<img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1733255540/awxp8thx07p7hngu3ax3.jpg">&nbsp;By ABBEY KOTDavid Salkin runs his namesake&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(29, 65, 160);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://www.davidsalkin.com/" target="_blank">creative design studio</a>&nbsp;and exhibition program in West Town, where he draws from his architectural training to create artistic, and often custom, domestic and commercial objects and materials with distinct urban patterns and themes.Recently, I sat down with Salkin to discuss his architectural background and the benefits of creative collaboration.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1733255541/eqba5umoyrw7uniagynu.jpg">Drawing studies. Photo by Nick Albertson&nbsp;CGN: Your background in architecture implies a tendency to work in a three dimensional format, however your mediums of choice tend to be flat, including digital sketches and wool rugs. What is your process when translating urban architectural inspiration into two dimensional mediums?&nbsp;David Salkin:&nbsp;As a child, I had a fascination for maps and architectural drawings because they gave me a way to "see" a place without physically being there. I grew up studying these flat representations, trying to imagine and "3Dify" them. Over time, I realized that two-dimensional space allows for other ways to understand rhythm and scale that aren’t as evident in the built environment. By thinking about architecture through the lens of surface design, I am looking to capture the patterns and spatial relationships that make cities what they are. It’s not about replicating the experience of three dimensions but about distilling it into a kind of visual code that reveals its underlying geometry — patterns, textures, and proportions — and bringing out the hidden rhythms of a place.&nbsp;I have come to think of my process as “breaking the grid.” It is the moment when I consciously step outside my comfort zone to reimagine and reconfigure the grid of a city to create new patterns that challenge the status quo. In practice, breaking the grid manifests in asymmetrical layouts, unexpected alignments, and dynamic compositions that draw the eye in new and intriguing ways. I experiment with overlapping elements, varied spacing, and irregular shapes, all while maintaining an underlying sense of cohesion and balance. My goal is to create designs that feel fresh and innovative yet still communicate effectively and resonate.&nbsp;&nbsp;<img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1733255542/wgpd5mti40nyeiqudgze.jpg">&nbsp;CGN: Architecture and installation pieces are site-specific, offering a sense of exclusivity. How does this affect your creative practice when utilizing the physical gallery space?&nbsp;DS: It’s exactly that. The studio is the connection between the bespoke object and creative process. My space is open and intentionally inclusive—anyone can walk in and engage with me and the work. I chose my studio space intentionally – to be an active participant in a community of other creative people and programs at the 1709 gallery building. The physical space of my studio lets me experiment and play, grounding my work in the immediate surroundings. And because of my desire to be accessible and open, I like to believe I’m demonstrating a kind of generosity, where I share my interests with others, inviting them to interact with works that range from tactile pieces to conceptual installations.&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: Your style leans towards modern and postmodernist art with a focus on flatness and geometry. What do you say to those who view modern architecture as the “death of detail”?&nbsp;DS: I think modern architecture and design are misunderstood if they're seen as lacking detail. Modernism, to me, is all about nuance and restraint. The detail is there; it just demands a different kind of attention. Look at the way patterns align or see the texture in a surface — these are intentional choices that speak volumes. Modernism, to me, is optimistic and outward-looking, relying on intentional subtleties that invite you to look closer. Every detail in a modern piece holds meaning without shouting, and that, to me, is where the beauty lies. By contrast, I find that postmodernism veers into irony, as if it's given up on earnestness, detracting from the authenticity of design.&nbsp;In terms of my own work, I think the richness lies in the tension between minimalism and intricacy. Geometric shapes and clean lines invite you to notice subtleties that might be overlooked in more ornate forms. When I strip a design to its essence, I am bound to make every choice a crucial one. And in the process, the detail becomes the experience of form itself rather than a superfluous element.&nbsp;<img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1733255542/ux3rpzoawskja2rsq6pg.jpg">&nbsp;CGN: What do you feel are the benefits of creative collaboration, especially in a practice like yours, which involves teamwork in many stages of the process?&nbsp;DS: Collaboration introduces fresh perspectives and expertise that I couldn’t achieve alone. I crave that shared energy, where ideas evolve through dialogue and hands-on exchange. Each person I work with —whether they’re an artisan, a fabricator, or another designer — adds layers to the work that make it richer and more intricate. For example, collaborating with master craftspeople gives me access to a level of material knowledge that’s invaluable. They help transform my designs into something beyond what I could create solo, embedding their own narratives and skills into each piece. As time goes on, I am more aware of the power of collaboration and look to find ways to make it a constant dynamic in my practice rather than episodic.&nbsp;&nbsp;<img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1733255543/qv6ta7gwjig5fw2yycx2.jpg">&nbsp;CGN: Do you have any advice for young artists beginning their professional practices?&nbsp;DS: My advice is to embrace the process of learning and don’t shy away from experimentation. Study everything, including disciplines outside your own. Often, the most rewarding work comes from taking risks, trying new techniques, and challenging conventional thinking. Be present, be curious, and engage with the world around you. Don’t get caught up in trends or in trying to perform for others — authenticity matters more than you think. Don’t get trapped in the digital space; instead, step out and experience things firsthand. Take time to connect, ask questions, and don’t rush through your work. Because when you focus on building relationships and engaging with other artists, mentors, and collaborators, the real magic happens and you create conditions to grow, adapt, and stay inspired.#&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(29, 65, 160);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://www.davidsalkin.com/" target="_blank">David Salkin Creative Surface Design</a>1709 West Chicago Avenue, #2A, Chicago, Illinois, 60622

CGN Insights: David Salkin, David Salkin Creative Surface Design

<img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1733255289/b6l0nhirrtpujxwmslqm.jpg">&nbsp;By ABBEY KOT&nbsp;Janine Mileaf has served as the executive director and chief curator at&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(29, 65, 160);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.artsclubchicago.org/" target="_blank">The Arts Club of Chicago</a>&nbsp;since 2012. This week, we sat down with her to discuss her educational background and time at The Arts Club.&nbsp;&nbsp;Chicago Gallery News: As both director and curator at The Arts Club of Chicago, it’s almost hard to imagine the depth of your involvement in each exhibition. Are there any areas within your process that you look forward to, or that you find particularly challenging?Janine Mileaf:&nbsp;I find it extremely gratifying to work directly with artists to help them realize a particular project. It is especially exciting when an exhibition takes form specifically around the opportunity to show work in the context of The Arts Club of Chicago. Our long history often provokes new ideas for artists or new ways in which to situate their work. I love when that happens.&nbsp;CGN: As a student of art history, how do you feel your own research and understanding of the art world impacts what you are drawn to as a curator?&nbsp;JM:&nbsp;I come to curation from the point of view of a historian, but I find that this does not necessarily draw me to historical works (although sometimes it does). More frequently, I’m compelled by artists who themselves are engaged in historical or research-based thought. I try not to go after trends, but rather to work with artists whose ideas and objects will endure beyond the moment and who are making things that make me think or feel something new.CGN: In&nbsp;2010, you published&nbsp;Please Touch: Dada and Surrealist Objects After the Readymade.&nbsp;What ultimately moved you to write about the Dada movement, a period which can be difficult to digest in many ways?&nbsp;JM:&nbsp;That is exactly why I wanted to write about Dada! I chose to think about Marcel Duchamp’s readymades and their aftermath because at the time they were conceived, they were understood to be the farthest thing from a work of art–and yet, in the long-run, that very idea is hard to grasp because the object-as-art has become so commonplace. I wanted to look at that difficulty and the gesture of inserting something so problematic into the context of art and figure out what that tells us about the category “art” and its function.CGN: During your time working at The Arts Club of Chicago, has there been an exhibition that stands out to you as a critical learning moment?&nbsp;JM:&nbsp;Our most recent exhibition&nbsp;Haegue Yang: Flat Works&nbsp;has reminded me not to shy away from ambitious projects. Each time I start a conversation with an artist about what they want to make, it is a risk—something of a challenge—to see how the institution is equipped to meet their intentions and to find out what we can do to surpass any limitations. In this project we surveyed work that Yang has been making for 30 years, but that has never been considered as an entity; we fabricated an exquisite display to tell the history of Yang’s most recent series of paper cuttings known as Mesmerizing Mesh; and we published a book that will be distributed internationally by Skira and outlast the exhibition. In the end, The Arts Club provided a venue for the artist to showcase long-term thought processes that are at the core of her practice and to discover the unifying concept that has to do with abstraction.CGN: What advice would you give to those wishing to work on the business side of the art world?&nbsp;JM:&nbsp;I’m sure this sounds trite, but I would say to follow your passion, not the market. If you do that, you will develop a point of view and a distinct program that are authentic and lead to meaningful and genuine engagements.&nbsp;Image: Headshot by Frank Ishman&nbsp;

CGN Insights: Janine Mileaf, The Arts Club of Chicago

<html><head></head><body>CGN works with dozens of art world leaders, creatives and supporters all year long. Each one has a different perspective on the industry in general as well as their own role within it. CGN is pleased to share many of these insights and personal stories in a new online series.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092759/opuadyqjkyefggayfcnk.jpg" jackson-1.jpg=""><figcaption>Chris Jackson in Jackson Junge Gallery with Surreal Salon on view. The show celebrates the gallery's 15th year in business.</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;By ABBEY KOTSince 2009, Chris Jackson and his partner, Laura Lee Junge, have owned and operated the Jackson Junge Gallery out of Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood. This week, we sat down with Jackson to discuss the details of his career as well as his personal insights on the gallery’s unique shows and services.&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN:&nbsp;Your career has a dynamic background in the arts world, ranging from work in theater and television to the founding of this gallery. What are some surprising commonalities you have found throughout your career?&nbsp;Chris Jackson: Throughout my career in theater, film, television, and the arts—including founding a gallery—I’ve noticed several surprising themes across these mediums. Storytelling is at the heart of each. In theater and television, storytelling is more overt, with narratives shaping each performance or episode. In the art world, it’s subtler, as curating an exhibition involves crafting a story that connects the artworks in meaningful ways for viewers.Each field also demands significant teamwork. In theater, film and television, writers, directors, actors, and crews work together to bring a vision to life. Similarly, in the art world, I collaborate closely with artists, curators, and the public. The success of any project depends deeply on this collaborative spirit. Creativity and out-of-the-box thinking are essential in all three fields. In theater and commercial work, problem-solving happens on the fly—managing time, budget, or a tricky scene. In the gallery world, I balance artistic vision with practical considerations like space, lighting, and presentation. Regardless of the medium, the ultimate goal is to engage the audience, evoking an emotional or intellectual response. The challenge lies in understanding your audience and connecting with them on a deeper level.The arts also demand adaptability and resilience. In the performing world, you might face changing scripts, technical issues, or unexpected challenges, while in the gallery world, market trends and public tastes are constantly evolving. The ability to pivot and embrace change is crucial in both arenas. Authenticity is valued across all fields—whether it’s an actor’s performance, a showrunner’s vision, or an artist’s work in a gallery. Audiences respond to genuine expressions of creativity. Emotions drive reactions in theater, film, television, and the visual arts. All these forms thrive on making people feel—whether joy, sadness, curiosity, or even discomfort. The ability to evoke emotions is a common thread that transcends the medium.These shared elements emphasize that while the mediums may differ, the core principles that drive success in the arts are remarkably similar.&nbsp;CGN: The Jackson Junge Gallery offers custom framing services alongside its typical exhibition space. What inspired you to curate an environment that suits the needs of collectors on multiple levels?CJ: Combining custom framing services with a traditional exhibition space creates a comprehensive experience for collectors and art enthusiasts. The gallery can provide a complete, end-to-end service, allowing collectors to acquire a piece of art and leave with it fully framed and ready for display.&nbsp;Framing serves as an extension of the artwork itself. The right frame can elevate a piece, enhancing its style, while the wrong one can detract from its impact. By offering custom framing in-house, the gallery retains creative control over how the artwork is ultimately displayed, aligning it with both the artist’s vision and the buyer’s preferences. Framing services also allow the gallery to build ongoing relationships with clients, as collectors often return for framing services for pieces acquired elsewhere. This creates opportunities to nurture relationships, share expertise, and introduce clients to new exhibitions.From a business perspective, framing services provide an additional revenue stream, supporting the gallery’s sustainability even during fluctuations in art sales. This model allows the gallery to act not only as a curator of fine art but also as a partner in preserving it. In doing so, the gallery enhances the experience for art collectors while becoming more dynamic and versatile.&nbsp;CGN:&nbsp; As the gallery’s proprietor, your day to day involves managing multiple facets of the business. Have there been any challenges that stand out to you as an important lesson that shapes your practice currently?CJ: One of the most defining challenges of running a gallery is the constant balancing act between the creative and business sides. Early on, I learned that managing a gallery is as much about business as it is about showcasing art. Ensuring financial sustainability while maintaining artistic authenticity requires balancing creativity with practical considerations like overhead, pricing, and marketing. This ongoing negotiation has honed my ability to operate with both a creative vision and a business mindset.The art market is ever-evolving, and staying responsive to these changes is crucial. Whether adapting to the rise of online art sales, shifts in collector preferences, or new technologies like AI, flexibility has become a cornerstone of the gallery’s strategy. This adaptability helps keep the gallery relevant and appealing to a diverse audience. Managing relationships with artists, collectors, and the local community is also key to the gallery’s success. Finding the right balance between promoting artists’ work and making collectors feel valued has been a delicate but essential lesson.&nbsp;With so many facets to oversee—curating exhibitions, managing sales, overseeing framing services, marketing, and more—time management and delegation have become vital. Learning to trust staff with certain responsibilities while focusing on the broader vision is essential to avoid burnout and ensure smooth operations. Resilience is another invaluable lesson, especially in the face of uncertainty. Whether it’s fluctuations in art sales, unexpected costs, or global events like the COVID-19 pandemic, the ability to pivot, re-strategize, and explore new avenues (such as virtual exhibitions) shapes the gallery’s approach to both short-term and long-term goals.Another important lesson is that each exhibition needs a strong, cohesive vision. Over time, refining the practice of curation to present exhibitions that resonate with visitors, tell a story, and provoke thought has become even more crucial. It’s not just about displaying beautiful art, it’s about creating a meaningful experience for viewers. These challenges and lessons underscore that managing an art gallery requires a blend of creativity, business awareness, and adaptability, all of which shape my approach to leadership.&nbsp;CGN: What does the curation process look like when proposing a very open ended concept, such as your recurring TEN by TEN group exhibition, in which the only limitation is essentially size?&nbsp;CJ: The curation process for an open-ended concept like the TEN by TEN exhibition, where size is the primary limitation, requires a careful balance of inclusivity, medium diversity, and cohesive presentation. With the 10x10 inch size as the only constraint, I remind our staff that this limitation serves to equalize all submissions, making the size both a challenge and a unifier for artists from various backgrounds.We actively reach out to artists from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds. An inclusive exhibition should represent diverse perspectives, styles, and cultural influences. TEN by TEN welcomes all artistic mediums—painting, sculpture, mixed media, photography, digital art, textiles, and more. The open call for submissions encourages artists to explore how their medium adapts to the 10x10 format. This exhibition creates space for both emerging and established artists, allowing visitors to discover new voices alongside familiar ones.In TEN by TEN, size becomes a unifying thematic element. The artworks are displayed in a grid, emphasizing the consistent dimensions and highlighting how each artist uniquely fills that 10x10 space. This approach enables viewers to appreciate both the individuality of each piece and the cohesive visual impact of the collection as a whole.By focusing on inclusivity, diverse mediums, and cohesive presentation, the TEN by TEN exhibition showcases the adaptability of artists and fosters a dialogue between different forms of creative expression, all within the shared 10x10 constraint. This not only highlights the variety of work possible within a common framework but also celebrates the richness of a collective artistic experience.&nbsp;CGN: Is there any advice you would give to those looking to enter the gallery space, either on the creative or the administrative side?&nbsp;CJ: Entering the gallery world—whether on the creative or administrative side—requires a combination of passion, perseverance, and practical skills.For creatives, it’s essential to cultivate a consistent style or thematic focus that distinguishes your work. The Jackson Junge Gallery seeks local artists with a clear, unique voice and a cohesive body of work that tells a story or explores a specific idea. To gain exposure, I suggest displaying your work at local art fairs, community shows, or online platforms. Building relationships with galleries and curators is crucial. Attend gallery openings and events to network with curators, gallery owners, and other artists. Networking can lead to valuable connections and opportunities. Research galleries that align with your style and reach out with a professional portfolio and artist statement. We often invite artists to apply for our group exhibitions, which can lead to additional opportunities. Professionalism is key. Meet deadlines, communicate clearly, and be reliable. If you don’t get an opportunity right away, keep creating, refining your skills, and continue to reach out. Don’t be discouraged by rejection; be persistent.For those interested in the administrative side, start by volunteering or interning at a gallery or museum to gain firsthand experience. Many galleries value practical experience, and internships provide insights into daily operations, curation, and event planning. Entry-level positions, such as front desk staff or gallery assistant, offer a solid foundation in customer service, sales, and gallery operations. Sales skills are especially valuable. Understanding how to connect with clients, tell the story of an artwork, and close a sale is essential. Marketing also plays a significant role in a gallery’s success, so learn about social media marketing, email campaigns, and event planning to promote exhibitions and attract visitors. If you’re interested in curation, practice by organizing smaller shows or pop-up exhibitions. This experience helps you build a portfolio and gain skills in developing themes, selecting works, and designing shows. Gallery work often involves juggling multiple tasks, from event planning to managing artists’ contracts. Strong organizational skills and flexibility are crucial, as gallery staff frequently wear many hats. Ultimately, working in a gallery is about supporting and championing artists. Building strong relationships with artists and helping them present their work to the world is incredibly rewarding and central to the role.The gallery world can be competitive, but it’s also vibrant and full of opportunities for those who are passionate, resourceful, and determined to contribute to the art community.&nbsp;Jackson Junge Gallery is located in Wicker Park at 1389 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago, IL 60622<a href="https://j2gallery.com">j2gallery.com</a>&nbsp;#</body></html>

CGN Insights: Chris Jackson of Jackson Junge Gallery

<html><head></head><body>*This interview was conducted in August &nbsp;and is from CGN's fall 2024 magazine. To subscribe to the print edition <a href="https://835ba3.myshopify.com">click here</a>.*&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092759/wdlxn3pv3akeptjjcdt1.jpg"><figcaption>New graduate Tom McCormick in 1971 in the communal kitchen of the Lakeside Inn, his boss john Wilson’s headquarters &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;By GINNY VAN ALYEATom McCormick hails from Kansas–he graduated from the University of Kansas in 1971 with a printmaking degree and an obsession with antiques collecting and old stuff–but he’s been just about everywhere. For a time he was a professional “picker”, sourcing quilts, furniture, folk art, ceramics, prints, paintings, even Navajo rugs and oriental carpets, wherever he could unearth them, honing his eye and learning the joy of turning a profit from secret treasure. Eventually McCormick found himself more mainstream employment working for a print dealer in Lakeside, Michigan, who happened to be John Wilson, the eventual founder of Art Expo. The job involved crisscrossing the country and enough motel stays in two years for a lifetime. Once he tired of being on the road, McCormick got his MFA and sold off the collection he had built, catching the bug that would lead to a life and career as a dealer. He also established himself and his family in Chicago.Today McCormick still spends much of his free time in Michigan, but it’s clear Chicago maintains a hold on him. Nearly 25 years after opening a gallery in the up-and-coming West Loop, McCormick could reasonably retire and write a tell-all about the art market, sharing secrets and witty observations about shifting peaks and valleys of Chicago’s gallery world and its characters and creatives. Instead, for now, he is embracing change while keeping his feet planted in the city. This July McCormick moved his namesake gallery from its longtime home on West Washington Boulevard and migrated to the still-evolving West Town. A new address of his own and a fresh space has re-energized McCormick, though he doesn’t seem to ever run out of energy.&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: So Tom, what’s new with you and the gallery?&nbsp;Tom McCormick: Well…as you know, we moved [in July] to a new location in West Town, 2251 W. Grand Ave., and are busy getting ourselves organized and settled in. A big job to move after 24 years in the old place. Because of partnership issues surrounding the Washington Blvd. building, of which I’m a half owner, I knew a change was inevitable and I began shopping for a new home this time last year. I ended up buying Tyler Mongerson’s building after he tragically, and unexpectedly died last summer. Really awful. Tyler had been helping me look at West Town real estate, and I eventually worked a deal with Sara, his wife, to acquire their property. It’s a terrific space and we spent the last year slowly renovating it to fit our needs.&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: The gallery has been around for 24 years. Why make a big move now instead of just saying, “It’s been a great run.”&nbsp;TM: OK, I have been doing some version of this (art dealing) for over 50 years, and I think I’m finally starting to get the hang of it. You know, practice makes perfect. Seriously… I love doing this job and am reasonably good at it. I have a great Director in Mary Beyer and a wonderful group of artists that we represent. I also continue to nurture my long interest in historic art. As long as I am healthy and can arrive at work in an upright position, I think I’ll just keep on showing up. I think they keep an oxygen tank somewhere in the closet, just in case.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092759/cixwin2zv2mrgopvhult.jpg"><figcaption>The exterior of the new gallery space at 2251 W. Grand Ave. in Chicago’s West Town. &nbsp;</figcaption></figure> &nbsp;CGN: What attracted you to West Town? What are you excited about after so many years in the West Loop?&nbsp;TM: Honestly, I grew disenchanted with the West Loop years ago. Since we own the building we didn’t get forced out by high rents, as usually happens to galleries, we stayed put as others moved on. The neighborhood was raw and funky in 1999. My car mechanic was across the street, there was a great hot dog place on the corner, and you could buy a mop bucket next door. Perfect. There was a community of galleries within walking distance. That’s all changed. So many good galleries have moved west: Rhona Hoffman, Andrew Rafacz, Carrie Secrst, Corbett vs. Dempsey, GRAY, PATRON. West Town is the place to be now.&nbsp;CGN: Tell me about the first show planned in the new space.&nbsp;TM: John Santoro, who we have shown for years, will be opening with new paintings on September 12. John was also a huge help in the move, he’s quite a handy guy. Eventually I want to do an inaugural type show featuring all our contemporary artists. &nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: What are you spending time on outside the gallery these days?&nbsp;TM: I guess the short answer is Michigan. We have had a place in Sawyer for over 30 years and it has become more and more central to our life. [My wife] Janis lives there pretty much full time and actually changed her residence so she can vote there. Smart lady. She also has chickens, her art studio and she has joined the board of the Lubeznik Art Center in Michigan City. We have a native prairie and about 25 sculptures sited around the place. We just added a commissioned piece by Gwen Yen Chiu, a fantastic young artist.&nbsp;So, we are blessed with a beautiful 13 acre property, which keeps us busy, often on our bellies in the dirt–pruning, weeding, planting, and cussing.&nbsp;Visit McCormick Gallery's new location at 2251 W. Grand Ave. in West Town.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thomasmccormick.com">thomasmccormick.com</a>&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092760/se7frktsourmz2c9kkfl.jpg"><figcaption>A painting by John Sontoro, whose exhibition opens September 12, 2024 &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;</body></html>

Moving Out and On: An Interview with Tom McCormick

Gertie Makes No Little Plans: Chicago Exhibition Weekend 2024, and Beyond

<html><head></head><body>By BIANCA BOVAMany Chicago galleries have a remarkable longevity. This year three celebrate the milestone of reaching (or in some cases, surpassing) 20 years in business. Dealers John Corbett and Jim Dempsey of Corbett vs. Dempsey; Scott Speh of Western Exhibitions and (Northern) Western Exhibitions; and Bert Green of Bert Green Fine Art share the origins of their respective operations, how they’ve crafted programs and fostered long-term relationships with artists, and what they see for themselves in the future.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092759/zgvwzzsldg5scknp7qb7.jpg"><figcaption>Jim Dempsey and John Corbett, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2021.&nbsp; (Photo: Terri Kapsalis) &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>John Corbett and Jim Dempsey, Corbett vs. Dempsey&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: What led to the decision to found the gallery? Has its focus changed in the 20 years you've been open?&nbsp;Corbett: We met because we attended a lot of the same events around town, art and music wise. We hit it off immediately, then started talking about how little we knew about the Chicago art scene—given that we’re really both kind of culture-vultures, it felt a little weird that there was so little information readily available about the visual art scene that we were both part of. Our first collaborative exhibitions were at the Roger Brown Study Collection, on the ground floor of the late artist’s home. I was interim chair of the exhibition studies program at the School of the Art Institute at the time, and just kind of commandeered the space between SAIC shows. Then in 2004, we opened Corbett vs. Dempsey in the space above Dusty Groove.&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: Tell me about the long-term relationships you've had with artists over the gallery's tenure.&nbsp;Dempsey:&nbsp;A couple of artists that we work with now–Gina Litherland was Phil Hanson were some of the very first we worked with, we showed them all the way back at the Roger Brown space. The thing is, we were and are both interested in the historical part of Chicago, but we realized that the artistic output in the last 50 or 60 years in this city can be really hard to parse sometimes. We just thought, maybe we can find ways to put the puzzle together on our end a little bit to present it to other folks, and start to develop a narrative that seemed a bit spotty at that moment. That has led to some long-term engagement&nbsp;CGN: The gallery moved locations after 15 years. What led to the decision to expand?&nbsp;Dempsey: Initially, when we moved into the first space in Wicker Park, we thought we would have more of a private dealership model, but that space naturally felt more like a gallery. And we had a good run in that space. Eventually, we just had to acknowledge that we were up against the limitations of that space. No elevator, small doors, and there were things that we just couldn't do there. But it was also such a big part of our identity that it took a lot to kind of get our minds around like, we need to make this move. And then to find a space that had the warmth of the space that we had before that wasn't just like a white cube or a traditional gallery. Ultimately, we found what we needed in our current space. We’ve been able to realize programs and exhibitions we could not have done before.&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: What's next for Corbett vs. Dempsey?Corbett: On September 14, we opened <a href="https://corbettvsdempsey.com/exhibitions/hubcap-diamond-star-halo/">“Hubcap Diamond Star Halo: Corbett vs. Dempsey at Twenty,”</a> a program of events and exhibitions in honor of our twentieth anniversary. It includes a survey exhibition in the primary gallery space, as well as a revolving exhibition in the north gallery space which will change over weekly for the seven weeks of the show. That will be featuring thematic and one-, two-, and three-person exhibitions. There will also be a robust slate of book launches, conversations with artists, and musical events accompanying the exhibitions, which will run through November 2. Come back often.&nbsp;<a href="https://corbettvsdempsey.com">corbettvsdempsey.com</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092761/jkdhghq0g7mvyhpfhb7t.jpg"><figcaption>Scott Speh. Photo by James Prinz &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>Scott Speh, Western Exhibition | (Northern) Western Exhibitions&nbsp;CGN: What led to the decision to found the gallery? Has its focus changed in the 20 years you've been open?&nbsp;Speh: I was a failing artist who became more interested in organizing shows than making my own work. I was living in Brooklyn but a day-job kept me on the road a lot. When I’d return to town, I’d find myself wanting to connect with artist friends, often in their studios, instead of holing up in my own studio. I moved to Chicago in late 2001 and became frustrated that friends of mine who I thought were great artists weren’t getting the recognition they deserved, so I decided to open a gallery.&nbsp;The early focus was presenting the work of friends and some college colleagues whose work excited me, and I felt it deserved a larger audience. As the gallery continued, several themes began to develop (though this wasn’t necessarily a conscious plan of mine, my instincts led the curatorial development, not a unified mission), themes I didn’t really place until I overheard a conversation in our booth at the first EXPO on Navy Pier between curators Shannon Stratton and Mark Pascale, with Stratton urging her colleague to consider “Western Exhibitions' especially rich program devoted to drawing” (or something to this effect. Also, Mark, when I used this anecdote elsewhere professionally, strongly told me that he already knew this). This led me to the realization that Western Exhibitions prioritizes drawings and works on paper, an organic development. It took an outsider to notice this, as at that point, I didn’t perceive that the gallery had a particular focus other than work I thought was good and important. From there, I realized that gallery artists and the shows we’ve presented often pull from the following paths — personal narratives, unique cosmologies and world views; LGBTQ artists and issues; Feminist art/fighting the patriarchy; pattern, decoration and surface concerns; works on paper (especially drawing); and artist books.&nbsp;CGN: Tell me about one or two of the long-term relationships you've had with artists over the gallery's tenure.&nbsp;Speh: One of the first artists I encountered in grad school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1994 was Stan Shellabarger. As I was scoping out the print media studio (my area of focus), I noticed a tall, thin man with a long beard, slowly pacing the hallways, nearly hugging the wall. Upon further examination and explanation, Stan was using the performative practice of walking in public to make a drawing, in this case, by dragging his fingernail against the wall, the repeated accumulation of scuffs ultimately making a visible mark down the wall. I was FASCINATED. I didn’t necessarily become close with Stan during grad school but I made it a point to see his work every time it was presented.I stayed in Madison for three years after grad school, curated a bunch of shows there, self-published an art criticism zine, got divorced, moved to New York, lived there for two years, moved to Chicago in 2001 to find that Stan and his partner Dutes Miller had also moved to Chicago. Stan was still making this sort of ‘70s conceptually driven performance work that resulted in handsome, rough-hewn, hand-made minimalist objects, yet with pretty much no interest from the Chicago art world.&nbsp; When I started up the Western Exhibitions nomadic gallery project, I made it a point to work with artists like Stan who are compelled to follow their artistic path even if no one is paying attention. We had several shows with Stan and then started showing the collaborative work he and Dutes make, under the separate artistic persona, Miller &amp; Shellabarger. We’ve placed Stan’s work in several prestigious institutional collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, National Gallery of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art and Baltimore Museum of Art.&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: The gallery moved to various locations in Chicago several times before settling down at 1709, and then subsequently opening a second location in the north shore. How has it grown over the years as it occupied new spaces, and what led to the decision to expand to the suburbs?&nbsp;Speh: Every move was driven by circumstance, not strategic growth. From 2006 to 2008, I shared another space in West Town (1821 W Hubbard) with Lisa Boyle, a full-time dealer. Then, Shannon Stratton at threewalls asked me if I’d be interested in taking over their lease in the 119 N Peoria Building in the West Loop as they were moving to a bigger space in the same building. I leapt into running a gallery as my full-time job in the fall of 2008 in the West Loop, then the heart of Chicago’s contemporary art scene, just in time for the stock market to collapse and The Great Recession to begin. Fun.I then moved across the street to 835 W Washington to take over Tony Wight’s space when he decided to downsize and met the proprietors of Document and Volume Gallery there. When all of our leases were up in 2016, we decided to seek out a space together. After striking out on a bunch of possibilities, our landlords pulled a deus ex machina and offered us the second floor at 1709 W Chicago, then a cross-fit gym, as they planned to put a restaurant on the first floor. We invited David Salkin Creative to join our new art commune.(northern) Western Exhibitions in Skokie started as and continues to be an experiment and was definitely not something I envisioned or planned for. Zach Williams, a client of the gallery, came by the gallery for a visit one day and proceeded to tell me his life story which culminated into him winding down his law practice to do something cool and personally meaningful — opening a modern design store, seeded from his own collection as he strives to buy from living artists going forward, with a gallery attached, in Skokie. Zach told me “I want a gallery there but I don’t know how to run a gallery nor do I want to learn” and said that he appreciated my vision and work ethic and asked if I wanted a gallery in Skokie. To which I replied, “Wut? This thought has never occurred to me!” But I decided, why not? I am using (northern) Western Exhibitions to scratch my curatorial itch, as it is, to comb through gallery artists’ pasts to put together a show that they may not have envisioned themselves.&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: What's next for Western Exhibitions?Speh: We’re officially celebrating our 20th year milestone with a show derived from the archives. <a href="http://westernexhibitions.com/exhibition/20-years-of-western-exhibitions/">20 Years of Western Exhibitions</a> will present every press release from every show at all 6 of our locations over the years, plus printed ephemera, some on loan from the Anthony Elms Art Ephemera collection as I somehow did not save the postcard from the first bricks-and-mortar show, plus reviews of shows and a pile of notebooks containing my to-do lists from over the years. And at the same time, in Gallery 2 in Chicago, I’m excited to present Zhi Ding’s first solo show in Chicago. Zhi is a Chinese artist, educated at the Art Institute, now living in New York, who makes seemingly whimsical paintings, which resemble illustrations from a children’s picture book, but are full of drama and darkness. At (northern) Western Exhibitions at the end of October, I am presenting a show devoted to <a href="http://westernexhibitions.com/exhibition/sigils/">Elijah Burgher’s practice</a> of creating painted mystical symbols, sigils, which is an early 20th occult practice of recombining the letters that spell out a wish into a new abstract symbol.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092762/ipybn3qaal3qvuqzc90p.jpg"><figcaption>Bert Green. Photo by John Ellis.&nbsp;</figcaption></figure>Bert Green, <a href="https://bgfa.us/index.html">Bert Green Fine Art</a>&nbsp;CGN: What led to the decision to found the gallery? Has its focus changed in the 20-plus years you've been open?&nbsp; Green: I started my first gallery in 1999, which is coming up on 25 years now, at the end of 1999 in Los Angeles. I first opened in Hollywood, then moved to downtown LA. Then moved to Chicago in January of 2012. There was a core group of people, about 30 galleries in the district then. When that scene peaked in the mid 2000s, the real estate obviously followed, then the gallery scene shifted to a different part of downtown a more industrial area. Then there was that push in the mid to late 2000s, where it became very international and very high end. That's where it is now, LA has become this major international art center. It was not like that at the time, but it was beginning, you could see it coming, it just it just hadn't happened yet when we were there.&nbsp;My late partner [Aric Lasher] was an architect, and was lured back here for a job that led to us making the move to Chicago. Initially, I saw myself as an opportunity to introduce artists to Chicago that might not have had an opportunity to show here–artists I was working with from California, a few international artists. The gallery has two rooms. For the first five years the program revolved around showing one out-of-town artist and one in-town artist.&nbsp;CGN: Tell me about one or two of the long-term relationships you've had with artists over the gallery's tenure.&nbsp;Green: The two that come to mind are Sandra Yagi. She's a Japanese American artist in San Francisco. We've been working with her pretty continuously since the gallery opened. She does sort of fantastical work that combines naturalistic imagery with scientific imagery. She's mainly a painter, but we've done some prints, and she also does works on paper.&nbsp;The other one is Grey James, he's based in L.A. Grey James is a transgender artist who had a previous identity, which was Jennifer Heaslip. I've been working with Grey since probably 2003. He transitioned from female to male in the year 2013, and in that year, we did a show here in Chicago where one of the rooms was the work from the previous identity and the other room was work from the new identity. Even though he is not well known in Chicago, it did really, really, really well. I felt that was a highlight for that sort of relationship between L.A. and Chicago.&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: Yours is one of the few galleries still operating in the Loop. What made you decide on a downtown space, rather than a space in the gallery district?&nbsp;Green: Yes, I'm on an upper floor in an office building. When I first moved to Chicago I looked all over. At that time the West Loop was still where lots of galleries were, the West Loop and River North. River North was waning and West Loop was kind of at its peak or near its peak. I couldn't find a space that worked for me. Either the prices were too high or the cost of renovation was too high or just wasn't the right space. I live downtown, and I thought well wouldn't it be nice to just have a place that I can walk to work? My partner who was also an architectural historian made a suggestion to me to look at the street wall of Michigan Avenue across from Grant Park. All of those buildings are designed in such a way that they maximize light and views of the lake, but every one of those buildings has usually a tier in the back that doesn't get any light that's against the brick wall or, you know, it's very dark, and for a gallery that's kind of perfect. So I looked at three or four of the buildings and I found a very good deal in the Willoughby, very, very inexpensive rent at the time, which hasn't really gone up all that much.I also got a little bit tired after being on a street level space in LA. I had a very large space in downtown LA. The majority of people who walked in the door were, you know, just looky-loos and it really felt like the business was changing in such a way because online is such a important way that people look at art and connect with galleries now. I wanted something that was not quite by appointment only, but a destination. The majority of my business is done privately or online or by appointment, but I am open to the public, one day a week. And that balance has worked out really well for me.&nbsp;CGN: What's next for Bert Green Fine Art?Green: In October we open our <a href="https://bgfa.us/resources/bgfa_release_2410.pdf">25th Anniversary show</a>. It's really a look back. It includes people that I've worked with from the beginning and throughout the whole 25-year period, and also includes some artists that I've only started recently working with, a couple of artists in the show that I've maybe only worked with for two or three years. There’s about 30 artists in the show. A good number of them–probably a good half of them–are people that we've published prints with that we don't necessarily represent. People such as Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, Shepard Fairey, people from California who have bigger names–don’t necessarily exhibit their work, but we’ve worked with them publishing prints. So they'll be in the mix as well. There's a good number of local artists from Chicago, like Industry of the Ordinary and Mac Pierce, who's a recent graduate from SAIC, Mikey Mosher, who's also a recent graduate from SAIC, Morgan Sims, who worked in Chicago for many years before he moved to Philadelphia. Jesse Howards as well. They're all pretty prominently featured. It’s a mix of lots of people, a good look at what the gallery has been doing for 25 years.&nbsp;#&nbsp;&nbsp;</body></html>

Three Chicago Galleries Navigate Their Twenties

<html><head></head><body><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092759/fct4die0mw4qwwcba031.jpg"><figcaption>Artist Paul Nudd’s studio. Photo by Mark Ballogg &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;By JACKIE LEWIS&nbsp;When we hear ‘make space’ it can imply the act of a preparatory welcome, a decluttering of old things in anticipation of readying for something new. But space for making can signify an environment for creativity, in which something is forged from nothing. To enter that space is to be committed to contributing something tangible. This fall, photographer Mark Ballogg will exhibit a new body of work at ALMA Art and Interiors based on his book Making Space, which depicts Chicago artists and their studios, capturing their methods, processes and works in progress. Created over the course of six years, Ballogg’s book explores the studios and thoughts of 113 Chicago artists in 94 color photographs and 76 quotes, selected from over 4,000 images generated from 166 studio visits. The exhibition, also titled Making Space, features 30 large-scale photographs, displayed in conversation with a collection of finished work from the artists featured in those images. CGN spoke with Ballogg as he prepared for the exhibition’s opening in November.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092760/epvvaqtcyqpgswvqg8ty.jpg"><figcaption>Mark Ballogg</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;CGN: Tell me a bit about your artistic background and how you chose photography as your medium.Mark Ballogg: My exposure to art was sporadic. For a time, I lived in a home filled with art, and early on I could render most any object faithfully, but I lacked a consistent artistic focus. In 1974 I purchased a Nikon camera to photograph my drawings and quickly realized that formal instruction could help me develop my photographic technique. I enrolled in a photography class at Columbia College Chicago, which nurtured my lifelong passion. Capturing a photograph created a serene moment of total focus, uplifting me when I sensed I was seeing something for the first time. That discovery, in some small way, momentarily completed me.&nbsp;CGN: Your book “Making Space” captures scenes from dozens of different Chicago artists’ studios. What drew you to this subject matter?MB: In October 2017 I was invited by a friend, Jeffrey Goldstein, to visit Richard Hunt’s studio. Richard’s cavernous space in an old CTA power station was filled with massive abstract sculptures in various stages of completion, alongside maquettes, tools, and multiple mounds of scrap metal. I was mesmerized. This experience happened while I was searching for a concept for a new body of work, and photographing Chicago artists’ studios seemed promising. After researching several books on artists’ studios, I felt confident that I could create work that was uniquely my own to add to that oeuvre.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092760/txgdqochjbglor4nstih.jpg"><figcaption>A detail showing Barbara Crane’s studio. Photo by Mark Ballogg.</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;CGN: Do you feel this project connects with prior subjects or is it a divergence from your usual work?MB: I have worked as a commercial architectural photographer for nearly 40 years in Chicago and across the country. Interior photography is a primary aspect of my commercial work. Artist studios are primarily interior spaces, but Making Space is solely defined by my personal vision unconstrained by a client’s direction. I tried to make photographs that transcend documentary, to elevate the image to a new level of emotional and intellectual vibrancy, to arrange and distill complex disparate elements into a dynamic whole. Some detail shots taken out of context don’t necessarily even read as an artist’s studio. I forced myself to make photographs that made me uncomfortable, to push my work forward.&nbsp;CGN: In a city filled with so much art, how did you determine which artists you would visit and capture?MB: I have also collected art, and through collecting I have cultivated friends in the arts. Initially I scheduled visits with some of those friends and at each visit I asked for other artist recommendations. My final selections were based on an artist’s accessibility and my desire to capture the diversity and flavor of the Chicago art scene. I photographed a balance of artists in all aspects of gender, practice, and defining circumstances.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092761/qbxknevlirw6jgh5grrj.jpg"><figcaption>Artist Wesley Kimler’s studio. Photo by Mark Ballogg &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;CGN: Tell me about these studio visits. What transpired between you and these artists to create such a collaborative book?MB: Each studio visit consisted of about two hours of photography and one hour of a recorded conversation with the artist discussing all matters of art. On most occasions, the artist was in the studio working and/or watching me photograph their studio. I approached each studio without preconceived ideas, responding intuitively to the space. Often the photography would inform the direction of our conversations. The collaborative nature grew from the artists’ generous willingness to allow me into their studio and my respect for their space and work.&nbsp;CGN: Have you found connections between an artist’s physical space and their relationship with their artistic practice and philosophy?&nbsp;MB: The Making Space photographs of studios offer unique and shared aspects of an artist’s practice. In some cases, they are discreet. For example, In Anne Harris’s studio photograph, I was drawn to the word “eyelid” drawn on the wall. When Anne spent about 15 minutes talking about the significance that eyelids play in her art, I figured I’d been right to notice. Others are more obvious: the massive sculptural work of Richard Hunt dictated the scale of his studio. But yes, many studio photographs are defined by studio size, space location, functional design, furnishing, tools, and the work itself, all offering insights into the artist’s practice.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092762/aaokgf9rgwxueje2wej4.jpg"><figcaption>The late Richard Hunt's studio. Photo by Mark Ballogg &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;CGN: This fall Making Space, the exhibition, will be at ALMA Art and Interiors and include 31 of your studio photographs alongside 31 works from the related artists. Was this also a collaborative experience?MB: These collaborations were expressed by the artists’ willingness to be included in the exhibition and submit work for the it. In addition, we are planning a series of events that bring these artists into the gallery to discuss their practices and their Making Space experience.&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: How do your photographs work in conversation with these artists’ pieces?MB: I hope to create a symbiotic relationship between the artist’s work and my photographs of their studio. At times, the photograph illustrates the artist’s work. On other occasions, the actual construction of the photograph reveals one aspect of the artist’s practice. The studio space itself can also be a reflection of the artist’s personality.I think the total impact of viewing the photo and the work is greater than viewing each separately. I hesitate to predict exactly how that relationship plays out, but I’m excited to see how the audience reacts.&nbsp;Making SpaceCurated by Mark Ballogg, Kimberly Oliva and Gosia Korsakowski&nbsp;ALMA Art and Interiors – 3636 S. Iron, Chicago (60609)Opening Reception, Friday, Nov 8, 5–9pm. On view Nov 8–Feb 28, 2025Details at <a href="https://www.almaartandinteriors.com">almaartandinteriors.com</a> and on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/makingspace_book/">@makingspace_book</a>&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092764/eaq4hglob3ucy90wg7rb.jpg"><figcaption>Artist Renee Robbins's studio. Photo by Mark Ballogg &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;</body></html>

The Magic of Making: Mark Ballogg’s Studio Views

<html><head></head><body>CGN works with dozens of art world leaders, creatives and supporters all year long. Each one has a different perspective on the industry in general as well as their own role within it. CGN is pleased to share many of these insights and personal stories in a new online series. Our first interview is with Natasha Egan, Executive Director of the Museum of Contemporary Photography.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092759/ye0bav2mr20ydcfvoesr.jpg"><figcaption>Headshot taken by Brook Hummer Photography&nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;By ABBEY KOTNatasha Egan has served as the MoCP’s executive director since 2011, formerly filling the roles of associate director and curator. This week, we sat down with her to discuss the inner workings of an establishment that combines industry professionals with working students.&nbsp; &nbsp;Chicago Gallery News: While most museums focus on education, the MoCP is unique in that it is connected to a college and staffs many of its students. What do you feel some of the benefits are when working with students and emerging scholars in a professional museum setting?&nbsp;&nbsp;Natasha Egan: MoCP’s affiliation with Columbia College Chicago is central to our mission of preparing students for the professional world. Our student staff come from various disciplines at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and our team mentors them, providing valuable real-world experience. We expect a high degree of professionalism from our students, and they consistently meet this standard. For example, during our #AiWeiwei exhibition, Ai Weiwei’s team was impressed that our preparators were all student employees overseen by professional staff.Many of our student staff pursue careers in the museum and art fields. For instance, Greg Harris, a former student of mine who worked on our operations team, went on to earn his master’s degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and became the Assistant Curator at the DePaul Art Museum. He is now the Curator of Photography at the High Museum in Atlanta. Greg recently returned to Columbia College to give a lecture and critique graduate student work, creating a full-circle moment. He even mentioned that he still carries his MoCP tote bag.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092760/fyonfgmrjkykw19wzjrs.jpg"><figcaption>Terry Evans conducting a print viewing in the MoCP’s print study room.&nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;CGN: As the executive director of the museum, you oversee all aspects of operation, from print viewings to installation plans; are there any recent challenges you can recall that allowed for creative problem-solving or a lesson learned?&nbsp;NE: MoCP has a small but highly capable professional staff, each overseeing different departments such as operations, education, marketing, curatorial, and collections management. Despite recent budgetary constraints, our team has adapted by embracing changes in their job descriptions. This flexibility allows us to remain nimble and continue producing top-tier exhibitions and programs under adverse circumstances.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092760/uh30lcqatylxo1nkrazj.jpg"><figcaption>From the Summer 2024 show “Captured Earth”</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;CGN: Your background is in higher education and fine arts photography, with an impressive and deep connection to Columbia College Chicago, working as an educator in the school’s photography department and holding the position of associate director at the MoCP for over ten years. Are there any surprising ways your knowledge of fine arts and background in education has translated into your time in the administrative side of the museum world?&nbsp;NE: During my tenure at MoCP, I have curated over 50 exhibitions and collaborated with artists and institutions worldwide. Teaching at Columbia College Chicago for over a decade, both on campus and abroad in China, exposed me to diverse curatorial styles and institutional operations. These experiences have been invaluable as I now focus on strategic initiatives for MoCP’s future as Executive Director.&nbsp;CGN: The turnaround time between shows at the MoCP tends to be fairly quick, with the gap between your current and next show set for only twelve days. What moments do you look forward to during the installation and execution of a new exhibition?NE: After months or even years of developing exhibitions, it is always rewarding to see them materialize. The installation phase provides a deeper understanding of the exhibition beyond its conceptual phase. For students, it is a time to meet artists, learn more about the exhibited works, and develop new skills. It is also exciting to witness the public's reaction to the exhibition for the first time.&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: What is one piece of advice that you would give to someone wanting to get started in the museum world?NE: Immerse yourself in the art world by visiting a variety of institutions, from the largest museums to the smallest galleries. Smaller museums often influence larger institutions. Additionally, visit artist spaces and nonprofits that offer unique perspectives outside traditional museum settings. Take the time to have informal conversations with art professionals to determine if this path is right for you.&nbsp;For more information about MoCP and its programming visit <a href="https://www.mocp.org">mocp.org</a>#&nbsp;&nbsp;</body></html>

CGN Insights: MoCP's Natasha Egan

<html><head></head><body>*This interview appears in CGN's fall 2024 magazine. To subscribe to the print edition <a href="https://835ba3.myshopify.com">click here</a>.*&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092759/u4e5j23fa7naks81lppc.jpg"><figcaption>Georgie Miller, Pete’s Wild Party For Him and His Friends, 36 x 48”, 2024. Collage on Paper. &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;By GINNY VAN ALYEAGeorgie Miller is definitely from Texas. When I ask her, over lunch one sweltering day when I can feel heat emanating from an expanse of baking Chicago concrete, if she’s been enjoying the summer, she doesn’t mention the 90° temperature, even though it’s all I can think about. Instead she tells me she’s just gotten back from Nicaragua, and she’s off to Montana in a few days. The jet-setting, she explains, is for her job as Travel Editor and Digital Strategy Director for Texas Based PaperCity. But when she’s between trips, she is working on creating her art and experimenting with how to get it in front of a wider audience. &nbsp;As I melt in my chair Miller keeps her cool, rattling off a list of area galleries she has been following, as well as arts groups and residencies she has been undauntedly applying to. She says she has averaged five residency applications or group show submissions a month for the past year, with five successes so far in 2024: one in Austin, Texas, another in Houston, and three in Chicago. Because Miller lives in both Austin and Chicago, she plans to continue taking advantage building relationships in two gallery markets.&nbsp;While Miller has been fearlessly sending out applications, she confesses she is learning as she goes.&nbsp;“I don’t have a real body of work quite yet, so by applying I’m also trying to figure out what sticks as well as what it is I’m working on next,” Miller admits. “Eventually I’d love to work with a dealer who can help me focus and choose a direction, because right now I have several.”&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092760/otkik9jnopjpdeeautia.jpg"><figcaption>Georgie Miller next to her piece that was part of a group exhibiton earlier this year at ARC Gallery, Chicago.</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;Conventional wisdom has been that navigating the art world is part cold-calling, part self-help. An artist creates a body of work and spends time getting to know various gallery programs in order to decide whether or not there is a fit for their own art. Then an artist must attempt many introductions, steeling themself for individual rejections before going back to fine-tune what they present to galleries or collectors. Artists also have to contend with a limited market of operating galleries that are even accepting unsolicited applications. While much of these truths still hold, in 2024 artists can choose to set up a basic website or even just a social media presence solely to push their precious art out of the nest and in front of millions of content-hungry viewers, at once marketing and selling while also soliciting feedback and gaining visibility, essentially learning to fly in real time. Miller says she has enjoyed going solo so far, prolifically creating work and posting individual pieces as she completes them, as the follower engagement has helped her look at her work the way others might, and she’s also secured a couple commissions along the way.&nbsp;For now Miller works exclusively in collage, an accessible but often labor intensive medium. She says she chose to work in a photography-based version because it feels like the right vehicle to help her present her exploration of indulgence and consumption in a colorful and appealing way. Her larger-scale tablescapes incorporate light colorways, even glitter, as she creates tableaus of cigarette-filled dinner parties and card games. No iPhones on the tables here, just martinis and matchbooks. Mah-jong has even made an appearance. There’s nothing conspicuously sinister about folded hands of cards and the spilled dregs of a wine bottle, but Miller acknowledges there are various perspectives one might have, depending on which gatherings or social situations come to mind when viewing the work–the laughter-filled ones, the awkward ones, or the ones that should have ended before the tempers flared.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092760/z3s7zmyvwsn409yvdyr8.jpg"><figcaption>Georgie Miller, Petalscapes, Texas and Chicago No 1, 2024.Collage on Paper.</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;You can tell Miller has reached a point where she is ready to push into new themes and alternative tonalities with her most recent work, which focuses on still lifes of flower arrangements made from snaps of Chicago streets and skyscrapers – 875 N. Michigan, Water Tower Place, a Lakeview apartment building. The palettes are a bit forboding, stormier compared to the lakeside vibes of a relaxing weekend with friends during a house party. Says Miller, “I’m dropping in photos, which is different for me, and these pieces have a darker, more tactile look. I’m trying out styles and seeing if they connect.”&nbsp;Process is always critical to an artist’s practice, and though Miller is young and juggling art-making along with another full-time job, I can tell she is having fun now, and she will continue to enjoy each layer of the creative process as it comes.#&nbsp;<a href="https://www.georgiemillerart.com">georgiemillerart.com</a></body></html>

A Young Artist Learns as She Works: Georgie Miller

<html><head></head><body>*This interview and is from CGN's fall 2024 magazine. To subscribe to the print edition <a href="https://835ba3.myshopify.com">click here</a>.*&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092759/abkndwr35643txbilvab.jpg"></figure>By GINNY VAN ALYEAThe art world is ever changing, but when many people consider the arc of the gallery scene in Chicago, they still think (or hear stories) of River North in the 1980s, when it was a new city neighborhood bursting with dozens of art spaces and the buzzy people who flocked to them on opening nights. Gallerist Carl Hammer’s name and career is inextricably linked to those early days in the art world and much of what has come in the four and a half decades since.Hammer opened his gallery, then called Hammer and Hammer / American Folk Art, in 1979 at 620 N. Michigan Ave., in what was known as the Breskin building, which housed numerous other galleries at the time, including Richard Gray, and other prominent early names. He moved a few blocks west to Wells Street in the ‘80s and was part of the original 16 galleries that created the River North Gallery District. Hammer’s gallery remains at the same historic Wells Street address today.Hammer’s journey to being one of the most well-known dealers in Chicago started before he was part of the art market at all: when he was teaching English at Evanston High School during the Civil Rights era and the Vietnam War. Hammer and his wife at the time became interested in collecting art and were inspired to focus on grassroots artists because of the country’s political and social climate. Collecting art while traveling during school breaks led to a deeper, but still idealistic, exploration of what grassroots art meant, and those out of the way road trips put Hammer in touch with self-taught and folk artists, who were eventually labeled “Outsider.” Hammer felt called to enter the business of selling the art he so admired, and his life in the gallery world followed, featuring exhibitions of work by noted Outsider artists like Lee Godie and Henry Darger, as well as contemporary art by Michael Hernandez de Luna, and graphic novelist Chris Ware.&nbsp;Hammer told me a few years ago he considered himself a bit of an outsider, since he never had formal art training, but I think it’s Hammer’s continual curiosity, combined with his affection for artists and collectors, that has given him 45 years both inside and outside the art scene, with more to come.&nbsp;The gallery will celebrate it’s 45th anniversary this fall with an exhibition of work by Chris “CJ” Pyle, opening September 6, and a show with David Sharpe opening November 1.&nbsp;Details at <a href="https://www.carlhammergallery.com">carlhammergallery.com</a>&nbsp;</body></html>

Carl Hammer: 45 Years of Steady Change

<html><head></head><body>*This interview appears in CGN's fall 2024 magazine. To subscribe to the print edition <a href="https://835ba3.myshopify.com">click here</a>.*&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092759/pj5orybf29krve1vhj3n.jpg"><figcaption>Artwork pictured on walls, starting from left of cabinet: Jason Lazurus, Cody Hudson, Jason Pickleman, Jeroen Nelemans, Adam Pendelton, Aron Gent, Brian Kapernekas, Laura Letinsky, Loyola Condenser, Stephen Eichorn, Tony Tasset, Dorothee Joachim, David Salkin (in background through door). Photo by CGN. &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;By BIANCA BOVA“The place that art holds is sacred ground,” Michelle Edwards tells me. An established collector, fashion icon to those in the know, cultural patron, and–more recently–a realtor, Edwards’ reverential attitude towards art, if not life itself, is immediately discernible upon entering her home. Seated in her living room, surrounded by sweeping 47th floor views that look north over Grant Park and east out onto Lake Michigan, there is a serenity to the space, despite the fact that its entirety is densely arrayed with objects of all modalities. The predominant feature is, of course, the art collection, alongside which can be found selections of transferware, Wedgewood, and silver service pieces. The furnishings are lush, and thoughtfully selected. In less careful hands, the aggregate of it might overwhelm, but here, to the contrary, Edwards has created an oasis. She concedes to having had some help, noting, “I have for many years worked with Patrick DiMichele on my spaces. I won’t–can’t–live in an environment he has not done.”*&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092759/jj1w5zmvajmxseujevfc.jpg"><figcaption>Michelle Edwards. Artwork pictured on wall: Jason Lazarus; Monika Bartholomé; in background, sculpture by Greg Stimac. Photo by CGN. &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;Edwards is not a lifelong art collector, or (to my surprise) even a lifelong art enthusiast. Her first love was fashion, with deep roots in the storied Oak Street boutique Ultimo.&nbsp;“During high school I was a waitress at the Oak Room in Marshall Fields in the Oak Brook Mall, and I would save my tips, then I would go into the city, to Ultimo, and buy stuff on sale. I just loved magazines, French Vogue was my favorite. And I knew that Ultimo had Norma Kamali and they had Thierry Mugler, so I would go there,” she tells me, “When I got out of college, I was trying to figure out what I would do, and I interviewed across all these different jobs. Then I went down to Ultimo one day and they just hired me. You weren’t allowed to talk to customers for, like, six months. It was really this apprentice program. By the time I left, I ran the whole thing: men’s department, women’s department, all of it. I do have a tendency to end up running the show, whatever I do.”“You have to understand that it was the equivalent of carrier pigeons compared to online shopping today. The access just wasn’t the same. There were really only four or five seminal boutiques in the world at that time, of which Ultimo was one. You relied on these boutiques for taste and for the edit. If it wasn’t in those stores, you didn’t need to have it, was the feeling.” &nbsp;&nbsp;<blockquote>“I can’t garden, I’m not a gardener. So this is my garden. The amount of time that I spend interacting with the art–and everything in my home–it brings me so much joy. I stop and look at it. I spend time with different pieces. I’m tending my garden.”– Michelle Edwards</blockquote>&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092760/zzxvaj0do8felhuglh5s.jpg" 2.jpg=""><figcaption>Edwards's sitting room features a black and white photograph by Lenny Kravitz, who turned the camera back on the paparazzi that always followed him. Photo by CGN. &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;It was through her years at the boutique, from 1984 to 1999, that Edwards came into contact with the art world.&nbsp;“When Art Chicago came around, it was a big deal at the boutique. It was the art crowd that traveled globally, and of course, they were shoppers. Everyone would come through that weekend.”When Edwards herself visited Art Chicago in the late 1980’s she acquired her first piece of art, a small painting by the English artist John Virtue. It still has pride of place in her home.&nbsp;“It was my first time ever at an art fair. I was with Lynn Sable, who was from Ultimo, and her brother is the art dealer Sean Kelly. He was there, and he was very passionate about his goal to have a gallery. And I don’t know–it was just infectious, it was so exciting. And this John Virtue, I just loved it.”&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092761/xdgbg7uvf17e0di7fqfi.jpg"><figcaption>Photo by CGN. &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;Despite this initial acquisition, buying work at fairs didn’t become a habit for Edwards, who still prefers a quieter approach.&nbsp;“When it comes to collecting, I’m not an art fair girl,” she admits, “I like to go for the excitement, the community. That’s fun, but I can’t do: big, little, far, near, color, everything all at once. I get a headache. That’s why I love the gallery experience. I love a curated little show. I love a conversation.”In fact, the acquisition of the Virtue did not give immediate way to collecting as a practice, or sustained participation in the art world. It wasn’t until the late 1990’s, after leaving Ultimo and being introduced to the Society for Contemporary Art (SCA) at the Art Institute of Chicago that her involvement became a more serious and intentional pursuit.&nbsp;“I had a very good friend who is active in the art world globally, who used to be in Chicago, but has since moved to Los Angeles. She knew the SCA and she said, ‘I want you to join this group because they’re really good.’ When I joined, I did not like contemporary art. I did not understand contemporary art. I thought, ‘My dog can do that, my child can do that.’ I just didn’t understand it. But through attending lectures and realizing how unbelievably highly educated these artists are, and how thoughtful the work is–even if it’s work I don’t respond to–just to hear their story is so special to me. I started to go once a month, then I went to literally everything. At first, I didn’t talk to anybody. It took me a really long time to even decide to go to a dinner. I was hooked though. The first talk I went to was Gaylen Gerber, who of course spoke about [the color] gray. I remember going home and trying to tell people about this brilliant lecture, how thought provoking it was. I always feel bigger, better, fuller, richer for having heard someone speak about their work.” Her involvement quickly deepened as she joined the organization’s board of directors.&nbsp;“Eventually they started to notice that I was attending with regularity. I believe it was Jay Dandy who called me then and said he’d like me to be on the board. And I said, ‘Well, what do I have to do?’ And he said, ‘Oh, you might have to make a batch of cookies or something like that.’ So, you know, a four year presidency term, four fundraising benefits, I don’t know how many years as secretary, three years as the acquisition chair, and over 20 years in total on the board later, I still haven’t made a batch of cookies. But it did change my life.”&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092762/k6ntawhvysx8smsaglj3.jpg"><figcaption>A view looking north from Edwards's apartment. Photo by CGN.</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;As her long tenure on the SCA’s board comes to a close, Edwards continues to find new opportunities to support other institutions in the city, including the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP), with whom she has recently become involved.&nbsp;“I appreciate the accessibility of [MoCP Director] Natasha Egan. The ability to just speak to her, and that she just is this endless stream of brilliance, but so accessible. It’s really magic. It’s still a small institution, and it would be really fun to see them grow.” she adds.&nbsp;As much as Edwards’ art collection has been led by her relationships with artists, dealers, and curators, it has also been informed by the spaces that have housed it. For years, she resided in the Kenwood neighborhood, in a historic home designed by famed Chicago architect Howard Van Doren Shaw, a leader in the American Craftsman movement. Built in 1904, the 10,000 square foot English country-style house sits on three quarters of an acre.&nbsp;“It was a very experiential house,” Edwards tells me, “Living in Kenwood, too–it’s the cradle of art intellects in Chicago in some ways, and that was in the air. I loved that experience, but this–this apartment–this is where I belong. I see the collection differently now, because I can literally see it. There’s daylight. The light is different in the morning than it is in the evening. The light is different in the summer than it is in the winter. So the work also changes, in a way it just didn’t in a dark, brick and limestone house.”&nbsp;As for the decision to also move the antiques into the new, more modern space, Edwards says with a shrug, “I didn’t think twice. There’s just that richness to it. I can’t live without this layer of richness. I think there’s this rogue gene I have, it’s the only way I can explain it.”&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092763/ozqzgrdcf4xcf4y4njrv.jpg"><figcaption>Pictured above: Nancy Rosen, Rose Edwards, Gary Rattigan, Ken Fandell, Jenny Shanahan, Andrei Rabodzee, random broquante find (not Picasso (!), Instagram (fur). Photo by CGN. &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;She points to several objects arranged on the coffee table between us, “This is my grandmother’s Bible. These were my great-grandfather’s buttons from his war jersey. Here are railroad spikes from when the SCA toured the 606. There really isn’t anything in this entire apartment–in my entire collecting existence–that there wasn’t some experience that it ties back to. A conversation, whether it was with the artist or with a gallerist, an event or a trip, or a memory of some kind.”&nbsp;Though her collection in some ways feels like an encyclopedic look at Chicago’s art scene in the past 30 years, there is a distinctive eye guiding it that mirrors the discerning eclecticism evident in all that Edwards involves herself with. Works by everyone from Laura Letinsky, Nathaniel Robinson, Jason Lazarus, Aron Gent, and Jenny Shanahan, to Judy Ledgerwood, Tony Tasset, Cowboy, Robert Brown Jr., and the Loyola Condenser may be found, alongside the occasional work by Lenny Kravitz or Ken Fandell.&nbsp;“I’ve never been a “checklist collector”–’Oh, I’ve got one of those, I got one of these, two of these’–those collectors working their way up the ladder hoping that they then get access to better stuff. I just don’t work like that,” she tells me, continuing, “And I’m not an impulse buyer. I have to go home and see how I feel about it in the morning. What I now have, what has developed over time, is just absolute confidence in what I collect. Plenty of works have come from galleries or from auctions, but I also have, for instance, a painting that I acquired off of Instagram, which was painted by a monkey. I love that monkey, I love the painting. I have a big, furry version of the Mona Lisa. I love the Mona Lisa, I have a real thing about the Mona Lisa, and I am also a fan of Sylvie Fleury’s fur paintings, so when I saw this, I thought–well, I just have to have it.”&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092764/ptg9d2vieelcw19ab1rj.jpg"><figcaption>A detailed view of works in Edwards's living room. Photo by CGN. &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;This nonhierarchical attitude is typical of Edwards, who acknowledges, “It’s paralleled by how I orient my wardrobe. People assume everything I wear is something, but it may not be. I have a jacket everyone raves over that looks couture, but it is, in fact, a Zara swimsuit cover up. Same principle as art. It’s confidence in what you have. It’s the eye.”&nbsp;Whether it is her eye, her confidence, or, as she puts it, her “rogue gene” that acts as a guiding principle, Edwards can be counted on to bring the full impact of her experience to all that she does.&nbsp;“Now I’m engaged with the real estate thing. A year and half ago I went to work with @properties Christie’s International Real Estate. The thing is, I’ve lived in a Lincoln Park studio, and a Bucktown bungalow. I lived in a greystone in Wicker Park and in a significant Kenwood country house mansion. Now here I am in a contemporary highrise on the lakefront. I’ve been in so many properties. I know why apartments work, and why houses work, and I know why they don’t work. It’s not unrelated to the way I understand fashion, or the way I understand collecting art.&nbsp;I love to tend the flock, and I really enjoy guiding my people through incredibly emotional purchases, as with the passage of life that comes with finding a home,” she says.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092765/eeu1mb5pqfvxrriofwrb.jpg"><figcaption>Pictured above: Robert Burnier; Laurie Simmons. Photo by CGN. &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;It is in Edwards’ own home that this ethos is exemplified, even celebrated. To move through its rooms is to be engaged, again and again, not just by the artwork, or by the furnishings, but by the stories that they each plainly tell. Great art and beautiful homes may be hallmarks of metropolitan life, but far fewer and farther between are such earnestly intentional collections, and striking, deeply personal domestic spaces as the ones Edwards has devoted herself to cultivating.&nbsp;“I can’t garden, I’m not a gardener. So this is my garden,” She says, “The amount of time that I spend interacting with the art–and everything in my home–it brings me so much joy. I stop and look at it. I spend time with different pieces. I’m tending my garden.”&nbsp;&nbsp;#&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092766/ejcukrtugtvana8ahiep.jpg"><figcaption>Photo by CGN. &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;This interview is featured in CGN's fall 2024 magazine. To receive a print copy please <a href="https://835ba3.myshopify.com">click here to subscribe.</a>&nbsp;</body></html>

Nurturing  a Garden of Art: Michelle Edwards Tends to Her Collection

<html><head></head><body>Fall is a busy season of art, offering new gallery and museum exhibitions. the Art world figures working hard behind the scenes give us so much to look forward to. we spoke to five (technically six this time!) art community figures about what they’re excited about now and looking forward to next.The following preview is one of five conversations that appear in our fall 2024 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition&nbsp;<a href="https://835ba3.myshopify.com/">click here.&nbsp;</a>&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092759/xaieeyz5sb6wxyz7a5fc.jpg"></figure>&nbsp;Lisa Key – Director, <a href="https://driehausmuseum.org">Driehaus Museum</a>“There’s so much we’re looking forward to—and much of it involves capitalizing on our recent addition of the Murphy Auditorium building to our campus. On October 24, we open Photographing Frank Lloyd. The exhibition focuses on the lesser-known role photography played in Wright’s work and success as an architect and includes his own photography and that of esteemed artists like Chicago’s own Hedrich-Blessing.&nbsp;Our Free Third Wednesday Nights series has been a big hit, too, and we anticipate its continued success this fall.&nbsp;Finally, this holiday season we’re turning the Murphy Auditorium into a holiday market that will be a delight for children of all ages!”#&nbsp;Read Fall 2024's 5 to Talk to with:<a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/8/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-jessica-cochran-and-angee-lennard-process-process">Jessica Cochran and Angee Lennard – Process/Process&nbsp;</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/8/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-jake-troyli">Jake Troyli – Artist</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/9/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-anne-loucks">Anne Loucks – Anne Loucks Gallery</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/9/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-emma-mckee">Emma McKee – Chicago Dir., Mariane Ibrahim</a></body></html>

Anticipating a Season of Art: Five to Talk to – Lisa Key

<html><head></head><body>Fall is a busy season of art, offering new gallery and museum exhibitions. the Art world figures working hard behind the scenes give us so much to look forward to. we spoke to five (technically six this time!) art community figures about what they’re excited about now and looking forward to next.The following preview is one of five conversations that appear in our fall 2024 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition&nbsp;<a href="https://835ba3.myshopify.com/">click here.&nbsp;</a>&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092759/k6qq16gq2huyvbzm1ttm.jpg"></figure>&nbsp;Anne Loucks – <a href="http://loucksgallery.com">Anne Loucks Gallery</a>“We are incredibly excited for the fall season – both in our Glencoe and Winnetka galleries, and with all that’s going on around us in the Chicago art scene. (Don’t miss Lost and Found at the Chicago Botanic Garden and Every Brilliant Thing at our neighbor, Writers Theater).In Glencoe, we have an exhibition of paintings by artists Sara MacCulloch and Hannah Bureau, alongside a collection of Fairfield Porter lithographs from 1969–1975,&nbsp; on view through Oct 15. This will be followed by a show of new paintings by northern Michigan artists Melanie Parke and Richard Kooyman Oct 25–Dec 31.In our newly opened Winnetka space, we continue our series of solo exhibitions featuring Madeline Denaro’s abstract paintings in September, Stephen Dinsmore’s figurative work in October, and ending the year with an exhibition of work by celebrated photographer Rodney Smith (1946-2016).Art is more important than ever in today’s world. As we approach our 25th year, we continue to be inspired and energized by the artists we represent and the vibrant, creative and supportive community that surrounds us.”#&nbsp;Read Fall 2024's 5 to Talk to with:<a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/9/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-lisa-key">Lisa Key – Director, Driehaus Museum</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/8/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-jessica-cochran-and-angee-lennard-process-process">Jessica Cochran and Angee Lennard – Process/Process&nbsp;</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/8/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-jake-troyli">Jake Troyli – Artist</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/9/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-emma-mckee">Emma McKee – Chicago Dir., Mariane Ibrahim</a></body></html>

Anticipating a Season of Art: Five to Talk to – Anne Loucks

<html><head></head><body>Fall is a busy season of art, offering new gallery and museum exhibitions. the Art world figures working hard behind the scenes give us so much to look forward to. we spoke to five (technically six this time!) art community figures about what they’re excited about now and looking forward to next.The following preview is one of five conversations that appear in our fall 2024 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition&nbsp;<a href="https://835ba3.myshopify.com/">click here.&nbsp;</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092759/wgevpsvusznavk31sf9p.jpg"><figcaption>Photo by Z. Najeebah Dumas-O’Neal</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;Emma McKee – Chicago Dir., <a href="https://marianeibrahim.com">Mariane Ibrahim</a>“While enjoying the summer, we were preparing for our busiest months of the year, September and October. We wrapped up an important group exhibition, Palimpsest, which brought together our gallery artists with renowned Chicago-based artists McArthur Binion, Bethany Collins, Michael Rakowitz, and Edra Soto—pillars of the local art scene. Their associated galleries—Rhona Hoffman, PATRON, and GRAY—have graciously contributed works to the show. At the opening, someone remarked that Palimpsest is a true love letter to the city, a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with.In late August we unveiled a solo exhibition by Chicago-based artist Leasho Johnson, on view through the end of October. Johnson’s show will be part of Chicago Exhibition Weekend (CXW), hosted by Gertie and EXPO Chicago, an event we are eagerly anticipating for another year. Last year’s CXW was a beautiful moment for the city, and I am confident this year’s program will be even more robust.”#&nbsp;Read Fall 2024's 5 to Talk to with:<a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/8/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-jessica-cochran-and-angee-lennard-process-process">Jessica Cochran and Angee Lennard – Process/Process&nbsp;</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/8/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-jake-troyli">Jake Troyli – Artist</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/9/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-anne-loucks">Anne Loucks – Anne Loucks Gallery</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/9/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-lisa-key">Lisa Key – Director, Driehaus Museum</a>&nbsp;</body></html>

Anticipating a Season of Art: Five to Talk to – Emma McKee

<html><head></head><body>Fall is a busy season of art, offering new gallery and museum exhibitions. the Art world figures working hard behind the scenes give us so much to look forward to. we spoke to five (technically six this time!) art community figures about what they’re excited about now and looking forward to next.The following preview is one of five conversations that appear in our fall 2024 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition&nbsp;<a href="https://835ba3.myshopify.com/">click here.&nbsp;</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092759/nd82gyngkisv9io904g9.jpg"><figcaption>Headshot courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery. Photo: Raphael Lugassy.</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;Jake Troyli – Artist“For me, 2024 has already been incredibly productive and demanding but also super exciting. I just finished (in collaboration with the amazing team at Gertie) my first public art commission, a 30-foot-tall mural for the new westside location of SkyArt, a west-and-south-side-Chicago-based organization that uses art to provide new avenues of generative thinking for young people in the city. I’ve wanted to do a large-scale mural project for a while, and this felt like the perfect first step into the possibilities of community-facing art. In the studio, I just finished paintings for a group show that opened in August in Düsseldorf, Germany, and I will have work in another group show opening in NYC later this year. I’ll also make my San Francisco debut as part of the expansive group show, Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture which opens at the San Francisco MOMA in October. And finally, I’m most excited about my upcoming solo show with Monique Meloche Gallery, opening November 9th (mark your calendars!) which I’m working on right now in my studio.”#&nbsp;Read Fall 2024's 5 to Talk to with:<a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/8/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-jessica-cochran-and-angee-lennard-process-process">Jessica Cochran and Angee Lennard – Process/Process&nbsp;</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/9/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-anne-loucks">Anne Loucks – Anne Loucks Gallery</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/9/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-lisa-key">Lisa Key – Director, Driehaus Museum</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/9/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-emma-mckee">Emma McKee – Chicago Dir., Mariane Ibrahim</a></body></html>

Anticipating a Season of Art: Five to Talk to – Jake Troyli

<html><head></head><body>Fall is a busy season of art, offering new gallery and museum exhibitions. the Art world figures working hard behind the scenes give us so much to look forward to. we spoke to five (technically six this time!) art community figures about what they’re excited about now and looking forward to next.The following preview is one of five conversations that appear in our fall 2024 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition&nbsp;<a href="https://835ba3.myshopify.com/">click here.&nbsp;</a>&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092759/sgwzn3id7sdhau3cra8k.jpg"><figcaption>Left: Jessica Cochran; right: Angee Lennard</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;Jessica Cochran and Angee Lennard – <a href="https://process-process.com">Process/Process</a>“As a new print publishing venture, this is our very first fall art season! Process/Process will launch five editions on September 5 at Filter Space, with prints by Zarouhie Abdalian, Selva Arapicio, Barber, Michelle Grabner, and Matthew Metzger. Later this fall, we’ll release works by Selina Trepp and Alice Tippit, whose solo exhibition opens September 14 at PATRON.&nbsp;Chicago’s incredible tempo makes it the perfect city for our work with artists. We won’t miss November’s Staple and Stitch Art Book and Print Fair at the 21c Museum Hotel. And this September 6, Barber–one of our collaborating artists–opens a solo exhibition at Ignition Project Space.”#&nbsp;Read Fall 2024's 5 to Talk to with:<a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/8/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-jake-troyli">Jake Troyli – Artist</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/9/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-anne-loucks">Anne Loucks – Anne Loucks Gallery</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/9/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-lisa-key">Lisa Key – Director, Driehaus Museum</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/9/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-emma-mckee">Emma McKee – Chicago Dir., Mariane Ibrahim</a></body></html>

Anticipating a Season of Art: Five to Talk to – Jessica Cochran and Angee Lennard – Process/Process

<html><head></head><body>*This interview is CGN's fall 2024 cover feature. To subscribe to the print edition <a href="https://835ba3.myshopify.com">click here</a>.*&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092759/fqcasmvf5trm4cvwhwdo.jpg"><figcaption>Caroline Kent. Photo: Evan Jenkins. &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;By ALISON REILLYWhen Caroline Kent and I spoke in late July, she was attending a writing workshop at Northwestern University. Working from what felt like a Victorian-era study at Scott Hall, she cherished the opportunity to sit with her ideas, without interruption. By the third day, she said she was hitting her stride and started writing as soon as she arrived in the morning. An athlete who found art as an undergraduate student at Illinois State University, Kent uses writing to gain clarity about her visual art practice. She trusts the process of making, values hard work and practice, and has an acute understanding of herself. Her compelling abstract paintings, works on paper, and installations showcase her own visual language. This fall, through a collaboration with Amtrak, Kent will present her work in a large-scale public installation at Chicago’s Union Station.&nbsp;CGN: Could you tell me about your own writing?&nbsp;Caroline Kent: My relationship to writing comes out of having kept a journal for a long time and using it as a creative space, even in how I once documented my days. I don’t have that practice anymore. But when I get time to write, I try to always write about my practice, always thinking of it having legs and arms that can go in different directions.&nbsp;CGN: How does your writing affect your visual art?CK: My practice has painting as its center but branches off into text-based works or ideas around language. And more recently, I’ve been using this writing workshop at Northwestern to work on a one-act play, to write expanded ideas around different projects like Victoria/Veronica. Writing helps deepen and bring breath to the work that then can move outside of painting and speak to other mediums, whether that’s installation or considering an entire room as opposed to an art object.Right now I’m working on a project for La Trienal with El Museo del Barrio (New York) that’s coming up this fall. I was invited to present some of my work, and they gave me a wall. Am I going to hang an art object on it? Am I going to paint something on it? The writing ends up helping me make formal decisions and choices about how I want the work to function in the presentation of the exhibition, whether it’s the abstract language painted on a large canvas or whether it needs to be reduced down to simple shapes on Belgian linen. Those kinds of distinctions are interesting for me to be really selective about when I am presenting the work– what kind of narrative do I want to build in the work and what do I want to say this time?&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: When you’re in your studio, how do all the different media that you’re working with come together?&nbsp;CK: In the studio, what I really appreciate is that I can work on the wall on something large and then I can move immediately and look over to the table. They’re all in the same room. And even when I’m making works on paper, I like to have them sit out in the room together, because they start to speak to one another. What happens on a larger canvas ends up happening on a work on paper. They all end up getting influenced.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092759/zl1dez682so8wuvm6t6m.jpg"><figcaption>Caroline Kent: Space | Shadow | Script, PATRON Gallery, Chicago, September 2022. Photo: Evan Jenkins. &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>CGN: What is a typical day in your studio?&nbsp;CK: My studio is in my home. In the morning, once I get in there–I learned this trick from someone I don’t remember where, but they told me, if you have a problem when you first go into your studio in the morning of knowing where to start, it’s always good to leave something for yourself to do the day before so that you can go in and start without having to think and make decisions, but continue something. I always try to leave some painting for myself to do.It’s my warmup. It gets me into it.I’ve got headphones on, and typically I’m listening to / watching a BBC crime drama. I’m not always looking at the screen, but I’m listening to the dialogue and it gives my mind something to grab onto while I’m working. I usually work until lunch, then I break and come back and check email and things like that, but I get back into the studio. I would say on average, it’s about a five- to six-hour day. Then it goes back to kids, husband, life. All the other stuff that’s so easy to get distracted by when you’re in your house. I try to stay pretty focused.&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: What are some of your earliest memories making art?&nbsp;CK: This is a funny question because there are two things that stick out to me from my childhood. One of them is that I used to leave writings around the house–just scribbles on a notepad. Recently, my mother has been sending me these as she’s been combing through boxes and bins of things. We had a typewriter at one point, and I remember typing up these conversations about my sister’s boyfriend and asking what his intentions were. I read them now and I’m thinking, this is exactly somehow related to what I’m doing now.&nbsp;And then another thing while I was growing up–this is much more abstract. I didn’t have a name for it. There were moments like during a car ride across the flat land of driving from Sterling, Illinois to Rockford, staring out at cornfields and bean fields. I would have the strangest ideas about things I would do. And I can’t give you an example because they’re so weird for me now, but I remember later on in life, recognizing a lot of these abstract ideas I had really fit into the language of art. Those are some of my earliest memories.&nbsp;CGN: You grew up in Sterling?&nbsp;CK: I went to elementary and high school in Sterling,and my parents still live there.&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: And Rockford, you visited?&nbsp;CK: My grandparents lived in Rockford, and so my father would drive us there all the time. There were six of us in a station wagon, four girls in my family. And we would all drive to and from Rockford.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092760/u0z9wshojjf4gfqlxggl.jpg"><figcaption>Caroline Kent, A witness comes, beckoned from beyond, 2024, Acrylic on canvas. Photo: Evan Jenkins, Courtesy PATRON Gallery.</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;CGN: You said leaving notes for yourself relates to what you’re doing now. Could you talk more about that?&nbsp;CK: The notes were these small scenarios. They’re little snippets of theatrical descriptions of life. Some of the things that I’ve even been working on more recently–I have a series called Typewriter Works, where I pair different descriptions of characters with abstract paintings on paper. I make a painting, and it dries on the paper and then I feed it through the typewriter. In this way, I am synthesizing a character that I have seen in a film or in my imagination. I think that’s the connection I can see clearly. When I was younger, I was inventing a lens on how I was perceiving myself, my teachers, how my parents viewed me, writing about my sisters’ lives and making these funny, inflated, idealistic writings.&nbsp;CGN: When did you start identifying as an artist or make the decision to be an artist?&nbsp;CK: I feel like I was late in the game in some ways. Art didn’t awaken in me until I was in college. I was at university, and it was there that I walked into a gallery. My twin sister and I, we would go around and check everything out from the theater department to watch plays, to the art gallery, coffee shops. It was the nineties, the alternative scene. I remember the nineties aesthetics in art. Collage was big. I have such a clear idea of going back to my dorm room and starting to work in collage. That was the moment when I was like, this is the thing I want to do, but I didn’t know how to get there until a mentor friend of mine guided me to really consider making art my major. And I remember thinking, but I don’t know how to draw, I don’t know how to paint, and just telling myself, okay, I guess I’m just going to be the artist who learns when they’re 20.That kind of confidence, I would call it confidence looking back because it was such a big decision to tell yourself, when you feel there’s a deficiency, maybe I should have been doing this since I was three or four. But I think it came out of athletics and being able to push my body and know what pain was, getting to the other side of physical challenges. I think because of track and field, it helped me decide, well, I guess I’m going to do it in a non-traditional way.&nbsp;CGN: I love that. How long do you think it took you to get confident in your own skills? Was it something you picked up immediately?&nbsp;CK: I invited it immediately and it brought a satisfaction, but I don’t think that I felt confident in art making. I wasn’t thinking about it because I did feel such a freedom with it. I finished up my undergrad degree and I had taken a lot of intro classes, but after that I took seven years off before I went to grad school. In that interim time I ran into a charming professor from Illinois State, Harold Boyd, who I really adored. I ran into him on the street in Minneapolis. I said, I’m about to go to the Peace Corps, and what do I do with art? How do I continue making it if I’m doing this completely other thing? And he said, well, you need something to make art about. You need some depth, you need experience, you need life, and so don’t consider this not conducive to your art practice. That was so helpful. The confidence came probably after graduate school. That’s when I felt confident and understood what I was doing. And to be honest, I wasn’t pursuing confidence, but I was getting confident by really understanding my own practice and developing it and getting legs under it.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092761/qsfbqtisv98k9gp8y9en.jpg"><figcaption>Caroline Kent: This Space for Correspondence, Casey Kaplan, New York, November 2023.&nbsp; &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;CGN: How was your experience being part of the Peace Corps in Romania?&nbsp;CK: It was a super interesting time because it was such a contrast to American life. I knew that I was feeling a certain way about American culture, and I wanted a kind of diversity that I only saw watching international films. Going [to Romania] gratified this desire to have a very different kind of experience other than an American one, though it also was very challenging. It was hard to be away from the familiar, but it helped me grow and experience a lot of really wonderful things, not only the foods and the culture and the people I met and the children I taught, but the landscape was incredible, as was visiting monasteries and learning another language and going to these Romanian Orthodox churches where most people stand the entire service. Going through the forest and traveling with friends for an hour, and then running into an old woman there who’s gathering up pussy willows, giant ones – I was like, ‘Where am I?’&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: How did you decide to pursue an MFA and go to graduate school?&nbsp;CK: I had been living in Minneapolis for a while and I had traveled, lived abroad. I’d come back home and had a temp job to reintroduce myself back into American life. I knew I needed something more. That was the moment when I was like, okay, what do I want to do? I’m at another kind of crossroads. I liked art, but I had been out of any connection with the contemporary art world. I ended up taking advanced painting and drawing at the University of Minnesota. I was really incredibly zealous. I was excited, and I overproduced. My professors saw something in that and were like, you really should consider the MFA program. So I put together my portfolio. Three people were accepted that year for painting and drawing, and I was one of them. That was the most encouraging and exciting news. I still remember to this day the phone call I received when they told me I was chosen out of 130 applicants. I really felt it marked a moment in my life that illuminated a path forward.&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: How long have you been in Chicago, and how has living here affected your practice as an artist?&nbsp;CK: I’ve been in Chicago since 2017. I was living in Minneapolis, and it had a rich art community, but I was ready for more. I think any artist that works in a smaller city, at some point, you either make a commitment to be there for the long term or you start getting the itch to move. My husband was offered a position here at UIC in the art department. It expanded our practices in many ways. Part of that was more visibility, connecting to a larger network of artists. It took me a couple of years before I really got comfortable here in Chicago and maybe even longer. I moved to Garfield Park and the intensity was of high contrast. It took me a while, but there are so many great things that I love about Chicago. It was great to see such diversity having come from Minnesota. And the city has a kind of energy, seeing Lake Michigan, there’s nothing like it. The cultural history here, there’s still so much for me to discover in Chicago.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092762/cbfzayzmwu0nwp1ckr1k.jpg"><figcaption>Caroline Kent: A short play about watching shadows move across the room, The Queens Museum, Queens, NY. December 2023. Photo: Hai Zhang&nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;CGN: You mentioned the upcoming triennial with Museo del Barrio. What else are you working on?CK: I’m working on a project for Amtrak right now, and it’s going to debut at Union Station in the fall. It is a vinyl mural project that I’m designing for interior windows in their downstairs space. I feel like it’s really going to transform Union Station. I’m also working on a commission with the U.S. Embassies Project, a program where artists are commissioned to make work for different U.S. embassies around the world. Then I’m making work for my own practice. Sometimes as an artist, my artwork leaves my studio so fast. I don’t live with it. If I have an exhibition coming up, and there’s some really lovely works that I want to live with for a while. Well, it goes to the exhibition. And if it does get placed with a collector or an institution, it never comes back. And so what did I have? Six months with that piece, that’s it. It’s nice to always be making work that will live with me, that will stay in the studio, that I can keep, that I can continue to think about and be inspired by. I’m often making work for my own personal archive.&nbsp;CGN: Do you keep an archive of your work?&nbsp;CK: It can be tricky. But I’m just getting better at learning to save things and hold on to them. Not only for myself, but thinking about what I will leave to my children. I have three children and I want them to keep the archives of their parents’ work.&nbsp;CGN: Are they interested in art at all?&nbsp;CK: My daughter, Nina is eight, my son, Kent is ten, and Ysabella my stepdaughter is the oldest, she’s 19. They were each very creative when they were young. We definitely are a home of makers. They’re always making something, gluing something, whether it’s my son making a contraption for Legos, or my daughter is making bookmarks, painting or gluing something together. She’s a sewer. My youngest, Nina, is really in a creative moment with sewing, crochet, drawing, making, all of it.&nbsp;CGN: That’s great to kind of watch them experiment with all those things.&nbsp;CK: It’s helpful being parents that are makers, because when your kids are like, ‘Oh, I want to do this thing.’ We just go into our studios and we’re like, ‘All right, let’s do it. What do you need? We’ll do it this way. We’ll build it.’ Those are really great teaching moments.&nbsp;CGN: What about teaching at Northwestern? How has that affected your art practice?CK: As an artist, it can be such an isolating, singular path. When you’re making in your studio and you’re trying to exhibit, it can feel like your peers aren’t always on the same path with you. Teaching is such a great balance for my soul, because it gives me opportunities regularly to give back and pour into other students and share with them and break bread with them. In a way, that feels counter to thinking about the art market. It’s a hard topic for a lot of artists to talk about, because it’s about money in exchange for art. What can be rewarding is when I have an exhibition–for example, I have a mural up at the Queens Museum right now–and I can talk about that experience and share what I learned and gained from working with an institution and be able to share that with graduate students. When I can give in a way that can plant seeds and inspire something alongside academia, that is really a rich and holistic piece of my life.&nbsp;*This interview is CGN's fall 2024 cover feature. To subscribe to the print edition <a href="https://835ba3.myshopify.com">click here</a>.*&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1731092762/jzkab2jvty5uwxfpoa7y.jpg"><figcaption>Subscribe to the print edition&nbsp;<a href="https://835ba3.myshopify.com"> here</a>.</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;</body></html>

Caroline Kent: Confidence On Canvas

<html><head></head><body><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419409/ak3y128hf1hyfe33ujtw.jpg"><figcaption>Collin van der Sluijs's latest wall in Laon, France, 2024</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;BY ANNA DOBROWOLSKII caught up with Collin van der Sluijs as he put the finishing touches on a four-story-tall rooster in a small town in France. "I'm baking from the heat, so it's a good time for a break," he tells me.While some artists shy away from graffiti, dismissing it as a mere teenage fling with urban art, Collin van der Sluijs raises it to new heights, literally. His style blends formal academic art training with illustrative boldness. Drawing inspiration from unexpected sources like Michelangelo and Da Vinci (yes, the cartoon characters), he has spearheaded a graffiti renaissance. On July 5th, he returns to Vertical Gallery in Chicago for his fifth solo show, Observer.&nbsp;CGN: Observer is a clever title for the exhibit - it tows the line between perception and attention to something or someone, and surveillance. What prompted this show? Did you build it with a question in mind?Collin van der Sluijs: I’m always asking questions. Who am I, what am I doing here?&nbsp; I am always looking around for answers, observing my surroundings.&nbsp;When I’m walking through a city or cycling through the landscape, I’m also looking at walls. I think, “That would be a nice one to paint.”&nbsp; I will stop and paint watercolors en plein air. I try to make an interpretation of whatever it is I’m looking at. When I’m in the studio – my studio is in my hometown in Maastricht. I can just go there by bike like a typical Dutch guy and in ten minutes I'm there – I’m working on paintings about things that I’ve experienced or things I’ve seen. We are all observers.&nbsp;CGN: Yet not all of us are equipped with that ability to pay attention, especially to something as familiar as a wall on our commute. Maybe this sounds basic, but what makes a wall interesting to you? &nbsp;CvdS:&nbsp;The wall doesn’t have to be downtown. The building itself can be along an interesting route. It’s almost always a portrait, not a landscape wall. I don’t know why. If it's a tall surface, I see it and think, “That’s a pretty good spot for a painting. It's a feeling of sport, too, in a way."&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419409/xw550yehmw4l3uzp6xnm.jpg"><figcaption>Collin van der Sluijs, a Maastricht, Netherlands wall in progress, summer 2024</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;CGN: Sounds challenging. Can you tell me more about how graffiti ended up in your art practice?CvdS: “When I was about 10 or 11, I went grocery shopping with my mom and dad. I saw a group of guys in the city painting graffiti. I thought, “Wow, this is like drawing outside your little bedroom and into the wild. Before that I was always drawing the classics, like the Ninja Turtles and cartoons. When I came back home from that I started sketching – and to be honest it looked like shit. But I always stuck with it.My parents sent me to art school because they thought it would be better for me to learn something there. They were always supportive.While being in the art academy I tried to find a way to get that graffiti feeling into my art. I combined spray paint with oils and acrylics, which they didn’t like. It took some time to master that combination. I still haven't mastered it, but that’s fine because otherwise it would be boring.&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: It used to be a sort of unspoken rule to not get caught tagging buildings, etc. but it seems like graffiti is picking up in the mainstream art world – I’m thinking of a certain famously anonymous graffiti artist, for example -- but you embrace it and make it a part of your gallery work, which is refreshing. Did you ever get caught?&nbsp;CvdS: No, never. I also never would cover people’s houses or whatever. If it’s an abandoned building that’s about to get torn down anyway, that’s ok.In art, there is – or maybe was -- a tendency to hide it. Some artists will say “I’m not 16 anymore.” There were times when I tried to hide it, but it didn’t work out. For me it is how everything started. It’s a thing from the past that will always haunt me in a positive way. Now I travel everywhere because of it.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419410/baqrnvxv4qg1zmjo8p8c.jpg"><figcaption>Collin van der Sluijs</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;CGN: This is your 5th show at Vertical. How is this show different from the others to you?How did you scale-down?&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419411/f2btgod8z6eh0tjonbyf.jpg"><figcaption>Collin van der Sluijs</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;CvdS: The way I work hasn’t changed over the years, but what I observe. I started with gallery work around 1990—growing from small shows to bigger shows. I see how things change. Like murals going mainstream. More artists working out of the box.[...]Growing as an artist doesn't necessarily mean 'growing up' from the things that fascinated us as children. Sometimes, it just means finding a bigger wall to scale.&nbsp;“If I were to give my younger self advice, I'd say to believe in yourself. It won't be easy; there will be unsafe and crazy situations, but when the project is completed, you'll often leave with a laugh. If you don't take a risk, you'll never know."&nbsp;#&nbsp;Collin van der Sluijs Observer July 5 - 27, 2024 Opening reception: Friday July 5th, 5:00-8:00pm <a href="https://verticalgallery.com/blogs/news/collin-van-der-sluijs-observer">Vertical Gallery</a> – 2006 W Chicago Ave #1R<a href="https://www.instagram.com/collinvandersluijs/">@collinvandersluijs</a>&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419412/gnrayzf9x6hnasdltoun.jpg"><figcaption>Collin van der Sluijs</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;</body></html>

Collin van der Sluijs Elevates Graffiti to New Heights

<html><head></head><body><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419401/smp8yheaxkcbbkdwwtje.jpg"></figure>&nbsp;By BIANCA BOVAWilliam J. O’Brien is a world-maker. Working across a range of media that spans ceramics, bronze, drawing, painting, fiber, and steel, his ability to collate the output of his vast practice into a single coherent narrative that engulfs the physical spaces it occupies and hints at the psychic spaces of its inhabitants holds a singular power unrivaled by his similarly prodigious contemporaries.A prolific artist, O’Brien has already enjoyed a decades-spanning career that has included solo exhibitions at institutions including the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art; the Renaissance Society, Chicago; KMAC Museum, Louisville; MAD Museum, New York; Witte De With, Rotterdam; and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City. His first major museum survey came in 2014 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, curated by Naomi Beckwith. His work resides in the permanent collections of museums including The Art Institute of Chicago; Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and KMAC Museum, Louisville, among many others. He also holds a post as professor and former Chair in the Fine Arts department at School of the Art Institute of Chicago.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419402/vxbfquolaxuifrqzfnwj.jpg"><figcaption>WILLIAM J. O’BRIEN, Freak Flags, 2024, Installation view, ACKERMAN CLARKE, Chicago, IL USA &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;With this laundry list of accomplishments behind him–and having overcome a catastrophic studio fire in 2012 that destroyed hundreds of pieces of his work–O’Brien not only continues to pursue his practice, but to expand it. In 2023, he partnered with the Chicago Park District to install the exhibition Earth, Water, Fire, Wind &amp; Space at the historic Lincoln Park Conservatory. ​​The multimedia exhibition spanned both the Palm Room and the Show Room of the Victorian greenhouse, and featured over one hundred ceramic and papier-mâché sculptures integrated throughout the plant life, infrastructure, and water features therein. Reflecting on the exhibition, O’Brien notes, “The show at the conservatory was me thinking about where art can exist more outside of a traditional gallery or museum context.”&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419402/tckthnzrubkgjg1zilzy.jpg"></figure>&nbsp;&nbsp;This embrace of nontraditionalism extends into the latest expansion of O’Brien’s practice with the founding of Shadow Work Press, and the subsequent publication of the artist’s debut novel, Nighttime Kingdom.&nbsp;“The decision was, ‘If I'm going to publish a book, I want it to be on my terms, so I'm just gonna do the press,’” says O’Brien, “It was about reclaiming a sense of expression and of autonomy.”The novel, which features a foreword by T. Cole Rachel and cover design by Ben Tousley, marks O’Brien’s first foray into fiction writing. Its narrative arc follows protagonist Ted Krieger’s heart-wrenching journey as he navigates the haunting secrets of the small-town America in which he was raised, the tumultuous city of New York in which he lives, and the discovery that healing can only begin with the confrontation of the ghosts of the past.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419403/ys1sxoqnrchl2ioz5faf.jpg"><figcaption>WILLIAM J. O’BRIEN, Freak Flags, 2024, Installation view, ACKERMAN CLARKE, Chicago, IL USA &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;“The novel is a form of experimentation,” acknowledges O’Brien, “I have always had a relationship with language in some form or another within my practice. In my early career, and also recently this summer, I worked on zines, poetry, and self-published works that straddled the art, literary, and alternative comics audiences. For the recent novel Nighttime Kingdom, I approached writing the novel in the same way that I approach making my artwork. I view the embodiment of emotional and psychological states as a current core of what I do in my practice and approached writing the character development and plot for Nighttime Kingdom in the same way. Although the creative fields like to create tight lines between disciplines, I have never thought of my work as fitting neatly into one classification. The book is a story that incorporates drawings, and I view it in the same vein as how I sculpt clay and make drawings. It just so happens that it fell this time with this novel into a formal book."When asked about any biographical elements to the story, O’Brien clarifies, “There is a town called Burton, Ohio that has an Apple Butter Festival, and I did structure the novel's setting based on their town square–on my childhood memory of that town square. But the whole story is a total fictionalization. I was thinking about the emotional story arc. It’s about exposing the reality of the vulnerability of what it's like to be a queer person growing up in rural America, and what that feels like. I think the book is also about power, masculinity, violence, inherited expectations and tropes of masculinity. These can be heavy and personal topics. It’s not a light piece.”&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419404/q2cwvsch8apzkprshxrv.jpg"></figure>&nbsp;Buoying up the heaviness of the narrative is the suite of drawings that appear throughout the novel’s pages. Neither explicitly illustrative nor tied directly to the storyline or to the characters of Nighttime Kingdom, these drawings (many of them hauntingly spare and gorgeously gestural) serve as a kind of ancillary punctuation, a means of emphasizing the atmosphere created in the book.&nbsp;“The drawings were a way of reclaiming a sense of imagination over a story that is very heavy,” says the artist, “I looked through twenty years of my sketchbooks and pulled the [drawings] that felt right, and placed them throughout the text. And that's what I liked so much about having them in, was that including them didn't feel like a device. It was not like these are drawings that are in service to this story in a particular way. It’s a form of straddling that I'm interested in. If someone reads the novel, and they have an emotional response, I'm like, ‘Oh, good. It's successful.’ They might not like it or they might not relate to the story, but if there is an emotional response that is elicited, in the same way they might have an emotional response looking at a sculptural work or a painting, then that to me that’s–well, it's the best I could ever expect.”&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419405/nxnt8qy6jnnomzlsjpls.jpg"></figure>&nbsp;On the heels of the successful releases of both hardcover and paperback editions of Nighttime Kingdom, Shadow Work Press is now set to release a series of three zines by O’Brien over the course of the summer of 2024.&nbsp;“I'm really excited about the zines,” O’Brien says,” I would say that on some level, I feel like I'm reclaiming more of my creative autonomy that was lost along the way of my going from an emerging artist to, I guess you’d say, an established artist. I feel like I’m in what is actually a nice chapter, where I've kind of started to do more projects that are more in line with things that I'm just interested in doing.”&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419406/ap6fdnak6rlxnzqgudob.jpg"></figure>&nbsp;This sensibility was palpable in O’Brien’s recent exhibition Freak Flags at Chicago’s Ackerman Clarke Gallery. The exhibition, which to the credit of gallery owner John Schmid was surprisingly reserved in both tone and volume, consisted of just four colored pencil and ink on paper drawings by the artist, each roughly 80 inches by 60 inches in size. Their monumentality and wall power unequivocally held the space, and created an environment that rewarded the kind of long, slow, deliberate looking that best benefits the depth and complexity of O’Brien’s drawings, but which many prior exhibitions elsewhere containing a higher volume of his work typically sacrifice in service to including a more definitively representational survey of the wide range of media he employs.“I would say that drawing is the foundational language of my practice,” O’Brien says,&nbsp; “It is the core that allows me to extend and experiment with other types of materials.&nbsp;Of his influences, he adds, “I grew up in rural northeastern Ohio, where there is a rich history of craft and folk art, and I feel a certain affinity to the Imagist artists of Chicago. I see no hierarchies between traditional academic artists and self-taught artists, and I personally have connected more with visionary artists because of their use of embodiment as the material center of making and creating art.”It is perhaps this nonhierarchical attitude, with its attendant egolessness and its openness to experimentation and acts of personal interpretation, that characterizes what might be (in less thoughtful hands) a disparate practice as not only a coherent one, but one which is so richly developed as to always leave those who traverse its output wishing they could remain within its confines, and press forward to reach the furthest recesses of its great depths.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419407/ovhlgsawmhwkarpr0sqn.jpg"><figcaption>WILLIAM J. O’BRIEN, Maze, 2018, Colored pencil and ink on paper, 60h x 75w in, 152.4h x 190.5w cm, Unframed; 65 1/4h x 80w x 2.75d in, 165.7h x 203.2w x 7d cm, Framed</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="https://williamjobrien.com">williamjobrien.com</a>Purchase O'Brien's new book at <a href="https://williamjobrien.bigcartel.com">williamjobrien.bigcartel.com</a>View O'Brien's exhibition at <a href="https://ackermanclarke.com/William-J-O-Brien-Freak-Flags">Ackerman Clarke</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</body></html>

The Prolific William J. O’Brien is a World-Maker

<html><head></head><body><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419385/fjmf74mwo0duwczlcvgn.jpg"><figcaption>Suzette Bross</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;Suzette Bross thought she had come up with an idea for an art project that would span one year. That idea turned into an organization, CPS Lives, that is celebrating its 6th anniversary this May. Bross’s organization has expanded and undergone several changes in just a few years, all while finding an artistically civic purpose and developing many connections along the way. Following is CGN’s conversation with Bross as she prepared for a booth at EXPO CHICAGO, as well as some exciting collaborations and celebrations this summer.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;– GV&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: What inspired you to found CPS Lives? &nbsp;Suzette Bross: I am a photographer, and during my career&nbsp; I have seen the power of groups of artists gathering to raise awareness and make a difference. When I started CPS Lives I envisioned a group of Chicago artists working for one year to make art and highlight the city’s public schools. I was inspired by artist collectives like AfriCOBRA in the ‘70s, which focused on black art movements and racial injustices, and the City 2000 photo project, a yearlong group photography project I was part of, that was formed to document the city of Chicago at the beginning of the new millennium.Initially I thought of CPS Lives as a yearlong project that would pair Chicago artists with various public schools, giving opportunities to both of these communities. CPS Lives was formed post internet and in the social media age, allowing audiences to see projects as they were created, lending a transparency and excitement to the way work was made. Artists would have the opportunity to make work, engage with students and share stories of area public schools. At the end of the year the artists, teachers, students and families would come together to celebrate the collaboration at a huge party in Millennium Park.&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: So how did the first year go?SB: Little did I know what I was proposing to accomplish! Chicago is the third largest school system in the country, with around 330,000 students and 650 schools. Our goal is still to be in all schools, but now I realize it will take many years to tell the stories of all our public schools. After six years we have worked with 70 artists and been in 86 schools across 61 neighborhoods. It has been an incredibly interesting and rewarding journey.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419386/bsyowfmyiqcmrw1thr56.jpg"><figcaption>Ludvig Péres, Mozart Elementary School, 2023 &nbsp;</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;CGN: How many schools and photographers are you currently working with?&nbsp;SB: The 2023-2024 residency class is made up of 19 amazing artists working with 21 schools.&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: After six years what has impacted your programming the most since you got started?&nbsp;SB: We have become a nonprofit. Not only does our organiation provide opportunities for students and artists, we provide a visual historic record about public schools. This became very important when the pandemic hit. Artists such as Matt Siber and Ludvig Péres created work that was specific to that pandemic history, working in empty schools when classes went online and also working with students at home and over zoom to share their experiences. We were able to create a book, Resilience: Chicago Public Schools in a Time of Quarantine, that will forever be a record of this historical time in education.&nbsp;In 2020 we worked with BMO Harris Bank to create one of the first murals made with the plywood used to protect the building’s windows during the protests. Lead artists Jeff Phillips and Dorian Sylvain worked with students from over 20 different public schools at the Hyde Park Art Center to create a photographic collage. Marzena Abrahamik’s joyful Michele Clark High School graduation images were the center of the piece, celebrating the accomplishments of these students during this difficult time for them and their families.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419387/parkhazyiq9ladhb7jbk.webp"><figcaption>CPS Lives selected Denise Waite (top left) and Chang-Ching “Casper” Su (top right) as 2024 EXPO Chicago Artists</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;CGN: What do you hope CPS Lives can do for the individual schools, as well as Chicago artists?&nbsp;SB: If you look at what our artists have seen and are communicating in their work, you can really start to see what public education looks like today. There are the proverbial warts of course, but there are also stories of joy and hope and day to day life in public schools in Chicago.&nbsp;When you give students the opportunity to work with professional artists, it can encourage the next generation of designers, photographers, artists and creative thinkers. Many of our artists are CPS alumni–for example: Denise Waite, Bob Thall and Norman Teague–and welcome the idea of giving back to their alma mater, or they are artists interested in giving back to the schools in their neighborhood. Many credit a teacher who inspired them to pursue the career they have today.Encouraging students to think creatively will help them succeed in any career path and confidently address future challenges. Students have a choice about where they go to high school, so many CPS schools must compete for students. Each school has a unique culture, and our artists can help schools understand, define and thus promote what makes them unique.CPS Lives provides local artists with opportunities to make great work with their communities and exhibit around the city, something that’s been very important after the pandemic. CPS Lives also provides schools with the opportunity to be connected to the art world in a meaningful way.&nbsp;&nbsp;CGN: Tell us what CPS Lives has planned this season?SB: We are thrilled to participate in Expo Chicago April 11–14. Our booth will highlight the work of Denise Waite, who worked in her alma mater, Lincoln Park High School, and Casper Su who worked in Haines Elementary. One of the joys of participating in the fair is working with EXPO to bring the students and their parents to the fair and see the students’ expressions as they see their own faces reflected in the art hanging on the walls.&nbsp;Our 6th Anniversary benefit party is May 22 at the Arts Club. The public is invited to meet our artists and many of the teachers and principals from our participating schools and bid on unique art.We are also looking ahead to the 2025. Remember I said one of my original goals was to have a big party with our artists and schools? We are going to do that on the 606 / Bloomingdale Trail to celebrate their 10th annivesary. There are four public schools on the trail, and the 606 connects many Chicago neighborhoods. CPS Lives also provides a way to connect with and see our city, so we’re excited to have fun with them. Stay tuned and join us this spring!&nbsp;#&nbsp;Visit <a href="https://cpslives.org">cpslives.org</a> for information&nbsp;</body></html>

Recording a Day in the Life of CPS:  Artists in Schools

<html><head></head><body>This spring and summer there will be art fairs, new gallery and museum exhibitions and many creative endeavors taking place.the Art world figures working hard behind the scenes give us so much to look forward to, and we spoke to five art community leaders about what they’re excited about now and looking forward to next.&nbsp;The following preview is one of five that appear in our spring/summer 2024 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition <a href="https://835ba3.myshopify.com">click here.&nbsp;</a>&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419385/jshwxikss7vi8yect7qf.jpg"></figure>Jonathan Higgins – <a href="https://mannekenpress.com">Manneken Press</a>“2024 marks Manneken’s 24th year as an independent fine print publisher, and it is shaping up to be a busy and exciting one. We kicked off the year by exhibiting in the International Fine Print Dealers Association’s spectacular Print Fair, which took place in February at New York City’s iconic Park Avenue Armory. We are also releasing our first published prints of 2024 – a suite of three color aquatints by Matt Magee which mix taxonomy with minimalism, and our online exhibition series on Artsy continueswith a new show - “Infinite Guile” - featuring ethereal, abstract monotypes by Sarah Smelser, inspired by her travels in Greece.We just came back from EXPO CHICAGO where we showcased new and recent prints by a diverse range of artists, including Chicago favorites Richard Hull, Anna Kunz and Judy Ledgerwood, all published by Manneken Press. Looking ahead, we will be hosting NYC-based painter Jason Karolak, an SAIC alum, in our Bloomington studio where he will begin work on a new group of etchings. Stay tuned for our additional projects as the year progresses.”#&nbsp;Read 5 to Talk to with:<a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/5/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-edra-soto">Edra Soto – Artist</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/5/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-kimberly-oliva-oliva-gallery-and-alma-fine-art-interiors">Kimberly Oliva – Oliva Gallery, and Alma Fine Art &amp; Interiors</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/5/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-claudine-ise-goldfinch">Claudine Ise – Goldfinch</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/5/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-aron-packer-potter-potter-auctions">Aron Packer - Potter &amp; Potter Auctions</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</body></html>

Anticipating a Season of Art: Five to Talk to – Jonathan Higgins, Manneken Press

<html><head></head><body>This spring and summer there will be art fairs, new gallery and museum exhibitions and many creative endeavors taking place.the Art world figures working hard behind the scenes give us so much to look forward to, and we spoke to five art community leaders about what they’re excited about now and looking forward to next.&nbsp;The following preview is one of five that appear in our spring/summer 2024 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition&nbsp;<a href="https://835ba3.myshopify.com/">click here.&nbsp;</a>&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419385/gcspo1az9ktuucji4dez.jpg"></figure>Kimberly Oliva –&nbsp;<a href="https://www.olivagallery.com">Oliva Gallery</a> and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.almaartandinteriors.com">Alma Fine Art &amp; Interiors</a>“Each spring, I’m thrilled to launch new projects uniting Chicago’s arts community. A highlight this season is our partnership exhibition of CSI x ALMA, where my co-owner, Gosia Korsakowski, and I will spotlight national talent and foster connections across art forms.&nbsp;Looking forward, our August Arts and Culture Summit aims to ignite dialogue and engagement on Chicago’s west side. Joined by El Schomburg’s Brenda Torres Figueroa and Agitator Gallery’s Gretchen Hasse, we strive to cultivate a vibrant, inclusive cultural hub.Additionally, I would like to highlight “Liminal Space: Bethany Cordero and Deborah Newmark,” opening May 10 at Oliva Gallery. These two emerging artists are ones to watch in 2024.”#&nbsp;Read 5 to Talk to with:<a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/5/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-jonathan-higgins-manneken-press">Jonathan Higgins – Manneken Press</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/5/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-edra-soto">Edra Soto – Artist</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/5/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-claudine-ise-goldfinch">Claudine Ise – Goldfinch</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/5/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-aron-packer-potter-potter-auctions">Aron Packer - Potter &amp; Potter Auctions</a>&nbsp;</body></html>

Anticipating a Season of Art: Five to Talk to – Kimberly Oliva, Oliva Gallery and Alma Fine Art & Interiors

<html><head></head><body>This spring and summer there will be art fairs, new gallery and museum exhibitions and many creative endeavors taking place.the Art world figures working hard behind the scenes give us so much to look forward to, and we spoke to five art community leaders about what they’re excited about now and looking forward to next.&nbsp;The following preview is one of five that appear in our spring/summer 2024 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition&nbsp;<a href="https://835ba3.myshopify.com/">click here.&nbsp;</a>&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419385/gjxzt7pb37mk9uvzz81c.jpg"></figure>&nbsp;Aron Packer – <a href="https://www.potterauctions.com">Potter &amp; Potter Auctions</a>“As the Fine and Outsider Art Specialist at Potter &amp; Potter, I never know exactly what will come through our doors. To a certain extent, auction houses play the cards they’ve been dealt - which keeps the entire team on its toes. As an example of “I never knew this would happen,” we recently acquired an important collection of Edward S. Curtis works.Named the “Best Auction House in Chicago” for 2024 by the&nbsp;Chicago Reader, Potter &amp; Potter looks forward to burnishing that hard-won award, especially in its rapidly growing art department. Our art sales occur in June and December and offer pieces in all genres, from all time periods, spanning the categories of Outsider, Folk, Contemporary and Fine Art. We accept consignments on a rolling basis.&nbsp;For the fall season I will organize&nbsp;A Cabinet of Morbid Curiosities: The Collection of Richard Harris.&nbsp;This all-encompassing death-related collection addresses this serious and precarious topic in a continuum from humor to tragedy and beyond.”#&nbsp;Read 5 to Talk to with:<a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/5/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-jonathan-higgins-manneken-press">Jonathan Higgins – Manneken Press</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/5/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-edra-soto">Edra Soto – Artist</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/5/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-kimberly-oliva-oliva-gallery-and-alma-fine-art-interiors">Kimberly Oliva – Oliva Gallery, and Alma Fine Art &amp; Interiors</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/5/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-claudine-ise-goldfinch">Claudine Ise – Goldfinch</a>&nbsp;</body></html>

Anticipating a Season of Art: Five to Talk to – Aron Packer, Potter & Potter Auctions

<html><head></head><body>This spring and summer there will be art fairs, new gallery and museum exhibitions and many creative endeavors taking place.the Art world figures working hard behind the scenes give us so much to look forward to, and we spoke to five art community leaders about what they’re excited about now and looking forward to next.&nbsp;The following preview is one of five that appear in our spring/summer 2024 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition <a href="https://835ba3.myshopify.com">click here.&nbsp;</a>&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721419377/yfzgdnsqhiqgoqtrnqtx.jpg"></figure>Claudine Ise – <a href="https://goldfinch-gallery.com">Goldfinch</a>“This year I’m especially excited for the Spring/Summer season because in April (through April 20th), we’re presenting a pair of really superb solo shows by two longtime Chicago painters: Leslie Baum (in Gallery 1) and Andreas Fischer (Gallery 2). Both Leslie and Andreas engage abstraction in really different and equally compelling ways, and the gallery is going to draw out that discourse via a public conversation on painting with Leslie and Andreas that will be moderated by Justin Witte, Director and Curator at Cleve Carney Museum of Art, College of DuPage (on Saturday, April 13th at 2pm in conjunction with EXPO Art Week).&nbsp;On deck after that are solo shows by Sherwin Ovid and an emerging Taiwanese artist named Tsai-Ling Tseng, and in summer, our first solo show with Chicago artist Jessie Mott that will focus on Jessie’s new paintings. I can’t wait!”#&nbsp;Read 5 to Talk to with:<a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/5/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-jonathan-higgins-manneken-press">Jonathan Higgins – Manneken Press</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/5/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-edra-soto">Edra Soto – Artist</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/5/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-kimberly-oliva-oliva-gallery-and-alma-fine-art-interiors">Kimberly Oliva – Oliva Gallery, and Alma Fine Art &amp; Interiors</a><a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2024/5/anticipating-a-season-of-art-five-to-talk-to-aron-packer-potter-potter-auctions">Aron Packer - Potter &amp; Potter Auctions</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</body></html>