I recently had the opportunity to chat up Sixty writer Jenny Lam. She takes on many roles within the art world and I learned that, in addition to writing and curating, she started an artist representation business. I also learned that Jenny’s witty humor is not in short supply. Sixty on Sixty is a new series in which SIFCers interview one another, allowing readers to get to know the fine folks who... 

As the 2011 Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festvial was kicking off on Friday, I stopped by to speak with Jenn Grossman and Ryan Scheidt, the curators of Satellite: New Media Arts Exhibition, which is housed in three locations along Milwaukee Avenue. Satellite curators Jenn Grossman and Ryan Scheidt. (Photo credit: Jennifer Nalbantyan). Upon walking into the space at 2741 N Milwaukee Avenue I was met by the... 

File Type is a show currently on view at Gallery 400, which attempts to move beyond the general realm of “digital art” into a more nuanced exploration of the many iterations of commonly used files types such as .jpg, .pdf and .tiff. I had a chance to meet up with the curators of the show, Chaz Evans and Lorelei Stewart, at Gallery 400. We discussed the relevance of approaching new media with... 

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Clare Lyster, an architecture professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and principal and founder of Clare Lyster Urbanism and Architecture (CLUAA).  Her exhibition, SYSTEMscapes/Drawing Distribution Flow, is currently on view in the showPODS along the 1800 block of South Halsted in the Chicago Arts District. The exhibition displays Lyster’s... 

This past weekend, the winners and outstanding submissions of The Air We Breathe: The Chicago Clean Air Design Competition were revealed in an exhibition space during Pilsen’s 2nd Friday art walk.  The competition was hosted by the volunteer initiative, Design Makes Change: A Chicago Design Initiative, and called for design entries that would address the issue of air pollution in the Pilsen... 

Non-profits like Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education were among the highlights of this year’s Art Chicago lineup. CAPE is an organization which works on many levels to advance the arts within education by working with teachers, artists, and students.  The organization is involved in very important work within Chicago, but people may not know much about what they do.  I was recently able to follow... 

Last Thursday, people gathered at the Bridgeport Art Center for an art auction benefiting Howard Brown Health Center, the Midwest’s largest LGBT healthcare organization. The show was hosted by the Artists of EastBank, an artist collective with the Bridgeport Art Center, who asked exhibiting artists to purchase items from the Brown Elephant and turn them into works of art.   If you’ve... 

Despite the frenzy of activity at Art Chicago this past weekend, I was fortunate to be able to interview Rob Lentz, the Program Director of Project Onward, an organization housed under the Chicago Cultural Center which provides studio space for and promotes the professional growth of artists with mental or developmental disabilities.  They take a unique approach as a community based organization working... 

I recently met up with the two women behind threewalls’ current threewallsSALON series, Ania Szremski and Rebecca Hernandez.  Both are currently studying for their MA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and have a breadth of knowledge about, well, the idea of knowledge itself.  We covered a range of topics, from our realization that we each have an apparent “imposter complex” to professionalization... 

Eileen Myles recently gave a talk entitled “MYSELF (pornography)” at Gallery 400. Having experienced it, “performance” is actually a more apt word to describe what unfolded. This performance seemed to punctuate the shows that had just wrapped up at Gallery 400—Kerstin Honeit’s “Ambiguity is my Weapon” and “Bless this Mess” with Edie Fake, Forced into Femininity, Robin Hustle &...