Lives Lost

A Site of Struggle explores race, violence and art

"Curated by Janet Dees, the Block’s Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum curator of modern and contemporary art, the exhibition brings together work by over thirty artists and activists, dating from the 1890s to the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013. In a video interview, Alisa Swindell, a former curatorial research associate at the Block who assisted with the show, says she was drawn to working on the exhibition because of the importance of showing audiences that the struggle against anti-Black violence is nothing new." (Kerry Cardoza)

The Blue Issue

Something in the Water

At the Point, Swimming is Life

"I’ve been swimming at the Point since I moved to Chicago over twenty years ago, but I only became a regular, a true Point Swimmer, about a decade ago. It was here that I rediscovered my passion for open-water swimming, one I developed in some of Canada’s deep, dark and remote lakes. When I first told people I swam in the lake, they’d look at me with horror, like I was a monster from the deep." (Alison Cuddy)

Paint It Blue

"Picasso was conversant, literally as well as in visual vocabulary, with many of these movements of the era at which “The Old Guitarist” sits at the intersection. “The Blue Period, the way I see it anyway, establishes him as a significant figure, although he’s extremely young,” says Elizabeth Cowling, art history professor at the University of Edinburgh and a foremost authority on Picasso, who has written several books on the artist and staged multiple exhibitions, including at London’s Tate Modern, MoMA in New York and elsewhere." (Michael Workman)

True Blue

"With the raspberry popsicle, it was always a matter of some consternation that the frozen pop was blue, not red, as a raspberry-flavored thing might be expected to be. I’ve heard a lot of reasons for why some frozen pop makers chose to dye their raspberry-flavored summer treats not red but blue. I had assumed it was to distinguish red raspberry from red cherry." (David Hammond)

Twenty-Seven Crossroads

"They call her “The Blues Kitten” but she roars like a lion and plays guitar like an octopus. Yet Ivy Ford is more than just a musician. A prolific songwriter and performing artist, she incorporates not only the music of her greatest influences, Robert Johnson, Billie Holiday and Amy Winehouse, but at times physically transforms herself into their personas through dress and accessories." (David Witter) 

It's a Gass Gass Gass

"Like in this passage about pronouncing the word blue: 'SAY IT. Go ahead, stand before the mirror, look at your mouth, and say it. Blue. See how you pucker up, your lips opening with the consonants into a kiss, and then that final exhalation of vowels? Blue. The word looks like what it is, a syllable blown out into the air, and with the sound and the sight of saying it as one'.” (Jack Helbig)

Bye Bye Blue

"I’m a longtime bike commuter, and a fan of Chicago’s bike-share program, Divvy, with its big, blue, heavy, classic pedal-powered bikes. They’ve been a great option for getting around—it’s like having spare bikes around the city. But I’m worried about Divvy’s future." (Mary Wisniewski)

Blue On Blue

An Ode to Pat Dailey, the Barroom Troubadour of the Great Lakes 

"From Chicago to Cleveland to Put-in-Bay, a ten-drink-minimum kind of town on an island in Lake Erie, off the Ohio coast, I saw Pat Dailey play shows over several decades. He was celebrated around the Great Lakes region for his comedy music performances that took place during the summertime and in bars, including a headline slot at the world’s longest permanent bar, as measured by Guinness World Records." (John Moss)

From the Heart and Soul

The Blues photos of Paul Natkin (photo essay)

"I grew up on a steady diet of classical music (WFMT all day at my house), except for one two-hour period every Saturday night at 10:15pm when WFMT had a folk music show called “The Midnight Special.” This was my first exposure to the blues—blues being a kind of folk music. I soon started taking pictures at concerts and tried to seek out any blues music that I could find, going to all-ages shows around the city and hoping to one day meet the people that were making this wondrous music." (Paul Natkin) 

Arts & Culture

Reviews

Comics

The Strange Case of the Flower Carrier

Poetry

76 pages

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