BY MARY DEYOE

<img alt="" class="left" data-caption="Illustrations © The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust. All rights reserved." data-rich-file-id="84" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/84/original/99045-05maybewbn.jpg" />In February the Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA) will present two concurrent exhibitions of the work by writer and illustrator Edward Gorey (1925-2000), Elegant Enigmas: the Art of Edward Gorey and G is for Gorey - C is for Chicago: The Collection of Thomas Michalak. Well known for his illustrations colored by dark humor and wit, Gorey has worked for decades as an artist, creating book covers, magazine illustrations, and costume and set designs. While the exhibitions will display many of these examples, they will also draw heavily on Gorey&rsquo;s connection to his hometown, Chicago.

Even those unfamiliar with Edward Gorey the artist will recognize his idiosyncratic style. Tim Burton&rsquo;s dark tales, particularly Coraline, and the work of Daniel Handler - more famously known as Lemony Snicket, are direct inheritors of Gorey&rsquo;s dry wit and Edwardian-inspired designs. &ldquo;Snicket admits to being a &lsquo;complete rip off&rsquo; of Edward Gorey,&rdquo; said LUMA Senior Curator Jonathan Canning.&nbsp;

It is easy to see why Gorey&rsquo;s work stays relevant and beloved. &ldquo;[His] detailed drawing style draws in the eye and engages the viewer,&rdquo; said Canning. His perfectly balanced compositions [also] have a cinematic quality to them. He was very influenced by film, theater, and ballet.&rdquo; This love for these art forms was shared by Gorey and his college roommate, the poet Frank O&rsquo;Hara. Gorey and O&rsquo;Hara, who both attended Harvard on the GI Bill, were known on campus for &ldquo;throwing the best parties&rdquo; according to poet Donald Hall, and to essentially turning their dorm room into a literary salon.

But before attending Harvard and before serving in WWII, Gorey was a student at Chicago&rsquo;s Francis Parker school and for a short while attended the School of the Art Institute. G is for Gorey - C is for Chicago: The Collection of Thomas Michalak will present several items from his days as a student in Chicago, including yearbooks from Francis Parker. The Thomas Michalak Collection was recently given to Loyola University Chicago Libraries. Thomas Michalak (BS &rsquo;63) is a retired Harvard librarian and a member of the board of directors of the Edward Gorey House in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts. He has been collecting Gorey materials for over 35 years.&nbsp;

The companion exhibition to G is for Gorey &ndash; C is for Chicago is Elegant Enigmas: the Art of Edward Gorey, and it was organized by the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust and&nbsp;the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The exhibition has been traveling throughout the country and will continue on when it leaves Chicago in June.&nbsp;

One of the key points in the exhibitions is that &ldquo;Gorey was a very hardworking commercial artist right up to the end of his life,&rdquo; said Canning. He illustrated magazines&mdash;including numerous covers for TV Guide&mdash;and had a long-time relationship with Anchor books, which was a division of Doubleday. Gorey served as the art editor, creating the overall uniform style including the lettering, typography and design layouts. Gorey is also well known for his opening animated credits of the PBS television series&nbsp;Mystery!&nbsp;

Despite Gorey&rsquo;s interest and work in popular culture, &ldquo;We do not find that his work was at all influenced by it,&rdquo; said Canning. Gorey maintained his own unique and idiosyncratic style. Children are common characters, and as in many original fairy tales, they do not always fair so well. It seems danger is often lurking around the corner. In one illustration, a small boy wearing a coat with a sailor collar peers over his shoulder. His expression is wary. Two bears more than twice his size are following close behind. There is a tenderness to it and yet it is, as Gorey described much of his own work, &ldquo;mildly unsettling.&rdquo; Perhaps this is another reason we continue to return to his mysterious images. There is always more to the story than what appears on the surface.

<img alt="" class="right" data-caption="Illustrations © The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust. All rights reserved." data-rich-file-id="85" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/85/original/b-rev.jpg" />On February 22 LUMA is hosting the Edward Gorey Birthday Bash to benefit Loyola University Chicago Libraries and LUMA. This is one of many programs and events LUMA is planning in conjunction with the Loyola University Libraries (some of the events will take place on the Rogers Park campus). Events include lectures, performances and readings of Gorey&rsquo;s most beloved stories including (among many) the macabre Gashlycrumb Tinnies &ndash; a abecedarian book that tells the story of the untimely death of 26 children all of whom represent a different letter of the alphabet &ndash; and the cautionary tale of the Wuggly Ump (What is a Wuggly Ump? You&rsquo;ll have to see for yourself). In addition to these events, with what one can only imagine is a hint of irony, LUMA is also co-sponsoring a blood drive with the Law School.&nbsp;

Edward Gorey&rsquo;s engaging storytelling and remarkably grand characters, many of whom we see draped in fur and wearing top hats &ndash; a nod to the Edwardian details he loved, would be enough to draw visitors to the exhibition, but the personal effects from the Michalak collection &ndash; including letters from the artist to friends &ndash; offers us a much fuller look at the life of the artist, his inspiration, his lifelong dedication to the arts and the creation of his particular world full of dark-humor, wit, and playfulness.

The exhibitions are on view February 15-June 15, 2014 and are co-presented by Loyola University Chicago Libraries and LUMA with cooperation from the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust. Details can be found at <a href="http://www.luc.edu/gorey">luc.edu/gorey</a>

Edward Gorey's Dark and Witty World

BY FRANCK MERCURIO

Last August, the staff of the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern&nbsp;University were confronted with a near disaster. A pipe connected to the museum&rsquo;s sprinkler system burst. Luckily, the collections were not damaged; but the museum needed to close its gallery spaces&mdash;for all of fall quarter&mdash;while repairs were made.

Instead of viewing the closure as a set-back, the Block saw an opportunity to upgrade its facilities and focus its energies on developing a robust series of programs and exhibitions for winter quarter. &ldquo;It really gave us a chance to do what we needed on a system wide level to bring us to a state-of-the-art space,&rdquo; said Susy Bielak, the Block&rsquo;s Associate Director of Engagement. &ldquo;It also gave us time to launch with a program in January that we&rsquo;re really quite exhilarated about.&rdquo;

The museum&rsquo;s under-utilized entry-foyer has been transformed into the Spot Lounge, a more inviting&mdash;and activated&mdash;space. Comfortable seating, study areas, and WiFi now attract students, professors, and university staff to this new social hub.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="left" data-caption="Andy Warhol, &quot;Unidentified Woman wearing pearls&quot;, 1984, internal dye diffusion transfer print (Polaroid). Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, 2008.1.17. © 2013 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York" data-rich-file-id="75" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/75/original/warhol-2008-1-17.jpg" />&nbsp;<img alt="" class="left" data-caption="Edward Steichen, &quot;Actress Clara Bow for Vanity Fair&quot;, 1928, vintage gelatin silver print. Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Gift of the Hollander Family in Honor of Morton and Mimi Schapiro. 2012.10.16. Steichen / Condé Nast Archive. Steichen/ Vanity Fair; © Condé Nast. " data-rich-file-id="74" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/74/original/steichen-2012-10-16.jpg" />

The Block&rsquo;s renovated gallery spaces will be celebrated officially on Saturday, January 18, with the unveiling of two new temporary&nbsp;exhibitions and a slate of public programs.

Steichen/Warhol: Picturing Fame features&nbsp;photographs by Edward Steichen (1879-1973) alongside Polaroids by Andy Warhol. It is the first exhibition to compare the works of the two artists side-by-side and to fully explore the influence of Steichen&rsquo;s photography on Warhol&rsquo;s portraits.

&ldquo;The exhibition posits an unlikely comparison between Steichen&rsquo;s early glamour photography and Warhol&rsquo;s late career portraits,&rdquo; says the Block&rsquo;s Special Projects Curator, Elliot Reichert, who organized the exhibition.

Beginning in the late 1920s, Steichen became famous for photographing Hollywood&rsquo;s elite and defining the conventions of glamour photography during Hollywood&rsquo;s golden era.&nbsp;

Steichen/Warhol presents vintage Steichen prints from the Block&rsquo;s permanent collection (recently donated by Richard and Jackie Hollander), including portraits of film stars such as&nbsp;Greta Garbo and Clara Bow.

These images had a profound effect on Warhol, influencing his silk-screen style portrait paintings of the 1970s and 80s. Warhol began his process by snapping Polaroids of celebrities and wealthy collectors, consciously employing some of the same photographic conventions established by Steichen 50 years earlier.

&ldquo;Warhol never really intended these [Polaroids] as art objects to be exhibited,&rdquo; says Reichert, &ldquo;They are pieces of his process that have been reintroduced as objects worthy of study.&rdquo;

The exhibition presents a range of Warhol Polaroids recently acquired from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, bringing a fascinating new perspective on the artist&rsquo;s creative process. Combined with 49 Steichen images, the total number of works in the exhibition is 140.

Opening in tandem with Steichen/Warhol is The Left Front: Radical Art in the &ldquo;Red Decade,&rdquo; 1929&ndash;1940, curated by Northwestern University PhD candidates John Murphy and Jill Bugajski. The show examines Depression-era artists who questioned the capitalist system in the face of economic catastrophe and practiced art as a form of social and political activism.

<img alt="" class="left" data-caption="Mitchell Siporin, &quot;Workers Family&quot;, from the portfolio A Gift to Biro Bidjan, 1937, woodcut. Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, 1997.30.15." data-rich-file-id="76" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/76/original/siporin-workers-family.jpg" />&ldquo;Artists were becoming activists, taking it to the streets, beyond the galleries and museums,&rdquo; says Murphy, &ldquo;and asking &lsquo;What kind of art earns the name revolutionary?&rsquo; They saw themselves as soldiers in a class struggle using art as a weapon.&rdquo;

Examples in the show include over 100 prints, paintings, posters, rare books and ephemera assembled from the Block&rsquo;s permanent&nbsp;collections, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Terra Foundation, the Smart Museum, and the&nbsp;Hull-House Museum.

In the 1930s, printmaking was seen as a way of distributing art to the masses. Lithographs, etchings, and woodcuts&mdash;by the likes of Carl Hoeckner, Rockwell Kent and Stuart Davis&mdash;figure prominently in the exhibition.

&ldquo;These artists were making political gestures,&rdquo; says Bugajski, &ldquo;but also trying to shift the social fabric by moving art away from institutions and the upper crust and bringing it to the people as a force for change.&rdquo;

The Block will open&nbsp;The Left Front&nbsp;with a series of events and programs meant to engage&nbsp;Chicago in the question of &ldquo;What is revolutionary art?&rdquo; On Saturday, January 18, the museum will host what Bielak calls a &ldquo;multi-fold opening&rdquo; including performances by NU students and a presentation on &ldquo;Fashion and Revolution&rdquo; by Tom Mitchell, professor of&nbsp;English and Art History at the University&nbsp;of Chicago. For a full roster of upcoming programs addressing &ldquo;revolutionary art,&rdquo; visit the Block&rsquo;s website at <a href="http://www.block.northwestern.edu">block.northwestern.edu</a>

Northwestern’s Block Museum Reopens

<html><head></head><body><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721418552/phqnsirf4ynajjsteijw.png"></figure>&nbsp;During a summer visit to South Side, North Washington Park home of collector D.E. Simmons, his thoughts were decidedly on the fall and the 10-year anniversary of Diasporal Rhythms, a Chicago collecting group devoted to art of the African Diaspora. Having heard about the group’s mission and collecting initiatives from co-founder Patric McCoy, Simmons, who works closely with the group and is their fall event chair, told me about this season’s home-tour series as well as the changes the group has undergone in the past decade. When DR started in 2003 there were four founding members; today they number 60-strong; the ambitious group now has its sights on what to accomplish next in the collecting community. -GVSimmons describes Diasporal Rhythms’ fall home tours as having a uniqueness that comes out of the spirit of the South Side art community and its desire to express to the larger population that there are talented artists doing wonderful works worthy of notoriety, and more important, of being added to other collections. Simmons says, “I always talk about us as the little organization that could, and can, and does. We’ve offered eight versions of the tour in 10 years, and we’ve focused on expanding and making them creative.” Simmons says that tour-goers can get a little overwhelmed at first, but ultimately the sensory overload is productive. “If you’ve never been on the tour and you don’t live with this much art in your home, it’s a lot to drink in,” he explains. “You have several houses to go through and so many ideas can come to you. That pollination effect is powerful - not that we hope to wear people out but we want them to think about what’s possible for themselves.” Simmons acknowledges, “The last couple of years some of thesame homes have been on the tour, and since we’re trying to make a new experience we have to look at different communities. This year the combination of four homes in South Shore and South Chicago, plus our Logan Center exhibition is going to be really powerful.”Getting people to interact at home is more unusual than one might think. Simmons says there is some reluctance to opening up one’s home, “There’s something about not letting people into your space. Socially, I think in Chicago people tend to say, ‘Oh I’ll meet you here,’ but I’ve noticed that many people won’t invite you over. This home tour is special. It’s not only on the South Side, but it makes people open doors - to everyone who has a ticket of course - so others can experience passion in a personal space. It’s a rare opportunity.” Homeowners quickly find it to be a very positive experience. They enjoy seeing guests inspired by the abundance of artwork. To Simmons, “It is a wonderful exchange - you get to talk about your passion for your collection and answer questions. We’re asking people to join the conversation and explore the possibilities. That openness has made many people want to support our organization.”Simmons has received almost shocked personal feedback from participants: “Some of the notes I get say, ‘I didn’t know we lived like this culturally,’ or ‘I didn’t know I could be a collector - I thought it was only high-brow.’ I say it’s about what you like. We want you to join this madcap adventure called collecting because it is enjoyable. We learn quite a bit about certain artists, their techniques, styles, what they’re capturing and then transferring, and we react to it. We buy a piece and bring it into our own environment and thatsays something about what’s resonating within ourselves.”Diasporal Rhythms will stage an anniversary exhibition in October at the Logan Art Center at the University of Chicago. The chance to show member works in an academic setting is a new way to come together, and the time is right to exhibit in a major art center. To Simmons, “Having pieces taken out of collections and shown together as a part of this show allows others to see the progression from when we started buying work and where we are today. Additionally a catalogue will be published for the exhibition, which is a way of documenting this moment and setting the standard for us and others. This has been our first real test, and I think we’ve passed - we have lasted 10 years. So, the next challenge is ‘what are we going to do next?’”Reflecting on the economic difficulties that have been hard on everyone in recent years, Simmons says that many Diasporal Rhythms members have still managed to add to their collections and support artists, and they continue to be interested in art despite less-than-ideal-conditions. Three years ago, in the midst of the global financial tumult, the group reviewed and revamped their mission. “By taking a hard look at ourselves as an organization,” Simmons says, “we had to decide whether we were going to do more concrete things. Being more adroit and focused about how to grow this organization and keep it interesting spurred us to pursue more activities like studio visits to find out what artists are doing. Diasporal Rhythms aims to emphasize that you don’t have to be a multi-millionaire to be a collector. The key is that you don’t have to leave Chicago to find great artists - they’re probably living right next door to you and you just don’t know it.”Simmons led me on a tour of his home and collection the day I visited. From the entryway to the upstairs bedrooms of his vintage home, colorful, figurative works of art cover most of the available wall space. When he acquires something new, it starts out in his office, almost visible from the sidewalk out front through the picture window. Simmons explains, “When I get a new piece it stays here for me to commune with. Ultimately it will go where it’s supposed to be in the house.” He points to the painting that is there now, “This is the only piece that’s come in and stayed and basically said, ‘This is my spot.’ This is my daughter’s work. I saw her finish this and I paid her for it, and she goes, ‘Are you serious?’ I told her yes, but she just thought I was being a dad. When I got it here I just kept looking at it and looking at it. She came over for her birthday, and when she walked in and saw I had it framed, she said, ‘Oh my God, I love it.’ I couldn’t convince her how much I really respected her work, so when she saw it was in this space, she understood that it was for real.”Each piece, says Simmons, tends to have its own voice, and he’s not the only Diasporal Rhythms member who feels this way, “That’s a common theme when you get to know us - we say the artwork speaks to us.” Works by Joyce Owens, Alonzo Evans, Emmett McBain and Theodore Feaster populate the downstairs of Simmons’s home, demonstrating the range of work he’s collected, from large-scale paintings like Owens’s to Evans’s works on corrugated cardboard, to Feaster’s contemporary stained glass. Each piece tells a story, whether through its placement in the house, the materials used, or in the case of Feaster’s stained glass, the tough scene that inspired it. Simmons says that for a while the economy limited his collecting abilities; since he wasn’t able to buy art, he bought frames. To him, as is the case at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum where empty frames represent dozens of major works stolen in the 90s, “Everyone was asking, ‘Why are you buying frames?’ and I said, “If you buy the frame, the artwork will come.’” Simmons was eventually able to buy art once again and seek out new artists. The Diasporal Rhythms 10-year anniversary has energized Simmons and the group as a whole, and it is clear that the next 10 years will bring new relationships betweenartists, collectors and their homes.</body></html>

Diasporal Rhythms: 10 Years of Collecting

by Kevin NanceWhen the nonprofit grant-making organization 3Arts was founded in Chicago five years ago, its leaders thought they were joining a stable community of similar groups providing financial support to local artists. The organization’s unique, tripartite focus—&nbsp;on jumpstarting and/ or developing the careers of women artists, artists of color and those with disabilities in the performing, teaching, and visual arts—&nbsp;was intended to supplement the funding activities of other funders, including private foundations and government-subsidized agencies. Individual artists (as opposed to arts organizations) who might not be lucky enough to secure funding for their careers and projects, from say, the Illinois Arts Council or the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, could turn to 3Arts.But as the years went by, 3Arts found itself increasingly lonely in the world of Chicago art advocacy. The Driehaus Foundation, which has for years been giving a small number of $15,000 grants to visual artists, discontinued that practice after its board changed its priorities. The Illinois Arts Council, which had once been a major benefactor to visual artists around the state, had seen its grant programs devastated by budget cuts of around 60 percent; its grants to individual artists, which had once amounted to several thousand dollars per artist, have in many cases shrunk to a few hundred dollars—&nbsp;hardly worth the time and effort a midcareer artists would need to devote to the application process. In some cases, artists who had been notified of grant awards later received letters notifying them of the state’s inability to send the promised monies.Now, with a few exceptions such as the MacArthur Foundation (at which a local visual artist’s chances of winning a grant are hardly more than those winning a Powerball jackpot) and the City of Chicago’s Community Arts Assistance Program (whose individual artists awards are capped at $1,000 each), 3Arts is virtually alone in providing substantial grants to individual visual artists. 3Arts now awards 10 unrestricted grants of $15,000 to artists each year, along with an increasing number of grants earmarked for specific projects.“We started out giving about six annual grants, but then during the recession, artists were unemployed at twice the rate of other workers, and we nearly doubled the number of grants to about 10,” says executive director Esther Grimm, who also provides professional feedback and mentoring to artists, including those who are nominated for 3Arts grants but don’t receive them at first. “Then about a year ago, we realized that the one-time support wasn’t enough. Typically when you win a grant like ours, you’re never eligible for another. But our artists need ongoing support for their projects, and so we decided that the most impact we could have was to stick with them over the long haul, helping them build momentum and really get their careers off the ground, or just be there for them when they need us.”3Arts currently has an annual budget of about $740,000, all of which is raised from donors and given directly to artists. (Salaries for the two-person staff, including Grimm, comes from proceeds from a separate fund.) The organization also supports six two-week residencies at Ragdale, an artists’ retreat in Lake Forest, and next year plans to expand that program to include month-long residencies with larger stipends at a national network of similar artist residency programs.“I’m a huge fan of 3Arts,” says Peter Handler, program direction at the Driehaus Foundation. “I don’t know of any other organization like them in the city, and the work they do is tremendously important.”The fact that 3Arts is virtually the only game in town in its niche has made it a crucial lifeline for a community of artists whose careers might otherwise have stalled—&nbsp;artists such as Riva Lehrer, whose professional and personal prospects absorbed a potentially crippling blow when her live/ work condo in Edgewater was flooded by thousands of gallons of rainwater during a storm in 2009 while she was out of town.“It destroyed most of what I owned, and there was more than $20,000 worth of damage that wasn’t covered by my insurance,” Lehrer recalls. “Fortunately I was able to use part of my 3Arts money to put my studio back together. I don’t know what I would have done without it. Really, 3Arts is amazing. They listen better than any arts organization I’ve ever dealt with. They have passionate love for artists and a practical eye for how to help them. They’re a total gift to the city. I just wish we had a lot more people operating at that level. Or if 3Arts could manage to get a significantly larger group of donors, they could be truly transformative.”Something similar happened to emerging artists David Leggett, who used his initial 3Arts grant to pay off debt, buy a computer and rent a larger studio, which allowed him to transition from making small-scale artworks to creating larger pieces. Subsequently, his studio was flooded, and he used the money from a 3Arts project grant to repair damage to the studio and its contents.Then there’s Harold Mendez, who’s using the proceeds from his 2012 grant to develop a collaborative multimedia project at the Studio Museum of Harlem to be unveiled in February. He also plans to use part of the money to visit his home country of Colombia, where he will do family research in the national archives for an art project that’s been in the planning stages for years. “It’s been in my mind since 2005, but until recently I haven’t had the resources to make it happen,” he says. “Without the 3Arts grant, it would take me a lot longer. Chicago is a great city with great institutions, but I feel like the funding structure for artists doesn’t match the other things that Chicago offer, even though there’s so much money here. It’s great that 3Arts exists, because I know so many artists who’ve changed their practice in so many ways because of 3Arts.”There’s also Maria Vergara, a young painter who told&nbsp;Chicago Gallery News&nbsp;that she’ll use a significant portion of her 2012 3Arts grant to buy “a heck of a lot of art supplies” for a monthly program in which she teaches art-making to autistic children from local Hispanic families. “The kids are really good at art, they learn super-fact, but the funds for the program keep getting cut,” she says. “They want to paint on canvas, but I have to give them paper and crayons. But they really deserve it, so i’m going to get them some canvas.”Like Vergara’s teaching, several other 3Arts-funded projects are having what Grimm calls a significant “ripple effect,” providing arts opportunities to a number of underserved neighborhoods in Chicago. One example is The Franklin, a small exhibition space constructed in the backyard of the home of conceptual artist Edra Soto and her husband, the custom fabricator Dan Sullivan, at 3522 W. Franklin Blvd. in Garfield Park. “Dan did most of the construction, but the materials are so expensive,” Soto explains. “We couldn’t have done it without the 3Arts money.”And at 3550 W. Lawrence, in Albany Park, now stands North Branch Projects, a community founded by artists Regin Igloria that gives free instruction in art-making and bookbinding to residents of the neighborhood, which has few arts organizations of any kind. “I created it in 2010 because I was frustrated with the relationship of the contemporary art world to people in Albany Park, where I grew up,” says Igloria, who also works as director of artist residency programs at Ragdale. “There was almost no connection between the art world and non-artists, so the idea was to create a place where the concept of creativity could be explored as part of a broad dialogue with my neighbors.”As it happened Igloria’s 2011 3Arts grant arrived in the nick of time. ‘It was literally a lifesaver, because I used up all my savings and was down-and-out financially, just trying to keep this place running”, he says. “The money really helped me keep the doors open, and it gave me such a morale boost, knowing that someone was there to help me keep it alive.”

From a 2013 issue, Chicago Gallery news features 3Arts, a nonprofit organization. 

3ARTS: Changing Chicago artists' lives for 5 years

By&nbsp;KEVIN NANCE&nbsp;Chicago is keenly conscious of its artistic&nbsp;history and reverent toward many of its elders, but it isn’t always a hospitable place for younger and emerging artists. It’s hard for artists of any age to break through the clutter, of course, but this is especially true for artists under 40. Our inability to see them clearly is understandable, up to a point; the past is visible in a way the future can never be. But while there’s safety in venerating artists with substantial track records, identifying artists with the potential for significant careers is a risky business many are unwilling to undertake.At Chicago Gallery News, we’re sticking our necks out. We don’t say that Mariano Chavez, Renee Robbins and Tony Lewis are the future of art in Chicago, but they are three artists of great promise, worthy of the attention of gallerists, collectors and the art-interested public. Of the three, Chavez is the most diverse in style, Robbins the most immediately accessible and Lewis the most intriguingly enigmatic. We’d like to introduce them in these pages as part of a new occasional series highlighting younger and emerging artists to watch. In future installments of the series, we’ll look at younger artists working in sculpture, collage, new media and other modes. In the meantime, we introduce our first trio.Mariano Chavez:&nbsp;Stranger in ParadiseIn a typical Mariano Chavez artwork, there’s a suggestion of narrative that’s both comic and ominous. In First Date, a painting that depicts a group of prehistoric men encountering their hirsute would-be paramours, hell, pretty clearly, is about to break loose. Another painting, Mexican Vacation, pairs Tijuana tourist imagery—a cartoon taco vendor, a blanketed burro—with an iconic weeping Christ, along with the none-too-reassuring phrase “It is finished.”“There’s always the idea of paradise in my work, but also the idea that there’s going to be a tragedy,” says Chavez, 39, who teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and owns an antiques store, Agent Gallery Chicago. “All of the pictures are setting something up, a story in which we don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’s not going to be good. If I were making a movie, it would definitely be very Coen Brothers-esque, all about morality and human nature, with something bad going to happen along the way.”Chavez is primarily a painter, but also works to transform found objects, architectural fragments and other materials with color and repetition in a latter-day Pop/surrealist mode; in the process he suggests the transition of symbols from profound to banal and back again. Much of his imagery is drawn from his childhood in southwest Texas near the Mexican border, where his father was from. “Where I grew up, everybody is very religious, and the further south you go, it’s even more religious,” he recalls. “When I went to Mexico on vacation in 1993, when I was 21, that’s where I first felt this super-Catholic mysticism, the sense of the supernatural and the feeling of tragedy behind it. The mixture of all that stuff left a big impression on me.”Inevitably, perhaps, much of Chavez’s art meditates on the ubiquity and meaning of Catholicism in the lives of Mexican-Americans, as symbolized by stickers of the Virgin Mary sold in bubblegum machines in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood when he lived there in the early 1990s. “I’m interested in how an icon passes through time and becomes a cartoon of its former self,” he says. “It’s like how Munch’s The Scream was a very powerful image and then gets appropriated in the form of an inflatable doll. There was a guy who gave me a last-rites cross that used to belong to a guy who passed away. For him, I think, it was a symbol of the passage from the material and the spirit world. But when you make something like that into a toy, as people sort of do, it diminishes its power, but doesn’t eliminate it entirely. That’s interesting to me.”“What I love about Mariano’s work is the cross-pollination of religion and Mexican border-town culture,” says Tony Fitzpatrick, who included Chavez in The Bus: 29 Hooligans from Chitown, an exhibit he organized at Los Angeles’s La Luz de Jesus Gallery in April. “He doesn’t disparage religion; he makes you think about the power of symbols and images. There’s a memento-mori quality about his pieces that reminds us we’re all going to one funeral.” <a href="http://www.marianochavez.com">www.marianochavez.com</a>Renee Robbins: Voyager&nbsp;Growing up in northern Indiana, Renee Robbins wanted to be a marine biologist.&nbsp;The ocean was a place where her imagination swam, picturing what things might look like there. “The ocean was always far away,” she says, “and at some point I realized I was more interested in the visual aspect of science than the actual pursuit of it.”Now, looking at Robbins’s richly colored acrylic paintings, you feel you’re in the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, its portholes&nbsp;offering fantastic views of undersea life in undiscovered corners of the ocean—a submarine that occasionally travels into outer space, touring the galaxies, before shrinking to atomic size and weaving its way through the cells of plants. Considering the terrain and the distances covered—between, for example, representation and abstraction, and between the real and the phantasmagorical—it’s a surprisingly smooth ride.“My work now goes from the micro to the macro, from marine life—sea creatures and plants, coral reefs—out into the cosmos, the stars and planets,” says Robbins, 34.&nbsp;“My images don’t necessarily exist in nature, but they come from natural phenomena, different systems that come together in a work, like a constellation, or the molecular pattern embedded in the structure of a plant. I think they’re a metaphor for how we make sense of ourselves and create a notion of identity.”Even though Robbins became an artist rather than a scientist, she retains a lively interest in how the world works. “I’m sort of obsessed with new discoveries in science, especially things on the nanotechnology level—the latest thing in mitochondria, say, or some YouTube video of a new creature that’s been discovered,” she says. In one recent painting, Holographic Chamber, she incorporated a carnivorous harp sponge, which has spiky white tendrils that look like the strings of a harp. “It’s beautiful, but also menacing, in a very appealing way. That dichotomy between the attraction and the repulsion of it is pretty compelling, I think.”Robbins doesn’t compare or align herself with the Chicago Imagists, but she does identify with their use of neon colors “and their pattern-making, as in Gladys Nilsson’s work.” Chicago painter Joyce Owens, who recently began collecting Robbins’s work, says, “Renee’s pieces are very organic. I think of it as looking at microorganisms and other things that we can’t see normally that she makes visible. It’s complicated work, but not difficult to look at. Some art is complex and you can’t engage with it; hers is complex and accessible at the same time, which I think is great. I like seeing it in my house.” <a href="http://www.reneerobbins.com">www.reneerobbins.com</a>Tony Lewis:&nbsp;Breaking Down LanguageTony Lewis’s graphite drawings on paper give the impression of having been handled a bit roughly; they’re smudged, scumbled and distressed in a way that can seem intentional, even gestural. As it happens, both things are true. In Lewis’s work, the planned and the accidental are indistinguishable, which is itself thought out in advance. More or less.This odd indeterminacy in the work is echoed by its apparent subject, which seems to be the difficulty—perhaps the impossibility—of communication, specifically in the form of language, whose authority comes constantly under attack. Words (or parts of words) are suspended within the frame (often a grid of four pieces of joined paper), hanging and partial, sometimes crossed out and begun again, connected by drawn lines that sometimes organize themselves into misshapen thought balloons. The overall effect is that of speech trying haltingly, at times desperately, to articulate itself.A cerebral, intriguingly austere, modernist aesthetic is in operation here. Its procedures are stark, its deepest meanings elusive, and intentionally so. Lewis, a 26-year-old recent graduate of the School of the Art Institute, offers a sort of skeleton key to several of his drawings in the form of a sentence from which many of the depicted words are drawn. But he doesn’t want the sentence—a looping, elliptical epigram of his owncomposition, relating to the intertwined historical conceptions of “colored people” and “people of color,” and the gap between the two—reproduced in full in this article, or indeed anywhere. “It’s not a scheme to keep people from knowing it, more of a way to create a considerable distance,” he explains. “Thanks for respecting and understanding.”A “person of color” himself (he’s African-American), Lewis says much of his recent work has revolved around the mystery sentence, “trying to figure out what it meant at the time, what it means now,” as he puts it. “My relationship, my attitude toward the sentence has changed to it quite a bit over time, and its meanings have shifted a lot. The sentence has a really weird quality to it. It’s nonsense, on one level, but at the same time it’s charged, and feels like it’s supposed to mean something. It does tend to make sense, sort of, when you break it up into fragments and start moving parts of it around, which is what I do in the drawings.”It’s unlikely that most viewers will “get” the work on what might be called its molecular level, but this is not a concern for Lewis. “For me, it’s not a question of people ‘getting it,’” says the artist, who’s continuing a tradition that includes language-oriented conceptual artists like Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer and Glenn Ligon. “If viewers feel they ‘understand’ the work, that’s fine, but it’s essentially irrelevant, because the piecesare rooted in drawing as much as they are in language,” Lewis says. “The work is just there. It’s just the piece itself, the paper. And it’s what’s there that should prevail—that’s the experience, whether or not you know the sentence that’s being quoted. The sentence is just a structure to attack, to analyze, to break down, to see what happens to language when you put it to through the process of being broken down.”"The graphite [in Lewis's drawings]&nbsp;spreads everywhere and the work’s conceptual underpinnings, the interrogation of race, is metaphorically conveyed in the material contamination," says Michelle Grabner, a professor at SAIC. "Nothing is clean, crisp, nor clear in his large-scale drawings.&nbsp;And nothing is absolute in contemporary racial politics." <a href="http://www.shanecampbellgallery.com/tony-lewis">http://www.shanecampbellgallery.com/tony-lewis</a>

Chicago's Young Artists: What Does the Future Hold?

<html><head></head><body><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721418552/cjyvtbpyarrlrsxkivsu.jpg"></figure>&nbsp;By GINNY VAN ALYEAWhen I arrived to meet Patric McCoy and see his collection in Kenwood, near Hyde Park on the South Side, I was totally unprepared for the volume of work I encountered in his modest condominium. Upon being buzzed inside I followed the friendly voice up the stairs, noticing the art along the way. Stepping into the entryway my eyes struggled to take in the dozens of works hanging all around me. Moving into the kitchen I just stopped and stared. Paintings were displayed on every kitchen cabinet, even behind the toaster oven. A 115 year-old bicycle that once belonged to artist Susan Clinard hung sideways from the ceiling, small tea lights suspended from the spokes. The proud collector beamed and welcomed me in - enjoying, for I’m sure not the first time, the look of surprise on his visitor’s face.&nbsp;-GV&nbsp;McCoy is a native Chicagoan, recently retired as an environmental scientist with the EPA and the University of Chicago, though judging by his art-filled apartment, one would guess he’s spent his life traveling the world and buying art. While McCoy has ventured abroad, he’s spent most of his free time&nbsp;scouring Chicago meeting and supporting local artists. He’s been a first class flyer of a different sort, commuting to work by bicycle for 30 years, taking photos and stopping for conversation along the way.&nbsp;A collector for decades, McCoy laughs when he tells me how he began collecting art in 1967 while still in college at the University of Chicago. “The very first piece I bought is there by the front door - it’s by Scott Stapleton, who was my roommate in college. He was an Art major and I was a Chemistry major. He came in one day and said ‘I’ve done this lithograph.’” Though McCoy was unfamiliar with art terminology, he says he knew what Stapleton was talking about, “In Chemistry you have to learn a lot of Greek prefixes, so I knew ‘litho’ and I knew ‘graph.’ I said, ‘You’re writing with stone, but I don’t know what you’re doing. It was fascinating, so I asked him if it was for sale. I offered him $10, and I’ve had it with me ever since.”&nbsp;McCoy describes his home growing up as filled with art. His parents were highly creative - his father painted, built furniture, and was a photographer, while his mother was a seamstress. Though McCoy first wanted to emulate his parents and be an artist, eventually he found he belonged in the field of Chemistry. He explains, “I believe that my earlier interests and exposure to the arts actually set me up to be a good scientist.” He sees the two fields as inextricably linked, “I tell people with young children you should always expose them to the visual arts; instead of telling them, ask them what they see. That way you’ll trigger creative and critical thinking before they worry about seeing the wrong thing. There’s a lot of thinking and manipulating objects that comes out of the artistic realm. I really appreciate that it ended up giving me the framework to excel in Chemistry.”“Psychologically and socially I didn’t begin to collect until the 1990s. Until then I was just acquiring work – I was doing a lot of it but I wouldn’t claim or admit I was a collector,” says McCoy. Eventually, he wanted to get others to collect, and in 2003 he co-founded Diasporal Rhythms, a group he says represents a different concept of collecting in Chicago, “Our organization is charged with how to redefine the term ‘collector.’ In America it has this meaning of being wealthy, private, academic - having the magic ability to know the future value of something. That’s what the majority of people in this country believe. We’re saying none of that has to be true. Particularly in our community on the South Side, we have to be the first voices.”McCoy acknowledges why most collectors shy away from the term. He says it took him a long time to own his passion, and he’s seen the same behavior with others he’s met and introduced to Diasporal Rhythms: “They have bought into a top-down model, and we’re saying it’s from the bottom up, like every other aspect of the culture.” He sees a model for enjoying art evident in how people appreciate music in their daily lives: “No one asks you as a music collector – and almost everyone in this country is in one shape or form – did you get a degree in music? It is something we readily share with others because we share what we like. It’s not private or expensive. Despite not being academically trained to do so, they appreciate music and view the people who create it as important. The value of music for the buyer is what they personally put into it. Why can’t we do that with the visual arts?” &nbsp;When McCoy was invited to be on a panel at the South Side Community Art Center over a decade ago, with fellow collector Dan Parker, Joan Crisler, the principal of the Dixon Elementary School, and Carol Briggs, principal of DuSable High School, it was one of the first times McCoy heard others say the things he’d come to believe about the importance of art collecting in the African American Community. He says that on the south side, in what he calls “the area of Chicago that is underneath the larger art scene radar,” there is a group operating out of a long tradition of collecting that few know anything about.&nbsp;A particularly resonant consensus was on the importance of artists to the community and in schools. McCoy says,&nbsp;“The two principals on the panel talked about how powerful art was in socializing children. Dixon Elementary School, the only institutional member of Diasporal Rhythms, is where I went in the 7th grade back in the late ‘50s, and it was the most depressing place. At the time it was like a prison. Joan Crisler took overfor 17 years, and she collected art and put it in the school. Visiting there became, ‘Oh my God, this is amazing.’ It was a spiritual environment – now a place of learning and inspiration for young children.”&nbsp;Much of the work in the school was figurative and depicted African American subjects that resonated with children unfamiliar with seeing art they could relate to. Because the art is built into the&nbsp;curriculum of the school, McCoy says teachers would bring the children out into the hall and use the art in lessons. He points out that Dixon, located in the Chatham neighborhood on the south side, is not a selective enrollment or magnet or charter school, it’s a regular Chicago Public School. He says,&nbsp;“You see that original art can be in a public space and it will take care of itself. When I went to Dixon and recognized that these are kindergarten to eighth grade kids, at an age when usually they’re bouncing off the wall like little dynamos of destruction, and these priceless pieces are safe in the halls or above their lockers, I thought, ‘these kids have been socialized by the art!’ These works survive because the children value it.”&nbsp;Today many of Dixon’s students are collection docents.&nbsp;McCoy sees the success at Dixon as more than just a nice story – it’s evidence that by holding the arts in a place of honor, while also making them accessible, you are able to teach children other subjects too, because you have gained their attention and interest. Because of Diasporal Rhythms’s relationships with many artists from the community, the group has adopted the Advanced Placement class at King College Prep, regularly inviting artists to come to the school to do workshops for students. McCoy says that for students, the power of having professional artists work with them cannot be understated. The&nbsp;students are always hungry for more.Diasporal Rhythms was founded in 2003&nbsp;following a museum panel discussion that was part of A Century of Collecting: African American Art in The Art Institute of Chicago. McCoy remembers, “The Art Institute at that time was, in my mind, perpetrating a fraud – I didn’t think they had been collecting for 100 years. Maybe they had a [Henry Ossawa] Tanner 100 years ago, but then there seemed to be a big gap and then more recent stuff. I was mostly struck by how the artists at the panel, who were in this show, shared my view and criticized AIC, saying ‘you have not done what you are presenting with this show.’”&nbsp;It wasn’t long after when McCoy and his fellow collectors created Diasporal Rhythms in an effort to unite their collective opinions and perspectives.&nbsp;McCoy sees another museum in the future now, “Whenever collectors organize, a museum is created at that particular moment. It’s true of the Art Institute and the Museum of Contemporary Art, and others. Though Diasporal Rhythms doesn’t have a brick and mortar space now, we know that’s what will happen down the road. When a collector recognizes that these works of art have a value that is bigger than they are, they want to pass the experience on to other generations.”McCoy undoubtedly spends a great deal of time on his bicycle, traveling to art openings, visiting studios or meeting up with fellow collectors. But his home is where his art experience is concentrated on a daily basis. Having lost count of the total number of pieces in his collection, McCoy says he estimates today that he has between 1,200 and 1,300 works. Nearly all of them are on display in his five-room home. Within the collection 350 artists are represented, including Theaster Gates, Joyce Owens, Luis DeLaTorre, Ed Paschke and many, many more. 90% are African American, and 90% are Chicago artists. McCoy says he also has a strong interest in acquiring work by female artists. Trying to summarize his collection, he points out its most identifiable characteristics, “I believe the face and the figure can tell all of the stories of human beings. We read body language and facial expressions. Color is also important - the use and play of color, and using color for expression. I also enjoy variety and try not to get stuck on any one thing.”&nbsp;When McCoy moved to his current home over a decade ago, he had to reinstall his expansive collection all at once. It was then that he recognized his collecting themes. For instance, in an area near his stereo, he’s assembled works relating to music – small linocut portraits of famous African American soul singers, like Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles, are arranged in what McCoy refers to as a sort of musical frieze. &nbsp;When McCoy decided he did not want any blinds or drapes in his living room, in their place he put up stained glass portraits to capture the abundant eastern sunlight. McCoy remembers when he first moved in, “It was quite a colorful neighborhood then. When I’d look out I’d see lots of people going by, so in the windows I put up these sort of masks to remind myself that people wear their own disguises, you just have to look below the surface.”&nbsp;While McCoy enjoys observing people day-to-day, his collection has focused on historical themes, such as the struggle for Africans in the Americas. One room alone acknowledges challenges for black men. The space is divided in half on a diagonal, &nbsp;“One part of the room deals with problems that black men have suffered or created, and the other side represents solutions. A piece I commissioned by artist Brian Ellison for Hyde ParkArt Center’s portrait commission program, Not Just Another Pretty Face, is done here as an African adinkra symbol for the supremacy of God, because philosophically both the problems and solutions are under one God. All of these issues that have tripped up black men in America – drugs, gangs, abandonment, whatever you can imagine as the problem and its solution, there should be an image that reflects that here.”&nbsp;McCoy says the balance of the room helped him avoid the depression that would otherwise result from focusing on only the sad side of things. To him, “I’m a proponent that all people on the planet have had a struggle, so you can’t dwell on it because everyone’s been dogged out at some time.” Opposite another area devoted to struggle is a space devoted to meditation and peace, where McCoy says ultimately he wants to be. In this section is a portrait by artist Mary Qian of McCoy smiling in Jackson Park by the Museum of Science and Industry. As he points out the piece, McCoy reminds me that the Museum began as the Fine Arts building for the White City during the World’s Fair in 1893. He enjoys the significance that the building underwent a transformation from art to science, while McCoy himself eventually went from science to art. &nbsp;McCoy tells a story throughout his home with each step. The works of art are in&nbsp;conversation with him and with each other&nbsp;in powerful ways. More than anything else McCoy is an observer who is keenly interested in people, their struggles, passions and origins. Despite already having so many works in his collection, McCoy says he’s waiting on new pieces to arrive. His collection even overflows into the stairway in his building, so art is the first thing a guest sees. He’s pleased when others enjoy the art he’s acquired, “I think it says something to a visitor when you have a welcoming environment.”Note: for info about the Dixon Elementary School, McCoy recommends a documentary, The Curators of the Dixon School, by Pamela Sherrod Anderson. The film will be screened this fall as part of Diasporal Rhythms' 10-year anniversary at the Logan Center at University of Chicago.&nbsp;&nbsp;</body></html>

Collector Profile: Kenwood's Patric McCoy

By MARY DEYOEWhen it comes to purchasing art and furniture, an “antiques fair” may not appeal to young buyers. It sounds too expensive, too stuffy, and “just not for me.” Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth. On April 26-29 the Merchandise Mart hosts the annual International Antiques Fair. With nearly 100 international dealers the fair is one of many excellent opportunities for individuals to find unique furniture, art, jewelry and decorative pieces for their homes.&nbsp;Speaking specifically about young and new collectors, Leslie Hindman, President and CEO of Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, suggests that people should use opportunities like fairs and auctions to really enjoy the process of collecting. It’s easy (or at least appears so) to go to a mass retailer and pick out a couch or dining room table. But the thought that this is an simpler or less expensive option is just false. “People are smarter to buy objects and furniture that have history,” says Hindman. “These items actually cost about the same as anything you would buy new, and what you’re getting&nbsp;is unique.”&nbsp;The benefit of going to a fair is also the opportunity to talk to the dealers. The dealers want to talk to customers, to tell them about each piece—where it was made; how it was made; why the craftsmanship is significant. Dealers tend to be enthusiastic about what they do and want to share that enthusiasm about the objects with collectors. “It is an extremely fun process,” Hindman adds, “and I think people can forget to or don’t take the time to have fun and to learn.”No matter how much or how little you purchase at a fair, auction or gallery, the experience will be far more exciting and personal than a trip to the mall or time spent online. Attending antiques-focused events will expose you to an expansive range of styles and designs. If you have only ever looked at Mid-Century Modern furniture, you may discover that you also like 19th Century French objects. “It is a fantastic opportunity to find inspiration,” says Hindman.Hindman&nbsp;added that there is also financial benefit to purchasing antiques. A desk from a mass retailer is unlikely to appreciate, while an authentic antique desk undoubtedly will.&nbsp;

Training Young Collectors to Buy Old Antiques

By MARY DE YOEThe University of Chicago has long been known for pushing boundaries and challenging expectations. The new Reva and David Logan Center for the arts is no exception. Less than a year old—the building had a “soft-opening” in March 2012, then celebrated with the three-day Logan Launch Festival in October—the Logan Center has already demonstrated its strong commitment to the study, practice, and presentation of art that is experimental, multi-disciplinary, and engaging.The glass and limestone structure stands out amid the Neo-Gothic buildings on the UofC campus, punctuated with an 11-story tower. The Center, designed by husband and wife team Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, feels light and open. The tower offers impressive sweeping views of Hyde Park, and as you make your way down the staircase at the south end of the tower you can see the solar paneled-roof of one arm of the Center and the grass roof of another. Williams and Tsien said their design was inspired by urban landscapes and the prairie, with the tower referencing both the city’s skyscraper tradition and silos rising from the Midwestern prairies.This blending of styles and references is a theme that carries through the Logan Center. The space was designed to foster cross-disciplinary encounters and collaborations. With art studios, screening rooms, theaters, classrooms, exhibitions and rehearsal spaces the building allows for dynamic interactions between students, faculty and members of the larger Hyde Park and Chicago community.“We thinking about the Center as a portal between north and south,” said Monika Szewczyk, Visual Arts Program Curator. “We very much want to be open to and engage the South Side community as well as the campus.” The building itself is designed to support this. The box office entrance is located on the south end of the building, making two main entrances—there is also one at the north end—and a symbolic flow of energy from both ends of the city. For Szewczyk, who leads Logan Center Exhibitions, his idea of openness is important.It was for this reason that Szewczyk felt so strongly about presenting Brazilian artist Ricardo Basbaum’s signature project, would you like to participate in an artistic experience. “It was crucial [at the outset] to set an inquisitive tone,” explained Szewczyk— “and Basbaum’s project, which revolves around [a] loaded question does this beautifully. It also connects the program of Logan Center Exhibitions into a global network of practice and inquiry”Basbaum launched would you like to participate in an artistic experience in 1994. Centered around a heavy metal object called “New Bases for Personality”(NBP) and painted white with royal blue trim, the dimensions are approximately 49” x 31.5” x 7”. The NBPs are meant to live outside the gallery for participants to do with as they please. When resting on the ground, the object looks almost like a miniature ice rink. Since 1994 NBPs have been used in artistic expressions in over 40 cities across four continents. “However generous the project may sound, it demands a lot in return,” said Szewcyzk of the challenge of the person (or group of people) in possession of the object.The exhibition, which was on view at the Logan Center this past fall, highlighted through documentation and diagrams some of the ways that the community used the NBPs. One clever example is the MFA student Tucker Rae-Grant, who worked with librarians to incorporate the NBP into the The Joseph Regenstein Library collection where it could be checked-out like any piece of media in circulation.This project by its very nature resists exhibition in a traditional sense, questioning notions about the function of a gallery. As Szewczyk explained, “this work was perfect for a non-collecting entity, and it was a way to repurpose the white cube [in our case] as a type of lab—a place for experimentation.”The gallery, however, is not the only place where visitors will find exhibitions. Running concurrently with would you like to participate in an artistic experience was Wall Text. Co-curated by Szewczyk and Zachary Cahill, Open Practice Committee Coordinator, the show featured 25 text-based works by 10 artists with strong ties to the UofC community, including Jenny Holzer, that were displayed on walls (and windows, in the case of Anthony Elms, who was recently named curator of the Whitney Biennial along with Michelle Grabner and Stuart Comer) throughout the building. The exhibition is accompanied by a booklet produced by artist David Giordano. More than merely an explanatory text, the booklet raises crucial questions and serves as one of the art works in the exhibition. Giordano’s essay stresses how this exhibition challenges and often essential element of traditional exhibitions: “Wall texts explicate an artwork’s historical trajectory...yet, what happens when the text on the wall is the art itself and provides its own context through the use of language? Does it change our relationship to images? Is the wall itself changed through language? Are there texts without language?”Probing questions such as these are ones visitor will continue to encounter through the Logan Center’s roughly 10 exhibitions per year. The shows are curated by Szewczyk as well as guest curators, as in the case of Wall Text, and the Center will also present shows curated and including works by MFA students, whose studios are located in the building. “I am excited about this mix of very young artists with others who are veterans of documenta (international exhibition of Modern and Contemporary art in Kassel, Germany)” said Szewcyzk.In conjunction with the exhibitions, the Logan Center will present a variety of programs that will include visiting visual artists, dancers, musicians and partnerships with the Open Practice Committee Coordinator, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, the Arts + Public Life initiative, and others.In 2007 the University of Chicago announced that David and Reva Logan and their sons and grandchildren made a record $35 million gift to support the building of a center dedicated to performance and creative arts. Both UofC alumni, David and Reva were longtime supporters of the arts and generous philanthropists. They envisioned the Center as a means to improve the quality of life for students and faculty of the University as well as the community. Judging by the pace so far, it seems the Logans’ vision will not be compromised.&nbsp;

CGN features the new Logan Center, an art space at University of Chicago. 

Chicago's new Logan Center: expect the unexpected 

<html><head></head><body><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721418577/s1qjaiq9vl88di0psvhk.jpg"><figcaption>Charles Van Doren Shaw's Ragdale House in Lake Forest</figcaption></figure>By Mary DeyoeSometimes what we all need is a change of scenery or pace. It is incredible how much even the slightest adjustment to our everyday schedule offers new perspectives and a refreshed state of mind. Artists are of course no exception to this, and the artist residency exists almost solely to offer space, time and resourches for artists to focus and work. This past summer; when thinking ahead to Chicago Artists Month in October; I looked into 10 different Chicago-area residencies and discovered that, despite their use of the same label, each program is defining on its own terms what it mean to be a residency. Following are individual profiles of the various program personalities.&nbsp;Among the traditional retreat-style residencies you wild find Ox-Bow, Ragdale and ACRE, each set in an idyllic "country" environment. The impulse to escape the hustle and bustle to find a calm and quite place is not a new practice for artists or writers—certainly that desire motivated what Monet did at Giverny and what Jackson Pollack and lee Krasner found appealing in East Hampton.&nbsp;About 30 miles north of Chicago in Lae Forest, you can easily miss the entrance to&nbsp;Ragdale as you drive down Green Bay Road. Once in the driveway every noise from the busy road dissipates. The barn and main house—the Ragdale House—were designed by Charles Van Doren Shaw in 1897 as a retreat for his family. It was formally established as a residency in 1976, and since then more buildings have been added, including a sculpture studio in 2006—an indication of Ragdale's efforts to welcome more visual artists (and performing artists), as the program's greatest number of residents are writers. Eacg group is thoughtfully planned so as to create as much harmony as possible during the artists' two week stay. "The community is important," said Regin Igloria, Director of the Artists-in-Residence Program. "We want to make sure there is a mix of people from various cities and stages in their careers." Ragdale residents have complete freedom to make their own schedules; they are asked only to meet nightly for a family-style dinner. Ragdale's peacefulness is difficult to describe, but any visitor would wish to stay awhile and admire the sweeping landscape and bright airy studios, while resident casually pass through the open kitchen.&nbsp;Ox-Bow, located in Saugatuck, MI, i one of the oldest and most well-known residencies in the region, established as both a residency and school in 1910. Residents, primarily visual artists, come from around the world for 2-5 weeks. In addition to receiving studio space and time they are invited to participate in recreational activities and attend nightly lectures (during fall sessions only.) "The community is one of the primary benefits," says executive director Elizabeth Chodos. "Artists [and staff—comprised primarily of artists] bond with each other in a way that is difficult to do in other settings...they can let their guard down."Similarly,&nbsp;ACRE (Artists' Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions), as well as providing time and space, offers a host of activities and programs. These range from the calm and sophisticated—wine and cheese pairing lessons, bike rides—to the racously playful—a cross-river tug-o-war—to the academic. 6-10 international visiting artists meet with residents for a single session (including musicians—ACRE has a fully equipped recording studio) to share skills, lead workshops and give lectures. Co-directors Emily Green and Nick Wylie feel it is important to include an exhibition piece, and each resident has the opportunity to exhibit work at one of ten current partner galleries in Chicago. "This is &nbsp;great way to extend the community," Wylie says. This tendency to add practical professional development elements to a residency is, I discovered, very common among city-based residencies.In the same professional growth vein, the&nbsp;BOLT residency run by the&nbsp;Chicago Artists' Coalition provides 10-11 Chicago artists 24-hour access to studio space for a year, but they do not offer living space. During the residency artists must learn to balance their daily lives with their studio time. What BOLT lacks in living space, it more than makes up for in professional resources. "The residency acts as a holistic incubator," explains Cortney Lederer, Director of Exhbitions + Community Outreach. In addition to studio space, residents are given &nbsp;solo exhibition, they meet monthly as a group with Lederer, and they have opportunities to meet with and exchange ideas with artists, curators, program directors and other people from the Chicago community, such as Art Institute curator Lisa Dorin and former MCA curator Tricia Van Eck.&nbsp;threewalls gallery each have residency programs that focus on Chicago and the region. HPAC's residency launches this October and is by invitation only. The goa is to look to the Chicago arts community for inspiration. "The benefit [for the artsist, many of whom are from outside of the US] is not escape," explained Megha Ralapati, Residency Coordinator, "but being immersed in the Chicago environment." Kate Lorenz, Associate Director of HPAC says "We encourage artists to take risks, and we aim to facilitate connections between artists, other people and resources in the community."threewalls' artist-in-research-residency also acts as a facilitator between artists and the community. Their residency, though, is open to artists, writers, musicians, curators, critics, arts administrators, etc. Residents are provided with studio space (and living space), but that space may be used for public programs, conferences, discussion series, meetings, work-space and more. "We are looking for people who are interested in creating projects in the Midwest," said program director Abigail Satinsky. This doesn't mean the workis site specific, but their work/research must be tied somehow to the region. threewalls was originally estalblished as a residency program by graduates of the School of the Art Institute in an effort to keep artists living and working in Chicago.&nbsp;Anchor Graphics is tucked into a small but ethereal space in a Columbia College building. Bright light flows in through the floor-to-ceiling windows and the walls are covered with work that ranges from prints with simple bold text, to pieces with fine, intricate details. The three-week residency program (which includes an apartment) is designed to give an experienced printmaker unlimied access to the studio. "Its not about the results," says David jones, executive director, "rather we encourage residents to use this time to take risks."&nbsp;Spudnik Press, like Anchor Graphics, has a residency specifically for printmakers. Theirs, however, is geared towards the completion of a specific project and culminates with an exhibition for the resident. Profits from artwork sold during the show go towards funding the next resident. Unlike writers or painters who are arguably more mobile, printmakers need access to large expensive printing presses. Residencies like Spudnik's and Anchor Graphics are invaluable for both the access to professional tools and unfettered support.&nbsp;Primarily a craft-based organization,&nbsp;Lillstreet Art Center&nbsp;also provides tools an artist might not otherwise be able to access, such as ilns and presses. During one-year residencies artists are integrated into the organization by teaching classes and giving two public presentations. When considering that our area offers a number of residency programs, Emily Shroeder Willis, Director of Artist Programs says, "I think it's important to keep an open relationship with other residencies. We are not in competition; we learn from one another."This is exactly the spirit that led leaders from several of the residencies to form&nbsp;CAARP (Chicago Area Arts Residency Programs),&nbsp;a grup which meets to exchange ideas and assist one another in continuing to attract and support outstanding artistic talent and practice. Often, artists don't just participate in a residency once; they will likely find reasons over time to apply to several and to take advantage of multiple programs and experiences.&nbsp;The exception among these residencies with physical centers is&nbsp;TRANSIT, which does not exist in any one location. TRANSIT's motto, "helping artists go places", reveals their mission: to facilitate opportunities for artists to work both in and out of Chicago. Artists apply with their projects in mind, and TRANSIT accomodates each artist's needs. Explains founder and director Meredith Winer, "We tailor everything."&nbsp;Perhaps TRANSIT's motto is applicable to all of the residencies. Whether by phyically, professionally or pscyhically, all of them afford artists the opportunity to go places—to make new connections, to take risks. Both by attracting new artists to the city and supporting local talent residences provide a fertile ground for new conversation, questions and discoveries about art.&nbsp;</body></html>

CGN profiles different artist residencies in the Chicago area. 

Chicago's Unique Artist Residencies

By KEVIN NANCEIf anyone is ideally positioned to carry on the line of major art fairs in Chicago and restore it to health after years of turmoil, it’s Tony Karman. He’s been involved—sometimes tangentially, sometimes heavily—in nearly all of the fairs dating back to the early 1980s, when he worked at the Chicago International Art Exposition as a security guard. More recently, after two decades as one of the local art scene’s busiest drum-beaters and string-pullers, he helped organize four editions of Art Chicago at the Merchandise Mart, which threw up its hand last winter and canceled this year’s event. By that time, Karman had already left the Mart and—with “absolute chutzpah,” he admits in an interview—announced his own fair, the International Exposition of Contemporary/Modern Art &amp; Design, aka Expo Chicago, premiering Sept. 19-23, 2012 at Navy Pier.Mart executives argued that Chicago is no longer a viable player in the art-fair market, which they claimed has “gravitated towards the coasts.” Karman begs to differ. “I’m not a controversial guy—I don’t throw stones—but that statement does not hold water,” he declares. “This is a city that led the world with a great international art fair, and there’s absolutely no reason why we can’t do it again.”In some ways, Karman’s playbook for Expo Chicago is not so different from the one he used with varying success at the Mart: building partnerships and goodwill with the city’s visual arts movers and shakers, including top collectors, dealers, and museums (in particular the Museum of Contemporary Art, who benefit preview, Vernissage, is being revived after an eight-year hiatus); tempting out-of-town buyers by leveraging Chicago’s array of cultural amenities, including its world-class restaurant scene; and enlisting the support of the city, whose civic pride (an income from tourism) would suffer a significant blow if it no longer boasted a major art fair. “It would have been sad if there’d been no fair this year,” says Janet Alberti, MCA’s deputy director. “We were really sorry that the Mart made the decision not to move forward, but Tony’s doing the city a great service by revitalizing the fair.”To that end, karman has a few new cards up his elegantly tailored sleeve. He has pumped Expo Chicago full of star power in the form or architect Jeanne Gang, who has designed a thoughtful new scheme for the booth configuration at Navy Pier’s Festival Hall, and top chefs Michael Kornick, Graham Elliot, Ryan Poli, Patricio Sandoval and Randy Zweiban, who will add a touch of culinary artistry to the paintings and sculpture. And smartly, Karman is mounting Expo Chicago not in the fairs’ traditional spring time frame but in the fall, taking it out of the competition with the year’s biggest art auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s in New York and getting an intuitive jump on Art Basel Miami Beach, which has boomed in large part because of its host city’s famously balmy winter weather. “September in Chicago is our December in Miami,” he says. “There’s nothing more beautiful than autumn in Chicago.” &nbsp;Just as important, Expo Chicago is doing what few, if any, of its predecessors ever did: imposing strict discipline on the size of the event. Where Art Chicago and its various components and companions grew so large and unwieldy that some patrons were overwhelmed by the sheer acreage to be covered—which also had the effect of spreading sales too thinly among too many dealers—Karman has taken a beyond-boutique approach, emphasizing quality over quantity by limiting participation to exactly 100 of the world’s top galleries. (For the complete list, which was strategically announced a full five months before the event, visit Expochicago.com/exhibitors.) That’s crucial to the galleries, several of whom complained of market dilution during the more-is-more years at the Mart. “One reason I limited the fair to 100 galleries is that there’s a better chance they’ll see the kind of business they’re looking for,” Karman says. “If I did a show with 200 dealers, I think we’d repeat what happened in the past, and they would hit that same wall.”Most crucial of all, perhaps, is the return to Navy Pier, home of Art Chicago in its storied heyday in the 1980s and the early ‘90s. Part of its appeal is logistical and aesthetic; unlike the Mart, with its relatively low ceilings, Festival Hall allows for 12-foot booth walls (borrowed from Mark Lyman’s annual SOFA show) and an airy feelings of space overhead. But especially for those with long memories, Expo Chicago’s venue is significant for reasons that have less to do with the height of the booths than with emotion and history.“The two magic words that made this work were ‘Navy Pier,’” Karman says. “When we were able to secure the Pier, it allowed nostalgia to take over and and sent a massive signal to the international art world that we’re reconnecting to the legacy of the fair. Back in 1980, there were three great art fairs in the world: Cologne, Basel, and Chicago. The art fair scene has since gotten much larger, of course, but the institutional memory of what this city meant to the international art world—collector, curator, dealer—is undeniable. It would be sad for them, as well as sad for our city, not to have a fair that lives up to that legacy and continues to raise the bar.Of course, its venues alone doesn’t guarantee Expo Chicago’s success. In 2005, a new show, Chicago Contemporary &amp; Classic, set itself up at a Navy Pier in direct competition with Art Chicago, which had left the Pier after an ugly financial dispute. (In 2004, McPier sued Art Chicago owner-operator Thomas Blackman for what it claimed was $375,000 in unpaid rent. The lawsuit settled out of court, and Blackman moved his fair to a tent in Butler Field. Art Chicago’s money woes continued, however, leading to the Mart’s last minute rescue/takeover in 2006.) Chicago Contemporary &amp; Classic, which had announced a long-term lease at the Pier, turned out to be short-lived.Arman hopes to avoid the fate of CC&amp;C, which had included exhibitors of the traditional art and antiques as well as contemporary and modern art, and which positioned itself as a regional fair rather than national or international one. “Every fair needs to know what its niche is,” CC&amp;C’s Ilana Vardy told me when I reported on the event for the Chicago-Sun times. “Chicago needs to serve the market in the city, the needs to serve the market in the city, the state and the region surrounding Illinois. We’re not trying to be another Art Basel, &nbsp;because its not going to happen here that way. There isn’t enough time on the calendar for collectors of that level to keep going to so many fairs. My goal is to rebuild the Chicago fair as a Midwest show.”Like Vardy before him, Karman believes in the importance of the regional market as a key element of the business strategy of the fair and its exhibitors. “The art world recognizes that Chicago plays an important role in the ecosystem, even in this era of potentially too many art fairs,” he says. “My job is not necessarily to turn out the collectors in L.A. and New York and Europe—even though I think we will because we’re an international city that people love to visit. The dealers are really looking to me to turn to our tertiary markets like Tulsa and Omaha, Kansas City and St. Louis, Cleveland and Minneapolis, Dallas and Houston, places with lots of collectors who historically come to the art fair here. Those people are just as important to the dealers as collectors in Paris of Shanghai.But unlike CC&amp;C, which has relatively few top galleries on its exhibitor roster, Expo Chicago has gone for the creme-de-la-creme, which, in a strong vote of confidence, has turned out in force. “To do just a regional fair doesn’t draw the region,” Karman says. “That just doesn’t work in Chicago, where any fair is always going to be judged by the standard of our glorious past, by the legacy and the aspirations of our collectors for 30 years. The only way to do a successful fair here, I feel, is to do it on that level. “On the other hand, Expo Chicago’s emphasis on staying relatively small has had the potential of ruffling feathers among the local gallerists, several of whom would have liked to participate but didn’t meet the criteria established by Karman’s selection committee (composed of Chicago’s D’Amelio and San Francisco’s Anthony Meier). “If I were taking any gallery in, the context of exclusivity would be lost, and so would be the filter that assures the collector that this is a highly curated show,” Karman says. “It would have never stirred any souls, and it would never have been able to compete in the international marketplace. That’s why I did it, and painfully so. It’s also why we’re going to have booth reviews. If they said they were going to bring a Rauschenberg, where’s the Rauschenberg?”Fortunately, even many local gallerists who aren’t in Expo Chicago are pulling for Karman to succeed. “Tony has a lot of fans in this town,” says Linda Warren of Linda Warren Projects in the West Loop. “We’re all in his corner, because if he makes this thing work, it’ll benefit us all.”

From a 2012 issue, CGN profiles Expo Chicago. 

Expo Chicago to revive Windy City’s glorious art-fair legacy 

To comission a work of art sounds like a ofty endeavor, but as the Hyde Park Art Cent&#39;ers (HPAC)&nbsp;Not Just Another Pretty FaceI (NJAPF)&nbsp;demonstrates, the process of a patron working with an artist is uniquely satisfying, and not at all out of reach. The program returns this fall for a fifth run. What began in 1995 as a way to support Chicago artists and the Art Center has garnered priase from those familiar with the concept, such as artists looking to collaborate and patrons looking to support HPAC, as well as art enthusiasts who appreciate this genius, approachable idea.&nbsp;

At a glance, NJAPF is a kind of matchmaking arrangement for the art world, intended to support Chicago artists while making collecting ore assesible to a broader group of people. Through the &quot;salons&quot; series artists and patrons pair up, questions are answered, artists&#39; art work ix explored and the collaboartion begins.&nbsp;

NJAPF involves many people and from start to finish it can take place anywhere from 18 months to two years. Inititially HPAC builds up the artist roster, where the goal is to assemble a diverse group of artists, encompassing a range of cultural backgrounds, artistic media, styles and price points. Once artists are selected, private and public salons are hosted by interested patrons as well as HPAC. Artists and patrons meet and the matchmaking begins. Eventually parameters are established regarding finances and the nature of the commissioned artwork. Some patrons lay down specific requests, such as a certain type of artwork or style, liked a mixed media portrait, while others may give the artist total control over the process and outcome. Works executed include painting, photography, sculpture, installation and more.&nbsp;

Due to the program&#39;s dual goals, commission proceeds generated by patrons are split equally between HPAC and the artist. Finally, a comprehensive catalogue is produced and the final works are unveiled at a celebratory opening of the three-month exhibition of the work produced during the program. In many cases at the opening party is the first time a patron sees the finished work before taking it home to be a part of, or the start to, their collections.&nbsp;

NJAPF has a proven track record of bringing more awareness and support to Chicago artists, as well as demystifying the notion of collecting art. Brand new patrons as well as seasoned collectors recognize their sponsorship plays a direct role in supporting the arts. -LM

CGN profiles the Hyde Park Art Center and Not Just Another Pretty Face, an interactive art experience. 

Not Just Another Pretty Face: Artists + Individuals Creating Together

What were you doing 40 years ago this fall? How about 30, or even 10? Were you even born? A sizeable number of our city&#39;s galleries are marking major milestones this fall, so we took some time to ask them about the kind of impact that longetivity and leadership have had in our neighborhoods and in our arts community. A multitude of developments have affected art businesses here and around the world, but when considering the many industry shifts, Chicago dealers have similar reponses: the internet and art fairs have turned things on their head when it comes to selling art, promoting artists and reaching collectors. With the benefit of hindsight, several dealers celebrating significant anniversaries this year offered reflections on all that has changed over the decades, as well as what thankfully remains the same. -GV

Artists and art dealers are often pioneers when it comes to seeking out new neighborhoods in which to live as well as run a business. The vitality and popularity of Chicago neighborhoods today, such as River North and the West Loop, versus 10 or 20 years ago is in part thaks to dealers and artists who blazed early trails. Such geographic changes have had long-rage effects on the gallery scene that are still evident.&nbsp;

Prior to the 1980s the city&#39;s established galleries were centered around Michigan Avenue. A few stalwarts are still located there today, including Richard Gray Gallery, approaching its 50th anniversary in 2013, and R.S. Johnson Fine Art, in business for over 56 years. By the late &#39;70s a few dealers addressed a need for space that was not available along the city&#39;s main retail corridor. Zolla/Lieberman Gallery moved to 368 West Huron in 1976. In 1979 Ann and Roy Boyd moved their gallery to West Superior to the second floor above Young Hoffman Gallery, with Jack Lemmon and Landfall Press. Ann Boyd remembers, &quot;It was a ronderful time. There was hardly any activity during the day, but people who came to see us came for a purpose. We were all feeling pressure to have higher ceilings, more space for art, more elbowroom during openings. Some artists thouht we were crazy until their say the big spaces and recognized the sense of camraderie. Ou rinsurance when we started wa $1,500 a month because our agent though all of our windows would be smashed.&quot; By 1983 16 galleries had opened in what would soon be known as River North.&nbsp;

Around the same time that galleries were begining to establish Chicago&#39;s first gallery district, in 1981 a new event on the city&#39;s art calendar would forever change the art business.&nbsp;Art Exposition&nbsp;launched on Navy Pier that year, and the resulting enegery and attention bouyed Chicago&#39;s reputation as an international art center; it also added fuel to the rapid local gallery growth. By the end of &#39;80s, over 65 galleries filled River North, while more openered around the city, including in Wicker Park/Bucktown and beyond.&nbsp;

Catherine Edelman launched her namesake gallery 25 years ago after graduating from the School of the Art Institute, opening her doors two weeks before the 1987 stock market crash. An April 1989 fire that devestated River North, along with the coinciding crash of the global art market, led to widespread votality well into the early &#39;90s. Some dealers again sought larger spaces and lower rents, spurring a significant relocation to he West Loop. Edelman says, &quot;I think the idea was that we&#39;d all move, which at first seemed like a viable idea, but a lot of us decided to stay. I think that split hurt the power of the Chicago gallery scene. There never used to be a thought where else you&#39;d go opening night.&quot;&nbsp;

Art centers have continued to develop locally in all directions, such as in Pilsen and Bridgeport where distinct neighborhood personalities are evident. The ever-creative art scene now even includes pop-up galleries and installations, a timely result of a resourceful economy. Changes in the global business landscape have also aletered the way we all reach audiences beyond the ones at home. In the past 10 years, we&#39;ve come to view websites, blogs, Twitter and Facebook as critical.&nbsp;

Douglas Dawson Gallery markes 30 years at the end of this year, and Dawson points to technology as being one of the most striking differences since his early days, though he admits that new channels maynot seem as jarring to those starting out. He says, &quot;For older galleries, like ours, with an older clientele, and a long history of print, mailings, personal contact, the evolution of technology and the impetus to make it a valid tool of the business has been challenging.&quot;&nbsp;

Social networking and the web aren&#39;t the only things making the art world smaller. Roy Boyd, who founded his gallery in 1972 in Westrn Springs before moving downtown near the original site of the MCA, says that compared to 40 years ago, &quot;We all know art fairs have taken over. The scene isn&#39;t just local anymore.&quot; Dawson reiterated Boyd&#39;s point: &quot;the changes I&#39;ve seen in the art business in Chicago mirror changes nationally. When I opened in the early 1980&#39;s there was tremendous, self-sustaining energy in the art community. Today our business is predicated on participating in important art fairs. We depend on the clients we meet at those fairs who, if they do not purchase at the show, often will when they visit us in Chicago.&nbsp;

Valerie Crberry, who opened her gallery 10 years ago in the John Hancock Center, says though many see striking changes over the years, and art now reaches many via the internet, up close and in-person can&#39;t be beat: &quot;What has not changed is that the quality of experience for the casual vistor or the experience collector is never better than in the gallery itself, where the directors, staff, and artists are available to share their expertise and enthusiasm in a comfortable space. This experience endures alongside the many and now vital platforms for art viewing, such as online or at art fairs, and proves the value of a basic pleasure.&quot;&nbsp;

Running a gallery is a marathon, certainly not a sprint. Dawson says, &quot;I think the most important issue for an older gallery, as for an older individual, is how to remain vital, relevant, and able to bring energized perspectives to one&#39;s activities. Chicago is a wonderful and receptive city to explore those challenges.&quot; 10 years ago the Boyds hosted an intimate party for their 30th anniversary. &quot;This fall,&quot; Roy says, &quot;we&#39;re going to just have a group show for our 40th anniversary. We&#39;re letting our artists subit their favorite old work, or they can submit something new. We just wanted to recognize the people we&#39;ve worked so well with.&quot;

CGN profiles local Chicago galleries celebrating their anniversaries. 

2012 Gallery Milestones: Decades in the Art Business

By KEVIN NANCEIs the glass half-empty for the Chicago art scene, or half-full? It depends on whom you ask, what you focus on and how ambitious a response you propose.In the upper, unoccupied, rather lonely part of the glass, there’s the fact that the Merchandise Mart recently pulled the plug on Next Art Chicago, which it rescued so gallantly a few years ago, only to see it suffer during the recession and struggle to compete with other fairs in Basel, Miami, New York, London and elsewhere. After what they described in a parting statement as “a thorough analysis of the art fair landscape,” the Mart’s Staci Boris and Ken Tyburski bailed on Chicago like it was the Titanic, concluding that “the great majority of the art fair market in the United States has gravitated toward the coasts.”For Chicago artists and gallery owners, who increasingly feel that local collectors prefer to buy elsewhere, the recession has been hard. There’s a battle-fatigue, even a malaise, in certain precincts. “There’s still such a fantastic art scene here, so many great galleries – but an energy is missing,” says Kasia Kay of kasia kay art projects in the West Loop. “It’s really kind of sad.”In the lower, still quite fluid part of the glass, hopes are high for former Art Chicago director Tony Karman’s new fair, EXPO&nbsp;Chicago, set to debut at Navy Pier, September 20-23, 2012. “Tony’s taken the torch and is running with it at the moment,” says Linda Warren of Linda Warren Projects. “There’s a real buzz out there because he’s investing a lot of energy into it, trying to be the very top tier of art fairs in the world. If it happens, I think it’ll help bring our art scene back.”There’s some disagreement about that. Even if EXPO Chicago is&nbsp;wildly successful, gallery owner Carrie Secrist says, no city can assume that one art fair, which now has&nbsp;so much competition around the world, can revive an ailing art scene all by itself. “That’s over,” Secrist declares. “If a comeback happens, it’ll have to happen another way.”Still, there are positive signs. “As the economy has started to come back over the past few months, our business has been stronger,” the River North gallery owner Roy Boyd says. “We’ve seen some green sprouts.”And at City Hall, the new mayor’s administration appeared to be arts-friendly,so far. The Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) hit the ground running earlier this year when it began organizing dozens of community meetings to gather input for the new Chicago Cultural Plan, the first time such a plan has been seriously revisited since initially launched in the 1980s. Many in the arts community are still holding out for more concrete signs of support from City Hall.Either way you look at it – half-full or half-empty – the question remains: How do we fill up that damn glass? How do we refocus attention – locally, nationally, internationally – on Chicago as an art center? How do we leverage the city’s unique character, including its vast array of cultural resources, to provide a shot in the arm to an art scene that some regard as in the doldrums?A Hail Mary approach would be to mount a major citywide event modeled, at least loosely, on Pacific Standard Time, a recently concluded series of more than 60 exhibitions in Southern California focused on Los Angeles art from 1945 to 1980. PST, as it was known, drew mostly positive reviews, brought cohesion to the city’s sprawling art scene and raised its national and international profile, enviable results, and certainly all worthy goals for any Chicago counterpart. But PST, several years in the planning, was largely organized and funded by the Getty Foundation, which contributed about $10 million. The Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art, while not exactly aloof from the Chicago art scene, are not known for their deep involvement with it, at least not at the paternal level of the Getty in L.A.; certainly neither can match the Getty’s deep pockets.That isn’t to say that a Chicago-style art celebration, even one with as grand a scope as L.A.’s, couldn’t be pulled off here. “I think it could be done,” Boyd asserts. “It would take a massive effort to spearhead it, of course, and a great deal of cooperation between a number of different people and entities who don’t normally work together that closely, but it could be done.” In Boyd’s vision, major Chicago Institution, galleries, artists, collectors, art-loving philanthropists and foundations – including the MacArthur, the Pritzker and the Terra – could band together and mount a coordinated citywide event that could give Pacific Standard Time a run for its money. “Having the museums and the galleries and everyone moving together as a united font would certainly lend a focus and a power to any effort like that,” Secrist says. “That’s probably the quickest way to bring back more of a national focus to Chicago.”But how would herd all those cats? You’d need to field an all-star team with the vision of a Daniel Burnham, the networking skills of a Lois Weisberg, the fundraising prowess of a John H. Bryan and, probably, the political clout of Rahm Emaunuel.Until such a dream team surfaces, perhaps the problem would be best attacked, at least for the time being, on a smaller, more manageable scale, with an approach that is multifaceted and less monolithic. One of several possible models might be Gallery Weekend Chicago, a collaboration that began in fall 2011 between a group of local galleries (including Andrew Rafacz, Corbett vs. Dempsey, Devening Projects + Editions, Donald Young, Kavi Gupta, moniquemelcohe, Rhona Hoffman, Shane Campbell, threewalls, Tony Wight and Western Exhibitions) and local collectors to bring in out-of-towners for a “privately curated” sampling of the Chicago art and cultural scene, including gallery and museum visits, hard-to-get reservations at top restaurants and an architecture river tour.“We’ve seen a decline in what’s been going on here, but we still have incredibly thriving institutions and galleries, and so we came together last year to see how we could share that with collectors from all over the country,” Monique Meloche says. “Berlin has been doing something like this, and it’s been wildly popular there. Both New York and L.A. have tried to produce their own versions, so we thought, why not? We have such great institutions here, such great architecture, and a national culinary profile. People love to come to Chicago, so it seemed like a natural.” Last year’s event drew about 50 out-of-towners, and the group hopes to triple the attendance at this year’s follow-up, scheduled to coincide with Expo Chicago in September. (For details visit <a href="http://www.galleryweekendchicago.com">galleryweekendchicago.com</a>) “We don’t think it’ll get much larger than that, because we don’t want it to become a marathon,” Meloche says. “We want to keep it manageable for people so they can spend some quality time at these spaces.”In her opinion, in fact, the sensory overload provided by a major art fair – or a Pacific Standard Time knockoff – might not be what Chicago needs after all, at least not now. Instead of one big jolt of shock therapy to rouse us from our collective depression, maybe a series of smaller zaps would do just as well or better. “If you do a ‘Chicago Standard Time,’ maybe you’d narrow the focus too much on the art scene, and frankly I’m not sure it would draw people here like Pacific Standard Time drew people to L.A.,” Meloche says. “We need to be showcasing the whole culture of Chicago, not just the art scene – including the architecture, the world-class institutions, the restaurants, everything. I mean, when you talk to out-of-town people about coming to Chicago, their eyes light up. We just need to invite them.”

Kevin Nance talks to members of the Chicago art scene about an arts revival in 2012

An Invitation from Chicago to the World

By GINNY VAN ALYEAThere was an article in the Arts section of the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/arts/design/southern-california-claims-its-place-on-the-art-world-map.html?_r=4&amp;src=me&amp;ref=arts">New York Times</a>&nbsp;on Thursday, October 13 that really made me cringe, and a lively discussion on&nbsp;Twitter&nbsp;soon followed.&nbsp; In a nutshell, the article talks about LA's recent emergence as a major international art center, and of course they discuss the city's art scene in comparison to New York today, as well as what has made New York's art world so dynamic over the decades. For me, the piece brought up all sorts of feelings and observations about Chicago.The article starts by discussing a new arts festival, Pacific Standard Time, and referencing the sprawling territory throughout southern California for galleries, museums, and art centers.&nbsp; The festival is touted as, "a statement of self-affirmation by a region that, at times, appears to feel underappreciated as a serious culture center." &nbsp;There were a lot of lines that sounded very familiar to me - if I read the article with all references to California blacked out, I might be able to read this piece as a summation of our own varied, lively arts scene in Chicago.&nbsp; I give LA credit - they've got some blockbusters going on right now that are drawing crowds (Tim Burton; the graffiti show.) And it's so sunny most of the year that "Curators talk about the difficulty of encouraging people to walk indoors for anything but a movie in a city that has glorious weather so many months of the year."&nbsp; They have some really solid artists producing work that is of the moment now - who hasn't been obsessed with Ed Ruscha during the past 10 years?&nbsp;"Indeed, Los Angeles these days has more than its share of ambitious museums, adventurous art galleries, wealthy collectors, top-notch art schools and — perhaps most important — young artists drawn here by relatively cheap rents, abundant light and an atmosphere that encourages experimentation."As I was reading the article I thought, there's something missing - they haven't acknowledged that there IS another major city in the US that has all of these things, except of course the abundant sunshine and mild weather.&nbsp; Actually, there are a lot of smaller cities and communities that have notable art scenes, but they don't get covered because they're in fly-over territory.&nbsp; Chicago has really solid artists, though less of the Hollywood vibe (fine by me) and we've always been less flash-in-the-pan. But we have great art schools and young artists. We have cheap rents. Hello, the alternative space/apartment gallery scene here is unlike anywhere else, as shown in Hyde Park Art Center's exhibition,&nbsp;Artists Run Chicago&nbsp;in 2009. We have art fairs devoted to it! We have ambitious museums - Art Institute and MCA, yes, but also Smart, Renaissance, and Block.&nbsp; Adventurous galleries (5 Chicago galleries are in the&nbsp;ADAA,&nbsp;and LA has 6, though two are related and basically have the same name.)&nbsp; We have wealthy collectors, though they also suffer from the instinct to sometimes buy in New York more often than they should, to the detriment of our local artists.&nbsp;The article goes on: “There is now enough critical mass of galleries, of places where artists meet, blogs, magazines..." Again, we have a&nbsp;long list. &nbsp;What made me throw down my paper in frustration on an otherwise quiet Thursday evening was when I got to the concluding, and damning, quote from none other than former Art Institute president Jim Cuno, who recently turned up in LA to become president of the J. Paul Getty Trust after a very sudden departure from AIC.&nbsp; I guess he left Chicago for LA for more than the weather: "Mr. Cuno said his perception was that people in Los Angeles did not really spend a lot of time worrying about what other people thought of them. “I don’t feel or hear any ‘second city’ mentality here,” said Mr. Cuno, who came from Chicago, where that kind of talk is common. “People in Los Angeles are pretty happy with their position in the world and needn’t get the confirmation from elsewhere.”So, if I lived in LA I'd be confident enough to just shrug my shoulders and move on.&nbsp; Since I'm from Chicago, I must be foolishly obsessed with what other people think.&nbsp; What's wrong with caring?&nbsp; Chicagoans get doses of 'second city mentality' with their breakfast. We're used to it,&nbsp; even if we can't overcome it. It's an old debate, and it's not going to go anywhere soon, but I think the reference was kind of a cheap shot.&nbsp; Conversely, Cuno's comment also makes everyone in LA sound kind of dippy and just inherently happy, which I'm sure isn't giving them enough credit for their own hard work.&nbsp;There are a lot of opinions out there about Mr. Cuno and his biggest Chciago project, the&nbsp;Modern Wing, which I happen to really enjoy and love.&nbsp; I have always thought that someone who could have led that project, which ultimately did garner a great deal of favorable press for Chicago in 2009, would go on to have warm feelings about our city.&nbsp; That would be 'reverse second city menality, as it made me actually think people liked us.&nbsp; I'm sure there is more to Mr. Cuno's sentiments than what comes through in the article (I hope so) and if that's the case, it's a poor job by NYT for unnecessarily pitting one city against another without a fair fight.&nbsp;Back to the Art Institute: I think that the new head of the museum is absolutley off to the right start to start looking at life after the Modern Wing. New president&nbsp;Douglas Druick&nbsp;has been a curator at AIC for decades, so he's part of the family, and he seems to be committed to keeping the museum on strong financial footing so that it can be an anchor for the city and to making sure that the curatorial schedule doesn't get too bloated.&nbsp; I hope that there are many opportunities ahead to see the museum as a cultural space that belongs to all Chicagoans and visitors. AIC can serve as a mirror to hold up to our own evolving art history, not just the world's; for instance, I'd love to get back to the time when AIC actually had exhibitions focused on Chicago artists and work being made in the city now - with a wing devoted to contemporary art NOW is the time... Such engaging programs could do our pride some good and just might even make Chicago seem almost as bright and sunny as LA.&nbsp; In our city at least people have no problem going indoors for at least 6 months of the year.Mr. Cuno's comments stung my civic pride.&nbsp; Ultimately I think Chicagoans especially value loyalty, and I put myself in that group.&nbsp; I've built up some extra defensiveness over the past 9 years of living in Chicago, since there is no shortage of opportunities to have to defend Chicago, let alone its art community, against other bigger, shinier places and to work to build its reputation as a dynamic and honest cultural home.&nbsp; I also have come to expect the same faithfulness from others who are or have been part of that same community.I look forward to everyone's comments and thoughts on the article and this post.&nbsp; If you're a writer in Chicago, I also encourage you to write your own article or posting in response to the dominant ideas about Chicago's place in the art world - on its own or in relation to LA and NYC.&nbsp; As we all know, it's a never ending battle.