Friday 4/19 – Thursday 4/25
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Sculptor and curator of “pet-chewed objects” Todd Slaughter will give a talk in connection with his Protected Comforts exhibit today at 5:30 in the Sidney R. Yates gallery on the fourth floor of the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington. The show’s deadpan takes on domesticity include Comfort Zone–a living room suite cast in salt and slowly dissolving in a steam-filled chamber–and a collection of the aforementioned gnawed-upons: a pair of gloves masticated by a beloved dog dead some 17 years, a chair completely mauled by four weimaraners, et al. The talk and exhibit (which runs through June 16) are free; viewing hours are 10 to 6 Friday, 10 to 5 Saturday, 11 to 5 Sunday, 10 to 7 Monday through Wednesday, and 10 to 9 Thursday. Call 312-744-1424 for more.
20 SATURDAY Today is Chicago Earth Day, brought to you by the festival-mad mayor’s office and “corporate steward” ComEd. The Chicago Greens (312-593-0996; info@chicagogreens.org) are sponsoring a protest at the festival site, in Lincoln Park at Fullerton and Cannon Drive, but if neither event appeals, you’re invited to hurt your back with Friends of the Parks, organizers of a mass cleanup at 100 public greens from Garfield and Grant to McKinley and Humboldt parks. The litter crusade runs from 9 to noon, and Streets and San tackle–gloves, garbage bags–will be provided. The cleanup will be followed by a free Earth Day Education Fair from noon to 3 at Nichols Park, 1300 E. 55th. Call 312-857-2757, ext. 13, for more information.
24 WEDNESDAY Maureen Seaton’s villanelle, Nostradamus Predicts the Destruction of Chicago, imagines Fermilab as the site of radiation bubbling “beneath the skin / in Batavia, top quarks and a boson / so wraithlike and belligerent they claim / a small bang might sicken the earth with neon.” “Oh no, another hysterical end-of-the-century Nostradamus poem!” she writes in an accompanying note. A Columbia College artist in residence and the author of several collections including Furious Cooking, Fear of Subways, and the National Book Award-nominated Little Ice Age, Seaton will give a poetry reading with Brooklyn-based poet and publisher Jim Elledge today at 5 as part of Columbia’s Collegiate Pride Month. The free event’s at the college’s Hermann D. Conaway Center, 1104 S. Wabash; call 312-344-8594 for more information.
