Granite Amit collaborates with10 young artists-

performance and installation 

 Recurrent Dreams project is a collaboration between Granite Amit, an artist and therapist working with ten youth participants from the Southwest Youth Collaborative (SWYC) within the vibrant University of Hip Hop.
As these ten youths embraced their identities, histories and powerful narratives, Amit and SWYC witnessed their powerful transformation into young talented artists. At times struggling with issues of absent parents, incarcerated parents, and semi- homelessness to homelessness; using urban dance and visual art forms including break-dance, footwork, graffiti and mural art, they communicated their narratives with resiliency, vitality, brilliance, courage, integrity and talent. In a process led by Amit, they developed artistic pieces printed on lenticular lenses
articulating their changing self-perceptions and their role in society. Recurrent Dreams are psychological substances, routed in the past, which are forced to surface, to be decoded and recognized by the waking mind as a reality. And from this emerge the dreams these youth communicate for their future - to be recognized and realized as artists.
The young artists participating: 

Brandon Reynolds· Chris Mitchell    

Darios McGraw · Keith Redmond  

Lethaniel Barajas · Robert Alonzo

Stewart Redmond · Trinidad Castillo  

Xavier Marrero · Yessica Gallardo      

The Southwest Youth Collaborative (SWYC) is a community-based organization that
works with children, youth and families on the southwest side of Chicago. Their
mission is to inspire youth, families, and community members from diverse economic,
racial, and ethnic backgrounds to become leaders in their communities. Through a
self-transformation approach, youth are engaged in innovative programs and services
that focus on positive youth development, grassroots organizing, advocacy and social
change initiatives.
University of Hip Hop; citywide collective, founded at SWYC, embodies and promotes HIP HOP
as "Healthy Independent People Helping Other People". The goal of University
of Hip Hop programming is to build a movement for positive personal & social
change through technical instruction in urban art forms as well as creative cultural
engagement.

Visit www.swyc.org for more information.

Recurrent Dreams Project is funded by the Leo S. Guthman Fund and partially by
ARC gallery outreach project.    

Kina Bagovska's new exhibition, "Earth and Fire," seeks to explore and understand the relationship of the female figure to those created in ancient Bulgarian civilization. Ancient peoples have long made statuettes as metaphoric references to creation. Earth is an expression of the female spirit and Fire refers to male power. Both are part of the nature of humankind.

She draws and paints diverse body shapes which allude to the shape of excavated figurines but exceed their original size. Kina continually searches for translucency using graphic lines from the first layer as reflections of light in order to reveal movement and depth in space.