Exploring AMERICA'S COURTYARD
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The Artists

• Denise Milan and Ary Perez, creators of America's Courtyard

Chicago Artists

Frames of Reference

The six Chicago artists on this website, Nina Smoot-Cain, Jaun Angel Chavez, John Pitman Weber, Cynthia Weiss, Bernard Williams, and Mirtes Zierzynski, are studio artists, public artists, and artist-educators. The work they create, in both form and content, addresses multiple frames of reference.

These artists have directed large-scale outdoor, public art projects for many years. Each has developed his/her own design style that allows for narrating complex community themes. They have used mutiple pictoral languages in a single art work including figurative painting, patterned borders, cultural symbol systems, and close-cropped frames within panaramic vies. They use these forms to simultaneously depict political issues and personal responses.

In their studios, these artists work with similar multi-latered compositions to narrate more intimate stories.

• Nina Smoot-Cain

• Juan Angel Chavez

• John Pitman Weber

• Cynthia Weiss

• Bernard Williams

• Mirtes Zwierzynski

Bahia Arists

• Mestre Didi