Today In The Culture, February 22, 2022: Food Justice Summit | Onion City Experimental Film + Video Festival Sets Plan | Sarofsky’s Titles for Suicide Squad Spinoff
Behind the Conservation Of Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”
WGN-TV goes behind the scenes of the conservation of Seurat’s Art Institute centerpiece. “The piece was temporarily removed from the gallery and brought out from behind its glass enclosure to receive a brand-new, handcrafted frame and a gentle cleaning treatment in the Art Institute’s on-site conservation studio. This temperature-controlled space houses some of the most important conservation and repair work done by on-site artists and woodworkers. In the conservation studio, ‘La Grande Jatte’ was seen up close and without glass. Museum curator Gloria Groom explained the significance of seeing the painting in this state. ‘You think about it as complete, done at one time… And we know it was done in stages. And you can really start looking at the areas where he’s come back in after getting the entire painting down for an exhibition in 1885.'”
DESIGN
Project44 Logistics Tracker Looks To Expand
“Tracking supply chain performance has become a competitive sport, with stock brokerages and logistics companies among those compiling reports,” writes the Sun-Times. “A Chicago-based company believes it can outdo them all and has a basis for boasting. The company is called Project44. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in the Merchandise Mart, Project44 said it has more than 1,100 employees globally, including 287 in Chicago, and plans to add more. It provides information to the vast market of more than 1,000 companies needing to move things, such as Amazon, Mondelez and General Mills… On a fast track for expansion, the company has started a free online tracker that offers information about shipping’s worst chokepoints.”
Local Gravestone Makers Suffer Supply Chain Issues
“Companies are suffering from closed quarries, crowded ports and trucker shortages,” reports the Sun-Times. “It’s a grave problem: A shortage of materials, monthslong backlogs and rising costs are causing holdups in getting monuments and gravestones. George Pantelic, owner of ABC Monuments in Lawndale, said orders from a domestic supplier used to take four weeks to arrive. Now, they take seven months. ‘I’m out of gray stone that’s coming from Georgia, and I have close to 100 orders that I can’t fill… I’ve been waiting for that stone for the last two-and-a-half months.'”
Picturing Gary, Indiana’s West 5th Avenue Apartments Historic District
Belt magazine features Josh Lipnik’s photo essay on Gary’s Gold Coast: “This historic apartment district is a museum of architectural styles…The historic district has generally managed to avoid demolition and decay. There are exceptions, like the burnt husk of the once-grand Mahencha Apartments, but the core of the district remains largely intact. It serves as an important historical document of the city’s rapid early growth and development, and the centralized planning role of the Gary Land Company. More importantly, the buildings that make up the district are still occupied by a significant number of the 69,093 people who call Gary home.”
Birder’s Paradise, Big Marsh Park, Has A Building Designed To Prevent Bird Collisions
“On the far southeast side of Chicago, a new building celebrates the history and ecology of the region and educates visitors about its wildlife,” reports Fast Company. “Located next to Lake Calumet, the Ford Calumet Environmental Center was built for people, but also for the 200 bird species that live nearby, and the millions of birds that fly over the region during migration season… Every year, between 100 million and 1 billion birds are killed by colliding into buildings, especially those with large expanses of glass, because birds can’t see transparent materials. To remedy that, the center sports an opaque facade with recessed windows that birds can’t fly into, minimal lighting that could be confusing for birds, and clever window shutters that open upward to block views of the glass windows from above.”
DINING & DRINKING
Twisted Hippo Brewpub In Albany Park Destroyed By Pre-Dawn Fire
An extra-alarm fire destroyed two Albany Park businesses, the Twisted Hippo brewpub and the Ultimate Ninjas Gym around 3:30am on President’s Day, reports Block Club. “The sun hadn’t risen yet when Marilee Rutherford walked up to a row of television cameras Monday, what was left of her Albany Park brewery still burning behind her,” reports the Sun-Times. “‘It’s a little unreal,’ said Rutherford, who opened Twisted Hippo on Montrose Avenue a little over three years ago with her husband. ‘It’s… It’s hard. It’s going to be hard, but we are lucky to have had it and we will see how we move forward.'”
Boeufhaus Reopens In Ukrainian Village
Ending a two-year pandemic closure, “Boeufhaus is set to welcome back patrons to its Ukrainian Village dining room,” reports Block Club. “Known for its high-quality cuts of steaks and other meat, the restaurant at 1012 North Western will reopen March 2.” Chef-owner Brian Ahern said most of March is already booked. “It’s great. We knew this place was a beloved restaurant. It’s getting to where we always knew it was going to be. We have a wonderful, loyal customer base.”
Inside The Restored “Afrocentric Modernist” Ebony Test Kitchen
The New York Times checks into “African/American: Making the Nation’s Table,” an exhibition in Harlem running through Juneteenth, where the Ebony magazine test kitchen has been rebuilt by the Museum of Food and Drink: “When it was built a half-century ago, the Ebony kitchen was at the heart of Black American food culture in the media… Here, amid the psychedelic waves of orange, green and purple that swirled along the walls, Black cuisine was freed to be experimental and futuristic. For Ebony readers, the magazine’s food was a central element of Black identity and pride. When the kitchen was built in the early 1970s, it heralded the magazine’s place in the culinary pantheon, a legacy that began a quarter-century before with Freda DeKnight, an exalted cook and food editor who paved a path for future generations of Black women in American food media. Lee Bey, an adjunct professor of architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, said the look of the kitchen was almost indescribable. ‘I liken it to a kind of Afrocentric Modernism, where there are colors and fabrics, and leather and ostrich feathers and color and wallpaper with angled patterns on it and every floor looks different,’ he said.” (The Times also covered the sale and relocation of the kitchen in 2019.)
The Seventeenth Annual Chicago Food Justice Summit Starts Wednesday
The Seventeenth Annual Chicago Food Justice Summit, running Wednesday to Friday, the group relays, “will equip attendees with meaningful knowledge, relationships, and conversations to envision our food future together. Each day will highlight ways to ground policy in community action and engage participants in radically re-imagining Chicago’s foodscape. You will be able to connect with food workers, farmers, vendors, and local leaders. Together we will discuss food policy and other critical issues involving climate change, labor, food access and urban farming. We will also dive into food production in Chicago, Cook County and across the state of Illinois. The Summit will consist of virtual workshops, passionate speakers and a marketplace of resources. The event is organized in partnership with Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events and the Cook County Department of Public Health. This year’s theme is Collective Care, highlighting how, in the face of a global pandemic, neighbors, mutual aid networks, cooks, and local growers showed up for us and showed up for each other.” Free reservations here.
Lynwood’s Warsaw Inn May Not Close After All
Suburban Lynwood’s Warsaw Inn was calling it quits after half a century, but… maybe not so fast, reports the Trib. “Since announcing our closing, there are more than 2,000 comments on our Facebook page and we have gotten between 500 and 1,000 phone calls a day,” owner Angie Golom tells the paper. Will the kitchen doors to the Polish buffet stay open? “We’ll see. I just didn’t expect this kind of support… So many people wanting to come one more time.”
FILM & TELEVISION
32nd Onion City Experimental Film + Video Festival Announces Events
Chicago Filmmakers announces the opening-night presentation and other special events for the 32nd Onion City Experimental Film + Video Festival, which will be presented in partnership with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Cine-File, Chicago Film Society and Nightingale Cinema. All special presentations will take place at in-theater screenings only. Competition film programs will be announced in the coming weeks and will be screened both in-person and online. “After two years of mostly virtual programming, I wanted to give our audience more unique opportunities to see experimental film and video on the big screen,” festival programmer, Zachary Vanes says in a release. “Chicago is such a wonderful place to be a cinephile because of the filmmakers who have called it home and the organizations that have provided a space for films to be seen and discussed. I hope that these screenings will inspire viewers to engage with the local history of experimental moving images and the broader state of the art on equal footing.” The fest begins March 31 at the Siskel Film Center, with “An Evening with Dani and Sheilah ReStack.” Co-presented by Conversations at the Edge at SAIC, the artistic duo will be on hand for a discussion following the Chicago premiere of their “Feral Domesticity Trilogy,” three radical explorations of queer desire, parenthood, and creative community. Other co-presentations will be held at Chicago Filmmakers’ Firehouse Cinema, 1326 West Hollywood and will include a digital restoration of “The Bloody Child,” Nina Menkes’ 1996 non-linear retelling of a murder investigation on a U.S. military base; and a collection of 16mm short films made by Sharon Couzin, a significant figure in building and promoting the local experimental film community.
Sarofsky Titles For “Peacemaker” Another Hit
Writer-director James Gunn’s “The Suicide Squad” spinoff “Peacemaker” again pairs the creatives and producers from one-stop cross-media production company Sarofsky. Each episode opens with lead John Cena’s Peacemaker character performing a show-stopping dance number with his co-stars, colorfully setting the stage for the epic and the unexpected. Led by executive creative director Erin Sarofsky, creative lead Duarte Elvas, and managing director-executive producer Steven Anderson, Sarofsky also created custom titles, typography, and visual effects for “The Suicide Squad,” and for both “Guardians of the Galaxy” volumes. Of the filmmaker, Sarofsky says, “We love collaborating with James. He is so unique and has a real vision… and we feel lucky to be on the same creative page with him so often. There is a trust and a shorthand built up at this point, that we don’t take for granted.” “Gunn conceived and filmed a choreographed dance routine with the entire cast, set to the glam metal track ‘Do You Wanna Taste It’ by Norwegian band Wig Wam. With the music as inspiration, the designers homed-in on a typographic treatment to nail the series’ bad-ass aesthetic.” “Duarte was an All-Star on this,” Sarofsky says. “He got to be very hands-on, and it shows with the precision and type mastery.” The title sequence is here. More on Sarofsky here.
MUSIC
The Quandaries Of Touring And Playing Music To COVID’s Tune
In an illustrated piece reported by Shaina Feinberg and illustrated by Julia Rothman, the New York Times looks at the business of touring today, including Devendra Banhart’s comment, “Now we’re working on a new record, and someone recently asked me what the endgame is, like, ‘Oh, you’re making a record, what’s the endgame?’ And it’s not really how it works. The endgame is I die. Making music is a practice.”
ARTS & CULTURE
Klipspringer Arrives At Brookfield Zoo
Asali (pronounced AH-sah-lee), a female klipspringer (a small African antelope) whose name means “honey” in Swahili, has relocated from her birthplace of Lincoln Park Zoo to Brookfield Zoo’s “Habitat Africa! The Savannah.” The transfer of Asali to Brookfield Zoo was based on a recommendation from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Klipspringer Species Survival Plan (SSP). An SSP is a cooperative population management and conservation program for select species in accredited North American zoos and aquariums. Each plan manages the breeding of a species to maintain a healthy and self-sustaining population that is both genetically diverse and demographically stable for the long-term future. After analyzing data on the klipspringers in professional care, a team of expert advisors determined that Asali is a good match with Yukon, a four-year-old male, who arrived at Brookfield Zoo in 2019. Twenty-six klipspringers reside at nine accredited zoos in North America, including the two at Brookfield Zoo.
Chicago Zoological Society’s Randall Wells Receives Lifetime Achievement Award From Society For Marine Mammalogy
The Chicago Zoological Society, which manages Brookfield Zoo, announces that Randall Wells, Ph.D., vice-president of marine mammal conservation and director of CZS’s Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, received the Kenneth S. Norris Lifetime Achievement Award from the international Society for Marine Mammalogy (SMM). “‘A Norris Award winner’s career has significantly altered the course of marine mammal science— through their science and deeds they have made our field substantially better and more complete than if they had never turned their energy towards marine mammals,’ said Charles Littnan, Ph.D., president of the Society for Marine Mammalogy. ‘Dr. Wells’ contributions to our understanding of dolphin biology, ecology, and behavior, and his commitment to providing opportunity and his knowledge to young researchers is unparalleled. He has inspired generations of researchers and his influence will be felt for generations to come. In addition to being the current director of the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, Wells co-founded the program in 1970, making it the world’s longest-running study of a wild dolphin population. Over the years, he and his team have made many contributions to knowledge of bottlenose dolphin behavior, social structure, life history, health, ecology, communication and the effects of human activities on these complex marine mammals. The team also helps rescue entangled or injured dolphins, and has trained more than 400 researchers and students from more than thirty countries in dolphin research and conservation techniques that are now applied to protect species around the globe.'”
