Chicago's Art Pioneer Dr. Margaret Burroughs Celebrated at Komechak Art Gallery

Dr. Margaret Burroughs' artistic legacy in Chicago is well-regarded. She was an artist who made paintings, drawings and prints as well as making works from found objects. She wrote poetry and taught art in the public school system, as well as visited and taught art to prisoners in the city's jails. Her energy to plant the seeds of creativity in young African-Americans had its rewards in the numbers of students who went on to become professional artists and art collectors. At the time of her passing in 2013, this art pioneer had shared her art and poetry with thousands of people and her passing was noted with accolades from the Mayor of Chicago to the President of the United States. Truly, this woman was an important figure in Chicago's art scene, and her artwork and writings are left for future generations to admire and enjoy. The Komechak Art Gallery is celebrating this artist's life and work with an exhibition of 24 pieces, plus photographs and awards from the family's personal collections. Additionally, Oakton Community College's Koehnline Museum of Art graciously lent works from their permanent collection.

Throughout the exhibit one finds Burroughs' fascination with portraiture and iconic persons. Her subjects range from African-American icons like Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, to Malcolm X ('Allah's Angry Man') and spiritual and political leaders like 'Pharoah' and the 'Black Madonna and Child'. Burroughs also portrays views of racial identity, and 'blended-ness'. Several prints in the exhibit show family group portraits and their faces are deliberately segmented and divided. The parts of the faces are black, parts are white, and parts are filled with lines to suggest they are both. The faces show happiness in their unity and an exude an optimism.

Burroughs' choice to work in the relief linocut printmaking method further enhances a bold statement in how her pieces are executed. The lines are clean and clear. The medium doesn't permit much in the way of nuanced surfaces the way other printmaking mediums do, but Burroughs approached these portraits with gusto and ferocity. They are all in black and white, which may have been a deliberate choice for the expediency of production, but no matter. They have power and presence, and they earned her exclusive shows at museums along the east coast, including the Studio Museum in New York.

There are a couple of color images in the exhibit, and One is the Birthday Party, which was based upon a painting. The piece shows the joys of a family gathering for a child's birthday party. The original painting once hung in a bank at 78th Street and State Street. The black and white print of the same subject loses nothing in translation. Burroughs sought to bring her life to art and her works leave the viewer with a sense of hope and respect for one's physical and spiritual lineage. This exhibition will run March 9 through April 25.

Artist Biography Burroughs started making art as a child and her works reflect the pride of her heritage, and the optimism of creativity. Born in Louisiana, Burroughs moved with her parents to Chicago in 1922. She met fellow artist Charles White in high school and they formed a group known as the Art Craft Guild. Burroughs attended Chicago State, and later the Art Institute of Chicago. She joined other South Side artists to form the South Side Community Arts Center (SSCAC). The federal government had offered financial support through the Federal Art Program (FAP) of the Works Projects Administration (WPA) to help support the facility. The center opened in 1939, and was officially dedicated by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in 1941. The SSCAC continues to show African-American artists and offers workshops and classes. Burroughs married Bernard Goss in 1939, divorced soon after, and then married Charles Gordon Burroughs in 1949. The Burroughs’ home held weekly gatherings which brought in notable poets and artists like Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Margaret Walker, Richard Wright and Paul Robeson. They established the Ebony Museum of African American History in 1961, which would later be renamed the DuSable Museum of African-American History; which has more than 100,000 pieces in its permanent collection.

In 1975 she received the President’s Humanitarian Award from President Gerald Ford and was named one of Chicago’s most influential women by the Chicago Defender. In the 1980s Burroughs served on the Chicago Board of Education. In 1989, she was inducted into the Chicago Women's Hall of Fame. President Jimmy Carter appointed her a member of the National Commission on African-American History and Culture. Her other notable awards include the Paul Robeson Award, and the Legacy Award from the Art Institute of Chicago.

In a statement, President Barack Obama praised Mrs. Burroughs, saying... "Michelle and I are saddened by the passing of Dr. Margaret Burroughs, who was widely admired for her contributions to American culture as an esteemed artist, historian, educator and mentor," Obama said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to Dr. Burroughs' family and loved ones. Her legacy will live on in Chicago and around the world."

Izabela Mieszczanska's "Guardians of Warsaw" Photography Exhibition Comes to Benedictine University

Benedictine University is host to a special photography exhibition by Izabela Mieszczanska, an artist/teacher living in Warsaw, Poland. Ms. Mieszczanska has been on the search to photograph the Madonna shrines of Warsaw. These uniquely beautiful shrines are all dedicated to the Virgin Mary. They grace Warsaw's streets, alleyways, courtyards and niches in hundreds of locations throughout the city. One is immediately struck by how well attended these shrines are; with flowers, and fresh paint. They look as though they were just put together, not sitting forlorn or neglected, as one might expect since most of them are now over 50 years old.

Mieszczanska became fascinated with these shrines as a child on her annual family visits to Poland, but when she moved to Warsaw three years ago, she started to look for them and photograph them within their settings. Some of the locations are out in the open, in a courtyard or alongside a busy street, but a lot of these shrines are in isolated walkways and behind old, decrepit buildings. They stand out like a beacon of colorful light amongst the weathered old bricks of buildings whose surfaces have been scarred from war and antiquity.

Mieszczanska's statement about her work says "these extreme contrasts of beauty within desolation serve as a reminder that beauty exists always, both in spite of and because of things that are not beautiful. There is also a sense of domestic normality and peace that radiate from Mieszczaska's work. They supply the beholder with feelings of humility and thankfulness, trying to remind them that time never stops, life must always moves forward and rises like a phoenix from the ashes."

The details Mieszczanska shares about the shrines' function for the people of Warsaw is heartfelt and poignant. She says the shrines were built by the residents of the surrounding block where they are currently found. They were built mostly during the period of the Warsaw Uprising during WWI. At that time, people could not openly go about their business, let alone go to church, so they built the shrines in the belief it would protect their small neighborhoods.

When it became too dangerous for the residents to go to church, or their churches had been destroyed in the conflict, these shrines served as makeshift places of worship. People would gather for private services, marriages, baptisms, etc. The more shocking revelation was that the ground surrounding many of the shrines also became consecrated burial grounds. People could not go to the cemeteries to bury their dead, so many of these shrines also serve as grave markers for multiple burials under the street or alleyways surrounding them.

These photographs bring us a private and personal reality of the Warsaw Uprising and the resilience of its residents to survive by any means necessary. They show us that the residents' faith was not abandoned or destroyed when their city was being besieged by the Germans and the Soviets. The shrines show us today that there is faith and reverence for these places, and the belief these shrines till watch over the neighborhood is evident by the care and devotion they obviously still receive.

Mieszczanska's goal is to eventually photograph all of the 400 shrines in Warsaw. After three years, she is halfway there..... Details about the Warsaw Uprising...the exact number of casualties remains unknown, it is estimated that about 16,000 members of the Polish resistance were killed and about 6,000 badly wounded. In addition, between 150,000 and 200,000 Polish civilians died, mostly from mass executions. Jews being harboured by Poles were exposed by German house-to-house clearances and mass evictions of entire neighbourhoods. German casualties totalled over 8,000 soldiers killed and missing, and 9,000 wounded. During the urban combat approximately 25% of Warsaw's buildings were destroyed. Following the surrender of Polish forces, German troops systematically leveled another 35% of the city block by block. Together with earlier damage suffered in the 1939 invasion of Poland and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, over 85% of the city was destroyed by January 1945, when the course of the events in the Eastern Front forced the Germans to abandon the city.

This exhibition will be continued through March 31st, and is located on the first floor of Kindlon Hall of Learning. For more information about Ms. Mieszczanska's work or to contact her: Email: Izabelam@comcast.net Website: izabelam.wix.com/imphotography Blog: izumfoto@wordpress.com

Bernard Kleina photographs bring life to MLK's Chicago Freedom Marches

The Fr. Michael E. Komechak O.S.B., Art Gallery recently hosted an exhibition of over forty photographs by noted photographer, Bernard Kleina. These images, all in color, portrayed a chronological view of Kleina's involvement in, and observances of, Chicago's notoriously contested fair housing marches, which took place in 1965-66. They were, according to Dr. Martin Luther King, some of the most viciously and obviously resented marches of his career.

Bernard Kleina had an unparalleled access to his subjects, MLK and his inner circle, during these marches. In fact, on many occasions, Kleina appears to be only a couple of feet from MLK. Certainly reflective of the innocence of the age, these pictures present a close and personal view of MLK which most photographers today would never have that kind of intimacy with their subject.

Kleina was a priest during the mid 1960s and went to march with MLK in Selma, Alabama. (He went back to Selma for the 50th anniversary of that civil rights march.) He and other several priests went to show support for King's work. He later left the clergy and went to work in the non-profit sector for over thirty years, also for fair housing, in DuPage county, in Illinois. To meet Kleina, one would think he is a gentle soul, but after speaking with him about his work, one realizes he has an inner courage, and has made a lifelong commitment to his work and presenting these images to the public.

His ability to photograph the crowds of Chicago's marches in Marquette park, Soldier Field and along Lake Shore Drive bring the conflict to life. Young men shouting obscenities and being arrested by Chicago policemen, people pushing in and throwing bottles and and other things at the peaceful marchers, shows in one sense that the conflicts of bias and racism today haven't advanced much from the feelings expressed in Kleina's pictures from 50 years ago.

One could become discouraged by the thought, but something about Kleina's images of this great man and his convictions for freedom and fair housing for African-Americans still comes through. The steely stare and set jaw of King shows us he believed his work was something worth more than the man himself.He knew the risks and believed it was worth the effort to break down social/racial barriers.

Kleina's photographs let us get a closer look at the man and his resolve to do what he believed was right. We feel like we are with him in these images. We can believe that change will eventually come if we have the resolve to see it through. At the end of the exhibition, Kleina included several photographs of his nephew Nathan. The pictures show the promise of his youth, and a cause whose torch still needs carrying to this day.

Kleina's works are the only color images taken of Dr.King. His works are included in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. One can see more of his work at bernardkleina.com. All photographs rights are reserved. @Bernard Kleina.

▶ 2:37 www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXKkRDbuqRM