Ann Tyler, who grew up in Champaign, says she didn’t worry much about her safety in public until around 1975. That was when she moved to Chicago after completing a graduate degree in graphic design at the University of Illinois. “With coming out I realized how vulnerable I was because of being different,” she says. “I experienced some street harassment in Chicago, and it made me aware of the potential for heightened harassment or attack.”
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Tyler got a job designing books, brochures, and posters at a commercial studio. One day roofers working on a neighbor’s house shouted at her and her partner from the rooftop, asking if they were sisters. “People go out of their way,” she says. “Clearly they want to define the relationship in some way.” Her work from this time deals with “how people are viewed and what makes somebody verbally aggressive in anonymous public situations.”
Tyler, who’s taught at the School of the Art Institute since 1986, was inspired by an antique children’s book her great-aunt gave her that lets the reader mix and match different animal heads and bodies. Tyler’s more sinister version encourages the reader to mix grainy newspaper photos of the two victims with Acremant’s statements and fragments of a dog and a chicken. “Part of it is trying to understand that no one can understand how one is seen,” she says. “I could easily be seen in the same way.”
Tyler will discuss and sign copies of her work Sunday from 5 to 6:30 at Women & Children First Bookstore, 5233 N. Clark (773-769-9299). It’s free. –Cara Jepsen
