What’s New

Join Andersonville residents and celebrate the holidays the Swedish way, with St. Lucia and the Lucia Procession. Lucia girls, in white robes and candle crowns, were crowned at noon at the temporary Nordic House in the Wrigley building downtown. This afternoon a procession walks up Clark Street in Andersonville (starting at the Swedish American Museum, 5211 N. Clark, at 4:45 PM) followed by a 5 PM musical performance near the Christmas tree at 1500 W. Catalpa. More music, readings, and a final St. Lucia procession starts at 7 PM at Ebenezer Lutheran Church (1650 W. Foster). All events are free with no tickets required. (TA)

Last week Gossip Wolf let us know that south-side native Manasseh plays the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (220 E. Chicago) tonight as part of their Soundtrack series, which asks local musicians to perform in response to the themes explored in a current exhibit. Manasseh will be backed by the ensemble the Fam, featuring Brandon Cameron, Blake Davis, Lisha Denise, Lamonté Norwood, and Remon Sanders as they explore original arrangements in response to work of artist Martine Syms. It starts at 6 PM and the performance is free with admission to the museum (and residents of Illinois enjoy free admission on Tuesdays). (SCJ)

Manasseh recorded this performance at the Chicago Public Media Jim and Kay Mabie Performance Studio.

Reader contributor Steve Krakow’s Secret History of Chicago Music visits our music pages on a regular basis with deep research into overlooked Chicago musicians and bands complete with original illustrations. Tonight you can enjoy a live version of the column as Krakow hosts soul singer Renaldo Domino (whose 60s discography has been reissued by Numero Group), as well as Reader contributor Aaron Cohen, the author of Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power. The three gents will discuss pivotal Chicago soul and R&B music starting at 7:30 PM at Gman Tavern (3740 N. Clark); tickets are $15 and can be purchased at the door or in advance at Etix. (SCJ)

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Join Andersonville residents and celebrate the holidays the Swedish way, with St. Lucia and the Lucia Procession. Lucia girls, in white robes and candle crowns, were crowned at noon at the temporary Nordic House in the Wrigley building downtown. This afternoon a procession walks up Clark Street in Andersonville (starting at the Swedish American Museum, 5211 N. Clark, at 4:45 PM) followed by a 5 PM musical performance near the Christmas tree at 1500 W. Catalpa. More music, readings, and a final St. Lucia procession starts at 7 PM at Ebenezer Lutheran Church (1650 W. Foster). All events are free with no tickets required. (TA)

Last week Gossip Wolf let us know that south-side native Manasseh plays the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (220 E. Chicago) tonight as part of their Soundtrack series, which asks local musicians to perform in response to the themes explored in a current exhibit. Manasseh will be backed by the ensemble the Fam, featuring Brandon Cameron, Blake Davis, Lisha Denise, Lamonté Norwood, and Remon Sanders as they explore original arrangements in response to work of artist Martine Syms. It starts at 6 PM and the performance is free with admission to the museum (and residents of Illinois enjoy free admission on Tuesdays). (SCJ)

Manasseh recorded this performance at the Chicago Public Media Jim and Kay Mabie Performance Studio.

Reader contributor Steve Krakow’s Secret History of Chicago Music visits our music pages on a regular basis with deep research into overlooked Chicago musicians and bands complete with original illustrations. Tonight you can enjoy a live version of the column as Krakow hosts soul singer Renaldo Domino (whose 60s discography has been reissued by Numero Group), as well as Reader contributor Aaron Cohen, the author of Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power. The three gents will discuss pivotal Chicago soul and R&B music starting at 7:30 PM at Gman Tavern (3740 N. Clark); tickets are $15 and can be purchased at the door or in advance at Etix. (SCJ)

Read More

Join Andersonville residents and celebrate the holidays the Swedish way, with St. Lucia and the Lucia Procession. Lucia girls, in white robes and candle crowns, were crowned at noon at the temporary Nordic House in the Wrigley building downtown. This afternoon a procession walks up Clark Street in Andersonville (starting at the Swedish American Museum, 5211 N. Clark, at 4:45 PM) followed by a 5 PM musical performance near the Christmas tree at 1500 W. Catalpa. More music, readings, and a final St. Lucia procession starts at 7 PM at Ebenezer Lutheran Church (1650 W. Foster). All events are free with no tickets required. (TA)

Last week Gossip Wolf let us know that south-side native Manasseh plays the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (220 E. Chicago) tonight as part of their Soundtrack series, which asks local musicians to perform in response to the themes explored in a current exhibit. Manasseh will be backed by the ensemble the Fam, featuring Brandon Cameron, Blake Davis, Lisha Denise, Lamonté Norwood, and Remon Sanders as they explore original arrangements in response to work of artist Martine Syms. It starts at 6 PM and the performance is free with admission to the museum (and residents of Illinois enjoy free admission on Tuesdays). (SCJ)

Manasseh recorded this performance at the Chicago Public Media Jim and Kay Mabie Performance Studio.

Reader contributor Steve Krakow’s Secret History of Chicago Music visits our music pages on a regular basis with deep research into overlooked Chicago musicians and bands complete with original illustrations. Tonight you can enjoy a live version of the column as Krakow hosts soul singer Renaldo Domino (whose 60s discography has been reissued by Numero Group), as well as Reader contributor Aaron Cohen, the author of Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power. The three gents will discuss pivotal Chicago soul and R&B music starting at 7:30 PM at Gman Tavern (3740 N. Clark); tickets are $15 and can be purchased at the door or in advance at Etix. (SCJ)

Read More

Join Andersonville residents and celebrate the holidays the Swedish way, with St. Lucia and the Lucia Procession. Lucia girls, in white robes and candle crowns, were crowned at noon at the temporary Nordic House in the Wrigley building downtown. This afternoon a procession walks up Clark Street in Andersonville (starting at the Swedish American Museum, 5211 N. Clark, at 4:45 PM) followed by a 5 PM musical performance near the Christmas tree at 1500 W. Catalpa. More music, readings, and a final St. Lucia procession starts at 7 PM at Ebenezer Lutheran Church (1650 W. Foster). All events are free with no tickets required. (TA)

Last week Gossip Wolf let us know that south-side native Manasseh plays the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (220 E. Chicago) tonight as part of their Soundtrack series, which asks local musicians to perform in response to the themes explored in a current exhibit. Manasseh will be backed by the ensemble the Fam, featuring Brandon Cameron, Blake Davis, Lisha Denise, Lamonté Norwood, and Remon Sanders as they explore original arrangements in response to work of artist Martine Syms. It starts at 6 PM and the performance is free with admission to the museum (and residents of Illinois enjoy free admission on Tuesdays). (SCJ)

Manasseh recorded this performance at the Chicago Public Media Jim and Kay Mabie Performance Studio.

Reader contributor Steve Krakow’s Secret History of Chicago Music visits our music pages on a regular basis with deep research into overlooked Chicago musicians and bands complete with original illustrations. Tonight you can enjoy a live version of the column as Krakow hosts soul singer Renaldo Domino (whose 60s discography has been reissued by Numero Group), as well as Reader contributor Aaron Cohen, the author of Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power. The three gents will discuss pivotal Chicago soul and R&B music starting at 7:30 PM at Gman Tavern (3740 N. Clark); tickets are $15 and can be purchased at the door or in advance at Etix. (SCJ)

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164 BCE: The Maccabees have taken Jerusalem from the Seleucids and begun cleaning up the mess the occupiers left in the Second Temple. They’ve lit up the menorah, but there’s only enough sacred oil to last one day. Yet, on day two it keeps burning. And so it goes on days three, four, five, six, seven, and eight, until some fresh green EVOO is pressed, blessed, and resupplied.

They didn’t use that miraculous oil to fry up latkes and jelly donuts. Those came centuries later when the modern celebration of Hanukkah began to commemorate the world’s first successful armed rebellion with—sure, luminous menorahs, dreidels, and chocolate coins—but also foods fried crispy in hot, sizzling fat.  

December 19, 2022 CE: Zeitlin’s Delicatessen and Schneider Provisions have taken the kitchen at the Kedzie Inn on the second night of Hanukkah and lit up the fryer for Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up.

Sam Zeitlin arrived in Chicago in 2018 looking for a proper bagel. He’d cooked in high-end Michelin-starred restaurants in D.C. after culinary school, and he landed at Galit when he got here. But he pined for the great Jewish American deli food he grew up with, and yet . . . bupkis.

That’s when Zeitlin, aka @bagelboy312, started making his own bagels, and during the pandemic began selling them out of his apartment to support melanoma research. “I missed the food I grew up eating as a kid,” he says. “I didn’t understand that it had such a profound effect on the way I see food and interact with food and culture. I dove into my Jewish identity and wanted to learn more about it because it was something that I didn’t even really know a whole lot about.”

Nearly three years later, Zeitlin’s Delicatessen is a powerhouse in Chicago’s deli renaissance, a farmers’ market and pop-up mainstay with a broad repertoire of traditional and innovative Jewish baked and preserved comestibles, from bagel dogs to bialys to babkas.

Sam Zeitlin’s reckoning with the Jewish American deli legacy aligned with a similar trajectory to that of Jake Schneider of Schneider Provisions, who packed the Kedzie at his own sandwich-oriented Foodball in October. That’s why they’re the ideal collaborators for Monday’s Hanukkah-inspired, family-style dinner that features latkes (withapplesauce, of course); and sugar-dusted jelly donuts, aka sufganiyot, with a fruity molten core cooked down from Oriana “The Pear Angel” Kruszewski’s Asian pears.

There will be other not-necessarily-Hanukkah-tied, Askenazi-style dishes on the table, such as an update on the 80s Silver Palate Cookbook’s classic chicken Marbella, braised with prunes, capers, and olives; a roasted veggie goulash ladled over egg noodles; a bitter green salad with maple sherry vinaigrette; Zeitlin’s bronzed, braided challah; and a pickle plate from Schneider.

This is a one-seating sit-down beginning at 6 PM at 4100 N. Kedzie, with very limited walk-in orders available. Venmo @Zeitlinsdeli for tickets. Don’t have Venmo? DM @zeitlinsdelicatessen.

It’s also a bittersweet night for myself and Kedzie owner Jon Pokorny, as Monday Night Foodball will leave its birthplace and relocate to a new kitchen-barroom stadium starting in January 2023. Details coming soon. Here’s a hint at our opener.

Read More

Iron Years Credit: Courtesy Play Alone Records

In 2018, local band Iron Years dropped a compelling demo on Bandcamp that weds several distinct styles: its buoyant bass lines and shimmering guitars recall the Cure’s Disintegration, and its snapping, propulsive electronic rhythms are reminiscent of classic Chicago house. It’s fun to listen to, but it makes the band tough to categorize! (The best Gossip Wolf has come up with so far is “gothic darkwave postpunk dance music,” which feels accurate, if a tad unwieldy.) Anyway, in July of this year, Iron Years finally followed up that demo with a new version of one of those early tracks, “Lucid,” released as a single from the upcoming album Reverie. It came out with a video that seems to prove this wolf’s thesis: the clip culminates with a bunch of lovelorn-looking goth kids meeting at a roller-skating rink, getting into the groove, and popping some unison dance moves. On Monday, December 19, Iron Years will drop Reverie via Pittsburgh postpunk label Play Alone Records, and that same night they’ll celebrate with a record-release show at the Empty Bottle. It’s part of the club’s free Monday series, and the bill also includes fellow gothically inclined groups Kill Scenes and Rose Lake. 

The “Lucid” video, directed by Milo Mendoza

Released on December 2, “Wander” is the second single from Reverie.

Beastii singer and guitarist Jen Larson (from dearly departed punk band Swimsuit Addition) says the group’s new lineup—with original drummer Chris Lee, returning bassist Maureen Neer, and new guitarist Jesse Fevvers—have been hard at work on “a collaborative new full-length album that shoots off in dreamy directions.” In the meantime, they’ve dropped a new tape, B.E.A.S.T.I.I.,  via What’s for Breakfast? Records. It collects previously released material dating back to 2017, with Larson either working via email with Lee or playing in a trio with Lee and former bassist Dom D’Amico. The tape’s got a solid variety of tunes, including the scorching, tuneful punk of the Violators cover “Summer of ’81” and the synth-infused pop update of the pro-union folk song “Praise Boss.” 

Beastii sold out of tapes at their Empty Bottle show on Monday, but their new release is still available on Bandcamp.

On Friday, local label Red Scare Industries reissued a posthumous 1995 compilation from early-90s Chicago punks Sludgeworth called Losers of the Year. Front man Dan Vapid, who also played bass and guitar in Screeching Weasel for many years, put together Sludgeworth around the time Screeching Weasel broke up for the first time in 1989. He recruited Screeching Weasel drummer Brian Vermin, and the two of them brought aboard guitarist Dave McClean and bassist Mike Hootenstrat (both from hardcore group Insolent Respect) and a second guitarist, Adam White, who’d been one of Vapid’s childhood friends. “I really loved Naked Raygun, and I like the Descendents a lot,” Vapid says, describing how Sludgeworth settled on a sound. “They’re like, ‘Yeah, that sounds great.’ Started playing and it did pretty well off the bat.” Sludgeworth were together for only three years, and a highlight of their brief career was opening for Naked Raygun at the Riviera. “I was 20 years old at the time, and I’d never played for that many people before,” Vapid says. “I want to say there was about 2,000 people there. I was nervous as all hell, but we really went all out and did great—I guess we were doing the right thing at the right time.” 

Back in the day, Bay Area punk label Lookout! Records issued Losers of the Year on CD only, and it’s been out of print for at least a decade—Lookout! shuttered in 2012. The Red Scare reissue is the first time the album has been pressed to vinyl, but Vapid wasn’t the one who made it happen. “I play in Dan Vapid & the Cheats, and now the Methadones are back,” he says. “I wasn’t really lighting a fire under anybody’s butts about it.” Red Scare founder Toby Jeg started the ball rolling on a Losers of the Year vinyl reissue more than five years ago, though the process of locating and rescuing the recordings took far longer than he’d expected. While gathering material, he discovered two previously unreleased songs, and they appear on the CD and digital versions of the reissue.

The digital version of Losers of the Year includes two previously unissued tracks that aren’t on the vinyl.

Fans of Chicago hip-hop have no doubt seen local rappers rocking gear from streetwear company Leaders 1354 (often styled LDRS 1354). On Sunday, FourtuneHouse Art Center (4410 S. Cottage Grove) opened an art exhibit celebrating the 20th anniversary of LDRS. The show is on view from 2 till 6 PM every day until it closes on Sunday, December 18.

Read More

164 BCE: The Maccabees have taken Jerusalem from the Seleucids and begun cleaning up the mess the occupiers left in the Second Temple. They’ve lit up the menorah, but there’s only enough sacred oil to last one day. Yet, on day two it keeps burning. And so it goes on days three, four, five, six, seven, and eight, until some fresh green EVOO is pressed, blessed, and resupplied.

They didn’t use that miraculous oil to fry up latkes and jelly donuts. Those came centuries later when the modern celebration of Hanukkah began to commemorate the world’s first successful armed rebellion with—sure, luminous menorahs, dreidels, and chocolate coins—but also foods fried crispy in hot, sizzling fat.  

December 19, 2022 CE: Zeitlin’s Delicatessen and Schneider Provisions have taken the kitchen at the Kedzie Inn on the second night of Hanukkah and lit up the fryer for Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up.

Sam Zeitlin arrived in Chicago in 2018 looking for a proper bagel. He’d cooked in high-end Michelin-starred restaurants in D.C. after culinary school, and he landed at Galit when he got here. But he pined for the great Jewish American deli food he grew up with, and yet . . . bupkis.

That’s when Zeitlin, aka @bagelboy312, started making his own bagels, and during the pandemic began selling them out of his apartment to support melanoma research. “I missed the food I grew up eating as a kid,” he says. “I didn’t understand that it had such a profound effect on the way I see food and interact with food and culture. I dove into my Jewish identity and wanted to learn more about it because it was something that I didn’t even really know a whole lot about.”

Nearly three years later, Zeitlin’s Delicatessen is a powerhouse in Chicago’s deli renaissance, a farmers’ market and pop-up mainstay with a broad repertoire of traditional and innovative Jewish baked and preserved comestibles, from bagel dogs to bialys to babkas.

Sam Zeitlin’s reckoning with the Jewish American deli legacy aligned with a similar trajectory to that of Jake Schneider of Schneider Provisions, who packed the Kedzie at his own sandwich-oriented Foodball in October. That’s why they’re the ideal collaborators for Monday’s Hanukkah-inspired, family-style dinner that features latkes (withapplesauce, of course); and sugar-dusted jelly donuts, aka sufganiyot, with a fruity molten core cooked down from Oriana “The Pear Angel” Kruszewski’s Asian pears.

There will be other not-necessarily-Hanukkah-tied, Askenazi-style dishes on the table, such as an update on the 80s Silver Palate Cookbook’s classic chicken Marbella, braised with prunes, capers, and olives; a roasted veggie goulash ladled over egg noodles; a bitter green salad with maple sherry vinaigrette; Zeitlin’s bronzed, braided challah; and a pickle plate from Schneider.

This is a one-seating sit-down beginning at 6 PM at 4100 N. Kedzie, with very limited walk-in orders available. Venmo @Zeitlinsdeli for tickets. Don’t have Venmo? DM @zeitlinsdelicatessen.

It’s also a bittersweet night for myself and Kedzie owner Jon Pokorny, as Monday Night Foodball will leave its birthplace and relocate to a new kitchen-barroom stadium starting in January 2023. Details coming soon. Here’s a hint at our opener.

Read More

Iron Years Credit: Courtesy Play Alone Records

In 2018, local band Iron Years dropped a compelling demo on Bandcamp that weds several distinct styles: its buoyant bass lines and shimmering guitars recall the Cure’s Disintegration, and its snapping, propulsive electronic rhythms are reminiscent of classic Chicago house. It’s fun to listen to, but it makes the band tough to categorize! (The best Gossip Wolf has come up with so far is “gothic darkwave postpunk dance music,” which feels accurate, if a tad unwieldy.) Anyway, in July of this year, Iron Years finally followed up that demo with a new version of one of those early tracks, “Lucid,” released as a single from the upcoming album Reverie. It came out with a video that seems to prove this wolf’s thesis: the clip culminates with a bunch of lovelorn-looking goth kids meeting at a roller-skating rink, getting into the groove, and popping some unison dance moves. On Monday, December 19, Iron Years will drop Reverie via Pittsburgh postpunk label Play Alone Records, and that same night they’ll celebrate with a record-release show at the Empty Bottle. It’s part of the club’s free Monday series, and the bill also includes fellow gothically inclined groups Kill Scenes and Rose Lake. 

The “Lucid” video, directed by Milo Mendoza

Released on December 2, “Wander” is the second single from Reverie.

Beastii singer and guitarist Jen Larson (from dearly departed punk band Swimsuit Addition) says the group’s new lineup—with original drummer Chris Lee, returning bassist Maureen Neer, and new guitarist Jesse Fevvers—have been hard at work on “a collaborative new full-length album that shoots off in dreamy directions.” In the meantime, they’ve dropped a new tape, B.E.A.S.T.I.I.,  via What’s for Breakfast? Records. It collects previously released material dating back to 2017, with Larson either working via email with Lee or playing in a trio with Lee and former bassist Dom D’Amico. The tape’s got a solid variety of tunes, including the scorching, tuneful punk of the Violators cover “Summer of ’81” and the synth-infused pop update of the pro-union folk song “Praise Boss.” 

Beastii sold out of tapes at their Empty Bottle show on Monday, but their new release is still available on Bandcamp.

On Friday, local label Red Scare Industries reissued a posthumous 1995 compilation from early-90s Chicago punks Sludgeworth called Losers of the Year. Front man Dan Vapid, who also played bass and guitar in Screeching Weasel for many years, put together Sludgeworth around the time Screeching Weasel broke up for the first time in 1989. He recruited Screeching Weasel drummer Brian Vermin, and the two of them brought aboard guitarist Dave McClean and bassist Mike Hootenstrat (both from hardcore group Insolent Respect) and a second guitarist, Adam White, who’d been one of Vapid’s childhood friends. “I really loved Naked Raygun, and I like the Descendents a lot,” Vapid says, describing how Sludgeworth settled on a sound. “They’re like, ‘Yeah, that sounds great.’ Started playing and it did pretty well off the bat.” Sludgeworth were together for only three years, and a highlight of their brief career was opening for Naked Raygun at the Riviera. “I was 20 years old at the time, and I’d never played for that many people before,” Vapid says. “I want to say there was about 2,000 people there. I was nervous as all hell, but we really went all out and did great—I guess we were doing the right thing at the right time.” 

Back in the day, Bay Area punk label Lookout! Records issued Losers of the Year on CD only, and it’s been out of print for at least a decade—Lookout! shuttered in 2012. The Red Scare reissue is the first time the album has been pressed to vinyl, but Vapid wasn’t the one who made it happen. “I play in Dan Vapid & the Cheats, and now the Methadones are back,” he says. “I wasn’t really lighting a fire under anybody’s butts about it.” Red Scare founder Toby Jeg started the ball rolling on a Losers of the Year vinyl reissue more than five years ago, though the process of locating and rescuing the recordings took far longer than he’d expected. While gathering material, he discovered two previously unreleased songs, and they appear on the CD and digital versions of the reissue.

The digital version of Losers of the Year includes two previously unissued tracks that aren’t on the vinyl.

Fans of Chicago hip-hop have no doubt seen local rappers rocking gear from streetwear company Leaders 1354 (often styled LDRS 1354). On Sunday, FourtuneHouse Art Center (4410 S. Cottage Grove) opened an art exhibit celebrating the 20th anniversary of LDRS. The show is on view from 2 till 6 PM every day until it closes on Sunday, December 18.

Read More

The Chicago Blackhawks are not having a good year but it is by design. They clearly have their sights set on rebuilding and that includes having a top-five pick in the 2023 NHL Draft. There have been some entertaining moments this year but everyone knows what the goal is.

At 7-15-4, the Hawks are in 31st place out of 32. Only the Anaheim Ducks are below them with one less point. It is a lot of losing but there is a lot to look forward to. If everything goes according to Kyle Davidson’s plan, they will be good again soon enough.

For now, we have to keep finding reasons to watch. When it comes to the current roster, there isn’t much. The prospects playing around the world are much more fun to think about. However, every now and again, an opponent comes in with a reason to watch them.

The Washington Capitals are a team that is overall on the decline but they are still one of the biggest stories in the NHL. That is because of their captain Alex Ovechkin who is closing in on some big-time NHL history.

Alex Ovechkin will play the Chicago Blackhawks with history on his mind.

Ovechkin comes into this game with 797 career goals. He is three away from becoming just the third NHL player in history to reach the 800 career goal mark. When he reaches that point, it is going to be a big moment for the sport and its history.

One goal later (801), he will tie Gordie Howe for the second most in NHL history. Following that, he will look to get into sole possession of second place and only trail Wayne Gretzky.

Now, Ovechkin would have to get a hat trick at the United Center in order to get to 800 on Tuesday night which is unlikely. However, seeing him up close as he chases history is really fun.

If he were to pull off something like that, however, not a single person should be surprised. It isn’t like the Hawks have this awesome defense that is going to be able to fully contain Ovechkin for most of the game. If he plays well, he will have a field day with this Blackhawks team.

We all know that Ovechkin has caused a lot of damage from his “office” on the power play. He stands there waiting for one of Washington’s great playmakers to find him for a big one-time shot. His wrist shot from that spot is elite as well.

At this point, no matter who you root for, you just have to cheer on greatness when it is right in front of you. Ovechkin is one of the six or seven greatest players ever. As mentioned before, once he breaks 100 and passes Howe, passing Gretzky is the final boss for him.

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“Can you see me?” at Weinberg/Newton Gallery intentionally gives a platform to individuals affected by incarceration and to communities that have been deeply cut by the prison industrial complex. What does it mean to listen to a person’s experience while simultaneously considering the depth of change it has on a group, a community, a generation? How can artistic collaboration center the collective voices of incarcerated folks while maintaining their humanity as individuals? 

“Can you see me?”Through 12/21: Thu-Sun 11 AM-5 PM, Weinberg/Newton Gallery, 688 N. Milwaukee, weinbergnewtongallery.com

This sentiment is put into practice with collaborative pieces by the youth in SkyART’s programming. Large and mural-like, these works, filled with symbols of youth, hold the spirit of street art and notebook doodles. Compelling images on their own, they are layered with powerful words and drawings—together often creating an abstracted body. These works are the sum of their parts, but are also powerful when viewed together, reminding us that incarceration doesn’t just affect the individual—each person is part of a family, a community; it reaches out like a web to change all it touches.

Still from A Letter to the City: “jail is not my home” by Kirsten Leenaars and Circles & Ciphers. Credit: Evan Jenkins

Along with this exhibition, concurrent shows were organized by Arts + Public Life and SkyART, which offers accessible arts programming to youth on Chicago’s south side. Several other organizations that serve youth and/or incarcerated communities are also represented here, including ConTextos, Arte Pro, and Circles & Ciphers. A unique aspect of the show is the presence of artwork created by youth involved with these organizations, as well as well-known artists such as Ebony G. Patterson and Cheryl Pope, whose piece WHEN I GET OUT I NOT NEVER COMING BACK greets you with haunting words as you enter the space, leaving you to wonder if this use of the double negative is a precursor to the fact that perhaps “I” may be “coming back” after all. This raw and intimate first-person voice is present throughout in letters that line the wall from currently incarcerated folks writing what freedom means to them and again in text written in public spaces throughout Chicago in the video, A Letter to the City: “jail is not my home” by Kirsten Leenaars and Circles & Ciphers.

“Can you see me?” is rich with content and, like most exhibitions tackling large, looming issues, it is marked by the amount of necessary (and important!) reading involved—but it is worth it. It is worth it to read the letters, sit with the material, and spend time with the words of folks spending time inside the walls, fighting against a system that has continued to fail them.

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