Until last week I had never been to the Chicago Art District’s 2nd Fridays Gallery Night in Pilsen (a neighborhood in Chicago), although I had heard of it. It’s comprised of several nearby galleries hosting receptions for the work of various artists. I saw most of the galleries, and only have a few things to say about a couple of the artists’ works.

Above is a performance piece involving the a set of directions having to do with standing up and lying down over a determined period of time. Certainly something everyone looked at. I’m not sure what to say about it.

One woman’s paintings (either her first or last name was Sylvia, but I can’t seem to track down her full name or even the name of the gallery hosting her work) had the motif of flowers before windows overlooking great expanses. Her artist’s statement said that the window created as a “way out.” She writes, “My paintings are symbols of freedom at the same time as they are enclosures, harbingers of stability.” But I was reminded too much of a phrase about irony, which I’ll appropriate here to describe the sense of her work: it is the song of the bird that has come to love its own cage. Although the window is in the scene, the paintings give the appearance of a fear of freedom. The open window gives even more excuse for staying inside.