Saying good bye is always hard. But sometimes, saying good bye is more like saying “See you later.”  This is the case for us this month at Bad At Sports. Both Richard Holland and Jamilee Polson Lacy have revised their participation with our project and entered semi-retirement.

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Jamilee left Chicago six months ago and took along her brilliant artist husband Steve Lacy (of Academy Records.) She remained as our Blog Czar for a couple of months before quietly handing the reins over to Dana Bassett. Jamilee embraced her role with B@S with gusto. Reshaping what Caroline Picard had produced and building a more efficient machine on top of it. Her strength allowed B@S to start seeing a stronger future for the project.

Jamilee left Chicago to be appointed Director and Curator of PC Galleries at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island, and she leaves all of us with a great hole to fill in our independent curatorial ranks. Few and far between are curators with the creativity, curiosity, depth, breadth, business sense, and raw ambition of our Jamilee.

Jamilee’s last Chicago exhibition at Columbia College’s A+D gallery, “Types by Display,” was easily the best graphic design-oriented exhibition presented in Chicago last year and I was grateful to spend a significant amount of time with it.

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Richard Holland’s retirement is a harder thing to get my head around.  What can one say about the leaving of a partner and founder? We have worked arm-in-arm together for 500 weeks and I love him like a brother. It is difficult for me to imagine the project without him. Our show will miss its ever-present host and his wit and erudition.

Richard leaves to focus on his growing Real Estate and Legal practices, and to spend a little more time with his family. There are also rumors he is amassing an army of hybrid space crafts for an intergalactic war.

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“Thank you,” hardly seems to cover the debt we owe Richard and Jamilee. They have made a defining impact on the project’s past and it’s future and both leave shoes that can never be filled. But we will not be completely without Richard as he will continue to be a dominant voice on our twitter feed and occasionally will reprise his role as interviewer, producer, and editor. Likewise, Jamilee swore to me that she would return to writing and sharing the East Coast’s art world just as soon as she settles into a solid groove.

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