Collective, Communal Production Project Ends After 10 Years By Alicia Eler, CAR Visual Art Researcher After ten years the artist-run, experimental cultural center Mess Hall, located at 6932 N. Glenwood in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, closes up shop. Initially a gift to artists from the property owner, developer Al Goldberg, Mess Hall became a project on [...]
On How Arts PR Shapes an Organization’s Message Elizabeth Burke Dain is no stranger to the Chicago art world. Since 1985, she has been crafting the messages of arts organizations around the city. She started her professional career at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1985 in the Asian art galleries, eventually migrating into the role of [...]
Two Chicagoans Win the 2012 Andy Warhol Arts Writers Grant By Alicia Eler, CAR Visual Arts Researcher It’s almost Christmas in Chicago, and for members of the visual art community this means only two things: More-hipster-than-thou ugly Christmas sweater parties, and cash from Uncle Warhol for arts writing projects. On December 3, the Andy Warhol Foundation [...]
How An Artist Transitioned from Textual to Visual Language Lauren Levato draws bugs. Lots and lots of bugs. Sometimes they stand on their own, quiet in their stillness and repose. Other times they appear inside a woman’s belly; we peer inside of her, privy to the experience of an unseen swarm, while she stands gracefully, oblivious of [...]
On the Importance of a Studio, and How to Afford It Chicago artist Gwen Zabicki is interested in the ways people in urban environments live alone together. In her most recent body of work she explores the idea of a shared urban melancholy. Her work is deeply invested in Chicago’s urban landscape. In discussing her work, she [...]
On Balancing Studio Time and Part-Time Teaching Chicago-based, Virginia-located artist Kate Hampel uses sculptural objects to investigate unvoiced traumas implicit in our social constructs. Through her material-based practice, she seeks to unravel the underlying narratives that enthrall the public through the 24/7 media sensationalism cycle, but ultimately vanish from deeper collective thought, swept under the [...]
How I Got Back to My Real Passion It was only after the third month of volunteering at an after-school photography class that I had my “Aha!” art moment. I was helping teens curate a show of their self-portraits into a local art space in gritty downtown Springfield, MA. Witnessing the build of excitement triggered [...]
CHICAGO — What does it mean, bodily, physically, emotionally, mentally, and perhaps spiritually, to be what Simone de Beauvoir deemed “the second … [Read More...]
Slipping the fur skin of a dead animal over a perfectly crafted taxidermy form produces a visual illusion of life, much in the tradition of a trompe … [Read More...]
Abigail DeVille ICEBERG PROJECTS 7714 N Sheridan Road April 13–June 1, 2013 If “X” marks the spot, and three Xs mean “poison, do not … [Read More...]
