Engaging with my kitchen studio as a pie shop, I am conjuring up spells for queer pleasures on the daily to celebrate and honor our existence, communal care, and beauty. It has offered me so much healing in return. Everything is so absolutely uncertain all the time. The only certain thing is how temporary everything always is. 

I can see the physical changes the rapidly rising pressure Corona Virus has made to my ice cream shop, Pretty Cool Ice Cream. Like fossils of long by-gone times, we still have a sign declaring the water fountain out of order next to a box of magnetic letters pulled from our giant magnetic wall, relics of our first feeble attempts at public safety.

It’s why we don’t use mirrors tilted at the clouds as traffic signs, at least anymore.

Public Media Institute's Lumpen Radio Twitch Channel will host public online after parties for Common Field Convening, a now-virtual national gathering of arts organizers.

A poetic mixtape between two roommates by Noa/h Fields and Stevie Cisneros Hanley

Artists, Únete La Villita member, and Associate Teen Librarin, Sara Heymann, imagines the lungs of La Villita.

Little Village is a remarkable neighborhood of hardworking people that live or work there, from our ambitious mothers and fathers to students who never give up on a neighborhood that suffers from all types of injustices, unfairness, and inequality. Moments like these, while seeing the world change in front of our eyes, can take a heavy toll on us.

Little Village students Giovanni Macias Valadez and Melissa Regalado reflect on the times.

The device used to arrange cut flowers in water is called a flower frog. I’m not exactly sure why. The flower frog is essentially a frame. It mutes the clamor so we finally notice something that has always been there.

The majority of the people I have come to know in Chicago are remarkably like these flower frogs. Quarantine times is a flower frog. This is that. I didn’t do anything here. I stood very still. I saw what was already there and I moved the frame a little to the left. You’ll love this. Throw a heavy wool blanket over everything and peek through this small tear in the fabric. - Alex Chitty

Social practice fiber artist, Aram Han Sifuentes, shares the struggle of convincing her parents to close their dry-cleaning shop during the pandemic.