The exhibition commemorates the ninth installment of the Not Just Another Pretty Face project. The triennial program, created by Hyde Park Art Center in the mid-1990s, allows the Art Center to play matchmaker for artists and potential art buyers. This dynamic project facilitates a fun and accessible commissioning process that builds lasting relationships between artists and patrons, creates a new base of support for artists, and invests in the vitality of Chicago’s cultural community. The completion of each installment is celebrated by an exhibition, a catalog documenting the process, and a lively event to unveil the finished pieces, which will make their way to the patrons’ homes following the exhibition.

The project has been a successful way for the Art Center to cultivate an essential part of the “ecosystem” that artists need to thrive – collectors – by embracing and encouraging the idea of patronage in contemporary art. We believe that artists need not only consumers (i.e., collectors) of their work but also a community of people who know and support them and value what they do.

To date, the Art Center has raised over $900,000—half of which goes directly into the hands of artists, with the other half supporting Art Center programs. Through Not Just Another Pretty Face, 375+ original works of art have been commissioned by 275 new and established collectors interested in investing in Chicago’s artists.

Inspired by the Octavia Butler archive at The Huntington Library in San Marino, California, Candace Hunter has been building an expansive body of multimedia work to process the celebrated Black fiction author’s uncanny narratives since 2016. The new work presented at the Art Center is curated by Ciera McKissick and Allison Peters Quinn to create an exploratory installation of video, performance, collage, and painting that continues Hunter’s speculation on the future of human resilience in the wake of racial reckoning, climate change, and food scarcity. According to Hunter, the imaginings presented in this show,  “gives room to examine the idea of who is alien, who is owner, who belongs, and what does it take to belong when you look different.” Hunter created much of this work while in the Jackman Goldwasser studios in 2022 – 2023. 

What are the true surfaces of an object? Chicago-based artist Marian Carow considers this philosophical perspective and other formal concerns in her upcoming solo exhibition. Salvages will present new sculptural work rendered in cardboard, through which Carow explores minimal forms referencing architecture as well as the constant flux and impermanence of our built urban environment. Carow is an alumna of Hyde Park Art Center’s Center Program (2016) and has been making drawings and sculptures for several decades.

A professional development program for artists who are ready to raise their practice to the next level, The Center Program offers the unique opportunity to develop new work, receive feedback from art professionals in the field, and work towards an exhibition at the Art Center. Over the course of eight months, a supportive peer network, guest artists, gallerists, critics, and professionals push 20 Center Program artists to answer tough questions and evolve their practice. Guest curated by educator, organizer, and Center Program Alumnus artist, Silvia Gonzales, the exhibition will introduce strong, new work that often determines bold new directions for local artists.

New paintings, drawings, photography, prints, and multimedia works demonstrate the intense study by young adult artists participating in Hyde Park Art Center’s Teen programs. Under the guidance of professional artists, nearly twenty teens develop their creative voices over the course of 15 weeks. These young artists chose to address the challenges in articulating perplexed thoughts, feelings, and emotions into individual works of art.

SURVIVING THE LONG WARS: Unlikely Entanglements reveals the connections that emerge between personal and collective histories of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities marked by the legacies of the two longest wars in US history—the “American Indian Wars” and the “Global War on Terror.” 

Visual parallels and connections surface—from contrasting viewpoints and across differences—between artworks by civilians impacted by these long wars and BIPOC military veterans. These “unlikely entanglements” highlight the aesthetic affinities that form between different histories, geographies, and peoples resisting colonialism. The featured artists use collage, embroidery, soft sculpture, and installation to unravel dominant histories of militarism while weaving together intimate stories of survival and resistance. Collectively, these consequential artworks of wartime survivors and their descendants conjure meaning out of the traumatic afterlives of the long wars while creating space for solidarity and alternative futures.

Unlikely Entanglements is one of the three featured exhibitions of the second Veteran Art Triennial, SURVIVING THE LONG WARS. From the “American Indian Wars” to the “Global War on Terror,” SURVIVING THE LONG WARS explores the multiple, overlapping histories that shape our understanding of warfare, as well as alternative visions of peace, healing, and justice generated by diverse and entangled communities impacted by war. The other exhibitions include Residues and Rebellions at the Newberry Library and Reckon and Reimagine at the Chicago Cultural Center.

The print-based artist, activist, and educator William Estrada presents twenty years of work in Multiples and Multitudes. Estrada’s socially-engaged practice is rooted in Chicago neighborhoods, where he collaborates with youth, community members, teachers, and artists to reimagine public and educational spaces to unite people and amplify local voices. The exhibition will bring together works by the Mexican artist, his collaborators, and students that exemplify his radical commitment to empowering communities through art-making and agency. Drawing inspiration from the Chicano art movement and Taller de Grafica Popular and spanning print, photography, performance, and video, William Estrada’s work is committed to political advocacy with and for communities of color. This exhibition is the outcome of Estrada’s participation as a Radicle Resident Artist in the Jackman Goldwasser Residency at Hyde Park Art Center. Multiples and Multitudes is curated by Mariela Acuña, Exhibitions & Residency Manager, in collaboration with the artist.

The solo exhibition Destination/El Destino: a decade of GRAFT concentrates on the decade-long series of artworks by Chicago-based, Puerto Rican artist, educator, and organizer Edra Soto, while speculating on the evolution of this work towards establishing more emotionally transformative and healing public spaces. Activating the indoor/outdoor feature of the main gallery, Soto will build an immersive installation of porous sculptures, documentary photographs, drawings and games that create a playful and open environment for discussing cultural hybridity.

Through the GRAFT series of sculptures, wall reliefs and installations, Edra Soto explores vernacular architecture familiar to the artist’s native Puerto Rico to address the adaptability and hybridity of cultural representation. GRAFT makes reference to two common domestic architectural elements: the quiebrasoles, which are distinctly ornate concrete blocks, and rejas, ornamental grilles or screens typically made of wrought iron. Both are arranged in decorative geometric patterns to create shade or act as a protective barrier between the street and the home. Recent iterations of GRAFT include small viewfinders embedded in the void of geometric patterns in Soto’s installations. In peering through the viewfinders, the audience is met with images of Soto’s childhood home, scenes from various neighborhoods, destruction from hurricane Maria, screenshots of television commercials, and magazine advertisements. In previous GRAFT work, all photo documentation has come from Soto’s personal archive. For Destination/El Destino, Soto will collaborate with Puerto Rican and US-based artists to include their photographs and expand the voices and visions represented in the architecture.

The Jackman Goldwasser Facade Gallery –a billboard-sized projection wall on the front of the Art Center — features the live animated digital video by Chicago-based artist Kristin McWharter just in time for the football season. Football Practice is an experiment in visualizing the archetypes, stereotypes, and desires that are enmeshed in the narratives of professional sports.The software runs in real-time with AI athletes driven by the motivations of how workshop participants reimagined players for a speculative hybrid sport. This exhibition marks the close of a two-year development process and is an opportunity to witness what new narratives this virtual team embodies as they play.

From 2020 to 2022, a series of online public workshops organized by VGA gallery and the artist engaged participants to discuss the cultural impacts they experienced surrounding American football and design their speculative players for a reimagined game. The complex discussion involves how fandom, inclusion, exclusion, gender, race, class, and consensual violence contribute to forming an American identity. These online conversations and the attributes of the players the participants designed laid the groundwork for a dynamic team of artists and developers to create the simulation software that reimagined American football.

Football Practice is programmed by VGA Gallery, a participant in the Artist Run Chicago network.