Friday 9/12 – Thursday 9/18
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13 SATURDAY Executive director Bruce Robbins compares the 1975 founding of Lincoln Park’s Lillstreet Art Center to the old Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney movies. “They’d say, ‘Let’s put on a play.’ Two scenes later they’re having a full production,” he says. “We said, ‘Let’s have an arts center,’ and two months later we were an arts center.” The center’s old digs–a former horse barn on Lill Street–started out with one classroom and 12 studios, but over the years it grew to include 12 classrooms, 40 studios, and two galleries. Feeling squeezed, Robbins and his board started looking for a new home, and now they’ve got one. Lillstreet’s new $3 million, 24,000-square-foot space in Ravenswood, which celebrates its grand opening today, features 14 classrooms, 20 studios, a gallery space twice as large as the old one, a shop, and a cafe; they’ll also rent out studios elsewhere in the building to local artists. Today at 10 AM a procession will set off on foot from the old building at 1021 W. Lill (which will shortly be torn down to make way for three $2 million houses) to the new one at 4401 N. Ravenswood, about three miles away, where there’ll be food, music, and tours of the new facility. From 2 to 5 there’ll be an opening reception for an exhibit of work by Lillstreet faculty and students; it’ll be followed by a hands-on “Art-a-Thon,” which runs from 6 to midnight and includes workshops on clay, painting, drawing, and metalsmithing. Those are $5 a pop, plus a small fee for supplies; the rest of the event is free. For more information call 773-769-4226 or see www.lillstreet.com.
“It makes you feel connected to everyone and everything in the world,” says Peace Day coordinator Gregory Garrett, who was on hand when Chicago’s Peace School launched the event on September 7, 1978. Peace Day is now celebrated in over 500 U.S. cities, and in 1982 the UN picked up the ball, naming September 21st the International Day of Peace. Mayor Daley has declared September 7 through 21 “Peace Days in Chicago,” and today the Peace School will celebrate the 25th anniversary of Peace Day, observing a moment of silence and then holding up flags for every nation on the planet–starting with Afghanistan and ending with Zimbabwe–and chanting a wish for peace in each of them. It’s from 11:30 to 1:30 at the school, 3121 N. Lincoln. Organizers are encouraging those who can’t attend to observe a moment of silence at noon. For more information call 773-248-7959 or see www.peaceschool.org.
17 WEDNESDAY “Never come give it up, whatever you may squander / The figs in the pockets and the cousins down under / By blood are the passions passing us up / By pill is the poison feeling / The heat it kills me everyday / By graveyard vigil and candles I bake / And kitchens are aching for archangel falls / Of soft baby bottoms and polished skulls, amen.” Those eight lines are all that’s available so far from former Smashing Pumpkin Billy Corgan’s forthcoming book of poetry. He’ll reveal more when he kicks off the Poetry Center’s annual reading series tonight with a benefit multimedia performance of his verse at 6:30 at the Art Institute’s Rubloff Auditorium, 111 S. Michigan (enter on Columbus). Tickets are $35; call 866-468-3401 or go to www.ticketweb.com. For more, see www.poetrycenter.org.
