SCAFFOLD
Activating Comfort Station’s public lawn, SCAFFOLD returns for the 2023 season as a site for artist intervention. Built from common and utilitarian construction materials, the steel bones of SCAFFOLD exist as a framework for artists to build on and within, hosting installations, performances, and interventions throughout the spring, summer and fall. The structure is erected as a home for Chicago’s extended art community to gather and build common ground.
Designed by Via Chicago Architects + Diseñadores in the summer of 2021, SCAFFOLD’s original installation acted as an opportunity to visually announce the reopening of Comfort Station after a year of darkness. In 2021, SCAFFOLD’s inaugural season hosted a handful of programs including Anatomy for Interiors, The Royal Sessions from the Chicago Black Artist Union, and Noise Prom, among others. The structure serves as the home of Comfort Station’s annual Dia de los Muertos celebration in partnership with the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, which brings together Latine communities to question “who/what are we honoring” through a month-long series of workshops and activations by local artists and organizers. Each year, SCAFFOLD continues to grow and serves as a space to expand our understanding of the potential of public space.
2024 programming includes
February 1-29: Jeffrey Yard, “Seds and Structures”
In situ, architectural (archeological?) project
Materials Burlap , possibly other garden fabric, twine, (snow, ice, rain)
Everyday working on building/changing the 3 structures
Maintenance and Stewardship ; Trash Identification & Removal
(Woven, sewn, strewn)
Logan Square aeolian deposition
Glacial Till Morraine definition
Comfort means care
Possibly repair , grandma
Sewing like fly fishing
What am I to catch?
If not a cold,
The scaffolds will look like houses, rocks, piles of shit, or just comfort stations
More information at www.yard.studio (expect delays) {This site will also evolve}
January 4-31: Isaac Couch, “Guardian Angels (Study)”
Guardian Angels are heavy duty experimental garments made for a purpose imposed by the wearer. Stepping away from the Western tradition of sculptural clothing, these garments are made without 3D form. However, these garments can be twisted, gathered, and stretched to fit the user or situation. Historically, Guardian Angels have been used as garment, shelter, rain catcher, or wind breaker.
In this study, Couch explores the 3D shapes that emerge when the body is not involved. He uses recycled tarps made for "work", disregarding their manufactured application while keeping the context. This study is a way for Couch to connect further with both the material and the environment. The goal is to find new 3D shapes that can interact with both the environment they find themselves in, and eventually the body during further garment exploration.
2023 programming includes
October 11-November 2: Yutian Liu, “Navigation: Flags in Flux”
Navigation: Flags in Flux comprises multiple sets of flags that are printed, cut, shifted, and sewn together through secondary fabrication. It draws inspiration from the maritime signal flag pattern, which the artist considers a visual linguistic system. Positioned at the striking junction of three-way boulevards, the flags appear to function as a lighthouse amidst the bustling flow of people and traffic. However, the artist's actions of cutting and re-sewing further distort the flags, allowing for enciphering, glitching, puzzling, and mis-navigation. Paradoxically, this transforms what initially seems to be a signal installation into something that is nearly nonsensical—a pure linguistic game.
September 2-30: Eseosa Ekiawowo Edebiri
Come Play is an installation taking note of the loss of color and play in American society as we age. It is the addition of what's deemed child-like colors and an invitation to pause, to rest even, during your day. It says "be free. be soft and silly and those walls built to protect you, aren't necessary right now. it feels like be vulnerable- i dare you too."
August 2-29: Izzy Cho, “North, East, South, West”
Using the literal framework of SCAFFOLD as inspiration, North, East, South, West references systems of pung soo jiri and feng shui to usher in good luck and fortune into the “home”. N, E, S, W incorporates said “auspicious” objects and symbols with embedded text appropriated from Asian and Asian American poets. Through iconography, directionality, and text, connections are made between domestic geomancy and diasporic experiences both as desires to be grounded in space and place.
Thank you to:
"i love you to the moon" & by Chen Chen
"From Blossoms" by Li-Young Lee
"Litany for the Animals Who Run From Me" by Hieu Minh Nguyen
"The Gardener 85" by Rabindranath Tagore
"A Sheaf of Pleasant Voices" by John Yau
Izzy Cho is a Chicago based artist and charm maker.
July 3-29: Becs Epstein & Vince Phan, “The Grass Ceiling”
The Grass Ceiling is an installation commenting on the American obsession with lawns and its impacts on native plants, insect species and the environment. Utilizing SCAFFOLD as a strucure for a pulley system to raise the grass bed (aka the ceiling) off the ground, the installation aims to creates new space for plant native and bee-friendly plant seeds to grow. Through the month of July, Becs Epstein and Vince Phan, will take care of the seeds planted in the soil in which the grass ceiling is removed.
On July 8, the artists will host a performance in which Epstein will apologize to past and current plant species on the public lawn. The apologies will be written on a flag that will be displayed on SCAFFOLD throughout the month and viewers can write their own apologies on the flag.
June 1-30: Madison Manning
For the month of June leading up to the Logan Square Arts Festival, Madison Manning will be creating a woven installation on Comfort Station’s SCAFFOLD. Utilizing construction materials, yarn and donated materials, Madison will transform SCAFFOLD into an interactive space with soft, adorned walls and pseudo-awnings extending off the structure.
The project will conclude with a community weaving workshop at the Logan Square Arts Festival on June 25 from 12-4 pm. All are welcome and those in attendance will weave with traditional and non-traditional materials directly on SCAFFOLD, culminating in two large community panels. Madison will be working on the installation multiple days a week and the public are welcome to stop by to hang out, drop off material donations or weave on the community panels.
May 8-May 31: Johnny Doley, “Goodbye Flags”
When periodical cicadas lay their eggs in the tips of trees, the tree responds by cutting off that twig from nutrients. These egg saturated branches are referred to as flags as they slowly die and fall to ground. “Goodbye flags” takes inspiration from this process of cicada birth and stick death, drawing a connection between human and tree flags to explore the many ways human and non-human symbols and structures intersect.
April 1-May 7: Vanessa Viruet
A Chicago-based fiber artist of Puerto Rican descent, Vanessa Viruet creates monumental scale artworks to examine complex histories rooted in textiles, like identity, cultural heritage, gender and class. Drawing from the history of flags as emblems of cultural identity, queer cruising, and gang allegiance, Viruet uses the traditional bandana paisley to mark ever-shifting space in the central square of a gentrifying neighborhood. “Exaggerating the scale is a symbolic gesture of intervention,” she says, “a way of colonizing and claiming my space in the world as a queer, Latina woman from el Barrio.”
The month-long installation will close with a community event on Saturday May 5.
March 1-29: Maria Burundarena
Situated in the midst of Logan Square’s commons, SCAFFOLD offers an interesting intersection in Burundarena’s practice. Wrapped entirely in reflective silver emergency blankets, SCAFFOLD’s surface becomes an illusion as the material picks up the lights of the square, passing cars at a major intersection of the Boulevard system, and distorted mirroring of passersby. “Like water and light, the image is something that is flexible and does not have a frame or a shape. While contouring the spaces that are given, I explore the boundaries of the image as a material itself. I look to question our relationship to how we experience and understand what we are seeing, our depth of feeling,” says the artist.
Stay tuned for the ongoing roll out of programming throughout the season!