Center Sunday

Hyde Park Art Center, the renowned non-profit hub for contemporary art located on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, will host its latest Center Sunday, an all-ages program filled with art-making activities, workshops, and artist talks, held on the first Sunday of each month, November 1, from 1-4 p.m. virtually, via Zoom. This month’s program will feature three hour-long segments led by artists Delilah D. Salgado, Lillianna Chavarria, Kristin Cass and Cindy Lys. The event is free and open to the public virtually via Zoom link us02web.zoom.us/j/89622017693. No pre-registration required. For more information, visit www.hydeparkart.org.

Center Sundays are curated by Ciera McKissick, Hyde Park Art Center Public Programs Coordinator, as a means of introducing the community to the myriad ongoing offerings at the Hyde Park Art Center for all ages, interests and skill levels; the November Center Sunday programming includes:

Art-making: Create a Day of the Dead Ofrenda “Dedicated to Chicago”

1pm via Zoom

Join Hyde Park Art Center Resident Artist Delilah D. Salgado of Mujeres Mutantes and guest artist and activist Lillianna Chavarria to create a Dia De Los Muertos/Day of the Dead ofrenda (Spanish for ‘offering,’ a home altar or ritual display honoring an individual who has died) “Dedicated to Chicago” that will be showcased during this Zoom session. They will discuss Dia de Los Muertos and the meaning behind their altar currently on display at the Center’s current Artists Run Chicago 2.0 exhibition, and demonstrate how to create tissue paper cempasuchil (Mexican marigold flowers, referred to as the “flower of the dead” in Mexican culture and said to guide the spirits back to the altars of family members). “We honor our ancestors and tell the stories of those who came before us and those who we have been fortunate enough to know,” said Salgado.

Multidisciplinary artist Delilah D. Salgado is an “artivist” who co-founded We Are Hip Hop, an annual youth-led festival in Pilsen that helps cultivate young voices to create peace and unity. She is a mother and the co-founder of Mujeres Mutantes, an all-women art collective. She currently lives in McKinley Park with her husband and three children and is creating a body of work based on the Graffiti and Goddess archetypes found in Indigenous Mythology, Jungian theories, and the mythology and religion literature of Joseph Campbell. 

Lillianna Chavarria is a Pilsen-raised, South Side-based organizer, educator, and artist. Her work focuses on gentrification and prison abolition. Her work aims to heal and make space for wounds to breathe while continuing the fight for collective liberation.

Artist Talk: “Marks On Our Bodies/Things That Constrain Us”

2pm via Zoom 

Join Hyde Park Art Center Bridge Program Artist, Kristin Cass, for an artist talk about her photography project in progress, “Toxic Femininity,” and her artistic practice which explores standards of beauty, aspects of socially enforced gender roles, and how society frequently controls women through their bodies and physical appearances. Choosing to wear clothes or use products that constrict female bodies literally leaves marks, often red and sore. These marks are also reminders of the lost time, energy and money women put into conforming beauty regimens, as consumerism and capitalism unite to diminish their resources.

Kristin Cass is a Chicago-based artist working in photography, video, writing, sculpture and other media. Her art explores the intensely personal spaces where one’s life intersects with those of others, considering underlying questions of social justice and human rights. As an artist of mixed ethnicity and descendent of genocide survivors, Cass’s work reflects her passion for amplifying diverse voices telling stories that inspire change. She is especially interested in the role that women play in the survival and evolution of cultures and communities. In addition to her arts education, her career as a lawyer gives her a unique perspective on the injustices that people and communities face every day. Cass is a graduate of the University of Chicago.  

Workshop: 8minutes46seconds Series with Cindy Lys

3pm via Zoom

Join Hyde Park Art Center Bridge Program Artist, Cindy Lys, in a timed mark-making activity and discussion of the embodied experience of her project, 8minutes46seconds Series, a mark-making project exploring the progression of time in response to the murder of George Floyd. Each piece in the series is an exercise in timed continuous mark-making on paper, an attempt to process the length of time that a white officer knelt on the neck of George Floyd. Participants will need a paper bag or piece of paper, and a marker or writing utensil.

A clinical social worker, Cindy Lys is a Haitian-American emerging visual artist working on the south side of Chicago.

For more information on Hyde Park Art Center’s public programs such as Center Sundays, please visit www.hydeparkart.org.

About Center Sundays

Every first Sunday of the month and pre-COVID 19, Hyde Park Art Center was activated throughout the center for the public, neighbors, and families, with intergenerational art making activities, artist workshops, artist talks, open studios, curatorial tours of its exhibitions, community collaborations, music and small bites. Since the pandemic lockdown, Center Sundays have switched online, continuing with virtual interaction, engagement, and exchange with the public audience on the same day of each month. Center Sundays are free and open for all.