09 11 / 2012
Do you know how to be a Good Friend?
It’s the time of year when we are carefully thinking about how our generosity can make an impact on others. You can enhance the lives of inner city students with art by making a 100% tax deductible gift to Good News Only, Chicago’s newest youth arts organization. In our first year, we have accomplished so much - touching the lives of participants and viewers. Please consider making a gift to our annual fund, which is essential to sustaining our programming.
Your philanthropic contribution will be used to assist student curators with the opportunity to continue to organize exciting exhibitions of work by contemporary artists, such as our summer show Forgotten Ones with Project Onward.
And your donation will be used to fulfill our mission of bringing art to the community to encourage dialogue, for example our city-wide installation of Candy Chang’s Before I Die (http://beforeidie.cc/) . With over five strategic locations around the city, thousands of Chicagoans responded to Chang’s piece.
Please make a year end gift to support Good News Only so we can continue to teach career development in the arts while enhancing neighborhoods. Your support is important to us, and we hope you will be as generous as you can.
View a short video (http://vimeo.com/40347019) about Good News Only.
This is an important time for Good News Only, and we hope you will become part of it. To make a contribution online, click here (http://gnonly.com/donate.html) .
By mail, checks can be made out to Good News Only, and sent to: Development Office, 1275 W. Victoria Street, Chicago, IL 60660.
27 7 / 2012
Good News Only is pleased to announce its current exhibition entitled Forgotten Ones. Please join us at the opening reception on Thursday, July 26th from 6-8pm. Teen curators Karla Almazan, Mikayla Garner, Jackie Mauleon, and Ellie Medel will be available to answer questions. The exhibition runs through August 24, 2012.
Good News Only is incredibly honored to have collaborated with Project Onward this summer. Project Onward is a studio and gallery dedicated to the creative growth of artists with mental and developmental disabilities. Located in the historic Chicago Cultural Center, Project Onward provides workspace, art materials, professional guidance, and opportunities for exhibition and sales to artists who have exceptional talents but face challenges ranging from autism to mental illness. All of the artwork in Forgotten Ones is on loan from Project Onward artists.
The Good News Only summer program was only five weeks long, so we packed a lot into our time together. We visited the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Cultural Center, National Museum of Mexican Art, Art Institute of Chicago and galleries in the West Loop. During our field trips to Project Onward, the GNO curators met many of the artists, heard their personal stories and learned about their artistic process.
Karla: “For me, Forgotten Ones refers to the artist perspective - it is their story about people who have affected their lives and how they don’t want those people/events/things to disappear from the world. It is important to remind themselves of it, they create those works to remind themselves and show other people, ‘Hey this is a man or event who changed someone else’s life, they don’t deserve to be forgotten.’”
Mikayla: “Blake Lenoir’s Iranian endangered species series is about animals that we may never have heard about. His work allows you to compare them to the animals you do know and learn something new. Even the nature preserves that are close to us, it makes us appreciate them more. It seems like some of the Project Onward artists experienced loss or death or someone close to them and it influenced their work. That’s how we chose the theme.”
Jackie: “Forgotten Ones means that it is important that after time has changed and people have been forgotten to remember those people again. Michael Bryant’s Mayor Eugene Sawyer is a good example of someone who has been forgotten since he was mayor for such a short time.”
Ellie: “I think people tend to follow whatever is modern and they’ll move on from the past quickly. To me, Forgotten Ones is like letting people know to remember - they know it but they don’t know enough - about the past. Forgotten Ones is stating that ‘they existed’ ‘they were here’ but you just don’t remember it.”
05 6 / 2012
A lot of you care, but not enough
Good News Only is pleased to announce its current exhibition curated by high school students entitled ‘A lot of you care, but not enough’. Please join us at the opening reception on Friday, June 15th from 6-8pm. Teen curators Samuel Choi, Theo Covey, Kimberly Hernandez and Katherine Rumas will be available to answer questions. The exhibition runs through July 20, 2012.
Halfway through our spring session, Good News Only curators chose tragedy as the theme for their exhibition. In the remaining weeks during artist studio visits and gallery tours, they began selecting artwork for the show highlighting different types of war: political, societal, natural and familial. Describing the exhibition, Kimberly said: “Tragedies are all around us and everyone’s personal tragedies make up something larger although we might not notice it. Our exhibition is made up of different tragedies put together to tell the story of the world.”
Artists included in the show are Daniel Beltra, Erin Chlaghmo, Deborah Luster, Wolfie Rawk, and Rodrigo Zendejas. Theo describes Beltra’s photograph: “The piece about the [BP] oil spill shows the beauty that is sometimes found in tragedy, the bright colors of the chemicals in the water reacting with the oil gives the entire thing an other worldly feel and it is just awesome.”
18 5 / 2012
Erin Chlaghmo
September 10, 2011
Found fabric, clothing woven on frame loom, polar fleece, felt, cast plaster hands, black paint, spray paint, black dye, Heat ‘n’ Bond, thread
4 x 6 feet
18 5 / 2012
Erin Chlaghmo
Tragedy Playing Irony, 2010
Gesso, pink foam, muslin, silk, masking tape, thread, t-pins, ribbon, feather, tripod
5 x 2 x 2 feet
18 5 / 2012
Wolfie Rawk
Predator Prey, 2011
Colored Pencil, Black Gesso and Charcoal on sheet
36 x 68 inches
