1. UPLIFT at Believe Inn

Work by work by Anthony Lewellen, Beth Pearlman, Chris Silva, Doug Fogelson, Eric Mecum, Jourdon Gullett, Justus Roe, Kim Frieders Tibbetts, Lauren Feece, Liza Berkoff, Matthew Hoffman, Renee Robbins, Robert Stevenson, Ruben Aguirre, and Tom Torluemke

Believe Inn is located at 2043 N Winchester Ave. Reception is Friday from 7-10pm.

2. “Just Breathe Normally” at Autumn Space

Work by Brian Hubble

Autumn Space is located at 1700 W Irving Park Rd. Reception is Saturday from 6-9pm.

3. FLAT 10 (FBI 3) at Floor Length and Tux

Work by Edra Soto, Jon Bollo, Liz Nielsen, Erik Wenzel, Catie Olson, and EC Brown

Floor Length and Tux is located at 2332 W. Augusta #3. Reception is Saturday from 7-10pm.

4. CLUB HELTER SKELTER at Manifest Exhibitions

Work by Stephen Collier

Manifest Exhibitions is located at 2950 N Allen Ave. Reception is Friday from 7-10pm.

5. Combinations Described at Donald Young Gallery

Work by Bruce Nauman

Donald Young Gallery is located at 224 S. Michigan Ave., suite 266. Reception is Friday from 5-7pm.

6. Nomadic Text at What It Is

Curated by Jessica Cochran and Mia Ruyter, with work by Joseph Grigely, Mark Booth, Alex Valentine, Karen Reimer, Jason Pickleman, Stephanie Brooks, Steven Miglio, Robert Ransick, Rachel Foster and Rebecca Foster.

What It Is is located at 1155 Lyman, Oak Park. Reception is Sunday from 3-8pm.

Hello again everyone. Sorry for the silence last week, I was on an adventure to California. It was great, except for the fact that someone out there got me sick, and now that I’m back with my nose to the grinding stone and a shoot to go to this weekend (both kinds), and I’ve got a wicked cold. Art’s been slimming down in preparation for the big Sept. 10th blowout, but there’s still a lot of great work up. Here’s my weekend picks…

1. Chicago Variety Show at Rotofugi Gallery

Work by Chicago artists Jeremiah Ketner, Myong Kurily, Jim Pavelec, David Rettker, Shawn Roberts, and Chema Skandal.

Rotofugi Gallery is located at 1955 W. Chicago Ave. Reception is Friday, from 7-10pm.

2. A Walking Tour of Here at Fill in the Blank Gallery

Paintings and prints by Justin Santora.

Fill in the Blank Gallery is located at 5038 N. Lincoln Ave. Reception is Friday, from 7-11pm.

3.Who’s Yr Shaman? at Johalla Projects

Work by Elijah Burgher, Sara Fagala, Terence Hannum, Chad Harrison, Ivan Lozano, Adam Ludwig, and Rebecca Walz.

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

4. Pastoral at Kasia Kay Art Projects Gallery

Work by Kim Curtis and S.J. Hart made at Tryon Farm in Michigan City.

Kasia Kay Art Projects Gallery is located at 215 N. Aberdeen St. Reception is Saturday, from 4-6pm.

5. Feeble Intimacy at LVL3

Work by Liz Nielsen, Kate Ruggeri, and Brendan Sullivan.

LVL3 is located at 1452 N Milwaukee Ave, #3. Reception Saturday, from 6-10pm.

Editors’ Note: Liz Nielsen’s is the last post in our week-long series on Apartment Galleries in Chicago, all of which were originally written for Floor Length and Tux’s “Untitled Circus” event a few weeks ago. A number of essays on Chicago’s thriving domestic/apartment gallery art space scene were solicited from local writers/artists/curators involved in the running of such spaces, and we posted some of them here on Bad at Sports as a way to extend the discussion. I’ll be posting some summarizing thoughts on this series later on, along with links to where you can find a .pdf file containing additional essays on Chicago’s Apartment Galleries written for the Untitled Circus event. Please feel free to email us with your comments at mail@badatsports.com, or if you’d like to contact the folks at FLAT directly, you can email Erik at erik@ floorlengthandtux.com.

Guest Post by Liz Nielsen

A few thoughts

Erik Brown and Michael Thomas invited me to write down my thoughts regarding the recent spurt of apartment/domestic/project spaces in Chicago with the intent of pushing forth a few waves of constructive criticism that might consequently enable some of these spaces to re-calibrate their homegrown efforts. Now, I run my own space too, the Swimming Pool Project Space in Albany Park, and so I began by looking at my own reflection in the mirror and asking myself why I do what I do, and why I am where I am.

I am a Chicago artist. I have seen my reflection many times but this time I saw something, a stark reality, with more clarity than I had seen in the past.  Louder than ever before I heard a resonating sentence echoing inside my head: If Chicago’s art scene is second or third tier then naturally it produces second or third tier artists.

But if Chicago’s art scene is second or third tier, does it follow that it would naturally produce second or third tier artists? I am better than that.  I know that we are better than that.

So the question becomes: can Chicago raise the bar? Can it rise above the standards set by third tier expectations? Do we ourselves want honorable mentions, or gold medals? The artists who do make it into the top tier usually leave Chicago shortly before or immediately after their success starts to happen. So this leads me to wonder, if Chicago artists want to be gold medal-winners and recipients of national and international recognition, must we leave Chicago?

I’ve been running circles in my mind trying to figure out why we are where we are, and why we don’t, apparently, have the means to get the gold.  We obviously have the energy.  The innumerable independent spaces are one indication of this.  I have come up with several reasons but there is one that I continually spiral back to, and that is that Chicago has very few “parent galleries”, relative to the number of artists. At risk of being cutesy, parent galleries are the commercial venues that give us artist children shelter, that help us with our homework, hang our work on the refrigerator, talk us up like crazy, send us to art camps/residencies, and above all help us grow into the artists that we are capable of becoming. As it stands, hundreds of art students are pumped out of our schools in Chicago every year — and these are great schools — only to be orphaned with nowhere to show, nowhere to go.

So we parent ourselves.

We build our own tree-houses and clubhouses in the backyard or in our living rooms.  We start our own spaces and exhibit our own work. We share our own ideas and show our friends. But to a certain extent, the pragmatic facts of “being an orphan” wear us down: the fact that the challenge of making work increases when we’re also completely responsible for ourselves, for promoting our art, and paying the bills through other means. In the end, these tree-house projects, no matter how exciting and productive in certain instances, don’t bring in much money, and don’t get enough support from the city or its institutions, and eventually most of us run out of gas without even making it onto any sort of global art map. Read more