Inside\Within

Anna Kunz's Methods for Non-Containment

Published August, 2017

Anna traverses the span of her paintings by using a thick wooden plank, the tool serving as both a unit of measurement and a stage on which to produce her architecturally-scaled works. By organizing specific colors she creates a continuum that moves from canvas to space, a choreography that implicates any work she chooses to place in its proximity. In addition to her large works on canvas, Anna also creates site-specific paintings that formalize light, ephemeral works that change with the shifting sun.

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Zachary Cahill’s Fluorescent Propaganda

Published August, 2017

Zachary’s studio is one of many sites that has housed the USSA, a series started in 2009 that imagines our society as controlled by a Soviet regime. Through several interrelated projects he has examined the nation’s infrastructure, creating a orphanage, wellness center, and most recently a state church titled the Assembly. Inspired by Marvel comics, Zachary has formed a tetrad of alien gods that serve as the base of the religion, reimagining the letters U, S, S, A as a message from another planet rather than the title of a communist public.

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Nazafarin Lotfi’s Interior Landscape

Published August, 2017

Nazafarin has always been interested in the horizon and what lays just beyond its perceived edge. After exploring the subject conceptually with painting, she has moved her interest to sculpture, exploring horizon and landscape physically through her work with paper maché molds. Her hollow works reveal deep interiors that she imagines could be lived in and used, rather than just serve as objects to be observed. Nazafarin develops these interiors just as much as the sculptures’ exterior surfaces, using the inner cavity to think about both the inner body and core of the earth.

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Margot Bergman’s Internal Other

Published April, 2016

Previously collaborating with anonymous makers of discarded art, Margot has recently begun to work alone with her gestures, allowing traces of what she learned while painting with others to continue to influence her own vocabulary. These larger works, which focus on female images, emotionally link broad paint strokes with manic scribbles. The disparate gestures create a dichotomy within each subject’s face, conjuring an energetic aura that extends beyond the canvas’s edge.

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Bradley Biancardi's Abstract Narratives

Published April, 2016

Connecting each aspect of his painting practice back to drawing, Bradley translates quick sketches in pencil to life-size works that create a physical connection between the viewer and the painting. Recently he has begun to incorporate the use of extended brushes as a way to break down this drawn dexterity, moving away from the predictable nature of each line. Color is then filled in to these large, sketched forms, a frozen narrative where contemporary iconography consciously dates the work.

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Alex Bradley Cohen’s Community-Culled Portraiture

Published February, 2016

Painting from the subjects that surround him, Alex creates portraits of his family and longtime friends— bright works that highlight his relationships in both the past and present. His paintings often take on an autobiographical quality, tracing personal stories from childhood memories to getting his GED. Alex often places himself within a work’s scene, painting multiple versions to represent different aspects of his psyche. Although deeply engaged with painting, he is also an active installation artist, desiring the balance of community-engaged art to his solitary studio time.

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Erin Washington’s Porous Palimpsests

Published February, 2016

Utilizing material as content, Erin produces works on handmade chalkboards with ephemeral materials such as coffee, chalk, and dust. Her works claim the labels of both painting and drawing as she continuously adds and erases marks on top of the abstract pieces. This layering express the history of each work’s construction, leaving evidence of prior marks and feelings within the porous materials. Inspired by the institution in which she works, Erin often pulls imagery from sculptures found in the Art Institute of Chicago, placing ancient Greek pieces like Head of Aphrodite onto her chalk-based works.

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Holly Cahill’s Illuminated Portals

Published February, 2016

Producing illuminated marks on paper and canvas, Holly switches back and forth between two and three dimensions, craving the variety inherent to her colorful practice. Building up color slowly through spray bottles, she softly layers colors she considers joyous, which turn mysterious once covered with graphite and resist. Inspired by both a science fiction and practical definition of portals, she often encourages her two and three dimensional work to reference that of a fourth dimension.

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Zoe Nelson: The Reverse of the Reverse

Published January, 2016

Giving equal thought to both the front and back of the canvas, Zoe has reclassified the sides of her work as “recto” and “verso.” This strategic retitling allows Zoe to democratize the way she views, speaks, and applies paint to the surface of the canvas, attempting to destabilize the hierarchy between front and back. Zoe slices holes into the canvas to expose its inner structure, leaving these open spaces as pauses or portals into more loaded psychological spaces.

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David Leggett’s User-Generated Satire

Published January, 2016

Working equally between painting, print-making, and blogging, David produces content inspired by Youtube comments and the week’s current topics of obsession. Trained in painting, he adds elements of craft onto his large canvases, subtly layering felt, googly eyes and glitter as collaged additions. Often generating dark subject matter on his own, Leggett also turns to his blog for viewer requests which can take his drawings and stamped images into even darker dimensions.

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José Lerma's Neon Gestures

Published October, 2015

Lit with bright, white light from the floor to ceiling window at the front of his studio, José’s work is cast in an ethereal glow, bright pinks, purples, and blues converging to form the faces of bourgeois bankers and 17th century royalty. To create these large paintings José scales up his materials, using brooms to produce thick, sculptural paint strokes. His neon palette and tendency towards light-activated works serves as a distraction to his works’ content, forcing the audience to test their concentration while being bombarded with blinking lights.

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Candida Alvarez's Embodied Biography

Published July, 2015

Candida gives herself over to each of her paintings, inserting her own historical references as well as that of the world around her into shapes that fragment on the canvas. Influenced by the attention-grabbing images on the front of the New York Times, Candida formats her works to express her current obsessions, also including merengue, cartoons, and words that refuse to leave her consciousness. Using cheap materials, Candida begins each work from a non-heroic place, using everything from hardware store paint to cloth dinner napkins.

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Jessica Campbell's Drawn-Out Humor

Published May, 2015

Often using comedic tropes as the subject matter of her practice, Jessica focuses on humor within her performance, drawing, painting, and comics. Relating comedy and art through their guarded expressions of vulnerability, she has begun to mask text within her work, forcing the audience to slowly absorb the words within their camouflaged environments.

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Josh Dihle's Material Lust

Published May, 2015

Josh balances his practice through several mediums, allowing his 3D work to influence the content of his paintings and vice versa. Drawn to organic structures, Josh often incorporates this subject matter into his work, creating paintings with material ranging from mid-Atlantic plants called from memory to fossilized shark teeth imbedded into the canvas.

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Cody Tumblin's Dyed Anti-Relics

Published April, 2015

Meticulously mixing dye like a mad scientist, Cody (who a plethora of beakers) uses the highly calculated process to paint onto cheap cloth. The material, which is often casually strewn around his studio, tends to be hung untraditionally after completion. Recently pieces were stretched into the shape of books from his personal collection as well as hung dangling from a laundry line. Paying attention to the personality of his materials Cody often sews pieces of fabric together to create one piece, using the seam as an opportunity to draw on his works.

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Allison Reimus: Contending With the Edge

Published April, 2015

Allison flattens 3D vessels onto her canvas, concentrating on the static object as an active subject. Constantly thinking about what her vessels should contain, Allison has begun to add texture to her works—first discovering the idea to layer alternate materials after a piece of her ceiling literally fell on her head. Observing both the subject (vessel) and painting as objects, Allison continues her paintings to the edges of her canvas, allowing the often looked over area to become another focal point in her piece.

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Andrew Holmquist's Articulation Through Destruction

Published April, 2015

Embedded within Andrew’s work are the subtle and not so subtle instructions for its final composition. This process is also explored within his video work, 4-5 minute pieces that trace his compositional decisions while keeping a beat to move the audience along at a steady pace. Andrew’s work seduces the viewer into engaging longer than the typical once-over, making sure to entice one from any distance they stand from the canvas.

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Kenrick Mcfarlane's Latent Cartoon Abstractions

Published March, 2015

Consciously leaving the details of himself and present worries at the door, Kenrick uses his studio as a way to play with the inner matter of his subconscious, folding deep memories and scattered inspiration into his work. Simply applying materials to canvas without plan, Kenrick chooses to analyze images only after their creation, often circumventing intention and relying completely on a meditative flow.

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Lyndsey Marko's Tropical-Tinted Now

Published March, 2015

Inspired by cinematic moments, her personal history, and bright florescent accents, Lyndsey paints abstract images of tropical scenes that call forth her childhood in Florida. Previously painting straight from memory as a way to transcribe the last traces of her grandparents’ home, Lyndsey has moved to painting more abstractly, using a mix of oil and spray paint to produce works that play into a common nostalgia.

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Wyatt Grant's Works on Stage

Published February, 2015

Wyatt paints beams of light onto his darkened landscapes, their presence often growing to act more as characters to the narrative rather than visual attributes. Previously focused on printmaking, Wyatt harnesses the practice’s devices and methodologies to create layered scenes akin to juvenile sets, his cut-out and painted figures taking on the appearance of props on a stage.

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Lise Haller Baggesen's Disco Feminism

Published February, 2015

Lise creates work that not only address motherhood and its feminist components, but act as a mother through its execution and content. Her practice focuses on staking out a territory for mothering in contemporary discourse, balancing her vibrant, tented environment with the printed text of her piece Mothernism—a disco beat serving as the lyrical and aesthetic inspiration.

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Elijah Burgher's Portable Ritual Spaces

Published February, 2015

Focused on sigils, Elijah turned his drawings into portable ritual spaces, a way to propel his images on paper into real space. His history of experimental rituals now informs his large, drop cloth paintings, charging them through the act of making each work. Focusing on a specific group of symbols at a time, Elijah allows them to fall out naturally as desires and worries emerge or evolve.

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Magalie Guerin's Repetitious Shape Systems

Published January, 2015

Magalie has had a relationship with a hat-like shape for the past several years of her practice, painting the shape over and over again to create a systematic style to her work. Previously concentrating on detailed ballpoint drawings, Magalie has opened up her practice to embrace color— not settling on a final palette until several layers are built up upon the canvas.

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Matt Morris: Memory as Gesture

Published December, 2014

A writer, educator, critic, and artist, Matt investigates the underlying systems that exist beneath that which is most familiar. Working from a studio that also serves as an office and library, Matt allows each to influence the other, transparent about how the many positions he holds are continuously engaged with one another.

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Chelsea Culp's Memory-Tied Talismans

Published December, 2014

Arranged from overlooked memories, Chelsea’s paintings tap into the undocumented moments of her recent past, turning them into fantasy on canvas. Often distracted by images imprinted on her mind, Chelsea chooses to paint the images instead, removing them from her consciousness so her focus remains on her environmental paintings and cement-dipped sculptures.

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Maddie Reyna's Disrupted Documentation

Published October, 2014

Smattered with objects Maddie has stolen from various chain retail locations, her studio exists as a gathering place for her girly aesthetic. Gold flowers and doodled hearts cover her foamcore pieces, works not focused on precise production but rather how that lack of perfection is perceived. Often incorporating correspondence into projects, Maddie explores others’ value systems— whether institutional or tied to one’s obsession with frivolous accessories.

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Phyllis Bramson's Complex Eroticism

Published October, 2014

Phyllis’s studio in her Greektown loft appears as a collage itself, filled with drawers and portfolios that contain the scraps and images that she layers onto her complex works. Phyllis’s pieces have the quality of a collected chaos, abstracted narratives of fairytales and erotic encounters weaved throughout her large-scale pieces.

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McArthur Binion's Labor-Based Narratives

Published September, 2014

McArthur works with relics of his past, placing tiled autobiographical documents into his paintings. Within his DNA Studies series McArthur focused on the individuals that comprised his address book, while his new series, Haints, points to his Mississippi past and Southern upbringing. Forced to be left-handed as a child, McArthur has long embraced using both hands, keeping both sharp to ensure lack of fatigue during his labor-intensive process.

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Josh Reames's Compositional Illusions and Palm Trees

Published September, 2014

Previously focusing on the subject of escapism, Josh has recently moved away from escapist imagery, instead focusing on the removal of hierarchy from his compositions. Josh creates the illusion of depth within his work by heavily incorporating textured paper and shadowed objects, such as emojis. By placing the modern day hieroglyphics into his painted works, Josh creates a universal language of objects that exudes a dry sense of humor.

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Geoffrey Todd Smith's Diaristic Abstractions

Published August, 2014

Geoffrey creates paintings based on a grid, forcing the eye to twirl and race off the edge of his pieces through cyclical marks based in bright, eye-pounding shades. Spending almost as much time on the title as the actual piece, Geoffrey creates controversial text dripping in sleaze and wit which encourages the audience to penetrate his mind during the paintings’ elongated conception.

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Cody Hudson's Cut Paper Crossovers

Published August, 2014

Once obsessed with limiting the connections between his paintings and graphic design, Cody has recently migrated to an acceptance of their related imagery, allowing his painting to become more planned. Cody continues to produce graphic design work for his company Struggle Inc., while also focusing further into the overlapping influence of cut paper collages within his large metal sculptures and paintings.

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Kate Ruggeri's Personally-Bound Sculptures

Published June, 2014

Kate’s studio is large and open, objects and paintings clinging to the walls and floor in an array of completion. Often requested to make larger sculptural objects for shows, Kate places her own items inside, giving personal objects a newly enshrined existence.

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Adam Scott's Liquid Hedonism

Published May, 2014

Adam’s studio takes up the majority of his rehabbed Wicker Park home’s basement, stacks of paintings and carefully curated collages scattering the bright space. Addressing American paranoia through thickly poured paint, Adam warps imagery that dually seduces and repulses his audience.

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Leslie Baum's Hydradic Appetite

Published April, 2014

Leslie’s studio is a storefront in Logan Square, a vast white space and former bodega a 1/2 block from her home. Utilizing all surfaces including the floor, Leslie works on several pieces at once to feed the many heads of her Hydra-like practice.

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Melanie Pankau's Geometric Meditations

Published April, 2014

Melanie’s studio overlooks the skyline, a bright loft divided between her and her husband. Strands of tape litter one wall, pickings of her purposeful procedures in line and geometric form. Focusing intently on palette and drawings, Melanie’s paintings go through several preliminary rounds before finally ending on a finished product.

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Sofia Leiby's Nostalgia for the Future

Published March, 2014

Sofia’s studio is within her Logan Square home, just beyond a make-shift wall that physically separates her studio from her bed. Casually entering and exiting the room’s divide, Sofia focuses on her painting practice which has increasingly begun to lean toward the personal.

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Samantha Bittman's Patterned Prototypes

Published February, 2014

Samantha has traditionally created weavings and paintings out of her West Loop studio, but has recently moved her practice to incorporate small, unfixed tiles. The tiles remain separate, coming together to create site-specific patterns originally inspired by the weavings that she still creates on her in-studio loom.

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Steven Husby's Slowly Rotating Gestures

Published January, 2014

Steven is a painter and obsessive Tumblr curator living and working in Rogers Park. Through selective restriction, Steven produces meditative graphics with absolute precision.

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Renee Robbins's Macro-Biotic Breeds

Published January, 2014

Renee generates minute and magnificently detailed lifeforms in her home and studio a short walk from the California Blue Line. By exploring both the macro and micro, she creates hybrid environments not found in the world or known cosmos.

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Sarah Leitten's Earth Juice

Published November, 2013

Sarah is a comic artist, sculptor, musician, and turtle owner living and making art in Humboldt Park. In addition to wood burning, comic creation, and mud monster molding, Sarah also uses her studio for sleeping, spying on the neighbors, and white magic.

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