December 10th is Jane Addams Day. In 1931, Jane Addams became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. In December, Hull-House observes Jane Addams Day as a celebration of Addams’ lifelong commitment to peace and justice.
In honor of Jane Addams Day, please join Jane Addams Hull-House Museum for the book launch of Invisible Labors: Reviving Histories of Women’s Land Work in the Blue Island Ridge Communities, Chicago, Illinois. Authors Susannah Papish, artist and Director of boundary gallery, and Melissa Potter, artist and Professor at Columbia College Chicago, will be in dialogue with printer Jacob Lindgren of Inga Books and Tom McCormick of Thomas McCormick Gallery about the project from the genesis of the garden design to the development of the artist book. The conversation will also feature a video interview with designer Tamara Becerra Valdez. Like Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Invisible Labors connects the efforts and desires of Chicago’s Progressive Era social reformers to women working today across the arts and social justice spheres.
Event Schedule
5:00 pm Museum will be open for special hours so that guest can view Alice DeWolf Kellogg Tyler’s paintings throughout the Museum.
6:00-8:00 pm presentation and discussion with Invisible Labors authors and contributors.
Invisible Labors began as a garden installation project for the 2021 Terrain Biennial. Written and conceived by Susannah Papish and Melissa Potter, Invisible Labors details the fascinating and mostly under-discovered histories of women and the manner in which land-stewarding and the Progressive movement influenced their creative work. The publication tells the stories of the Potawatomi black ash basket-making tradition, Kate Starr Kellogg and Alice D. Kellogg Tyler, sisters who were closely associated with the Hull-House settlement house in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and cartographer and artist Louise Barwick.
Alice D. Kellogg Tyler’s legacy is featured in the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum initiative Learning Together: Art, Education, and Community and her paintings hang in the Museum as they did during Jane Addams's lifetime.
About Alice DeWolf Kellogg Tyler (1862 - 1900)
Born to a socially progressive Chicago family, Kellogg studied art both in Chicago and Paris. Kellogg later became involved with Hull-House, where she would teach and display her work until her death. Kellogg worked to make improvements for women artists at a time when women and their art were considered inferior. By forming The Palette Club for women artists, exhibiting her work at The World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 and sharing her gifts with the communities at Hull-House, Kellogg was an exemplary artist and educator. Jane Addams eloquently eulogized Kellogg after she passed away in 1900, saying:
Her pictures hang upon the various walls of Hull-House; they attract by a rare quality of beauty and power but always give out clearly this message: Do not consent that life shall become dreary and commonplace.
About the Invisible Labors book
The publication includes Potter’s interview with basket-maker Kelly Church, Anishinaabe, who carries on the Potawatomi black–ash basket weaving tradition and also tells the stories of educator Kate Starr Kellogg and sister and artist Alice D. Kellogg, who were closely associated with Jane Addam’s Hull House in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Invisible Labors also amplifies the life of Louise Barwick, educator, geographer, cartographer and artist. For the collaboration, the title Invisible Labors has also come to signify the actual invisible labor and contributions that these women, along with many others, made to the Ridge area in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Papish and Potter worked with designer and artist Tamara Becerra Valdez, and printer Jacob Lindgren of Inga Bookshop, to create a limited edition artist book. The risograph publication includes Potter’s interview with Potawatomi basket maker Kelly Church, essays by Papish and Potter, archival photos, original artwork by the authors and Potter’s handmade burdock paper. The team has worked with care and attention to create a unique visual experience that mirrors the Invisible Labors garden design.
Tamara Becerra Valdez is an artist and educator who works at the intersection of archives, oral histories, material studies, and ecology. She has participated in national and international multi-disciplinary projects focused on art, preservation, and ecology, including: Tender House Project, City of Chicago Park District, Political Ecology: Platform Chicago, Whole Life Academy, and The Anthropocene Campus with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.
She has held residencies at ACRE and BOLT Residency at the Chicago Artists Coalition. In 2021, she was awarded a 3Arts Make A Wave grant. She received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and BFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Tamara is also a gardener, seed saver, and collective member at El Paseo Community Garden in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago.
Susannah Papish is a Chicago-based visual artist, curator and writer who earned a MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2002) and a BA in Art History from the University of Illinois at Chicago (1995). She has been a grant recipient from 3Arts, Artists Run Chicago, Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Chicago and the Illinois Arts Council. Papish is Director of boundary, a contemporary visual arts project space founded in 2017 and located in her renovated garage. In 2020, boundary was included in the Hyde Park Art Center's Artists Run Chicago 2.0. Papish was a member of The Center Program 2021 cohort at The Hyde Park Art Center and her paintings and collages have been exhibited at many Chicago-area spaces including solo shows at Skestos Gabriele Gallery and the Beverly Arts Center. Her writing has been published in Hyperallergic, Bridge Journal and 60 Inches from Center. A limited edition artist book entitled Invisible Labors written with collaborator Melissa H. Potter will be released in December 2022 with a reception at Jane Addams Hull House Museum.
Melissa Hilliard Potter is a feminist interdisciplinary artist, writer, and curator whose work has been exhibited in numerous venues including White Columns, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, to name a few. Her films have been screened at international film festivals, such as the Cinneffable and the Reeling International LGBT Film Festival.
Potter has been the recipient of three Fulbright Scholar grants, as well as funding from CEC ArtsLink, Trust for Mutual Understanding, and Soros Fund for Arts and Culture, all of which enabled her to build two papermaking studios at university art departments in Serbia and Bosnia & Hercegovina. In addition, she collaborated with women felt artisans and activists from Georgia through her project, “Craft Power,” with Miriam Schaer.
Melissa developed research, documentary and advocacy projects with ethnographers and intangible heritage experts to protect, interpret and archive endangered women’s handicrafts and social customs. In Chicago, this work extends to the history of the Hull-House arts and crafts movement and its contemporary influence in crafts media including hand papermaking and artists’ books.
As a curator, Potter’s exhibitions include “Social Paper: Hand Papermaking in the Context of Socially Engaged Art” with Jessica Cochran and “Revolution at Point Zero: Feminist Social Practice” with Neysa Page Lieberman. Her curatorial and recent hand papermaking projects, including “Seeds InService” with Maggie Puckett, have been funded by the Crafts Research Fund, Clinton Hill Foundation, The Nathan Cummings Foundation & Jane M. Saks, and the MAKER Grant.
A prolific writer, her critical essays have been printed in BOMB, Art Papers, Flash Art, Metropolis M, Hand Papermaking, and AfterImage among others.
Potter is a Professor at Columbia College Chicago and collaborates with artists in the medium of hand papermaking. She travels throughout the country teaching, lecturing, and conducting interviews.
Melissa lives and works in Chicago, IL.
