Newcity Chicago October 2020

Design Gnat Rosa Madrid/Photo: Brittany Sowacke Glitter Kink unusual color combinations and the fashion collective, the Antwerp Six. Gnat's Quest to Offer Fetish Gear and Bondage for All “To see the sexuality and wellness industry blow up over the last five to seven years makes me By Kaycie Surrell so happy for the world, because I feel like people are getting in touch with pleasure in a I can only see Gnat Rosa Madrid’s eyes partner Chris, we were looking at all the art way that’s making us happier, more activated OCTOBER 2020 Newcity over the rim of her protective mask but they and it’s just like what I make but different, one people,” says Gnat. “I think pleasure is light up when she shows me a gift from her even had the same sequins I use glued around essential to living your life and connecting with parents—a Virgen de Guadalupe decoupage the Virgen, so it’s pretty obvious where I get others, and most importantly connecting with to put in her brand new studio space in my inspiration.” yourself.” Rogers Park. She tells me how the oval nimbus surrounding the Virgen is like a vulva, Gnat started her business selling glittery vinyl The word “fetish” wasn’t always as closely the cloak she wears like labia. and plastic bondage gear in 2012, a year associated as it is today with sexual expres- before graduating with her BFA from the sion and gratification. Originally referring to “I’m Mexican-American and some people are School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She objects or amulets thought to offer protection, like, ‘Oh, it's so interesting that your family is spent a summer working with eclectic that definition later broadened to include Mexican Catholic and you make kink-wear,’ German fashion designer Bernhard Willhelm objects of irrational devotion or ideas. Fetish and it’s like have you seen Mexican art?” says and worked briefly with Belgian designer fashion is any style, appearance, clothing type, Gnat. “When I was in Mexico City with my Walter Van Beirendonck—known for his or accessory created with provocative intent. 51

Materials like leather, latex, plastic, spandex tric fetish and bondage gear, Gnat has stayed and fishnet fabrics are often associated with busy. Her hard work and obvious talent fetishwear, as are stiletto shoes and stylized haven’t gone unnoticed—she’s designed undergarments. one-of-a-kind pieces for performers like Chicago’s Lucy Stoole and last year she While fetish gear might be having a moment, designed a full set for Lizzo. we’ve been drawn to the provocative and Gnat’s sales boomed when the quarantine taboo for nearly as long as we’ve been wearing clothes. Early fetish designers Nativa went into effect, something she attributes to her customers realizing they might be stuck Richard and her husband founded their fetishwear company Yva Richard in France just at home for a while and feeling ready to a few weeks before the outbreak of World War experiment. “I’ve worked on this business I. They started with fetish-inspired hats, lingerie and this practice for so long and it’s amazing to finally be hitting a place where it’s DESIGN TOP 5 and shoes, and expanded the business by sustainable for me and by some sort of 1 Open House Chicago. Chicago selling bondage photographs and exotic Architecture Center. The annual magical preference of people at home, my free public festival gives a look behind accessories like leashes, collars and whips. the scenes of Chicago’s landmarks. business has grown during this,” says Gnat. October 16-25 Leather culture and the harnesses, masks “I definitely feel very empathetic toward smaller 2 Luftwerk & Normal: SOS Color Code 2020. Elmhurst Art and associated accessories are speculated businesses where that’s been the opposite, Museum. Luftwerk design duo Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero to have grown out of post-World War II biker so it’s tricky to want to celebrate my growth collaborate with Normal Studio’s culture. Chuck Renslow opened the first gay while being empathetic and helpful to others.” Renata Graw to create Color Code, a work that visualizes SOS, the leather bar in the United States in Chicago in Now that Gnat has moved her business international distress signal, as colored flags rather than Morse code. 1958, and in the early nineties, he and Tony into a larger studio, she hopes to Through November 3 DeBlase founded the Leather Archives and eventually be able to provide jobs to queer 3 Balkrishna Doshi: Architecture for the People. Museum less than a ten-minute walk from folks and open it up to the community as a Wrightwood 659. Sixty years of work by the first Indian architect to Gnat’s new studio. space for workshops. She and her partner receive the Pritzker Prize. Through December 12 “I’ve always been out and queer but when I Chris, a nurse at Howard Brown, are 4 Design Chicago. Merchandise was younger I don’t think I realized being committed to a better queer, liberated Mart. Architecture and interior furnishings at the Midwest’s largest queer could be feminine,” says Gnat. “I future and also plan to use the space to residential design conference. October 6-8 remember buying some gray leather from the house donations and medical kits. The goal is to give back to the same communi- 5 Womanish. 114 South State textile outlet and making a mock-up of a Street. A five-floor multisensory ty that supported Gnat when she moved photo-worthy experience created to harness. I didn’t really think it was ‘me’ but celebrate womanhood. Through to Chicago just over a decade ago. October 4 then I bought some glitter vinyl and made a 52 harness, some cuffs, and a blindfold for a “I feel really lucky that growing up as a queer gallery show. It just hit my freak button and person in this city, I pretty immediately found I’ve been making them ever since.” groups and communities that I could be part Gnat’s “Party Gurl Collection” is a holographic, of. One of my first queer parties was glittery assortment of metallic confetti pieces Chances Dances [a nightlife collective for queer people from 2005-2018] and they were pressed between clear PVC and fashioned how I met queer people and discovered into collars, cuffs, and even a “Kinky Lock & Key Earring Set” with a working lock in silver queer sex and found my identity,” says Gnat. chrome. The “Lover Babe: Valentines 2020” “Chicago really feels like my home, I became the person I am today here.” collection indulges the fantasy with heart- shaped glitter and steel linked chains. Gnat recently launched a GoFundMe to “People will often say, 'Oh my God, your crowdfund start-up costs of a new work- harnesses remind me of my Trapper Keeper space and shop. Donations mean she’ll be when I was a kid,' and they think I’ll be able to purchase better equipment and surprised to hear them say that but like, that’s supplies that are needed to produces her high-quality harnesses and fetish gear definitely on the vision board,” says Gnat. “I efficiently and safely. She plans to work Newcity OCTOBER 2020 like to think of fashion as a vehicle to get to this heightened erotic place, so even if you're diligently to generate sales which enable her not tying your bra to your cuffs or engaging in to continue making investments and donations to Black, trans and minority funds. some kind of scene, that fashion piece becomes fetishwear because it puts you in “I don't know what the future of my store will an erotic state of being.” look like. Luckily, until I figure it out, I'm just Balancing school, working as a barista in a gonna keep making strap on harnesses and specialty coffee shop while organizing and people are gonna keep buying them,” says hosting regular nightlife events at clubs Gnat. “The world is so fucking crazy, why not around the city, and making her femme-cen- do what makes me happy?”

D&rDininkiinngg Because I am so fond of the stuff, I was thrilled to see photos of the gelatin-based creations being turned out by Ken Albala, author (of over two dozen books) and food historian/professor at the University of the Pacific. Albala has a book (University of Illinois, 2021) coming out about jello (small J, no hyphen, to distinguish it from the name brand). Albala has been developing some stunning jello creations, so I called him up to get his insights into this miraculous, though much maligned, foodstuff. Jello is a kind of jokey food, usually presented in super-bright colors, transpar- ent and jiggly. It is, in short, a food that no one seems to take very seriously, though it is not uncommon to see gelatin (usually from agar or carrageenan) at higher-end places like Alinea, Chicago’s only Michelin three-star. One source of gelatin for molecular gastronomists at the higher end of the food industry is Modernist Pantry [modernistpantry.com], which boasts they “have everything you need to make culinary magic happen in your kitchen.” Ken Albala’s Recipe for Cooked Peach and Candied Walnut in Gin Jello/photo: Ken Albala But you don’t need to be a Michelin chef to make the cool gelatin creations like Albala’s. Make Room for Jell-O “Ninety-five percent of my recipes use Knox gelatin,” says Albala, “because it’s standard, A Perennial Favorite May Be Making a Comeback and the measurements are standard. Thing is, it’s made by the same company, Kraft, that By David Hammond makes Jell-O, so it all comes out of the same factory. Still, I’d rather use unflavored Knox Years ago, my favorite restaurant was buffet, such styles of dining are disappearing gelatin than that pre-flavored, artificially OCTOBER 2020 Newcity Horwath’s, a supper club in Elmwood Park, as the pandemic makes such communal colored Jell-O.” and I went there several times a month. For dining seem risky. the appetizer, I’d order the Jell-O with Melba So, you can make some awesome dishes Sauce, a throwback rarity not found on many For the past few weeks, I’ve been eating four with jello, but it’s still going to be a hard sell twenty-first-century menus. Horwath’s is long cups of the stuff every day. Whenever I for some folks because jello is kind of, you gone but if you’re in the mood for Jell-O mention this food fetish to family and friends, know, hard to take seriously. Though both either before or after dinner, your best bet is I get an eyeroll and a look that says, “You’re Albala and I consider jello a viable foodstuff, at Polish restaurants, like Jolly Inn on Irving kidding, right?” No, I’m not. I like jello, it’s Albala admits that his experimentation with, Park. Alas, as many times the jello was super low cal, and a cool thing to eat on a and writings about, jello are all “slightly served in little glass goblets as part of the hot night. tongue-in-cheek, because what I’m doing is partly scary, partly humorous and partly serious. I’ve tried to ride that line. People don’t really know if I’m serious or joking or really trying to create art. People will say ‘that sounds gross,’ but they’ll taste it anyway.” Albala explains that “jello is a food that has been disparaged over the last thirty years or so, and that’s not a new thing. Jello has gone in and out of fashion very dramatically since the late Middle Ages.” During the medieval period, Albala says, “people used to like bright colorful surprises at the table.” (Think 53

DINING & DRINKING four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.) Ken Albala’s Recipe for TOP 5 “And it was the same thing in the fifties when Cooked Peach and Candied people enjoyed bright, modern flavors and Walnut in Gin Jello 1 The Chef and the Dish. wanted something really unusual,” though in Online. Sign up and you receive the “past twenty years or so, people have When the peaches you bought at the market a shopping list and online directions tended to prefer food that is homey, simple are overripe, remove the pits and slice them for preparing any one of dozens of and local. That’s not jello, which is modern skin and all, put them in a nonstick pan and dishes, presented in concert with and technologically driven and you don’t toss on sugar and maybe a little vanilla extract. names in Chicago food, like J.P. really know how it works. Jello, sometimes in Gently cook them, so the juice reduces slowly Graziano, Bende, The Spanish the form of aspics, was very fashionable in until the peaches are thick; then place Square and Mitsuwa. the late nineteenth century, and there are everything in a jar. The quantity you make is of hundreds of recipes for gelatin salads course entirely dependent upon whatever you 2 The Chopping Block. Zoom. containing fruits and vegetables and meat. have on hand. Or proceed with this recipe While closed, the Chopping The classic is Perfection Salad,” a jello loaf using a commercial whole fruit preserve. The Block store at Merchandise Mart with lemon vinaigrette and chopped charm I think is using a fluted mold that makes presents Zoom classes given by vegetables, “which was a starter.” the slices look like pie—this was a plastic chefs who lead cook-along classes container from an order of takeout chow mein. for beginner as well as accomplished Sounds like perfection to me. home chefs. One cup peach preserves “People always think I’m being ironic,” says One cup walnuts 3 The Kid’s Table. Facebook Live. Albala, “and they say, ‘Oh, you’re doing like a One-half cup unrefined sugar The Kid’s Table, a Chicago- retro jello salad mold,’ but no, I’m not doing One-quarter teaspoon ground cinnamon based virtual cooking class for the that at all.” A pinch of salt young, is an excellent way to give the kids professionally guided kitchen Some samples of Albala’s creations include One cup water experiences, as well as a sanity- Sauvignon Blanc Jello-Stuffed Pasta Shells, Juice of one lemon supporting strategy for parents to Finger Lime, on Smashed Blackberries with One-half cup sugar get a few hours of respite. a Smudge of Chevre, as well as Poke Salad Two drops lemon extract of Cod and Mango Set with Rum Jello and One-quarter cup gin 4 The Social Table. Zoom. Shichimi Togarashi in a Cannoli Tube. At the One packet of gelatin The Armitage location of the end of this article, you will find a recipe for Social Table, closed but now his Cooked Peach and Candied Walnut in In a nonstick pan, place the walnuts, sugar, reopened, continues  online cooking Gin Jello, which I’d be glad to see set in cinnamon and salt. Heat on low until the classes for children and adults. front of me. sugar melts, then stir to coat the nuts. Don’t touch them, but put aside on a plate to 5 Le Cordon Bleu. Online. Fancy, right? cool. Put the peach preserve and walnuts in You have time on your hands, a mold. Put the water on the stove to boil so why not get a culinary arts degree? Albala’s creations are cool to look at, and and combine all the other ingredients to let Or at least take some classes? they frequently pack a mild buzz. “I put the gelatin bloom. Then add the boiling Get recreation, an education or alcohol in almost all of them,” says Albala, water and pour into the mold. Let set in the both, online at any one of the Le “which are jello shots, pretty much. Some- refrigerator. Slice into wedges and serve, Cordon Bleu locations, including times I use wine, for flavor. What I’m doing is perhaps with ice cream. the one in London. combining, for instance, a fancy appetizer Newcity OCTOBER 2020 with a cocktail, so they could function as an 54 appetizer or a dessert. I probably wouldn’t have something like that for a main meal.” I would. In what may be a sign of the return of comforting jello—if not Jell-O—during these difficult times, our local Jewel has been out of Knox gelatin packages for going on a month. Perhaps, like Albala, others are re-discover- ing this sometimes beloved, sometimes disdained food.

Film and rocketing fortunes, the intrigues of getting movies done under twentieth-century film finance, his own fears and failings. “My life after that would never be the same. I’d work for real studios, with real money. I’d go on to have an up-and-down career like most of us, each film widening my view of the world as I went; actually, the films were shock absorbers, marching me through decades of an intense, almost insane American experience… The constant strain of a dog-eat-dog film business geared to make money can wear any good soul to the bone. The movies give, and they destroy,” Stone writes in gentle rat-a-tat-tat. “This is a story about making a dream at all costs, even without money. It’s about cutting corners, improvising, hustling, cobbling together workarounds to get movies made and into theaters, not knowing where the next payday is coming from—or the next monsoon or scorpion bite.” John Boorman's \"Point Blank\" Dramatic and melodramatic, analytic and relentlessly self-shredding, Stone pleases his Lucent Dreaming perceived audience with a salutary amount of gibes, a squint-eyed menace at those who The Matter of Memories cross him. As one of the costly writers on what became “Top Gun,” Stone recalls that By Ray Pride hit’s co-producer. “Don Simpson would die, bloated and prematurely, of heart failure at Remembering memories of remembering: tell stories from fresh perspective can flare fifty-two in 1996; it was reported that he was OCTOBER 2020 Newcity that’s the nested nature of a good filmmaker mightily or more commonly, tamp last, sitting on a toilet in his mansion, alone, memoir. Worthy memories are caught on film, deadly embers. reading James Riordan’s 1995 biography of and in so many cases, the stories that were my life when he keeled over. I do hope he delved and mined and detonated wisp away The finest efflorescence of the auto(bi- was at least enjoying himself. I always felt a as lives go by. ographical) impulse in this cloistering season certain kinship in his dancing eyes for the was Karina Longworth’s “Polly Platt: The madness of this life.” Of course, there need to be more simmering Invisible Woman,” her “You Must Remember and explosive other stories, less-etched This” audio adaptation and expansion of the Reviewers get a shaggy nod, too. “Most lives of the phalanx of workers who are incomplete memoir on the foundered were generally negative” about “Scarface,” necessary to make most movies; the directorial career of Polly Platt, who excelled he writes, “and sometimes cruel, separating inattention of publishing may be as much as writer, producer, mentor and mind, who their cult-like devotion to De Palma, who had at fault as criticism and scholarship. (Tell-alls was much more than the maudlin muse a semi-Hitchcock status with them, from and show-hows could use the contrast of who first supported the ambitions of the Pacino and myself—that violent writer. 'A De why-nots and what-should-have-beens.) terrible infant Peter Bogdanovich. It’s terrific, Palma Movie for People Who Don’t Like De and titanic. Palma Movies' read the title of Pauline Kael’s In the best of the books we have, from review in The New Yorker… Her review Josef von Sternberg to Derek Jarman and Summer brought Oliver Stone’s autumnal typified a new kind of self-conscious film beyond, the work that has been made is “Chasing the Light,” a sweet, earnest rebuke criticism, and it ruined a lifetime of going to experienced in amber, further refracted if the to the seventy-four-year-old filmmaker’s late the movies for me. A sort of super-fandom film artist has the late-career opportunity to fiction like “Snowden.” Stone writes clearly wherein the critic, putting himself or herself recollect, as well as the necessary zeal to about the particulars of his youthful ambitions between the movie and the audience, reveled in his or her subjective, specialized knowl- edge of the filmmaker, as opposed to just watching a movie without knowing who made it—as when we were young. The audience, for the most part, might not know who directed it, and it shouldn’t matter. A film exists on its own merits—no cheating 55

FILM TOP 5 (snap up any of the thirteen volumes you find online) and has written earlier memoirs includ- 1 The Trial of the Chicago 7. ing “Money into Light” and “Adventures of a Netflix, October 16. Aaron Sorkin Suburban Boy.” Still, “Conclusions,” as swings at directing for the big screen Boorman journeys down his many rivers again. Cast including Sacha Baron toward his eighty-eighth birthday, is brisk, Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Yahya melancholy entertainment. He is the vivid Abdul-Mateen II, Jeremy Strong, storyteller, elegantly daubing details. Mark Rylance, John Carroll Lynch, Newcity OCTOBER 2020 Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Frank Langella, allowed (reviews, money thrown at it, Boorman has told his fine-feathered William Hurt and Michael Keaton. promotions, etc.).” anecdotes down to bone, toward compacted comic asperity, but that’s no complaint. 2 Time. Oct. 9 in theaters; Oct.23, Most films in our world suffer from no “There is a story I have often repeated of a Prime Video. Garrett Bradley's promotion. Pamela Cohn, an arts journalist, dinner with Lee Marvin on Venice Pier. Lee doc is an unusually intimate portrait curator and festival programmer, accrued a got very drunk, and I insisted on driving his of Fox Rich, an entrepreneur, raft of pungent profiles (often featured in car,” Boorman recalls. “We struggled over the abolitionist and mother of six boys BOMB and Filmmaker), as “Lucid Dreaming,” keys, and when I eventually prevailed, to save who has spent over twenty years of makers of lesser notice (but not of lesser face he would not get in the car but climbed fighting for the release of her note) whose work may be known to the most up onto the roof, refusing to come down. It husband, Rob G. Rich. informed and the most involved of what was late at night, but he lived only a few comprised the festival circuit until spring of miles down the Pacific Coast Highway, so I 3 The War With Grandpa. this year. drove carefully along it. I was pulled over by a Opens October 9. But is it a cop, who moved over to my window, looked dirty war with Dirty Grandpa? Robert I think of Cohn’s conversations, as with the up and said, ‘Do you know you’ve got Lee De Niro, Uma Thurman, Rob Riggle best of head-to-head banter, as engaged first Marvin on your roof?'” and Oakes Fegley star. sketches of biographies or autobiographies about minds of major moment, stories told Smallest asides bloom into ready lesson. 4 Death On The Nile. Opens here by twenty-nine filmmakers, including the “’The General,’” he writes of a small, late great October 23. Can uber-prolific Philippines’ Khavn, Syria’s Orwa Nyrabia picture, “had street scenes, and I cringed at hack Kenneth Branagh deliver on (filmmaker and artistic director of International red and blue cars and orange-garbed street the swank-slick trailer for “Death on Documentary Festival Amsterdam), Brazilian workers distracting from the action. I opted the Nile” (scored to Depeche Mode’s director Karim Aïnouz, Americans Travis to shoot in black and white. One could argue “Policy of Truth\"), his follow-up (with Wilkerson and Terence Nance, and a few that film was at its purest when shot on that screenwriter Michael Green) to Chicago-affiliated filmmakers, including Film early, flammable, silver nitrate stock. When it “Murder on the Orient Express” on 50 alumni Shengze Zhu, Deborah Stratman caught fire, it produced oxygen, so it was the Agatha Christie couture and and J. P. Sniadecki. almost impossible to put out. Safety film haberdashery floor? Cry hubris and lacked the silky blacks and snowy whites lose the goofy anachronisms Writing as a non-scholar, Cohn says that she and luminosity of silver nitrate. The color hoped to “capture a sort of zeitgeist moment stocks that followed were over-saturated and 5 The Fifty-Sixth Chicago in nonfiction moving image as it reflects the garish. The more film struggled to simulate International Film Festival. world around us in very special ways, encom- reality, the further away it got. Film, at its best, October 14-25. Fifty features in a passing the socio- and geo-political nature of offers a parallel, contiguous world as real and \"hybrid\" edition, shown at Chi-Town the critical impulse, activism, notions of as unreal as a dreamscape. Film is metaphor. Movies drive-in and virtually, kicking off beauty, sonic espionage and borders both ‘Point Blank’ was my first color film, and I with R. J. Cutler's John Belushi doc. mobile and immobile.” The prose is wiry and struggled to deal with color in a noir film that The keynote speaker of the Industry the queries spiked: Cohn brings out the best cried out for black-and-white. I decided to Days sidebar, which runs October verbiage from makers of vivid, visceral, shoot each scene highlighting a single color, 14-18, is producer and president of uncompromising work, in ways that look moving through the spectrum from greys Plan B Entertainment Dede Gardner, directly at our moment, not back (and and blues up to the final scene in dark red. whose credits include 12 Years A perhaps, by fortune, not forward). This unity gave power to the scenes. Too Slave and Moonlight. many colors drench the retina and dissipate Always looking forward even as he leans the impact.” 56 backward, the British writer-director John Boorman is chiseling stone earnestly and Voice that sings and soars, yet the tale is told gainfully at the end of his career, and his before you know it: memoirs ought to be “Conclusions” is a flinty, yet funny-to-riotous more than birth and some muddle in the take on his decades among film folk while middle on a clumsy course toward the getting away with mad-as-a-rat movies like precipice of death. Boorman shames many “Point Blank” and “Deliverance” and “Excali- from this volume’s first words, with a preface bur.” Boorman co-edited a splendid that is introduction and ending alike, spare, long-running film journal, “Projections” earned, luscious: “In old age, words escape me. If I wait patiently, they float up, and I recapture them. If that fails, I am obliged to go down to the cellar, where they languish, and drag them back up. I note that water is starting to seep into the cellar. I fear some words will drown and be lost for ever. The quest for harmony of word and image has been my life. Sight loss is making the world look like late Turners. While I still can, I hasten to testify.”

Kathleen Rooney Lit /Photo: Beth Rooney A World One of the most hopelessly idealistic nick- Rooney’s novel rises above the clichéd glamor Without names of all time has to be “the war to end of bullet wounds and artillery strikes, instead War all wars,” considering that World War I was revealing that when it comes to something as anything but that. Not only did its conclusion annihilating as World War I, there are no clear An Interview bring about the Treaty of Versailles—practically winners or losers. with Kathleen Rooney a Kickstarter campaign for round two—but the immense tragedy and death resulting from I spoke to Rooney over the phone about her By Tim Cundy four years of brutal trench warfare left nations experience researching characters who lived confused as to why they sacrificed so many over a century ago, how their actions could be of their bright young men for a cause that a valuable lesson, and how the romanticization OCTOBER 2020 Newcity came from an obscure, zigzagging chain of of war stories can be a slippery slope. events that can barely be remembered by most high school students during exam time. World War I is such a complex and dense period of history, filled with Riddled with misinterpretations, that war hundreds and hundreds of different and its many lessons were largely swept stories. How did you manage to narrow under the rug of history. Kathleen Rooney’s a novel down to the unique narratives new historical fiction novel, “Cher Ami and of Cher Ami and Charles Whittlesey? Major Whittlesey,” looks into the forgotten lives of individuals who endured the tortuous I’ve always wanted to write about World War I, fighting. Writing from the perspectives of its but before I learned of Cher Ami and Whit, title characters, Rooney follows a homing- I wasn’t going to. What could I say about pigeon-turned-hero who saved the lives of this massive event? After a former student of 195 American soldiers who were stranded mine encouraged me to look her up, Cher Ami in the Argonne Forest under the command became my first fascination; she was my way of their beloved leader Major Whittlesey. into the story, but almost simultaneously I fell 57

Newcity OCTOBER 2020 LIT TOP 5 down the rabbit hole of Whit as well. I was Coppola. One way I managed to do this was drawn to both of them right away because to shift my focus from the larger events to the 1 Chicago Poetry, Then even by Googling to the shallowest extent, smaller details. I don’t want to be crude, but and Now. Newberry Library. you see they both have this really interesting war is crude, war is obscene, war is bodily, Suzanne Buffam, Srikanth Reddy gender and sexuality situation where Cher Ami and when the battalion is stuck in the Argonne and Ed Roberson and the was misgendered as a male pigeon her entire Forest for days, the latrines are overfilled and Newberry’s Liesl Olson discuss life and Whit, based on most researched they are literally living in their own shit. It’s really the role of Chicago as a home accounts, lived a clandestine life as a gay man. hard to read scenes like that and come away and influence for the city’s poets. thinking, “I wish I fought in World War I.” Register for the free Zoom event Obviously, it isn’t difficult to instantly in advance. October 6, 6pm sympathize with Whit and Cher Ami’s Global events are constantly being put struggles, but something I found impres- into the mind frame of war. Essential 2 Mijente LatiNext Poetry sive was how closely I connected with workers are “frontline workers.” Candi- Salon. Chicago Public the characters fighting alongside these dates are visiting “battleground states.” Library. Contributors to “The protagonists such as Zip Cepaglia and Trump was recently reported by The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext” Captain McMurtry. How did you maintain Atlantic calling wounded veterans “losers.” read from the anthology as part the emotional core of the story without What can this infusion of war jargon of Latinx Heritage Month. The losing these details that painted the have on a country’s way of thinking? reading will air live and as well picture of the Lost Battalion? as archived on CPL’s YouTube I finished writing this book years ago, and channel. October 7, 6pm One of the things I think about a lot is the no author knows when their book is going information-intimacy axis that fiction operates to come out, but I certainly did not imagine 3 Poetry & Biscuits with on where the more information you get from that it’d be coming out in a year with Trump Kazim Ali, Anastacia- a novel, the less intimacy you feel. When versus Biden or during a global pandemic. Reneé, Chris Martin and Ted Both of these situations have this war-oriented Mathys. Carrie Olivia Adams you’re pulled back language of life or death, victor or loser, black usually hosts this as an intimate, to get a global or white and I think putting non-war situations salon-style reading here in picture, you’re inside of war rhetoric develops this mindset Chicago. Now you can join more informed of a zero-sum game where there can be no the featured authors online and but you don’t feel half measures. This thinking doesn’t give enjoy whatever you like at home. as emotionally the necessary room to develop empathetic connected, and strategies for change. Although to be clear, October 8, 7:30pm sometimes the defeating Trump is a matter of life or death, more intimate and we need to choose life. I wouldn’t use 4 Index of Haunted Houses. you are with a a war metaphor to define the election, but Pilsen Community Books. character, the I would use the metaphor that Trumpism is Adam O. Davis is joined by Kiki less information a death cult. Petrosino and Eduardo C. Corral you learn from to celebrate his collection of ghost a global event, Looking at something like world war and stories for this event streamed on so I was really other world-involving events like global YouTube Live. October 14, 7pm trying to balance warming, the line between emotions information versus and facts often blurs. During the writing 5 The Man of the Crowd: intimacy. There’s this clichéd proverb that goes, process, did you ever come to certain Edgar Allan Poe and the “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a ideas about how these two could be City. American Writers Museum. statistic.” That was something I was thinking separated for positive change? Just before Halloween, Scott about a lot because numerically WW I should Peeples discusses how Edgar horrify us. There were twenty million casualties, It’s difficult to say because if I knew how to Allan Poe’s work was informed by half of which were noncombatants. That alone successfully do that I’d probably run for office life in several cities, and how those should stop us in our tracks, but it does and or rule the world. But in all seriousness, I’m places left their marks on Poe’s it doesn’t. You take a number like twenty leery as an artist of conflating art and politics. writing. October 27, 6:30pm million and it becomes an intellectual exercise. I think they have a relationship, but they are What I hoped for was that if the novel focused separate things. I hope I wrote an antiwar 58 on these individual stories, then the narrative novel, but I do not naively believe this novel could embody the true tragedy. will stop war. Having said that, I do think that the negotiation between facts and emotions There’s that Hemingway cliché of a in the so-called “real world” is going to hinge romantic war story where some guy does on narratives and stories, some of which may the equivalent of blowing up a bridge as a be novels. The narrativization of problems sacrifice for the greater good, but unlike puts people in action. I don’t want to apply most popular war films and books, your war metaphors to climate change, but they’re novel avoids that. Was it a challenge to both these hyper-object situations that are avoid this glamorization while writing? difficult to wrap our minds around. It seems like we have the knowledge to never go to war I was super-aware of the tradition of war again, we have the knowledge to not destroy literature and war cinema where even stuff our planet and ourselves, and yet we’re not that is intended as antiwar comes off as stopping these things from happening. I am pro-war. Take “Apocalypse Now,” where anti-war in every circumstance, and I know there’s this famous scene of a helicopter raid people think I might be foolish or cockamamie while Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” plays. for thinking that, but I think it’s a failure of You get the impression that Coppola is being imagination to believe that we cannot live critical of war, but it’s impossible to watch that in a world without war. It’s never too late to scene and not think, “That was super-cool.” make a restorative choice. I was always reminding myself not to pull a

Live at The Book Cellar David Lazar Barney Scout Mann “Celeste Holm Syndrome” “Journeys North” in conversation with October 8, 7pm CST Michele Morano October 1, 7pm CST Amy Shearn StoryStudio Writers “Unseen City” and Festival 2020 Emily Gray Tedrowe October 1-October 4, 10am CST “The Talented Miss Farwell” Storytime with Joint Launch Party October 14, 7pm CST Paris Rosenthal “Don’t Look Now: Things “Dear Baby” and We Wish We Hadn’t Seen” Edited by Kristen Iversen Miss Nili, and David Lazar the Storybook Mom!  October 21 at 7pm CST October 3, 11am CST Kevin C. O’Leary Rachel Swearingen “Madison’s Sorrow” October 28, 7pm CST “How to Walk on Water” in conversation with Kate Wisel October 5, 7pm CST Go to our website for virtual event details, book clubs and more! Your Independent Book Store in Lincoln Square! 4736-38 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago 773.293.2665 • bookcellarinc.com newcity JUNE 2019 33 VISIONS FOR THE NEXT CITY WHO REALLY BOOKS IN CHICAGO + EVE EWING feb cover+FOB.indd 1 1/20/19 4:50 PM DTHIBSEECNCOEIVTATYETHRHE SURFACE NEWCITY WHAT’S GOING ON ARTISTS, POETS AND WRITERS RESPOND TO MAY 2020 RACIAL INJUSTICE AND POLICE BRUTALITY JULY 2020 WHAT’S GOING ON December 2018 TORONZO CANNON Subscribe at Newcity.com/subscribe

Music In Praise of Pegboy A Chicago Punk Band, Thirty Years On By Craig Bechtel I have many regrets I can trace back to my college years (an English writing major, trying to take biology and Latin during first periods, not properly using the career services department, an ex-wife), but one of them is not booking Pegboy to play a show when I was in charge of concerts. Sure, there were triumphs, such as booking Material Issue with openers Madder Rose, and Green with openers The Lilacs, but there were also choices like booking Harm Farm instead of Poster Children. An intriguing package from one of the booking agents contained a cassette from Pegboy called “Three-Chord Monte.” That EP was released in 1990 shortly after Pegboy (named after an apocryphal nickname for a young boy who was used by seamen for sex) was formed by John Haggerty, former guitarist for Chicago punk legends Naked Raygun and his brother Joe (of The Effigies and before that, Blood- sport) on drums and Larry Damore and Steve Saylors, who were in Bhopal Stiffs together. (Damore sang and played guitar and Saylors played bass. )John Haggerty had produced Bhopal Stiffs’ demo three years earlier. Newcity OCTOBER 2020 Thirty years since their formation and that but this one sounds like it was turned up It’s your sadness / I remember when you used debut EP, it’s time for an appreciation of to an eleven-like volume in 1990. Damore’s to hope for / The hope there was some magic.” Pegboy, a band that, due to their lineage and vocals, blunt to the point of sounding frequent commingling, too often were over- bone-headed are gruff like a vocoder un- The wistfulness is palpable, and he goes on shadowed by the legacy of Naked Raygun. packed from a razor-blade suitcase but to sing that never diminishing his bleeding-heart passion. Notwithstanding the pedigree of the band, I can still remember when, You used to what stands out is the quality of the songs. Whereas Naked Raygun merges the political take your heart in hand, It begins with blazing, anthemic guitars, with the personal, Pegboy’s subject matter And gave it, gave it, gave it, gave it, rapid-fire, explosive drumming and passionate almost always shines on the heart light— I wish I could go back again, screams of “Through My Fingers.” Like the witness the closer “Method” on which Damore And trace my childhood again, To your best Raygun cuts, it’s like someone discov- sings “There’s a method to your madness / madness, madness, madness ered a lost Buzzcocks demo from 1979, 60

There is indeed a method to the madness lays on the listener like a layer of hot asphalt that is the music of Pegboy, and it’s always while being flattened by a steamroller. compelling, and on “Three-Chord Monte,” As if to say “Get the ‘F’ out of the way,” all they needed was three chords and Pegboy released the “Fore” EP in 1992, again some truth. leading with a strong upper-cut in the form The quartet followed up their debut EP in of “Never A Question” and there was never 1991 with the full-length “Strong Reaction,” a question that they would let go of their MUSIC TOP 5 anger, their rocketing tempos and blistering and it was just as strong, if not stronger. Kicking off with the powerful, brooding title passion. Given that Saylors had sailed away cut, the foursome brings ten new songs to on bass due to work commitments, friend the table in under half an hour. Only “Strong and engineer Steve Albini played bass on Outstanding new album releases by stellar these four tracks, so the bass is less elastic Chicago artists, available now. Reaction” approaches four minutes, and and more workmanlike, as he always tries to 1 Johnny Iguana. Johnny just as “Through My Fingers” served as a Iguana’s Chicago Spectacular! give the band’s natural sound the spotlight. That exclamation point is no statement of intent for its predecessor, throwaway. The dynamic pianist The crunch and roll of “Witnessed” oozes and Claudettes co-founder brings so does this song for their first album. rockabilly verve to our hometown regret and the ennui of the straight-ahead blues, and challenges an A-list of The lead guitar part blazes in like flaming guest players to keep pace. punk anthem “Minutes To Hours” anticipates meteorites entering the atmosphere, and 2 Kathy Greenholdt. the pop-punk impulses of SF Bay populariz- If. The singer-songwriter’s the drums and bass crater the earth’s clean, clear, straight-ahead folk surface with pummeling precision. Damore ers Green Day. “Jesus Christ” closes the doesn’t just recall an earlier, age; she quartet of cuts on “Fore” and it’s an epic also taps into the foundational role cries out on the first verse: of folk singer-activist by devoting all metal pummeling that lifts from “Jesus CD proceeds through mid-October to the Biden-Harris campaign. Left all alone to bear your soul Christ Superstar” but doesn’t do much else. 3 The J. Davis Trio. Fire and And the feeling in your heart is low For 1994’s “Earwig,” Naked Raygun’s Math. The self-proclaimed “garage jazz” ensemble may be I’ve seen so many passing ways Pierre Kezdy brought his bass, striped and otherwise math-challenged (this “trio” boasts eight members), I see our whole lives slip away large-mouthed, to Pegboy and the group but “Fire and Math” locks into irresistible grooves, including And I want you back right now turned the term “ear worm” on its ear, pulling hip-hop and funk—and the playing is absolutely airtight. Damore’s vocals have never been the the pins on another stellar set of punk-rock 4 Sharel Cassity. Fearless. inspiration for other punk-rock lead singers, grenades. It kicks off with“Line Up,” which The saxophonist displays collapses into chaos, then the shame tremendous bebop bravado on and I doubt he would care. If there’s one an album of largely new material celebration of “Sinner Inside” that threatens that she wrote during a bout of ill word to characterize his delivery, it’s health. The performances reveal her to reignite Sodom, and “Blister” may or may roaring back to ravishing top form. “serviceable.” He’s passionate and by no not be about John Haggerty’s fingers after 5 Josie Falbo. You Must means a turn-off, but his mission is to Believe In Spring. Just burning through these twelve tracks in just when we need it most, the sonic convey the lyrics and give another bullet equivalent to comfort food: an over thirty minutes. album of cherished twentieth- to the chamber that is the firearm of century standards featuring a full, lush orchestra and jazz diva Falbo’s Pegboy’s foursome. He doesn’t have “Cha-Cha-Damore,” Pegboy’s final full-length, gorgeous, golden instrument. Naked Raygun leader Jeff Pezzati’s cool released in 1997, might not be their finest detachment and erudition, but it’s just as well; the last thing Pegboy needs is another moment, but still has much to recommend. As usual, there are actual guitar solos here reason to be eclipsed by Raygun. and there (a patented Pegboy middle finger “Not What I Want” comes off like an early, to punk-rock tradition) and their recurrent pre-sell-out Soul Asylum scat and the bass sense of humor forms a silver lining around line on “What To Do” threatens to alchemically the band’s dark, screamo sensibility (as in alter tectonic plates to rubber. The malaise “In The Pantry of the Mountain King,” a and frustration on these cuts boils over the tongue-in-cheek allusion to prog-rockers King Crimson’s “In the Court of the Crimson vinyl’s grooves, so following those tracks with the bracing instrumental “Locomotive- King”). On the searing shout-fest “Danger- ace,” they out-Nirvana Nirvana (and clearly lung” is a wise choice, if only to give the influenced later Chicago bands like The listener something to mosh away from the Arrivals) and the dark table setting at the darkness. “Superstar” is the other clear single here, so much so it’s hard to believe beginning of “Hey, Look, I’m a Cowboy” before galloping forward is a clear testament it’s not a cover (easily confused with the Delaney & Bonnie classic made popular by to Raygun’s influence, and their predeces- sors, Buzzcocks. The Carpenters), and Damore begins by shouting that “If I could be a superstar / I’d get away would go far / And I would get The band mostly disbanded in 2000, reunited in 2006 at Riot Fest and played a away, get away from here” and continues on the chorus that “With all the things that Touch and Go twenty-fifth anniversary show I do / I’m tired of playing for you / I’m done in 2007, and although they are “pretty much inactive, Pegboy get together once a week wasting my time / Got to live my own life.” OCTOBER 2020 Newcity to 'practice,'\" as well to play the occasional It’s a stunning dismissal to anyone who is show in Chicago, according to the Touch a fan—the ultimate “denial,” as Nirvana would put it on “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on and Go/Quarterstick website. Since Naked Raygun reformed in 2007, Kezdy went back “Nevermind,” released only nine days later. to playing with them and “Skinny” Mike Just in case that number was too bright and Thompson handles bass duties as needed. cheery, “Superstar” is followed by a mosey Although Pegboy’s thirtieth reunion shows booked for May were rescheduled, they are through a “Field of Darkness” and by the time we get to “Time Again,” blistering guitar scheduled to play October 17 at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeport. solo notwithstanding, the world-weariness 61

Stage “Wild & Sublime” with Karen Yates (left) /Photo: Jeffrey Biven Newcity OCTOBER 2020 Wild Sex in the time of COVID is a hot topic expression. That allows people to come & Online as those without live-in partners or separated together in community and realize that it’s okay from sexual relationships navigate the to talk about sex, that we all feel weird about The Host Becomes complexities of hooking up when you cannot sex. It’s something that is so shrouded in the Guest in an Interview come within six feet of another person. Karen our society that merely opening it up can give with Karen Yates Yates is the creator, producer and host of people a lot of relief. I like to say that I’m not of “Wild & Sublime” “Wild & Sublime”—formerly “Super Tasty”— a sex moralist, I’m a sex curator. So it’s really Chicago’s “inclusive cabaret talk show about about allowing people to express what they’re By Hayley Osborn sex for everyone.” Karen discusses the show, doing sexually or to talk about sex, have its transition into a podcast production, and therapists talk about underlying things, and 62 ways Chicagoans can use information and allow that to create a forum for discussion. infotainment to enlighten their sexual selves. “Wild & Sublime” has been a live show, For those who haven’t heard of you so what was the transition into a or know the show by a different name, podcast like? what is “Wild & Sublime?” I had already begun looking at expanding the “Wild & Sublime” is an inclusive talk show show in other arenas, based on a lot of stuff about sex that is for all orientations, gender going on at the end of 2019. After talking to expressions, relationship styles and sexual a number of folks, I decided on the podcast preferences. The point of the show is to create format. I really wanted to do this for two a space that reduces shame about sexual reasons: I wanted to make it as easy as

possible, and to get the show out there. I also ethos. Those things are still very much part STAGE TOP 5 wanted to retain creative control for as long of the show. They’re the heartbeat of the show, as possible. So the podcast was already in of sexual expansiveness. Yet because the 1 Chapter & Verse: The my brain a number of months before COVID show now is every week, I’m also aware there Gospel of James Baldwin. actually hit. I had already started conceptualiz- are many people listening to the show who MCA Stage. Musician Meshell ing it, figuring out how I was going to do it. might not be there. They want to be sexually Ndegeocello, along with a handful of Then when it happened I was like, “Oh wow. expansive but for them, being sexually activists and artists, take inspiration It’s happening.” And it took me a number of expansive might be moving a couple of inches from James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next months to pull together the old audio from instead of jumping into a dungeon situation. Time,” sharing new work online the show because I had been systematically And so because of that I am really interested and in print free to subscribers that recording audio for all the shows. It was a in diving deeper into the belief systems that ranges from music to video to poetry. matter of sitting down, indexing everything, underlie our sexual hangups, our sexual working with an audio engineer to sweep blocks, our inability to be intimate. I’m September-December the files and then going from there. creating a broader base of subject matter and coming at it a little differently. 2 Rastus & Hattie. 16th How is the podcast different from Street Theater. Lisa Langford’s the live show? What are some sex resources people can comedy about race in America, use during these decidedly unsexy times? adapted as an audio play, describes The live show used to be monthly and it was a friendship complicated by time a two-act show. I always felt because I was One of the most awesome sexual resources travel and two “problematic” only doing it once a month that I had to pack available to people is the New York City robots from the past, inspired by as much as possible into this format. Since Health Department guidelines on having sex a design from Westinghouse the podcast is every week I feel like I can during COVID. Honestly I don’t think it can Electric Corporation circa 1930. breathe a little. I can unpack these facets of be improved upon. It’s a go-to guide. And sexuality. It’s something I’m still really getting I love it too because they roll the STI conversa- Through October 24 used to like, “Oh, how deep can I go with a tion into it, so it’s an omnibus document. particular subject?” Right now the podcast is That guideline was based on the guidelines 3 ‘Night, Mother. Invictus a magazine style, so it’s segmented. Usually they had during the AIDS epidemic. They Theatre Company. Both every podcast has maybe three segments: basically took it and started applying the actors in this live-streamed short interviews pre-recorded from the live COVID things. But the idea is that people production of Marsha Norman’s show, new interviews, new panel discussions aren’t going to stop having sex. Truly. And Pulitzer Prize-winning drama will or pre-recorded panel discussions or story- so I think folks are like “oh no! I’m going to perform from their homes, with tellers from the live show. And I’m playing have to stop having sex!” No, you’re not. multiple cameras capturing the with the idea of having just a long interview action in a new approach to live, with someone or just a long panel discussion. Is there anything else that you’d like quarantine theater. October I’m loving the fluidity of the podcast form. to talk about? 22-November 8 When live shows can happen again, Yeah, I would like to say that one thing I’m 4 Chicago Tap Summit. OCTOBER 2020 Newcity do you expect to continue the podcast? interested in doing is what I said earlier about M.A.D.D. Rhythms. Bril diving deeper into the beliefs that underpin Barrett and the Harold Washington Oh yes. Oh yes, indeed. I would say that these obstacles in expressing ourselves Cultural Center take M.A.D.D. given the circumstances, we can see that more fully; the obstacles to more pleasure. Rhythms’ annual Tap Summit this is going to be around for a while. I see I’ve been educated as a somatic sex educator, virtual, with classes and workshops, the podcast probably moving into the primary so for me the focus is on the body. Yet I’m also culminating in a live-streamed vehicle. Yes, for sure I’m going to be having a tantra practitioner which is dealing with greatest hits premiere from the live shows again. Will they be every single energy structures in the body. As I go forward company. October 2-4 month? I’m not sure about that, but there with the show, I’m looking in and creating a will always be live shows. I’m just not sure broader, more expansive view that doesn’t 5 Hit ‘Em on the Blackside. how they’re going to be laid in. And maybe leave the body behind. And I know you might Congo Square Theatre. there’s going to be touring to other cities. think “well, of course, it’s sex, how could you Anthony Irons directs biweekly Obviously we all know that podcasters leave the body.” I would say that I think that sketch comedy episodes, available routinely do that. Now that their audience for so many people, sex exists in the brain, starting October 9 and running is larger they’re able to go to other cities in the mind. We overthink things. We’re not through December, to be compiled and do the show. That definitely will be present sexually when we’re with someone into a full-length show at the end something that I’m doing in the future. else. We’re always thinking ahead three steps. of the year. October-December We’re thinking, “How is this person reacting What are some other things that have to me? What are they thinking about me?” had to change because of the pandemic? And all of these keep us from being in our bodies. So that will always continue to be a When I was starting out, we had a very cornerstone of the show, focusing on the body, intimate audience. We were in a smaller venue, looking into dismantling beliefs, but also adding so it felt very cozy and I felt much more at conversation about energy and other ways of ease talking about my own sexual experience thinking about the body’s capacity for pleasure. with the crowd. Now as the show goes out into the ether, I check myself before I say Karen Yates is a somatic sex educator something revealing. Simply because I feel like I need to, it’s a different medium. The with a background in Tantra and over other thing is, the show in Chicago, the main audience, was a very sex-positive audience. twenty years experience as a theater They were people who were conversant in sex-positive topics such as polyamory and director, producer, performer, writer alternative sexual styles such as kink. A queer and maker of art. With new episodes released every Thursday, the “Wild & Sublime” podcast can be found on all podcasting platforms. patreon.com/wildandsublime 63

Installation view of McArthur Binion, Newcity OCTOBER 2020 64 “DNA:Work and the Under:Conscious Drawings,” at Gray Warehouse, 2020 Reviews/CourtesyGray,Chicago/NewYork

Art river and a lone, dark figure shuffling world more concerned with psychologi- Reviews down a rutted dirt road. Even more cal and social critique—but the superstar Seen Enough Monet Yet? angst-ridden is the nearby “Seine Near status of Monet is some evidence of A Review of Monet and Chicago Vetheuil, Stormy Weather (1878), also their ongoing relevance to contemporary at the Art Institute from a private collection, that presents life. (Chris Miller) two distant figures in a small boat, With the largest public collection of battered by choppy waves beneath “Monet and Chicago” is on view at the Monet paintings (thirty-three) outside a tempestuous sky. These are themes Art Institute of Chicago, 111 South Paris, it has been “Monet in Chicago” seldom associated with Monet. Michigan, through January 18, 2021. day at the Art Institute for about a hundred years. And then there’s the There are several pieces that seem A Milwaukee Artist Finds special exhibitions, beginning with inspired by other French painters. The Power in the Quotidian “Twenty Works by Claude Monet” festivity of “The Parc Monceau” (1878), A Review of Ariana Vaeth at in 1895 and continuing up through a royal private park, appears to have Lynden Sculpture Garden “Claude Monet: 1840-1926” in 1995. been inspired by the fêtes depicted As the current show documents, by Watteau. The angularity seen in Not much really happens in the Monet was beloved by Chicago “Apple Trees” (1878) seems indebted to paintings of Ariana Vaeth. They are collectors way back when his work Cezanne. The small dabs of bright color domestic, infused with calm and first sold in America—Bertha Palmer in “Luncheon Under the Tent“ (1883) quiet whimsy. Within this realm, Vaeth owned ninety pieces—and he has recalls the Grande Jatte of Seurat. The has created ambiguous, surprisingly been popular ever since. (Tickets for solitary figure beneath the branches of powerful painted narratives. the 1995 exhibition were hawked like an overhanging tree in “The Towpath at tickets to Bulls or Bears games.) Granval” (1883) looks a lot like Corot. This exhibition marks a significant formal leap for this young artist. What might account for that enduring It’s disappointing that museum special She describes a woman’s world, appeal to Chicagoans? My guess is exhibitions continue to neglect other a milieu of friends who talk, flirt and that some of his work, like “Cliff Walk great plein air painters like Alfred Sisley, fancy each other’s company. It is at Pourville” (1882) and “Poppy Field or the many masters from other coun- celebratory and insightful. (Giverny)” (1890) have the joyful intensity of that sunny summer day we dream about from late October to early June. But Monet also created multiple series of paintings on the same subject—like haystacks—that seem to reflect a thoughtful mind, at least as concerned with perceptual investigation as with personal pleasure. He spent his last thirty years representing the water lilies in his pond, which, as gallery signage instructs: “More than any other motif, have come to define his career and lasting influence on artists of the twentieth century and today.” Chicagoans, or at least those who fly business class, may be hedonistic, but they also believe in technological and cultural progress. This iteration combines the museum’s Claude Monet. “The Needle Rock at Low Tide, Etretat,” permanent collection with dozens of 1883. Private collection/Photo by Jamie Stukenberg, pieces borrowed from local collectors, Professional Graphics Inc. possibly because that was less expen- sive than having them shipped in from tries, especially Russia. And heaven Vaeth is a prominent fixture in M OCTOBER 2020 Newcity museums around the world. That makes forbid that the work of a contemporary ilwaukee’s art scene. She received a for a low-risk, high-profit exhibition. Impressionist would ever hang in the prestigious Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellow- Yet it’s also an opportunity to view Modern Wing. But I’m guessing that ship as an emerging artist and was pieces that are rarely seen in public, plein air landscape painting will be a featured in the Wisconsin Triennial and possibly outside the dominant permanent feature of world culture, at the Madison Museum of Contempo- taste and ideology of twentieth-century just as the Chinese tradition of mono- rary Art in 2019. museum professionals. chrome ink landscapes on paper or silk has endured for millennia. These forms The strengths in these paintings have The first painting in the show, “The celebrate the spontaneous experience much to do with composition. Vaeth Seine at Bougival” (1869), comes from of being alive and aware. Coming out has locked in gestures and angles, a private collection, and is a sharp of European civilization, plein air bringing a forceful “disegno” to bear contrast to the peaceful and glowing painting focuses more on the individuali- in deceptively complex snapshots of “On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt,” ty of self and place as an exploration interior scenes. In “Dye Party” we see which was painted a year earlier and has of both. Those concerns have been Vaeth and two friends from above, been in the permanent collection for marginalized by a mainstream art in a bathroom. Vaeth is receiving an nearly a hundred years. Instead of a sunny summer day, it’s a winter scene with a pebbled gray sky, a half-frozen 65

Review ablution of hair dye that has turned the The paintings are not fully mature. impressionism is evident through the Impasto effects rear up randomly, and fluid expression of the markings. water a light magenta. Nude, she is Binion’s personal history seeps through Vaeth’s surfaces veer from matte to to the spectator by spatial relationships angled up into a corner of the tub, and the need for close examination. her hand languidly holding her phone. gloss and back. But their ultimate power The juxtaposition of intimate subject lies in their fascination with the quotidian. matter, such as excerpts from Binion’s Her fingers, near the center of the personal address book and photos of Imagine, people from underrepresented his childhood home, and ambiguous composition, splay out, reaching imagery relays his signature foundation- toward multiple corners of the painting. groups doing essentially nothing, putting al message of creating works in your on makeup, grabbing food out of the own likeness. They draw our eyes across other carefully constructed arrangements— fridge. When are minorities represented His surface markings bring to life his this way? The art world seems to concept of under-consciousness. All the conditioner, a lighter, lotion lying on markings and lines are done by hand, the floor. A woman holding the hair dye demand a focus on identity, politics, which the viewer can see through the over Vaeth’s head stares back toward or both from underrepresented artists. changes in lines drawn. In each of his Minorities have to “mean” something. marks you can see the labor-intensive the viewer with a certain disdain. We aspect of his practice. The body of each How refreshing to see these young stroke changes with each line drawn. are interlopers. He uses oil-stick charcoal, ballpoint pen women hanging out, not up to a and graphite to render these shapes. As social distancing practices remain, The anchor of this exhibition is “Pre- goddamn thing. Just living. (Rafael Binion allows you to break them for intensive spectating. In order to truly see Game.” A prelude to an unknown event, Francisco Salas) Binion’s work, it is vital to be up close. While he creates with his hands, the in htis painting we see Vaeth grabbing work calls for close physical contact involving the viewer’s body and how they a jar of pickles and holding up a blender “Ariana Vaeth: New Work” is on view with a banana in it. Behind her, cen- interact with the piece. In at the Lynden Sculpture Garden, the “DNA” paintings, the tered on the canvas, a figure in a green 2145 West Brown Deer Road, scale of the pieces are dress and heart-shaped glasses raises Milwaukee, through December 23. similar to Binion’s body, her hands in a balletic gesture. A third standing at six-feet-four- inches; the viewer’s own character smiles upwards, sucking on Intimacy Required understanding of the A Review of McArthur Binion body is brought to the a beer and shot. The weirdness and at Gray Warehouse forefront. The width of the pieces are two of him inward joking of this scene is lyrical. so it is a type of self- portrait. This show is And yet, beyond the wackiness, Vaeth Chicago-based artist McArthur Binion’s labor-intensive, intimate and what is needed right confidently demands our attention. exhibition at Gray Warehouse includes now in the art world. The central figure evokes a magical minimal abstract paintings and chal- realism, like a character from Marc The beauty of this show is in the details, the aspects that draw you to the work. Each viewer will notice something different, something that relates to them personal- ly and that can only happen through close Ariana Vaeth, “Dye Party,” 2019, contact. Just like how oil on canvas, 72 x 48 inches our own DNA is unique to each of us, each piece in this show is Chagall, dancing through the air. lenges how we see self-expression. not only unique to Binion but also to Details—a bottle of Tabasco sauce Newcity OCTOBER 2020 and a “Little Mermaid” shower curtain— The modern artist’s “DNA:Work and the spectator. The internal emotional offer autobiographical joie de vivre. The painting is a bravura display. the Under:Conscious Drawings” is concepts in this show bleed through There are pensive moments. We see an interactive exhibition that takes each piece. Our attention to detail Vaeth curled on a couch, looking absently toward two girls, undoubtedly the viewer to an intimate level that during COVID-19 has made us pay sisters. I felt a sense of otherness in Vaeth as she contemplated the opposes social distancing practices. attention to the small details which distance between them, a glass of wine in hand. are tested throughout “DNA:Work From the use of rigid surface levels and the Under:Conscious drawings.” of wood and aluminum with crayons, (Caira Moreira-Brown) oil sticks and inks imposed on top of them, Binion’s work straddles abstrac- DNA:Work and the Under:Conscious tion and intimacy. The influence of Drawings,” at Gray Warehouse, 2044 bebop improvisation and abstract West Carroll, through October 31. 66

Visiting Artist Series Erin Wiersma, On Location, Photo Credit: David Mates TREVOR PAGLEN MARY MATTINGLY Thursday, October 15, Wednesday, October 2020, 11am 28, 2020, 11am Streamed Live: Streamed Live: theCCMA.org/talks theCCMA.org/talks DARBY ENGLISH & All lectures are FREE AYANAH MOOR For more information visit: Tuesday, November 10, theCCMA.org 2020, 1pm @theclevecarneymuseumofart Streamed Live: theCCMA.org/talks PROGRAMMING IN ANTICIPATION OF FRIDA KAHLO: TIMELESS DAILY HERALD BOOK CLUB WITH CELIA STAHR FRIDA IN AMERICA: THE CREATIVE AWAKENING OF A GREAT ARTIST OCT. 4, 3P $10/HOUSEHOLD THE FASHIONS JUNE 5 - SEPT. 6 OF FRIDA KAHLO To learn more and WITH KATHY BAUM, purchase tickets visit COD PROFESSOR OF ART Frida2021.org DEC. 17, 7P © Nickolas Muray Photo Archives FREE | FACEBOOK LIVE To see all streamed events at College of DuPage’s McAninch Arts Center visit AtTheMAC.org