Signals & Mysteries: Photographs from Chicago Public Schools are portraits now by late career artist Melissa Ann Pinney. It will be looked back upon perhaps as the boom-Covid-BLM era. The artist speaks in the gallery in person at noon. Registration on Eventbrite required https://www.blueskygallery.org/programs-events/2022/4/9/artist-talk-melissa-ann-pinney. I would suggest watching her talk when it goes up on the Blue Sky YouTube channel. It gives a lot of context to each photo.
The Photolucida Critical Mass award is a big thing. Federico Estol from Uraguay won the Blue Sky solo show award this year. His project is Shine Heroes/Héroes del Brillo.
The project "started three years ago as he began engaging with the shoe shiners of Bolivia. There are 3,000 shoe shiners who go out into the streets of La Paz and El Alto suburbs each day in search of clients. They are from all ages and in recent years have become a social phenomenon in the Bolivian capital.
What characterizes this tribe is the use of ski masks so they will not be recognized by those around them. They confront the discrimination they face through these masks; in their neighborhoods no one knows that they work as shoe shiners, at school they hide this fact, and even their own families believe they have a different job when they head down to the center of the city from El Alto.
Estol collaborated with sixty shoe shiners associated with the shoe shiners newspaper "Hormigón Armado" with the idea to create a photobook. Together they planned the scenes during a series of graphic novel workshops depicting the new Andean architecture of El Alto as its background. In this process, the shine heroes became both producers and protagonists of a street-style photobook to fight against a social stigma.
Today this group makes its living primarily from selling the photobook and postcards of the project more than from being shoe shiners. This casts light on the possibilites of art in transforming discrimination into a sign of struggle and survival that could ultimately help promote social integration."
It is a modern superhero social practice art admix! The photographer speaks April 20, 6PM advance registration on Eventbrite required https://www.blueskygallery.org/programs-events/2022/4/9/artist-talk-melissa-ann-pinney-rl9sy
The Nines Gallery has Georgiana Nehl, longtime former instructor at OCAC, with Centering and Encircling.
At Blue Sky Gallery www.blueskygallery.org 122 NW 8th Map 11AM-5PM Free
I'm sure there are aliens and I'm sure they haven't visited Earth. But if they did, they would be the 3d drippy amoeba sculptures of Dan Lam. She uses some kind of flow foam then decorates them with spiky cilia in jucy and flouro colors. She has a new series of flat blobs that remind of our new awareneness of microorganisms of late. These have bright color, while microorganmisms have little.
At Stephanie Chefas Projects www.stephaniechefas.com 305 SE 3rd Ave #202 - the City Sign Building, formerly a low cost artist space Map. 5PM-8 Free
The big CAP auction art party is tonight. All the info is at https://www.capartauction.org/. Doors 5PM, art auction video stream 7. Dance party 8. At the Convention Center Hyatt 375 NE Holladay $55-300
