SOFA 2016 Recap

SOFA aka Sculptural Objects Functional Art and Design turned 23 this year. But that’s not all that Chicago celebrated on SOFA’s opening day. During the pre-opening media viewing, Navy Pier’s Festival Hall buzzed with electricians installing lights atop beeping hydraulic lifts and gallerists arranging their displays, and hummed with unabashed glee—it was the morning after the Cubs triumph.

Some key SOFA 2016 stats before moving on to particulars: 70 galleries from a dozen countries representing 800 artists; and 30 lectures. SOFA Special Exhibits included: of Ball State University School of Art; Chicago High School for the Arts (ChiArts); Collectors of Wood Art; Glass Art Society; CONNECT, a student design competition with installations from six universities (Purdue University was awarded first place); a live-in installation by Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS (DIFFA) Chicago with AIDS survivor and ambassador Jim Petrakis; and the Hot Glass Roadshow from the Corning Glass Museum, a semi-trailer equipped to make glass.

 

It’s conventional among some art world inhabitants to look down on SOFA as beneath their interest—or as less worthy than art fairs that exclude work with associations to the descriptors craft, design, and decorative arts. For audiences who are interested in what artists and craftspeople create in materials such as glass, metal, wood, plastic, and fiber, SOFA 2016 didn’t disappoint.

That’s to say, SOFA isn’t simply for moneyed buyers of eye candy. Its scale makes room for works that are mind candy, feats of eye-hand coordination, and from time to time the results of pure luck. Here’s a selection of SOFA 2016 sights that invited me to look—and look again.