A PD Invitation
From April 26 to June 15, 2019 Chicago artist Alberto Aguilar had a retrospective at Gallery 400. As part of this major exhibition he invited many of his past collaborators to contribute programing during the run of the show. This programing ranged from artist’s performances to artist-led participatory events. All events were open to the general public. I created an artist-teacher professional development workshop in collaboration with Marcela Torres (Gallery 400), Scott Sikkema, and Mark Diaz (both Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education). The workshop—entitled A PD Invitation and conceived as an artwork itself— was held on May 11 and consisted of 9 participants and three parts: 1. A dialogue with Marcela about Alberto’s show around the question, “where is the pedagogy in art, and where is the art in pedagogy?”, 2. a creative response using only 8.5” x 11” sheets of paper led by Mark, and 3. a guided group conversation by Scott and I on Alberto’s rug piece Sensitive Equipment (2012). The poster for A PD Invitation (seen here) is purposefully not an actual Facebook invite, rather it is an Illustrator-drawn replica that mimicked Alberto’s Facebook invitation for his 2009 A Personal Dinner Invitation, from which the name A PD Invitation is derived.
