Art
Making Art in the Midwest
CHICAGO — The Midwest is no place for haters, slackers, and anyone who can't admit that they secretly love hot dogs and regularly daydream about living on a farm, or at least somewhere in the woods.
Chicago
Art
Sculptural Remnants and Re-creations of Jimmy Page
CHICAGO — Led Zeppelin, man — they were so before my time. Arguably the inventors of heavy metal, the band reached their height of fame in the early 1970s with the song “Stairway to Heaven” on their untitled fourth album. Through the works of artist Karolina Gnatowski, now on view in the artist's so
Art
Cursed Meteorite, Giant Octopus Models, and Other World's Fair Wonders
The Columbian Exposition of 1893 is almost impossible to imagine: a spectacle of 200 gleaming white neoclassical buildings on over 600 acres in Chicago, a temporary city whose main purpose was instilling a sense of wonder with the world.
Art
A Psychedelic Cave Blooms in Chicago
CHICAGO — If a tree grows in Brooklyn, a cave populated by neon flora 'n fauna blooms in Chicago by way of New Mexico.
Art
A New Vision for Chicago's Oldest Feminist Gallery
CHICAGO — The feminist art space Woman Made Gallery (WMG) is shifting its vision to one that focuses on feminism and feminist art-making as it relates to class, ethnicity and age.
Art
A Midsummer Group Show Dream
CHICAGO — As we settle into midway-through-summer mode here in the city that does sleep sometimes, we spend more time hanging at the beach, BBQing with friends and generally chillaxing. With this slowing down of general movement comes the proliferation of — wait for it! — the summer group show.
Art
In Chicago, an Art Crawl on Steroids
CHICAGO — There was an art walk last Thursday evening in the River North district, an area with many upscale, decades-old galleries that some may consider conservative. Paintings and sculptures with big price tags on them shared the space with musicians, visiting speakers, and a musico-theatrical pe
Art
A Green Screen Mirrors the Impossibilities of Arrival
Somewhere in Los Angeles, a movie is being filmed, an actor is speaking words from memory, and a person is hunched over a screen carefully editing moving images using the green screen, a post-production special effects technique that layers on a background that doesn’t physically exist. The conceptu
Art
Why Chicago's Persepolis Book Ban Hurts Students Most
CHICAGO — In case you haven’t been keeping up with the school closing crisis in Chicago or the continuing escalation of gun violence, the experience of youth in the hella screwed-up public education system just became even more brutal. The Chicago Board of Education is now defending the classroom ba
Art
A Family Lives Out the Drama of the World
CHICAGO — Typical American movie moments of heightened tension use signal sounds in tandem with the emotions portrayed by the actors on screen. The family dog knocks over a precious antique plate, and an ominous tune rolls in to signify that the pup is about to get in trouble. Dad arrives home only
Art
Carrying on a Political Absurdist Legacy
CHICAGO — Cartoonist Rube Goldberg (1883–1970) was best known for his depictions of "inventions" that imagined complicated contraptions with far too many moving parts built to solve the simplest of problems. These “Rube Goldberg machines” appeared in his work, and were used as devices to poke fun at
Art
Latham Zearfoss Knits Together Materiality, Domestic Politics, and Queer Identity
CHICAGO — The absence of the body (politic), the presence of a re-negotiated domesticity and a necessary embracing of the fine line between romance and criticality play forward roles in artist Latham Zearfoss's work, which embodies radical feminism of days past while looking toward the future. Zearf