It was great to hear, late last month, that Chicagoan Angela Jackson has been chosen as the new Illinois poet laureate. But it was a posthumous honor: Prine died of COVID-19 in April. Or praying they way into designer My mama told me enough Jackson’s a prolific writer in multiple genres—her body of work includes four poetry books, three novels, four plays, and a Gwendolyn Brooks biography—and she’s collected an armload of literary honors....
The year 2018 was considered by many pundits the year of the woman. From congressional bids to local and state races across the country, women challenged and in many places won power at rates previously unseen in American life. But just when momentum seems to be building in national politics, Chicago seems poised for an abrupt turn back toward the masculine in our mayoral election. While headlines early in the mayoral race focused on the celebrity and youth support behind Amara Enyia or the supposed front-runner status of Cook County Board president Toni Preckwinkle, it seems that in truth Chicago may be on the brink of the reign of yet another Daley....
On two recent multidisc sets, Australian composer, improviser, and electroacoustic musician Anthony Pateras chronicles his compulsive drive to try new things and move on. In the booklet that accompanies Bern • Melbourne • Milan, a release by his trio with drummer Sean Baxter and guitarist David Brown, Baxter recalls that Pateras wowed him and Brown with a solo piano performance that combined classical and jazz gestures with grindcore intensity. When the two of them approached Pateras about forming a collaborative project in 2002, he agreed, but he told them that he was about to stop playing classical music entirely....
Mayor Lori Lightfoot Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa Finalists: Alderman Matt Martin, City Clerk Anna Valencia
Best theatrical couple Best test of the structural soundness of audience members’ backsides Best theatrical mob action Best advice from an artistic director Best new off-Loop combo for dinner and a show, fringe division Best theatrical collaboration Best underground voguer and breakdancer Best new comedy festival Best comedy club located in a pizzeria Best storytelling series for potty humor Best living Vivian Maier Best citizen-thinker Best rehab of a public housing project into artists’ housing Best exhibit for bashing a Jeff Koons balloon dog Best small museum, Skokie division Best new video installation Best archival discovery Best business counterstrike Best conflict of interest Best secret microcinema Best local film company that doesn’t make films Best new local production (documentary) Best new local production (drama) Best second-run house Best creative rivalry Best movie theater Best theater company Best stand-up comic Best sketch/improv troupe Best venue for stand-up Best visual artist Best street artist Best photographer Best gallery Best actor Best actress Best stage director Best playwright Best musical Best play Best film festival Best film programming Best nonfiction writer Best novelist Best literary event Best dance troupe Best magician
“Faux fur, snake skin, hooflike heels, and other abstract signifiers of animality have played a key role in my daily self-fashioning,” says Danielle Rosen. The 30-year-old visual artist, photographed at the Garfield Park Conservatory, is fascinated by the relationship between human and nonhuman animals, and has spent time working on an Icelandic sheep farm in Vermont. There she performed daily massages on three sheep—Luna, Aurora, and Juniper—to remove burrs from their wool....
Chicago Fringe Opera is presenting the local premiere of this compact 75-minute transgender coming-of-age story, which has had an unusual number of productions since its first appearance in 2014. That might be due to its economical structure—it requires only two singers and a string quartet—but also, no doubt, owes to its topical subject. As One is loosely based on the experience of colibrettist Kimberly Reed, whose 2008 documentary Prodigal Sons traced the story of her own transition from high school football hero (and class president) to adult woman and lesbian (who incidentally makes the surprising discovery that her brother is the grandson of Hollywood legends Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles)....
Like many businesses, Bash Party Goods began life as a creative answer to a relatively mundane problem. “I could never find paper plates that I liked, so I decided to make a few,” says designer Angela Wator, who started the company in her Logan Square studio apartment in 2015. Inspired by the Memphis Milano movement of the 1980s, she covered her products in grids, polka dots, and squiggly lines, and used unconventional combinations of color....
Figuring out what to put on the cover of each Reader issue is one of the most rewarding and at times most stressful aspects of my job. When a cover really comes together, it’s a beautiful thing: I rush into the office on Wednesday morning to see the newly printed copies, basking in the glow of the final product. There’s been no office to rush into for the past month—the entire Reader editorial process, from pitches to proofs, happens remotely....
During his own migration season—roughly every Yuletide season—Los Angeles resident Andrew Bird brings his whistling songs and violin back to the city where he first took flight. He always seems to shine for the hometown crowd, and his four-night residency at downtown’s beautiful Fourth Presbyterian Church provides a large number of local fans the chance to see him in an intimate setting. The theme of the shows is “Gezelligheid,” a Dutch word that has no precise English equivalent, but means both fellowship and reunion with old friends....
In 2017, when choreographer and former Merce Cunningham dancer Kimberly Bartosik began working on I Hunger for You, her evening-length work on faith inspired by early personal experiences with charismatic spirituality, the country’s deep division following the most recent presidential election was a fresh wound in her mind. “I was, like many people in this country, in a state of distress about how we had gotten to a place where we couldn’t speak to somebody who did not share our values—our life values, not just our religious values....
Douglas, Union, and Grant Parks have served as valued community centers for Chicago since the mid-1800s. Today, all three parks host thousands of attendees for popular private music festivals—Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash, Pitchfork Music Festival, and Lollapalooza, respectively—taking on a different personality for one weekend each summer before returning to their treasured role as neighborly places to gather. This project explores these spaces and their inhabitants. v
Welcome to the first-ever What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Vote (WTEWYETV) guide! This is an effort to share information about the in-person voting process in Chicago, with the goal of demystifying the actual steps required to cast a ballot. This guide is only relevant for voters within the city of Chicago for the March 17 primary, does not include the voting-by-mail process, and is primarily based on poll worker training materials from the Chicago Board of Elections (CBOE)....
The 2021 Sundance Film Festival soldiered on in the shadow of COVID-19 with newly appointed festival director Tabitha Jackson testing the limits of virtual event planning on the grandest scale. The hybrid socially-distanced in-person and virtual festival highlighted only 73 feature films, significantly less than its typical 120. However, smaller did not mean less inclusive, as participants came from more than 120 countries around the world and all 50 U....
Slagel Family Farm Nichols Farm & Orchard Finalist: Mick Klug Farm
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