Yet I can't say enough about both schools, their methods, and their philosophies of teaching. I will say, ask lots of questions before you decide on the school you choose. The experience at both schools is at the very least, exciting.
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