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EDITION #11

June 17, 2013 · Print This Article

Tony Tasset is watching you.

Painting the town red

New public art to grace the Chicagoland area

Everyone knows that going to a museum or a gallery is usually more trouble than it’s worth. What, with all the disapproving glances, heady talk and questionable wine selections. Wouldn’t it be easier just to look at art while you shop? Or during your morning commute to the Loop?

Citizens of Chicago, have no fear. Murals and public commissions are popping up all over (and around) the city. Just this past week the CTA announced the seven artists commissioned to beautify North Side Red Line stations. Lynn Basa (renowned public artist and my former boss) posted this mock-up for her Byzantine glass mosaic that will adorn the Argyle stop on facebook. Basa, who [literally] wrote the book on public art commissions mentioned to me this weekend that she is elated to be creating a public work in her hometown.

Basa mock-up for the Argyle station.

As if the CTA commissions weren’t enough, some of my very favorite Miami artists from Jim Drain to Bhakti Baxter have been descending on the town of Rosemont to complete murals in a new mall scheduled to open sometime this summer. For reasons beyond my comprehension, the ever-relevant New York Times devoted print space to this “ambitious” project. What’s the T? has heard that the mall will also feature an Alvaro Ilizarbe piece that is “his sistine chapel” and worth the trip to the mall-seum. See you there?

Chicago artist, Josh Reames, working on the Drain mural.

Threewall’s ‘Power of Ten’ was a party for way more.

Those artists sure do clean up nice!

Screw Basel and Venice, the Threewalls 10th anniversary benefit this weekend was on point! The Power of Ten at Salvage One had everything – food, drinks, crazy antiques and baubles, steampunk-style old-timey tin-types, circus performers, drink, dancing, a silhouette cutting artist, music, drinks, and even some art.

Even though we still don’t know where they’re moving (do they even know where they’re moving to?!), here are ten fabulously done-up attendee’s in honor of the power of ’10′:

Threewalls Programming Director, Abby Satinsky with artist and curator, Anthony Romero. Abby’s dress is just killer and La Croix continues to trend.

Auction guest curators and Chicago fashion icons, Ben Foch and Chealsea Culp of New Capital with Threewalls Director Shannon Stratton.

Formerly featured on Who Wore it Better, the daper Daniel Tucker and Anthony Stepter.

Artist Jason Lazurus flanked by up-and-comers Raven Munsell and Jesse Malmed. LOVING the seersucker suit!

Totally Trending

Face paint was definitely a big winner at the ACRE Block Party last Saturday, June 8th.


The Weatherman Report

For Chicago IL

Mary Heilmann , San Gregorio, 2012 Oil on canvas (15 x 12 inches) Image provided by hyperallergic.

SMALLTIME ARCHIPHILE:

Roberto Clemente Post Office

by ANDREW SANTA LUCIA

Consistently referred to as the worse post office in the world, the Roberto Clemente Branch of the USPS in Logan Square is a wonderfully ‘brick’ building, not in material but in shape. Thats not to say it’s shaped like a brick, but the bricks become different shapes. I say this because brick is on display, not for what it wants to be – sorry Lou Kahn – but for what it tries to simulate. It’s like when Neo sees Agent Smith shrouded in binary code – parts to whole, whole to parts, but without the make-up.

Post office exterior.

Usually used as a traditional building material, mostly flat and controlled through joining patterns, bricks do not become cylindrical columns, filleted edges, curves, almost tapestry like frames for tall beautiful window displays of people waiting two hours for a package, like at the RCPO. Opened in 1937, this building threw me for a loop because I dated it later, but the deco interior and amazing mural insice should have been more of an indication.

The mural in all it’s glory.

The changes in the bricks attitude is mad postmodern, but it was done at the mid-stage of American modernism, lending itself to the deco ideas of streamline. That would explain the curvaceous bod on this beauty, but not her brick dress. Beauty might be only skin deep, but when you use rounded bricks to complete a homogenous cladding of a building that could have been expressed in steel or another more plastic material, you’re trying to say something about normal buildings out there, namely ‘who cares what the brick wants to be.’

Located at 2339 N California Ave, Chicago, IL 60647

SLAC studios take hold on Milwaukee Ave

Artists revitalize storefronts in advance of MAAF

If you live in Logan Square you’ve probably been wondering what happened to that garrish pink bakery on Milwaukee Avenue near the Spaulding Blue Line stop. Unwilling to let it lay dormant, Gwendolyn Zabicki, founder and director of the South Logan Arts Coalition is putting this and other vacant storefronts on Milwaukee Avenue to use. SLAC’s studios will be open to the public with exhibitions featuring a total of 40 artists during the 2013 Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival, June 28-30th.

What’s the T? caught up with Zabicki and some of the SLAC artists for sneak peek of what SLAC has in store for MAAF:

Melody Saraniti

Matthew Woodward with his work in the bakery turned studio.

Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival will also feature local favorites and newcomers such as the Trailer Park Proyects, Threewalls, The Comfort Station, Document, Reform Objects. We also heard the food is going to be the bomb.com.

SLAC continued…

Milwaukee Ave Arts Fest flyer at Reform Objects.

Natalie Krick in her SLAC studio.

Zabicki in the studio being occupied by Krick.

Location to Stationers

Summer Dreamin’

Some summer dreams worth supporting (IMHO)

Location to Station: Help my ACRE homies fulfill their vision quest to super rad places like Cahokia. The artists are all super talented, and the “perks” for donating are real sweet.

ACRE Kitchen: ACRE does a lot of intangible things for the over 90 artists who visit the residency in Wisconsin each summer, but one of the most substantial and delicious parts of the program is feeding everyone twice a day. Anyone who’s been to ACRE knows the food is awesome, fresh, sustainable, all that jazz and the staff is tireless. Help ACRE help you! Plus it’s tax deductible. Hurry! There’s only a few days left!



Week in Review : Art and then some

June 2, 2013 · Print This Article

ocbab1

The week began with a guest post from Jamie Kazay who continues her serial Barbie-reflections:

Play time with Barbie created a space for the infinite possibilities that language enables. This is, albeit a different medium, how the principles of La Nouvelle Vague operate. Within this movement there seems to be an intense need to circle-back, to recreate, and to satirize all with the intention to provide a variety of end results. It is the distance that is traveled while watching these films that should be observed. They provide a wealth of possibilities. For instance, in “À bout de souffle” I am amused by the collage of scenes that jump back and forth like a child playing jump rope. The mismatched shots pull from a variety of American cultural references. I recount the jazz notes and sounds, Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans, Humphrey Bogart, and countless other references. As I played with Barbie, I adapted. I coordinated a sense of wonder and culture, and this established my freedom to create.

Photo by Clay Hickson.

Photo by Clay Hickson.

Following that, EDITION #10 spellz hot hot hot and, aside from a Who Wore It Better contest between TIME Magazine and a tombstone, the weather report, Facebook art convos, and more, contains a nice little list of good books to check out. As What’s The T? mastermind, Dana Bassett, puts it:

BREAKING: In a surprising turn of events, books exist in the physical realm…

IMAG2808_o

Chicago Artist Writers hosted a workshop with Lori Waxman at Gallery 400 on March 14, 2013. This week on Bad at Sports, they tried to collect and recap some of Waxman’s two-hour lecture:

Lori posited that criticism has largely not changed much since its first appearance with Diderot’s reviews of the Paris Salon of 1765, and the writing that we see in major outlets like the Tribune or Artforum holds the same basic values of that style to this day. This default approach to art criticism doesn’t reflect the drastic changes in art and technology’s influence on the contemporary conversation as much as it could.

She used Documenta as a case in point–-it embodied a sprawling, time-intensive experience for the viewer, and the critical responses to it suffered as their structuring was inadequate to cover the exhibition’s curatorial conceits. Critics who were only able to visit 3-5 days and print 1000 words were ill equipped to critique the event in its totality. “Who goes to NYC for a weekend, and tries to see everything, and if they can’t, it’s New York’s fault?” Lori asked. She used Dieter Roelstraete’s review of the Documenta in Artforum as one example; one of his main critiques was that it had too much going on. Similarly, Roberta Smith’s review in the New York Times was schizophrenic, unable to deal with the scope of the massive three-month undertaking. Lori suggested that despite the stubborn precedent of “objective distance” in traditional criticism, she herself might be the best critic of Documenta, having spent her entire summer there.

Eppink copy

News from New York: Juliana Driever interviews Jason Eppink, who by way of introduction has said on his blog: “At some point in time I will write three succinct sentences that clearly express who I am and what I do. Alas, we have not arrived at that point in time yet. ” He is also the Assistant Curator of Digital Media at theMuseum of the Moving Image and, at one turn in the interview says:

Every generation is comfortable navigating the world with the tools they grew up with and every generation feels uncomfortable with the tools they didn’t grow up with, and there’s a simple evolutionary reason for this: Our brains are elastic during our youth as we figure out how the world works, adapting very easily to new tools because, well, everything is new to us. And our brains become more firm as we age so we can more efficiently do the things that ensured our survival. And in age, we can interpret new tools as threats or we can adapt and relearn behaviors. Historically this was not much of a tension, because, e.g., it took thousands of generations to perfect agriculture. Today, the tools change a little faster.

octo

Top 5 Weekend Picks via Stephanie Burke #huzza! 

BIG & BOLD: a post from your truly about exciting things (or should I say, things I am excited about) including the Rapid Pulse [Performance] Festival, ACRE’s kitchen festival, a Heather Mekkelson show from 2008, and the new Vitamin D2 book, featuring Deb Sokolow and Elijah Burger. 

JSR_06_sq

Monica Westin posted her piece on Steve Juras this Friday:

The first impression Steve Juras’ studio calls to mind is of self-constraint as aesthetic. His work spans any number of two and three dimensional, formal and conceptual practices, and it’s the consistently tightening systems he builds and acts under that provide a through-line: repetitions and experiments in tightly restricted games that insist on looping back on themselves. Juras’ background is in design– his MFA from SAIC is in visual communication– and it’s easy to read some of that background into his somewhat detached approach, which often translates into the obsessive working of images into their most basic shapes (like a long series of skull drawings in notebooks, where a naturalistic sketch ultimately devolves into a study of curve and line) and explorations of shapes within grids. “I’m always looking back to abstraction, the investigation of the line,” he muses as he flips through carefully labeled notebooks that offer endless repetitions on simple themes.

Trine Søndergaard and Nicolai Howalt, from DYING BIRDS (2010)

Trine Søndergaard and Nicolai Howalt, from DYING BIRDS (2010)

MAINTENANCE #2 courtesy of one Mairead Case — who adeptly discusses the MORE books (including) Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia Butler (Seven Stories Press, 1996), Kite by Dominique Eddé, trans. Ros Schwartz (Seagull Books, 2012), Dying Birds by Nicolai Howalt and Trine Søndergaard (Haasla Books, 2010), Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun (Riverhead Books, 2009), STIR Vol. 1 (www.stirtoaction.com, 2012), and Man vs. Sky by Corey Zeller (YesYes Books, 2013), with an introductory note:

This MAINTENANCE comes to you from my neighbors’ apartment, where it is thunderstorming outside and inside, I am looking after one very great, very large, very orange boss of a cat. My Buddha machine is on and every hour or so, a cuckoo clock pings and the cat leaves the bedroom to hiss or to glare. Across the alley, some little girls are shriek-giggling.

All the disquiet—a word I’m using like the great Marc Weidenbaum does—is, in the end, pretty cozy. (Kitty calmed down.) I didn’t always feel this way, the shrieks in particular would be too many hooks for hanging my hat. But Weidenbaum’s writing and sound archives, which include field recordings and more traditional performances (usually as part of Disquiet Junto, a series he runs), they help me maintain focus even when my neighborhood’s not playing a lullaby. They help me see chaos settling into music, not into garble but patterns and rhythms, however hiccupily.

LA_theatre_review_solo_show

And, rounding off the week Adrienne Harris posted this very same Sunday with notes from our other coast, about her theater and movie attendance:

When I lived in New York, theatre felt almost as easy as going to the movies. There were so many theaters all over town. There was public transportation and the TKTS discount ticket center in Time Square offering me tickets to shows I desperately wanted to see at a price that was in my budget. I had friends that worked for live theatre and could get me free tickets. Hell, I sold concessions at a small professional theatre in West Village and saw all those plays, multiple times, for free. I saw the original production of the Last 5 Years and an amazing productions of Burn This with Edward Norton and Katherine Keener for free! It was great. Now I live in LA and my friends work for tv shows and in movies and no one has access to free theatre anymore. So, I go to the movie theatre near my house and park in the large parking structure that takes the movie theatre’s validation and I use my Stubs card to earn upgrades on popcorn and eventually free movie tickets and I sit in the dark and watch Super Heros duke it out, or couples turning 40 fight about their marriage, or young people who feel lost but find love in the end. And I LOVE this too. I really love it.



EDITION #10

May 28, 2013 · Print This Article

Reading is Fundamental

The “real books” edition

BREAKING: In a surprising turn of events, books exist in the physical realm. In the interest of your papered pleasure, here is a rundown of some noteworthy and [pretty] new Chicago imprints.

  • RE: things in the lap, by Edmund Chia. This sincere and experimental volume by Peregrine Program proprietor Edmund Chia covers his experience of the last three years of exhibitions through prose, poetry and images from Peregrine artists. Chia’s poetic interpretations are like remembering through someone else’s brain. Sweet cover art by David Salkin. Available here.
  • Psychosexual catalog, ANDREW RAFACZ GALLERY, curated by Scott J. Hunter. Rafacz told the T that this catalog is the first in a series, with forthcoming edition for Wendy White’s solo exhibition in September. The catalogs are part of larger initiative to expand and deepen the galleries programming with longer running exhibitions and events like the catalog release and conversation on May 25th.

    A “real extension of the show” Rafacz said the book is meant to be a “sexy object,” sporting a lux cover, BUTT magazine-esque pink pages and elaborate typography. Designed by Ryan Swanson, Jason Foumberg‘s diagrammatic essay might be Psychosexual’s sexiest piece. Also includes an essay by Hunter and a great read about a Caravaggio work by Elijah Burger. More information on the Psychosexual catalog here.

  • A sneak peak of Foumberg’s essay.
  • Space, Interiors and Exteriors, 1972, Sun Ra + Ayé Aton. A new book with never-before-seen photos by Sun Ra, released by Corbett vs. Dempsey? owning this book will score you about a million cool points. Featuring photographs by Mr. Ra, murals by Aton, an introduction by Glenn Ligon and an essay by John Corbett. It’s pretty much an investment. Availble here.

  • Photo by Clay Hickson.
  • Sunday Thoughts, by Clay Hickson. I love seeing Hickson’s “Sunday Thoughts” on my tumblr stream, so I couldn’t be more excited to have the entire collection in the flesh. Sunday Thoughts was recently featured alongside other local, national and maybe even international artists at Johalla Project‘s Artist Book Collection, curated by Nina Hartmann.

Hartmann with the Artist Book Collection at Johalla Projects.

The Weatherman Report

For Chicago IL

Roger de La Fresnaye , Landscape with a Village, The Hills Beyond Meulan, 1911 Oil on canvas (72.4 × 59.4 cm) Image provided by Indianapolis Museum of Art

#linkedin

What’s trending on the internets?
  • New Capital featured on Art Slant. Finally! Someone is paying attention to awesome work in Chicago.

  • An image of Seth Sher and Meg Noe at New Capital from the article by author and photographer, Paul Germanos.
  • Like “Cribs” for artists on the internet. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s (and my former classmate), Kate Korroch‘s apartment featured on popular blog, Apartment Therapy.

  • Korroch and her husband, Chad Jewsbury, at their Ravenswood apartment.
  • Oh come on, I know you get your art news from Facebook, too. Click images for stories.

  • Anthony said it best.

  • Gallerista‘s Joshua Herrington asks, ‘girl, what is the T?’
  • Theaster Gates trending even more than normal. Recently my gmail inbox just cannot get enough of Theaster Gates. It keeps going on and on about how Gates has been named the keynote speaker of the One State Together in the Arts conference, and how he inaugrated his new exhibition 13th Ballad at the MCA, or about this well timed interview between him and Elysabeth Alfano. Will my inbox never rest?

Who Wore it Better?

Time Magazine cover and Kate Ruggeri sculpture from 2010. (Stole this from Kate‘s tumblr).


Inspirational art work for the band Black/Black, who performed this weekend at SWAN SONG for LODOS. Art work by Steven Vainberg



EDITION #9

May 13, 2013 · Print This Article

Rose Halpern

TWENDING

2013 SAIC Fashion Show
  • Headlessness
  • Pointed Shouldews
  • Space Tennis
  • “Inappwopwiate beadwok”
  • Empty suitcases
  • Gas masks
  • Tunics
  • Veils
  • Abstwact bulk
  • Inconvenient pockets
  • Pockets-as-hand-passageways
  • Deconstwucted Camo pattewns
  • Bustles (many of them)
  • Expanding spatial wadius via bulky, geometwically shaped layews
  • Mad Men on sizzuwp
  • Anime
  • Neon yellow, khaki combo

Francisco Gonzalez

Jacqueline Nadolski
WHATs OUT
  • Man clothes
  • Visible body

Tenley George

Sam Salvo

Special report by twend tracker Caroline Picard.

The Weatherman Report

For Chicago IL

Gustave Caillebotte, Rue de Paris, temps de pluie, 1877 (oil on canvas, 83.54″ x 108.74″).

SMALLTIME ARCHIPHILE:

The Bachman House

by ANDREW SANTA LUCIA

Chicago has had characters – both architects and buildings – throughout it’s development as a place where things get built, regardless of if people want it or not. Bruce Goff, a transplanted Chicagoan, was a character and produced them. Goff was a child prodigy that started practicing architecture at 12-fucking-years-old and was doing weird things before they were cool i.e. Pre-PoMo; hell, pre-WWII.

The Bachman house was completed in 1947 and landmarked in the 1980s. This single-family home sports a straight-up sheet metal façade that’s closer to a shed than a home. The sharp triangulation and peak of the Bachman House roof volume gets bisected by an even more acute triangle, held up by two symmetrical equilateral ones – architects did love drawing with their triangles! The front and center in-your-face nature of this bungalow only gets weirder by placing it within a typical Chicago neighborhood laden with brick 3-flats and masonry walk-ups. Goff’s fortress (many people compare his work to castles) does not embrace local flavor superficially. Instead, it totally engages with Chicago’s, “build first and ask questions later” attitude to architectural culture. Unfortunately, that approach comes with a disclaimer that the Daley’s and Rahm both espouse: “nothing or no one stands in the way of development.” Meaning not even landmark status can save buildings anymore in Chicago.

Maybe they didn’t get the memo that architects are used to projects never getting built, let alone mostly working in virtual reality, so you can kill a building but you can’t kill architecture.

Located at 1244 W. Carmen Ave, Chicago, IL 60640.

.gif of “Sitting Bull” from the NAFM

.gif of “earring” from the NAFM

Native American Fax Machine:

Transmissions from Elisa Harkins

.gif of “Trail of Tears”

Featuring work generated rounds of Harkins’ own game, Native American Fax Machine is on view through May 25th at Happy Collaborationists. If these .gif’s are any indication (which they obviously are), this show is definitely worth checking out. Bonus points for contributing to the landline trend! The instructions for your own round of Native American Fax Machine are included below:

A game played with 6 or more players.
Each player selects a card with a noun.
Each player has 3 minutes to draw the noun.
The players move the drawings clockwise.

Players then have 1 minute to copy the drawing.
Players pass the drawings until they have made the same amount of copies as players.
The last person to draw the noun has to guess the original noun on the card.

Composite of “caribou” from the NAFM

.gif of “caribou” from the NAFM

E-Dogz: Zom­bie Apoc­a­lyp­tic Refuge Center

Something to ease the loss of “Walking Dead”

When the zom­bie apoc­a­lypse goes down, we’ll all have to think on their toes– watch­ing our backs as we hit the roads– escap­ing the rav­en­ous army of undead relent­lessly pur­su­ing our cra­nial tis­sues. The liv­ing will have to eat too and the mobile kitchen of E-Dogz will be a bea­con of nour­ish­ment in these end days. Eric “E-Dog” May has teamed up with Rimas Simaitis to equip the food trailer to travel land and sea, feed­ing the peo­ple in these dyer times. The zom­bie plague actu­ally began gen­er­a­tions ago, con­jured through black magic by Voodoo priests on island nations dur­ing the glory days of the high seas. To honor the zom­bie resis­tance of yore, E-Dogz: Zom­bie Apoc­a­lypse Refuge Cen­ter will host a tiki party to ward off zom­bies and serve up dooms­day cui­sine and cir­cuses. This event may fea­ture, but will not be lim­ited to: Spam nigiri, ento­mophagy (look it up), flam­ing cock­tails, and/or coconut short wave radios.

TODAY!
Eric May & Rimas Simaitis present:
E-Dogz: Zom­bie Apoc­a­lyp­tic Refuge Center
May 13th, 5pm– 7pm
Gallery 400
in response to Halflifers



Week in Review : Road Trips, Dinner Parties and Other Exit Strategies

May 5, 2013 · Print This Article

It’s a busy time of year and a busy week on top of it. MFA and BFA events left and right, writing and grading papers, final presentations, vacation plans, residency plans, devised escape attempts, and closing remarks. That’s right folks, summer is almost upon us. #huzza But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. This week in review —

RoadTrip

Episode 400 y’all! Duncan and Richard published their road trip. What is estimated to be a five hour drive between St. Louis and Chicago was boiled down into a healthy 45-minute reduction of audio sauce. Get your fill of those fellas here.

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“Peep this outtake from Kris Harzinski & Will Haughery’s May 26th exhibition at ACRE.” (WTT) 

Otherwise, some Monday T from our favorite gossip columnist, Dana Bassatt. Bassatt asks after G.R. N’Namdi Gallery’s vacated storefront, offers insider reportage about her Dinner Party field trip, and offers a great eye-spy on an easily overlooked building in all its freaky grandeur (shout out to Kokorokoko — this building seems right up your alley, perhaps?). All that and more here.

Colleen Asper, Bathroom Mirror with Rectangle, 2012.

Colleen Asper, Bathroom Mirror with Rectangle, 2012.

I reposted a link to The Highlights: an online arts journal who’s latest issue presents blog works/art/articles that touch on labor, Marx, and biographical statements while presenting images of honey glazed turkey, black rectangles and to do lists.

Matts Leiderstam, “Once Seen (The Moving Panorama),” 2013

Matts Leiderstam, “Once Seen (The Moving Panorama),” 2013

One more reason for a road trip courtesy of Kelly Shindler who published a great list of things to look out for art-wise in STLA:

“It’s the first of May, which means that it’s May Day, International Worker’s Day, and you may as well watch the Bee Gees perform this. It also means that lots of art spaces and museums are getting ready to open their first round of summer shows. In solidarity, I present to you my (rather long) shortlist of what’s on in St. Louis in the coming weeks…”

Work by Jenny Kendler at The Sub-Mission, 1431 W. Chicago Ave

Work by Jenny Kendler at The Sub-Mission, 1431 W. Chicago Ave

Stephanie Burke posts the TOP 10 shows-to-see (obviously everyone has been hard at work all winter, and the fruits of labor are now, this very moment, EXPLODING). Which is to say, all good things are upon us. HERE

Mierle Laderman Ukeles, MAINTAIN YOUR DESTINY (1974)

Mierle Laderman Ukeles, MAINTAIN YOUR DESTINY (1974)

Another new columnist arrives at the scene, adding one more reason to open that bottle of champagne. Yes, that’s right, Mairead Case published the first post in an on-going series, MAINTENANCE. In her words:

I want this column to be about maintenance, because endings get so much press right now—education is increasingly privatized and teachers are undervalued, slow media is undervalued, pedagogy and art practice and criticism are going weirdo Cerebrus on us—and instead of getting ever-crabbier or just throwing in the towel, I want to talk about how we’re living. How we’re taking care, how we’re keeping the wheels turning. How we’re supporting ourselves long-haul. (Why books? I spend most of my time in libraries and classrooms, and reading, so books seem like a good place to start.)

MAINTENANCE will focus on reviewing new publications, but there’ll always be older ones in the mix. Again, if there’s something you’d like me to cover, please be in touch: mairead dot case at gmail.com. Hi!

So — with that, hope you had a good weekend, and let’s plan a day of hooky. Meet me at the beach, noon on Wednesday. Call it a National Day of Wellness and Leisure. Wear your best suits. I’ll bring the cold cuts if you bring the beach ball. Maybe we can look as dapper as the old timers downstairs. See you soon.


 



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