Chicago Artist Paints ‘100 Zoom Portraits’

A landscape artist is ditching the dirt for some more formal paintings in a new series titled “100 Zoom Portraits.”

What started out as 300 screenshots of Zoom interviews from her favorite newscasts, has since transformed into a declaration of the times. 

Via WTTW

Embattled Thompson Center Lands Buyer With Plans For Overhaul, Reuse

A reprieve for the Thompson Center.

Late last week, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced a deal to sell the love-it-or-hate it state building downtown to the Prime Group for $70 million. The development firm plans to overhaul the Helmut Jahn-designed structure rather than demolish it and start anew, as others had proposed.

Via WTTW

Bob Faust's Latest Art Installations See Chicago All Wrapped Up

“I am blessed that my work and life places me regularly in many of our city’s great neighborhoods, rich with color, texture and surprising juxtapositions,” acknowledges Bob Faust, principal and creative director of his eponymous Chicago-based art and design studio Faust (faustltd.com). “I have made it part of my practice to catalog inspiring images when I come across them.” These images are the main medium in Faust’s most recent installations, with all, and still… and Rapt on The Mile, two distinct projects connected by the artist’s style and intent.

Via Michigan Ave. Magazine

From Outside In: Rashid Johnson Has Plied His Status as an Art Star to Effect the Kinds of Change He Wants to See

After meeting at a neighborhood bar a little more than a decade ago, Rashid Johnson and Joel Mesler became such fixtures together on New York’s Lower East Side—where Johnson lived and Mesler owned a gallery—that one day Mesler half-jokingly said to his friend: “‘Look, man, we’ve got to divide Orchard Street properly.” Mesler decided that he would commandeer the thoroughfare two blocks south of Grand Street, while Johnson would take control of the blocks to the north. After quickly becoming the unofficial mayor of his zone, Johnson would “sit out on his porch, on the steps, and smoke cigarettes—and he just knew everybody,” Mesler recalled.

Via Artnews