Christ & Co. (Gonzales’ Christ Revised and Extended) by Ebony G. Patterson

“The tone of the show is supposed to be colorful and I wanted to invite people in as opposed to pushing people away,” Camille Morgan, curator of the Black Gossamer show at Glass Curtain Gallery, explains. Walking into the exhibition, a visitor is greeted by wide open space, white walls splashed with bright yellows, purples and blues – glitter, textiles, and fabrics -  radiating from the various artwork. The atmosphere of the arrangement is fun and psychedelic, but the pieces definitely showcase complicated undertones regarding some social, economic, and historical commentaries. “As you get closer to thinking about the artwork,” Morgan says. “You would see that there’s something more complex underneath that you may or may not find controversial.”

One would think fashion is a subject that is the least controversial – outside of that dress that’s too skimpy, those jeans that sag too low, or that informal outfit at a bow tie event. But to take the concept of fashion, take it away from what some might call the trivial environment of the red carpet or runway, and view it in terms of culture makes the subject more than what’s laying around in someone’s closet. The Black Gossamer show says loud and clear that fashion is like a picture, in and of itself. Holding a shirt, an accessory, or a fabric can tell just as many stories as a picture with a thousand words. The value of fashion is something that Camille Morgan has held close to her heart throughout all of her studies in art history and design. “There’s the underlying element of fashion where people don’t often times want to take it seriously on an academic level,” she says.  “But it kind of lives throughout everything we do – everyday – even if you don’t want to recognize or think it’s valuable. But there are also many fashion academics like myself that write about it in a critical way, so I thought if I’m going to curate a show my ‘thing’ will always be connected to fashion.”

Pin-Up series by Wangechi Mutu

Walking in the door, the viewer is first greeted with a black and white photography piece by Krisanne Johnson. This is the same piece featured on the cover of the exhibition catalogue. As a purposeful placement choice by Morgan, the photograph sets the tone for many themes throughout the entire show. Displaying young African American adults in designer clothes, the pictures seem to take the perspective of a fly on the wall, capturing a candid party atmosphere. Though the photography style might remind viewers of an advertisement spread one would find in VIBE magazine (which in fact, does speak to consumerism – a shared theme throughout the show), the artwork does invite people to analyze what connection fashion has in black culture and what clothes mean in regards to status, popularity, and stereotypes. In fact, Morgan encountered a visitor who thought that the young people in the photo were doing illegal drugs, perhaps glorifying the practice, when in fact they were smoking hookah. However, what is it about the photos that made this person jump to that conclusion? Like the rest of the show, these works pose an open-ended question and leaves it to the viewer to come up with their own answers.

Next to the photography is an installation by Aisha Bell that – on surface level – seems to depict all the different faces, characteristics, personalities, or moods women (and not just limited to black women) chose to “put on” and wear. With the use of colors and fabric,  the work speaks directly to how important clothing is in regards to identity. Morgan explains, “Even though people are like ‘Just because I’m wearing it doesn’t mean that’s who I am.’ Well then who are you? Why are you wearing it? There is some reason behind that.” Likewise, there is a reason why each fabric is placed on that installation – they tell a story. Bell has put a name to almost all of the fabrics, for instance, there is a “club dress” fabric. When talking to Bell, Morgan discovered that Bell found a very stretchy, light bright pink, almost velvety fabric at a shop. Someone came up to Bell and asked what she thought about using it for formal wear. There, the point was made – there’s a fabric for everyone, any time, for every personality, and it’s always rooted in identity.

Next is Christ & Co. (Gonzales’ Christ Revised and Extended) by Ebony G. Patterson, an installation that takes the space of an entire room. Shrines depict a dense representation of the culture of Dancehall, a form of music popular in Jamaica that borrows from both dance and reggae. But just like hip hop, fashion plays an important part in the culture and the more flashy, the more outrageous, the more daring – the better. The glitter, lights, candles, and textures make the room very busy, and one might compare it to being in the heart of Las Vegas – a somewhat condensed hyperactive space depicting what some might call consumerism, American culture. What’s interesting about this piece is the religious connotation – containing a slow, hymn playing in the background, and Jesus-like symbolism in its epicenter. The song, however, is not about religion, but about a popular shoe brand within Dancehall culture. Accessory and products adorn the shelves, with everything from jewelry to creams for skin bleaching – a practice also popular in that culture. Contrary to what most might think, for many the practice isn’t an attempt to imitate “whiteness” or express dissatisfaction with who they are – it is a way to be the most extreme. Much like extreme sports or wearing the highest heels known to man, the most outrageous is often respected and rewarded with attention.

Chameleon by Aisha Bell

This piece speaks in dialogue with Wangechi Mutu’s Pin-Up series very well, which depict images of African American “pin up” girls with grotesque deformities such as alligator tails, exaggerated body parts, and missing limbs. One might view such pieces as a commentary on the African American body image, but there’s another perspective – especially in regards to how disturbingly close the use of plastic surgery in contemporary society comes to creating such images off the canvas, and not just in African American culture. “I wanted to look at a part of a culture, specifically black culture, in a way that was not focused on comparing it or viewing it through white culture,” Morgan says. “In my head these artists are really looking at black culture…not necessarily being ideas bounced off of something else, like white culture.” In fact, these artists successfully raise many questions about cross-cultural issues. How far will “extreme” fashion go in our society? Is this really only the product of something connected with African American’s relations with white culture or is it something more universal?

The Black Gossamer exhibit gives a tunnel vision snapshot of African American culture through the eyes of fashion and at the same time, expands the viewer’s peripheral vision about individual identity not necessarily connected to African American culture. It shows how effective fashion can be as an unspoken language, just like a picture or photograph. “Weaving is one of the oldest practices that humans have ever done…to clothe yourself, it’s very basic.” Morgan says, also getting to the very raw, simple, and yet still complicated statement of the exhibition. “People have a lot of fun with [fashion] now but I think it says a lot about identity.”

You can see the show for yourself until February 11^th at Columbia College’s Glass Curtain Gallery. 

-Thursday February, 2nd-

Film is Dead: Edges of the Digital Frame

I AM Logan Square
2648 N. Milwaukee Avenue Chicago, IL 60647
Hermosa

Opening reception February 2nd, 6-8:30PM

I Am Logan Square presents the February gallery opening, “Film Is Dead: Edges of The Digital Frame”. This exhibition is a radical video exhibition that celebrates the new wave of underground cinema. The works of Nelson Carvajal and Amir George represent an underexposed avenue of truly independent filmmaking. The opening reception will be held at the IALS gallery, 2644 N. Milwaukee Ave. Revolution Brewing will be providing its signature bacon fat popcorn and seasonal beer for the reception accompanied by delicious treats by Paper Moon Pastry.

 

-Friday February, 3rd-

SKY LINES at Chapel Projects

Charnel House Chicago
3421 W. Fullerton Ave.
Logan Square

Opening reception February 3rd, 6-9PM
Closes February 19th

Works by Robin Dluzen; Photographs produced by New Bound Media. Curated by MK Meador. Employing salvaged cardboard to construct her water tower support structures, Dluzen draws parallels to the scavenging history of the forms. The individual sculptures are lined up and stacked on top of one another to create a skyline composed entirely of these formerly functional objects. In this way, Dluzen presents the supports and the city’s landscape in a new light, and restores a bit of this outmoded architecture’s glory. Viewing hours are from 12pm-4pm Saturday and Sunday or by appointment.

Issuing Forth: Benjamin Chaffee, Timothy McMullen, Zoe Nelson, and Josh Reames.

Robert Bills Contemporary
650 W. Lake
Loop

Opening reception February 3rd, 6-9PM
Closes February 25th

Curated by Becca Schlossberg and Hannah Klemm. Robert Bills Contemporary is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition Issuing Forth. This group exhibition presents new work by four artists who interrogate, extend, and experiment with the possibilities of painting. Building up, off, and around the traditionally flat plane, these four artists employ distinctive strategies that test both the potential and the limitations of the medium. Each artist creates new supports for the painted surface through a variety of methods and techniques. Resisting traditional painterly methods and artistic methodologies, their work demonstrates ways in which the historical and material trajectory of painting may be redirected to new ends in the contemporary moment. Zoe Nelson dramatizes the division between painted surface and negative space by cutting into the canvas. The cuts, and cut-out shapes and negative spaces produced by them, become key compositional elements. Through an emphasis on addition and subtraction, concealing and revealing, Nelson’s work actively rethinks the acknowledged unity of the object, surface, and frame. Combining a variety of materials such as painted canvas, paper, glass and panels with lean-to wooden structures, Timothy McMullen pushes the concerns of painting into three-dimensional space. McMullen translates elements of the language of painting into the realm of sculpture by inserting two-dimensional media into different spatial and structural frameworks. Josh Reames approximates the material qualities of painting without recourse to a brush. He eschews conventional gestural application, instead mimicking or mirroring its effects. Reames selects alternative tools such as airbrush, palette knife, and paint straight from the tube to reinterpret painterly conventions in a new way. Benjamin Chaffee’s previous work in performance and installation has often addressed and interrogated the act of painting and the conditions necessary for its execution. His new work shows a deep fascination with the materiality, finish, and function of a painted surface and its supports. The resultant objects serve as potential props for a heretofore-unrealized performance, existing in between description and invention.

 

Survey: Watie White

Co-Prosperity Sphere
3219 S. Morgan St.
Bridgeport

Opening reception February 3rd, 6-8PM
Closes February 17th

The Chicago Project is highlighting the work of artist Watie White. An intermediary, whose traditional selection of mediums, printmaking, painting and drawing, benefits White’s exquisite skill in interpreting our fundamental experiences. A catalog of the Chicago Project will be available at the Teachers Lounge Project Space at DePaul University. The Chicago Project is curated by Jim Duignan.

 

MOLLY ZUCKERMAN-HARTUNG: Negative Joy

Corbett vs. Dempsey
1120 N. Ashland Ave.
Noble Square

Opening reception February 3rd, 5-8PM
Closes March 17th

It is with great pleasure that Corbett vs. Dempsey presents Negative Joy, a show of new work by Molly Zuckerman-Hartung. In her CvsD debut, Zuckerman-Hartung continues a deeply inquisitive exploration of painting as a primary practice, investigating its material raptures, intellectual speed-bumps, and conceptual limits. Zuckerman-Hartung, who was raised in Olympia, Washington, and now lives and teaches in Chicago, simultaneously has an adoring relationship with paint – its gooey, viscous, repulsive, sexy physicality – and is also instinctively skeptical of its fetishistic power. Working abstractly, in relatively small scale, she reaches into a deep trick-bag, pouring, spraying, incising, collaging, assemblaging, linking, amputating, and otherwise thoroughly working and reworking her canvases. An earlier interest in modernist geometry has been subsumed in a much wider array of effects, blasting open cubist facets and placing them in an explosive array of textures, colors, and even images. Ferociously original and intent on maintaining a permanent personal revolution, Zuckerman-Hartung has rapidly become one of the most visible artists of her generation to emerge in Chicago. Recent exhibitions have included Anna Kustera Gallery (New York) and Spazio Cabinet (Milan), and in upcoming months she will be featured in one-person exhibitions at Jacky Strenz (Frankfurt) in March, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago) in May. Negative Joy is accompanied by a 44-page catalog featuring full-color reproductions of the paintings and a conversation between John Corbett and Zuckerman-Hartung.

In the East Wing: MIROSLAV TICHY In the East Wing, CvsD is delighted to present the first Chicago exhibition of work by the maverick Czech photographer Miroslav Tichy (1926-2011). Known for his materially distressed pictures of women in the artist’s hometown of Kyjov, taken on one of several handmade cardboard cameras starting in the 1960s, Tichy’s unique and hermetic images have a mystery and allure that is darkly leering, funny, and often strangely tender. The New York Times called the work an “uncanny fusion of eroticism, paranoia and deliberation.” For some of the prints – which are unique, not editioned –  he created quizzical colored-paper frames, crudely decorated with ballpoint pen. Not quite like any other contemporary photographer, Tichy’s work only came to light in 2004, but since then he has been the subject of many solo exhibitions from Beijing and Tokyo to Paris and London. His first U.S. exhibition was in New York in 2005; in 2010, the International Center for Photography (New York) presented an expansive solo retrospective.

 

The Question of Their Content

Zolla/Lieberman
325 W. Huron St.
River North

Opening reception February 3rd, 5-8PM
Closes March 10th

April Behnke Caitlin Berndt Garrett Durant Magalie Guerin Antonia Gurkovska Chinatsu Ikeda Osamu Kobayashi Nazafarin Lotfi Brian Maller Nick Ostoff Mario Romano Kellie Romany Carly Silverman Erin Washington Eros Zhao The Question of Their Content surveys the work of fifteen recent graduate students from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago who explore the ethos of abstraction and the non-objective. Literal depictions are variably reformed and reduced to rudimentary shapes, loose brush work, and informal mediums to depart from conventional symbolic tropes and loaded imagery. The resulting forms dispose images of any easily discernible vintage or origination. The works then exist as a complex sensory experience; independent of influence, like a visual equivalent to atonal music. The viewer approaches each terse description with abandoned ideals in order to focus on the physicality and expression of the mark.

 

ANTONIA GURKOVSKA: INDEX

Kavi Gupta Gallery
835 W. Washington Blvd.
West Loop

Opening reception February 3rd, 5-8PM
Closes March 24th

Kavi Gupta is pleased to announce our first solo exhibition for Antonia Gurkovska entitled Index. Using materials that stand on the periphery of painterly tradition, such as vinyl, latex, staples, packing material, and found fabrics, Gurkovska’s works are critical of the repetitious gestures, marks and interior formal structures that define their aesthetic. Reminiscent of artists Lucio Fontana, Gustav Metzger and Rudolf Stingel the works Gurkovska has included in Index are deliberate in their rough hewn state and almost always involve a cutting or puncturing of the pictorial plane. Works like the eponymous Index (2011) or Holes Of Steel (2011) are epitomic of Gurkovska’s use of negative space or the absence of material as a primary subject in a work’s composition. However, unlike the Arte Povera approach of Fontana, Gurkovska’s work often presents this canvas cutting only to unveil a secondary plane beneath, suggesting that the aesthetic structure that gives a work its form is never singular, but multiple and fractal.

ONCE, WE WERE GIANTS

Johalla Projects
1821 west Hubbard suite 110
Bucktown

Opening reception February 3rd, 7-10PM
Closes February 6th

new works by MONTGOMERY KIM. In our era of super-technologies and hyper-infrastructures, the gap between body and mind seems to become exponentially smaller and blurred. The link between the physical world around us and ideology seamlessly blend into one another, as one is borne from the other in no discernible order. The niches we establish are formed by ever more calculated measures, which we perceive as extensions of our selves. In so doing, our person- our physical being – not only becomes one with external stimuli, but exists with infinite potential. It is possible now for us to immortalize our selves, not through God, but by becoming gods of our own.

 

Of a door, neither open nor closed

Defibrillator Performance Art Gallery
1136 N. Milwaukee Ave. Chicago, IL 60642
East Village

Opening reception February 3rd, 8PM

“Of a door, neither open nor closed” is a performance of death and time. This new work by Joshua Kent, is the result of a collaboration between the artist and three men with no previous performance experience. A performance of simple movements with text both original and appropriated, the piece vacillates between grinding stillness, and the frenetic energy of everyday lives. Drawing from their collective experience and inexperience the performers move about the space attempting to speak to something they themselves have never personally experienced. Their efforts cannot be called heroic, as they lack virtuosity, yet something else is arrived at in the spaces of the work. As the four men occupy the room, their actions and stillness invite viewers into a liminal space, one seeking to connect viewers with both the present moment and the future. “Of a door, neither open nor closed” is to be shown at DEFIBRILLATOR gallery, a non-profit arts organization and alternative performance space in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood. Performances are February 3rd and 4th at 8pm with a suggested donation of $5. This project is supported by a Community Art Assistance Program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and Illinois Arts Council, a state agency. Performers include: Douglas Van Ramshorst, Seth A. Bird, Ian Wotkun, and Joshua Kent

 

-Saturday February, 4th-

Young Sun Han: sooner later

Las Manos Gallery
5220 N. Clark St.
Andersonville

Opening reception February 4th, 6-10PM
Closes February 12th 

Fundraising event for North Korean Refugees, with an exhibition by reality personality Young Sun Han. The recent death of Kim Jong-il prompted Korean-American artist and activist Young Sun Han to think about his own family’s connections to North Korea: “My father’s family escaped North Korea somewhere between 1949 and the summer of 1950 at the outbreak of the Korean War. They got us out just in time by bribing Russian officials and stowing away in military tanks across the border.” When the artist’s father passed away in November 2010, Young Sun Han was left with hundreds of cell phone photos that documented his father’s battle with cancer. About six months later, Han began to assemble an intimate book with these images, recently published under the title, sooner later. The book portrays his family’s daily struggles and efforts to combat the disease.

 

Inaugural Exhibition of Bert Green Fine Art in Chicago

Bert Green Fine Art
8 S. Michigan Ave. Suite 1220 Chicago Il 60603
Loop

Opening reception February 4th, 12-7PM
Closes March 1st

Bert Green Fine Art, after 13 years in Los Angeles, CA, has relocated to Chicago, IL. The new gallery is located on Michigan Avenue across from Milennium Park and a few blocks from the Art Institute on the 12th floor of the Willoughby Building at 8 S. Michigan Ave., an historic high-rise along the famous South Michigan Avenue row of early skyscrapers. Bert Green Fine Art exhibits contemporary artists of all ages in various media, with a particular focus on painting and works on paper. Artists exhibited by the gallery include Clive Barker, Elizabeth McGrath, Sandra Yagi, Barron Storey, Shane Guffogg, Jessica Curtaz, Scott Horsley, Jeff Gillette, Laurie Hassold, Jen Heaslip, John U. Abrahamson, Eduardo Villacis, David Hollen, Valerie Jacobs, Joe Novak, Carl Ramsey, Scott Siedman, Jerome Caja, Gabor Ekecs, and Carlee Fernandez. Artists included in the inaugural exhibition include: Barron Storey, Elizabeth McGrath, Jeff Gillette, Carlee Fernandez, Laurie Hassold, Jen Heaslip, Shane Guffogg, Sandra Yagi, Clive Barker, Eduardo Villacis, Jessica Curtaz, John U. Abrahamson, Gabor Ekecs. There will be a public Grand Opening “Open House” on Saturday, February 4 from 12, 7 pm. Gallery hours are Wednesday, Friday 11 and Saturday 12-5, or by appointment at other times. This inaugural exhibition will be followed by a series of solo shows beginning in March 2012. The gallery has both a main room and a project room. Watch our website for the schedule, which will be posted as it is confirmed.

 

Sheree Hovsepian: Haptic Wonders

Monique Meloche
2154 W. Division St.
Wicker Park

Opening reception February 4th, 4-7PM
Closes March 24th

Sheree Hovsepian’s work is a multi-faceted investigation of photographic processes. In our first solo show with the artist, Hovsepian’s black and white photograms, hypnotic video, and delicately balanced wall-based installations have a physicality that relates very naturally to the body, and more specifically to the artist’s hand. Touch, or the haptic sense, may be more commonly associated with painting or sculpture, but Hovsepian’s tactile manipulations are very present in her mostly abstract photographic works.

Kerry James Marshall Black Night Falling: Black holes and constellations February 4 – May 12, 2012 KJM Black Night Falling.jpg For our very special on the wall project by Kerry James Marshall, the artist has been secretly working in his studio to make a site-specific work for our 10 x 25 foot wall visible 24/7 through our Division Street windows. Marshall simply states “come see it” — need we say more? Kerry James Marshall (American b. 1958 Birmingham Alabama, lives Chicago) received his BFA and honorary doctorate from Otis College of Art and Design LA. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation genius grant in 1997, the same year he was included in the Whitney Biennial. In 1998 The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago was one of the first institutions to give Marshall a solo show that travelled extensively. In 2003 Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art followed suit by mounting a very ambitious travelling exhibition. His work was featured in Carnegie International 1999/2000, Venice Biennale 2003, and Documenta 1997 and 2007. Recent solo exhibitions include the Vancouver Art Gallery 2010, SF MoMA 2009, and Wexner Center 2008. Currently, he is working on a major solo show to open at the SECESSION Vienna in September 2012. His work is in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, MCA Chicago, Studio Museum in Harlem, Whitney Museum, LACMA, Denver Art Museum, Corcoran Gallery of Art DC, Contemporary Museum Honolulu, Seattle Art Museum, and SF MoMA to name a few. We are pleased to be the first gallery in Chicago to present Kerry James Marshall with a solo project.

“We’re living in the space age… No matter where you are…” Longtime Arkestra member June Tyson sings in a haunting chant, clad in the silver-ringed cap seen also on Sun Ra’s drummers.

As Chicagoan, NASA astronaut and the first black woman in space challenged the audience in her keynote at DuSable Museum last summer, “The future didn’t just happen; it was created.”

This article focuses on Afro-Futurism and its fashion intersections with Chicago, also referencing how my Afro-Futurist performance art utilizes the garment as second skin and metaphor.

Artists have many reasons for utilizing the trappings of futurism. I focus on ritual to create meditative, immersive works investigating the artist’s ability to effect transformation through vibrational, intentional action.  Alter-Destiny 888--from Sun Ra’s  “I am the alter destiny”–considered the epidemic of fibroids among women of color and the use of healing sonic force.  The cloak became heavy with clumps of clay figures that were then dragged hanging off the back with increasing weight day by day.

Rapunzel Revisited: An Afri-sci-fi Space Sea Siren Taleis a zoomorphic hybridization of human and jellyfish “skirt” investigating trappings of “classic beauty” and notions of black femininity, remixing fairy tales.

Color: Shaping Experience

Photo courtesy Matt "Motep" Woods

In 1958 the United States launched the first satellite and the space age officially began.  Sun Ra dressed his band members in colors based on chakras, explaining, “costumes are music. Colors throw out musical sounds. Every color throws out vibrations of life.”[i] Trumpeter Lucious Randolph recalls that Sun Ra was so affected by color that “sometimes you’d have to change to a different color just to be able to talk to him.”[ii]  Ra designed the band’s costumes which became “so common…that some began to wear parts of them on the streets.”

In April 2010, Nicole Mitchell and Black Earth Ensemble’s Xenogenesis II performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art featured ethereal costumes made of white plastic bags with stage lighting that turned the band and stage into an ethereal dreamscape.[iii]

Chicago’s trailblazing Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians members are well-known for their painted visages and costuming that adds a mystical level to their multi-generational jazz performances.

Futurism Embodied

Sun Ra, scene from Space is the Place, 1974

Along with space travel and the approaching Millennium came new fashions shaped by these future visions.  Asking “voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?” Labelle stripped away the old persona and inspired legions of fans with seamless melodies, masterful lyrics, and silvery costumes that were at once space uniforms and sexy alien suits.  Pushing past notions of what black female musicians could do, they claimed their rightful place in rock music history.  A May 1976 Ebony magazine feature describes the scene:

“A masquerading groupie, prancing down the center of the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago like a pony freshly dipped in silver paint, is about to witness a great American rock show[...]The former doowah ladies…are in the forefront of outrageous unisexual futurism in rock music show biz…”[iv]

1978′s The Wiz introduced audiences to a black-centric version of The Wizard of Oz with Nipsey Russell as Tinman.  On most days on Michigan Avenue in front of any high-end shopping destination, you can find Chicago’s own Tinman Leroy Midyette who has been performing his signature dance moves to a Michael Jackson soundtrack on the Magnificent Mile since 1998.  Contrary to the Tin Woodsman, he is described as “full of heart.”[v]

Labelle

From Gary, Indiana to Thriller, Moonwalker to Neverland, Michael Jackson’s iconic style translated directly into mass market for desperately in love fans for whom the accessories and accoutrements brought them closer their hero and his tortured path with which they identified so deeply.

Outfitting the New Nation

At 1974′s Wattstax, Jesse Jackson led the 110,000-plus attendees in recitation of a national black litany.  At the end with fist raised, he roars, “What time is it?” and in unison they reply, “NATION TIME!”

“[I]n the early days in every nation, everyone had their costume.  ‘Cause they identified the nation….If you’re out fighting a battle, they say, “Fly your colors…every night I’m fighting a different kind of battle, so I have to change according to that night…”  -Sun Ra

“Sun Ra used to compare the Arkestra to a disciplined army,” James Jacson said.  “Soldiers can only win the war if they believe in what they do.”

Chakaia Booker, courtesy Nelson Tejada

“We’re like space warriors.  Music can be used as a weapon, as energy.  The right note or chord can transport you into space using music and energy flow.  And the listeners can travel along with you.[vi]

Jae Jarrell of Chicago’s AfriCOBRA created Revolutionary Suit in 1970.  Her tweed A-line suit with delicate scalloped “bullet” border translates fluidly as “ready to wear.”

Parallels to Afro-Futurism’s core tenets are found in the work of sculptor Chakaia Booker.  Always pictured in her headdress of African textiles, wrapped one on top of the other with panels hanging to shoulder and sometimes waist-length, she is Amazonian with eyes so direct they seem to strip away all pretense.  Her presence is awesome and beautiful.  Her monumental works of discarded tire rubber speak to reclamation and reuse; she pushes the material into forms that are alive, organic.

“To this day, [Booker] follows a family tradition and makes her own clothes, transforming them into wearable art, like the turbans that make her seem twice as tall as she is. Her eccentric appearance can shock people and still draws catcalls on the Lower East Side, where she has lived, in the same tiny apartment near Tompkins Square Park, for nearly 30 years.”

George Clinton as Dr. Funkenstein

Booker is represented in Chicago by G.R. N’Namdi Gallery.

George Clinton and P-Funk enact the cosmic drama with the mythological Dr. Funkenstein and Sir Nose where funk is rescued while “guitarist Gary Shider sail[s] over the audience, dressed as a diapered angel.”[vii]  Work “uniforms” in the Afro-Futurist style extend to all band members including his muse who enthralled the crowd in 2002 Washington Park by floating down the extended runway into the audience wearing a gigantic pair of butterfly wings, wild-colored Clinton-esque hair, and glittering gown.

Cool.  Chic and Cool is simply the only way to describe newcomer Hinge Gallery.  Situated on Chicago and Damen in the Ukrainian Village, this open and ambitious storefront space—with its unassuming yet charming exterior—is decidedly inviting.  Casual and intimate, Hinge promotes emerging contemporary artists of the highest caliber from Chicago and throughout the country.  Although the artists work in media as various as painting, mixed media, prints, sound, video, sculpture, and installation, all of their pieces suit the mission and particular contemporary aesthetic of the gallery.

Hinge believes in supporting professional artists, owner and director Holly Sabin says, who have completed their MFAs and received some notoriety in their young careers.  These artists have, for the most part, little experience in the commercial art world and are largely unrepresented by galleries.

Even though Hinge just opened this past July, it has already accumulated an impressive roster of artists and begun to garner a reputation as a well-curated, easily accessible, and reliable space both for first time and seasoned collectors of contemporary art.

“Hinge is very new, and I’m extremely pleased with how things have progressed,” Sabin says.  “More and more clients are coming in from all over looking for affordable work by emerging artists.”

Hinge Gallery owner and director, Holly Sabin. Photo by Jay Schroeder

They’ve come to the right place.  The gallery’s front two rooms open with a new exhibition every six to eight weeks, and the third room features a constantly rotating selection of work from the usual cache of artists who collaborate with Hinge.  Tucked away in the back is the Print Shop, a small alcove of a room that displays works on paper.  These are the most affordable items in the gallery.

Hinge is currently presenting a joint exhibit of oil paintings by Cole Pierce and prints by Rusty Shackleford.  According to the gallery’s website, Pierce’s series is “based on variations of a triangle grid pattern [and aims] to produce a vibrating optical effect that is a visceral experience, momentarily disrupting the viewer’s spatial intelligence.”  In contrast, Shackleford’s prints are “concerned with the relationship between gesture and the found image.  [He] works intuitively, applying various materials and mediums to found images that he collects from discarded media.”  The show, as Sabin says, is “getting a lot of attention.”

When asked which of the gallery’s exhibits has been her favorite, Sabin, understandably, is indecisive.

“It’s hard to choose a favorite,” she says.  “Every time a new exhibition is installed, I think it’s so strong it will be hard to live up to again.”

Inside Hinge Gallery. Photo by Mathew Stephen Photography

“Sure enough,” she adds, “the next one is just as good.”

Time will tell.  The gallery will debut a new group show on January 14, 2012, featuring work from Charles Mahaffee, MaryKate Maher, Corydon Cowansage, and Brent Houston, as well as a performance piece by Ryan Richey and Chris Lin.  Then, Hinge will collaborate in March with What It Is, an apartment gallery space in Oak Park run by Tom Burtonwood and Holly Holmes, to spotlight the work of What It Is artists.

In addition to hosting exhibits, Hinge also provides supplemental programming that includes openings, artist talks, performance art, workshops, and late-night receptions.  The events—and the gallery’s broad price range—are meant to appeal to a wide variety of interests, to draw new and various people through the front door.  Sabin describes the gallery as a “very laid back space.”

“Everyone is welcome at Hinge,” she says.  “All too often, people assume art is for the few; I do not believe this to be true.”

“I think [the diverse crowd] is actually one of the best things about the Chicago gallery scene in general,” she adds.  “People are very friendly.”

Outside Hinge Gallery. Photo by Mathew Stephen Photography

Indeed, the area seems to have welcomed her with open arms.  Sabin says it feels like the right time and the right place.  The Ukrainian Village is a vibrant and bustling neighborhood and has seen a recent boom in new business.  She hopes Hinge will be the next to thrive, satisfying, as it is, a crucial niche in both the gallery and local communities.

The gallery does appear to be on its way to becoming a fixture in the Ukrainian Village—which is Sabin’s goal.  And it is living up to its name.

“In addition to the aesthetic value of the word in print,” she explains, “it alludes to a door opening or providing a sort of functional role in the mechanics of things.”

And isn’t that exactly what Hinge Gallery accomplishes?

Hinge Gallery is located at 1955 W. Chicago Avenue.  Hours are Wednesday-Friday 12-7 pm and Saturday-Sunday 12-6 pm.  They are also open by appointment and by chance.  Call 312-291-9313 or visit www.hingegallery.com.   

SKY LINES Presented by Chapel Projects at the Charnel House

Works by Robin Dluzen; Photographs produced by New Bound Media

Curated by MK Meador

Opening Reception: Friday, February 3rd, 2012  from 6pm-9pm. Cocktails and hors d’ oeuvres

Employing salvaged cardboard to construct her water tower support structures, Dluzen draws parallels to the scavenging history of the forms.  The individual sculptures are lined up and stacked on top of one another to create a skyline composed entirely of these formerly functional objects.  In this way, Dluzen presents the supports and the city’s landscape in a new light, and restores a bit of this outmoded architecture’s glory.

Exhibition runs through February 19th.

Viewing hours are from 12pm-4pm Saturday and Sunday or by appointment.

Chapel Projects is located at The Charnel House Chicago, 3421 W. Fullerton Ave., Chicago

Media contact: MK Meador, meadormk@gmail.com

Chicago sculptor Rosario Rosi is a former U.S. Marine Corps captain with no formal artistic background who went on to create critically-acclaimed works featured around the world. Over the course of a decades-long career that began on the north side of Chicago, Rosi has followed his passion from the art capitals of Asia to Italy, where he found inspiration. In the process, he has established an international reputation for pushing sculpture to expressive extremes.

Now, Rosi has returned to Edgewater to share his creative expertise with the community that fostered them, determined to construct a community center for the arts where the arts once flourished.

“As far as Edgewater goes, it’s not noted for its cultural leanings, but who’s to say? A lot of areas of the city that are now meccas of galleries and cultural institutions were just down and out a few years ago,” Rosi said. He added city officials have planned to build other art venues and theaters for the Edgewater arts corridor on Ridge Avenue, between Clark and Broadway.

As part of this push, Rosi is renovating an abandoned building as a gallery and studio at 5757 N. Ridge Ave. The building was, in fact, a theater built in 1918 as a venue for Charlie Chaplin back in the days when Chicago was in contention with Los Angeles to be the world’s showbiz capital.

If he succeeds in fixing it up to reflect turn-of-the-century Chicago, Rosi hopes the new gallery will be a hub for the arts and help anchor a vibrant artist community in Edgewater. He said he envisions the gallery will host visual and performance arts ranging from 3D installations to piano concerts and performances by dance companies.  His goal is to provide free cultural exposure for members of his community.

“I think the beauty of the gallery when it’s finished should present a desirable location for people and a destination for people to come and visit,” Rosi said. “The community loves it and loves the idea of it being a cultural point that they can gather.”

However, in light of the ongoing economic crisis, Chicago artists have – some would say inevitably –  struggled to fund their work, whether it be painting, sculpture or, in Rosi’s case, massive construction to make a cultural icon of the past relevant again.

Unable to secure commercial loans from local banks, Rosi is currently paying for the project out of his own pocket, drawing from his children’s college funds, his own retirement savings and art sales conducted at The Eighth Day Gallery, which he owns.

Still, he hasn’t given up and is searching for locals to step up and reach out with ideas.

Ald. Harry Osterman (48^th Ward) said although development of the long-abandoned real estate into an art gallery would benefit the community greatly, his only concern about Rosi’s vision for the property is his financial capacity to execute it.

“The building’s a beautiful building,” Osterman said. “I’m all for Mr. Rosi developing this site and moving forward. The main challenge that I have is that there are not going to be taxpayer dollars going to finish the buildup. The city is under significant financial challenges and acquiring or developing money to develop a private space is not feasible right now.”

Osterman suggested marketing the real estate to a local arts organization might be a creative way to find other sources of financing. He also expressed enthusiasm for redefining Edgewater as a premier Chicago arts district.

Osterman said, if the project succeeds, Rosi’s vision could reinforce commercial vitality in the area.

“Everyone wants to see the project finished,” he said. “The question is how to pay for it.”

Local painter Dorothy Mason, a member of Edgewater Artists in Motion – a local arts networking group — said lending support to Rosi’s gallery may be a move which fits her organization’s mission, which is “to transform the Edgewater neighborhood into a center for the creative arts and an artistic destination in Chicago,” according to its website. Personally, she said she feels Edgewater currently lacks a space for local artists to gather and network.

“Many don’t realize how many artists there are,” she said of the area. “When we first started Artists in Motion, a lot of artists sort of came out of the woodwork. A gallery would serve the community very nicely and give a forum to artists in the area to show locally.”

Despite financial obstacles to completing the gallery as quickly as he would have liked, Rosi said his perspective on remodeling resonates with his general attitude toward art.

“I never liked to talk about art,” he said. “I don’t really have any artistic conversations. I just need to do it.”

-Thursday January, 26th-

UNDRESSED: Women’s Unmentionables of the 1950s and 60s

Columbia College Chicago
600 S. Michigan Ave.
Loop

Opening reception January 26th, 5-7PM
Closes March 1st

An Exhibition to Showcase women’s undergarments and nightwear of the 1950s and 60s. WHAT: Women’s Unmentionables of the 1950s and 60s is a glimpse at the sometimes provocative, often uncomfortable, and always intriguing under layers and nightwearworn by women during a time of rapid change in fashion. All of the exhibition garments, from bras to nightgowns to petticoats and girdles, are from the Fashion Study Collection and the Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest. The selection of garments is decidedly classic, elegant, and sexy.

 

Our No Place – Kelly K. Jones

Gallery X
280 South Columbus Drive
Loop

Opening reception January 26th, 4-6PM
Closes February 11th

Kelly K. Jones’ photographs of the North Lawndale neighborhood where she was born and raised aim to challenge our expectations and stereotypes. As both an insider and outsider, the artist explores her personal and complex relationship to place and identity as a white woman growing up and living in a predominantly African-American community. Portraits staged in nature and interior studies offer up figures in which history and intimacy collide. Navigating between the record and the metaphor, Jones’ images of her personal landscape consider issues of culture, race, belonging, and self-image.

 

Limits of Photography

Museum of Contemporary Photography
600 1st Pl. Ave.
South Loop

Opening reception January 26th, 5-7PM 

Join us for an opening reception celebrating The Limits of Photography. Free and open to the public.

-Friday January, 27th-

Not Cool or Stoic

Slow
2153 W. 21st St.
Pilsen

Opening reception January 27th, 6-9PM
Closes February 18th

Slow has partnered with ACRE to host Not Cool or Stoic as a part of ACRE’s year-long series of exhibitions by 2011 ACRE summer residents. The exhibition features new work from Chuck Jones and from ACRE resident Matthew Schlagbaum. (image by Matthew Schlagbaum) Colored theory. Not color for color’s sake, but named colors for linguistic associations. Matthew Schlagbaum begins with greyscale, a faux grisaille, and slips in a technicolor magic schism. Unlike the filmic precedent, Matthew is invested neither in generating delight, nor affirming faith in humanity or individuality. More like Matthew is illuminating the shameless manipulations that drive familiar stories. Glittering gold. Black and white and read all over. Chuck Jones, a gorillalike hulking man always decked out in Carhartts and work shoes, spins a yarn with earnest ennui. Deeply sentimental moments become meditational gems. But his laser focus meanders – the moment was truly heart-felt, but Chuck is open enough to respond just as deeply to the next. Follow his lead and you may end up with your emotional guard puddled around your ankles, not knowing the differences between true grit, heart-strings, or even what is funny. Chuck and Matthew both reside somewhere shaken, somewhat glum. Not cool or stoic. Each embraces his own direct emotional responses, and calls upon a viewer to dive into a moment. But each is driven toward a view of reality that pulls back the curtain to reveal something as it is complete with contradictions, flaws and untidy conclusions.

 

Painted in 2011

EC Gallery
215 N. Aberdeen
West Loop

Opening reception January 27th, 6-8PM
Closes February 25th

The “Painted in 2011″ exhibition will display works of Tadeusz Bilecki – a new series of abstract portraits painted on paper with a coating of acrylic mixed with a large amount of water – a technique that adds deformity to the paper giving it a sculptural character.

 

Andre Butzer:Andre Butzer

Rhona Hoffman Gallery
118 North Peoria St.
West Loop

Opening reception January 27th, 5:00-7:30PM
Closes March 17th

 

DAVID LEGGETT and MELISSA STECKBAUER

Western Exhibitions
119 N. Peoria St.
West Loop

Opening reception January 27th, 5-8PM
Closes March 10th

David Leggett’s new mixed-media paintings wrestle with complicated feelings towards his two obsessions, painting and hip-hop, as he confronts race, sexuality, fame and class in humorous and ambiguous situations. Melissa Steckbauer’s new photo-based collages are the visual remainder following a personal study in communication and intimate contact, a deviation from the overt sexuality seen in her paintings. Weaved, fringed, puckered, and diced Steckbauer diffuses the status and familiarity of her pictures by manipulating them with naive decoration. Pictures become images and objects; they leave the scope of family albums and are updated within a loose semiotics.

-Saturday January, 28th-

Holding onto Something Slippery

LVL3
1542 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Wicker Park

Opening reception January 28th, 6-10PM
Closes February 19th

Jerome Acks, Alika Cooper and Ryan Fenchel. Holding onto Something Slippery renders visible the creation process through a combination of materials and a hybrid of mediums. Jerome Acks manipulates dimensionality and flatness, calling into question the materials and basic, physical elements of his works. Alika Cooper couples patchwork and layering of common fabrics, which portray intimate figures in camouflaged settings. Ryan Fenchel uses notions of craft and display as tools for discovery, accumulating ideas and materials to be arranged in various ways. All artists employ elements of craft, referencing traditional, if not domestic, means of creation in order to express the tensions between their forms.

-Sunday January, 29th-

LYNN BOOK and SHAWN DECKER

Experimental Sound Studio
5925 N. Ravenswood
Edgewater

Opening reception January 29th, 8PM

Transmedia and vocal artist Lynn Book, in collaboration with electronic musician and sound artist Shawn Decker, will perform The Phaedra Escapes: a song-cycle that deploys Phaedra as a divining tool to denature the form by way of voluptuous frictions between release and containment, stasis and white hot freedom. Part history and part possibility, Phaedra is both a mythical figure and a contemporary sign of escape. The artists spring her from a Baroque opera where she migrated from Racine’s stage, having threaded through centuries of story, including conflicting fragments that Euripides wrote, lost, then wrote again in ancient Greece. Phaedra becomes the ideal escape body for our time, resonant with multiple histories and radiant with propositions for possible futures.

 

Joshua Abelow and Alexander Valentine

Devening Projects and Editions
3039 W. Carroll Ave.
Garfield Park

Opening reception January 29th, 4-7PM
Closes March 3rd

Released in 1969, Songs from a Room was Leonard Cohen’s seminal second album; it’s also the title of New York-based artist Joshua Abelow’s first solo exhibition at devening projects editions. Cohen’s release set the stage for a long career as a poet, lyrcist and vocalist with a sound and attitude that was spare and circumscribe. Like the songs on this ablum, Abelow’s paintings have a similar quality of efficiency and use a melodic thread as the foundation for cutting subject matter. At the root of Abelow’s modestly scaled paintings is a prodigious, career-long reconsideration of Modernist idioms. Filtered through a lens of wry self-deprecation, these tough canvases are produced with highly specific chromatic systems and suggest a historical reverence to artists as diverse as William Copley, Francis Picabia and Rene Magritte (particularly works from his Vache period). We are very pleased to show Joshua’s work at this important time in his career. In the off space, devening projects editions presents Blonder Tongue Audio Baton, a collection of editioned portfolios, publications, prints, posters and packages by Chicago artist Alexander Valentine. The title of the exhibition borrows from the name of a 1950′s analog graphic equalizer as well as the name of an album by the Swirlies, a Boston shoe-gaze band from the 1990s. Alex’s experimental work with a small format offset press comes out of a 70s and 80s music and poster culture driven by immediacy and passion. Cheap Xerox prints, ‘zines, ephemera and ads for rock bands have fueled and inspired a developing personal iconography by this important young graphic artist.

]]> http://chicagoartmagazine.com/2012/01/chicago-art-map-openings-jan-26-29-2012/feed/ 0 http://chicagoartmagazine.com/2012/01/union-league-club-of-chicago-honors-phyllis-bramson-anne-wilson/ http://chicagoartmagazine.com/2012/01/union-league-club-of-chicago-honors-phyllis-bramson-anne-wilson/#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:00:25 +0000 Chicago Art Magazine http://chicagoartmagazine.com/?p=19103 Two internationally recognized Chicago artists, Phyllis Bramson and Anne Wilson,  inducted into the Union League Club of Chicago’s Distinguished Artists program at the Club’s biennial Beaux-Arts Celebration Friday, January 20, 2012.

Phyllis Bramson

Phyllis Bramson, a painter, printmaker and Professor Emerita of Studio Arts at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is critically acclaimed for her prolific and lively figurative paintings and works on paper.

Anne Wilson, a Professor in the Department of Fiber and Materials at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, is an innovator in fiber arts who reinvents and reinterprets the medium with her sculptural installations, performances, video animations, and collaborative community projects.

These two newest members of the Club’s Distinguished Artist program are being recognized for their contributions to furthering Chicago’s reputation as a world-class center of the arts.

Work by Phyllis Bramson

Bramson began her career as a window designer for Marshall Field & Co. after earning a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree in drawing and painting from the University of Illinois, Urbana and a Master of Arts degree in painting from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Later, she earned a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
She is a recipient of three awards from National Endowment for the Arts, a Senior Fulbright Scholar, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Grant, and a 2004 Artadia: The Fund for Art and Dialogue Jury Award and a 2009 “Anonymous Was a Woman” Award.
Bramson has had more than thirty one-person exhibitions, including those at: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Cultural Center of Chicago; Boulder Art Museum; and the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (a mid-career survey).

Her work has been Included in numerous group exhibitions at: Seattle Art Museum; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Smart Museum; Renwick Gallery, The Smithsonian Institution; and the Corcoran Museum’s 43rd Painting Biennial.
Bramson lives and paints in Chicago and has been a visiting artist in the Graduate Program in Drawing and Painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago since 2007.

A Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Wilson earned Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts degrees from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield, Michigan and California College of Arts, Oakland, California respectively.

Wilson’s art is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Museum of Glass, Tacoma; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan, among others.

She is the recipient of grants from the Driehaus Foundation, Artadia, and the Tiffany Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Illinois Arts Council and others.
Wilson’s 2011 solo exhibitions included: “Rewinds” at the Rhona Hoffman Gallery and “Local Industry” at the Knoxville Museum of Art.  In 2010, her work was part of “Hand+Made” at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston and her solo exhibition “Wind/Rewind/Weave” was presented at the Knoxville Museum.

Anne Wilson

In 2007-08, she participated in “Out of the Ordinary” at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Her work was part of “Alternative Paradise” at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan in 2005-06.

Other major exhibitions include: The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston hosted a major solo exhibition of Wilson’s art in 2004, and “Anne Wilson: Unfoldings” was presented at MassArt, Boston in 2002, and at the University Art Gallery at San Diego State University in 2003. She was included in the “2002 Biennial” at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and her solo exhibition entitled “Anne Wilson: Anatomy of Wear” was presented in 2000 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Previous inductees in the Union League Club of Chicago’s Distinguished Artists program are:  Dawoud Bey, William Conger, Barbara Crane, Richard Hunt, Michiko Itatani, Vera Klement, Robert Lostutter, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Kerry James Marshall, John David Mooney, and James Valerio. The late Don Baum, Ruth Duckworth and Ed Paschke were also distinguished artist privilege holders.

Union League Club of Chicago Distinguished Artists Privilege Holder Program

In 1997, the Union League Club of Chicago established its Distinguished Artist Program to honor select Chicago-area artists for their contributions to the visual arts and the community. They are feted at the biennial Beaux-Arts Celebration. In 2002, the program was expanded to include authors and musicians who are honored at separate dedicated events.

Work by Anne Wilson

Union League Club of Chicago’s Art Collection Distinguished as America’s #1 City Club, the Union League Club began collecting art in 1886 and has built one of the most important private collections of American art in the Midwest. Comprised of over 800 works, highlights include art by Claude Monet, George Inness, Leon Golub, Ed Paschke, Kerry James Marshall, and more. With a focus on artists of Midwest, the Club’s collection is a vital part of Chicago’s art history and present.

Earlier this year, a major Chicago Tribune feature article marking the Club’s 125th anniversary of its collection, termed the Union League Club as the other art institute in Chicago.”

In 1997, the Club established an on-site conservation laboratory and added a paintings conservator to the staff, making it the only club in the city with a full-time curator and an in-house paintings conservator.

“The history of its collecting efforts parallels that of a number of museums, yet its collecting philosophy diverged from major institutions,” Neil Harris wrote in the introduction to the Union League Club of Chicago Art Collection.

Ongoing Club activities to promote appreciation of art include recognizing the contributions of distinguished Chicago artists, organizing exhibitions with other Chicago arts institutions and producing monthly exhibitions of contemporary art.

About the Union League Club of Chicago

Founded in 1879 by some of the city’s principal business and thought leaders, the non-partisan Union League Club of Chicago www.ulcc.org has served as a significant force within the community, focusing attention on critical public affairs issues of the day and stimulating action on important social, civic and cultural issues.

Club Leader Forum recently ranked the Union League Club as the best city club in the United States in a survey of 7,000 club managers and presidents.

]]> http://chicagoartmagazine.com/2012/01/union-league-club-of-chicago-honors-phyllis-bramson-anne-wilson/feed/ 0 http://chicagoartmagazine.com/2012/01/shipping-a-painting-advice-from-chicago-artists/ http://chicagoartmagazine.com/2012/01/shipping-a-painting-advice-from-chicago-artists/#comments Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:00:59 +0000 Chicago Art Magazine http://chicagoartmagazine.com/?p=19046 A few months ago, Chicago Art Magazine stumbled upon a Facebook conversation initiated by Geoffrey Todd Smith, who asked the question that many artists ask each other: how to safely and inexpensively pack and ship a painting. He asked,

Work by Geoffery Todd Smith

“Any of you painters have advice for shipping a relatively big painting on canvas? Should I just make a crate or is there a cheaper alternative? Is there somebody I can pay to do this who isn’t too expensive?” Adding that the work he wanted to ship was “52”x 64.” Stretched canvas.”

In response to Smith’s question, many of his Facebook friends weighed in with excellent advice:

Multi-media artist and teacher, David A. Parker, jumped in first with a link to where to buy alternatives to expensive crating:

“A lot of people (including me) use Strongboxes – way cheaper than crates, and lighter too. http://masterpak-usa.com/hil_01_strong.htm If you think you need a crate I can ask a few folks, let me know.”

Cassie Marie Edwards was next, with advice on repurposing shipping material that you might already have around:

“I order my frames from American Frame company, and they send their orders in heavy duty cardboard boxes with reinforcement. I’ve reused their boxes to ship some paintings and they’ve been really great. I just use 1″ Styrofoam insulation on both sides of the canvas, and wrap the painting in bubble wrap in case it gets dinged. They’ve worked really well though.”

Painter Todd Chilton added,

“I usually make my own boxes. Wrap the painting in plastic, 2 layers of bubble wrap, then 2 layers of cardboard all around. Never had a problem. I shipped a 48″x60″ painting FedEx that way and it was fine.”

Cameron MacEachran suggested “blue insulation foam. Reinforce the corners. Use good tape.” While painter Bob Jones asked, “Were is it going Geoffrey? 52” x 64” can probably be slip cased, and shipped express.”

Geoffrey Todd Smith: “To Los Angeles for the art fair at the end of the month.”

Todd Chilton:  “That’s the other thing. Always ship express.”

Chicago-based artist Brian Kapernekas gave advice based on his first hand experience:

“Rate on the weight of a crate is steep. I’ve geeked out on a 6′x7′ canvas once by slipcasing the whole thing in cardboard and styro sheets, and reinforced the front with 1/4″ luan sheet. Wasn’t pretty, but lighter then a solid crate. Is it a 50/50 shipping thing between you and LA?”

Geoffrey Todd Smith: “I am just trying to cut the cost by keeping it light. It more than doubles costs for these robbers to crate stuff. I’m just not the most handy guy in the world and I don’t usually work this big.”

Ryan Travis Christian, a Chicago-based artist known for his drawings, suggested that a simple method might be the way to go:

“Pink insulation foam crate is the cheapest, easy to build, nice and light. I made one for a 4’ x 6’ framed drawing to send to LA and it was super affordable for them. Also I punched the foam crate as hard as I could and it held up quite nicely.”

Geoffrey Todd Smith: “Thanks everyone. I had a pretty good idea of what I needed to do but this helps. Just trying to streamline the operation and keep my costs down. I am not very good at dealing with the bullshit after the artwork is done.”

Michael Rea: “tisk, tisk”

]]> http://chicagoartmagazine.com/2012/01/shipping-a-painting-advice-from-chicago-artists/feed/ 2 http://chicagoartmagazine.com/2012/01/fear-no-art-chicago-launches-new-show-the-dinner-party-130/ http://chicagoartmagazine.com/2012/01/fear-no-art-chicago-launches-new-show-the-dinner-party-130/#comments Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:00:25 +0000 Chicago Art Magazine http://chicagoartmagazine.com/?p=18881 Join host Elysabeth Alfano at the Mayne Stage theatre the last Monday of every month for a live filming of THE DINNER PARTY, a completely new and different kind of show. Alfano invites 3 artists and a celebrity chef to join in food, art, wine and conversation during this 1 hour show, which also streams live on the internet. Can’t make the Mayne Stage? Watch THE DINNER PARTY on-line at www.FearNoART.tv and tweet in to be a part of this fantastic new multi-dimensional show.

When: Last Monday of every month, beginning Jan. 30

Where: Live performace at the Mayne Stage Theatre and streaming live on www.FearNoArt.tv

What: Dinner Party internet show and live performance

Guests (Jan. 30): artist Tony Fitzpatrick, musician Jon Langford, musical director, Rachel Rockwell, Dinner Party chef Homaro Cantu of Moto and iNG

Price: $18 (Buy tix to Mayne Stage including food sampling), or free on-line viewing.

Time: Doors open at 6:30. Appetizers tasting is at 7:15. Filming starts at 7:30 Dinner sampling is at 8:45

More Information, click on Fear No ART presents THE DINNER PARTY.

The Dinner Party would like to thank iNG Restaurant, its media partner Chicago Gallery News, and Disaster Planning & Response Art Rescue.

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