Evil Clown Reception on N. Halsted
In the first event of its kind, all the participants of the 7th Annual North Halsted Street Halloween Parade are to be guests at a reception in their honor. The occasion is a neighborhood celebration of the “art” that came from the Evil Clown Project in last year’s parade. Guests will include the evil clowns, makeup artists, musicians, street performers, fire breathers, the parade committee and others who came together in the unprecedented event.
“It may seem strange to re-live Halloween in April, but everything about this has been pretty strange,” said Jim Ludwig, President of the Triangle Neighbors Association. “The art will be an event in itself.”
The Evil Clown Reception will be held on Thursday, April 22, at Roscoe’s Tavern, 3400 N. Halsted St., from 6 pm to 10 pm. An awards ceremony will be held, and 21 stunning evil clown portraits by Dimitre will be unveiled for the first time.
The Evil Clown Project started when parade organizers asked Chicago Assistant Water Management Commissioner Tom LaPorte to help establish the “Evil Clown” theme at last year’s parade. They wanted him to be the official Evil Clown leading the parade. Before he was done, he had assembled 5 makeup artists, 30 volunteer evil clowns (both actors and friends), arranged for WNEP Theater to become Clown Central, recruited a clown rock band, and won the support of both Ludwig’s team and the parade producers at Chicago Special Events Management (CSEM).
“We had a good feeling about this, and it just kept getting better,” said CSEM producer Courtney Lohmann. Every time Tom and his team called up, there was something new,” she said.
The make-up artists were told they’d be treated “like concert pianists” for an evening, and given the best materials. Local photographer Dimitre volunteered his time to make portraits of the evil clowns, providing them with documentation of their work. The Evil Clown Reception will celebrate the event, and showcase Dimitre’s photographs, which have been printed on canvas (3’ by 4’), by Sergio Castro. Castro’s employer, Hewitt Associates, supported his efforts with time and material.
Among the evil clowns were Alderman Tom Tunney (44th) and Mike O’Connor, brand manager for Effen Vodka. Effen immediacy signed on to help sponsor the reception.
“Then we got ambitious,” says LaPorte. “We assembled—for the first time—all of the street performance groups in town. This was the first time they all came together, and it worked well.”
“The great thing was that everyone got what they hoped for here,” said Ludwig. “The parade got an explosion of color and spectacle. The makeup artists get stunning documentation. Dimitre gets a gallery of remarkable images. Everyone came together for all the right reasons,” he said.
The 7th Annual North Halsted Street Halloween Parade far exceeded all previous years with 10,000 people lining the street. The reception will see a number of the original artists performing.
The project was a precursor to the Lake View Dance Project, in which organizers recruited 60 modern dancers to perform in stores during a local “Jollypalooza” shopping festival in exchange for in-kind sponsorship by merchants.
The public is invited to the Evil Clown Reception without charge |
