Interview and Opening with Rose Blouin
Opening | Saturday, April 19th 2:30-4:30
Book Talk | Saturday, June 28, 2-4pm
Narrow Bridge Arts Club is pleased to announce the unveiling of our first 2025 outdoor exhibition artist, Rose Blouin.
Following Blouin’s solo exhibition, To Washington Park, With Love: Photography from the Summer of 1987 at APL’s Arts Incubator in 2022, the corresponding book by the same name was released last fall. Blouin’s “Washington Park” series is a timeless relic of our southsider history and a true affirmation, a touching presentation of Afro-nostalgia, presentism, and joy for Black Chicagoans and others alike, that holds an intergenerational impact beyond comparison.
“As a documentary photographer, it's really important for me to capture events and the spirit and the humanity of the people, and give someone who wasn't there a sense of what it was and make sure he was listening, and was like, and uh, I accomplished that with these photographs and had an appreciation for what showed up as my love for the community for Black people for our culture.”
Launched in October 2024, “To Washington Park with Love” is a soul-nourishing binding of one hundred and twenty plus images derived from the 800 pictures taken by Blouin in the summer of 1987 in Washington park, and thought pieces by Chicago based , including a forward by Adrienne Brown & Eve L. Ewing. “To Washington Park with Love” is a tangible archive of the familiar romance southsiders share with Washington Park.
“I really felt it was important to present something that offered a different image of Black people creating, loving, being themselves, being joyful. I mean, you could add so many adjectives to that.”
For a more intimate glimpse at Blouin’s motivations surrounding her practice, and to read more about the process behind her debut solo exhibition in 2022, affirmation of southern tradition and the influence of Toni Morrison’s writing, and the people involved in the Washington Park project, read the full interview here:
Phia lynne: You began this project in 1987 and didn’t return to the images until over three decades later. How did your perspective on the photos change during that time, especially after retiring and revisiting them?
Rose Bluoin: Ah, that's a good question. Thirty plus years is a really long time to have not really looked at work that I had done, I mean if I go back and dig up writing that I did 30 plus years ago, I'm sure I would read it differently, but I had a general memory sense of how important that project was and that there were probably some really great images in there but I mean, in 2019 when I received a grant which enabled me to have all of the images, the negatives professionally scanned and digitized, and I mean I had contact sheets, but if you know contact sheets, the images are so tiny that you don't get a real feel for how they look enlarged.
I remember getting the digital files and just being amazed at what I was seeing. And I'm like, 'Oh my God', there's some great stuff here. It really gave me a renewed appreciation and validation for what I had done in '87 by proposing the project and making it a documentary project of all the events in Washington Park during that one summer. As a documentary photographer, it's really important for me to capture events and the spirit and the humanity of the people, and give someone who wasn't there a sense of what it was and make sure he was listening, and was like, and uh, I really think I accomplished that with these, these photographs, and just really had an appreciation for what showed up as my love for the community for Black people for our culture.
PL: What called you to choose to publicize the selected images we see in your book out of the hundreds of negatives you had held onto? What did that curatorial process look like?
RB: I grew up on the South Side, spent some summers in North Carolina, rural North Carolina, on my grandmother's farm, and really developed an appreciation for wide open spaces and nature. I remember going to Washington Park as a kid, and of course I had been to Washington Park so many times over the decades and took my children there and had family outings there and so on. And just as I was looking through the images and making selections, because it's really tough to narrow down, I think I ended up with around 800 images that I thought would really be great images and having to narrow that down to just the 40 for the initial exhibition.
I think there's 120 in the book. I wanted to present the real sense of community that was evident in the photographs–the landscape, how people interacted, how people interacted with the landscape. I was especially drawn to my photographs of children and families and particularly children with Black men, their dads or uncles or grandfathers or whoever they were with. And because I think those values are still so important. And so I think the photographs are kind of a reminder of how precious all of that is. And also the idea that it, and also the idea that it, presents the Black community in a way that's different from how Black folks are generally seen in the media. I mean, the media pays a lot of attention to that–to crime and violence and celebrity and nonsense. So I really felt it was important to present something that offered a different image of Black people creating, loving, being themselves, being joyful. And you could just add so many adjectives to that.
PL: In your book, “To Washington Park with Love”, you shared how the representation of black southern culture within Toni Morrison’s work gave inspiration to the imagery you sought after and captured in your Washington Park series. How has photography served for you and your audience as a reunification with southern life and tradition?
RB: I'm not so sure it necessarily represents a reunification as an affirmation. When I was teaching at Columbia, I taught a seminar on Toni Morrison. And she's just absolutely my favorite writer–partly because I know her characters, and particularly with the lived experience of spending summers in the South, and being surrounded by family and community throughout my life who had come from the South. And who had brought their traditions, and character and personalities and language and speech and all of that with them. Morrison's characters were so alive for me. It's sort of like If you go to Africa, uh, or, yeah. And you see people who look just like somebody you know here. the way her characters express their own humanity, as well as their grief, their suffering, but also their joy. So when I'm out shooting, I look for those things. I recognize them. And I think it has to do with capturing the essence, the soul, the spirit of the people I'm photographing.
PL: What relationships emerged from the people involved in this project? What intergenerational conversations have you encountered in response to your Washington Park series?
RB: I've had a lot of conversations actually with people who, when they've seen the images, they immediately start telling me about their own experiences in Washington park growing up, which is really great because it seems to affirm that the photographs captured something that a whole lot of people can relate to. I know a lot of the people who were in the photographs. I mean, not the majority, I would say maybe, oh, five to ten percent of the people. And a lot of the people I know, their photographs are not in the book. For example, my children are in the book. My goddaughter is in the book. D Alexander, Henry Huff, and a lot of the drummers and dancers that you see in the photographs. Douglas Ewert, Margaret Burroughs. In the wedding photos, I came to know a couple of people who were in the book, and a couple that was getting married, though I didn't know them at the time.
After the exhibition was up at Arts Incubator, one day this woman came by, and she turned out to be– I never knew that the University of Chicago Hospitals have a curator, and she's responsible for exhibiting and purchasing art for the University of Chicago Hospitals. There's a long hallway in DCAM, and she wanted to exhibit the images there, so she took probably two-thirds of them, and some of them were really big, like 35 by 50 inches, and she did a really great job of curating and hanging and putting text and everything.
Anyway, she contacted me and told me that one of the hospital employees was walking through the gallery and saw a photograph of her, and said, ‘that's my father in that photograph,’ and so I was able to contact her and find out which photograph, and there's a guy and two girls in [this] photograph, and there's an ice cream vendor kind of in the background. Her dad was the ice cream vendor, and it turned out that her dad was still selling ice cream in 2021, but he'd gotten 35 years older, and she said that he's usually around Ray school.
I was supposed to hook up with her because I wanted to give her a print of the photograph, and for some reason she couldn't meet me, but she said, ‘you'll probably see my dad, I think he's out today,’ and I had to go pick up my granddaughter from Ray anyway, so I went. I was parked waiting for school to get out, and I saw him across the street, with his ice cream cart, and, you know, he was really old and barely able to push that cart around, but I got to talk to him, and he told me how when I took that photograph, he had wanted to open an ice cream shop, and he never could.
Because he was always getting hassled about not having a vendor's license or something, and he basically blames the city for destroying his dream of having an ice cream shop, but he was still out there selling his ice cream, and I was able to give him the print, so that was really great. I keep hearing all kinds of things from people who remembered and were there during that time, that's really sweet.
Add Book Talk to your calendar | Saturday, June 28, 2-4pm
Year of Repair
By Rachel Wallis
The ethos of repair is woven into every strand of the Narrow Bridge Arts Club.
From the care taken to repair its glorious century old building, to the commitment to material reuse, to the relationships built in the shared studios strengthening the fabric of our communities. From the first time I read about the project I knew it would be a fantastic space to explore my project Year of Repair.
Year of Repair was born out of a time when I was feeling overwhelmed by what was broken in the world around me. The scale of the damage was so large and I felt so small and ineffective. I needed to ground myself in the possibility of repair: that everyday, in every community, people are fixing the things that are broken at a human level.
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I spent a year diving into different strategies for repair, including restorative justice; regenerative agriculture; mutual aid; trauma informed healing; harm reduction; and material reuse. I coordinated a book club about repair, and held monthly mending circles at a local community garden. I grew dye plants that restored the local ecosystem by removing toxins, enriching the soil, and feeding pollinators.
At the end of the year, I gathered up what had been collected: the Hopi sunflowers, coreopsis, comfrey, and marigold plants; the unmendable textiles, too worn to be repaired and ready for their next use; and the dreams of repair from the circle participants.
During my residency at Narrow Bridge, I’m combining all of these ingredients into a quilt documenting what is broken in our lives, and what we are working to repair.
Again, join me this Friday March 28th from 1pm to 4pm, and then again from 6pm - 9pm for the final community quilting circles of this residency. We will sit in circle, explore how we repair what is broken in our lives and communities, while embroidering squares for the Year of Repair quilt. No sewing experience is necessary. Refreshments will be served. Wheelchair accessible. Masks suggested. For other accessibility needs, questions or concerns contact Rachel.a.wallis@gmail.com
Hexipuffs with Anna
Words from Narrow Bridge member Anna Marshall
“My mom was an avid and very accomplished crocheter. When she worked on her larger projects like afghans and blankets, she generated a lot of what we called “floof” — the little snips of yarn that were left over when she trimmed her ends. Now that I knit, I have the same problem: bags and bowls and boxes filled with yarn trimmings. Mom used to throw them away after a bunch of them piled up, but I find it difficult to do that. Like many knitters, I often think about the environmental impact that this hobby of mine has, so I’m not crazy about contributing to landfills. But I’m also cheap, and it seems like a waste of money to just throw all that “floof” away.
As you might guess, it used a lot of yarn, but I also had several partial skeins left over. I used those partial skeins to make “hexipuffs.” I have a project that helps me out of this dilemma — a Hexipuff Blanket using scraps from my Temperature Blanket and a massive amount of “floof” I’ve accumulated. And at the end, I’ll have a fun, decorative blanket that turns the “waste” of my knitting projects into a wonderful reminder of some of my fun projects.
I start with my Temperature Blanket — which I’ll write about in another post. Very quickly here, each square represents the range of temperatures in a day in Chicago in 2023.
The (paid) pattern for these little shapes is called The Beekeeper’s Quilt, but is widespread across the internet – here’s a blog post that has “the recipe” for the hexipuffs. And as the blog post comments, there are a lot of variations in how knitters make them — some use DPNs, some magic loop (which is what I do). Some do their increases and decreases one stitch in from the edge; I’ve been experimenting with doing the increases and decreases on the edge of the work. In short, you do you!
You bind off the last row, which leaves a little opening in the hexagon — which you can then stuff with floof and then sew up the end to seal it. (I use a 3 needle bind off; others use Kitchener stitch; mattress stitch is fine — again, you do you!) And you’re left with a Hexipuff.
After you’ve knitted a big bunch of these, then you put them together in a honeycomb shape. This is a tentative layout with the ones I had on hand during Knitting Circle at Narrow Bridge.
Then, you bind them together, and once more, different crafters have different ideas about how to connect them. The original pattern suggests tying them together at the corners — yet another possible use for scrap yarn. Other crafters choose to stitch them together for a tighter connection. I haven’t made a decision yet. . . . Come to Knitting Circle at Narrow Bridge and find out! In the meantime, if you have any “floof” from your own knitting or crochet projects, please bring it to Narrow Bridge – Amber’s collecting it for me and anyone else who wants to try this project?”
Stuff is happening…
The work tables are working!
Dorthy Burge: Working on a quilt of LaTanya Jenifor-Sublett
Dorthy Burge: Quilt of LaTanya Jenifor-Sublett, in progress
Membership is OPEN!
We got occupancy! You are invited to a Winter Solstice Bonfire on Sunday December 22nd at 4pm and old school potlucks! Check out membership and look to the calendar for upcoming member lead circles.
Arthur Wright’s new painting series and the best thing to do with styrofoam.,.
New Additions to Narrow Bridge: Recycling Water
Part of Narrow Bridge Art Club’s commitment to carbon neutrality and environmental care is the reuse of materials, both man-made and natural. One element of this process is setting up a rainwater catch system, mainly used to care for the garden out front.
A rainwater catch system, in this case, made of a series of water collection barrels connected by pipes and valves directing water to a spigot, collects rainwater so it can be reused later. The barrels themselves are reused food-grade fifty-five-gallon barrels, so the construction requires as little new material as possible. While it cannot be used for drinking water, it can be used for garden irrigation, car washing, cleaning outdoor supplies, and other activities that don’t require filtered water. This system is similar to a greywater system, which functions in the same way but instead collects and reuses greywater — water that has been, what I would call, “lightly used” for things like showering or washing dishes. One of the main benefits of these types of gravity-fed systems is that once set up, they are self-sustaining, requiring no electrical input and little adjustment. The lack of maintenance or consumption of new resources makes these a long-term environmentally friendly solution.
As a Narrow Bridge intern helping with but not leading the construction of the rainwater catch system, I was surprised at how accessible the making of this system felt. We were able to put together all the necessary parts with two people, although it’s possible with just one, and followed instruction manuals showing how to set them up. Environmental solutions are often presented as inaccessible and far away, which can encourage inaction, hopelessness, and sympathy for large environmentally damaging institutions. However, seeing various stacks of materials become a functioning water recycling system over a few days was a reminder that there are existing solutions that can be implemented right now to address concerns over issues such as excessive consumption and energy conservation.
Written by Theo Luna Baker-Stohlmann
Planting and Tea with Alexy Irving
You are invited to join our featured artist, Alexy Irving, on Sunday. We will be starting the Foedge (food-hedge). This front pedway garden will be a series arcing mounds made of buried and stacked 100-year-old wood that has been salvaged during the construction process. The different layers and heights of a hedge provide sunlight, shade, and compost-enriched soil for small trees, shrubs, and ground plants whose growth habits complement one another.
On Mother’s Day, Alexy selected, roses, strawberries and daylillies to get us rolling, all flowering edible plants. Come, enjoy a nice cup of iced tea and join the making and planting.
If you love old growth forest
By Amber Ginsburg, Executive Director
If you love old growth forests, it makes perfect sense to harvest hardwood flooring from turn of the century buildings. I have been taking apart hardwood floors with a studio assistant, Cooper Page, using a steel pallet buster. Pallets and hardwood floors have a lot in common. Both are comprised of long running hardwood boards nailed into cross pieces called stickers. I genuinely appreciate this big blue bulky tool.
Spending hours prying off each 3” boards, I had a fair amount of time to think about the materials involved. There are the oak floor boards. The pine stickers. And steel nails. As building materials go, all components are separable, which equates to salvageable. With labor. A lot of labor. A lot of, lot of, labor. If one only considers a time based economy, it does not make sense to save old oak flooring.
First, the oak is separated from the stickers. This is a board by board process. Enough time to notice grain, different wear, and curious stains.
Mostly, I was thinking about the trees, the source of this wood. Oak trees are familiar to me, growing up in northern California. Oaks dotted the landscape of my childhood in open lands, along highways, and in front yards. There are many fewer now than when I was growing up. While this is due to many factors, Sudden Oak Death, a disease that targets oaks, has been a caused rapid decrease in the Oak population So the trees and the grain of this 100 year old midwestern forest definitely felt familiar. While the forest species are different in the midwest and much of the topography is flat, Oaks were an integral part of the Midwest landscape, a mix in the forests and a companion to the prairie. I don’t know the stats on Oaks, but I do know that less than 1% of paraire still exists. And for the forest context:
In 1892 alone, 13 billion board feet of timber was cut from the Wisconsin north woods, which according to Mike Dombeck, former Chief of the US Forest Service, was, “enough to build a boardwalk more than 300 feet wide circling the equator.”
Edward Hein’s National Forest Use Book, Sara Black and Raewyn Martyn, Pg, 20
If I had not intervened, this wood was headed for the dumpster and then to landfill. Once moist in landfill, wood decomposes quickly and releases its carbon back into the atmosphere.
As the boards pile up, the volume of one floor section takes hulking shape. This bit of flooring starts to reference a forest. This is not one tree, but many. And this from one section of one house. Imagine all the houses on the block, the neighborhood, the city. If you live in an old home in Chicago, you live with the once vast Midwest forest, cut down, milled and living with us.
Pulling these boards, de-nailing them, and re-staking them to be repurposed as benches over the geothermal ducting, I am working in a carbon economy. An economy that exists in the imagination of many people, including Kim Stanley Robinson. In the world of his book, Ministry of the Future, Cooper and I would be paid for this. The time it takes to do this work may not make sense in our current economy. But it makes carbon sense.
In a nothing-goes-to-waste ethic, the stickers, which are pine, will be buried in the yard as Hugelkultur berms. As the wood breaks down, the nutrients will feed the roots of the young plants growing on top. And, it will provide the yard with some undulating topography.
Not sure what all the steel nails in the pine stickers will do…maybe keep future archeologists guessing about this mound? And in the meantime, old growth forest will support the growth of new trees and plants.
Geothermal is the new Steam Punk
There are a few things we are doing in the building that are foundational to hitting carbon positivity. A big element is adding geothermal. For those new to this heating and cooling system, and really I never get bored thinking about it, this system takes advantage of the consistent 55 degree ground temperature, below the 3 foot freeze zone. On the side lot next to Narrow Bridge, we dug 7 geothermal wells, each 470 feet straight down. The wells are about 4 inches in diameter. Each well has a hose that loops down and then comes back up, all connected into the building.
It was a beautiful moment to see how the “circulatory system" of the geothermal loops work. The Arts Club on the ground floor will be heated and cooled with radiant floors. The coils (who knew they would be such a beautiful red) loop back and forth over the entire floor. Now that the concrete slab is poured, the 55 degree water running throughout will keep the entire space cool by the reflected temperature of the floor. There will be no “air conditioning” rather “floor conditioning”. There are no hot and cold air ducts, rather a subtle and wonderful even temperature across the entire place.
It works similarly in the winter. The water that loops through the hoses in the floor, down into the wells, and back up through the floor, and across a heat pump that heats the coils. The way this system works it is a closed loop that efficiently heats off the 55 degrees ground temperature and only needs to get to 70 degrees. That is a lot less than the air temperature in Chicago, which in the winter get below zero.
In the end, all the gorgeous drawing with red hoses and the looping water system is invisible. The concrete wa poured and is curing. While it is beautiful to begin to see the space get a more finished look, I don’t know if I have even been more delighted in this process than looking at those looping tubes and seeing how we can efficiently heat and cool such a big space.
However, the choices in how to attempt rigor with regard to carbon are NOT clear. The materials going into this part of the project, in particular the rigid foam and the concrete, are some of the highest “pluses” we are adding to our ongoing carbon “accounting”. I am so lucky to be working with Charlie Vinz, architect and friend. We are looking at the carbon birth, life, and death of this building. So much of the carbon “cost” in construction is not considered and does not include the carbon used in the creation of a building, or even worse, the death of buildings. Construction waste is a huge carbon burden. When buildings are rated, it takes into account how the building will “live”, its heating, cooling, lighting etc. Narrow Bridge is an experiment with more truthful accountability.
As such, we have given ourselves a “carbon credit” for the building, all the brick, all the steel, all the wood, already in the building. These are items which, had this been sold to the other bidders, would have ended up in landfill. If I had my druthers, we would not add concrete to this building, as it is a big carbon “cost”. However, it is the most efficient heat and cooling sink. We graded the floor to pour as little concrete as possible. We will look at the carbon calculation at the end, but likely, almost certainly, we know we will go over the “credit” we have for the existing materials in this retrofit. It is better than tearing the whole thing down and starting over, for sure, but it is still a humbling experience to really look at materials in a project and not ignore the hard choices, even when they are towards a better system for the “life/use” of the building.