No, no, no, no.
Come on, come on.
This one right there, right.
No, no, no, no.
Okay.
Right, right.
So that means your finger starts on G, right? Both of them starts on G.
Sorry, stop.
Right, you stop on G, right? Try it again.
One, two, ready, play.
Right, right, right.
Okay.
One and two and three, four.
Down two, three, four.
Five, six, seven, eight.
And one, two, three, four.
It was like a journey together.
The people in the communities, people in city government, people in the arts.
Some of the artists were idealists, some were social activists, and some just needed a way to do their work.
For a year and a half, their jobs would be to work for the city and in the communities.
In the meantime, they would be refining the skills and talents that would make them fully professional and off the public payroll.
And that's the kind of journey it was.
A way for people, jobs, the arts.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
I guess my thoughts are messing up the count.
We know that in a period of recession, the amount of unemployment among artists is every bit as high as it is among our industrial workers or any others who are seeking, who work for a living.
And that the same kinds of programs to deal with the problems of the unemployed ought to be available to those who make their living in the arts or in cultural endeavors.
Bradley Parker Sparrow gave piano concerts.
He also organized workshops for the residents of public housing developments.
More than half the artists in the program spent their time working at their art and also teaching it.
I taught 110 kids a week for six months, sometimes 25 kids by myself.
You can't teach someone to draw.
You can't teach someone to play.
You can only open them up.
You can stimulate them.
The only reason why you'd want to stimulate them is because you love them.
I did it because I wanted to do it.
It was the only thing in the whole program that made me stay in it.
We made it very clear when we first announced the program that artists who were going to apply should have a very definite commitment to public service.
Artists in the first place have had to make a number of choices in their lives, choices to continue their art.
So they, number one, bring a motivation that perhaps many of us regular folks who find ourselves drifting into jobs don't quite have.
They come, number one, with a motivation.
Those that are in the program have also a real desire to share their skills and their creativity with others.
That's the whole purpose of a public service art program is artists are working in the context of the community.
They're not sitting and dreaming up paintings that they would like to place in a private gallery.
They're trying to conceptualize about works of art that will be integral to the community and that will speak to the community.
Hey, hey.
Georgina here.
Who is he at? Oh, where's George? He went to the great big guy.
That's a guy.
That's, that's food.
Oh yeah.
Hey, what's happening? How you doing? Fine.
How's the chicken pot? Chicken pot? How you doing? Ah, for me? You're just a big guy.
Right, back up, back up.
Okay, good.
Now, you remember that song, that one in A minor? Do the A minor blues scale.
Remember the one in A minor? Yeah, no, no, A minor.
That's C minor, do the A minor one.
Right, there, yeah.
Right, we only got one, there's only one flat.
What flat is that in A minor blues scale? G flat.
No, no.
E flat.
E flat, okay.
Now, let's, remember you was playing those chords, play those chords with it.
The one in A song in A minor.
One, two, three.
Now, that's gotta be clean.
You gonna do it with me? Do it.
Don't come in too early, alright? Okay, three, four.
Oh, get on board.
Oh, get on board.
The Artist in Residence program was not the exclusive domain of any particular age group.
For the senior citizens, there were workshops, plays, jazz performances, and magic shows.
There were moments when things did not go smoothly.
Sometimes the city would worry about the cost of a project, and sometimes the artists would worry that they would be made to compromise their work.
But always, there was a strong enough commitment on both sides to sustain the link between the city and the arts.
The proof of what it, of its validity is the enthusiasm of the department heads, who were somewhat skeptical when this program began as to how those programs might contribute to their departmental activities.
I think it's a marriage that's gonna last.
I'm sure that we would have continued doing what we've been doing, and that is that we put up a sign that says this is a rattlesnake, and the kids come and see it, and they say, yes, it's a rattlesnake, and that's all we do.
As part of the fact that emphasis at this zoo today is education, along with conservation, it became very apparent that we needed a graphic story to tell what's happening in that lower level.
But we never had the capability to tell this story.
And the parent body to date has not seen fit to grant them this capability because of financial reasons, and so the Artists in Residence program has done that.
We had been in communication with Dr.
Fisher and Ed for quite a while in the staff about what had been done before, and we did a lot of field research.
And it was a combination of what they wanted and what we wanted.
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.
The entire reptile area is being redesigned for the zoo, and when completed will be a permanent record of the Artists in Residence program.
By contrast, Jan Sullivan's piece was intended to be impermanent.
The Arbode piece was called Signature or Sign Nature.
It represents the growth rings in a tree.
It usually starts from a center point.
I decide somehow intuitively at a center.
Although I use ropes and strings and things as a kind of physical geometry, I usually work in paces.
As much as I feel ephemerality is integral to the center of the work, I also like what it does to people's perceptions about the nature of art.
I like that they see that it fades, that it breathes with its environment.
Let's go through everything, okay, please? And we'll clarify as we're going through.
Five, six, seven, eight.
Conventionally, the artist makes the work and then looks for a place to put it.
But a public arts program is different because the work is generated by the needs of the city.
This show is a promotion for a Clean Streets campaign.
The troupe will perform for a lunch hour crowd in the heart of Chicago's loop.
Look at 63rd Street, it's wonderful! Look at downtown! The Old Public Library The Old Public Library building is now the city's cultural center.
It was the site of many of our concerts and exhibits.
Mary Linda Swayze, who taught dance and performed during the year, improvises movements especially for this architecture.
A short time after this was filmed, she was accepted as a member of the Dance Theater of Harlem.
The Old Public Library The Old Public Library The Old Public Library The arts program was a way to give shape to vision, a way that could be reflected and shared.
This group of actors wore masks to tell their stories.
They performed in schools and outdoors during the summer.
It is in rehearsal when the play begins to take shape.
Well, we can do this.
If you do not, we will have no choice.
And we will disappear.
Never to return, period.
Just never to return.
How's that? Never to have our stories told.
You already said that our stories won't be told earlier in the introduction.
Yes, I'd rather leave it as a question.
And, you know, like Michael said, not to make a decision on it right now.
I am Essen.
I tell the stories of the Quarang maze.
And we, the non -such, will go on the journey with you.
The non -such? That's your crew? That is what we are, Zetta.
What does it mean? It merely means there are none such as we.
You must always look for something to look for.
I repeat, you must always look for something to look for.
When you find something to look for, you will be able to journey through to the end of the maze.
If you do not find something to look for, there is no way out of the Quarang maze.
The story begins.
Come, non -such! Let us turn your arms into the Quarang maze! Come on, non -such! So long, Zetta! So long, everybody! ...into a bigger house.
The house had two floors.
My mother went to church on State Street.
I liked the church.
Since I was small, I went to...
It wouldn't be a learning disability if things were more geared for blind kids.
But it's a learning disability in that the things that are available are mostly for presided people.
In that sense, they are very lucky to be at Skinner because it's a really concerted effort to teach handicapped kids.
I was reading a mystery, actually, well, a murder mystery the other day.
I thought we might try our own.
So I brought a few things that you would expect to find at the scene of the crime.
I want you to smell this.
Smell that.
Yeah, be careful.
What's that smell like? Yeah, but what does a cigar smell like? If you had to describe the smell of a cigar to somebody who'd never smelled it before, what would it be like? What's going to happen in this room with the silk furniture and the cigar in one of the ashtrays that's still burning? I know that.
You know? Okay.
They feel things acutely, not just with their fingers but sort of inside them.
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.
They're bad people? What kind of bad people? What do they do that's bad? Noreen wrote when she had to do an objective exercise concerning herself.
She did this wonderful, wonderful poem about this city that's sort of divided down the center.
And there's the rich side that's kept up and then there's the poorer side.
And she talked about how the poorer side has to be helped along by the rich side.
How do you measure success? By applause? There was much of that.
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.
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.
You knew when you heard those voices that you had touched people and been touched in return.
That you had left an imprint in the dust and sunlight of their lives.
I gotta go upstairs.
Yeah? They're still here.
They're crouching around underneath things.
They want to be out of the way as much as possible.
Okay, I'll see everybody.
In addition to the workshops and performances, there were murals, photographs, slide presentations, and a lot of other things.
Presentations, film strips, films, public service announcements, sculpture, poetry readings, videotapes, neighborhood arts programs, graphics, posters, brochures.
And in the summer, there was an arts and jobs program for 100 inner city youth.
