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October 1st ShowCase Section
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Starving artists? Not this month
October 1, 2004
BY MARGARET HAWKINS
Forget about those starving artists. For the duration of Chicago Artists' Month, which starts today, hundreds of visual artists around town will eat well, thanks to the largess of the Lettuce Entertain You restaurant chain and the organizational efforts of the Chicago Cultural Affairs Department.
"Lunch With an Artist," which pairs working artists with civic leaders for lunch dates to foster communication and appreciation, is only one facet of Chicago Artists' Month programming that includes more than 100 events planned for this annual monthlong celebration. Fittingly, the theme this year is "Art Connects."
Conceived nine years ago to bring attention to the rich visual arts community in Chicago, this year's CAM will feature special exhibits and programs throughout the city, including open studios, tours, panel discussions, demonstrations, lectures and workshops at more than 150 museums, galleries, cultural centers, parks and arts buildings. Hundreds of artists will be included in scheduled events, while 12 featured artists from diverse backgrounds with very different artistic styles will receive special recognition.
"Amina Dickerson, the director of corporate contributions at Kraft Foods, called and asked Jason Verbeek and me to lunch at their corporate headquarters," says well-known Chicago sculptor Terry Karpowicz, sounding like he'd been asked to the prom. Karpowicz, who is a featured artist along with Verbeek, co-curated a show at Wood Street Gallery with Mary O'Shaughnessy that will feature collaborations between established artists and emerging artists of their choice.
"Every artist makes one piece each, and then each pair does a piece together," he explains. "Whoever you choose probably has a similar aesthetic, so then you see how your two energies blend. The idea is to combine the new and the old."
Karpowicz plans his collaboration with Verbeek as an "exquisite corpse," a technique originated by the Surrealists in which one artist begins a work of art and then passes it on to another to add to or complete.
"I'll start a piece and give it to Jason to finish and he'll give me one to finish," Karpowicz says. "Then we'll choose which one of those goes in the show."
Karpowicz's and Verbeek's collaborative sculpture will combine granite and water and will be on view in "Connecting the Ages," Oct. 15 through 18.
"My paintings are a mix of contemporary folk and urban pop art," says another featured artist, Anne Leuck Feldhaus. As a self-taught painter from Sparta, Wis., who combines her love of painting with her love of animals -- she has a dog, a cat and a brand new foster puppy from Animal Rescue -- she feels lucky to have been able to leave a corporate job as an events planner to make art full time.
"I do a lot of commissioned pet portraits, and I did the signage and T-shirt this year for the Chicago Animal Control and Rescue Bow Wow Beach Bash adoption event and fund-raiser," she says. "It's lucky I make happy art, because people seem to like to have happy stuff around them." Her work may be seen in the Chicago Art Open, the annual survey show that will include more than 300 artists at the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, Oct. 9-31.
Featured artists range from the accessible to the esoteric, the fun to the brainy. Consider Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, a conceptual and video artist who grew up in Madrid, Spain; Chicago, and Bogota, Colombia, teaches at University of Illinois at Chicago and is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. Manglano-Ovalle describes his sociopolitically conscious work as a series of "collaborations and investigations with architects, scientists, filmmakers, writers and cultural activists." His work can be seen through October at the Block Museum of Art, at Northwestern University in Evanston, in "Gene(sis)," an exhibit that explores human genomics.
Then there's the venerable Margaret Burroughs, painter and printmaker, who founded the South Side Community Art Center in 1939 and, with her husband, Charles Burroughs, started the DuSable Museum of African American History in 1961 in their home. Her work will be included in "African American Art: The Diaspora and Beyond" at the South Shore Cultural Center throughout the month of October.
Other featured artists include Venezuelan ceramicist Dubhe Carreno, whose recently opened gallery in Pilsen, at South Halsted and 18th streets, will host a reception on the evening of Oct. 8, and David Philpot, whose African-inspired carved painted wooden staffs will be on exhibit at Intuit: the Center for Outsider Art, 756 N. Milwaukee, today through Dec. 31.
Margaret Hawkins is a local free-lance writer.
CHICAGO ARTISTS' MONTH
When: Today-Oct. 31
Where: Galleries around town
Tickets: Most are free
Call: (312) 744-6630
