Chicago's Resilience

For our second unit of the course P'Art of History we study how Chicago shows resilience. Three events that shows resilience clearly is the construction of Illinois and Michigan canal, The Great Chicago Fire and The World Fair of 1893. In this unit we also studied Art Deco, which uses symmetry and geometric shapes. For this project, we chose an event in which Chicago has shown resilience in our lifetime. I choose to talk about The St. Patrick’s Day parade, an event special to me and my family, that is ruined yearly by the masses of intoxicated people.In this unit I learned how to create cement tiles. I am proud of how clearly my image stands out in the tile and the smooth texture of the tile.

KIS. Safety. 2014

Safety
KIS
Soft Lino-cut, carving tools, cement,clay.
6 inches by 6 inches
July 14 2014


The main purpose of this piece is to show how Chicago has demonstrated resilience in our lifetime. The question that we answered was How may you visualize Chicago's resilience today?

A way that Chicago has shown resilience is in the ways that they have dealt with big neighborhood-wide events such as St.Patrick’s Day. I like going to St.Patrick’s parade because you get to see the water get dyed and you memory’s with your family but, people get drunk, they drive, provoke accidents and makes a safe family event very unsafe. The cause of these accidents and risks are due to business selling alcohol or people illegally bringing their own alcohol to these events. Many people also drive to these events, making the roads very unsafe. Chicago has shown resilience by adding more police to patrol large events, like The St. Patrick’s Day parade. Another thing they do is warn people about drinking while driving and encourage them to take public transportation.

A time in history that shows resilience is The panic of 1837. What caused the Panic was “Land gambling”, it was easy credit since the nationwide bank was no longer in charge. The western banks took over and took risk on loaning lots of money to people who gambled. So now people spend a lot more money on land that was worthless before gambling started. Andrew Jackson (the person who came up with the idea) saw that people weren't paying back the bank he knew he had to do something to stop it. So Jackson ordered the banks to stop giving credit to the people, so now people who wanted to buy land have to buy it with gold or silver. For that reason people who buy stopped buying, investors were no longer able to invest and property values plummeted. Their economy went down and people had to pay the amount of money they bought lands for and payback the back the money they loaned. People who were rich became poor. The way Chicago showed resilience was by one person named William Ogden, became Chicago’s first mayor. Mayor Ogden sustain Chicago while the panic and r he presided over Chicago’s grim years and had a time of hibernation. He also improved Chicago by building the first swing bridge, building parks, laying out city streets, provided clean drinking water and had a sewage system. He also helped destroyed the red light districts. 

I used three symbols to address how Chicago has shown resilience in their efforts to make family events like The St. Patrick’s Day parade safer. First, I used Sankofa (shape of a heart) which means learn from the past. Second, I used Eban (diamond) which represents safety and security. Lastly, I used Sekhem represents authority. I used two Kente symbols and one Egyptian symbol.

The way I created my piece was by drawing my visual with Egyptian and Kente symbols that represent my story. From those three symbols, I arranged them on top of each other to create a pattern by using repetition. Then I traced the drawing onto the soft linoleum block. Then, I started carving out the symbols. After that I build walls of clay around my block so that I could pour cement over the linoleum to create a print. Lastly, I mixed the cement to the consistency that I wanted and poured it on to the box where the linoleum cut with my drawing was sitting.

Art Deco is a luxury, glamour, exuberance and faith. Art Deco takes the form of geometrical shapes and has symmetrical patterns. I incorporated Art Deco in my piece by repeating the pattern two more times in the block and I used symmetry and geometric shapes.