The Tiniest Gallery

Tags

Chicago, Gallery, miniature, painting

Walking from brunch with a friend I passed a storefront on Damen Ave with a series of tiny abstract paintings lining the bottom of it’s window.

They look like Polaroids from a bit of a distance away but up close you can see they are paintings on paper. The gallery is called “The Ledge,” of course, and the paintings were by Burleigh Krinquist.

They appear to be mini Rothko inspired paintings in neutral colors. The great thing about this little gallery is that you can always see what’s being displayed there. It’s things like this that make me lovey city even more.

2nd Fridays

Tags

Art walk, Chicago, Gallery, Pilsen

I met Karin Friday night for 2nd Fridays art walk in East Pilsen. “I read somewhere that Pilsen is the next up and coming neighborhood,” she told me as we walked from gallery to gallery. This is always a little hard to hear. We all want improvement but there aren’t many affordable places in the city left to live that are close to the lake and downtown. Pilsen has long been a good option for students and artists and “up and coming” can also mean higher rent and loss of some character. You will not find a neighborhood in Chicago more accepting of street art and supportive of public art. Some of it is really amazing and some of it- not so much. But the acceptance of this is what is so great about it. Here are some pictures of what I saw on my walk this morning in Pilsen, from where I live to a coffee shop on 18th.

I am writing this entry while at my favorite Pilsen coffee shop, Cafe Jumping Bean.

Anyway, back to the art walk. There are a number of artists who open their studio spaces to the public every 2nd Friday of the month for you to browse through. You can watch young models in training put on a little fashion show, stay in galleries who also have DJs playing and have some wine, get some chocolate or sweets, listen to live musicians on a sidewalk while being offered milkshakes and hotdogs (that happened), or be invited into an expansive shared gallery to see sculptured paintings and lively street inspired art by the artist himself as he hands you a can of Old Style (yep, that happened too). You will not feel underdressed or intimidated. These artists are friendly and happy to have you by.

Bring your wallet if you want to add to your art collection. These artists are offering great deals on their work as they are displaying in their own spaces and do not have to give up any money to a gallery owner.

Is This Your Mother?

Tags

Chicago, Cool Friends, Friends, Friendship, Gallery, Intuit, OutsiderArt, Photography

I’ve known Julie longer than any of my friends, I was the new girl in our Kindergarten class and she was also a bit quiet and loved crayons and clay as much as I did. Instant friendship. I always thought she was a little bit cooler than I was, I loved her hair and her clothes and her name. When she wasn’t around and I was playing “house” my name would always be Julie. Over the years I became cooler yet Julie has grown to be WAY cooler.

Examples:
I teach art, she is in the corporate world as a designer. Cooler.
We are both stylish but my clothes are inevitable stained by drops of red or purple paint because some kid got paint on a table I walked by or dropped a brush on me.
I eat lunch in a windowless cafeteria, Julie works in the loop so she’s got world choice cuisine to choose from daily. Maybe she has power lunch meetings with other cool corporate people. Either way: lots cooler.
My work computer runs on Windows 97, I’m guessing Julie has a Mac at work, probably with multiple screens. By default, cool people have Macs.
I have a dying tomato plant on the tiny balcony of my apartment in Pilsen. Pilsen is pretty cool, I’ll admit, but Julie lives in a gorgeous Craftsman cottage in Oak Park with a quince tree in her backyard. Come on.
We both broke bones in this past year. I broke my hip when I slipped on ice; Julie broke one bone riding an ATV and another in a Roller Derby bout. Seriously, seriously…it’s not even fair.

When I roped her into my #SummerOfArt14 project I suggested Intuit Art Center in River West. Being the way cooler of us two, Julie knew of the art exhibit there because her friend was the artist. Intuit Art Center is a non profit museum dedicated to the work of self taught artists. Julie’s freind, Jeff Phillips, has a photo exhibit there until August 30th. In it are large format color photographs that tell the story of the travels of a couple from the mid 20th Century. Jeff found a large quantity of color slides in a second hand store in St. Louis. Using his photography skills he turned the photos into prints and then posted them on a Facebook page called Is This Your Mother?and asked for the help of the public to find the family of the couple. Finally, a niece of “Edna” identified herself in one of the pictures and the mystery was solved. We walked around the gallery marveling at how our world has changed since these photos were taken, we tried to guess the ages of the people in them, we identified similarities in photos of our own families, admired the clothes and cars and hairstyles and then we took this great selfie with Edna in her cruise ship drill outfit.

Now Edna’s cool factor has gone up like mine does every time I get to hang out with Julie.

Skokie Sculpture Walk

Tags

Art, Chicago, conversation, free art, freinds, path, public art, Sculpture, walk

There’s a two mile grassy strip that sits between McCormick Boulevard and the Northshore Channel about a 40 minute drive from downtown Chicago in Skokie, Illinois. Walk along it on an early morning and you can see some people rowing in the channel but at any time of day you can stroll, run or walk along the paved pathways. Speckled along the path are a number of fantastic sculptures for you to stop and admire.

I met my friend, Mandy, here on a Monday morning for a long and sunny walk. It was perfect for us because we go long lengths of time between catching up and the walk creates the perfect setting for that. If you are a teacher, like myself, you may consider the park a place to take students for a couple hours of sketching or inspiration for their own 3D piece.

Or maybe you just need a cool backdrop for some awesome selfies.
Skokie Sculpture Walk

The Provocateurs

Tags

#SummerOfArt14, art show, Camille Rose Garcia, Chicago, Dzine, Gallery, graffiti artists, painting, Shepard Fairy

With Art Alliance, and alongside Lollapalooza 2014, Chicago, Shepard Fairey curated an art show at Block 37. It included works for sale by popular urban artists including Fairey himself, Dzine, D*face, RETNA, Space Invader and Keith Haring.
The works I enjoyed most were by Camille Rose Garcia. Her paintings are super shiny acrylics of fantasy images that vibrate with complementary colored lines placed next to each other.

Also impressive were political statement paintings created on flags by Andrew Schoultz.

Back in 1993 I was dating a guy who hung out with Dzine on occasion. I remember visiting the loft he then occupied with some other guys and thinking this whole graffiti scene was pretty cool. It was my introduction to the art form and I have come to be a huge fan of it ever since. These guys were artists who most often used spray paint. Now Dzine is creating installations and is appreciated as a fine artist around the world. It’s amazing to see the evolution of what at first was considered to be art of criminals and thugs by those who just didn’t understand turn into sought after collectibles.

Art Alliance

Building The Dream

Tags

Art, Chicago, Gallery, Gus Russo, organized crime, painting, The outfit, underworld, xenz

Did you know that prior to the Chicago fire many of the city’s buildings were sinking? So, to save them, the buildings were jacked up and placed on beams which, in turn, created a series of alleys and tunnels below the city. These tunnels created the perfect atmosphere for the creation of organized crime. No photographs of the tunnels remain and very few drawings of it can be found. But when a London based artist, Xenz, learned of the tunnels while reading “The Outfit,” by Gus Russo, he created a series of drawings and paintings inspired by the fact based story of Chicago before the fire for his show at Vertical Gallery. Xenz even built a 3-D mulit-layered model of what he imagined art of the city to have looked at the gallery’s storefront.

Xenz creates images that convey the sense of grime a literal underworld would contain as well as characters who might be milling around down there. He layers washes of umber, sepia, cream and gray to lure us into his compositions and make us feel as though we are entering a tunnel into the world below the tall buildings. Above, we see faint suggestions of structures of familiar modern skyscrapers that allude to the title of the exhibit, “Building The Dream.”

The drawings and paintings are now my favorite of what I’ve seen this summer and I want my book club to read “The Outfit.” Someone please buy me one of these paintings, they are compellingly gorgeous.

Vertical Gallery
xenz

Teenagers…sigh

Tags

Art, art institute of chicago, Chicago, Magritte, museum, teenagers

I scheduled a meet up at the Art Institute with my most recently graduated AP Studio kids. Here’s what I learned about them as graduates:
1. It’s summertime, so only half the kids who say they will be there will actually show up.
2. The kids that do show up will be late, 15-60 mins late.
3. There will be no apologies for being late, just like in school. In fact, they will act as though you should be grateful that they are there at all.
4. They are there more for the experience of being downtown than they are for the artwork.
5. They will enjoy the gift shop more than the exhibit.
6. They will be very polite in the museum and behave appropriately.
7. They will stand to pose for only one selfie, then they are done and ready to catch the red line to china town for a bubble tea.

Overheard at the exhibit:
“This reminds me of Dalí for some reason.”
“It’s like… He’s making fun of art.”
“I could totally paint that one on the top left.”

We also observed that Magritte was way ahead of his time, fashion wise. He thought of barefoot shoes before they ever materialized, he envisioned the Brazilian wax and he painted wood grain tattoos on women (that one has yet to catch on but in sure we will see it in twenty years or so).

Magritte At The Art Institute of Chicago

Tags

Art, Chicago, Exhibits, Magritte, Museums, painting, Surreal, Surrealism

Lynne works at the same school I do and two years ago we were at a conference with a group of other teachers from our district. Most of the others were much younger than us so we found ourselves socializing at different locations than the others and we really hit it off. Since then we’ve been saying “we need to get together again” but we haven’t. We arrive to school around the same time each morning so the extent of our social time is limited to the five minutes we each have before we need to prep for the day.

So, I was really pleased when one morning, last week, I got a text from her asking if I was available the next day to meet her downtown. It was a beautiful Friday afternoon and being downtown on these days sometimes makes me feel like a tourist in my own city. We met at the Monroe street entrance so we could head to the Education Center and renew our free passes. Lynne wasn’t familiar with Rene Magritte but she was all for paying more for a ticket to get in to see the show.

Magritte was a surrealist and probably one of the more creepy ones. Surrealists were influenced by the ideas and theories of Sigmund Freud and the artists tried to tap into the subconscious to create their work. Magritte repeats the use of several images; one being emotionless men in dark suits and bowler hats. Most of the figures in his work seem to be devoid of emotion and identity. The colors are all very dull and the painting technique very precise. The gallery the show was exhibited in was very dimly lit. I’m not sure if that was done to decrease damage to the colors of the paint but, if so, it also made the experience that much more surreal. It also kinda made me sleepy, I yawned through the whole gallery.

Photos inside the exhibit were not allowed but I was happy to see in person many works I’ve only studied in books along with so many others that I’d never seen before. Lynne remarked, “this would be a cool project for your students,” when she saw a piece that used words in it. I repilied, “it would be a cool project for your kids too!” Later, I saw her jotting ideas down in a notebook.

Like my other non-artist freinds, Lynne was ready to leave before I was and I was certainly hungry, so we left to get some lunch and live the tourist life for a couple hours. We went to Park Grill at Millennium Park and sat at the bar for some lunch and a glass of wine. Days like this I do not take for granted as a teacher.

The Art Institute of Chicago
Millenium Park Grill

Bridgeport Art Center Third Fridays

Tags

Art, Bars, Beer, Chicago, freinds, Gallery, painting

My meet up buddy was again, the vivacious and spunky Miss Vero of Cicero, IL. She had to work until 9:00, on Friday, and the open studio was only until 10:00 but we went anyway, at 10:00. When the doors were closed and locked but we got in when someone else was leaving.
The Center is housed in what was once the Speigel catalog warehouse on 35th in Bridgeport, Chicago. The warehouse also houses a furniture dealer and an event venue which seemed to be hosting a wedding last night. We could see the flashing disco lights on the top floor beckoning us to crash the party.
Instead, we headed up to the third floor and found a couple studios still open and artists welcoming us to have a look. My favorite artist on this floor’s gallery space was Ruth Esserman whose artwork features thousands of identiless people shown from an arial view and looking busy at work though their poses were static. You cannot tell if the forms are male or female, what race they are or what they are wearing. They are assembled about in a way that reminded me of ants working together around their hill. There is no joy or drama just a sense of a task being handled through silent communication. The large paintings were my favorite because I was able to stand in front of them finding new things within for a while. It looked like colors were laid down then she put a white wash over them, removed areas where she wanted the figures, painted the figures and even used what looked like pencil for their shadows.

After the show, Vero and I headed over to Maria’s Packaged Goods for a drink. The beer menu at this place had us deliberating over what to order for at least ten minutes. Then, as is typical of time with Vero, we spent the next three hours involved in a great conversation. She gave me some tips on how to improve my blog and critiqued my refrigerator and pantry contents (Vero was my house sitter while I was in Greece). I learned, finally, what a Michelada is and why there was some leftover Clamato on a shelf in my fridge. Vero is a good example of benefits of teaching beyond summers off. Kids grow up and become adults and the ones you really connected with while they were in school can become your friends as adults. Friends that are great additions to your life and who have things to teach you.

Bridgeport Art Center

Maria’s Packaged Goods

Ruth Esserman

Art Institute Book Club Meeting

Tags

Art, Book club, Chicago, Forgery, freinds, museum, The Art Institute Of Chicago

When we read a book we like to meet places that are somehow related to the book. When we read Loving Frank, for example, we decided to meet at Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio in Oak Park. For Caveat Emptor we decided to hit The Art Institute Of Chicago and see if we could find some of the artists Perenyi forged.

Twenty four hours before we met I tweeted @perenyi_ken to let home know what we were up to in hopes that he would tweet back. He did not. Sigh. But that means now I can talk shit about his forging because he probably won’t check out the tweet I compose about this blog.

With the Art Institute’s map and App in our hands we first headed to The Early American Art gallery and found a Peto, a couple Heades, and a Sargent.

Here we are in front of a Heade.

Rachel and I had both downloaded the book on our devices and didn’t find the examples of Perenyi’s work until we finished the book because they are at the end. “If I knew that’s what he was describing while I was reading I wouldn’t have been so impressed,”remarked Rachel. I agreed. Many well known Early American artists and works sought out by collectors (who pay high prices) really aren’t that good if you are expecting super realism or quality comparable to Winslow Homer. I think the reason Perenyi, who is a self taught artist, was able to replicate works so well was for two reasons: 1. He was a genius about using authentic materials and making new paint look old. Much of his labor went into creating authentically old looking paintings. 2. As a beginner painter he knew he had to choose artists whose abilities matched his.

I kind of wanted to walk around more and point out my favorite European artists and explain why they were important. But when I had to talk Dora and Rachel into seeing the Magritte exhibit and they finished it in ten minutes (it took me an hour to get through it) that was my first clue that they were reaching their end. Dora kept texting and looking at her phone, they seemed unimpressed by my pointing out the beauty of the architecture in the museum, and I’m sure Rachel’s feet under her very pregnant belly were killing her. I had to realize my friends were just not as into it as I am and get the out of there. So, we wrapped things up and found a place to feed us salad.

The Art Institute of Chicago