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The Thirty-first Pilsen East
18th Street and Halsted Street Events which are short in duration, or presented in a temporary space or studio, are difficult to review. Outside New York City, or major art journals 'of record,' a reviewer's time and energies are justified solely by the hope that a visitor will go to see the art. That it is worth seeing 'in the flesh' is an informed, but ultimately subjective judgement. But after that, a notice had best supply some useful facts, and, perhaps, a potentially useful context for consideration. One expects viewers to form their own responses and debates -- at least, if the art has merit. The "31st Pilsen East Artists' Open House" is an annual event and if one cannot visit between September 28 through September 30, 2001, then at least a notice will alert the reader to its successor. Pilsen East has grown as an artists' district over the years. It has consistently offered interesting art. Visitors get to speak with the artists in their studios and examine art in progress. As a significant sampling within Chicago's wider art community, the "31st Pilsen East Artists' Open House" ranges: there are a number of very impressive artists; a broader body of serious, competent workers; and, as in any unrestricted and unjuried venue, a few who might not quit their day job. With over 120 artists and collaborative groups at sixty-three spaces, exhibiting and performing for the three-day weekend, no notice can do more than make a few observations. The Pilsen East Open House is a genuine artist's event set in a former manufacturing district. It has not yet been 'gentrified' for tourism and since the district has little close affiliations with any official art institutions -- schools, museums, sponsoring councils, commercial galleries or movements -- the art here is less bound to the dictates of art world fashions and agendas. (The major sponsors of the Open House are the Podmajersky real estate family, who have supported the community for over 40 years; Universal Federal Savings Bank; numerous local businesses; and, above all, the artists themselves.) In Pilsen East one finds experiment, innovation, but also a freedom to explore and build upon past art as well, art as a pleasure and a living, not just a fifteen-minute fame. Work such as Sonia Katz's Collage, Everything Stopped (41"x29"x2":2001), provides a case. Here is fine work which brings to mind Vassily Kandinsky in mid-career, Eleazar Lissitsky, or Paul Klee. But Kandinsky, evolving further styles, by no means exhausted allusive, fanciful (and engaging) abstraction. Katz's mixed media -- affixed Japanese papers, acrylics, heavy watercolor paper -- all marshal color harmonies and abstract form into subtle, suggestive rhythms. In her work a visceral, intuitive dynamic, much like the forms and harmonies of music, escapes concrete analysis. Her art is engaging. Katz's titles suggest further nuances, but each work is both a distinctive artist's insight, and a prompt to the viewer's own imaginings. And so... not Kandinsky, not Lissitzky, not Klee -- Sonia Katz: in art, contemporaries are not bound by calendars. Her work is part of the group show at the Pilsen East Gallery (1823 South Halsted). She will also be showing in October's "Chicago Art Open," organized by the Chicago Artists' Coalition. More of her art can be viewed at http://www.caconline.org/cacartists/KatzS/katzs.html
The Pilsen East event opens working studios to a general public without touristic marketing. Visitors, art representatives and gallery agents walk it for the art; art school students get exposure to art without academic tenure tracks. Some artists here pursue art in addition to an outside job, but a large number are 'in the field': one sees what offers a living, and how. Among Pilsen East's variety, there is representational work. Anne Farley Gaines (1839 S. Halsted) has a following for her free-standing folding screens and shaped wall pieces. (She recently completed a site-specific commission for Sara Lee Bakery in Chicago.) Her studio however adds a range of figurative drawings and paintings. Still more of Gaines's art can be viewed at http://168.144.145.184/fine_art_index.html. Mat Barber Kennedy's studio (1906-1/2 S. Halsted) is always of interest. The focus of this work is architectural renderings. Kennedy's subjects are well-chosen, well-executed, and collected. Mat Barber Kennedy's art may be viewed at http://www.esllimited.com/Mat-Barber/Mat-Barber.htm. Much of the most interesting art needn't be 'cutting-edge' media or concept. Several book artists associated with Pilsen East demonstrate that centuries-old traditions can inspire a surprisingly vital art. Rick Tuttle's bookbindings are displayed at 1745 S. Halsted. Tuttle's work does offer fine examples of an honored legacy: for example, a copy of The Wizard of Oz, by noted Chicago author, L. Frank Baum, bound in green leather, complete with Yellow Brick Road on the front cover. But, Tuttle often unites book and binding in a symbiosis of clever wit and unorthodox materials. Tuttle's case for Christ in Concrete (Bobbs-Merril:c1939) stands as example. The text by Pietro di Donato (1911-) treats Italian immigrants in the New York construction business -- the volume rests within a sculpted concrete housing. Similarly, a copy of Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan of the Apes is housed in a hollowed-out log; and an edition of Herman Hesse's The Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi) is protected by a binding in glass beads. Rick Tuttle has a full-time studio at 505 North LaSalle, Suite 500, Chicago, Il. 60610 (Tel: 312/ 644-4949). Melissa Jay Craig (1907 S. Halsted) is affiliated with Columbia College, Chicago (mcraig@popmail.colum.edu), and well-known for imaginative artist's books, as well as sculptural objects in paper often inspired by the codex and kindred formats. This art reveals an empathy with natural materials, artistic insight, and a sometimes mischievous whimsy. Among her exhibits, several drew particular notice: Male Power, a book object which falls limp at midway; and her Consumer Behavior, where several bites reduce the volume's outer edge. Craig has an eye for incongruities. Among her own pieces, one notes a found object: Pocket Dictionary: Large Text Edition, which strikes an unintended irony, but one well at home with Craig's work.
Jim Newberry (1900 S. Halsted) has been a free-lance photographer for over 13 years, and over that time has developed a body of celebrity portraits. His work is characterized by fine technical skill and an acute sense for personality. Many photographs focus on musicians: from young, emerging performers and composers, through such as free-spirited Chicago Blues artist, Eddy Clearwater, to contemplative studies of Sir Paul McCartney. Jim Newberry's work is probably most familiar from numerous record album covers, but, as with a number of Pilsen East artists, the collaboration of professional demands with a fine art aesthetic yields lively, communicative results. Newberry has a website: http://www.newberryphotography.com/.
Particularly striking among photographic offerings at the Pilsen East Open is the selected digital work of Daniel Dunn and Ambler Hutchinson (both at UrbanLab, 1825 South Halsted). Ambler's digital collages reassemble fragments from a wide range of sources -- medieval dames, contemporary portraits, patterned elements and ornamental bits -- into visual dialogues. Often a subject or form is given an overall unity by subsequent and subtle textural manipulation. In Untitled (2000), a grey-tone fragment of upper face from the Renaissance serves as eye mask for a young woman; her torso stands within a scratchy mist and is punctuated by three buttons of red filagree scraps, while clear, photographic hands play a cats-cradle of threads at lower waist. A torn photographic bit, displaying still another, appropriated nose and mouth, serves as skirt for what seems a Watteau harlequin. Hutchinson's subdued colors and shattered sequences of historical clues create a sense that beneath the masks and roles of place and period, a Platonic continuity nonetheless persists. Daniel Dunn's digital work equally draws great praise. Cyclicals (2001), for example, sets three denuded small tree stems as middle-ground; while above and back, an enigmatic square of tonal grey gradation hovers in free mist. At the left, front corner, a discreet arrow chases its tail in a circular path. Dunn's art also suggests that beneath the poetic instant, enduring process remains constant. Poet, Charles Olson, once wrote: "What does not change/ is the will to change." That assertion suffuses this art.
David Aschenbrener's sculptures complement the paintings of Larry Roberts at 1838 S. Halsted, 1st fl. Roberts paints on sundry wood panels, often in a thick impasto, and frequently constructs frames or borders which are integral to the final piece. Larry Roberts was reviewed in www.artscope.net as Part I of "Arts Vision: The 8th Show" (April 2000). David Aschenbrener's work, while intently crafted, reveals an acute sense of natural forms: plant, animal, and even complex, inanimate growth -- patterns of crystallization, metamorphosis, wear and accretion. Although most of Aschenbrener's pieces are on a modest scale and displayed within the Roberts studio, they leave a distinct impression that their true setting would be in an outdoor garden.
Micka Klauck is showing with others at 1833 S. Halsted. Her Two Nikisi (2000) is a Xerox(TM) transfer on fabric and here a nontraditional medium is employed to notable aesthetic effect. Klauck draws upon interests in African sculpture and cave paintings of the early Amerinds, and her art plies an anthropology of primal moods expressed through terse, partially effaced images. Additional examples of her art are at http://www.caconline.org/cacartists/KlauckM/klauckm.html and at wysiwyg://52/http://www.gallerynow.com/klauck/. Philosopher of art, Arthur C. Danto once wrote that he got a lot more out of art, once he started reviewing it, than he ever did before. In Pilsen East -- among solid work, experiment, a variety of personalities -- a visitor, whatever his preferences, is rarely confronted with arcane philosophies. Many artists there support themselves with both direct and commercial sales; much like Bonnard, Dali, Warhol, like artists for centuries. They are serious about their art. The art speaks for itself, directly and effectively. The Pilsen East studios are open, the artists are on site, and viewers can ask questions freely; and get answers. And art.... The "31st Pilsen East Artists' Open House" -- September 28 through September 30, 2001, is centered about the intersection of 18th Street and Halsted Street, Chicago: over 120 artists at sixty-three listed studios and exhibition spaces, and more joining in unofficially. A number of website links to the artists are available at http://www.chicagoartsdistrict.org/links.html. Each year is a greater pleasure. --G. Jurek Polanski Jurek Polanski has previously written and art edited for Strong Coffee in Chicago. He's also well known and respected among the Chicago museums and galleries. Jurek is currently a Visual Arts Correspondent for ArtScope.net. Editorial Note: Books mentioned in www.artscope.net reviews may be purchased through this site's Amazon.com link. Arthur C. Danto's The Madonna of the Future (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) was reviewed in www.artscope.net (Feb. 2001). |
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