Hyde Park Art Center, the renowned non-profit hub for contemporary art located on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, will host its latest Center Sunday, an all-ages program filled with art-making activities, workshops, and artist talks, held on the first Sunday of each month. This month’s program, on June 6, from 1-4 p.m., will be outdoor in-person in the Hyde Park Art Center parking lot with three artmaking activities: charcoal rubbing led by teen artist Stevia Ndoe, graphics workshop with current resident artist William Estrada, and drawing workshop with Smart Museum of Art. The event is free and open to the public, with pre-registration required at hydeparkart.org.
Monthly Center Sundays are curated by Ciera McKissick, Hyde Park Art Center Public Programs Coordinator, as a means of introducing the community to the myriad ongoing offerings at the Hyde Park Art Center for all ages, interests and skill levels; the June Center Sunday programming includes:
Create Your Own Charcoal Rubbing with Stevia Ndoe
1 – 3 p.m.
Stevia Ndoe, teen artist from the Art Center’s Youth Art Board, leads a charcoal rubbing artmaking activity inspired by the Art Center’s current exhibition Planting and Maintaining a Perennial Garden: Shrouds by Faheem Majeed. Ndoe, who assisted Majeed last summer in his rubbing of the South Side Community Art Center, will show participants how to explore different rubbing techniques and materials, and create their own rubbing using the textures surrounding Hyde Park Art Center.
Stevia Ndoe is currently a Cameroonian-American gap year student who will be attending New York University this fall to study photography, cinematography, and interactive media arts. In her work, she explores the themes of Blackness, age, family, beauty, and community as a means to explore her own identity and status in society. Ndoe strives to highlight the joy of being Black and rewrite the narratives of Blackness that include Black joy, Black love, and Black culture/fashion. Her work is not only a journey of self-exploration but a tool she uses to further connect and heal her community. She has received recognition from multiple organizations such as the National Young Arts Foundation (2020 & 2021), Chicago Public Library Foundation (2020), and the Scholastic Art & Writing Association (2020). Her work has been featured at Harold Washington Library, Hyde Park Art Center, and in the New York Times.
Creating Graphics Workshop with Radicle Resident Artist, William Estrada
2 – 4 p.m.
William Estrada, an artist in the Radicle Residency Program at Hyde Park Art Center, leads a workshop on creating graphics and how printmaking techniques can be used to engage broader discussions of community concerns. This is an opportunity to learn a brief history of printmaking, its use as a democratic medium and tool, and how Estrada incorporates it into his practice, such as his Mobile Street Art Cart—a project that brings collaborative, community-relevant artmaking to the streets of Chicago and directly to the people, particularly on the South Side.
William Estrada grew up in California, Mexico, and Chicago. His teaching and art making practice focus on addressing inequity, migration, historical passivity, and cultural recognition in historically marginalized communities. He documents and engages experiences in public spaces to transform, question, and make connections to established and organic systems through discussion, creation, and amplification of stories through creativity already present. He is currently a visual art teacher at Telpochcalli Elementary and faculty in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has worked as an educator and artist with Chicago Arts Partnership in Education, SkyArt, Marwen Foundation, Urban Gateways, DePaul University’s College Connect Program, Graffiti Institute, Vermont College of Art and Design, Prison + Neighborhood Art Project, and the School of The Art Institute of Chicago, besides Hyde Park Art Center.
Artmaking: “Fundred” Project Drawing Workshop with Smart Museum Educators
1 – 3 p.m.
Educators from the Smart Museum of Art will teach how to create one’s own “fundred” for the Fundred Project. The Fundreds Project engages youth in civic action around lead contamination and is a creative currency to demonstrate how much the lives of children and a future free of lead poisoning are valued. A “fundred” is an original, hand-drawn interpretations of $100 bills, and is a play on words which combines the words “Fun,” “Fund,” and “Hundred.” Making a Fundred is a chance to express oneself, while together the Fundreds demonstrate the value collectively placed on healthier communities, lead-safe homes, and the imagination of all children. Located nearby in Hyde Park, the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago is a site for rigorous inquiry and exchange that encourages the examination of complex issues through the lens of art objects and artistic practice. Through strong community and scholarly partnerships, the Museum, first opened in 1974, incorporates diverse ideas, identities, and experiences into its exhibitions and collections, academic inquiry, and public programming.
About Center Sundays
Every first Sunday of the month and pre-COVID 19, Hyde Park Art Center was activated throughout the center for the public, neighbors, and families, with intergenerational art making activities, artist workshops, artist talks, open studios, curatorial tours of its exhibitions, community collaborations, music and small bites. Since the pandemic lockdown, Center Sundays have switched online—and now in a hybrid mode—continuing with interaction, engagement, and exchange with the public on the same day of each month. Center Sundays are free and open for all.
About the Hyde Park Art Center
Hyde Park Art Center, at 5020 South Cornell Avenue on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, is a hub for contemporary arts in Chicago, serving as a gathering and production space for artists and the broader community to cultivate ideas, impact social change, and connect with new networks. Since its inception in 1939, Hyde Park Art Center has grown from a small collective of quirky artists to establishing a strong legacy of innovative development and emerging as a unique Chicago arts institution with social impact. The Art Center functions as an amplifier for today and tomorrow’s creative voices, providing the space to cultivate and create new work and connections.
For more information on Hyde Park Art Center’s public programs such as Center Sundays, please visit www.hydeparkart.org.