Episode 957: Andrew Rafacz
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Recorded live at Door County Contemporary, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller finally correct a seventeen-year oversight and sit down with Chicago gallerist Andrew Rafacz. From the Bucket Rider days in Pilsen to twenty-five years of building a gallery practice rooted in friendship, advocacy, and weird Midwestern generosity.
Sub-Rural #62, Whitney Claflin at Green Gallery
Whitney Claflin’s current Milwaukee exhibition “The Shops at Atlas Park” breeds aesthetics with merchandizing at the Green Gallery’s uniquely panoramic space on Farwell St. Her variously sized works ironically named after a mixed outdoor retail park in Queens,...
Episode 956: Phoenix Brown
This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with Milwaukee-based artist, curator, musician, and all-around multi-hyphenate Phoenix Brown. The conversation begins with Phoenix’s drawings in the Portrait Society exhibition and quickly expands into vulnerability, symbolism, self-healing, lizards from Italy, Midwestern art communities, music, curatorial practice, and the challenges of balancing multiple creative lives.
Episode 955: Mindy Rose Schwartz
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This week on Bad at Sports, Brian Andrews, Ryan Peter Miller, and Duncan MacKenzie sit down with Chicago artist Mindy Rose Schwartz to discuss Countersealed, her recent exhibition at M. LeBlanc Gallery.
Episode 954: Heather Mekkelson
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This week on Bad at Sports, Brian Andrews and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with Chicago artist Heather Mekkelson to discuss her recent paired exhibitions, Bass Note at 65GRAND and Snare at Boundary.
Episode 953: George Scheer
https://traffic.libsyn.com/badatsports/badatsportsepisode952GEORGEFROMTHEELIZABETH.mp3
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Executive Director of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, former co-founder of Elsewhere Museum, printmaking evangelist, institutional theorist, and recovering residency founder George Scheer joins Duncan and Ryan for a sprawling conversation about artist-centered institutions, the legacy of Robert Blackburn, socially engaged practice, the economics of DIY arts infrastructures, and what happens when artists try to build sustainable worlds inside systems that rarely reward care work.
Episode 952: Tali Halpern
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Bad at Sports Episode 951 has Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller still in Miami for a conversation with Chicago artist Tali Halpern at NADA, representing 1210 Gallery. The conversation spans weaving, sobriety, punk music, queer identity, labor, spectacle, and the ecstatic possibilities of fiber art. Halpern discusses their transition from painting and addiction into weaving, their work with digital looms at Loom Room, and the way embellishment, rhinestones, embroidery, and collage become acts of healing and reconstruction.
TOP V. WEEKEND PICKS (6/25-7/1)
1. Quetzali. Petalo: The Myth of Us June 26, 6-10PM Avondale Collective: 2800 N Milwaukee Ave 2. trejon: Seeds June 27, 7-10PM SPACE 01: 4850 W Bloomingdale Ave 3. Maisie Corl: Porcupette June 27, 5-8PM TUSK: 3205 W Armitage Ave 4. Loc...
Sub-Rural # 61, Obama Presidential Center
The Obama Presidential Center (OPC) opening today on its 19-acre southside campus designed by architects Billie Tsien and Todd Williams with landscape by Michael van Valkenburgh is an extraordinary architectural trek that’s gained much deserved attention but...
TOP V. WEEKEND PICKS (6/18-6/24)
1. Natalia Villanueva Linares: Chillona of the Forest.1+2 June 19-21, 2026 Mana Contemporary: 2233 S Throop St 2. Artist Talk and Screening with Las Nietas de Nonó June 20, 5-6PM Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church: 600 W Fullerton Pkwy 3. Gerald Williams:...
TOP V. WEEKEND PICKS (6/11-17)
1. Delightful Semapahores June 12, 6-9PM Co-Prosperity: 3219-21 S Morgan St Work by: Zach Hill, Coco Clockner, and Zante Moore 2. nánwàng de y? ti?n June 12, 6-10PM SHANGHAI SEMINARY: 3262 S Morgan St 3. Josué Esaú: The Carocal June 13, 6-9PM boundary:...
TOP V. WEEKEND PICKS (6/4-10)
1. Lisa Villa-Moser: Masasarap na Panaginip (Delicious Dreams) June 6, 12-4PM The Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago Museum (FAHSC): Mana Contemporary, Suite 316, 2233 S Throop St 2. Ghost Index: Curtis Miller and Megan Tan June 6, 4-7PM Comfort...
Sub-Rural # 60, Michelle Grabner Interview
PK: Michelle, I understand the design and presentation of your work through a reformed neo-Dada and Feminist frame. But it’s differently located in a consciously American and Inland context of class, industry, and hand-made labor with grit and a restless sense of...
TOP V. WEEKEND PICKS (5/28-6/3)
1. Monika Niwelinska: GAMMA TRACE: Photosensitive Sites. Latent Trauma. Images of Radiation. May 29, 5-8PM Hard Return: 410 S Michigan Ave, # 306 2. Carolyn Castaño: My Mother Mountain May 28, 6-8PM Gallery 400: 400 S Peoria St 3. H.A.G.S May 29, 12-4PM...
TOP V. WEEKEND PICKS (5/21-5/27)
1. Lindsey Dorr-Niro: Spectral Psalm May 23, 2-6PM Compound Yellow: 244 Lake St, Oak Park 2. Regin Igloria: Mid-day Meditations for May May 25, 2-5PM Cultivator: Bray Grove Farm 3. Nathaniel Mary Quinn: A Love Letter to My Mother May 21, 5-8PM National...
TOP V. WEEKEND PICKS (5/14-5/20)
1. Sara Grose: everything looks blurry May 14, 6-10PM Weatherproof: 3336 W Lawrence Ave, Ste. 303 2. Hazel Katz: WHO GETS TO FLY May 15, 6-9PM ACRE Projects: 2921 N Clark St 3. Allen Moore: Chasing what the Water Kept and Wendy Robles & Michael...