By TONY FITZPATRICK

A new year has begun, and I am reminded that there is something to be said for not looking back – for letting the past be the past... If 2015 taught us anything, it was to pay attention to the city around us. While the art world goes on about its business of being mostly about itself, nearly 400 of our citizens have died at the end of a gun; 20% live below the poverty level. Our public schools are a mess. These subjects used to be red meat for artists – there was a time when artists routinely engaged as social commentators; not everything was about fashion and celebrity and art fairs.

There are certainly artists here hard at work engaging and bettering communities. I hope that more are motivated to tackle large issues and push for meaningful changes. I cannot think of an example almost anywhere of an artist who does more than Theaster Gates, a man whose vision (and very capable team) is almost single-handedly revitalizing neighborhoods on Chicago’s south side. Central to Gates’s practice is finding transcendent moments in a community’s history. Music, books, buildings are all cultural artifacts; he gathers them like a historian and shares them with neighbors and the world.

I also applaud all of the artists out there who work with children, and in particular I marvel at the work that southside artist James Jankowiak has achieved with his students. Jankowiak is a fantastic, under-the-radar artist who has been so good for so long. His work is a retinal mix of street art, op-art, and formal abstraction. I’m always excited just to see what he posts on Facebook and to keep up with his art and his work with local students.

I’m a fan of Facebook as a place for artists to share their work and ideas. For all of the nasty bitch-biting and 6th grade idiocy, the one benefit of this time-vacuum is that it allows artists who’d have never otherwise known each other to have a dialogue. As a result I have artist friends in Finland, Tokyo, Joshua Tree, and Montreal.

Out of those global dialogues could come real change, though some times we will still see more pictures of cats or breakfast muffins. Facebook can bring out the 12 year old in people.

Putting certain technologies to work in the service of a better city and society is what I’m driving at. Chicago is a luminous, beautiful city, full of grace and poetry. It is also a city of ugliness and great cruelty, classism, racism and inequity. To acknowledge one vision of our city, we must own the other. Examining both sides is where artists can do a great deal of good; we can mitigate some of the misery.

In this coming year, I want to push artists (certainly others too, but I’ll pick on artists first, since I am one) to do one thing for their community. It doesn’t have to be monumental.

Be the “Picture Person” and take some photos, or donate some art supplies to a public school. Participate in art therapy for those in hospitals or assisted living facilities. Tutor kids, not only in art, but also in reading, math, the
sciences and computer skills. Donate (or sponsor) art in local hospitals,
hospice facilities and old folks’ residences. You will be surprised at how much this means to patients in those places. Artists shouldn’t be afraid to make themselves available. Collaborate with students to make their own art, like my pal James Jankowiak.

I see art as a means to celebrate life and elevate us above some grim realities; the best art does something for the artist and the viewer; it helps us reckon with those same sad facts. Artists may not be super heroes, but to make art in the face of what has been our city’s recent, dominant narrative is a triumph of optimism over reality.

Together the many participants in the art world can hold out a hand, sharing art’s possibilities with others. It might save us from ourselves.

https://www.facebook.com/tony.fitzpatrick

Pictured: James Jankowiak with Chicago students