As someone who comes from the Midwest, land of rolling hills, tall corn and flat lands, a place with that name doesn't exactly belong among the sparkling antennas and dark, black iron of the Hancock and Sears towers.
A name like 'The Flatlands' doesn't seem to fit a city like Chicago, at least not instinctually . Yet here it sits on the South side of the city surrounded by everything that isn't flat. Not even close. Well, that's not entirely true. Once the doors open and one is inside these walls everything is flat but only for a while and only to serve at the pleasure of the artist that stands before it with bottle, blade or brush in hand.
It is run on an energy of people. A humming that comes from inside the brain, the soul and the heart. This place has a lifeblood and it's made of ink mixed with sweat that pumps out colors Crayola doesn't tell us about as kids. These colors emanate from a variety of cones. Pressurized and pointed because you never know what will come next. They spread from bristles and fingertips. It is a living, breathing creature that allows visitors but never truly lets them in. One doesn't need a passport to come here, but one may feel jet-lagged upon the return to Earth.
This place is poetry in words expressed visually. It is camaraderie in solitude. It is home to some. A rest stop for others. A place that one may not love at first but will always want to leave last.
Ruled by creativity. Run on 808's. Rotated on an axis of late nights and the lyrics that the people of this world spit. An individual sound. A communal silence. A place ruled by a common passion. The result a common good. Uneven, rough, and jagged as the streets of the city on which it stands.
A land unto itself. Full of cramped, cluttered nooks and crannies packed with everything and nothing all at the same time. Masterpieces and just pieces. One man's trash. Another mans treasure. In this place something could be both to the same person depending on the time, place and mood.
Here colors have their own scent, a scent one is powerless not to take on. Lining its bowels are materials waiting to be molded. Or resting in a flash of new found inspiration, molded but forgotten. Layers upon layers of project upon project try desperately to blend into the floor or the walls. Failing miserably to do so, of course.
Scraps lie in piles on tables and against pipes wishing for the proverbial dog to gobble them up or bury them. In every corner one can find mismatched liquid rainbows. The harshness of metal penetrating, banging or protruding. Panels dripping wet with what is here today and possibly gone tomorrow.
There is plastic and piping. Trees get blown. Bottles get emptied. Conversation flows both with words and without. Art becomes greater than artwork.
It is an amalgamation of paint. Wood. Paper. It is a concoction of film. Cotton. Fumes. A never-ending bass line that makes dreads, braids and baseball caps bob up and down. It don't matter if you’re black or white here. For real. This place, this world opens itself up to you as long as you have access to someone who has the key.
Welcome to The Flatlands.
A landscape that makes the name so much more than ironic.
1 comment:
its nice when someone else sees what we don't see :)
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