1) The Green Lantern Gallery–which has long been led by Caroline Picard, who is also BAS’ newest blogger–is winding down as an exhibition space (but lives on as a publishing venture); this and next week’s slate of events offer some of your last chances to visit the space and hang out. In addition to the group show Isolated Fictions (which opened last Friday and features works by Deb Sokolow, Carmen Price, Jason Dunda, Amanda Browder, Nadine Nakanishi, Rebecca Mir and Nick Butcher), a reading by Adam Levin, a performance evening centered around world-based art, a screening curated by Eric Fleischauer and Jesse McLean, and the third installment of the Now It’s Dark experimental film and music series are all on the agenda. Click here for full schedule details.

2) Artist Damien James, who writes for New City and occasionally for this blog, is the latest Guest Blogger on art:21. His first post is up–in it, the Redmoon Theater’s production of The Cabinet, a puppetry-driven performance based on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, becomes a springboard for musings on art’s ability to transport us back to the past and deep into our own consciousness.  Several more essays by Mr. James will follow in the coming days and weeks, so be sure and check them out!

Adam Levin reads at The Green Lantern Gallery

from Redmoon Theater's puppet production of 'The Cabinet'

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Paintings by Chicago artist James Jankowiak.

Architrouve is located at 1433 W. Chicago Ave. Reception is Friday from 6-9pm.

2. GLI.TC/H run.time & real.time at Transistor and The Nightingale

Work by Theodore Darst, Ben Baker Smith, Cole Pierce, Omar Mashal, Clint Ens, Morgan Higby Flowers, Antonio Roberts, Evan Meaney, Richard O’Sullivan, BotBorg, Aaron Zarzutzki, Morgan Higby Flowers, Jeff Donaldson, Vadim Sprikut Anton Marini, jon.satrom, and Jason Soliday (Friday) and work by Jodie Mack, Theodore Darst, Nick Briz, Alexander Stewart, Clint Ens, Nick Salvatore, Johnny Rogers, Jon Satrom, James Connolly, Ben Pearson, Jimmy Joe Roche, Karl Klomp, JB Mabe, LJ Frezza, James Connolly & Eric Pellegrino, Tamas Kemenczy & Mark Beasley, Jeronimo Barbosa, Andrew Bucksbarg, Ben Baker-Smith & Evan Kühl, and StAllio! (Saturday)

Transistor is located at 5045 N Clark St and will host Part 1 Friday from 8-11:30pm. The Nightingale is located at 1084 N Milwaukee Ave and will host Part 2 Saturday from 7-10pm.

3. Future Shock at The Green Lantern Gallery

Work by Brandon Alvendia, Conrad Bakker, Edie Fake, The Library of Radiant Optimism, Red76, People Powered, and Randall Szott.

Green Lantern Gallery is located at 2542 W. Chicago Ave. Reception is Friday from 7-10pm.

4. Wild Card at Johalla Projects

Tarot cards by Bridey Bowen, Alex Chitty, David D’Andrea, Rob Doran, Ryan Duggan, Ron Ewert, Heather Gabel, Horsebites, Myles Smutney Hyde, Damara Kaminecki, Jenny Kendler, Rick Leech, Monique Ligons, Alexis Mackenzie, Roy Miranda, Kyle James Morrison, Steak Mtn, Rachel Peacock, Bird Reynolds, Cristy Roads, J.L. Schnabel, and David Snedden.

Johalla Projects is located at 1561 N. Milwaukee Ave. Reception is Friday from 7-11pm.

5. Neither Here Nor There at Helicon Hall Gallery

Work by James Beckman, Arielle Bielak, Sher Dionisio, nikki hollander, Damien James, Robert Jeffries, Blake Parish Lewis, Lauryn Lewis, Vivien Park, Sarah Park, Holly Sabin, and Shawn Stucky.

Helicon Hall Gallery is located at 1542 N. Milwaukee, 2nd floor. Reception is Saturday from 6-11pm.

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Part two of two.

If you haven’t already, you may be wondering by now what this has to do with art, why you’re reading about a humanitarian crisis on an arts weblog? I’ll tell you.

During the community conversation and throughout the reading of Half the Sky, there were several thoughts insisting on my full attention, one of which was how different my world would be minus any single one of the incredible women I’ve known, either personally or exclusively through exposure to whatever their art may be – painting or parenting, writing or teaching, cooking or counseling, making films or music. Each has been essential in some way, small or large, to my evolving understanding of the world I live in, no less my understanding of myself.

How many people would have less full lives if even a few of the women they know went missing or were never known to them at all? How would our own country be diminished intellectually, emotionally, artistically, if a million women were simply gone?

Women like Lynn Hershman Leeson, who, as a female artist trying to assert herself on the male-dominated art scene of the late 1960’s and 70’s, had to review her own work under a pseudonym because critics weren’t giving women artists a single column inch.

Leeson went on to invent what is commonly known as Second Life, to pioneer the use of blue screen technology in film making, to become Emeritus Professor of Digital Art at the University of California, and to have work in many major collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Yet there was a time that her work simply didn’t get reviewed.

Lynn Hershman Leeson, Roberta's Construction Chart #2, 1975. Dye Transfer Print

When Kurtz’s wife and collaborator of 25 years, Hope, suddenly and unexpectedly died of a heart attack and the police responded to his phone call, what they found and how they reacted turned the next few years of Kurtz’s life into nothing less than a battle with the government for his freedom.

Strange Culture is a time capsule of our subjugated civil rights under an unelected president, a record of our most recent and surreal dark age – which, as we can currently see, will take some time to come out of.

Leeson’s film inspired and enraged me. It introduced me to new ideas, people, problems. It literally influenced the way I live. (Can anyone say that about Avatar?) When I think back to the time before I had seen the film or learned about Leeson, it seems like I was in my own cultural dark age, or at least a bit more naive.

Women like Pamela Michele Johnson, an artist who perfectly illustrated my feelings about our consumer/capitalist society with six-foot tall paintings of Hostess cupcakes with glistening whipped lard centers, stacks of waffles with glowing oceans of syrup pooling in their crisp golden pockets, and toppling towers of ketchup-stained limp hamburgers looking so heavy and giant that you suddenly can’t help but wonder how much of that shit you’ve stuffed down your gullet.

Johnson’s art so poetically paraphrased every thought that I’ve never been able to put eloquently into words about how and what we eat, that I was instantly smitten with the paintings. She often shares people’s responses to the work with me, and I’m continually surprised by how many people view these monoliths as objects of nostalgia, tributes to simpler times, especially since I see them first and foremost as satirical critiques. I can’t help but view those “simpler times” as farces of progress spun into our heads by corporations disguised as clowns and farmers and cute little animals.

Pamela Michele Johnson, Waffles, 2007. Oil on canvas.

Her work is important to me for those two reasons; that it was the first and most personal example of how someone else’s image could so singularly define my thoughts about a certain issue, and that it offered to renew my appreciation for just how differently we all interpret information, for better or worse.

Women like Pam Bannos, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University, who uncovered the wholly neglected an incredibly relevant history of Lincoln Park, something which the current residents of the neighborhood might prefer to have left underground.

During the Civil War, Lincoln Park was a burial ground – The City Cemetery, not only for Confederate soldiers but also the diseased – and it is quite possible that there are still plenty of bones beneath those lovely lanes.

Bannos’s extensive research made quite a bit of noise, and the city of Chicago worked with her to place several markers throughout Lincoln Park which illuminate it’s history for hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.

The project, Hidden Truths, is currently being developed into a book, and having read a few of the early chapters, the potential is exciting. There are so many strange stories within the whole that Devil in the White City comes to mind, yet with far more immediate import.

The metaphors inherent in this story – of sweeping the dead under the carpet of history (akin perhaps to not showing us the coffins of our fellow patriots as they come home from war), of affluence planting it’s roots in the toil of drones (not unlike the 1 percenter’s who have made their money on the backs of the 99 percent of us who have none) – fit so snugly over the template of today that Bannos really cannot go wrong.

Her photography often beautifully aims its sweet spot at the idea and nature of truth, and I have no doubt that Bannos will apply the same focus, light, and personality to her book.

Experiencing the evolution of this project, from rigorously documented research to articulate narrative, has been an education in the creative endeavor for me, an education I intend to take full advantage of.

Marjane Satrapi

Women like – though there is really no other woman like her – Cassandra O’Keefe, one of the very first contributors to BUST Magazine, a staff member of GirlsRock! Chicago, and a gifted intuitive. O’Keefe is one of those unsung heroes who constantly crashes into our ever-expanding lack of civility and refuses to accept it.

She is an activist who has marched in every anti-war demonstration in the city of Chicago for the last decade, a creative autodidact who once decorated with handmade party hats and noise makers the smoked white fish which was to be eaten for a New Years brunch; and more importantly, a parent who decided to home-school her two daughters when No Child Left Behind became the prevailing but fundamentally flawed logic of the day for our public schools.

Not only has O’Keefe fought intolerance in her own neighborhood by simply engaging everyone she meets, but she has enriched my entire vocabulary for compassion. Those two daughters are mine as well, completing a trio of amazing women in my own home, none of whom I could imagine my life without.

Any of the millions of abused, abducted, murdered women in the world could easily be this important, this provocative, this enriching, for any number of people in their own lives. If given the chance. Their influence and intelligence could reach across the globe and touch all of us. Any one of the missing could profoundly impact someone near to them, if only they were truly valued.

There is an overwhelming amount of daily proof that our current values are failing us; our resources are withering, our environment is changing dramatically, and the same destruction that we’ve visited upon ourselves throughout history exists today, only with more politically acceptable terms. The word genocide is used far less than the phenomenon of genocide is employed. More women have to accept rape than men have to pay for the crime.

These are truths only because of our collective lack of involvement. And there is no one I know who can’t spare at least ten minutes to take the first step toward changing these truths.  How much time can you spare, and to what end?

Damien James is a self-taught artist and writer living (barely) and working (constantly) in Chicago. He has contributed to Chicago Reader, New City, Saatchi Gallery Online, Art Voices, and the general goodwill of mankind, among other things. His art has been seen in Chicago’s Around the Coyote Gallery and Aldo Castillo, Brooklyn’s 3rd Ward Gallery with Art House Co-op’s Sketchbook Project and Rhonda Schaller, various apartments in Berlin, London, Mumbai, and a tiny village in Romania.

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Part one of two.

I recently attended a community conversation with New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof, who was speaking about the oppression of and cruelty toward women throughout much of our global society, as illuminated with provocative bluntness and intelligence in the new book Half the Sky. A collaboration with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, the book earned the first Pulitzer ever awarded to a wife and husband team. WuDunn was not present for the conversation, but Kristof illustrated one of her connections to the subject matter by relating a story about WuDunn’s grandmother, who grew up in China and was a victim of foot binding.

The conversation was made possible by Facing History and Ourselves, an “international educational and professional development organization whose mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and anti-Semitism,” with the intent to promote a more informed and humane citizenry.

I am uncertain as to why the Thorne Auditorium of Northwestern University was not fully attended; there must have been at least 732 people in the Chicago area who had time for this event, who might have walked away from the evening filled with a certain shock and awe after finding that their quotient for compassion had increased considerably, which I would credit to the in-depth interviews and profound friendships embarked upon by WuDunn and Kristof as they spent time in Africa, Asia, and South America.

According to Kristof, the central moral challenge of the 19th century was slavery. In the 20th century it was the battle against totalitarianism. And in the 21st century, the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle against discrimination of women and children. One might argue that the former still exist in the latter, but by the end of the presentation, that women are still treated like second-class citizens – especially in third world countries, but certainly not limited to them – becomes quite clearly a truth beyond argument.

Kristof’s stories were often painful and graphic, and most importantly, personal. It was clear that he knew the women and children he spoke of, that he shared in their pains to some extent as they shared their stories with him, that he actually looked in their eyes and allowed himself to be affected by them.

He radiated a realistic sympathy as he spoke, and rather than try to make people feel guilty for how little they contribute to solving problems which seem far too large to tackle, Kristof focused – just as Half the Sky does – on making these insurmountable problems approachable by offering ways to get involved and engaged in the lives of women on the other side of the world, lives which can be radically changed by even the smallest generosity in the briefest of moments.

Beyond relating his experience and educating us about what we could do, Kristof offered hope as he spoke of women who have started fighting back, despite unbelievable odds and misogynistic patriarchal societies, not only improving their own lives but those of women around them, and in some cases gaining international attention for their cause.

In a moment I’m going to share some of these avenues for contributing to positive social change, but first I want to share some of the stories Kristof offered at the community conversation and through the book, because the myriad humanitarian crises which literally surround us are predominantly relegated to the back of our thoughts in abstraction; and there is certainly a reason for this psychic numbing.

How could we pay our Chase bills and watch the game or Idol or Top Chef, how could we Facebook our thoughts on the character arcs of Lost and Twitter our excitement at a Black Eyed Peas concert if we were always thinking about how acceptable it is to throw acid in a woman’s face in a country we have little or no desire to ever visit? And I’m not just singling out fans of “reality” TV or Facebook and Twitter users. To be honest, I think such social networks have an amazing amount of untapped potential, but it might be that not enough social entrepreneurs are using these networks to get our attention in a lasting way.

Is it powerful enough to state that 3 million women and girls worldwide can be fairly termed as enslaved in the sex trade? That, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, there are more than 100 million women simply missing in the world today? That girls in India from age one to five are 50 percent more likely to die than boys in the same age group because of the value placed on gender? (Such discrimination kills up to 2 million girls each year worldwide.) That 21 percent of Ghanaian women reported their first sexual experience was rape? That 17 percent of Nigerian women had endured rape or attempted rape by the age of nineteen, and 21 percent of South African women reported that they had been raped by the age of fifteen?

I don’t really even want to talk about the rates of maternal mortality in some countries, nor the number of women each year who suffer from fistula as a result of rape, women who are then ostracized from their homes because of the easily but rarely treated condition.

Such numbers just become fog, pressed back and out of our thoughts as we go through our day, which is why, Kristof argues, it is so important to personally connect with someone, to actively pursue a relationship.

Is it easier to remember – or harder to forget – if we see a photograph of Long Pross, a Thai girl who, at the age of thirteen was kidnapped and sold to a brothel in Cambodia? When Pross rebelled, the female brothel owner punished her by gouging out Pross’ eye with a metal rod.

Or Meena Hasina, an Indian Muslim who was eight years old when she was kidnapped and trafficked. In the dozen years that Meena was held in the brothel, she had two children and was beaten an average of five days a week. Her children were considered property of the brothel.

Is it harder to forget Zoya Najabi, an Afghan girl who was married at twelve and subjected to constant corporal punishment at the hand of her husband and mother-in-law? Zoya’s husband regularly beat her with an electrical cable until she fell unconscious. Her mother-in-law whipped the soles of her feet.

These stories are not isolated occurrences, nor are they plucked from some macabre dark age; they are entirely contemporary. Nor are they even the worst of what Kristof and WuDunn have to report. And while it might be easy to think that these women, children in many cases, should just flee, it is never that simple. The threat of punishment and death lies around every corner for many women in societies which condone such treatment in the first place.

Often the police in many of the countries Kristof and WuDunn frequent are bribed by brothels, intimidated by gangs, and will send women away with scorn for their audacity at even showing their dishonorable faces to the authorities. Occasionally police even beat the women seeking help, and there have been reports of women being raped by police before they’re pushed back out on the streets.

Again, Half the Sky is not simply a litany of abuse. It is also a lifeline for involvement, for there are as many heroes to encourage as there are villains to infuriate, women who have taken a stand against the injustices they were not only born into but also fully expected to accept.

Women like Edna Adan, who grew up in Somalia. (According to Kristof, the local camels had more freedoms than the women.) At eight years old, Edna was circumcised, joining the ranks of millions of girls who are forced to undergo the traditional procedure intended to reduce sexual desire and promiscuity for the sake of becoming more marriageable.

If this seems barbaric, consider that Edna is from an enlightened family, that her parents not only allowed her to have an education but also encouraged her to do so. Now a fierce opponent of genital cutting, she became Somalia’s first qualified nurse-midwife and eventually the countries first lady, marrying the prime minister. Edna went on to work for the UN and eventually retired from her post to open a hospital, which she was able to do with the support of women from around the world.

Mukhtar Mai, from a peasant family in southern Punjab, was sentenced to be publicly raped as punishment for a crime that her brother allegedly committed. Mukhtar prepared to commit suicide, a normal method of dealing with such situations in Pakistan, but was prevented by her parents, who kept constant vigil over her.

Eventually Mukhtar’s shame and depression became rage, which gave her the strength to report the rape to the police and demand prosecution. President Musharraf became aware of the case and sympathized, awarding Mukhtar the equivalent of over $8,000, which she used to invest in what she felt her village needed most: a school. The story spread and Mukhtar became revered for her courage and conviction; she was honored in several countries and went on to open more schools and raise the level of visibility for abused women everywhere.

In fact, each injustice in Half the Sky is followed by a survivor’s tale, someone who has turned their world around by sheer force of will.

Kristof pointed to the importance of education as intervention – the primary tool to dismantle the machinery of abuse which still runs largely unchecked in many countries – stating that education leads to professionalism which leads to community enrichment, a virtuous cycle. And while he pulls no punches about the fact that there is no easy solution to any of the problems facing women in the third world, Kristof has plenty of details, first-hand experience with individual women and girls and entire communities that have benefited from relatively small donations toward schooling.

For example, it costs only ten dollars a year to keep a girl in school in rural China, while fifteen dollars for a uniform is all that separates some African girls from a classroom. In Cambodia, the average girl has only 1.7 years of education; often in poor countries like Cambodia, girls drop out of school young – if they ever attended at all – to work and contribute to the family income.

It is when young girls join the work force that they are more susceptible to being trafficked, lured to different cities with the promise of a job, only to find themselves locked in a room empty of everything but a mattress. Cambodia has taken steps to curb trafficking by offering financial incentives to parents who keep their kids in school with perfect attendance, but it is far from a perfect system. There have been many instances of abduction while girls are walking long distances to or from their schools.

Despite how bottomless the problems of abuse and slavery in the sex trade are, both the community conversation and the book end with incredible positivity. Kristof and WuDunn have contributed so much of their time and money to improving conditions for women around the world and have seen direct results that their thrust is to encourage us to do the same, to express our humanity by taking incremental steps toward solving massive problems. Half the Sky ends with a chapter called Four Steps You Can Take in the Next Ten Minutes, a crash course in contributing to positive social change. As promised, here they are:

1. “Go to www.globalgiving.org or www.kiva.org and open an account. Both site are people-to-people (P2P), meaning that they link you directly to a person in need overseas.” Global Giving lets you choose and contribute to grassroots projects in education, health, and disaster relief, among many others, in the developing world. Kiva allows you to connect to entrepreneurs as a microlender; just as kickstarter microfinances creative projects, Kiva helps fund women to start their own businesses.

2. “Sponsor a girl or woman through Plan International, Women for Women International, World Vision, or American Jewish World Service.” Kristof and WuDunn are sponsors and have exchanged letters with and made visits to children in the Philippines, Sudan, and the Dominican Republic.

3. “Sign up for e-mail updates on www.womensenews.org and www.worldpulse.com. Both distribute information about abuses of woman and sometimes advise on actions that readers can take.”

4. “Join the CARE Action Network at www.can.care.org. This will assist you in speaking out, educating policy makers, and underscoring that the public wants action against poverty and injustice. This kind of citizen advocacy is essential to create change.”

Though it might only take ten minutes of your time, Kristof and WuDunn insist that these steps are just to break the ice. Half the Sky has a comprehensive appendix of organizations to connect with, should one feel particularly meaningful, and then the authors encourage readers to dive in.

Ten short minutes can change things. The family of one young Zimbabwean woman was given a goat through Heifer International, a gift that so radically improved their economic position that they were able to send their daughter to school in America. She has since returned and begun giving back to her community.

Ten dollars took a girl in China from poverty to formal education, which she used to better her entire village. Once barely able to scrape by on subsistence farming, the community now has wood and brick homes with electricity and a thriving export business, all because of a girl who was given the opportunity to go to school.

Kristof is also quick to admit that such problems are not unique to third world countries, that many cases of abuse and oppression exist in our own back yard, but there simply wasn’t room in Half the Sky to focus on domestic issues, something he plans to remedy in the future.

Read part two of two on Tuesday. If you want to.

Damien James is a self-taught artist and writer living (barely) and working (constantly) in Chicago. He has contributed to Chicago Reader, New City, Saatchi Gallery Online, Art Voices, and the general goodwill of mankind, among other things. His art has been seen in Chicago’s Around the Coyote Gallery and Aldo Castillo, Brooklyn’s 3rd Ward Gallery with Art House Co-op’s Sketchbook Project and Rhonda Schaller, various apartments in Berlin, London, Mumbai, and a tiny village in Romania.

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I heard all about what made the ancient Romans laugh (an inordinate amount of what were essentially absent-minded professor jokes), where Wittgenstein and Buster Keaton converge, the bathroom habits of insects, and Jewish humor. I heard clips of what is considered to be classic comedy, saw unreal films made and animated by Bob Sabiston, witnessed people actually slapping their knees while experiencing John Hodgman’s charmingly eloquent bullshit, and others share stories about themselves without the least bit of encouragement simply to pass the time while waiting in line to have a book signed.

It was such a bustling couple of weeks that I really didn’t have much time to do any actual and focused thinking about laughter, though. In hindsight and when I seriously put my mind to it (not necessarily easy for me), I began to consciously appreciate just how loaded laughter is, how there is a laugh for every emotion, how easily and naturally laughter is used to cover embarrassment, anger, self pity, contempt, all of which had passed through my thoughts at various times throughout my life, but had never featured prominently for any appreciable amount of time.

Though nearly every event I attended at the festival was enthralling (I’ll admit: the lectures I went to at the Chicago Temple were not easy for me; I was conditioned at an early age to be bored and distracted in churches, largely due to the fact that all of the services I attended as a kid were in Greek, and though the music of the language and the cantors on the altar still send a shiver along my spine, pale English in the echoing cavern of a sanctuary puts me straight to sleep. On top of that, I also have a bit of residual anxiety in churches because, as a kid, I thought I was the Antichrist. I thought this for two reasons. One, being that my name is Damien and I was born the same year that The Omen was released, my older brothers used to sit on my chest and pin my arms down with their legs while ruffling through my hair to find the 666 that they pretended was sure to be there. Two, we didn’t eat breakfast before going to church because communion had to be taken on an empty stomach (Wine first thing in the morning and I managed to avoid having a drinking problem. Up to this point, anyway.), and the combination of no food in the belly and sitting for what seemed like an eternity in the hot airless church would cause me to get light-headed. The color would completely drain from my face, I’d break out in a cold sweat, and get dizzy. At age eight, this seemed like exactly the kind of thing that would happen to the Antichrist in the house of god. I’d have to go downstairs into the bathroom and rest my cheek on the cool tile of the wall until everything stopped spinning. These were some of the easier moments of my childhood.), I simply had trouble sustaining thoughts about laughter once the events concluded. It was easy to be there, to be present, to forget your troubles while listening to some first-rate talent regale you with some first-rate story which, even if it might have been about hardship or of an entirely depressing nature, was still told by a professional, adept in the culture of laughter and humor, someone who just knows how to make you laugh and/or wonder, jaw dropped, at the amazingness of whatever it is they have to say.

But stepping back onto Chicago’s November street of reality, life was waiting, with its debt and collection agency phone calls, with its potholes of governmental carelessness and nightmarishly real robotmonster called Sarah Palin, with its never-ending bad news about teen killers, terrorist trials, celebrity scandals, the capitalist ruling class, holiday consumer frenzies, and who gives a fuck what else. Incessantly. Everywhere. Even the buses bark at you with their ultra-bright animated advertising video boards. (Yes I’ll say it: I’m so sick of advertising. Why is it that I can’t walk through the Jackson red-to-blue line tunnel without being bombarded every three paces by ads for Flip? Jesus Fucking Christ. Is it really that amazing?)

(I actually consider myself to be an incredibly fortunate person in that I have so much to be happy and laugh about. In fact, my life is filled with laughter, these small but constant injections of pure uncut joy which keep me from jumping out the 12th-floor window of my shitty day job. But there is so much data constantly trying to blot out everything that exists apart from itself, so much that just isn’t funny, isn’t healthy, isn’t productive, isn’t real; It’s impossible to avoid and maybe naïve to want to avoid it; but despite that, I don’t like it in my face. I understand that it’s a part of us and not likely to go anywhere, but I don’t like it.)

One of the things brought most prominently to the front of my thoughts while attending the Humanities Festival was humanity itself, in all its excellence and brokenness, as I experience it on the street and in culture from all over the world. When I think about all that we’ve accomplished as a humanity, as a collective force existing in time, I really can’t help but laugh. We’ve done such great things, from gaining awareness of the stars to navigating by them, from defining diseases to curing them, from Harry Potter to Twilight. And the potential for further greatness seems exponentially increased by how small the world has become, by how quickly we can communicate our discoveries, our inspirations, our trials, our hopes. Whenever I see something utterly amazing or mind boggling, I just laugh. Not so much a self-satisfied laughter, but I won’t deny some small bit of pride in being related to what is amazing or mind boggling by sheer virtue of the fact that I am also a part of this humanity. It feels great to be a part of this strange thing, this thing I will never understand.

The flip side, of course, the very dark, drastic, looming flip side, is our equally amazing and mind boggling capacity for self destruction. And though that, too, sometimes makes me laugh – the absurdity of what we destroy and how freely we destroy it, and perhaps more importantly how blind we chose to be to that destruction – our failures tend to inspire deep disappointment, depression, and hopelessness which no broad-smiling and charming politician will ever be able to negate. It all seems so tragic so much of the time, and it’s so hard to know where to go and what to do if you’re of the mind to commit yourself to altering the course of that tragedy, futile as it tends to feel. But humanity seems to be worth it. In my naïve, ultra-optimistic fantasy, anyway.

It certainly takes more than two weeks of listening to people at the Humanities Festival to encourage a little hope in the future, but listening to those people definitely helps remind me of what is at stake: the absolutely beautiful amazingness of humanity. And laughter, though sometimes hard to come by and harder to hold on to, is certainly a useful tool to wield against the end of the world which maybe only John Cusack can save us from.

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Beatrice Fisher, Going Home

I walked into Woman Made Gallery on Wednesday, October 14^th, to view and review the Beatrice Fisher retrospective, which surveyed fifty years of art making. Intrigued by the gallery’s website, which noted that this was Fisher’s first solo exhibition and that she had studied under such renowned Chicago artists as Karl Wirsum and Don Baum, for better or worse I had fairly high expectations.

Everything had just been hung, and the space was still a bit of a mess—the opening wasn’t for two more days and I hadn’t let anyone know that I was coming—then I realized that the mess consisted mostly of Fisher’s work, of which there was just too much to fit on the walls. (I was told that Fisher had thousands of pieces in her Evanston studio. Thousands was later corrected to hundreds.) After a moment of orientation amidst the clutter, I was able to focus on the walls, on her art, and was instantly taken, overtaken, by not only the range of her work but its consistent beauty and energy.

Beatrice Fisher, Under the Table

Fisher’s Attachment/Separation series focuses on divorce in the most physical terms; bodies in surreal Siamese union, some split apart by knives or attached by zippers rendered with a level of detail which brings the stark flatness of the paintings and their sharp lines into a kind of focused intimacy that looks cleanly through you. At least, they seemed to look through me. Some are paintings of women and men joined at the hips or shoulders, others of women joined to women, skin stretching into long bands waiting to be broken, their faces staring so pointedly, hypnotically. On another wall were military-themed works which dressed disembodied penises in camouflaged field gear, while across the room a group of small paintings of Jesus clad in ruby slippers and floating in the clouds shimmered. The slippers were glitter. Jesus had a beatific and tranquil face. Maybe it was the shoes.

Truthfully, there was so much work that this could easily have been a group show of six or seven entirely different artists, though it wasn’t difficult to see the common thread—the unique handwriting as it moved through all the pieces; the tongue-in-cheek humor, the cultural critiques, the exploration of sexuality and religion—yet each period in her career seemed to point to the absolute need to make art, out of anything and everything available. It was without a doubt the life of an artist on the walls of Woman Made, not just her art.

This was what I felt in the first five minutes with Beatrice Fisher’s work. The next 20 minutes were spent with Beate Minkovski, co-founder and executive director of the gallery, who joined me in the lower-level space where the exhibit was getting prepped for the opening. Beate told me it was entirely possible that this would be the 70-year-old artist’s final show, as she was currently fighting brain cancer. She informed me that Fisher’s son had just been in the day before to say that his mother wouldn’t be able to attend the opening, mostly because they wouldn’t be able to get her down the stairs. Beate pointed out some of her favorite pieces—Jesus among them, as Beate and Beatrice held similar views of organized religion—and offered a bit of background, brought me a chair, and welcomed me to spend as much time with the work as I wanted.

My eyes went immediately to the peaceful Jesus in his ruby slippers, then onto the painting of a crucifix wearing a long flowing blonde wig. Further still were renderings of tombstones, one with plump rouged lips as an epitaph, and two paintings from an under-the-table viewpoint of a woman’s legs with red painted toes next to which the long white femur, tibia, and fibula of a skeleton also dangled. Fisher seemed to keep close company with the idea and imagery of death, often casting a wink and a smile in its direction. For a moment the show read as if it were a wry goodbye, and though it was never really my intention,  I accepted the fact that it would be literally impossible for me to maintain any semblance of critical distance.

After being moved so quickly by the art upon my arrival at Woman Made, the unfolding story as it was just laid out to me felt surprisingly overwhelming. I came hoping to be knocked over, and I certainly was.

Friday morning, October 16^th, the day of her opening, I got a note from Beate that Beatrice Fisher had just passed away.

I went back to the gallery a few hours before the show opened and, save for the occasional footsteps from above, the space was silent. I might have brought a bit of my own silence as well, out of both respect and sadness, having just met the art of an artist I felt I could really sit down and have a conversation with, only to realize I was too late. It was a mildly heartbreaking place to be, as I have always been one who gets instantly and incredibly excited about the things I like, admire, respect, connect to; and the conversation which stems from that connection and admiration has always been fuel for me in my own art and life. (Yes yes, it sounds like I was being a bit selfish, but this is the self I have.)

The art looked entirely different to me. I hadn’t noticed on my initial visit that the very first piece one encounters was a self-portrait in which Fisher had painted a Rorschach inkblot over her mouth. It felt like an invitation to interpret and associate at will, to take what you could. (I was later informed that Fisher spent many years in classical Freudian psychotherapy, which wasn’t at all surprising when one stood in the context of the show; the number of sexual images, the way so many of her paintings seemed to descend through layers of experience, ego, and the inviolate resolution she seemed able to wrest from the works all pointed toward a sort of systematic investigation.) Below the portrait was a single votive on a white pedestal. Later would be placed a photo of the artist with the inscription “In memoriam, 1939 – 2009.”

Several days after the opening, I spoke with Janet Bloch, artist, teacher, and former partner of Beate Minkovski as director of Woman Made, who first came upon Fisher’s work several years ago while organizing a group show for the gallery. “I curated her in,” Bloch told me. “Hers was a small piece, with several penises all wearing different hats. I remember it really just tickled me,” Bloch laughed. “I was so surprised when I met her because she wasn’t what I expected from seeing her art. I told her this and Beatrice said, ‘You didn’t expect an old lady?’”

Fisher went on to take one of Bloch’s workshops geared toward helping artists market themselves more effectively, prepare their work for grant applications, and take advantage of opportunities they simply might not have known existed. “Beatrice was really quite frustrated with her career and the lack of attention she received, but I think I was able to help her,” Bloch said. “In fact, we helped each other quite a bit in that way, keeping each other motivated and buoyed regardless of disappointment.”

Beatrice Fisher, Now Then

With Bloch’s assistance, Fisher’s work was more widely circulated and appreciated, and the artist received residencies at colonies such as Ragdale in Illinois and Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, Colorado, which is where Fisher first met Ed Paschke (long associated with the Chicago Imagists), who she had always greatly admired and became quite fond of. Bloch recalled that Fisher was thrilled to meet Paschke and that he had been very kind to her at Anderson Ranch, inviting her to his studio in Chicago once the residency was complete. “Beatrice called me from her car outside Ed’s studio, frozen by nerves,” Bloch said. “I talked her through it, told her to just breathe, and she was eventually able to go in. She had an amazing time and felt very drawn to him. She even began to think that maybe the two of them were meant to be together. Two days later, though, Paschke died.”

Fisher was diagnosed with brain cancer in April of 2009 during her residency at Ragdale, where she began suffering from dizzy spells and numbness. Eventually the dizziness caused her to fall and she was taken to the hospital, where several lesions were found on her brain. She was given two to six months to live. “I haven’t even had time to mourn,” Bloch said. When I spoke with Daniel Zellman, Fisher’s second child from her first marriage, he hadn’t had time to start mourning either. “It just happened so fast, and it’s been such a roller coaster,” Zellman said.  He was laid off from his job in Canada shortly after his mother’s diagnosis, a “blessing in disguise,” as he said, which allowed him to come home and be with Fisher for her remaining days. “She had the most beautiful opening,” he told me through a long sad smile. “All her friends were there and I know she would have been overjoyed.”

Though we spoke only briefly, Zellman poured out a handful of close memories of his mother. “One of my earliest was of the smell of oil paint and Dr. Pepper in her studio,” he said.  “She always had Dr. Pepper. She also wallpapered the bathroom of a friend of hers with covers from The New Yorker, which she avidly read. She was a great reader, traveler, adventurer—even at the end she had travel brochures on the table next to her bed.”

Zellman was clearly worn out, and I felt more than sympathetic to him. In fact, there is certain empathy in me for him, for the whole story of Beatrice Fisher as it opens itself to me. Many mothers are taken by cancer, my own among them; mine, too, was an artist who, though she never produced work as avidly as Fisher, was clearly always making art in her head, and whole-heartedly lived artfully. I didn’t want to push too hard but I was compelled by the story, by my own overwhelming feeling of affinity for both art and artist, so I took more time from Zellman than I had right to, yet he graciously offered what he could in the time he had, for which I was grateful. I decided to give the rest of the family more time, however, which is why their voices are not heard here.

Zellman went on to laugh about his mother’s parking Karma. “She always, always had rock star parking, always right in front of wherever she was going. I’m hoping it’s something I inherit from her.” Both Zellman and Bloch corroborated on some of Fisher’s other characteristics, such as her occasional outrage and befuddlement that things sometimes did not go exactly as she wished them to, especially things for herself. “She just couldn’t understand,” Zellman said, “why everyone around her wouldn’t do everything they could to make her happy, or that she sometimes didn’t get what she wanted. It was a mystery to her.”

Once Bloch found out about Fisher’s condition, she called Minkovski at Woman Made and suggested a solo show, which was instantly agreed to. Bloch made several trips to Fisher’s studio, going through hundreds of pieces of art, much of which she had never seen before, carefully choosing what would eventually create several entirely unique bodies of work to fully flesh out a retrospective of, in my opinion, incredible originality.

Beatrice Fisher, Tatooed Twins

Fisher’s life as seen through her art was built of the same materials as most others: passion and pain, wry awareness and understanding, labor and love. The totemic penises (seriously: 8 feet tall), gorgeously erotic glittery paintings of tangled limbs, camouflaged fetuses (some of which actually plug into the walls), nesting dolls which diminish in layers like acetates from Gray’s Anatomy, circus performers balanced and perched on the noses and ears of unseen giants, and Paschke-like double portraits from whose mouths sing columns of honey bees, illustrate clearly, however, that Fisher’s perspective on life was anything but common. Whereas so many of us simply live among the wonder of everyday, Beatrice Fisher chose to make art of her wonder, of each thought and moment she had.  It was a small but bursting retrospective of what is possible when one lives artfully, and it was a fine gift to leave behind for the rest of us, regardless of how late we come to it.

Got a response to this post? Let us know! Email your comments to  mail@badatsports.com. We’ll feature thoughtful responses to issues generated by our posts in our Letters to the Editors Feature on Saturdays.

Damien James is a self-taught artist and writer living (barely) and working (constantly) in Chicago. He has contributed to Chicago Reader, New City, Saatchi Gallery Online, Art Voices, and the general goodwill of mankind, among other things, for the most part. His art has been seen in Chicago’s Around the Coyote Gallery, Brooklyn’s 3rd Ward Gallery with Art House Co-op’s Sketchbook Project, various apartments in Berlin, London, and a tiny village in Romania.

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Matt Groening and Lynda Barry circa 1984 by Michael Sepcot.

Guest post by Damien James

In the brief Chicago Humanities Festival preview posted a couple of weeks ago, I listed what I hoped would be some highlights, and I wanted to take a moment now that the festival is about halfway through its run to tell you about two events I recently attended so you get a picture—maybe fleeting—of how this years programming is meeting my admittedly high expectations.

In the near future I’ll share more about specific events as well as thoughts on the festival theme—laughter—with the intention of communicating how important the Humanities Festival has been for me, maybe how important it is to the city itself, and possibly beyond. It’s also my hope that it will become important to you, if it isn’t already. After all, each of us is a part of the greater festival of humanities as it plays out in our own lives every day, in the choices we make which not only effect ourselves, but everyone in our local and even global community.

And if this happens to be your city, the excellence of CHF earns you some bragging rights. Privatized parking meters, bogus mayoral claims of how green Chicago is, Land of the Lost-sized pot holes and shitty CTA service, our former governor’s “reality” TV career, and our failure (thank Jesus) to win the Olympic bid are not the only things we have going for us…

Chicagoan Harold Ramis was the first presenter I saw, and we should all be lucky enough to have so much to laugh about at 65 years old. I told him after his presentation at the Thorne Auditorium that he seemed to be an incredibly happy guy. He took a beat before responding and said, “I’m an actor.” Reading this on the screen, one can easily interpret those three words as “Of course I’m happy! And famous! And rich! And on my way to Spiaggia! Have you ever had their Gamberi e polenta al forno con erbe cipollinariccio di mare e cavaile? It’s fucking delicious!”

What you missed by not actually seeing and hearing him, however, was how easily his eyes and voice conveyed the same bittersweetness as when, answering a question from the audience as to what he would most like to accomplish at this point in his life, he said, “This is gonna sound sappy, but I’d just like to have a successful marriage.”

90 minutes with the writer/director/actor disappeared loudly and instantly as laughter spread itself across the spectrum of emotion while Ramis shared clips and anecdotes from his favorites, bouncing off the brilliant surfaces of the Marx Brothers in all their surrealist glory (this was the first time I had ever seen them on the big screen, which enhanced their funny ten-fold; As a kid, Ramis wanted to be both Groucho and Harpo), Cary Grant in Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace, Monty Python and their heady existentialism, Woody Allen and his flawless ability to embody the deep-seeded angst we all experience at least a thousand times (I’m underestimating) in our lives, Dr. Strangelove, Preston Sturges, the Coen brothers, and many more. It was as entertaining to watch Ramis laughing at the clips he shared as the clips were themselves.

He went from self-effacing to self-aggrandizing as if on cue and drew out delight at each step, boasting ownership of “four percent of AFI’s top 100 funniest films,” and admitting that he went to Hollywood to get laid. He told unexpected stories (“My wife said that for her fiftieth birthday she wanted to meet the Dalai Lama, so I called some friends in Glencoe…” They did in fact meet him, though Ramis was fairly certain that the Dalai Lama had never seen Caddyshack.), and spoke about the days leading up to The Second City, when Mike Nichols and Elaine May were at The Compass doing what had never been done before, his introduction to Billy Murray (“the funniest peanut vendor you could ever meet”), his musical history at the Old Town School of Folk as kid, and how he went into college like John Kennedy and came out like John Lennon. Even if you don’t care for some (or any) of Ramis’ films—though is there really anyone who doesn’t like Ghostbusters at least a little bit?—it was impossible not to be charmed by his enthusiasm and candor. Ramis closed with a scene from Monty Python in which a sing-along and group whistling was taken up to cheer Christ while crucified.

Just 48 hours later, with equal candor and a thick sloppy ladling of playful insanity, Matt Groening and Lynda Barry took the stage at the UIC Forum on 725 West Roosevelt, where both were hilarious, inspiring, and incredibly goddamn smart. Before they were introduced, it was said that the attendance for their presentation was the highest in CHF history. Sitting next to me was Chris Ware, who simultaneously looked around the Wal-Mart-esque room with it’s AC-lined high ceilings, institutional paint, and florescent lighting, and joked (I think) in his oddly compelling self-loathing-laced voice, “This place is just horrible. I feel like they’re going to take us all on stage and execute us.”

Regardless, the place was packed, and it was one of the more diverse crowds I’ve seen in four years of attending CHF events, which seem to draw more from middle-aged Northshore affluence than the richness of the inner-city student and working class. Why that is I am still not certain.

To claps and shouts, Matt and Lynda began. The two have such a deep history and palpable affection for each other that their conversation was completely engaging, like sitting at the adult table with older siblings you adore as they tell stories of their most outlandish drinking games, yet they carried with them the weight of decades of familiarity. They emphatically traded tales about their family histories, how they were both directly influenced by the mottos of their fathers (for Lynda: “There’s no problem too big to run away from;” for Matt: “If you’re going to do something, overdo it.”), how they met at Evergreen State College, their humble beginnings as a writer/chauffeur and a nude artists model, respectively, and the myriad ups and downs of living off creativity and the mostly constant struggle of trying to make it as cartoonists in the adult world, which is, as Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer said, “not a job for grown-ups.”

Lynda’s facial expressions and hand gestures were exclamation points on her punch lines. “Good art and good images,” she said wide-eyed and nodding as if to slow children she none the less loved dearly, “keep you from killing yourself and others!” Matt’s comic dialogs from his sons (“Listening to my kids was a great way to make weekly deadlines. At least until they got old enough that they no longer wanted to cooperate.”) as read by he and Lynda were met with those deep belly laughs that make your cheeks and crows feet hurt. During a clip of The Simpsons, someone even screamed.

Matt and Lynda made each other laugh, too, despite the fact, or because of, how much they admittedly annoy each other. Matt boyishly blushed at times, which Lynda seemed to savor. “He even asked me to marry him once,” she said, Matt looking down at the table, reddening. “He didn’t mean it.” The two had such chemistry on stage that it was easy to imagine them together, maybe just as easy to imagine what a disaster it could have been.

Groening and Barry spoke only briefly on the importance of each others work, but even that was unnecessary. They were ushered off stage by a standing ovation. People knew they were in the presence of greatness. I only say that because some of them said as much out loud. I might not have held the same opinion before hearing the two artists speak, but after, I felt the same way. Matt Groening and Lynda Barry weren’t trying to, but they convinced me.

That you can do what you love and maybe carve out a little place for yourself, despite how difficult it may be at times, is something every artist should hear and remember, not that carving out a place for yourself should ever be the motivation. Love for what you’re doing is the only motivation which is self sustaining. The decades of experience Groening and Barry shared with CHF patrons is proof.

CHF runs through November 15th. Get ticket info at: http://www.chicagohumanities.org/

Damien James is a self-taught artist and writer living (barely) and working (constantly) in Chicago. He has contributed to Chicago Reader, New City, Saatchi Gallery Online, Art Voices, and the general goodwill of mankind, among other things. His art has been seen in Chicago’s Around the Coyote Gallery, Brooklyn’s 3rd Ward Gallery with Art House Co-op’s Sketchbook Project, various apartments in Berlin, London, and a tiny village in Romania.

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The Yes Men, hoaxsters who have elevated civil disobedience to an art form by taking on the biggest, most socially irresponsible corporations and the government that allows those corporations to screw the people, will be making appearances in Chicago this week for the local premier of their new film, The Yes Men Fix the World.

On Thursday, October 29th at 7:30pm, they’ll be hosted by Lumpen Magazine at Co-Prosperity Sphere, where The Yes Men will present their recent projects and hold a workshop to plan an action for Friday, October 30th, after the premier of their new film at the Music Box Theater.

If you haven’t seen their work, you should. If you have, you probably understand how important it is. The Yes Men might just have the right amount of courage, conviction, and insanity (think Ralph Nader meets Philippe Petit) to truly enact some kind of positive social change, but they can’t continue to do it without public support. In fact, they can barely afford to pull off their stunts, much less share them with us through their films.

The Yes Men recently posted a project on kickstarter.com to raise $30,000 for prints of their new film, which is in danger of not being seen by enough people. Through kickstarter, anyone can pledge from $30 to thousands, and pledges are only collected if the project gets completely funded. If not, no one loses a cent. If you can only pledge $10, convince two of your friends to do the same. If you can pledge more, you might just win a Survivaball! The project ends December 31st at 4:39pm EST.

Watch them pose as Dow and take responsibility for Bhopal, or reverse the Chamber of Commerce position on climate change! If you like what you see, help them do more.

The Survivaball. You'll need one soon enough.

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The Chicago Humanities Festival has just kick-started it’s 20^th anniversary programming with the theme of Laughter. “Not Happiness, mind you,” writes the Festival’s artistic director Lawrence Weschler. “Happiness is smug and bland and self-satisfied. Laughter, on the other hand, runs the gamut: from blithe to bitter, raucous to serious, fond to angry,” and so on.

Spread out in venues across the city, the Chicago Humanities Festival will giddily dance through Laughter in all its permutations with the same expansive worldview and near-reckless abandon it has brought to the table since 1989, when Richard Franke got the bright idea to bring intellectually stimulating, entertaining, and entirely accessible lectures, performances, and all-around amazingness to our Midwestern metropolis.

On hand will be such distinguished guests as Harold Ramis (sharing some of his favorite funny moments in cinema), Matt Groening in conversation with Lynda Barry, Pulitzer Prize-winner Alison Lurie, Pulitzer Prize-coveter John Hodgman, Chris Ware and his beautifully sad art, Bob Sabiston (of Waking Life fame), the Neo Futurists, Chicago Reader’s Michael Miner, the Guerrilla Girls, and 151 other presenters that you’ll probably want to see.

CHF has literally changed peoples lives, my own included, and I’ll be attending from now through mid-November and sharing some of my experiences with you. Maybe this year I’ll explode.

The Festival runs through November 14th. For more info and tickets, visit http://www.chicagohumanities.org/.

Damien James is a self-taught artist and writer living (barely) and working (constantly) in Chicago. He has contributed to Chicago Reader, New City, Saatchi Gallery Online, Art Voices, and the general goodwill of mankind, among other things. His art has been seen in Chicago’s Around the Coyote Gallery, Brooklyn’s 3^rd Ward Gallery with Art House Co-op’s Sketchbook Project, various apartments in Berlin, London, and a tiny village in Romania.

Without the good sense and inspiration of his paramour, Cassandra, he would most likely be a small blot of dirt about to be washed away by an only slightly larger puddle of inky water in some back alley.

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This is actually more of a stealth-rant, deploying reverse-psychology tactics and appeals to the culprit’s sense of fair play. Some creep stole an artwork by Chicago artist Damien James right off the walls of the Flatiron building, and what’s worse, the piece had already been sold.

“My initial reaction, not surprisingly, was anger. Intense, red piping-hot anger. “What the fuck!?” were my words, to be exact, extra emphasis on the “f.” Who steals art at a small neighborhood show? From an “emerging” artist? (”Emerging” = “starving”) Even more, who steals a piece of art that’s already been sold? Now I know it was small, and as you passed by, maybe you thought it would fit perfectly in your bag or pocket or whatever, but did you not see the sticker above the drawing that said “sold?” Could you not have chosen a piece that hadn’t already been paid for? Because you see, some artists who do shows in the Flat Iron, especially in the halls of the Flat Iron, are struggling; they’re artists who are desperately trying to carve out some tiny, peaceful existence. We’re trying to do something good, to make and share something outside the ever-present web of invasive consumerist insanity. I get (but don’t condone) stealing an iPhone, an X-Box, cash; but a drawing? Not only did you steal something I made, but you took money out of my pocket. So: what the fuck!?

Really, what were you thinking? Was it, “this’ll look awesome on my bathroom wall?” Was it the thrill of stealing something? Are you some kind of Vincenzo Peruggia? What’s next, a Steven Soderbergh art-heist caper?”

Hats off to James for channeling his justifiable rage into a piece that actually transcends the circumstances behind this unfortunate incident to say something larger about the need to show some basic human decency, even if you’re drunk off your ass, and even (especially) when it comes to small art shows at neighborhood galleries.

Damien James, from the 'small person' series

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