Tactical Urbanism in the Horizontal Landscape Short Film Screenings- Featured Renee' Baker

"Art is Business"   Join us on Friday, September 20th, 2024, as we celebrate the season's last Bronzeville Art District Trolley Tour. The film screenings will begin at dusk and conclude at 9 p.m. 

436 E. 47th Street, the film screening is a popup temporary installation. 

Phantom Gallery Chicago- Film Projection Project Manager Suzetta Withtaker

Featured Artist Renee Baker

Film 1: The Black Fertile Mind

The Black Fertile Mind is an exploration of boundless creativity, celebrating the intellect, resilience, and innovation of Black thought. This film interweaves evocative visuals with a dynamic score by Renee C. Baker, performed by the Chicago Modern Orchestra Project and the Modern Black Music Ensemble. The soundtrack melds elements of avant-garde jazz, experimental chamber music, and abstract soundscapes, reflecting the depth and complexity of the Black artistic imagination. As the film unfolds, it delves into the vast landscapes of Black intellectual history, presenting a narrative that is at once historical and visionary. The visuals are complemented by the sonic textures that highlight the journey of ideas, inventions, and artistic expressions born from a fertile cultural legacy.

Film 2: EMAK 1

EMAK 1 is a sensory journey into the enigmatic and the surreal, guided by Renee C. Baker's innovative score. This experimental film embraces the abstraction of thought and form, creating a dreamlike narrative that defies traditional storytelling. The Chicago Modern Orchestra Project and the Modern Black Music Ensemble provide a sonic tapestry that oscillates between ethereal atmospheres and dissonant crescendos, reflecting the film's exploration of consciousness and the unknown. The visuals are a montage of abstract shapes, shifting patterns, and fleeting images, inviting viewers to immerse themselves in the subconscious and question the boundaries between reality and illusion.

Film 3: EMAK 2

EMAK 2 continues the exploration of the surreal begun in its predecessor, deepening the immersion into an auditory and visual world that is both mysterious and profound. The score, crafted by Renee C. Baker and brought to life by the Chicago Modern Orchestra Project and the Modern Black Music Ensemble, is an intricate composition that blends dissonance with harmony, creating a soundscape that feels simultaneously familiar and alien. The film navigates themes of transformation and transcendence, using its avant-garde aesthetic to challenge perceptions and provoke thought. The visuals, a fluid collage of moving images, mirror the music's complexity, crafting an experience that is introspective, meditative, and ever-evolving.

BIO

Renee' C. Baker is a towering figure in multidisciplinary artistry, transcending the boundaries of music, visual art, film, and composition with unparalleled finesse. Her creative journey unfolds like an epic saga, with over 2000 orchestral and chamber ensemble compositions serving as a testament to her boundless imagination and relentless pursuit of innovation.

As the founding music director and conductor of the Chicago Modern Orchestra Project (CMOP), Baker orchestrates a symphony of genres, seamlessly weaving classical elegance with the improvisational spirit of jazz. Her conducting styles, both traditional and gestural, are modes of transformation, conjuring surreal landscapes where sonic and visual realms intertwine in a mesmerizing dance. A true Renaissance artist, Baker's canvas knows no limits as she melds movement, film projections, and sound into a breathtaking tapestry of sensory delight. Her compositions and film scores invite exploration and interpretation, blurring the lines between classicism and experimentation, subjectivity and objectivity.

Baker's influence extends far beyond her compositions. With the same fervor she brings to her craft, she nurtures and cultivates new ensembles. From the Mantra Blue Free Orchestra to the Bleueblue Walkers/Bass Kollektief, her ensembles forge new paths in the ever-evolving landscape of contemporary music.

Baker's most profound legacy lies in her gestural conducting language, CCL/FLOW, a symphony of movements that transcends words, guiding ensembles through her painted score exploratorium pieces. In her hands, music becomes not just a performance but a transcendent experience, a journey into the unknown where every note is a brushstroke.

The formation of WABI HOUSE MEDIA and Relinquish Cinema has resulted in music scores for over 500 silent and 100 experimental films, all with original scores crafted by Baker and the Chicago Modern Orchestra Project.

A visual artist, film artist, composer, and recontextualiser, Baker is a true engineer of multi-disciplines. Layering movement and film projections, she creates an exquisite arena of surrealistic activity within a sonic theatre. Her compositions, crafted with careful construction, allow indeterminacy, experimentalism, classicism, subjectivity, and objective interpretations to coexist. Both performer and audience are cast into unknown roles, inhabiting a temporary environment of limitless potential.

"Exercising Creative Agency"

Renee' C. Baker, PhD.

Artistic Director / Conductor

Chicago Modern Orchestra Project

Modern Black Music Ensemble

Producer- Wabi House Media

Editor- YUGEN Imprint

reneebaker@comcast.net

Sojourner Truth African Heritage Museum- Big Day of Giving is Everyday

"Art is Business"

Sojourner Truth African Heritage Museum- Big Day of Giving is 365 days.

Shonna McDaniel's the Founder and Director of the Sojourner Truth Art Museum (founded in 1996). McDaniels is a professional artist/teacher/muralist, and community activist. She has an extensive background in art instruction and mural designs. She has studied under some of the finest professors in the Los Rios Community College network and master artists in the San Francisco Bay Area. While residing in Germany, McDaniels instructed art classes for two years on Military Bases and organized art exhibitions and programs. 

Before 1996, Shonna McDaniels was one of the co-founders and artists of the Visual Arts Development Project (founded in 1988); McDaniels taught art classes, conducted workshops, and organized art exhibits throughout the Oak Park and Del Paso communities.   She has donated art to various organizations and helped raise money for charitable causes throughout the Sacramento Region. She has over 25 years of community involvement with multiple organizations that support the arts through exhibitions, artist residencies, community activism, community murals, and organizing community-based festivals in South Sacramento.

Ms. McDaniels has contributed over 150 murals to the landscape of Sacramento, Stockton, and San Francisco:

These collections can be found: in Sacramento Unified School District, Sacramento Arts Commissions,

County of Sacramento, Florin Business Arts Complex/Sojourner Truth Murals Project 

And her artistic legacy within the community is renowned to grassroots, professional artists, politicians, and the business community. Her contributions have been recognized by Council members: Lauren Hammond, Bonnie Pannell, Larry Carr, Mayor Kevin Johnson, Congress Doris Matsui, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Entertainer Russell Simmons.  Mrs. McDaniels is a committed “social artist-activist.” Her work is dedicated to creativity and social change within the context of an evolving, healthy community.

Personal Statement: My purpose as an artist is to leave a legacy for future artists. I want young black girls and boys to see my art and experience something of worth, pride, and value. For this reason, I strive to have the essence of my work reflect dignity, strength, and the beauty of each subject I present. For me, youth education is critical, and I have spent a large part of my career as an artist educating youth. I feel today, more than ever, that art is needed by young people as a forum for safe expression, communication, exploration, imagination, and cultural and historical understanding. Art is an essential, encompassing life element that can produce an environment with a productive cultural exchange of ideas. In addition, art promotes acquiring intellectual skills in literature, science, and math. Indeed, art should be a priority in human development. Art can inspire youth to be creative, think outside the box, and use their skills to beautify their environment.

The Ocean Between IV Virtual Open Studio

"Art is Business"

ZOOM Phantom Gallery:
https://bit.ly/PhantomGalleryChicago,

Open virtual studio visit with artist Lashon Fouche of the Wild Yams Col...

ARTIST. WRITER. EDUCATOR.

Venise Keys is a visual artist, writer, and educator raised on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. Venise's art has been exhibited throughout Chicago at The Cre.ea.tive Room, the Museum Science, and Industry, KaLab Gallery, +Plus Gallery, Woman Made Gallery, and Intersect Chicago (formally known as SOFA: Sculpture, Objects, and Functional Art & Design Fair). She also exhibited at Front Room Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, and the Saint Louis Museum of Art in Saint Louis, Missouri.

She has a Bachelors's and Master's degree in Painting with a Certificate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for her research on Black Feminist politics. She served as adjunct faculty of art for Illinois Central College, Bradley University, and has lectured at Dillard University on the role of the Black artist. This work is published in the scholarly journal, Kalfou: Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies.

This year, Venise's writing on art education has circulated to Norway, Germany and she is recently published in a New York arts and culture magazine, Hyperallergic. Venise is currently an artist-in-residence at Wild Yams: A Residency for Black Women & Mothers located in The Cre.ea.tive Room. Venise teaches high school visual art at Art In Motion Creative Arts School and is the program director for the Kappa Chapter of Gamma Xi Phi Professional Art Fraternity.

What is the Lashon Fouché method to holistic arts education?

Increased self-esteem by abandoning perfectionism and imposter syndrome habits about art-making.

Developing intentional creative routines to use observations, emotions, meditations, and daily life dreams in the artwork.

Offering consultations/programming collaborations to promote alternative expressions of knowledge and socially responsible activism.

Bronzeville Art District Art Tour,

"Art is Business"

Hello and Welcome:

We look forward to you joining us for the July Art Tour this evening. Please read carefully to ensure you have all the information regarding the tour, virtual or in person. 

Due to COVID 19, there will not be a trolley this year.  Check opening times below:

To visit the virtual Bronzeville Art District Art Tour, use the links provided here. Opens on Zoom at 7:00 CST pm and in-person at participating venues. Check the times below.
 
Gallery Guichard: Virtual and In-person

https://bit.ly/galleryguichardarttourJuly

Webinar ID: 821 1588 2807

International numbers available: International numbers available: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kcL0XfIErZ

Fair Afrikan Art: Virtual and In-person https:us02web.zoom.us/j/87320093471?

Meeting ID 873 2009 3471

Passcode 698508

Blanc Gallery: Virtual and In-person https://bit.ly/BLANC_JULY
South Side Community Art Center: Virtual Only

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89008105934?pwd=TTBRdWRNZUh5RU9tQU1FUUx0QmpzUT09

Meeting ID: 998 0571 5631 Passcode: 098588

Bronzeville Artist Lofts - Virtual 
Phantom Gallery: https://bit.ly/PhantomGalleryChicago

Raymond Thomas Studio: https://bit.ly/ThomasStudios_Tour
Allen Emerson Hicks:

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87803862154?pwd=QUltVUdvYmpKaHBnL3FpditwbmlwUT09

Meeting ID: 878 0386 2154

Passcode: 065227

You can also copy and place it in your browser to search for the event.

 In-Person Experience: You can experience the tour in person at the following galleries:

• Blanc Gallery - in person and virtual 6 pm to 8 pm
• Gallery Guichard - in person and virtual 7 pm to 10 pm
• Faie Afrikan Art Gallery - in person and virtual 6 pm to 8 pm
• Bronzeville Artist Lofts - Virtual & in the Great Migration Sculpture Garden providing a video screening (Studios are not open)

Virtual Only:

South Side Community Art Center - Virtual only

The Bronzeville Art District Presents a Popup Concert Series on the Culture Coach

"Art is Business"

This year, the Bronzeville Art District added the Culture Coach, a portable stage co-owned by Susan Fox and Hanah Jon Taylor, offering an outdoor concert in the empty lot at 47th and Vincennes adjacent to the Great Migration Sculpture Garden. In addition, the alleyway next to 436 E. 47th Street will be activated as a social distance safe zone for art tour attendees and the surrounding neighborhood. 

Dance to the sounds of DJ Marcel Terry and Concert Headliner Aziza Lisa, a saucy, smooth, sensual, and most of all empowering performer.

Your tour RSVP grants you access to a celebration of Chicago Cultural traditions by Gallery Guichard, Building Community Foundation, AARP, and the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, “Chicago Presents,” our official sponsors.

Josephine "La" Baker : Vision of Beauty

In a world where African American female imagery, in cinema and life,  is often not celebrated, the victorious and love-filled life of Josephine Baker reminds us that beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.

Join us on the third Friday of the month this summer, July - September 17th, 2021, for a free screening during the Bronzeville Art District Art Tour,  SSFF Satellite Experimental Film Festival, presented by Wabi House Media, an art film by Renee Baker.

The art partners create an interdisciplinary/ multi-disciplinary Hybrid experience featuring a virtual online tour and in-person experiences at each gallery. In addition, an alley activation at 436 E. 47th Street will connect guests to the Great Migration Garden, becoming a social distance zone to gather.  Our neighbors can bring lawn chairs at dusk and enjoy a popup drive in an experimental film festival with projections on a three-foot wall facing the 47th street intersection. 

December Trolley Post Conversation with the Artists and Supporters

Special Thanks to all our Supporters

Phantom Gallery Chicago Board of Advisors:

William G. Hill, William Hill Gallery

Laura Weathered, Near North West Arts Council

Toni Collie Perry- Leadership Consultant

Mariana Buchwald, International Art Group

Featured Artist/ Network  Organizations 2020

July 17, 2020

 Caryl Henry Alexander Clinton Maryland, Daphne Burgess Moulton Albama, Shonna McDaniel's, Sacramento California, Talver Germany Miller- Mather California, 

August 21, 2020 

Sojourner Truth African Heritage Museum,  Gallery157

Larissa J. Akemremi, The Social Movement and cultural curator

September 21, 2020 

Renee Baker,  Artist in Residence, Chicago Modern Orchestra Project,  

Talver Germany Miller, Los Rios Community College District 

October 16, 2020

Caryl Henry Alexander, Artist with a Purpose, 

Shonna McDaniel's Sojourner Truth African Heritage Museum

Shonna McDaniel's, Wide Open Walls

Co-Owners Gallery 157 Daphne, Burgess, Milton 510 Bowens.

October 21, 2020

BRael Ali Thunder, Cesar Conde, Big Bang Project, 

Nicholas Conlon Nick Nickers, Pink Gun Project 

SUMMER 2021- WE WILL BE BACK

Virtual Open Studio, Phantom Gallery Chicago

"Art is Business"  December 18, 2020

2020 Bronzeville Art District Virtual Gallery Tours

Forecasting what the future holds, and how we adapt to new ways of presenting art engagement, and audience development while practicing social distancing.  Alpha Bruton, Founder of the Phantom Gallery Chicago, is moving to mark out a new and exciting program for the future of Phantom Gallery.

The Phantom Gallery will look at how the city influences art, and artists transform the city by contributing to civic dialogue and quality of life. These installations will produce "Creative Conversations" presenting artists speaking about their art.

2020 Program virtual gallery openings will focus on Examining the State of Our Environment- and having conversations with artists in their studios. 

The aim of the Phantom is to examine changes in current curatorial production and to develop innovative displays in relation to virtual spaces. "Curatorial Practice" explores the impact of the urban environment on the artist and their work, and the contributions that artists make to the vitality of a city. The place where art is imagined and made, whether in a physical or virtual space, affects the idea, the process, and the final product. 

Artist in Resident – Renee Baker

Renee Baker visual artist/media and film is a resident artist/curator, who has invested in the Phantom Gallery Chicago Loft as an AIR to stage her experimental film screenings, and as an ancillary gallery to showcase and exhibit her sculpture and paintings. Renee is an internationally renowned artist best known for her work in the classical music industry. She is a resident artist working in found objects, sculpture, and the experimental film just to list a few of her multidisciplinary work.

       "Home Molasses" artist Renee Baker, an installation by curator Alan Emerson Hicks

LOIS STONE ARTS

Artist Statement

My artwork explores the subject of transformation and change in the human condition. What I want to discover are the ways these changes are inspired and the awareness that is revealed. I use color, shape form, and texture to inform my audience. Through my work, I attempt to evoke a feeling, response, or even a question from the view on what they feel in hopes to transform something in them.  I use spontaneous mark-making movement and rhythmic patterns. My work is most often done on paper, but some work is done on wood canvas and synthetic paper and is often used together in collage pieces.

Lois Stone

"Lotus  Revised 3 Kunst", 19" x 26"         Lois Stone Art, Oil on Paper, 2020 

    

    Lotus Series 1 Revised by Lois Stone

Phil M. Cotton

Although the images and subjects of my artwork are diverse; the influences and subject matter originate from the 1950’s era, abstract expressionist movement, and architectural/ designs of the Mid Century Modern/ Bauhaus periods. My contemporary artwork consists of organic and architectural visual images that respond to my observations of historical moments in time and the present state of our ever-changing complex society.

        "Fetish Sacrifice" Found Object Sculpture, Phil Cotton, Private Collection Alpha Bruton 

"Dinosaur" Phil Cotton  Mixed Media, 2017 

Bronzeville Art District Virtual Trolley Tour "Creative Conversation" - Abstract Expression

"Art is Business" 

Join us for our end of the season Virtual Trolley Tour - Friday, December 18, 2020. 7pm - 8pm

Bit.ly/bronzevillearttrolleytour                    Facebook Live- Phantom Gallery

    @ Video produced by Joseph Rzodkiewicz

BOARD OF DIRECTORS 

WOULD LIKE TO GIVE A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS AND SUPPORTERS, YOUR GENEROUS DONATIONS AND ARTIST RELIEF FUNDS HAVE ALLOWED THE GALLERY TO SUSTAIN PROGRAMMING, DURING THIS DIFFICULT TIME OF COVID-19.

Postmodern Art movement in a Post Black Modernist World

"Art is Business"  Just think of it as "Experimentations" December 18th, 2020 Virtual Open Studio, "Creative Conversation", featuring artist Lois Stone, of Stone Arts discussing her work as a modernist painter.

My artwork began primarily in watercolor however my work quickly expanded to acrylic, mixed media, and surface design. My work is abstract concentrating on color, shape, form, and movement.  In my work, I try to explore the process of transformation, the humanistic and spiritual changes that take place guided by intuitive expression and stream of consciousness. Through my art, I hope to have the viewer have an experience there are no words for.

Abstract Alcohol  Ink Resin

I have lived and worked in the Bronzeville community for the past thirty-eight years. Originally from Birmingham, AL my family moved to Chicago during the early sixties and attended catholic school. After graduating from the Academy of Our Lady I attended the University of Illinois at Chicago. I also studied at Ray-Vogue College of Design, attend some adult continuing education classes at the Art Institute of Chicago began a Curatorial Program with the Hyde Park Art Center and the University of Chicago.

Artist Bio Lois Stone

I applied for and became a designated Illinois Artisan in 1987 and was an artist at the Illinois Artisan Gift Shop at Thompson Center in Chicago and the Illinois State Gift Shops in Springfield. I was a member of the Artisans 21 artist’s cooperative in Hyde Park for over ten years until its closing. I have exhibited at the Community Art Fair in Hyde Park and most recently The Chicago Creative Expo for two years. In 2010 I opened Stone Art Supply, an online art supply store where I carry brand names Fine Art, Drafting, and Craft Supplies for the student to professional.

In 2018 I began a one-year course in abstract art with Nancy Hillis in Santa Monica, CA. and I am a member of an artist group, ArtNXTLevel, and now a member of Phantom Gallery Chicago. Being a part of an artist collective has helped me to strengthen my own artistic practice.  I am not an artist in the traditional sense. I would say that I am self-taught. There is an audience for my art and I have an obligation to find that audience.

Some of my most recent work can be viewed on my website, Loisstoneart@wordpress.com. 

 

How did you find your voice?

Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art, and multimedia, particularly involving video are described as postmodern.

Modernism is both a philosophical movement and an art movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization which reflected the newly emerging industrial world, including features such as urbanization, new technologies, and war.

The African American Roots of Modernism: From Reconstruction to the Harlem Renaissance

SUMMARY

In identifying Jim Crow with the coming of modernity, Smethurst focuses on how artists reacted to the system’s racial territorialization, especially in urban areas, with migration narratives, poetry about the black experience, and black performance of popular culture forms such as ragtime and vaudeville. He shows how black writers such as Fenton Johnson and William Stanley Braithwaite circulated some of the earliest and strongest ideas about an American “bohemia.” Smethurst also upsets the customary assessment of the later Harlem Renaissance as the first and primary site of a nationally significant black arts movement by examining the influence of these earlier writers and artists on the black and white modernists who followed. In so doing, Smethurst brings forward a host of understudied figures while recontextualizing the work of canonical authors such as Charles Chesnutt, Pauline Hopkins, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and James Weldon Johnson. As such, Smethurst positions his work as part of the current growing intellectual conversation about the nature of African American literature and culture between Reconstruction and the Harlem Renaissance. Far from being a “nadir” period, Smethurst argues, this period saw black artists creating cultural forms from which issued some of the most significant literary works of the twentieth century.

 Focusing on the years from 1922 to 1938, this book revisits an important moment in black cultural history to explore how visual elements were used in poems, novels, and photography to undermine existing stereotypes. Miriam Thaggert identifies and analyzes an early form of black American modernism characterized by a heightened level of experimentation with visual and verbal techniques for narrating and representing blackness.

Bronzeville Art District November Virtual Open Studio, Cesar Conde

"Creative Conversation", artists speaking about their art practice, November 20, 2020, focuses on

 Open Virtual Studio, "Creative Conversation"- Artist Cesar Conde.

"in·sight /ˈinˌsīt/ the capacity to gain an accurate and deep intuitive understanding of a person or thing:

intuition, perception, awareness, discernment, understanding, ... "

Cesar Conde 

Cesar Conde was born on September 23, 1963, in the Philippines. He came to Seattle in the early '70s when his family emigrated to the United States. Both his parents were white-collared professionals. Conde went to a public school in Seattle and was part of the first busing integration program. However, his first year of schooling was in Chicago's west side, where he was exposed to African-American, Latino and Polish communities. He grew up pressured to assimilate into the American culture in order to survive.

Travel exposed Conde to different cultures, which is reflected in his art. He learned to draw in Florence, Italy, and studied painting in Monflanquin, France.

Exhibitions:

Southside Weekly said "Conde's art is an art that does, and when looking at his portraits, one cannot help but feel that art can and must do things for us, that it must be strong, not flimsy. Indeed, that is Conde's whole goal: to remind us of the hard truths under the surface of our biases and judgments, lest we forget what happened to Trayvon," Jake Bittle, November 20, 2013

His work is featured in the Chicago Contemporary.

 "The film". 13 November 2013. Retrieved 15 February 2016.

 "Cesar Conde Art". Archived from the original on 23 April 2011. Retrieved 15 February 2016.

 "South Side Weekly"

 "Chicago Contemporary". Archived from the original on 12 March 2016. Retrieved 15 February 2016

Coming soon.  Join us on December 18m, 2020  7pm - 8pm

Phantom Gallery: http://bit.ly/Phantom_Tour Meeting ID: 859 7433 6882

 Virtual Open Studio featuring:

Renee Baker- Experimental Film 

Post Modernism:

Lois Stone

Phillip Cotton

The Phantom Gallery will look at how the city influences art, and artists transform the city by contributing to civic dialogue and quality of life. These installations will produce "Creative Conversations" presenting artists speaking about their art.

2020 Program virtual gallery openings will focus on Examining the State of Our Environment- and having conversations with artists in their studios. 

The aim of the Phantom is to examine changes in current curatorial production and to develop innovative displays in relation to virtual spaces. "Curatorial Practice" explores the impact of the urban environment on the artist and their work, and the contributions that artists make to the vitality of a city. The place where art is imagined and made, whether in a physical or virtual space, affects the idea, the process, and the final product. 

B. Ra-El Ali Thunder Zoom Virtual Open Studio Artist Interview

BRael Ali Thunder

https://www.facebook.com/brael.ali

BReal Ali  

http://www.braelali.com/

B'RAEL ALI THE ARTISAN

BRAEL.ALI13@GMAIL.COM

773-494-2391

IG: BRAELALITHUNDER

FB: BRAELALITHUNDER

TWR:BRAELALITHUNDER

SOUNDCLOUD: BRAEL THUNDER

https://phantomgallery.blogspot.com/2016/07/black-experimentalism-let-us-examine.html

My title B’Rael Ali is an affirmation that I use so that I always remain conscious of my spiritual identity and purpose. My purpose being a creative force sent from the cosmos, a bringer of truth.  I was born on the south side of Chicago and I have lived much of my life in the urban City. I am a graduate of the Southern Illinois University of Carbondale achieving a BFA in Painting and Drawing. I am also a spoken word artist. My artwork and poetry are infusions of urban life, history, and social commentary. I believe that knowledge of self is the true answer to anyone’s individual struggles because gaining it has improved my life tremendously. My artwork and poetry serve as a form of education, displaying the lessons and philosophies that help me during my struggles in order to help others through their struggles as well. Art is my language, Art is my way of solving the problems of today in order to create a better future.

 Much of my artwork features dancing figures. Dance is the physical cultivation of the Spirit through mental release and rhythmic processes. Dance historically, and contemporary is a large part of African and African American culture being used for ritual purposes, ceremonial, as well as social. My artwork depicts those traditional uses of dance through 2D drawings on paper that are enhanced with acrylic paint and pastels. I use the dancing figure as a creative vessel to express African American culture and issues. Through compositions designed from the figurative image of the dancer, I compose narratives that describe the African American experience, largely addressing identity, reconnecting African Americans to their African ancestry. The collaboration of symbols new and old creates the persona of "Afrofuturism" in my work, allowing my art to become ritual. 

The Phantom Gallery will look at how the city influences art, and artists transform the city by contributing to civic dialogue and quality of life. These installations will produce "Creative Conversations" presenting artists speaking about their art.

2020 Program virtual gallery openings will focus on Examining the State of Our Environment- and having conversations with artists in their studios. 

The aim of the Phantom is to examine changes in current curatorial production and to develop innovative displays in relation to virtual spaces. "Curatorial Practice" explores the impact of the urban environment on the artist and their work, and the contributions that artists make to the vitality of a city. The place where art is imagined and made, whether in a physical or virtual space, affects the idea, the process, and the final product. 

Join us on December 18th, 2020 for our final installment of Virtual Open Studio featuring:

Renee Baker- Experimental Film 

Post Modernism:

Lois Stone

Phillip Cotton

Virtual Open Studio Featuring Renee Baker / Artist

BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE- RENEE BAKER

Renée Baker has created sonic arenas and compositions for many museums, including MCA CHICAGO, MOFA St. Petersburg, Fl., Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MOMA, NY, ARTS CLUB OF CHICAGO, DESTEJILK MUSEUM, Zwolle, NL, MOMA NY, Spurlock Museum Champaign, Il, Krannert Art Museum, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Stony Island Arts Bank, DuSable Museum Chicago, Gardener Museum Boston, alongside prestigious music organizations: Symphony Center, Chicago. 

She had the privilege of being the

Visiting Resident Artist of the CHICAGO SYMPHONY 

African American Network 2017-2020.

Her film scores for BODY AND SOUL, THE SCAR OF SHAME, along with two new opera projects, BALDWIN CHRONICLES MIDNIGHT RAMBLE and A SOVEREIGN POUT, both premiered at Symphony Center in 2019 and upcoming in 2020. In addition, films with her scores have aired on NETFLIX and TCM.

Renee' Baker is the founding music director and conductor of the internationally acclaimed Chicago Modern Orchestra Project (CMOP), a polystylistic organization that grew from the plums of classical music as well as jazz. 

A member of the world-renowned collective Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Critical acclaim for her graphic scores novels has come from performances in Berlin, Poland, London, Scotland, and as far-reaching as Vietnam.

From the Archives: Symphony Center (Chicago)

As a disruptive composer and visual artist, there are few barriers to the creative turns of this composer, conductor, artist, and instrumentalist. As a featured ensemble, CMOP has been chosen to work with NewMusicUSA and the EarShot program of the American Composers Orchestra.

 

An expert at ensemble development and training, Renee’ developed the Mantra Blue Free Orchestra (Chicago), PEK’ Contemporary Project (Berlin), the progenitor of Bleueblue Walkers/Bass Kollektief, Twilight Struggles (Berlin) as well as being involved in starting over 20 cutting edge new music ensembles. Among them: TUNTUI, Wrinkled Linen, Chocolate Chitlin’ Caucus, Red Chai Watch, FAQtet, Project 6, Renee’ Baker’s AWAKENING, Baker ArTet, a Butoh ensemble BODY STRATA, and Strings Attached.

Ms. Baker has performed globally from Bimhuis (Amsterdam) to Symphony Center (Chicago) and was a founding member and Principal Violist of Chicago Sinfonietta for 26 years. Ms. Baker has composed over two thousand works for ensembles ranging from solo instruments, ballet, opera to significant orchestral works that bridge the classical, jazz, and creative music genres. Her ability to embrace various creative parameters in her work has led to commissions for the Chicago Sinfonietta, Berlin International Brass, PEK’s Contemporary Project, and DanceWright Project.

From the Archives:

As a disruptive force in composition, Ms. Baker’s eclectic visual score compositions led her to create a gestured conducting language she calls CCL/FLOW (Cipher Conduit Linguistics), which she employs when working with numerous cutting edge groups in Cologne, Berlin, Netherlands, London, Chicago, Portland (OR), and other ensembles around the world. 

From the Archives:

A further aspect of her composition skills is the development of her painted score exploratorium pieces for ensembles of variable sizes. Ms. Baker is also in demand as a lecturer and expert in nontraditional composition techniques and large ensemble “comprovisation”/ improvisation development.

Aspects of the art world permeate Ms. Baker’s work. Her performance artwork SUNYATA: TOWARDS ABSOLUTE EMPTINESS premiered at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA, Chicago) in May 2015. Her tactile score sculpture works were featured at the MCA Chicago as part of the Sunyata premiere.

Ms. Baker is the composer of four operas. Currently, she is working as a film score composer, having composed and released a new score for Oscar Micheaux’s “race film” masterpiece BODY AND SOUL (1925) with the music performed by her Chicago Modern Orchestra Project ensemble.

From the Archives:

Called the latest AACM visionary by Downbeat Magazine, Ms. Baker is one of the brightest and most fertile minds active in composition today.

From the Archives:

2020 Film Society Series Canceled due to COVID -19 Pandemic

Renee’ C. Baker, Conductor/Composer

Chicago Modern Orchestra Project /PEK’ Contemporary Project

reneebaker@comcast.net

reneebakercomposer.com

reneebakercomposer.net

chicagomodernorchestraproject.org

For more information:

http://www.billdoggettproductions.com/Black-Composers.html

http://www.billdoggettproductions.com/Black-Composers-2.html

http://www.billdoggettproductions.com/CH125.html *

Creative Conversation Presenting Artists Speaking About Their Art

"Art is Business"

ZOOM Virtual Gallery Tour Run of Show- November 20, 2020

Facebook: Live Stream

LINK: https://www.facebook.com/events

Phantom Gallery: http://bit.ly/Phantom_Tour Meeting ID: 859 7433 6882

www.cesarcondeart.com

B real Ali Thunder, photo by Toni Smith

Nicholas Conlon, "Last American Poet",  PINK GUN PROJECT

Virtual Open Studio- November Trolley Tour 2020

"Art is Business"

Alpha Bruton, Chief Curator at Phantom Gallery Chicago Network, a project that connects artists to temporary installation spaces,  aims to examine changes in current curatorial production and to develop innovative displays in relation to virtual spaces. "Curatorial Practice" explores the impact of the urban environment on the artist and their work, and the contributions that artists make to the vitality of a city. The place where art is imagined and made, whether in a physical or virtual space, affects the idea, the process, and the final product.

Alpha is looking at how the city influences art, and how artists transform the city by contributing to civic dialogue and quality of life.