For the Smart Museum’s 50th anniversary, South Side artist Robert Earl Paige creates a multi-part pattern-based installation and sprawling public art project that invites communities into a collective experience of space.
Give the Drummer Some! is rooted in Paige’s decades-long practice as an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and educator who bridges cultural boundaries. A lifelong resident of the Woodlawn neighborhood just south of the University of Chicago campus, he merges African aesthetics, modernist painting, and Bauhaus architecture in creations that blur the line between fine art and craft. Paige’s infectious rhythm of repeating motifs originates as a complete environment in the Smart’s lobby, where the artist layers gold-trimmed fabrics and Chicago-inspired designs over the building’s walls, floors, and furniture. The project then extends outward, wrapping around the exterior of the Museum and ultimately out across the UChicago’s historic Hyde Park campus and beyond.
Through Paige’s iconic and wildly patterned designs, Give the Drummer Some! makes the Smart’s building more porous and inviting, and fosters a shared sense of belonging between campus, neighborhood, and global communities.
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An initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art in partnership with artists and organizations across the city, Art Design Chicago is a series of events and exhibitions that highlight the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.
