David Lee Csicsko spent part of pandemic creating free coloring sheets to do while sheltering at home

The artwork of David Lee Csicsko brings smiles to people’s faces. His bold, bright creations add cheerfulness to every subject he interprets, no matter how somber the topic.

Take the lives of saints. Most people grew up with holy cards and statues that depict saints in their martyrdom and perfect holiness, as exceptional people to revere in a detached, superhuman way.

Csicsko takes a different approach. Enthralled with the saints since he was a child, his playful images make them human and approachable, inviting viewers to learn more about them and to embrace their messages.

Via Chicago Tribune

(Read CGN's 2020 interview with Csicsko here)

What is NFT art? Chicago artists explain the goldrush, as one collection by Beeple brings in $69 million

Sara Ludy could buy her own island.

Maybe. Possibly. Assuming everything goes the way it has lately for digital artists selling their work right now in the form of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. Maybe then. Ludy has spent a couple of decades creating digital art and virtual-reality pieces and teaching the brave new world of new media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; last spring, after years in the city, she left Chicago for her dream state, New Mexico. She’s a significant figure in digital art. She’s not wading into NFTs to get rich quick. And frankly who knows if she even wants an island?

Via Chicago Tribune

From July 2020: Collector’s Eye: They Built a World-Class Collection of Black Artists’ Work. Who Are They Acquiring Now?

With the news today that the Art Institute of Chicago has a new chair of the Board of Trustees, Denise Gardner, we pulled up this article we were reading last summer.

Ms. Gardner, the vice-chairman of the board at the Art Institute of Chicago, said she recently walked into the room at home where she has long displayed the masters of the collection—and realized every artist was a Black man. She had bought a couple of major works by Black women lately, so she resolved to add these artists to the main room, thereby allowing Black women to share the spotlight.

Via WSJ

An Explosive Netflix Documentary About the $500 Million Isabella Stewart Gardner Heist Names the Gangsters Who May Have Done It

“This was a solvable crime,” Colin Barnicle, director of the new Netflix documentary series This Is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist, told Artnet News.

But more than three decades after the most expensive art theft in U.S. history, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s stolen paintings are still missing, with their empty frames hanging on the walls of the Venetian-style palazzo.

Via Artnet