Come
on an adventure with the Four Celestial Guardians! Explore seasons,
elements, and colors through storytelling, music, and dance!

Come
on an adventure with the Four Celestial Guardians: the White Tiger of
the West, the Black Tortoise of the North, the Azure Dragon of the East,
and the Vermilion Bird of the South!

Explore seasons, elements,
colors, and constellations through storytelling, music, and dance in
this interactive performance by Irene Hsiao in collaboration with tai
chi master Peter Wong, dancers Amanda Maraist and Darling Shear,
musicians Paige Brown and Hunter Diamond, and storyteller Penny Li.

Performances
are free, and art supplies will be provided to create fans to take home
in this all-ages event. Dress for the weather and wear comfortable
shoes for walking approximately one mile.

Guardians of the Earth and Sky

July 26, 2026, 2-4 PM

Jackson Park

6300 S. Cornell Ave

Free

ASL interpretation provided

Meet at Yoko Ono’s SKYLANDING: Skylanding
is just south of the north (Nancy C. Hays) bridge to Jackson Park’s
Wooded Island. Google maps to 6300 S. Cornell should navigate you quite
near. Via public transit, you can take Metra or the #6 bus to 57th
Street, then walk east to Jackson Park. If driving, there is a paid lot
on 1686 E. Hayes Drive just east of Cornell, which puts you south of the
Wooded Island — from there, walk east and cross the Stephen’s Bridge.
Once on the island, all paths lead to Skylanding — just keep walking
north! It’s about a 10-minute walk — see you there!

About the Artists

Irene Hsiao
is a dancer, writer, and multidisciplinary artist. She creates
site-specific participatory performance installations, a practice that
experiments with place and environment, created and found objects,
projections, community art, dance, and other live performance.
Currently, she is working on Shared Earth Flowing Water,
a performance series dedicated to peace, community, and the natural
world. She is the 2026 Artist in Residence at the Chinese Fine Arts
Society, inaugural Artist in Residence at the Smart Museum, first Artist
in Residence at 21c Museum Hotel Chicago, first Resident Artist at
Heritage Museum of Asian Art, 2022-23 Fellow at High Concept Labs, and a
2025 Radicle Resident at Hyde Park Art Center.

Vocalist, pianist and composer Paige Brown
believes in the use of voice as a channel, and the use of the
instrument/body as a voice. Having inherited a version of the deep,
resonant voice of her father and her late grandfather, she rejoices in
the ability to play inside that resonance, bringing that sound to bear
in songs that speak of joy, love, grief, and hope. She draws from a
broad spectrum of influences that range from high school madrigal
singers to college gospel choir, skipping from soul to funk to folk and
weaving through sounds somewhere in between. Emerging from her
compositional chrysalis, she is currently developing the inner
mechanisms and connections to deepen and externalize her own artistic
practice more fully, reacquainting herself with the simple, playful
practices that attracted her to Music, her first love.

Hunter Diamond
is a creative woodwind and sound artist based in Chicago. Though he is
most at home in the improvised music scene, a mixture of conceptual,
composed, and improvised performance keeps him perpetually present in
the interdisciplinary Chicago creative arts community. In 2021 Diamond
founded Curio Records, which serves as the primary outlet for his
recorded work. 2026 will see the release of several new recordings
including the debut album from Public Sentiment, the fifth album from
Black Diamond, and a string quintet about Israel/Palestine.

Titus Lau
is an illustrator from Chicago, working across diverse mediums of art
including fiber arts, graphic design, and 3d modeling. Recently
graduating from the CAAP program at SAIC, he has taken his love for
Chicago architecture as a future Yale undergraduate student. Connecting
with his Chinese identity, he creates pieces inspired by traditional
motifs and combining his signature style, incorporating modern elements
through detailed linework and striking compositions.

Penny Li
is a singer-songwriter who treats music as a personal diary—an
intimate, intuitive reflection of her observations, emotions, and
connections with the world. Multilingual, she creates and draws
inspiration from Chinese, English, Korean, and Japanese music. Based in
the Greater Chicago area, Penny is also an educator and development
professional passionate about the transformative power of art
interpretation and engagement. A lover of food, photography, psychology,
and theatre, she finds creativity in all aspects of life.

Amanda Maraist
is a dancemaker and performance community advocate making performance
work and arts programming in Chicago. Her work synthesizes mutualism,
play, world-building, and ethnographic research into practical somatic
strategies for thriving. She simultaneously produces her own artistic
performance work while also co-directing bim bom studios; an accessible,
sliding scale hourly movement rehearsal + performance space in Belmont
Cragin. These two efforts exist in symbiotic tandem: creating
performance that is collaborative and accessible – as well as creating
physical spaces within the dance ecosystem that fill gaps left by
evaporating institutions. Her commitment to support the community, and
the strategies employed to arrive at something that both survives and
thrives, show up in the aesthetics and actions of her performance and
the spaces she imagines.

Darling “Shear” Squire
is a Chicago native with Atlanta roots and trained in Ballet, Modern,
Jazz and African. After high school, Darling began dancing
professionally with Bubba Carr, Cher’s choreographer, Rhonda Henriksen,
Twyla Tharp, Tracy Vogt, Hinton Battle, and Lauri Stallings. As a
freelance dancer/ choreographer, Darling has worked with The Fly Honeys,
Soho House Chicago, EXPO Chicago, Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre, MCA,
Salonathon, Open TV and many others. Awards include: Impulstanz Between
Gestures scholarship (Vienna, Austria), Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab
Artist, CDF 10X10 Choreographer, Links Hall CoMission Fellowship, 3Arts
nominee (2019, 2022). Darling’s career has been one with a strong
spiritual center and allowance of universal well-being.

Peter Wong
is a fifth-generation practitioner of Yang Style Taijiquan. He has been
practicing Traditional Kungfu for over fifty years and has been an
instructor of Tai Chi at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Peter Wong
was a director of the 26th and 27th Board of Directors of the Chin Woo
Athletic Association Hong Kong Limited. He is also the appointed
Traditional Martial Arts Advisor and Sanshou散手 Advisor（2008-Now) of the
Hong Kong, China Wushu Union.

About Our Community Partners

Dear Asian Youth
(DAY) at UChicago is a student organization dedicated to empowering
Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) youth and promoting
intersectional activism, political engagement, and action in the APIDA
community in Chicago (and beyond!). To do this, DAY builds partnerships
with diverse groups and organizations, increases awareness about APIDA
issues, and celebrates APIDA cultures.

Chinese Family Camp
hosts a week-long summer camp at Cedar Lake, Indiana for Chinese,
Chinese-American, and Chinese adoptee families from across the United
States. Since 1958, they have provided a space where families join to
share our inherited and adopted Chinese American life experiences mixed
with Chinese history, culture, art, language, food and heritage.

Jackson Park Advisory Council
is the body that monitors the park, represents the community and
advises the Chicago Park District. They hold the district accountable
for stewardship and preserve the park’s historic character and special
natural areas. They also represent all park users and communities while
seeking to reach the park’s highest potential.

Guardians of the Earth and Sky is presented as part of the Chicago Park District’s Night Out in the Parks series,
supported by the Mayor’s Office and the Chicago Department of Cultural
Affairs and Special Events. The Night Out in the Parks program presents
cultural events year-round in neighborhood parks throughout the city.
The Chicago Park District in partnership with 100 local artists and
organizations, presents engaging events and performances that enhance
quality of life across Chicago and amplify the artistic and cultural
vibrancy in every neighborhood. Through multiple disciplines, which
include theater, music, movies, dance, site-specific work, nature
programs, and community festivals, the series aims to support
Chicago-based artists, facilitate community-based partnerships and
programs, cultivate civic engagement, and ensure equity in access to the
arts for all Chicagoans. For more information, please visit www.nightoutintheparks.com.