2013 was a huge year for us at Bad at Sports. We did a ton of big projects with places like the St Louis Contemporary Art Museum, EXPO Chicago, Open Engagement, Orange County Art Center, and Cannonball, but perhaps the biggest deal of all was that Caroline Picard took over as Bad at Sports’s most important collaborator and contributor, our Blog Czar. Caroline took the torch from Claudine Ise, who took it from Meg Onli, who was the spark that lit our blog, and like them she took us further then we had a right to ask her to. It is now her turn to pass that torch.
As you know Bad at Sports takes a “barn raising” like approach to the notion of “art journalism.” We are the voice of an art world. We are that voice because we choose to speak for and about the things we most care about. We are the artists, educators, curators, and writers that make up your world and we do this because we love it. Bad at Sports as a rule doesn’t make any money. It is 100% volunteer and for the last 8 years any money “it” made went to pay its bills so that a few of us are not continually paying them “out of pocket,” and Blog Czar is the hardest job we have. It means you are the bottle neck for everyone’s problems and contently chasing folks for the things they said they would do. Caroline has done it beautifully and gracefully, and her calm and stability will be missed.
Caroline presided over massive and continual change as the blog progressed and developed its scope and national interests. She supported the development of 20 new voices and instituted several new columns. She brought back an impulse to post daily and pushed for discussion around the issues that face performance art and the context of social practice. In short she has been incredible and our collective work has been pushed, pulled, and forever changed by her participation.
For Caroline this departure is nothing but the heralding of big things to come. As we speak she is grabbing coffee in a Paris cafe while she rocks a French residency and works through a number of ideas around object oriented philosophy and the animal world. When she returns to Chicago in May it will be just in time to publish a number of new books through the Green Lantern Press and start a new Chicago exhibition space in Logan Square. She promised that Bad at Sports will not be completely without her voice and she  will remain a consistent contributor.
We owe her a huge thank you and a lot of love.
But now is the time of Jamilee Polson Lacy! Jamilee is one of the most interesting independent curators in Chicago and if anyone can fill Caroline’s shoe it will be her.
This is only the start of what will be an incredible and change filled year at Bad at Sports. Get ready.
- Episode: 854 Chicago Abortion Fund and the Heyl Brothers - October 2, 2023
- Artist Poem #1: Zach Cahill! - April 25, 2022
- Episode 771: Foundation with Kayvon Tehranian and Lindsay Howard - July 22, 2021
