Title: Playground 01

Location: Compound Yellow

Artists: Raffa Reuther, Kendall Schauder

Playground 01 was created by Raffa Reuther and Kendall Schauder, at Compound Yellow in Oak Park, Chicago, IL. The design was inspired by the Children’s Cube, featured in the book Nomadic Furniture 1 by James Hennessy and Victor Papanek. We designed the playground with its’ structural bones and empty spaces to be able to change and adapt over time. The minimal aspects of the design allow participants to collaborate not only with each other but with the playground itself. The playground is a placeholder, with the ability to become whatever is needed of it at the time -- whether that is a fantasy castle for children, a frame for a new edible garden, a stage for a performance, or  a way to find new perspectives. Playground 01 is never complete, but rather like the community it is situated in, it becomes more of a compound through each new project it makes place for.

 

 

Services’ Self-Reliance Library, May 2017 - October 2017

The SRL is an autonomous reading and creating library. The collection is designed to provoke the reader, encourage a deeper relationship with our shared natural and human environment, solve creative problems, or suggest imaginative directions for a range of creative practices. 

In conjunction SRL, Mariame Kaba hosted a discussion on the topic of the publication Trying to Make the Personal Political: Feminism and Consciousness-Raising, released at the event. Other artists invited as part of SRS/SRL programming: Nance Klehm, Dan Miller, ______________

 

An Ahistorical American Project by Ally Reith and Matthew Nicholas
Reith and Nicholas have used conversations surrounding the idea of the SRS and Temporary Services’ SRL to create messages that respond to these initiatives in the form of flags to be installed on the roof of CY with a kiosk at street level to receive public inpu. The inaugural flag will state, “What do we need to know? / ¿Qué senecesita saber? As our conversations and engagements change over the next 6 months, so will the messaging depicted on the flags.
 

Carlos Matallana, Democracy TBD, November 5, 2017 - January 31, 2018

Exhibition and Workshops: Sculptural folded-paper installation that explores and speculates the political future of democracy in USA and its effect, if any, in the western hemisphere. The installation would morph over time by adding sculptural folded-paper by workshops attendees. Along with the exhibit, there will be free paper-folding workshops open to the public as well as Podcasting workshops for kids to hold a youth-run podcast at CY.

 

Melissa Potter, The Seeds InService Lucy Flower Self-Reliance Garden -

Seeds InService: A Papermaking Institute (SIS) is an eco-feminist art project by Melissa Potter and Maggie Puckett that combines feminist and ecological concerns with the art of hand papermaking. Our craft of hand papermaking stems from a rich tradition of feminist craft history particular to Chicago including the settlement house and Arts and Crafts movements, post-WW2 GI Bill that expanded craft in higher education, Marilyn Sward (founder of the paper program at The Center for Book and Paper at Columbia College), and WomanCraft a micro-industry that offered creative employment to women recovering from homelessness. SIS carries on these legacies and builds on them by examining contemporary issues through multidisciplinary projects and collaborations.

 

Sadie Woods curated projects:

Mothering (an evening of performance) by Amina Ross

I Belong to You, You Belong to Me - Street Art Cart Workshop by William Estrada

 

ANGEL BRIGADE I,  2017, Katrin Schnabl

Wool, cotton, acrylic, aluminum; 8’ dia. x 2”

 

ANGEL BRIGADE II,  2017, Katrin Schnabl

Wool, cotton, acrylic, aluminum; 9.5’ dia. x 2”

 

The installation at Compound Yellow features Angel Brigade I + II as two suspended circles. The-net-like interior is made of collaged garments. Schnabl employs these ‘membranes’, as she refers to them, to navigate and negotiate space: physical, emotional and philosophical. Over the duration of a season suspended outdoors, the cloths’ appearance is altered by the elements.

Katrin Schnabl is a designer, artist, and educator whose research and practice is situated in contemporary fashion, performance and installation. Schnabl’s work, brought to the body, is positioned in a participatory arena engaging both viewer and wearer. Specific cultural residues are processed into structures that result in garments. These garments, when worn, engage an alternate navigation, function as facilitator, and, collectively, form a new vernacular. Trained as a dancer, Schnabl moved from Germany to New York in the mid- eighties. She shifted into fashion, receiving a second degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology. Schnabl has designed extensively for dance and performance artists, and for the fashion industry, prior to launching her collections in the late 90's. More information can be found on katrinschnabl.com and schnabl.space.