Hey all, we're about 2 months out from this, so we wrote a bit about what's going to be going on at the exhibit. Full schedule coming soon.
JULY: RUMPUS ROOM
For the opening of Nomadic Studio, we will invite the public to view a transparent installation of several large murals that will provide the backdrop for our revolving gallery shows.
During the month, our programming involves sound recording, music performance and rehearsal, low-cost technology workshops, the flexibility of the home studio and more. In the central portion of the gallery, we have built a replica of the Rumpus Room, a fully functioning home recording studio and lounge hidden away in the city. The atmosphere of the Rumpus Room has always inspired creativity; the room at the museum we have envisioned is designed to do the same.
This recreated Rumpus Room has been used in the past as a rehearsal space, composing studio and performance venue, as well as a printmaking, woodworking, and technology workshop. It has also been a collaborative art project, classroom, gallery, and most importantly, a recording studio that packs away in under two hours, turning the room into a social club.
Artists tend to work from the home by default as well as necessity, and the Rumpus Room is a perfect model for what a home studio could be. The recording interface will allow us to not only document all performances and presentations, but also to teach recording and serve as a communal space.
AUGUST: BIRD SANCTUARY 
During the Bird Sanctuary, we will populate the museum with the work of artists who depict birds and flight as well as talk to producers about their ‘sanctuary’ practices.
We will also be recreating the appropriately titled, A\V-Aerie, a Chicago-based loft space. A\V-Aerie represents one of many venues for art and performance that has had to close its doors. However, like most closed spaces, those involved have remained vital and creative artists in spite of setbacks.
The mission of bird sanctuaries is generally to be safe havens—rest areas on the way to something beyond. They are where the creatures receive the best care that the sanctuaries can provide and are given the opportunity to behave as naturally as possible in a protective environment. A sanctuary can also be a location that is traditionally used for worship, meditation, asylum, contemplation, and reflection.
At the Nomadic Studio, Bird Sanctuary represents a refuge for artists, a place where one’s meaningful practice can be shared with others, a space where you struggle and grapple with new ideas and gain enrichment from creating and showing, teaching and growing. A studio can be like a home; it can be a place of healing and new learning. As nomadic artists and educators we migrate from place to place, situation to situation like birds seeking new nests, a new home for our ideas and inventions. In considering how much we enjoy birds as a model of play, freedom, and their nests habitats for recuperation. We also just think birds are extremely rad.
SEPTEMBER: BACK OF THE YARDS
Back of the Yards is one of Chicago’s 77 unique neighborhoods, deriving its name from the industrial and residential settlement near the Union Stock Yard & Transit Co. from 1865 to 1971. Like most de-industrialized communities in Chicago, when the jobs vanish the residents follow, leaving large gaps in urbanism ripe for new immigrant populations. As a somewhat invisible working-class area, it is also vulnerable to gang violence and suffers from various forms economic depression.
Outside of being a contemporary cultural Chicago neighborhood, Back of the Yards is also the birthplace of the Stockyard Institute, a community art and re-education project formed in 1995. It offered an array of radical community art / education programs that are still in service throughout Chicago today. Steeped in traditional DIY activism, liberating pedagogy, and urban street arts, Back of the Yards month celebrates years of passionate nomadic practices, visual art, and emergent knowledge systems that draw attention to communities in need. The Stockyard Institute has become a reputable Chicago institution and serves as a productive model for alternative art education in the city.
To remember the origins of the Stockyard Institute, Nomadic Studio will offer alternative programming that center on historic Do-It-Yourself street-level practices including reading, journaling, bookbinding, underground music venues, break dancing, storytelling, education, collectivity, and more.
We will also be recreating the appropriately titled Union Rock Yards, a Chicago-based underground rock club. Union Rock Yards archived every musical performance and event that came through the space. URY is a model of how artists can move into a non-traditional space and build a community.
OCTOBER: TEACHING ARTIST MONTH
October is Chicago Artist Month. In an effort to sharpen the focus and raise awareness to dialectical artistic processes of pedagogical and visual significance, Nomadic Studio celebrates teaching artists and professional arts educators. In lieu of the recent shift in social and everyday practices that empower youth and involve community through the arts, we feel it is critical to expand models and thinking about visual art to include various strains and systems of knowledge that allow everyone to share information. As a social activity, education and cultural production give way to discursive fields of inquiry that are central to imagining the kind of city in which we wish to live, work, and learn.
During the month, Nomadic Studio will hold an Extraneous Education Conference for teaching artists. We will discuss various strategies that point to future practices that may engage broader communities in art, education, the everyday, activism, and community collaboration, thus bridging the gaps that exist between theory and practice.
NOVEMBER: STOCKYARD INSTITUTE TEACHING EXPERIMENTS (SITE)
SITE is a multi-media publication initiative that seeks to locate and combine trans-disciplinary fields of knowledge in hopes of reconstituting and re-imagining educational resources through lived experiences. Productions of interest include, but are not limited to, visual art and education curriculum mapping, lesson / unit plans, scholastic research documents, and educator experiences.
During the month of November, we will have an open office where we will be reflecting, organizing, and documenting the previous months’ programs for the purposes of galvanizing future efforts for SITE. Feedback and participation is highly encouraged.
kerble is right.
