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The fees that
collectors’ groups charge for studio crawls seem nervy when the annual Pilsen
East Artist’s Open House, which ran last weekend, is free and fun. Save the
crawl fees and you can use your money to buy something enchanting, like
ceramic drones that artist Michael Martinez says "bridge [the] gap
[between] high and low culture, shallow appeal and informed
appreciation." We first noticed the
drones at CS37, a curated group show, where a
digital image by Robin Rios was arresting enough to propel us to his gallery,
4Art. We were enjoying unfamiliar music being spun there by a DJ from Urbanicity, an arts co-op whose logoed
sportswear is very appealing, until the friendly elevator man persuaded us to
ride up to the fifth floor and work our way down. Up there the views of the
skyline were awesome, and the live-work spaces fascinating. One studio took
minimalism seriously: all black-and-white walls and furniture, four tiny
black-and-white triptychs on display, even a totally empty black bookcase. Back on the ground
floor we were drawn to an indoor forest of birch trees that turned out to be
the living room of painter Joslyn Beta Laurence and
photographer Brian Kulmann. She explained the
trees: "I just moved here from We snared our drones at
Logsdon Gallery then wandered through the gardens behind the building,
tripping on Mambo Marilyn’s. A "visual anthropologist" who teaches
at the SAIC, Marilyn Houlberg exhibited voodoo
shrines and hand-beaded flags that she brings here from Haiti—well worth the
trip, as was Under the Wire, the neighborhood’s first gift shop, offering
bowls made from old phonograph records and exuberantly painted skateboards. The Arts District holds
open houses the second Friday of each month, so you don’t have to wait till
next year to visit. Most of this work probably won’t wind up at the MCA—more
probably on the walls of the young couples from the burgeoning condos nearby
who, complete with toddlers in strollers, came out opening night, alongside
oldsters who’ve probably been attending since the 1970s and art-school
hipsters, all swinging merrily between accessible pop and au courante haute. (2007-10-02) |
