WEBVTT

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No, no, no, no.

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Come on, come on.

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This one right there, right.

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No, no, no, no.

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Okay.

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Right, right.

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So that means your finger starts on G, right?

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Both of them starts on G.

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Sorry, stop.

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Right, you stop on G, right?

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Try it again.

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One, two, ready, play.

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Right, right, right.

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Okay.

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One and two and three, four.

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Down two, three, four.

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Five, six, seven, eight.

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And one, two, three, four.

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It was like a journey together.

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The people in the communities, people in city government, people in the arts.

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Some of the artists were idealists, some were social activists,

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and some just needed a way to do their work.

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For a year and a half, their jobs would be to work for the city and in the communities.

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In the meantime, they would be refining the skills and talents

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that would make them fully professional and off the public payroll.

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And that's the kind of journey it was.

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A way for people, jobs, the arts.

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One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

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I guess my thoughts are messing up the count.

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We know that in a period of recession, the amount of unemployment among artists

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is every bit as high as it is among our industrial workers

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or any others who are seeking, who work for a living.

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And that the same kinds of programs to deal with the problems of the unemployed

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ought to be available to those who make their living in the arts or in cultural endeavors.

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Bradley Parker Sparrow gave piano concerts.

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He also organized workshops for the residents of public housing developments.

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More than half the artists in the program spent their time working at their art

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and also teaching it.

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I taught 110 kids a week for six months, sometimes 25 kids by myself.

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You can't teach someone to draw. You can't teach someone to play.

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You can only open them up. You can stimulate them.

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The only reason why you'd want to stimulate them is because you love them.

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I did it because I wanted to do it. It was the only thing in the whole program

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that made me stay in it.

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We made it very clear when we first announced the program that artists

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who were going to apply should have a very definite commitment to public service.

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Artists in the first place have had to make a number of choices in their lives,

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choices to continue their art. So they, number one, bring a motivation

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that perhaps many of us regular folks who find ourselves drifting into jobs don't quite have.

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They come, number one, with a motivation. Those that are in the program have also

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a real desire to share their skills and their creativity with others.

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That's the whole purpose of a public service art program is artists are working in the context

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of the community. They're not sitting and dreaming up paintings that they would like to place

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in a private gallery. They're trying to conceptualize about works of art that will be integral

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to the community and that will speak to the community.

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Hey, hey.

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Georgina here.

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Who is he at?

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Oh, where's George?

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He went to the great big guy.

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That's a guy.

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That's, that's food.

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Oh yeah.

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Hey, what's happening?

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How you doing?

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Fine.

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How's the chicken pot?

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Chicken pot?

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How you doing?

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Ah, for me?

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You're just a big guy.

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Right, back up, back up.

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Okay, good. Now, you remember that song, that one in A minor? Do the A minor blues scale.

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Remember the one in A minor? Yeah, no, no, A minor. That's C minor, do the A minor one.

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Right, there, yeah.

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Right, we only got one, there's only one flat. What flat is that in A minor blues scale?

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G flat.

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No, no.

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E flat.

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E flat, okay. Now, let's, remember you was playing those chords, play those chords with it.

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The one in A song in A minor.

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One, two, three.

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Now, that's gotta be clean. You gonna do it with me? Do it.

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Don't come in too early, alright?

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Okay, three, four.

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Oh, get on board.

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Oh, get on board.

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The Artist in Residence program was not the exclusive domain of any particular age group.

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For the senior citizens, there were workshops, plays, jazz performances, and magic shows.

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There were moments when things did not go smoothly.

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Sometimes the city would worry about the cost of a project,

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and sometimes the artists would worry that they would be made to compromise their work.

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But always, there was a strong enough commitment on both sides to sustain the link between the city and the arts.

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The proof of what it, of its validity is the enthusiasm of the department heads,

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who were somewhat skeptical when this program began as to how those programs might contribute to their departmental activities.

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I think it's a marriage that's gonna last.

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I'm sure that we would have continued doing what we've been doing,

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and that is that we put up a sign that says this is a rattlesnake,

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and the kids come and see it, and they say, yes, it's a rattlesnake, and that's all we do.

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As part of the fact that emphasis at this zoo today is education, along with conservation,

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it became very apparent that we needed a graphic story to tell what's happening in that lower level.

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But we never had the capability to tell this story.

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And the parent body to date has not seen fit to grant them this capability because of financial reasons,

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and so the Artists in Residence program has done that.

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We had been in communication with Dr. Fisher and Ed for quite a while in the staff about what had been done before,

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and we did a lot of field research.

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And it was a combination of what they wanted and what we wanted.

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I feel that I've learned a lot about assimilating my needs as an artist with the needs of the zoo as a community function.

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The entire reptile area is being redesigned for the zoo,

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and when completed will be a permanent record of the Artists in Residence program.

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By contrast, Jan Sullivan's piece was intended to be impermanent.

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The Arbode piece was called Signature or Sign Nature.

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It represents the growth rings in a tree.

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It usually starts from a center point. I decide somehow intuitively at a center.

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Although I use ropes and strings and things as a kind of physical geometry, I usually work in paces.

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As much as I feel ephemerality is integral to the center of the work,

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I also like what it does to people's perceptions about the nature of art.

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I like that they see that it fades, that it breathes with its environment.

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Let's go through everything, okay, please? And we'll clarify as we're going through.

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Five, six, seven, eight.

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Conventionally, the artist makes the work and then looks for a place to put it.

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But a public arts program is different because the work is generated by the needs of the city.

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This show is a promotion for a Clean Streets campaign.

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The troupe will perform for a lunch hour crowd in the heart of Chicago's loop.

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Look at 63rd Street, it's wonderful!

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Look at downtown!

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The Old Public Library

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The Old Public Library building is now the city's cultural center.

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It was the site of many of our concerts and exhibits.

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Mary Linda Swayze, who taught dance and performed during the year,

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improvises movements especially for this architecture.

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A short time after this was filmed, she was accepted as a member of the Dance Theater of Harlem.

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The Old Public Library

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The Old Public Library

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The Old Public Library

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The arts program was a way to give shape to vision,

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a way that could be reflected and shared.

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This group of actors wore masks to tell their stories.

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They performed in schools and outdoors during the summer.

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It is in rehearsal when the play begins to take shape.

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Well, we can do this. If you do not, we will have no choice.

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And we will disappear. Never to return, period.

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Just never to return. How's that?

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Never to have our stories told. You already said that our stories won't be told earlier in the introduction.

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Yes, I'd rather leave it as a question.

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And, you know, like Michael said, not to make a decision on it right now.

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I am Essen. I tell the stories of the Quarang maze.

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And we, the non-such, will go on the journey with you.

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The non-such? That's your crew?

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That is what we are, Zetta.

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What does it mean?

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It merely means there are none such as we.

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You must always look for something to look for.

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I repeat, you must always look for something to look for.

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When you find something to look for, you will be able to journey through to the end of the maze.

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If you do not find something to look for, there is no way out of the Quarang maze.

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The story begins.

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Come, non-such! Let us turn your arms into the Quarang maze!

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Come on, non-such!

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So long, Zetta! So long, everybody!

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...into a bigger house. The house had two floors.

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My mother went to church on State Street. I liked the church.

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Since I was small, I went to...

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It wouldn't be a learning disability if things were more geared for blind kids.

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But it's a learning disability in that the things that are available are mostly for presided people.

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In that sense, they are very lucky to be at Skinner because it's a really concerted effort to teach handicapped kids.

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I was reading a mystery, actually, well, a murder mystery the other day.

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I thought we might try our own.

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So I brought a few things that you would expect to find at the scene of the crime.

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I want you to smell this.

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Smell that.

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Yeah, be careful.

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What's that smell like?

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Yeah, but what does a cigar smell like?

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If you had to describe the smell of a cigar to somebody who'd never smelled it before, what would it be like?

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What's going to happen in this room with the silk furniture and the cigar in one of the ashtrays that's still burning?

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I know that.

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You know?

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Okay.

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They feel things acutely, not just with their fingers but sort of inside them.

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It mattered more being with them, seeing what they wrote and telling them what I thought of it and then trying to get something else out.

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They're bad people? What kind of bad people?

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What do they do that's bad?

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Noreen wrote when she had to do an objective exercise concerning herself.

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She did this wonderful, wonderful poem about this city that's sort of divided down the center.

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And there's the rich side that's kept up and then there's the poorer side.

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And she talked about how the poorer side has to be helped along by the rich side.

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How do you measure success? By applause?

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There was much of that.

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But more deeply, you could see it in the face of the old woman as she wrote about her childhood a lifetime ago in Louisiana, a lifetime that she was preserving.

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Or you could feel it in the voice of the blind child who wrote a poem and in it said, dust is the tears of sunlight.

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You knew when you heard those voices that you had touched people and been touched in return.

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That you had left an imprint in the dust and sunlight of their lives.

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I gotta go upstairs. Yeah?

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They're still here.

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They're crouching around underneath things.

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They want to be out of the way as much as possible.

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Okay, I'll see everybody.

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In addition to the workshops and performances, there were murals, photographs, slide presentations, and a lot of other things.

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Presentations, film strips, films, public service announcements, sculpture, poetry readings, videotapes, neighborhood arts programs, graphics, posters, brochures.

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And in the summer, there was an arts and jobs program for 100 inner city youth.