Performance artist Hugh Musick uses this iconic symbol of play in a spectacle that can’t be missed. 

Hugh Musick is a Chicago-based artist and writer. His conceptual works aspire to transform ideas into physical realities.

In October 2007 the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs presented his work, Clark Street Bridge Percussion Orchestra. This site-specific piece involved the commission of an original score written for the bridge by the composer Eric Roth played with percussion mallets striking the steel structure of the bridge. More than 100 members of the public participated in the improvised section of the performance.

July 2007’s Harbingers was presented as part of The Nature of Art exhibition at the Lubeznik Art Center in Michigan, Indiana. Harbingers used origami frogs floated on lily pads of crude oil to show how amphibians absorb pollutants and serve as early indicators of the environmental effects of industrial contamination.

In May 2007, his work Bozos entailed filling the front window of the Chicago Office of Tourism with sixteen inflatable Bozo punching bags as part of The City of Chicago’s City at Play summer-long festival of activities. The work was meant as a provocation of sorts as an art object yearning to be knocked around and messed up. In July, Musick had four works displayed as part of Mark di Suvero’s Peace Tower exhibition in the Chicago Cultural Center.

Over the last decade, he has produced almost 1,000 works that combine collage and very short fiction. Twenty works will be on display from April 24–28, 2008 at The Artist Project held at The Merchandise Mart and presented as part of Artopolis.

A contributor to Ambidextrous, the magazine of The Stanford Design School he has written about the history of camouflage and most recently interviewed Phil Olsen, self-appointed captain of Beard Team USA™.

He is Associate Director of The Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology responsible for the school’s operations. Founded in 1937 by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy as The New Bauhaus, The Institute of Design is one of the world’s leading schools in teaching design methods and frameworks for innovation and new business development.