Today, Tonight: Tele Vision SAIC AIADO Exhibition Opening Reception, Panel Discussion

Kristina Jnuskaite-Sparks, mediating the edge (click images for larger view)

Today, Monday, June 11 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., the School of the Art Institute AIADO will be holding an opening reception for Tele Vision, this year's graduate thesis exhibition of the work of its emerging designers in the fields of architecture, interior architecture and designed objects.

Tele Vision, interpreted through its Greek and Latin roots, means “seeing from a distance.” The projects presented in the 2012 graduate design show share a long-view perspective, far-reaching in speculation, application, or duration. The exhibition is curated and designed by SAIC faculty member and architect Odile Compagnon with fellow faculty member Lisa Smith and Caroline Linder, who are partners in the design brand ODLCO and SAIC alumni (MDes 2008). Tele Vision features work by 45 SAIC students finishing their graduate degrees in seven programs

 The exhibition runs through July 21st, in the Sullivan Galleries, 33 North State, 7th Floor (you know - right above Target! ) The Galleries are open Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00 a.m., - 6:00 p.m.

Pierina Benvenuto Giorgetti,
North Lawndale Argriculture Park

The reception will be preceded by a panel discussion at 3:30, also in the Sullivan Galleries, which will "summarize and expand upon the themes that emerged during a day of critiques of the work the students included in the exhibition.  The panel will include Lisa Norton, moderator,  Professor of Sculpture and Designed Objects at SAIC; Obi Nwazota, architect, designer, and co-founder of Orange Skin; Martin Klaeshen, Adjunct Associate Professor at IIT and Principal in the architecture practice “HouseHaus” based in Chicago and Germany; Gillion Carrara, teacher of History of Fashion at SAIC and a highly regarded metalsmith exploring the relationship between materials, design, and function; and Pierina Benvenuto Giorgetti, an architect with roots in Chile, Argentina, and Europe, the editor of Revista Ciudad y Arquitectura, and the first prize winner in the recent North Lawndale Urban Agriculture Park Competition. From the student side, there will be 2012 graduates Sia Khorrami from Architecture and Shelley Getzendanner from Designed Objects.

Flowers for an invisible hulk

The Chicago Flower & Garden Show opens on Saturday at Navy Pier, running through Sunday the 13th, and it includes a number of "unique feature" gardens that includes everything from Captain Bligh's notorious breadfruit trees, a "One Goal, One Garden" for a rabid Black Hawk's fan from Tony Butterworth of Christy Webber, and this proposal, from a  School of the Art Institute student design team under the direction of Odile Compagnon.  Garden #25 - Growing in a New Direction takes as its on-the-surface unpromising the electrical substation that stubbornly endures at 10 East Lake, between the Wit Hotel and Harold L. Washington college . . .

click images for larger view

. . . a large, barren court before a stripped-down neoclassic hulk, behind an unfriendly gate which you shouldn't chain your bike to.  It's so blank and receded, it's urban-invisible.  Hundreds - if not thousands - pass by it every day without seeing it. The SAIC students imagine a

garden climbing the walls up into the sun. Imagine dancing lights that showcase the architecture of surrounding buildings. And imagine all the lighting and irrigation powered by a wind turbine, by solar panels and by energy captured from the roaring passage of L trains. From walls of plants to a curtain of LED lights, from fescue and cyclamen to a neon lightning bolt, this garden suggests the lively ideas that erupt when artists, designers, schools, corporations, and industry put their heads together to create sustainable solutions for urban living.

hey, as Judy Tenuta might say, "It could happen!"  It would certainly provide a relief to glum substation's annual summer festival of pigeons.  There's no law that, just because you're in the shadow of the "L", you have to be dour and glum, as well.

More information on all the special gardens here.

I've never been to a Flower & Garden Show - maybe I should check this one out.  I, myself, like to press wild flowers, although, truth be told, no matter how hard I do, they usually still refuse to comment.  In any event, it's a sign that winter's long oppression is lifting, and that in just weeks we'll be seeing the likes of this again . . .