Feb 21 free Blues blast: show on Artist/Bluesman Frank Scott Jr. and the Struggle for Maxwell St.
oikon
Contacts: Paige Sarlin 773-235-3187, psa...@artic.edu; Steve Balkin
312-341-3696, m...@topicbox.com; Brian Flood - School of the Art
Institute 312-899-5159
Art Exhibition on Artist/Bluesman Frank Scott Jr. and the Struggle To
Preserve Maxwell Street
An art exhibition on the work of Folk Artist and Chicago Bluesman,
Frank 'Little Sonny' Scott Jr. and its relation to the Struggle to
Preserve Maxwell Street will be held from Wednesday, February 19
through to Sunday, February 23 at the 1926 Exhibition Studies Space,
an exhibition space of the School of the Art Institute. This is
located at 1926 North Halsted Street, a half bock south of Armitage,
on the Near North side of Chicago. Gallery hours will be Wednesday
through Friday, from 3:00 to 7:00pm; and Saturday and Sunday from 1:00
- 6:00pm.
There will be an opening Blues celebration on Friday, February 21,
from 6pm to 9pm. Frank Scott Jr. will perform with The Motavations
Blues Band. Free beer and Maxwell Street Polish Sausages will be
served. There is a free parking lot across the street for the Feb. 21
opening celebration. For more information call 773-665-4802. All
events are free and open to the public.
75 year old Frank Scott Jr. is a blues musicians and self-taught
artist whose career and life was spent in and around the Maxwell
Street Market and neighborhood. This exhibition will feature his
collage work which depicts the music and market history as well as the
un-successful fight to preserve Maxwell Street from destruction and
development. Up until now, Scott has shown his work alongside the
recently re-located Maxwell Street Hot Dog Stands on Union Street near
Roosevelt Rd.. This exhibition will be his first gallery show,
especially apropos given that the 1926 Exhibition Space is also home
to the Roger Brown Study Collection, which contains many objects that
were found at Maxwell Street.
On Sunday, February 23, there will be a panel starting at 2pm at the
Intuit Gallery, 756 North Milwaukee Ave., Chicago. The title of this
panel is "Preserving Space, Place, and Culture: Maxwell Street and
Chicago Artists."
The moderator will be Paige Sarlin, the curator of this exhibition and
graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Panelists will include Lisa Stone of the Roger Brown Study Collection,
Photographers Ron Gordon and Lee Landry, Artist Karl Wirsum, and
filmmaker Tom Palazzolo. This panel will explore the relationship of
artistic practice, self-taught and otherwise, to Maxwell Street and
fights to preserve urban space. In an attempt to draw the lines of
connection between currents of artistic practice in Chicago - namely
that of so-called "Outsider Art" and the Chicago Imagists - to the
history of Maxwell Street, this panel will feature artists who will
discuss their experience of Maxwell Street and its influence on their
work and their practices. In addition, the panel will seek to answer
the questions: What kind of model of preservation does the history of
the Chicago Imagist artists, who collected the work of self-taught
artists, provide? What are some other models of artistic and cultural
production which treat the subject of the struggles to preserve space
and place in Chicago? What role can and do artists play in the
process of gentrification and "urban renewal"? What is the
relationship of artistic practice to the creation of urban history?
Paige Sarlin, 773-235-3187; Email: psa...@artic.edu, and Frank Scott
Jr. 773-264-4746 are both available for interviews.
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