Thoughts and actions during COVID-19
We hope that you, your loved ones, friends, and neighbors are staying safe and healthy during this unprecedented, universal virus. We hope that all who are suffering - whether near or distant - recover quickly and completely. Those staying at home, and those working in the front lines, thank you for doing this for others. We are a we. In this time of uncertainty, anxiety, and suffering, we each are affected differently. To guide us, we have reached out to a group of amazing artists to spatially not socially distance.
Sanctuary Sessions help us be the best - individually and as a society - we can be during these challenging times. Designed for creatives, these workshops are for all. Acknowledging our vulnerability and culpability together can help transform this moment and ourselves. Join us for these weekly self-care Zoom sessions to grow and bring about new beginnings:
Recorded Sanctuary Sessions
Alice Berry: A Guide to Mental Health for Artists – April 15 & April 29, 2020
By understanding our physiological responses, we can learn to manage our responses in this unsettling time.
This workshop’s combination of neuropsychology and mindfulness can help mitigate the stress on our bodies and minds. View on YouTube: April 29, 2020.
Rhonda Wheatley: Self-Care Strategies for Creatives in Quarantine – April 22, May 6, & May 20, 2020
These group workshops acknowledge the anxiety, fear, and grief due to COVID-19.
Together we work to ground ourselves and envision what comes next. View on YouTube: April 22; May 6; and May 20, 2020.
Dana Major: Collective Crystal Seeing – May 13, May 27, & June 3, 2020
Dana Major employs quartz crystals to see the internal light, known as scrying, to offer a positive, constructive way to see through COVID-19 as a group.
View on YouTube: May 13 and June 3, 2020.
Melissa Potter: Grow Your Own Native and Heirloom Plants – June 6, 2020
Planting the seeds. Join Melissa Potter and the Edgewater Environmental Sustainability Project to plant your own native and heirloom garden.
View on YouTube: June 6, 2020 + Download Handout Materials
Tricia Van Eck: Artist Statements – June 10 + June 11, 2020
What are you planting? An artist statement helps figure out who you are and what you want your work to be. Are you doing it? If not let’s get it together! Tricia will work with you to help you rewrite your artist statement to best reflect who you are, what your work is, what you have come to do here on this planet, and how you want to bring it forth for all to see.
View on YouTube: June 10 + June 11, 2020
Renee Patten: Project Management – June 24, 2020
Managing your garden. Learn the basics of project management so we can grow our garden. This workshop is to build skills and acquire resources to manage projects successfully from beginning to end. What is a project you want to do and have not started yet? Whether you are new or experienced in project management, you'll be able to walk away with takeaways to start or improve projects.
View on YouTube: June 24, 2020 and download materials.
Karyn Taeyaerts: Prioritizing Time Management – July 1, 2020
How to decide what to plant? There's only so many hours in the day and growing your art takes all of them – and more. So, how can you find more time in your day? More time to do what really matters. Step one is to get laser-focused on priorities, and then – with that clarity – use some proven tactics to stay moving forward efficiently and effectively. People who are great at optimizing their time work on the right things, at the right time, for the right amount of time, and with the right amount of focus and energy.
View on YouTube: July 1, 2020.
Rhonda Wheatley: Journaling – August 12 + August 26, 2020
Join artist, writer, and healer Rhonda Wheatley to discover how journaling can positively impact your life. Our worlds have significantly shifted since our last Sanctuary Sessions. As we navigate through, we invite you to join these additional Sanctuary Session focused on individual and collective restoration with words. Together we will dive deep into our healing as we explore change through journaling.
View on YouTube: August 12 and August 26, 2020
Alice Berry: Uncertainty – August 19, 2020
By understanding our physiological responses, we can learn to manage our responses in this unsettling time. This workshop’s combination of neuropsychology and mindfulness can help mitigate the stress on our bodies and minds as a result of prolonged uncertainty. Facilitated by Alice Berry.
View on YouTube: August 19, 2020
Tiffany Mitchenor: Restorative Guided Meditation – September 2, 2020
Tiffany Mitchenor is an everyday activist, facilitator of healing, and a nature enthusiast. Her teaching style is gentle, inviting, and created through a trauma informed lens. Tiffany is committed to being a lifelong learner, leading by example, and holding space for communities and individuals in need.
As COVID-19 is spread through close proximity, the City of Chicago has joined the State of Illinois in issuing a Stay at Home order. The Chicago Cultural Center is closed and all in-person events and tours are canceled until further notice. In Flux: Chicago Artists and Immigration at Chicago Cultural Center is a continuation of the 2018-2020 6018North project Living Architecture. In Flux responds to the current political climate to highlight how Chicago was built with immigrant labor, particularly in the arts, and is continuously shaped today by exemplary immigrant artists.
In Flux: Chicago Artists and Immigration – Online Artist-Led Tours
Experience our virtual walk-throughs via recorded discussions with Alberto Aguilar, Kioto Aoki, Amanda Assaley and Qais Assali, Yesenia Bello, Tom Burtonwood, Julietta Cheung, Sabba Elahi, Silvia Gonzalez, Óscar I González Díaz, Lise Haller Baggesen, Rodrigo Lara Zendejas, Wen Liu, Emilio Rojas, Jan Tichy, Orkideh Torabi, and visit 6018north.org/in-flux.
In Flux – Artist-Led Workshops
Townhall Discussion with Caroline Ng and Ji Yang – April 24, 2020
Join Caroline and Ji in a town hall discussion of xenophobia, racism, and ‘otherness’ as it relates to Chinese people and people of East Asian and Southeast Asian backgrounds during the COVID-19 pandemic. View on YouTube.
Mask-Making Sewing Workshop with Aram Han Sifuentes – April 25, 2020
Make masks with Aram Han Sifuentes on Zoom. Bring needle and thread or sewing machine, pre-washed cotton fabrics, bias tape or elastic (you can use hair bands, ribbons, shoelaces, etc), nose wire (you can use any wire, pipe cleaners, bag ties), ruler and scissors. No experience required. Aram's masks are donated to Cook County Jail inmates. View on YouTube.
Kolektiv Goluboy Vagon (Коллектив Голубой Вагон) – May 2, 2020
Kolektiv Goluboy Vagon zine launch explored de-assimilation and co-liberatory practices across the queer Soviet Jewish Diaspora, with a tea drinking ritual rooted in queer Soviet and Jewish tradition. Order Kolektiv Goluboy Vagon Issue 01.
“Table-reading” with Amanda Assaley and Qais Assali – May 8, 2020
Join this participatory performance by Amanda Assaley and Qais Assali as they explore language and mistranslation as it pertains to their work Ahl Al Medinah, Shurafa’ Al Ayn, 2018. View on YouTube.
We are the Cure: Drawings and New Visions on COVID-19 with Sabba Elahi – May 1 and May 9, 2020
Sabba Elahi invites the public to “redraw a COVID-19 cure," creating a collective work of healing.
Before meeting, a small tile/fragment (4” x 6”) of a blown-up corona virus cell was shared with each participant. Participants are asked to respond to their visual fragment to “redraw a cure,” and submit 5-7 words about healing. During the circle, participants hand drawing or stitch which create two new textiles: the new collective image and the wordscloud. View on YouTube.
Compass to Now|Here workshop with Silvia Ines Gonzalez – May 10, 2020
Compass to Now|Here is a multilayered artists’ book project archiving Chicago's history of settlement, resettlement, unsettlement, justice, and labor movements, in larger connection to national immigration policy.
The workshop for Compass to Now|Here with Silvia Ines Gonzalez invites participants to critically engage our city's historical and narrative framework by joining artists in a virtual investigation of the installation. The public is invited to share their own stories around settlement, resettlement, and unsettlement as it pertains to individual experiences around living, organizing, and the geographical shifting that continues to shape the way our city is experienced. Join the artists for a reading of the work's context as well as an art making and participatory invitation to become part of the work's archive. View on YouTube.
OTVReruns x 6018North – May 8, 2020
With OTVReruns, intersectional web TV platform OTV - Open Television explores its rich back catalogue from the point of view of the creators. In the form of VH1’s Pop-Up Video, the shorts are overlaid with behind the scenes info and trivia on display in annotated bubbles. This first edition of OTVReruns highlights Border’d, United States of Aliens, and FOBia. View the trailer on YouTube, with more info at weareo.tv.
Call for Participation: Imaginary Homelands with Kirsten Leenaars
If you have always wanted to be in film talking about yourself, sign up for this new documentary project by artist Kirsten Leenaars. Structured as a series of video portraits across the US, it traces personal stories of how we are connected and yet apart.
Visit 6018north.org/imaginary-homelands to sign up!
Windows to the World
We are using our home as an experimental platform and invite you to do the same. We always encourage people—artists, creatives, and audiences—to take risks, daring to go where there are no precedents, to challenge fears and norms. Today is no different. What can you do or express in this moment? How do you want the world to be post-COVID-19?
Curated by a collective of Justice Hotel curators – Wisdom Baty, Ciera McKissick, Caroline K. Ng, Ji Yang, and Su Yeon Lim - Windows to the World features work in 6018North’s windows and exterior spaces by Rohan Ayinde, Jane Georges, Efrat Hakimi, Jiwon Ham, Mashaun Hendricks, Tshab Her, Audra Jacot, Angela Lopez, AJ McClenon, Dorian Sylvain, and Sadie Woods. We invite you to use your own windows. For more on this project, please visit 6018north.org/windows-to-the-world.
Writers Workshop
During Summer 2020, 6018North organized our first online workshop on art criticism. The workshop's aim is twofold: to contribute to the development of Chicago-area writers who engage critically with contemporary art, and in the longer term, to bring contemporary art to new audiences. Carmen Luz Corredor, Amanda Dee, Zakkiyyah Najeebah Dumas-O’Neal, Felicia Holman, Jacklynn Kelsey, Lauren Lombre, Susan Musich, Josepha R. Natzke, Marina Resende Santos, and Sarina Shane join us to hone and advance their art writing, criticism, and practical skills. Workshop leader Lise McKean – with one-on-one editors Asha Iman Veal, Susan Snodgrass, Kate Sierzputowski, and Agnieszka Gratza – provided readings and assignments to expand the conversation about the art form and to offer feedback for emerging writers. The workshop features guests including Candida Alvarez, Wisdom Baty, Stephanie Cristello, SY Lim, Faheem Majeed, Ciera McKissick, Caroline Ng, Edra Soto, Amanda Williams, and Ji Yang.
Water Music on the Rocks
Water Music on the Beach – an annual series of live performances initiated in 2012 that highlights Chicago’s proximity to Lake Michigan – was relocated and renamed Water Music on the Rocks to ensure a COVID-safe event, with distanced performances taking place on the rocks next to the water, rather than on the beach. Performances by Simon Anderson, Ben Lamar Gay and Rob Frye, Alexander Massa, AJ McClenon, and Anna Martine Whitehead. To begin the event, Alexander Massa and his band led a New Orleans-style funeral procession to honor the dead from COVID-19 and the Black and Brown lives lost to police brutality. Programming was a collaboration between Homeroom and 6018North. For more photos and info on the event, visit 6018north.org/water-music-on-the-rocks.
Tuesday Town Halls
With the Edgewater Environmental Coalition, 6018North hosted for a series of Town Hall discussions with community experts and innovators to explore Chicago’s most pressing issues to create a sustainable future.
The events focused on Housing, Transportation, Waste, and Water – to view full recordings of the events, please visit 6018north.org/town-hall.
Power of Paint
This video demonstrates how art is educative and can save lives through washing your hands thoroughly.
Resources outside of 6018North
COVID-19, which passes from individual to individual, clearly shows that we are all interconnected and responsible to each other as individuals and as a group. Now it is crystal clear that we–the I generation–can no longer think of just ourselves. Our decisions affect and have always affected others; it perhaps was not as noticeable. Funders have taken this to heart and here are some opportunities:
Money
Statewide - Arts for Illinois Relief Fund via 3Arts
Nationwide - Artist Relief Fund
City of Chicago - COVID-19 Arts Relief & Resources
Federal Government - Self Employment Payroll Protection Plan
Artist Relief Funds - Compiled Lists
Freelance Artists - Resources
UPLC, ATU ONS, Tenant Rights - Resources
Communal and Self-Care
36 Questions that Lead to Love
Looking to the future, be counted - 2020Census.gov
Environmental Care
Illinois Environmental Council Actions
Support
6018North is deeply grateful to all of the artists working with us to create new work during this difficult time.
We are paying all of the artists, and if you have the means to support us and them, please donate here.
THANK YOU!