“You in Milwaukee on business?” the guy in the window seat always asks. It’s a fair question to pose to someone in a pair of semi-professional slacks heading to New York on a weekday evening with a bag full of paperwork. He doesn’t know that the papers are 20 ungraded art history quizzes that he would set the curve on if I gave him five minutes and the textbook. He doesn’t know that my 401(k) is twenty paintings sitting in a storage unit down by the Midtown Tunnel. I think Window-seat inevitably feels misled by these circumstances, expecting we’ll be connected by different nouns, but similar enough verbs to fill up a conversation that will last until the refreshment cart dispenses the Dewar’s. Like, maybe we both have to manage and coordinate, but thrillingly, I might apply those actions to retail distribution and he to digital networks. No such luck. Telling them I’m an artist, part-time professor and freelance art writer catches them off-guard and the conversation grinds down. The nouns and the verbs between us are different; that’s just too much inertia to overcome for the sake of pre-beverage chitchat.

I’m not a martyr for anything as petty as the drape of a pair of jeans, so I conform to the point that the locals in Wisconsin let me around their kids…and maybe just enough to take preemptive action against the Rob Reiner/Carroll O’Connor thing that seems to be brewing between my father-in-law and I. Those travel pants were purchased from the Marc Anthony collection at Kohl’s department store after someone outside a Home Depot took my slightly stained studio jeans for house painting clothes, and the same day my father-in-law (in whose attic I freeload and in whose fridge I store my beer) suggested I borrow some of his clothes before going to a casual restaurant. What I considered fairly unremarkable attire in Bushwick turned out to be downright avant-garde in Wisconsin. Incidentally, an orange hunter’s cap and an unkempt beard meets fashion requirements in both locales for a period of about three weeks during the fall.

On the morning of a recent return to Brooklyn, I slipped into the pile of clothes I left next to the bed, grabbed a coat from the rack by the door and departed for my studio. By the time evening rolled around I made the lazy decision to go straight to art openings without returning home to change. The show was at Allegra LaViola Gallery on the Lower East Side, and featured work riffing on (wouldn’t you know it) the fashion industry, by artist Andrea Mary Marshall. The gallery was packed to suffocating with young, beautiful fashionista-types that emphasized my Steve Carrell-meets-key grip couture. To see the work you had to slither in between the wall and rapt conversationalists…one of those scenes that mature spectators and those who don’t use cocaine tend to feel uncomfortable in. Halfway through a PBR I sought refuge in an old colleague from the Brooklyn Rail. Holding on to the conversation like a piece of driftwood in an angry ocean, we mused about being older and less effervescent than the surrounding bystanders. Maturity, like misery, loves company. When I convinced her I wasn’t lying about commuting between MKE and LGA, we traded art gossip and teaching stories until most of our beer had been jostled from our cans and onto the floor.

“Have a happy New Year,” she yelled breaking for the exit. “And, hey, don’t freeze your ass off in Minnesota either.”

“Minnesota?!” I thought, shocked. “Badgers, Packers, Brewers, Miss America, Muskies and Leinies!!!” Hometown pride??

Alone again, I tried to circulate. An epaulette on my jacket came undone when I pivoted into the crowd and brushed against a sexy transvestite who was pushing past. She spilled a few drops of beer that landed on my sleeve. I threw a frustrated glance at her, and she shrugged coquettishly before knifing into the crowd.

Off in one direction sprawled Minnesota, Wisconsin and all those dark fields of the Republic. In the other America’s incandescent cultural production center sizzled like a lit fuse. I stood flatfooted in a high-heeled crowd with an epaulette flapping like a Brooklyn flag above trousers the color of sand from Lake Winnebago, caught in-between the two.

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Mimi Moncier, Unbound, 2009. Courtesy of the artist, Adobe Books Parlor & the Pistils, San Francisco

Click here to read an interview with Adobe Books Backroom Gallery!

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With the addition of Tony Tasset’s installation in the loop, the Pop-Up Art Inititive currently underway & the upcoming Art Loop Open it is good to see the Chicago Loop Alliance getting some traction and note for their work, here is hoping it can survive as annual events.

ALO wants all of Chicago’s diverse and talented visual artists to apply, potentially win $50,000 in prizes and have the opportunity to reach new and coveted audiences from around the world.

“The work of Chicago artists is our city’s tapestry. Art Loop Open will be a unique opportunity for visitors and residents to celebrate our rich art, showcase our amazing downtown artistic attraction, and offer a platform for local artist to shine. Art Loop Open will be a interactive, cultural experience bringing everyone together to enjoy and admire great works of art.”
-Richard M. Daley, Mayor of Chicago

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This week, Duncan, Amanda and Tom talk to artist Steven Rand, who is the founder and Executive Director of apexart in New York.

If you are in or around NYC this is the last week of “Don’t Piss On Me and Tell Me It’s Raining” the Bad at Sports organized show, go check it out while you still can!

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Amanda & everyone involved with the Battleship conversation at Winkleman Gallery in NYC would like to thank everyone for turning out to the show and for helping to make it a great time. Here are some photos of the event as well as the link to the blog by William Powhida and Jennifer Dalton that streamed live video of the event and posts about it plus future events like it.

Again thanks for coming out and look forward to audio from the event in a future episode of Bad at Sports.

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Join our own NYC Correspondant / Referee: Amanda Browder (possible recording) For an afternoon of Battleship gaming at the Winkleman Gallery where two groups go head to head in an art conversation battle.
Sunday, February 28, 2010 / 2pm / part of the William Powhida – Jennifer Dalton exhibition #Class
HOST : Amanda Browder – Bad at Sports Podcast – NYC Correspondent
Address: 637 West 27th Street, NYC – btw 11th and 12th

Battle One: Formalists vs. Conceptualists.

- Why do people still fetishize the object?
- Why can’t I buy a performance?
- Can we actually believe half the work that is out there?
- What has more value: objects or ideas?

Battle Two: Painters vs. The World.

- Are painters just magicians? or illusionists?
- Why do painters always make more money?
- Isn’t photography a better version of painting?
- Painting sucks…why?

Battle Three: Artist vs. Dealer

- Why can’t I believe in my dealer?
- Why are artists so fucked up?
- Dealers suck because they use the artist for their own advantage.
- Artists have no idea what is going on, they need handling.

All are welcome and encouraged to choose your weapon. At the end we will tally up the points and see who really reigns supreme. It’s a WAR ON THE SHORE!

It is possible if all works out that some of it might be recorded for Bad at Sports….also an open soap box for ranting.

Bring it Sailor!!!! – I double dog dare you!

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This week Duncan and Christian check in from the Banff Centre for the Arts.

They sit down with the Director of Visual Arts, Kitty Scott to discuss what the Banff Centre is and does.

Then they hijack a moment of performance art to “guerrilla” style interview Jan Verwoert, a contributing editor to Frieze magazine, a regular writer for Afterall and Metropolis M, and the leader of their summer residency.
Christian Kuras
Jan Verwoert
Kitty Scott
Frances Stark
Stuart Bailey
Banff Centre
Banff International Curatorial Institute
Banff New Media Institute
Walter Phillips Gallery
Royal College of Art
Education, Collection, History Symposium at the Banff Centre
Ken Lum
Olivia Plender
Ashley Neese
Adrian Stimson

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Gaylen Gerber at Rowley Kennerk Gallery

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This week Duncan and Richard go to Gallery 400 and talk to Director Lorelei Stewart and Assistant Director Anthony Elms about the current exhibition Our Literal Speed the end of the At the Edge: Innovative Art in Chicago series, and the new approach they are taking to commission and exhibit the work of emerging and mid-career artists.

Gallery 400, a not-for-profit arts exhibition space at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was founded in 1983 to exhibit and support art, design and architecture. Over its 26 year history Gallery 400 has grown into a nationally recognized gallery that presents consistently acclaimed exhibitions, lectures, and artist commissions. The exhibitions and programs present a broad range of recent developments and aesthetic concerns and have included more than 1,000 artists to date.

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