Friday 4
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According to founder Joe Crosetto, the Art-O-Rama gallery will be showing “some awful, some profoundly stupid, and some profoundly relevant” work at its inaugural show, Cigs & Beer. About 80 “unsavory” artists from Chicago, California, and Michigan contributed various artworks on the title’s theme: “Some are nice, others not,” says Crosetto. If you want to risk it, the opening’s from 6 to 9 tonight at 3039 W. Irving Park. It’s free; 588-1876 for details.
Paula Pia Martinez is one of six artists who refused to go along with Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Lois Weisberg’s attempt to “fix” the controversial “Chicago Show” after a blind jury picked mostly white artists: she turned down Weisberg’s invitation to participate as one of 20 additional minority artists, pointedly telling reporters she wanted to be included in the show for her artistry, not her ethnicity. In Once, an exhibition of 11 Latin American artists, Martinez is included for all the right reasons–her large, colorful, and intensely emotional canvases. The show, which runs through the end of May, opens with receptions from 6 to 9 tonight and from 1 to 5 tomorrow at the Latino Arts Gallery, 850 N. Milwaukee. Regular gallery hours are 11 to 5 Tuesday through Saturday. Free admission; 243- 3777.
Say I’m a Jew is a 30-minute videotape by award-winning video maker Pier Marton that features interviews with 16 children of Holocaust survivors. Starting today, the tape will be screened as part of the Spertus Museum’s installation of portraits of the 16 interviewees, mounted on slate-painted walls so that viewers can record their responses in chalk. The installation runs through August 26 at the museum, 618 S. Michigan; doors are open 10 to 5 Sunday through Thursday, 10 to 3 Friday. Admission is $3.50, $2 for kids, seniors, and students. More info at 922- 9012, ext. 248.
The Chicago Historical Society takes a look at how America’s four basic clothing groups–leather jackets, jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers–have changed and endured over the past 50 years in its exhibit Leather Jackets and Jeans: Street Cool to Oak Street Chic. The society, at Clark Street and North Avenue, is open 9:30 to 4:30 daily, noon to 5 Sunday. Admission is $1.50, 50 cents for kids and seniors, free Monday. Call 642-4600.
A Different War: Vietnam in Art, an exhibit that looks at how the war affected American art over the last two decades, features 108 works by 54 artists: paintings, sculptures, photos, works on paper, video, and mixed media constructions. (The show’s catalog includes an essay by feminist critic Lucy Lippard.) It opens today and runs through June 24 at Northwestern University’s Mary and Leigh Block Gallery, 1967 Sheridan Road in Evanston. Regular gallery hours are noon to 5 Tuesday and Wednesday and noon to 8 Thursday through Sunday; admission is free. Various lectures and tours and a reading of letters and poems are scheduled throughout the exhibit; call 708-491-4000 for more info.
