I took a shower on Michigan Ave. and then went to a “Topless” exhibit.

On my way to the Columbia College library, it started raining, and I arrived in the 624 S. Michigan lobby soaked. On the second floor, I walked up to a young man and an older woman at the reference desk.

“Do you know where the Critical Encounters/Topless USA exhibit is?” I asked through water that was still streaming down my face.

“The what?” the older woman inquired.

“Topless USA?”

“I’m sorry, what? “ she asked again, annoyed.

“Topless USA, an exhibit about mountaintop removal, I think?” I was now starting to wonder if I was in the right building.

“Can’t believe you made her repeat that,” chuckled the younger guy to the irritated woman. He looked up to me, “I’m not sure if it’s still there, but go through the stacks, and it might be on the left.”

After circling the floor twice, I stumbled into a room labeled the “Library Classroom” and saw one lonely 3D diorama sitting atop a wobbly table, “protected” by drooping black, velvet ropes. I scanned the room and noticed no other mildly obvious works that might be part of the show, and was confused; one piece does not an exhibit make! At first glance, the sculpture, carved out of rock and spattered with fake moss and clay-colored paint, entitled “The Agony of Gaia,” reminded me of the inside of my cousin’s frog aquarium. Not too impressive. Until I saw that the fake moss is actually resting atop a life-size Mother Earth, who lays in a fetal position, covering her face, while bulldozers ravage her surface. I saw her exposed ribs, and her blood spurting out, due to “suffering the abuse of strip-mining” and “the devastation brought about by mountaintop removal and valley fills.” The artist, Jeff Chapman-Crane explained, “I believe that the earth is a living thing. I wanted to do a piece that conveyed the torment she must feel when she is abused in this way.” The piece takes on much more meaning after reading the artist’s motivation and devotion to environmental activism.

I’m about to leave the classroom, when I turn and finally can discern a framed painting hanging in the shadows. A richly colored but sorrowful piece showing a man playing a violin to an empty valley rests on a wall of chipped paint, and above stained carpet. I only realize it is apart of the exhibit when I read the tiny, wrinkled paper taped next to it. “Why wasn’t there a spotlight on this?”, I wonder. Walking out of the room, I notice three more non-spotlighted, mountaintop-ish themed paintings hanging above desks in “Laptop Land.” The late John Denver would appreciate the topic of this exhibit, but he would be mortified by the presentation. I can’t help but think how many aspiring curators at Columbia would have willingly brought some life to this show, because it definitely needed it. What is also glaringly odd to me is that I haven’t been able to locate any “Topless USA” signage. I’m not even sure that these are the only pieces in the exhibit, but I don’t have time to search in every dark corner or closet of this library.

Mountaintop removal in Kentucky is probably a totally obscure issue to art students in Chicago, if they haven’t seen this exhibit (which, I think is pretty likely). But, Columbia’s decision to host this study, is perhaps meant to remind students that our creativity has unlimited uses. We can someday use our design or writing skills to craft McDonald’s ads, or we can devote our producing talents to making films about social or environmental topics (like mountaintop removal). Columbia College Chicago wants its students to remember that there are many avenues to express one’s self, even if some ways are not as obvious or popular as others.

3CVJE and the Jazz Pop Choir, Columbia College Chicago

As someone who had never been to a Columbia College musical event until the other night, I was amazed by the 3CVJE and Jazz Pop Choir performances that took place in The Concert Hall of Columbia’s Music Center on April 20, 2009.

Before entering the hall, I picked up a program, and read that the Jazz Pop Choir is a one-credit course that meets two times per week, and is open for anyone to join. The other ensemble, 3CVJE is, however, by audition only, and rehearses three times each week.

Taking my seat in the still brightly lit room, I noticed the red, blue, green, and red shirts sitting in the back row. Members of the Jazz Pop Choir sat giggling, chatting, and anxiously waiting to take the blue-spotlighted stage.

Shortly, the lights dimmed and the 3CVJE members (six girls, four boys) appeared on stage from behind the curtains. While each singer clutched their own mic, clear, upbeat, perfected vocals exploded from the speakers. During all of their songs, in which there always seemed to be a cute, flirty dialogue apparent in the men’s and women’s lyrics, the singers smiled, laughed, winked, snapped their fingers and swayed to the beat for the audience as the choir director bopped around in the aisle and the stage, beaming from ear to ear. The entertaining solos and animated gestures that were sprinkled throughout each song made this performance anything but a dull choir concert.

After a few full-length solo songs sung by “stand out” members from the groups, the Jazz Pop Choir swarmed the stage to impress me further. While clearly not as polished, or vocally stunning as 3CVJE (the group as a whole looked much younger than the 3CVJE), the Jazz Pop Choir belted out songs like “We All Need Saving” (originally recorded by popular pop singer Jon McLaughlin), and “Swingin with the Saints,” a contemporary, playful take on the children’s song.

The singers were obviously the stars of the show, but one of my favorite performances that night was by the groups’ director. An exceedingly happy woman in a black pant suit that danced and joked around with her students on stage (once pretending to hide a mic from a boy about to do a solo), reminded the soloists to “Take a bow!” mid-song, and gushed about her singers and instrumentalists during every break. She was so proud of her students, and by the end of the show, so was the audience. She also took a few moments to pitch the groups, and encourage anyone in the audience to see her after the show about joining next semester. “We’re looking for new folks,” she explained, “men, especially.”

I clapped loudly song after song – and I’m not normally a passionate clapper. I expected to be dying to leave the one and a half hour concert early, and I ended up reluctantly exiting the hall, wishing the show hadn’t been over so soon. Walking home, I realized that I now wanted to be every girl that performed, and I had a crush on each boy that had sung.

Like Columbia College, the concert offered a quirky, non-traditional, and inspiring take on the arts. Both groups will be performing at Columbia's Manifest this May.

Harrison Haiku

I never really want to spend extra time hanging out in the subway. But, when I have to involuntarily freeze underground while waiting for the next train, it would be nice to have something artistically interesting to look at (besides the occasional singing homeless man). Unfortunately, I think Columbia College’s Harrison Haiku project at the same red line stop, is not more engaging to me than the homeless man. Tiled walls are adorned with boldly colored green, red, and yellow assorted squares. Geometric leaves of the same primary coloring are scattered aimlessly on the tunnel’s domed ceiling. But what I assume was meant to be the “star” of this project, the poetry, is plastered in plain, simple black lettering throughout the station. Some poems appear in full, while others are broken-up, and dispersed among pillars. Kenneth Daley, chair of the English Department at Columbia pleads, “The spare beauty of the Haiku form paired with the colorful graphics will be a wonderful ‘awakening’ for the South Loop residents and workers, as well as the thousands of Columbia and Jones students, faculty and staff who use the Harrison subway each day.” Though I appreciate this attempt to make poetry an appealing read and sight, this display is underwhelming. The chosen typeface seems much too large for the space, so that it easily gets lost in the graphic squares, and becomes just letters. My eye was not immediately drawn to anything when I walked into this not absolutely gross, but mostly run-down subway entrance. There was simply too much going on, and not enough negative space; if the lettering had been smaller, perhaps the viewer’s attention would be captured…because, apparently, crazy-homeless-man entertainment is hard to beat.

What I assume Columbia College hoped to promote with this project was a sense of hip, urban, simplicity that the school embodies. The graphic, choppy, modernist leaf stickers are kind of edgy, I guess. Sort of. The poetry itself is a bit quirky, in a way. Maybe. In it’s entirety, however, the Harrison Haiku project does not portray the lively, evolving, exciting art world that Columbia students (and future students) are (or want to be) absorbed in.

Michael Wolf's "The Transparent City" (revised)

On this dreary, gray day that I visit the Contemporary Museum of Photography in Chicago, I feel as if the sun might be hiding in the exposed scaffolding of the museum when I walk into the almost sunglasses-required brightly lit space. As my eyes adjust to glare, a smiling young woman hands me a brochure for "The Transparent City," German photographer Michael Wolf's first American show. Soon, I shuffle to the closest print, and my boots join the squeaking symphony of other slush and snow covered shoes strolling across the glossy wood floor.

Dangling from hopefully strong wall hooks, the exhibit is composed mostly of large-scale photographs that offer the viewer a zoomed-in look into the cubicles and apartments that make up so much of our city. From the vantage point at which the photographs are taken, either looking straight-across or occasionally looking down from a distance, it is almost as if the viewer is a spy into the lives of these nameless people. In one window, I'm drawn to a man, who could probably make a lot of money working as Santa Claus during the holiday season, sitting under his desk, tangled up in a pile of cords. (Where are the elves to help him with this mess, I wonder.) In another building, "grown-ups" wearing expensive suits play a round of mini golf. (I wonder if their bosses know that they've constructed Pebble Beach in their conference room.) Around the corner, a woman slumps in front of her computer, holding her head in her hands. (I'm worried about her, and wonder what has upset her.) Wolf's pieces pull the onlooker into moments we were never meant to be apart of. As I walk from print to print, the feeling that I've unintentionally become a peeping-tom has set in, but it doesn't stop me from looking. I am now a detective/psychologist/creeper, in search of another person to observe, study, and probably make erroneous, but entertaining, assumptions about.

Wolf uses a zoom lens to flatten out the space in his pieces. He chooses not to have a skyline; and instead his work is focused on the geometry/layout of the buildings, which seem to just pile up on top of one another. Most shots appear to be taken in the evening hours, so that the building structures serve as large frames for the countless lit-up windows. Because of this, the light generally used is artificial, giving the prints a stale, generic vibe.

If you are curious what that lady you just saw walking down the street does when she goes home after work, you would enjoy this show. If working in felt-covered cubicle is your current reality, it might be nice to see that you are not the only one playing Tetris on your laptop, while you should be making a spreadsheet.

"The Transparent City" will be at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago from November 14, 2008 - January 31, 2009.