Monthly Archives: April, 2005

Belltown Paradise/Making Their Own Plans, a collection of essays compiled by SAIC Instructor in Arts Administration, Brett Bloom, outlines the efforts and struggles of the eccentric, artsy Belltown neighborhood of Seattle to transform the Vine Street area into a people centered, green street.

John Reuter-Pacyna, a long time faculty member in the Department of Visual Communications, passed away in December 2004. John is most famous among students at SAIC for stripping the process of two-dimensional design to its basics: point, line, shape.

Chuck Stebelton started putting down stanzas on paper, and now we here in Chicago are lucky enough to have his spunk, energy, and devotion to poetry bringing us one to two poets a week every Sunday at 7 p.m. by way of the Myopic Poetry Series.

April 2005

Maybe it was the shiny red F, or Eliot refusing to play Batman and Robin in our underwear, or a brain fever: something made me do it. Before that first math quiz F, my parents had assured me I was perfect...

Terry Winters: Painting, Drawings, Prints 1994-2004 was marked by the simultaneity of vision and experience. In his Computation of Chains series (1995-1998), heavy, expressive black lines overlap one another in multiple directions, constructing dense networks of forms that expand the viewer's reading of architectural renderings, computer graphics, and medical photographs.

Corporate-driven culture and consumerism run amuck are bad. Very bad. Add sexism and it's even worse. Enter the Barbie Liberation Organization. BLO Nightly News is a mockumentary that combines BLO's own anti-capitalist propaganda with actual clips from Leno, CNN, even The Simpsons.

Dan Rather isn't the only reporter stepping down. David D'Arcy, a National Public Radio (NPR) art news freelance contributor for the past 20 years, will also no longer be on the air. In Rather's case, the authenticity of documents used in his CBS 60 Minutes Wednesday report about President Bush's participation in the Texas Air National Guard came into question.

In any event, the winner this year was a film called Born Into Brothels, by activist/photographer Zana Briski and Ross Kaufman.

This March, the Gene Siskel Film Center celebrated its 8th annual European Union Film Festival. From March 4 to 24, 43 films, ranging from full-length features to documentaries and short subjects, represented all 25 of the European Union nations.

An Interview with Avant-Pop Master Mayo Thompson of Red Krayola

Exactly two years ago this weekend, while I was living in Boston, the streets erupted in protest against the impending war in Iraq. With rainbow-colored signs, drumming, marching, and general making of noise, legions of citizens indicated that this war was against the will of the people.

In a recent address to the European Union and NATO leaders, George Bush expressed his hope for peace and reform in the Middle East. While doing so, he hit upon a more questionable topic, stating, Arab states must end incitement in their own media. This would appear to be a rather hefty demand and an ethically questionable task, but one that the U.S. State Department has been taking very seriously.