March is Youth Art Month
All March in the Main Library Lobby Community Space: We’re delighted to welcome back a Youth Art Month display (pictured above and below). Student artists in grades K-5, from all eight Oak Park Elementary School District 97 schools, contributed their art to this display. Come in for a close viewing all month!
Portrait Studies: Art from Life by Delia Jean Hickey
Now at Maze Branch: Hickey created the 15 portraits on display in drawing classes she took starting in 2019. They are “a testament to the development of artistic discipline, growing powers of observation, and capacity for reflection and expression,” Hickey says.
“People interest me,” Hickey says. “I am delighted by the uniqueness and variety of individual people as well inspired by our common humanity. My desire to express and share this fascination is what led me to become an artist.”
Echoes: The Stories of Male Survivors Overcoming Sexual Trauma by Robert Marshall
Opening March 14 in the Main Library Gallery: Explore an interactive art exhibit—presented by Dr. Robert Marshall, CEO and Founder of I Am Man, Inc.—featuring photographs and stories of male survivors overcoming sexual trauma.
Through research and restorative work with male survivors from urban communities around the country, this work exists to humanize the lived experiences of male survivors of sexual trauma.
Watch Marshall talk about the project on WGN Morning News »
Live events
Robert Marshall and The Survivors Circle share the lived experiences of male survivors overcoming of sexual trauma.
- March 25, 2-5 pm
- April 15 (TBA)
Alkebulan Shadows by Jason Dorsey
Through March 11 in the Main Library Gallery: The exhibit Alkebulan Shadows by Jason Dorsey, a documentary photographer born and based in Oak Park, features portraits of Indigenous people in Africa.
For Dorsey, who is African American, this project is personal. “My lineage begins there,” he says. “That’s a big part of my fascination and pursuit of documenting these wonderful people.”
“I’m extremely proud knowing that I derive from them,” he adds. “I feel I have a delicate duty of representing these people as properly as I can through my camera and testimony.”
