Sunday, March 23, 4-7pm at Watershed Art & Ecology
Meet and Greet!
Monday, March 24, 7pm at Pilsen Community Bookstore
Book discussion of “We Are Nature Defending Itself”
Wednesday, March 26, 6-9pm at Co-Prosperity
Participatory Art Build
Friday, March 28 6-10pm and Saturday 3-6pm at Watershed
Celebratory activation of A Poem for Entangled Living
In November 2024 at the Kansas City Midway gathering of Midwestern Artist-Run Spaces (www.mdw.art), we had the opportunity to connect with some of the liveliest folks in our region. Among the 200+ projects represented was the collective Spill Paint Not Oil from the Twin Cities. Now they will be in residence at Watershed Art & Ecology March 23-29 for a week of political arts programming culminating in an activation of A Poem for Entangled Living – an interactive mobile about grief, abolition and imagining new worlds. We’re excited to build connections between Chicago and Minneapolis – and bring the Midway Drifts back home.
Spill Paint Not Oil is an autonomous network of artists, organizers, friends, and mischief-makers based in Mni Sóta Makoce (so-called Minnesota). Since 2021, our collective has stewarded a community studio space that hosts regular art builds and assisted many ongoing community art projects.
A Poem for Entangled Living is an interactive art installation that offers a collective space to engage with personal and shared grief in the entangled world we live in. The piece invites you to add, subtract, or move painted signs to the arms of the mobile-like structure. Chains of words and images slowly build to form poems which move the arms in and out of balance – movement that asks us to consider our actions against the whole of the system and the balance of personal perspective with communal creation. It is a circular act of balance and unbalance, making and unmaking, birth and decomposition.
During the week we are hosting a few events to talk about and make art! Come say hi when we get to town the previous Sunday afternoon 3/23 4pm-7pm at Watershed Art & Ecology, join our book discussion of We Are Nature Defending Itself on Monday 3/24 7pm at Pilsen Community Books, and come participate in the creation of the installation at our Wednesday night Art Build at Co-Prosperity: 3/26 6pm-9pm.
The Wednesday Art Build will be focused on making Ephemera for the installation. Ephemera are the cardboard signs painted by community members that will be hung together on the installation to create poems later in the week. We hope you will collaborate with us to localize our piece to this community! This will also be an artist meetup where we hope to gather with other movement artists to chat about art making and organizing in political movements, and learn and share what we’re all working on!
All leading up to the activation of a big installation at Watershed Art & Ecology on Friday 3/28, (6-10pm) and Saturday, 3/29 (3-6pm),
Please help us spread the word to your networks! Excited to make art with you all.