Three years later, we close the magazine with some sadness, but no bitterness. I feel like we changed the art dialogue in Chicago by broadening the scope of what we felt was worthy of inclusion in an art magazine. As a result, we showcased a massive pool of unrecognized and unappreciated local artists, who had received little or no press. We proved a point – that a large local audience can only be earned by offering diversity, variety and multiple perspectives.

(Chicago Art Magazine Staff, from left to right, Jen Nalbantyan, MK Meador, Stephanie Burke, Jerian Hildwine, Robin Dluzen and Kathryn Born (badly Photoshopped in)

Robin once wisely said that we did the best we could with the resources we had. And within that caveat, I’ll say I’m incredibly proud of the stories we did, and am still amazed how far we trudged with one hand tied behind our back. We cut the budget 80% in 2011 and still almost tripled our traffic the same year.  I say this to illustrate that even if my spine hadn’t crumbled, Chicago Art Magazine would have changed; it was already changing and was adaptable by design. I’ve always viewed the Chicago art scene as a member of the artist community, not a critic looking down from above, but my artist sensibility doesn’t allow me to build the same thing over and over. I create, finish, and go onto the next piece.

If we wouldn’t have had this interruption, I would have been dabbling with BuddyPress, doing more with the Chicago Artist Database, and new software systems. I would have tried working with technology investors and creating new algorithms for art discovery that are completely different than the ones currently used on art sites today.

Chicago Art Magazine was an exercise in infrastructure, publishing, mentoring, and testing the boundaries of our local art industry. The goal was to figure out how to make a sustainable, functioning online magazine with a staff of paid writers and editors. In that respect, I don’t know how many answers I have for the next person who wants to  make a fiscally solvent magazine. Chicago’s art industry is in a tough spot and it creates a difficult ecosystem for any art-related business. So I will continue publishing (hopefully with Robin!) when I recover in 2013, but probably not here in the arts –instead grow TINC Magazine, which is positioned in the middle of the financially vibrant tech sector.

But I digress, I didn’t write this to complain. The point is, Chicago Art Magazine was never meant to go on forever, our goal was “10/10/2010” (see the “Transparency Pages“).  And during that time, we went on a wild adventure: we had good fights, made tons of friememies, got scoops and gossip, flashed business cards, got in free, and dove head first into controversy. The writers became friends and did projects together outside of the magazine. We had a red carpet debacle, turned the magazine into a school, and did 20 articles celebrating artists over 40 as a way for me to cope with my mid-life crisis. We defriended people on Facebook, bought a “Twitter machine”, almost got sued, and helped Rachel Hewitt burn bridges to many future employment opportunities with her investigative journalism assignments. We had adventures, I often got us lost, the site would crash, and we had wacky editorial meetings in a rent-by-the-hour conference room (people thought we had an office; never realizing the tiny conference room was the sum total of our physical presence). And I remember once hobbling into a meeting and couldn’t bend over to plug in my laptop — and MK Meador quietly took the cord and plugged it into the floor outlet for me.

Unequivocally, the most awesome part was watching the writers grow, like the day Robin and I had a “cord-cutting” ceremony when we disconnected the editor’s inbox so it no longer forwarded the emails to me, and she was flying on her own — a tremendous mentor in her own right.

For three years, we felt like a tiny army, forging through a recession in a publishing post-apocalypse.

I am left with amazing memories, and I know these stories will have a way of appearing in the next novel. Chicago artists will keep making art, new publications will come, and all of us will move on to the next “thing”. All the while, the articles will stay on this site, as a testament to what we did.

We were here for a good time, not a long time.

Farewell,
Kathryn Born

https://www.facebook.com/kathryn.born (account is full, but you can hit “subscribe”)
http://twitter.com/ChiArtMachine
http://diamondlifecafe.com

Many people, from both inside and outside of our city, have told me that Chicago is broken. I’ve sat through panel after panel, and have read article after article complaining about art writing in Chicago and pointing fingers at one another as to who’s to blame. I’m not interested in joining those ranks of naysayers here. I do not want to hear any more about how internet writing is deemed less important than print, and I don’t want to hear any more about how the decades-old model for arts criticism has disappeared.

You want to know what happened to arts criticism? It changed. Just like how art has changed. Oh, and now it’s on the internet.

Web writer and editor Erin Kissane explains in a recent book that, in the midst of the vast, democratic space of the internet, “the fact that anyone reads anything at all online is a demonstration of an extraordinary hunger for content.” Applied to the art world, I’d like to take this as proof that the outmoded, disappearing model of print publishing has turned our arts community to the internet to find the information that they can rely on. Art moves fast these days, and internet publishing has been poised to be the best medium through which it can be documented, expounded upon and distributed to those hungry for information.

At Chicago Art Magazine, we not only had to shoulder the weight of running our business and maintaining the quality of our publishing, but we also had to shoulder the weight of explaining the value and relevance of all internet publishing in general to an old guard of potential advertisers who have forever before been convinced of the authority of print media. Many galleries, institutions and individuals stepped up to the plate, offering support in a variety of ways, including supporting our revenue model that was heavily based upon advertising, and for that I thank you dearly.

I want to thank our dedicated Chicago readership for perusing, commenting, liking, sharing, tweeting, +1-ing and otherwise caring about our content. We dedicated our whole business to you, Chicago, and we always felt the love from our city’s artists, art-workers, gallerists, dealers and enthusiasts.

I would also like to acknowledge the woman who has made this all possible: our beloved founder and publisher, Kathryn Born. Besides being fearless, independent and exceptionally competent, Kathryn has never let her responsibility for the business’ bottom line compromise her belief in the value of artists. She is an unparalleled advocate for artists and art writers as a valuable workforce, and I absolutely cannot imagine where I would be without her mentorship.

But as Editor-in-Chief, the group I’d like to thank most is my beautiful team of loyal and talented art writers. Some of you came from Chicago, writing for decades about Chicago art and kindly adapted your skill set for the web. Others, like me, came out of art school woefully unprepared for the realities of a life as an artist, and found a voice and a platform for your ideas that I hope were assets to your careers. Others came from arts communities in other cities and other states, and still others from outside of the art world completely, courageously diving into this intimidating and incestuous world that we call the art scene.

My writers, we couldn’t pay you anywhere near as much as you deserved, but someday you will be, and you’ll have your archive of fine work here at Chicago Art Magazine.

If I had a spirit animal, it would be the Komodo dragon:  the master of the slow kill.  The Komodo dragon takes game much larger than itself by a rather unique method.  The Komodo dragon isn’t venomous. However, the Komodo dragon has rather poor oral hygiene.  It feeds on meat, especially carrion, and this gets stuck between the lizard’s teeth, festering and rotting, creating a mouth that is an ideal breeding ground for bacteria.  It is this bacteria which kills the Komodo’s prey:  it rushes a deer or other prey item, bites it, and then lets it go. The Komodo dragon follows.  Slowly, after days or even weeks, the wound becomes infected, and the deer grows ill.  One day, sick and exhausted, the deer lays down to rest. The Komodo dragon, which had been following it, unseen, all this time begins to feed while the deer, still alive, is too weak to resist.

The Komodo dragon approach has worked for me in a lot of ways.  Take graduate school, for example.  I first applied to a handful of schools in 2002. I was actually accepted to one of these schools, but by the time I got the news, I had decided that I needed to go to a real “art school,” so I declined the invitation.  The following year, I applied to 19 of the best art programs in the country, and was waitlisted at two of them…but not ultimately accepted to any of them.  This was a disappointing setback, but I immediately began a new body of work, far better than anything I’d done before, applied again the following year, and was accepted to several excellent programs. I ended up attending the Hoffberger School of Painting, at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

After graduating with my MFA in 2007, I moved to Chicago, as my wife, Stephanie Burke, had been accepted into SAIC’s MFA program in photography.  So we moved here, she started school, and I started looking for work. Within two weeks I’d been hired as a sales associate at an Ace Hardware location just a few minutes walk from my house. In the meantime, though, I was working on finding a teaching job, maintaining my studio practice, and securing gallery representation.  By Spring of 2008 I had picked up a few classes at LillStreet Art Center and Hyde Park Art Center, and the following fall I started as an adjunct instructor at Wilbur Wright Community College.

As soon as we’d landed in Chicago, Stephanie and I committed ourselves to familiarizing ourselves with Chicago’s gallery scene.  Each week, while I was working in the hardware store, Stephanie found time to come up with a list of what galleries were having openings that Friday.  I avoided working closing shifts on Fridays whenever possible, and we’d go out to the openings. After a while we started writing reviews for our blog, and between that and the fact that we showed up to pretty much all of their openings, the galleries got to know us.

I sent slides to a number of galleries –a select handful who seemed like good venues for my work:  Ann Nathan, Zg, Aron Packer, and Linda Warren. Of these, Zg and Nathan sent me polite rejection letters (Ann’s was handwritten!), and Packer invited me to bring some work by the gallery to show him.  I did so, and although it was pretty clear he wasn’t interested in showing it, he did provide me with some useful feedback.

Hildwine's "Zombie Hunter Stephanie," acrylic on canvas, 2012

Here’s where the Komodo dragon comes in.  I’d made my bite, introduced myself.  What I did NOT do was take these initial rejections personally, nor as the end of the discussion.  I still showed up to all the openings, even at galleries where I was pretty sure I’d never show my work.  For fun, I started blogging about the food and beverage offerings at the gallery openings:  the Snack Report, started on The Gallery Crawl blog and run, until late last year, on Art Talk Chicago. We tried some other blogging projects as well:  Monday Morning Quarterback, which were quick reviews of all the work we’d seen the weekend before, and the Red Dot Report, which were our notes on work that had sold. All the while, I was applying to group shows, and did some exhibitions in apartment galleries and alternative spaces.

My studio practice continued to develop as well, and was greatly informed by my teaching practice. Prior to teaching, I just sort of “messed with it ‘til it looked right,” a method (or non-method) that is common, and pretty effective, among a lot of very skilled and realistic painters whom I know. When I started teaching, I needed a method that I could easily explain.  I remembered a book I’d seen while I was in undergrad:  Joseph Sheppard’s How To Paint Like The Old Masters. I ordered a copy, and set about adapting Sheppard’s techniques to acrylics.  My interpretations of Sheppard’s interpretations of the Old Masters became the basis not only of my teaching of figure painting, but also of my studio practice.

All this allowed me to finally start making the paintings I wanted to make, the way I wanted to make them. As these pieces came together, I began to exhibit this work in group shows. All this time, I kept attending the gallery openings, and got to know some of the gallerists pretty well.  I very specifically did NOT harangue them about showing my work.  In fact, after I sent them the initial contact, I didn’t bring it up at all.

Eventually one of these gallerists, Linda Warren, asked me what was up with my own studio work, and wanted to come visit my studio.  This didn’t come out of nowhere:  I’d been attending nearly every one of her gallery openings for over three years, written about many of them, hung out, been cool, and most importantly, I was respectful of her time.  I didn’t talk business at her openings, and I didn’t press her to show, or even come look at, my work:  I sent her a link, a remained a part of the community, and eventually, she asked me.

Having a gallerist come visit your studio can be an intense experience; for a young artist especially, it’s easy to see it as the make-it-or-break-it career opportunity.  I just told myself to relax, and made sure the bathroom was reasonably clean and put a couple of beers in the fridge.  On the advice of a friend, I found an excuse to leave Linda alone with the work for a minute, so she could look at it without me looking over her shoulder.

She talked about some local collectors who might be into this kind of work, but when she asked about whether I was interested in selling the work, I mentioned that I’d rather show it as a complete body first. She told me that the main exhibition space was booked two years in advance, but that she could show some of the work in the project space, concurrent with Tom Torluemke’s show in the main space.  This was, in fact, exactly what I’d been hoping for. Gallery X (the smaller of the two rooms in her new space) is just large enough to accommodate the entire Living Dead Girls series, and the timing was just right for me to be able to finish the work to fill it.

Jeriah Hildwine, Living Dead Girls, opens at Linda Warren Projects (327 N. Aberdeen Suite 151) on Friday, April 27^th, 2012.  Also on view will be Tom Torluemke, Ring Around The Rosie.

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“The most unusual thing about public art, and the thing that makes it so different from a conventional art practice, is that you don’t make your own art. It’s made by fabricators.”

National Metal Fabricators offers laser-cut, custom metal fabrication. Their 50,000 square foot manufacturing center provides a space and capacity to take on services that include press brake formation, shearing, punching, robotic welding and assembly.  These Chicago custom metal fabricators utilize a 2,000-watt Cincinnati Laser Cutter that can cut carbon steel that is up to ½ “ thick. They can work with measurements so small, a human welder or metal cutter wouldn’t even consider an actual measurement, a distance of 0.005 of an inch!

Their 6’ 12’ cutting table is a dual-pallet table allows then to take on large volume jobs – as one piece of metal is finishing, they can load up the next piece.

The primary benefit of Laser Cutting, as opposed to saws, is that the machine cannot be contaminated by the materials they’re cutting. Saws also have the capacity to dull, and do not always offer the consistency and “clean,” burr-free cuts. By using a laser, a low divergence beam, it avoids human error, saves on cost, and offers a superior finished product.

National Metal Fabricators have served industries and projects that range from locomotive, special machinery, target ranges, custom lighting, architectural and amusement parts.  They’ve created hoppers, architectural parts, frames, custom light fixtures, frames and machine and conveyor components.

They offer the following custom metal fabrication services:  Carbon Steel Fabrication, Stainless Steel Fabrication, Aluminum Fabrication, Metal Laser Cutting, Press Brake Forming, Metal Shearing and assembly.

Linda Warren's Los Angeles house gallery

SK: Linda, I think some may be surprised to know that Chicago’s Linda Warren Projects actually started as Linda Warren Gallery in 1997 in your home in Los Angeles while you were still working in the film industry. I am picturing the gallery, a swimming pool, film stars, producers, and a house on the hill. Would you fill in some of those details without crushing my romantic notions too much?

LW: For me, it was extremely romantic.  But not in the manner you describe. It was a house on a hill, in Silver Lake, without a pool, but a view all the way to the ocean.  It was a multi-level art deco’y fixer-upper that I bought at the lowest point in the market (1994) from an 85 year old woman artist, whose husband, also an artist, had just passed away (Lolli and Oscar Van Young).  I was very into painting myself during those years, and the house, full of hundreds and hundreds of their paintings, was so enchanting…. I fell in love.  I had looked at over 100 homes at that point.  But I knew when I first saw it, that this was it. I slowly spent every penny I had to turn it from a terrible fixer-up to a very mediocre and funky but functioning and awesome home for me.  When I sold it in 2000, the value of the house had doubled. But I know the new owners thought it was still a fixer-upper.  And it was.

I had no idea that I would ever turn it into a gallery.  I was in the film business, working in production (ultimately becoming an Associate Producer on the last few big-budget films I worked on), and that was how I made my living.  It was a sort of brutal experience – almost every film was a ringer doozy pain in the ass – and it was just not my passion at all.  So in 1997, when a good artist sculptor friend, Dale Edwards, was evicted from his studio and needed a place to store 100 or so pieces of work, I agreed to place them all over my house. I was trying to help him out. But the next thing you know – my film friends started coming by and buying his work.  And then another couple artists thought – well, if you’re selling Dale’s work, you can maybe sell mine.  And they brought it over to my house, and in fact I did sell their work… again, just to friends stopping by.   I knew I could be a good conduit to this sort of thing… but never did I believe I could do this for a living.  So I slowly, without leaving the film industry for good (they were to be my clients, of course, and also my real income), converted that house into a very meandering, well-lit gallery, displaying over 100 pieces at a time and rotating and opening new shows all year round of artists from around LA and well beyond.

Linda Warren Projects Artist: Carson Fox, Cold Comfort (installation), 2010

Yes, some film stars and producers and agents made it up there – but also big collectors – like Peter Norton.  And finally, I was successful enough at selling art that I really didn’t need to work anymore in the industry.

SK: So, shortly after this you moved to Chicago and now, with 8 1/2 years as a gallerist here, you have proven that this city is a place to have a growing, successful gallery. Many people have the perception that the major Chicago collectors only buy in New York, but you have found a way to sell emerging art here, and with admirable success. Does your business model include collectors based both in and outside Chicago?

LW: Yes, I have a strong collector base from all over the United States, as well as a bit abroad. As I generally don’t participate in too many art fairs, I have to assume that the broader success of my business stems mainly from the fact that I show some pretty fantastic artists, as well as from word of mouth, and that my website (while in need of a major overhaul and update) is thorough and direct. It shows as many as ten artworks by each artist, and it lists prices. This uncommon practice of having the prices listed on the site lends both a transparency to the business, as well as an immediate awareness of the viewers as to whether or not they can afford the work.  I also know that my belief in my artists and my passion for what I do plays a part in the success of my business model.  I am confident in the value of the artists I work with, and I think collectors ultimately know how to find the galleries and artists that resonate for them.  They are smart seekers and finders.

Linda Warren Projects’ grand opening of the new space with Emmett Kerrigan's Grand Ave (Installation 2011-Gallery Y)

SK: In November 2011, you inaugurated your new location at 327 North Aberdeen – a much more expansive space – and you brought some innovative nomenclature into this new space. Case in point: the “X” and “Y” names of your two gallery spaces in the Linda Warren Projects.

LW: The “X” and “Y” idea came from multiple ideas. First, my desire to not diminish one exhibition space to the other as superior or inferior, which calling them A and B or 1 and 2 might do.  I also liked that x and y are used in a range of mathematical applications, and thus they, as subtext, suggest the existence of another realm of thought  – coordinates to explore two-dimensional and three-dimensional ideas. If people reflect on space and time in the context of looking at the work while being in the gallery, that is a huge plus.

SK: Would you also address your changing Linda Warren Gallery to Linda Warren Projects with the inauguration of your new Chicago space? 

Linda Warren Projects’ grand opening of the new space with Lora Fosberg’s, Fallible Memories and Wayward Fictions, (Installation 2011- Gallery X)

LW: The word “project” better describes the growing scope of my business and vision for its future.  Since its inception, I have seen my business grow to now include the fact that I am an Art Consultant working on some large corporate projects.  Though I never thought this was something I was much interested in, it has turned out to actually be very rewarding both creatively and financially and something I hope to continue doing in the years ahead while still, of course, running the gallery.  I am also trying to launch this year a nonprofit called Higher Art, Conscious Corporate Collecting.  This project will seek to find and cultivate the talent of young artists of all ages (not yet in college) by selling their art to businesses and corporations. The money from the sales of the artwork will go back to the artists’ schools to assist in the support of their art programs. Or the kids who are creating this artwork will hopefully get involved in deciding where this money should go.  Maybe not to their own school but a different school that is in need of the finances.  Validating their talent as young artists and empowering them to realize their own ability to facilitate change and become philanthropic themselves is a part of the vision.  All of this is in the present, but hopefully more projects that push the importance of art and the artists who are creating it will emerge in the future.

SK: What is your philosophy in representing a large roster of artists?

Linda Warren Projects Artist: Matthew Woodward, State Street (installation), 2010, graphite on paper, 100" x 88" each

LW: The term “represents” really doesn’t describe the nature of the relationships that I have with some of the artists who are listed on my website. I have worked with many artists in the past  – some, who had solo shows at the gallery, but are not necessarily going to have one in the near future. However, I can sell and promote these artists’ work in other ways. And there are other artists, who do not appear on my website roster, who will be having shows in future.  But that, too, for me doesn’t mean that I necessarily represent them.  Some artists I work with demand a lot more effort and time than others – they have more shows lined up in other galleries, and we do a lot more to help them to expand and navigate their careers, including large-scale commissions and licensing agreements. I think it feels more accurate with these people to say I do “represent” them when I start participating in other aspects of their career outside of the gallery confines and they have also had shows in the gallery. Not every artist that I work with has the same opportunities as others.   But my dream would be that ultimately everyone becomes tremendously successful.

Linda Warren Projects Artist: Juan Angel Chavez, Dragging the Leash (installation), 2009

SK: Your aesthetic has a wide scope – from work of Conrad Freiburg, Emmett Kerrigan, Matt Woodward, Lora Fosberg, Juan Chavez, Alex O’Neal, Chris Cosnowski, Tom Torleumke, Ed Valentine, Nicole Gordon, Brenda Moore, Peter Drake, Carson Fox, Jon Waldo, Joseph Noderer, Paula Henderson – just to name some of the artists that you work with. Is there some common essence in the work (and/or artists) that you look for in putting together your roster?

LW: The roster has evolved as a consequence of both my own personal aesthetic as well as my personal and professional relationship with each artist. I like work that is content driven, that is visually compelling and unique on a visceral level, and that has a high concern for craftsmanship and a value in beauty. Some is very quirky and humorous, some very dark and somber. I like a lot of work that is narrative driven.  I love great painting, installation and sculpture.  Basically, I like work that has the ability to immediately engage the viewer with a sense of awe and wonder, and curiosity, respect and concern for what the artists are trying to explore and communicate.  All of the artists you mention, and others that you haven’t who I work with, all do that for me and continue to do it in almost everything they create.

SK: With the remarkable growth of the Fine Arts in Chicago, ironically it seems that quality Chicago-based art criticism is contracting. One can see this in the reputable dailies and the absence of, say, a model like the Atlanta-based Art Papers Magazine or the Miami-based ARTPULSE Magazine. Do we need a writing model that is parallel to your gallery model–something Chicago-based that targets both local artistic talent and talent beyond Chicago? What would you say to those critics, editors, and publishers weighing the potential of locating in Chicago?

LW: Yes, 100% absolutely, of course.  The artists and galleries in Chicago are currently experiencing an enormous hole in the world of local art criticism.  It is like driving around a huge metropolis and not finding a single McDonald’s.  Yes, we have a few printed publications that do gallery exhibition reviews: New City, Time Out, and slightly: the Tribune. I have no idea what’s going on with the Sun Times, as I don’t read it nor has anyone been in my gallery for quite some time – so I wouldn’t know. And there are some blogs that are doing a bit of that – like this blog, Bad at Sports, and Paul Klein who really goes out of his way to look at what’s out there and gives things a thumbs up and a bit of encouragement.  But you would hope that after the blogs say,  “You should check this out or that out,” that someone will actually come and check it out…and then write.  But the local options for where writers can place their stories are so narrow.  The writers have to reach out and advocate for this city in more national magazines. Show them what is going on here. Champion the art scene here. Artists have to get reviews to build their resumes and credentials.  Critics need to do that.  They need to give the validation, help put things in context for the viewer, explain why something is good or why it isn’t.

Linda Warren Projects Artist: Joseph Noderer, Likens and Sue; Misters, 2011

Chicago is a huge city with a lot of talented fine artists who deserve to be recognized. The MFA program at the SAIC just got moved in ranking from third best in the nation to 2^nd best.  Do we want all these great artists coming out of there to leave? How can artists thrive in this community if there isn’t hardly anyone in the local media paying much attention to them? If we aren’t doing it for ourselves, it is no wonder why it’s so hard to get a national publication to pay much attention.  I think that a model that targets local artistic talent and talent beyond Chicago, in the same publication, seems like the best approach for everyone’s benefit. I’m sure there would be a local readership for this. But I get it – it’s not just subscriptions that are needed; local galleries need to support publications with advertising dollars.  I am willing to do that. I do do that.  And I guess that is one of the biggest issues. So galleries need to invest in this.  And if they do, they will attract more reviewers from national art magazines…and then maybe, hopefully, people will realize that it would be viable to have a more constant presence reviewing the art scene here.  I would say it has to be a community effort to support this – the galleries and the institutions in Chicago and art critics need to come together and raise the awareness further about what is happening locally.

SK: Thank You, Linda.

———

Stephen Knudsen is a Writer/ Critic for ARTPULSE Magazine, New York Arts Magazine, The SECAC Journal, and many other publications. He is a Professor of Painting at Savannah College of Art and Design.

 www.steveknudsen.com

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To experiment with space in the name of art is to stretch our collective definitions of what is private and public, individual and shared, personal and political. At The Fenn House, an 18-room Victorian mansion in Hyde Park and home to Southside Hub of Production, explorations into these and many other concepts are continually occurring.

The aim of Southside Hub of Production is to provide cultural and communal free space as an alternative to the museums, galleries, and universities that largely comprise Chicago’s art scene. SHoP came to fruition in August 2011 through the collective efforts of Laura Shaeffer, John Preus, and a number of other local artists, writers, filmmakers, craftspeople, and educators.

Chicago Art Magazine recently caught up with Laura and John to discuss the ideas and events materializing throughout The Fenn House, as well as SHoP’s communities taking shape and thriving here.

The Psychology of Space

The wheels that set SHoP in motion began turning much earlier than 2011. In 2009, Laura, who is an artist and curator, created The Opportunity Shop, a mobile space for community involvement and artistic exchange.

The Op Shop was conceived as a way to utilize existing resources, share ideas, and provide a sense of wonderment in the everyday. It has been brought to life through exhibitions, events, and programs that take place in empty spaces throughout Chicago. After the Op Shop’s fourth iteration, a public gardening project in Hyde Park, its creators recognized a need for more time and synergy in one space in order to deepen artistic ideas and further develop programming.

John’s background as a builder has further informed the conception and realization of SHoP in distinct ways. In this vocation, he often thinks about the rules that govern public space: how it is organized, paid for, and maintained. While it is a direct and pragmatic way to alter one’s environment, John also believes that building “encourages metaphorical and poetic thought about how things fit together, how space affects relationships, how people inhabit space according to the degree that it is proscribed or malleable.”

The on-going construction of new environments at The Fenn House unites these impulses of stability and fluidity, through the people, events, and exhibitions found in this space. Once home to a Unitarian Church and subsequently a meeting place for various groups of interest, SHoP has transformed The Fenn House into a center for artistic practice and production, and eclectic social gatherings.

The Pulse of SHoP

SHoP’s core is made up of like-minded individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences, bound by a desire for community engagement through the arts and the union of aspects of community life that are often kept separate. Because many of the artists involved in SHoP have children, their current lifestyles have forced them to alter their commitment to art-making in practical ways. The Fenn House is a welcome space in this regard, as artists and their families can gather and engage in many forms of creative community—and, by extension—explore issues related to domesticity and family life through the lens of art.

SHoP is also a response to the pressing reality that artists need and want venues for artistic production and interaction outside of traditional institutional spaces; in other words, they are seeking freedom from the impulse to create art in response to other art. While SHoP promotes this kind of creative license, The Fenn House’s physical structure necessarily informs decisions of what can or should take place here. Exhibition proposals are judged critically, but also pragmatically—according to relevance and suitability to the space, as well as its expected, diverse, audience.

Fenn House

Artists often respond to what may otherwise be perceived as constraints with creativity and humor. As part of SHoP’s on-going exhibition, This House is Not a Home, which runs through April 8, Matt Joynt has utilized a 3rd floor closet space for his work. Adam Grossi’s small, intimate paintings wind up the back stairwell of the house, forcing viewers to try and view the art while walking up or down the stairs. For the Hyde Park Kunstveirin, Dan Peterman’s plastic boards have overtaken the mansion’s library, imbuing the room with reflections upon waste and memory. In all these ways, contributors and visitors alike find delight and surprise in the discovery of appropriated environments.

In addition to the many cultural events and exhibitions that have taken place at SHoP to date, subtler communities are kept alive through projects such as the South Side Seed Exchange and the Community Woodshop. It is also in the everyday that deeply poignant moments are shared at The Fenn House. John speaks of the Chinese dance troupe that meets to practice on the third floor of the house. When they leave, he says, “Each person waves goodbye, and the last woman hugs me and beats my back, there is no language between us but we understand each other.” Whether in the midst of a packed exhibition or during the tranquility of a Sunday afternoon potluck, a sense of profound connection is experienced here often.

Finding New Roots

The premise of SHoP may not be novel, but it is nonetheless filling a particular niche in Chicago, one that its creators hope will endure. As SHoP’s 12-month lease on The Fenn House comes to an end this summer, its future is open to speculation and some concern. The house is currently on the market, and the nearby University of Chicago is a likely buyer. With lease renewal a slim prospect, John and Laura are in the process of forming an Artists Union with Jim Duignan, founder and director of DePaul University’s Stockyard Institute. The goal is to develop a solid foundation and network of support for similar endeavors around the city, to keep artistic production alive in new and exciting ways.

The likelihood of SHoP’s physical relocation is fraught with feelings of uncertainty but also possibility, as there are many reasons to believe that its collective spirit will find roots in new and evolving communities throughout Chicago.

Founding Managing Editor, Stephanie Burke; Editor-in-Chief, Robin Dluzen; Kathryn Born, Publisher (not pictured)

(originally posted 4/3/12)

Chicago Art Magazine will be closing on April 13, 2012. The primary reason for the close is due to the publisher, Kathryn Born, going on an 8-month medical leave. Robin Dluzen, the Editor-in-Chief, could have solely sustained the editorial and operational aspects of the magazine, but not the financial demands.

Running Chicago Art Magazine has been a wonderful experience; it’s been life-changing for those of us who have dedicated our work-lives to the magazine we built in 2009. In the days to follow, we will post some final editorials and thoughts, and the “transparency pages” will complete its mission to offer some degree of analysis of the publication and lessons learned, in an attempt to help the next endeavor.

Chicago Art Magazine will remain online, in its current form, for the next five years as an archive to the 935 posts and 5,260 images.

We leave this magazine in high spirits. We are in a different place as professional artists and writers, and we believe strongly that we helped Chicago’s art world be more prominent on the global map. We have no regrets.

(note: we’re doing a “soft close”, so although we have an official end date, some additional content may be posted after the close)

Woodward's "Huron Street" 71"x87" Graphite and coffee on Paper, 2011

The gritty, aggressive, large-scale works of Matthew Woodward are a kind of contemporary art anomaly. Without that self-conscious level of remove that dominates much of contemporary work created by artists with their terminal degrees, Woodward’s practice is centered around an unabashedly emotional drive. Like emotions, his work is not necessarily difficult to understand, but is decidedly difficult to approach intellectually. Though admittedly, getting a viewer to go beyond the personal expression and the drama of the gesture and surface is often a challenge for artists who work in this manner, Woodward’s practice contains content that can be accessed at varying points of entry.

Viewers are inevitably drawn to his remarkably consistent aesthetic: the heavy-handed mark-making enacted upon the artist’s ubiquitous trope of isolated, decorative architectural forms. A violent treatment of his materials, primarily graphite on paper, takes place through erasure marks, scratches, tears, and other traces of glue and grit by whatever means necessary, paralleling the layering of deterioration and buildup indicative of the wear of urban life. These decorative forms of winding, vaguely floral reliefs, lifted from their original context and hand-drawn onto Woodward’s works on paper, are a composite of anonymity and specificity.

The artist’s employment of these architectural details is discernibly more complicated than it may seem at first sight. Through manufacturing, patterning and reproduction, the forms’ uniqueness has been lost, and their original authors unknown. Through time and familiarity, the forms are overlooked and taken for granted, almost un-seeable to those who live amongst them. Woodward uses these architectural forms in every piece with an urgent repetition that, given their homogeny, becomes a kind of catalog of anonymous forms in the urban landscapes.

Detail of Woodward's "Huron Street"

As the forms are moved from the street, to the photograph, to the studio and into the drawings, they are further and farther removed from their original context. In his drawings, Woodward isolates each of these forms, enlarging them, centering them in the composition, and rendering them in a classical technique that is offset by his heavy-handed marks and the tattered surfaces of the abstracted ground. Through scale, dramatic chiaroscuro, and composition, these rather unimportant decorative images are transformed into grand icons, elevating their importance, though without establishing what it is that they have become symbols of.

At the end of all this layering, rendering and recontexualizing, after the forms have been moved and removed, cataloged and elevated, their meaning really hasn’t been changed. They are each assigned a title specifying the location in which the artist first encountered them, but that is where the explanations end; their ambiguity has remained intact and perhaps that is the very space left open for viewers to linger long after they have been drawn in by Woodward’s tactile surfaces and expressionistic hand. I suppose these works necessitate the use of your gut to appreciate their emotional content, though I think that a patient viewer will find herself able to spend much more time thoughtfully engaged in Woodward’s open-ended subject matter.

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View From the Birth Day, a solo exhibition of new works by Matthew Woodward will be on display at the Chicago Cultural Center, beginning with an opening reception Friday, April 13^th from 5:30-7:30pm.

Additional information about Woodward’s work can be found on his website, and through Linda Warren Projects.

"moving forward" by Diane Nelson

Art and biology have been inexorably intertwined since the earliest stages of humanity. Historically, humans have used depictions of the human body to not only tell stories, but also to understand our physiology. From The Woman of Willendorf, to Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp to Thomas Eakins’ The Gross Clinic, the search for understanding of the human body has manifested itself through art making.

Following this tradition is the work of painter Diane Nelson, who has made a practice of re-imagining of the integration of biology, medicine and fine art. Nelson’s previous career as a medical illustrator and art director has imbued her skillset with a mastery of representational imagery, as she illustrated medical textbooks, anatomical charts, and courtroom exhibits, and created original three-dimensional models. Since Nelson’s departure from the world of illustration, she has built upon this unique ability for rendering, pushing her practice to a place that is more complex and also more emotive.

In her newest body of work, Nelson takes a unique, multilayered approach to her media, a process that puts her practice firmly within a contemporary context. Beginning with pencil or charcoal, her works are then digitized and layered with digital imagery. The final stage is a selective application of paint over ink pigment printed on canvas, which bear her distinctive aesthetic that is both carefully detailed, and fantastically imaginative.

Pattern and Inspiration

"across time" by Diane Nelson

Representation in contemporary art can be a burden on many artists, for whom the challenge of creating something new from observation can be daunting. Nelson is in a particularly unique position because of her extensive experience looking at aspects of nature that most people do not. Nelson has harnessed the microscopic world that dictated much of her previous career, drawing from it its curious palettes, lines, shapes and movements.

In works like moving forward, the patterns that compose the painting’s background could be the quite literal interpretation of the actual biological forms. The pattern motif then continues as the bent figure is repeated over itself, and patterns swirl in the hair of the representational figure in the middle ground. In this way, the microscopic is brought to the forefront, infusing the paintings with the beauty of the unseen world.

The Figure

"on many layers" by Diane Nelson

Drawing from a Surrealist influence, Nelson’s compositions often contain the strange, hallmarks of a dreamscape: hazy atmospheres, unusual landscapes and an ambiguous sense of space. In her work, across time, the rather androgynous male figure is situated at the forefront of a fluid, violet background. These elements of this unreal landscape seemingly wash away the horizon line, and are even visible through the transparent areas of the figure.

The figure is almost omnipresent in Nelson’s works, occasionally opaque, but very often transparent, as in across time, and cellular element. Sometimes, the viewer can see through the figure to the background, while in other cases, the transparency is enacted as the ability to view the biological inner workings of the figure. In both instances, this transparency entices Nelson’s viewers to look beyond the composition and delve into the metaphorical possibilities inherent in her content.

Nelson has a unique ability to capture notions of humanity through biological and formal elements, as well as metaphorical ones, using the figure to do so. Figures in Nelson’s works are painted in very specific poses; in on many layers, the male figure kneels, reaching upwards and facing away from the viewer, while in beyond herself, a female figure stretches one arm out from a seated position. In both works, the figures maintain calm facial expressions, while their limbs evoke the agency and progressive motion of the symbolic “power” and “freedom” the artist strives for in her practice.

Analysis and Observation

"deepest layers" by Diane Nelson

Though Nelson has departed from much of the clinical aspects of medical illustration, what still remains from that practice is a distinct sense of analysis, as if the artistic process has become the vehicle for investigating the human condition. A vague awareness of physiological analysis can be detected from her medical experience, though a much more prominent feeling of psychological or emotional analysis occupies these works, perhaps a feature from the impact of her studies of Surrealism.

Most science, analysis and observation come from an objective point of view, though one can’t help but feel a subjective, and introspective approach to the imagery of Nelson’s work. While many of her works broach large subjects of humanity and emotion, a few of her current works seem to delve into the space of the artist’s mind. In pieces like, beneath the page, and deepest layers, the artist has depicted an image of a piece of paper with a biological image painted upon it. These images of the papers rest atop a trompe l’oeil wooden ground. This “image within an image” serves as an undeniably contemporary, self-referential act, indicative of an artist looking within. Here, Nelson seems to be taking a look at her past from a new perspective, still from a distance but with the subjective medium of fine art.