What It Is Puts Out a Whole Lotta Catalogues!

December 31, 2010 · Print This Article

Just wanted to let you all know that the Oak Park, IL domestic art space What It Is has made catalogs from several shows from its 2009 and 2010 years of programming available for purchase on their website. I don’t know how long these publications have actually been available, but the info just hit my RSS feed today and since they all look so nice, I thought I’d pass this along as an FYI. Publications on Jonathan Franklin, Sabina Ott + Michelle Wassen, Irene Pérez, Michelle Welzen, Collazo Anderson & Bernard Williams, Andrew Rigsby, and the group shows Permission to Work and Physicality, Perspective and the Consciousness of Relating are all available via the website. Each catalog even has this neat little preview slide show thingee so you can page through and take a look at the book in advance, before buying. Way to go guys!

Here’s what I want to know: if What It Is, a shoestring-budget domestic art space, can publish small catalogs in conjunction with many of its exhibitions — why the heck can’t the MCA do the same for its 12 x 12 series??

Michelle Welzen Collazo Anderson & Bernard Williams; exhibition December 2009

Art Loop Open: Vote Early, Vote Often; The Chicago Way

October 22, 2010 · Print This Article

The Chicago Loop Alliance has announced their short list of 10 artists to win the $50,000 in cash prizes for the inagural Art Loop Open.

All of the Artists on the short list have done amazing work and many that were not included deserved to make the final but this isn’t really about awards its about engaging the public. To that end Bad at Sports has officially come off the bench to support one canidate to win and that would be Steve Hamann’s History of ‘Bad at Sports’ (Work on Paper).

I know reading that you might think we are biased but that could not be further from the truth; I hate Steve Hamann. He is an annoying artist that has been the bane of my existance for longer then I would like to admit so when I ask you to vote 6 or 7 or even 10 times for his work at theWit Hotel (hell get a room and just vote everytime you cross the lobby) you will know that I do so on the merits of the work and no other reason. How great must that work be for me to ask the thousands of readers of Bad at Sports to reward a man that reads dead baby jokes in nursery wards. I may not love the artist but I salute the art.

Now having established that we will all vote for Steve “The Ego from this point out” Hamann to win lets spend some time on the great artists that should get second and third. They are hard working artists the lot of them and deserve more attention then even this is giving them, starting with a old friend Bernard Williams.

Bernard Williams: Buffalo Chart (Installation)
Block 37

Catherine Jacobi: Forgetting (Sculpture)
Block 37

Daniel Lavitt: Till We Meet Again (Sculpture)
Chicago French Market – MetraMarket

Giovanni Arce: Bush (Painting)
Block 37

John Dempsey: “The Great American Landscape” (Painting)
Macy’s

Joseph Ivacic: Staying Connected (Sculpture)
Hotel Burnham

Lauren Brescia: Surprise… (Installation)
Block 37

Len Upin: Helen (Work on Paper)
theWit Hotel

Yva Neal: WAKA: Wall Altat of Kismet Abundance (Installation)
W Chicago – City Center

Top 5 Weekend Picks! (9/17-9/19)

September 16, 2010 · Print This Article

Holy shit, I left you hanging on the busiest gallery weekend ogfthe year! Well, I made about a thousand maps, all of which were posted over at Chicago Art Magazine, and between those, working on the annual Renaissance Society benefit auction, teaching, art making, blah blah blah, I totally missed my weekend picks. Stupid me! Oh well, I’m back. This weekend, I’m actually going to be out of town, shooting out in Ohio (both kinds, to answer the inevitable question), but there are some great shows ya’ll should hit while I’m gone, I sure as shit want to hit ‘em when I get back. That is all…

1. To Peach at Donald Young Gallery