Polly Ullrich was a new friend and Chicago art critic who died suddenly in a car accident on Wednesday, July 6. Her feature article about sound in art in Chicago, “Making Worlds: Chicago Sound As Sculpture,” in Sculpture Magazine, mentioned important figures and resources in our local community, including my work with Chicago Phonography. With publication of her article, Polly was given support to organize a panel discussion on sound art in Chicago for the annual Art Chicago exposition on Saturday, April 30. She moderated with featured speakers Andrea Polli, Shawn Decker, and Christopher Janney. We enjoyed a nice dinner afterward, and were looking forward to attending the Sound Art Theories Symposium at SAIC, in November. It would have been fun to continue the conversation on sound and its role in the arts. As Duncan McKenzie wrote, “Polly, we miss you already…”

Polly was amazing and her passing is a loss to our art world and local community. She was kind, thoughtful and often set an example that was so blindingly hopeful that it was hard not to follow. I will forever remember her curiosity, interest, enthusiasm, and commitment to fostering a critical community. She will be missed by all of us that knew her and by this community.

Read the rest of Duncan’s post and Polly’s obituary on the Bad At Sports blog: http://badatsports.com/2011/polly-we-miss-you-already/

Here is an Audioboo I recorded at Art Chicago of Polly introducing the panel discussion: http://audioboo.fm/boos/345584-panel-sound-art-in-an-era-of-flow

My friend Keith Anwar died on Monday, July 5, 2010.

I’ve known Keith since 1982 as a brave steelworker, historian, socialist, technician with the Chicago Transit Authority, and playwright. His play, Kabulitis won the Dionysos Cup in the Polarity Ensemble’s New Plays competition this past May. It was read at the Josephenium, while I was performing From a Fading Light at the St. Paul’s Cultural Center. I missed the reading but ran into Keith and his wife Connie then. He was looking fine. We had a brief chat before we hurried off to our respective performances, not knowing that would be the last time we’d see each other. A few years earlier, I had the honor of reading the part of one of the play’s main character at the Oak Park Public Library.

Kabulitis is based on the lives of Keith’s parents who lived in Afghanistan. Keith wrote the afterword to his father’s book, Memories of Afghanistan, published by in 2004.