SEE IT: Forty Chicago artists, designers and architects as well as students and faculty at Chicago’s Harrington College of Design will participate on Thursday in “Home Tweet Home,” the annual Birdhouse Auction to benefit the Chicago House & Social Service Agency. Kelly Edwards and Ali Azhar, stars of HGTV’s “Design on a Dime,” also will create one-of-a-kind birdhouses to be auctioned to benefit Chicago House, now commemorating its 22nd year. Since 1985, Chicago House has provided housing and support services and has grown to include employment placement to men, women and children living with HIV/AIDS. Hours: 6 to 9 p.m. Location: The Museum of Contemporary Art, 202 E. Chicago Ave. Tickets: $55 in advance, $65 at the door. For information and tickets, call the Chicago House Ticketline at 773-248-5200, ext. 303, or visit www.chicagohouse.org.
— Mary Daniels
GET IT: Hey, grads, a piece of paper that represents four years (well, allegedly four years) of hard study and, perhaps, a $160,000 investment deserves proper presentation. But, what with paying off that college tuition debt, is going out and paying for a handsome frame for your recently acquired college diploma at the top of your to-do list? Artists Frame Service thinks so and understands your reality. So they’re offering to custom frame your college diploma gratis until July 31. (Was Latin in your course load?) Diplomas actually can be from any graduating year. And you don’t have to buy anything to get your free framing (up to $125 value) — though we won’t be surprised if you succumb to temptation.
1867 N. Clybourn Ave. 773-248-7713. artistsframeservice.com.
— Elaine Matsushita
GREEN IT: You’ve moved up to a sleeker, smarter, fancy-shmancy cell phone and have no need for that old clunker phone anymore. But that doesn’t mean someone else might not. The Ravenswood Community Council in Chicago was on to this notion and has been collecting old cell phones, refurbishing them and making them 911-enabled for senior citizens and domestic violence victims. The program is partially funded by the City of Chicago’s Department on Aging and distributes phones throughout the city. Call 773-784-0400 to donate a phone, or contact Anne Kamykowski, executive director of the Ravenswood Community Council, find out how to start a similar program in your community.
— E.M.
READ IT: It’s entertaining to browse and fantasize through “1001 Gardens You Must See Before You Die” (Barron’s Educational Series, 960 pages, $34.99). A variation on a fad in travel books, it gives a few paragraphs and one picture to public gardens from Africa to British Columbia to China, heavy on museums, palaces and grand country homes. Britain is heavily represented (it’s a British book), as is the rest of Europe (there are more gardens mentioned in Romania than in Chicago). You can ponder your own taste in garden styles or concoct elaborate imaginary itineraries. But perhaps the most useful reason to keep this book on hand would be to check for interesting side trips in a region you were thinking of visiting anyway.
— Beth Botts
CALL IT: If you’re planning home improvements this summer, the first thing on your to-do list should be to dial 811. By calling the new, national “Call Before You Dig” number, launched last spring by the Common Ground Alliance, homeowners can get their underground utility lines marked for free and avoid problems. More than 700,000 incidents of utility damage occur each year, according to the alliance.
Whether you’re building an addition, adding a deck, installing a fence or irrigation system, putting up a mailbox or simply planting a tree, an 811 call before embarking on any digging can prevent personal injury, potential fines, repair costs and the disruption of service to an entire neighborhood. Visit www.call811.com for more information, and remember: Call a few days before your scheduled project to allow time for the request to be processed.
— Terri Sapienza, The Washington Post
SURF IT: At first, the picture seems like a slightly coarse rendition of Georges-Pierre Seurat’s pointillist masterpiece “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” But look closer. It’s made up of photographs of aluminum cans — 106,000 of them, which Seattle artist Chris Jordan says is the number used in the U.S. every 30 seconds. The real artwork, part of his “Running the Numbers” series that represents statistics to comment on American consumption, is 60 by 92 inches and you would have to go to New York to see it. But you can get an idea of the impact from Jordan’s Web site, www.chrisjordan.com . While there, look around and find the 8 million toothpicks, representing the amount of wood used in mail-order catalogs every month; the 2 million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the U.S. every five minutes; the 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number retired every day; the 60,000 plastic shopping bags, as many as are used every five seconds. Makes you think.
— B.B.
SEE IT: The living art of Paula Hayes will be on display at the Rhona Hoffman Gallery, 113 N. Peoria St., from Friday until Aug. 3. Hayes creates modern bottle gardens: elegant terrariums of hand-blown glass planted with minuscule bamboo, tropical figs, elm and date trees, moss, ferns, clover and more. Also on display are trees planted in biomorphic containers made of silicone that change shape as the trees’ roots spread, and sculptures with a nature theme. The New York-based Hayes began crafting her tiny ecosystems, around $6,500 to $18,000, in 2003 as a way to combine art with her love of gardening. To learn more about the artist, visit www.paulahayes.com . For more information about the show, call the gallery at 312-455-1990.
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— Marcia Borucki
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