Newcity Chicago September 2018

IncenseSweaters&Ice MartineSymsSeptember 26, 2018–January 12, 2019 Image: “Martine Syms, Incense Sweaters & Ice (still), 2017.”Graham FoundationMadlener House, 4 W Burton Place, Chicagowww.grahamfoundation.org

September 2018 / ContentsTHE CONVERSATION ARTS & CULTUREMARSHALL BROWN’SEXIT INTERVIEW ART11 SOUTH SIDE ART LEGACIES 56THE BEACHCOMBERHOW JOHN SOSS FINDS BEAUTY DANCE16 NEJLA YATKIN HOLDS A “CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS”FALL ARTS PREVIEW 64OUR GUIDE TO THE NEW SEASON22 DESIGN 6018 NORTH EXPLORESARTIST OF THE MOMENT IMMIGRATION CITYWIDERASHAYLA MARIE BROWN SPEAKS 66TRUTH WITH POWER36 DINING & DRINKING A ROAD TRIP TO MERICHKA’SART 50 68WHO ARE THIS YEAR’SARTISTS’ ARTISTS? FILM39 ETHAN HAWKE PRESENTS BLAZE FOLEY 70 SEPTEMBER 2018 Newcity LIT EMILY JUNGMIN YOON CRAFTS PAIN INTO POETRY 73 MUSIC COLD WAVES OF INDUSTRIAL MUSIC 75 STAGE SEVENTY SHOWS TO SEE THIS FALL 78 LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL TEEN DREAMS ABOUT LOCO FAMILY VISITS 82 3

THE INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION OFCONTEMPORARY AND MODERN ARTGALLERIES Lévy Gorvy New York, London, Tandem Press Madison PROFILE Hong Kong, Zurich TEMPLON Paris, BrusselsAnglim Gilbert Gallery San Francisco David Lewis Gallery New York Vallarino Fine Art New York Carbon12 DubaiPeter Blake Gallery Laguna Beach Library Street Collective Detroit Susanne Vielmetter Edward Cella Art & ArchitectureBockley Gallery Minneapolis Long-Sharp Gallery Indianapolis, New York Los Angeles Projects Los Angeles Los AngelesBortolami New York Galeria Javier Lopez & Fer Frances Madrid Weinstein Hammons Gallery Chambers Fine Art New York, BeijingBorzoGallery Amsterdam Luhring Augustine New York, Brooklyn Minneapolis Derek Eller Gallery New YorkRena Bransten Gallery San Francisco Matthew Marks Gallery New York, Wexler Gallery Philadelphia Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery New YorkGavin Brown’s enterprise Los Angeles Yares Art New York, Palm Springs, Santa Fe Gallery Luisotti Los Angeles New York, Rome Philip Martin Gallery Los Angeles Zolla/Lieberman Gallery Chicago Martos Gallery New YorkCarrerasMugica Bilbao MARUANI MERCIER Brussels, Knokke, Paris Pavel Zoubok Fine Art New York MARUANI MERCIER Brussels,Casterline|Goodman Gallery Aspen McCormick Gallery Chicago David Zwirner New York, London, Knokke, ParisCentury Pictures Brooklyn Miles McEnery Gallery New York Hong Kong Galerie Barbara Thumm BerlinCernuda Arte Coral Gables Monique Meloche Gallery ChicagoCeysson & Bénétière Paris, Saint-Étienne, Mendes Wood DM São Paulo, Brussels, EXPOSURE EDITIONS + BOOKS Luxembourg, New York New YorkJames Cohan New York Gallery MOMO Cape Town, Johannesburg Curated by Justine Ludwig Art+Culture Projects New YorkCorbett vs. Dempsey Chicago Nahmad Projects London 313 Art Project Seoul Boreas Fine Art ChicagoStephen Daiter Gallery Chicago David Nolan Gallery New York Amar Gallery London Candor Arts ChicagoDC Moore Gallery New York Gallery Wendi Norris San Francisco Piero Atchugarry Garzón, Miami Downtown for Democracy U.S.A.De Buck Gallery New York Richard Norton Gallery Chicago BEERS London London Independent Curators International (ICI)Galerie Division Montréal, Toronto October Gallery London Club Pro Los Angeles Los Angeles New YorkCatherine Edelman Gallery Chicago Claire Oliver Gallery New York Luis De Jesus Los Angeles Los Angeles Index Art Book Fair Mexico CityEric Firestone Gallery East Hampton, ONE AND J. Gallery Seoul Dio Horia Athens, Mykonos LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) New York Galeria Karla Osorio , Brasilia Anat Ebgi Los Angeles Los AngelesFlowers Gallery London, New York Pablo’s Birthday, New York Edel Assanti London Manneken Press BloomingtonTory Folliard Gallery Milwaukee Peres Projects Berlin Daniel Faria Gallery Toronto NFP Editions | Field Editions, TateFort Gansevoort New York Perrotin New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Tokyo, FOLD London Editions, Royal Academy of ArtsForum Gallery New York Seoul, Shanghai Fridman Gallery New York René Schmitt Berlin, WOLGhebaly Gallery Los Angeles PKM Gallery Seoul Geary New York Spudnik Press Cooperative ChicagoDavid Gill Gallery London P.P.O.W New York Asya Geisberg Gallery New York TASCHEN Los Angeles, New York,Michael Goedhuis London, New York, Praz-Delavallade Paris, Los Angeles Grice Bench Los Angeles Miami, London, Paris, Berlin, Beijing R & Company New York MARIANE IBRAHIM Seattle Amsterdam, MilanRichard Gray Gallery Chicago, New York Roberts Projects Los Angeles Instituto De Visión BogotáGarth Greenan Gallery New York Ronchini Gallery London KANT Copenhagen SPECIAL EXHIBITIONSGRIMM Amsterdam, New York rosenfeld porcini London Klowden Mann Los AngelesKavi Gupta Chicago Royale Projects Los Angeles LAZY Mike Los Angeles, Moscow 6018North/ 3Arts ChicagoHackett Mill San Francisco Galerie RX Paris Harlan Levey Projects Brussels Aperture Foundation New Yorkhalf gallery New York Salon 94 New York NINO MIER GALLERY Los Angeles, Cologne Artadia New YorkHdM Gallery Beijing, London Georgia Scherman Projects Toronto Moskowitz Bayse Los Angeles Eli and Edythe Broad Art MuseumRichard Heller Gallery Los Angeles Vito Schnabel Gallery St. Moritz Shulamit Nazarian Los Angeles East LansingNancy Hoffman Gallery New York Eduardo Secci Contemporary Florence Night Gallery Los Angeles CASE Art Fund Chicago, OsloRhona Hoffman Gallery Chicago Carrie Secrist Gallery Chicago NOME Berlin Chicago Artists Coalition ChicagoThe Hole New York Stuart Shave / Modern Art London Officine dell’lmmagine Milan The Conservation Center ChicagoEdwynn Houk Gallery New York, Zürich William Shearburn Gallery St. Louis ROCKELMANN& Berlin DePaul Art Museum ChicagoGALLERY HYUNDAI Seoul Jessica Silverman Gallery San Francisco Romer Young Gallery San Francisco Human Rights WatchCharlie James Gallery Los Angeles Simoens Gallery Knokke Sapar Contemporary New York Hyde Park Art Center ChicagoJenkins Johnson Gallery San Francisco, Sims Reed Gallery London SHIN GALLERY New York The Joyce Foundation New York SmithDavidson Gallery Amsterdam, Miami Catinca Tabacaru New York, Harare MOSTYN LlandudnoKalfayan Galleries Athens, Thessaloniki Fredric Snitzer Gallery Miami Zalucky Contemporary Toronto National YoungArts Foundation MiamiPaul Kasmin Gallery New York Sous Les Etoiles Gallery New York Natural Resources Defense CouncilAnton Kern Gallery New York Stene Projects Gallery Stockholm (NRDC) ChicagoTina Kim Gallery New York MARC STRAUS New York ProjectArt Chicago, New York,David Klein Gallery Detroit, Birmingham Hollis Taggart Galleries New York Los Angeles, Detroit, Miami, PittsburghRobert Koch Gallery San Francisco Sundaram Tagore Gallery New York, The School of the Art Institute of ChicagoAlan Koppel Gallery Chicago Singapore, Hong Kong ChicagoGalerie Kornfeld Berlin Threewalls Chicago University of Chicago Department of Visual Arts Chicago

Featuring artwork from over 3,000 artists from 135 leading galleries representing 27 countries and 63 international cities27–30 SEPTEMBER 2018OPENING PREVIEW THURSDAY 27 SEPTCHICAGO | NAVY PIERPresenting Sponsor For tickets and programming information, visit expochicago.com #expochicago @expochicago Aligned with artdesignchicago.org Lake Series (Lake Michigan) by Lincoln Schatz

Newcity SEPTEMBER 2018 Editor’s Letter L ast week, I stepped onto the turf of a high-school football field for the first time in decades. I did not expect the sensation I’d feel, a sort of yearning for a love long gone but never really requited. We were finishing up principal photography on “Knives and Skin” and had to shoot a series of scenes taking place at a high-school football game. We’d secured the use of Lemont High School’s stadium for a night. Except for our cast, crew and extras, the entire place was empty and the sky was dark, but the lights glowed over the crisp green field and an entire rush of youthful memories surged as I stepped over the sideline and onto the field. Though arts and culture are my “game” these days, it was not the case when I was young. My father is a lifelong college football fan whose oldest son wanted nothing more, growing up in Lincoln, Nebraska where dad was completing his PhD in physics, than to be a star player for the Cornhuskers someday. And so countless hours of my school days in Joliet were spent in an attempt to overcome my innate physical shortcomings in pursuit of this futile dream. When I lost the starting quarterback position in a three-way shootout my senior year in high school, reality should have taken over, but it never really did. I’d go on to the University of Chicago, in part because I could play football on their Division III team, where I’d continue to prove my gridiron mediocrity for a couple more years. For most Newcity readers, fall is about the new arts season, a birth of culture so vast and new and invigorating it takes on a spring-like vigor. For others, it’s about going back to school. And for the rest of us, it’s about football. Like our nation itself, our love for the sport is deeply tarnished these days, by the revelation of its life-destroying head injuries and the collective public racism by those who object to how certain players exercise their fundamental American right to respond to the National Anthem. But it’s hard to lose the love of a lifetime. So you’ll see me in the theater this fall, watching the sad and desperate lives of fictional fellow humans unfold on the stage. And you’ll see me on the couch, next to my dad, who will make his special chip dip that is only brought out for such occasions, watching the sad and desperate fates of our teams, the Huskers and the Bears, unfold on the screen. BRIAN HIEGGELKE 6

WAEATRORT 27-30 SEPTEMBER 2018 NOV 1-4, 2018 NAVY PIER VIP Welcome Lounge Festival Hall Booth [email protected] yvel.com

CONTRIBUTORS master’s at SAIC. She’s currently the ON THE COVER managing director of the project-oriented Cover Photo: Nathan Keay ELLIOT REICHERT (Writer, “Artist of the Museum of Vernacular Arts + Knowledge, Cover Design: Dan Streeting Moment” and editor, Art 50) is Newcity’s which seeks to highlight works that are art editor. After finishing two master’s “not within the purview of art museums Vol. 33, No. 1383 degrees at SAIC in the spring, he spent and galleries because they are out of most of his summer teaching high school sync with dominant formal, aesthetic PUBLISHERS math in Ramallah, Palestine, working with and institutional values.” Brian & Jan Hieggelke kids from all over the West Bank. Associate Publisher Mike Hartnett MICHAEL WORKMAN (Writer, “The NATHAN KEAY (Photographer, cover, Conversation”) is a longtime Newcity EDITORIAL “Artist of the Moment” and Art 50) is a contributor as well as an artist “whose Editor Brian Hieggelke Chicago photographer who last shot interactionist dance and instructional Managing Editor Jan Hieggelke the portraits for our Design 50 issue choreographies seek to model precepts Art Editor Elliot Reichert in March. He specializes in portraits— of equality through constructed social Dance Editor Sharon Hoyer of people and of objects. interactions.” His book “Perfect Worlds: Design Editor Vasia Rigou Artistic Forms & Social Imaginaries” will Dining and Drinking Editor MONICA KASS ROGERS (Writer and be released at the MCA this October David Hammond Photographer, “The Beachcomber”) with a daylong series of performances. Film Editor Ray Pride contributes photography to Newcity on Lit Editor Toni Nealie a regular basis. She shot the Lit 50 in MANISHA ANIL RITA (Writer, “Immi- Music Editor Robert Rodi June, and contributed a photo essay to grant Artists”) is a recent graduate of Theater Editor Kevin Greene our July issue. SAIC’s master’s program in New Arts Contributing Writers Isa Giallorenzo, Journalism. With an interest in multimedia Aaron Hunt, Alex Huntsberger, Hugh Iglarsh, STEPHANIE KOCH (Writer, “Collectivity storytelling, her experiences run the Chris Miller, Dennis Polkow, Loy Webb, As Form”) is a graduate of the University gamut from morning radio host in Michael Workman of Chicago who recently completed her Chicago to an editorial internship with TimeOut Bengaluru. ART & DESIGN Senior Designers MJ Hieggelke, EXAMINE BELIEFS. Fletcher Martin, Dan Streeting RADICALLY RETHINK THEM. Designers Jim Maciukenas, Stephanie Plenner, Billy Werch SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO GRADUATE PROGRAMS MARKETING Marketing Manager Todd Hieggelke SAIC encourages interdisciplinary, Graduate SAIC Day collaborative, and experimental investigation. OPERATIONS In addition to our renowned Master of Fine SEPTEMBER 30 General Manager Jan Hieggelke Arts program, SAIC o ers a number of Master 10:00 A.M.– 2:00 P.M. Distribution Nick Bachmann, of Arts, Master of Architecture, Master of SAIC MACLEAN BALLROOM Adam Desantis, Preston Klik, Design, and Master of Science programs. 112 S. MICHIGAN AVE. Quinn Nicholson, Matt Russell Melanie Teresa Bohrer (MFA 2016), Untitled (Memorial), 2016 Graduate Portfolio Day One copy of current issue free at select locations. Additional copies, including back issues up to one NOVEMBER 3 year, may be ordered at Newcity.com/subscribe. 10:00 A.M.– 2:00 P.M. Copyright 2018, New City Communications, Inc. 280 S. COLUMBUS DR. All Rights Reserved.Newcity SEPTEMBER 2018 RSVP Now Newcity assumes no responsibility to return saic.edu/gr unsolicited editorial or graphic material. All rights in letters and unsolicited editorial or SAIC GRADUATE ADMISSIONS | 312.629.6100 | saic.edu/gr | [email protected] graphic material will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication and copyright purposes 8 and subject to comment editorially. Nothing may be reprinted in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher. Newcity is published by Newcity Communications, Inc. 47 West Polk, Suite 100-223, Chicago, IL 60605 Visit NewcityNetwork.com for advertising and editorial information.



From music tofilm: you wantto be here.Join usfor our2018-2019visual andperformingarts season! The Logan Center at the University of Chicago is a multidisciplinary home for artistic practice. Connect with the Logan Center for concerts, exhibitions, performances, family programs, and more from world class, emerging, local, student, and international artists. Most of our programs are FREE.arts.uchicago.edu Logan Center Photo: Hypnotic Brass.773.702.ARTS for the Arts 915 E 60th St uchicagoarts loganUChicago

THE CONVERSATION SEPTEMBER 2018 NewcityMARSHALL BROWN’S EXIT INTERVIEW BY MICHAEL WORKMAN 11

THE CONVERSATION MARSHALL BROWN The Ziggurat in the Arts Club GardenNewcity SEPTEMBER 2018You’ve been here since 2008, Photo: Michael Sullivan is it going to be hard for you to leave the city? Urbanist, architect, literary ground-breaker Yes. I hope to maintain connections to Chi- and critical-thinking futurist MarshallBrown cago but yeah, it’s going to be very hard continues his upward trend with a recent ap- to leave. It’s been very good to me. pointment as associate professor of architec- ture at Princeton University. Michael Workman A lot of things have happened provides the exit interview. over the years in your prac- tice, How do you think that12 practice will change? I’m especially interested in what you’ve described as the world-making aspect. That’s a good question. It’s hard to predict. I imagine that I’ll probably be spending a little more time doing things like writing, and more scholarly aspects, but I’ll con- tinue my design practice. I’ll probably have to travel more, to the places where I do my work, to the sites where I do my work. But I don’t think there’s a fundamental way my practice will change.

THE CONVERSATIONMARSHALL BROWNSince this is sort of like “fictions,” or what you described EXHIBITION ON VIEW: Sep 21–Nov 20 SEPTEMBER 2018 Newcityas these “future histories” of your practice, in whichyou’re researching a place and then imagining worlds Presented by Arts + Public Lifethat don’t exist yet, how do you think it might affect Curated by Damon Locks and Sarah Rosshow you research them?I don’t think that will change and, given the fact that I’ll be teaching Opening Receptionout of Princeton University, I think that sort of research aspect of Fri, Sep 21, 2018 | 6:00-8:00pmmy practice will probably only intensify. Between 2016–2018, artists, writers, and members of theBooks you’ll be working on, things along those lines. Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project created a series of thematicYes, exactly. I think there’ll be time to focus on books and publications, works around long-term sentencing policies and the other longmore discursive aspects of the practice — not at the expense of doing terms they produce: long-term struggles for freedom, long-termdesign projects or doing proposals for other projects, but I get a lot loss in communities, and long-term relationships behind theof, let’s say, benefit from the academic portion of my career. I’ve been prison wall.based at IIT, which has a certain legacy and an orientation toward These projects emerged out of collaborative work at Statevillepractice and now I’m going to Princeton, where the architecture prison, where people are serving extraordinarily long prison termsschool is based within a liberal arts college. So my thing has always (60, 70, and 80 years), often for crimes for which they would havebeen to draw my strengths from the place where I am—when I was already been released, had they been sentenced 30 years earlierin New York, I did projects about New York, when I was in Chicago, I or in a different country. This body of work includes works by 15did projects about Chicago—not exclusively, but I tried to understand Chicago artists, artists at Statesville Prison, formerly incarceratedthe place where I was and draw my creative strengths from the op- people, and artists surviving long-term sentencing.portunities that that place presented. I’m going to try to do that again.However, I’m moving to a very small town now so I suspect that my Arts Incubator @artspubliclifeoutlook will be more regional, then based around a particular urban 301 E Garfield Blvd arts.uchicago.edu/aplcenter, or something like that. I’m very interested in exploring places Chicago, IL 60637like Philadelphia, for example, or even the state of New Jersey, and Gallery Hours Graphic by Damon Lockswhat that means, or the Northeast Corridor to see what fertile ground Wed-Fri 12-6pm | FREEis there.Yes, there’s a cultural shift.Yes. Right. I also don’t plan to forsake Chicago. I’ve got ongoing re-search taking place in Chicago, maintaining my relationship withWestern Exhibitions, I’ll be doing the show there next June and I’mmaintaining a connection with the Arts Club of Chicago. I hope tostay engaged with things that are happening in Chicago, the Bienni-al for example.As an artist who also works with place identity,to a certain degree, I’m curious about this notion ofinclusion and exclusion in community engagementas a part of the design process, and how it affectsyour work.I think it’s a very involved conversation, so maybe I’ll focus on talkingabout what happens with my practice. I don’t think it’s very helpful togo into any neighborhood and ask people what they want, becausemost of what you hear is the same thing, most of us want the samething. We want good schools, we want a ordable housing, they wantsafety, they want cleanliness, they want a decent grocery store, theywant these things. We know what that list of things is, and it doesn’thelp me as a designer. I think the most interesting question you canask anybody in any neighborhood is what they know about the placewhere they live. Not what they want, what they know. That’s part one.The history?Anything. Past, present, what the future is, what do they know? Andthen the other thing is, there’s an awful lot of confusion out thereabout who we work for as architects for urbanists. Most of the proj-ects I propose are not for people who are alive today, or if they arethey’re for people who are, like, five years old, because they take a 13

Newcity SEPTEMBER 2018THE CONVERSATION MARSHALL BROWN long time to realize. So, given that architec- ture and urbanism are future-oriented prac- tices, the people that I‘m designing for might be in kindergarten right now, so I don’t get a lot of opportunities to talk to or engage them directly. That’s real. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. Or they might not even be alive yet. I’m always a little bit skeptical about how pro- ductive it is to get people in a room and ask them what they want for the future of their neighborhood. Because it’s not for them. You know, Daniel Burnham published the plan for Chicago in , and he died in . So what does that tell you, right? And all these years later people are still trying to realize aspects of his plan, and I think that’s really important to understand. It’s like the cliché about plant- ing trees under whose shade you will never sit. That’s how I approach my practice. Right Daniel Burnham’s Plan of Chicago with Brown’s proposed development intended to realize Burnham’s planned civic center to make the city the “center of the world.”14

Opens September 26Hairy Who? 1966–1969 is part of Art Design Chicago, an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art exploring Chicago’s artand design legacy, with presenting partner, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. This exhibition is funded by the Terra Foundation forAmerican Art. Major support for this exhibition is also provided by an anonymous donor, Robert J. Buford, the Kemper Educational andCharitable Fund, and Kathy and Chuck Harper. Additional support is contributed by Mark and Judy Bednar, the Morton InternationalExhibition Fund, and Deborah Lovely.Jim Falconer, Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Suellen Rocca, and Karl Wirsum. Uncut press sheet for Hairy Who comic, 1968.Gift of Gladys Nilsson and Jim Nutt.

Newcity SEPTEMBER 2018The Beachc John Soss & the Beauty of the Search ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PHOTOS BY MONICA KASS ROGERS16

comberBy Monica Kass RogersDo seagulls really “wheel”? They He plucks a bit of white glass from the the water, putting the bigger keepersglide. They swoop. They hover—even just-purged flotsam, swipes at it, in the satchel and the little ones in hiscareen. But they don’t exactly wheel. holds it to the light, and bends down pocket.At least not this morning. And the again. This time for a tiny bit of red For six years now, Soss has madewaves don’t “lap,” either. Maybe glass. “Red is rare,” he says, rolling beachcombing a nearly-every-daybecause the lake is so still today, they the fragment in his palm for me to see, ritual. Not just this beach, but aboutjust jostle, making a little chuckling pinching it between thumb and ten favorites that stretch up and downsound, nudging tiny stones and bits of forefinger and holding it sunward. “I Lake Shore Drive. One, he tells me, isglass, a plastic bottle cap, a kid’s can go for a month and not find a good for finding antique toys, anotherbarrette, like a dog nosing at an single piece of red glass.” for shotgun cartridges and clayinjured bird. Up and out of the water It’s 6:30am. We are walking the pigeons left over from the shootingthe objects come, onto the dry sand, water’s edge on a Chicago beach, a range that used to be there. Stillsettling there a moment before the favorite of John’s for finding good others yield water-worn bricks,waves are back to reclaim the bottle glass, driftwood and stones. terracotta chunks, pottery shards andcap and leave a piece of driftwood. Soss moves quickly, with a magpie- odd alloys from an old steel mill,John Soss reaches down to pick the like dart to his swift selections, construction dumps and who knowsdriftwood up, smoothing at its curve tossing most of what he finds back in what else?and shape, then puts it in his satchel. SEPTEMBER 2018 Newcity 17

“Like anybody who collects something, you get a little more picky about what’s worth keeping,” he says. “Overall? I’m not really interested in new stuff. Most of what I keep has been out in the lake for a long while. The real beauty comes when something has spent a lot of time in the water. A piece that’s been in there and the current has churned it around, scraped it up against the sand at the bottom and then given it to me. That’s what’s really beautiful.” Soss bends down and picks up a small, soft-edged stone with a perfectly round hole in the center. “Like this Whatever Soss decides to keep each The real beauty one, this one’s a keeper. I have a day gets laid out on one of two sheets comes when whole box of these at home.” of paper at his North Side flat—a something has The standards, I discover, are little piece for the light hauls, big for spent a lot of time there—not just for glass, but for bigger ones. Soss photographs the in the water. plastic, wood, metal—all of it. composition with his cell phone and I pick up a green plastic doodad from posts the results on Instagram. Then, the top of a disposable cocktail. “No,” he either tosses the found bits in the he says, disinterested. “I’ve got a lot trash, or sorts them into one or of those.” another of the dozens of jars, vases, boxes and bowls neatly organized in his living space. There are pull tabs and corks, lighters and sunglasses, An early riser, Soss was in the habit Driftwood bits that I find likewise get fruit pits and stones, bricks and baby of riding north to the turnaround by passed over. But a purple barrette is a dolls, rubber balls and pottery shards, the Kathy Osterman Beach. “There’s keeper, a stone with a piece of glass playing dice, army men, twisted metal, usually about three- to three-and-a- stuck to it, and a cerulean blue shard. and glass and glass and glass. half hours between when I get up and “An unusual blue,” he says. have to be at work,”he explains. “So one day, after my bike ride, I decided Soss blames his sister. Maybe not I’d lock my bike up and walk the This is where artistic instinct becomes blames but credits, because she’s the beach.” apparent. Although John says he’s not one who first told him about collecting Soss took everything he found that a photographer (“I don’t have a proper beach glass in the eighties. “We were day, laid it out, took a phone snap and camera, just use my phone, really, to in Michigan, taking a walk along a sent it to his sister. “And then I just document.”), and says he is never beach and she saw a bit of glass, kept doing it,” he says. really looking for anything specific on picked it up and showed me. She ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ his walks, as the morning progresses explained that this stuff somehow The Rules there is a certain rhythm and theme gets dumped in the lake, the bottles to what he finds, which shapes things. break into pieces and the waves roll “If I have certain lengths and shapes them around on the sand until of driftwood, say, I may pick up or eventually they come out like this,” he reject the next ones based on that.”Newcity SEPTEMBER 2018 holds up a soft-edged piece. Each beach visit Soss makes brings Our feet crunch loudly on the wet “We took a long walk that morning, with it an inevitable evolution: stones as we move along. The sun my sister and I. Found a bunch of Enhancements that create ritual out of gets hotter and the seagulls get stuff. And that was the first time I habit. Rules, guidelines and screechy, annoyed. Soss explains that knew about such a thing.” parameters form, some self- early morning is best for this sort of Years later, a friend showed Soss bits monitoring—such as practical limits hunt, and that his favorite finds have of beach glass “found right here on a set to keep the collections from happened not in “beachy” summer North Side beach,” he recalls. “I was overtaking and pushing him into months when tractors come out and surprised. I mean, I think I always hoarder territory. Others are quality rake the beach to groom it, but in the assumed you could find beach glass on judgements. “I do have my standards,” spring and fall, or after a storm when Soss laughs. the waves churn more things onto the the other side of the lake or on shore. vacation in Jamaica, not right here.”18

The InterlopersMoving up the beach in John’swake, I’m conscious that being here isan intrusion on what is pretty much aprivate ritual. Discovery can be ajoint venture, but what you find whenyou are alone—well, that’s in someways, more special.Think about some experience or object learning about John’s search to find to him that as much as I appreciatedyou really love. If I were to find one of the lake’s little treasures. his trying to help me, the discovery,those objects, knowing it was spot-on “He started picking things up with me, the reverie of the quiet walk andperfect for your collection, would you showing them to me, keeping some, search was as much a part of what Itreasure it as much as the ones you giving me others. And then he went was doing as the little bits I actuallyfound on your own? You might be away,” says John. “But then he came kept.”warm-fuzzy pleased: I found this back another day. And another. And John jokes that he should’ve put athing for you and thought to give it to then on a regular basis he started blindfold on me, so I wouldn’t knowyou... or might even think of me coming to that beach, trying to find which beach I was on. This makes mewhenever you saw it. But that, in fact, for me what things he thought I might feel cautious, uncomfortable,is part of the problem. If you’d found like. He’d bring them to me and say, threatened and at the same time,that special piece on your own, ‘You know, I really like doing this! It’s oddly voyeuristic.unexpectedly saw it and seized on it, become a habit for me.’” Still, within an hour, I have picked upthe thrill of that discovery, that “And suddenly, that beach wasn’t mine eighteen pieces of glass, a red lego,moment in time, the exact description anymore. It was his. I couldn’t explain six pieces of driftwood, a whole emptyof the space, the place, the feel of the eggshell, two goldfinch feathers, someair, the journey, would be wholly broken tile, some slag, four rocks andyours. You’d pay attention more, a golf tee. I show them all, feeling likeremember more. Story would come of a little kid trying to please, trying tothat heightened awareness. And you produce finds that measure up to thewould share that story, and maybe standard.that object, with the world later. Butthe discovery itself? That would beyour own.Soss tells a story that confirms this.He was drifting along a favorite beachone day, when along came an old man.He watched and followed along,asking John what he was doing, What John doesn’t want, I keep. But SEPTEMBER 2018 Newcity then, I find myself discovering bits I know he’d like, but rather than show him, quietly slip them into my pocket, feeling like a thief. An interloper. The old man. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Diamond Ring We have walked the entire length of 19 the beach. Combing the edges where the tractor couldn’t reach, John’s satchel is full of driftwood, rocks and

a large piece of heavy slag I found that he has agreed to tote back so I can stick it on my bookshelf. There is a feeling that whatever was to be found has been found. The intensity lifts, we chatter more, and walk faster to get back to the car. I am crankily aware I haven’t had any coffee yet, and that I really need to pee. Then I see it: An 18-karat gold diamond ring. It’s just lying there on the sand, winking at me. The diamonds are set in a horseshoe, and the ring is heavy, a little clunky, male, artless. I think it’s ugly. But, it’s gold! And there are diamonds. And I’m pretty sure that horseshoe symbolizes what a lucky thing it is that I am here, stealthy interloper or not. “Wow,” John says, quietly, “in all the years I’ve done this, I’ve never found a ring that valuable.” It’s a weird moment. I’m elated, because I just found this thing of “value.” (Yay, me! Best magpie of the morning!) But this is John’s beach. And the ring is ugly. And John has just found the most sheeny, velvety little piece of driftwood. He shows it to me and I hear myself blurt, “I’ll trade you this ring, for that driftwood.”Newcity SEPTEMBER 2018 A FREE INTERACTIVE EXHIBITION John hesitates. I wonder if he’s ABOUT THE GLOBAL REFUGEE CRISIS surprised I don’t want the jewelry, or thinks me stupid for wanting wood THE RICHARD J. DALEY CENTER more than diamonds. Or can’t believe CHICAGO, IL I’d ask him to trade such a pretty piece of wood, for such an ugly, SEPT 23 – 30 manmade thing. In the end? John took the ring. You Monday – Friday 4pm – 8pm can see it in the photo he shot that day Saturday – Sunday 10am – 6pm and posted May 31, a footnote, off in one corner, hanging on a little branch, FORCEDFROMHOME.COM/IL looking very out of place. I got the driftwood, a fat piece of slag, and a @forcedfromhome good story to tell you. Probably the better deal. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You can view John’s “On the Beach” photos here: instagram.com/heysossman20 8/14/18 5:40 PM MSF-FFH-Print-Chicago-NewCity.indd 1



NewcityASEPTEMBERL2018L ARTS PREVIE Serpentine Miracle Marathon, Serpentine Galleries (October 8, 2016)/Photo: Lewis Ronald ART TCCRHAAPICDITAINAGLGO: ’FSOCHUanRsREUlSriAchTOObIrNVistEStages a Mini-Interview Marathon BY LEE ANN NORMAN Conversation among artists, curators or rhyme—they always give attention to writers is much more than a linguistic presentation and delivery. The battle—a exercise or tit-for-tat. Dialogues are dramatized conversation—is after all, exchanges, a “trading of fours” that can essentially a performance. be likened to a rap battle. As the battle Since the early 2000s, Hans Ulrich Obrist progresses and one MC presents an idea has been interviewing artists and to the other, the verses grow bolder and organizing “Interview Marathons,” in more extravagant with each response. which artists, curators, collectors, Although verbal sparring partners focus historians, writers, designers and other intently on the content of their verses— interested parties hold a series of syntax, pacing, the cleverness of the conversations for an extended period,22

much like a durational performance. Obrist has amassed more than 1,600 FALL ART EVENTS Presented by the Chicago Humanities recorded and transcribed interviews over Festival as part of Art Design Chicago the years. EXPO CHICAGO 2018 SEPTEMBER 2018 Newcity and in collaboration with EXPO Chicago More than ever, Chicago’s annual 2018, Obrist’s first U.S. iteration of the Obrist curates his Interview Marathons commercial art fair on Navy Pier event, dubbed “Creative Chicago,” seeks and conversations through choice of shows the world what to expect from to reveal the sparks and synergies that artistic collaborators such as Rem the Midwest’s artistic powerhouse. make Chicago a center for a broad range Koolhaas and Olafur Eliasson, as well as Browse over a hundred established of creative activity. artists, which have included Yoko Ono, galleries coming from as close as Jonas Mekas, Zaha Hadid. The Chicago Detroit and as far as Johannesburg, Shortly after becoming co-director of the edition will include the international or focus on the thirty or so extra Serpentine Galleries in 2006, Obrist fashion designer (and Rockford, Illinois spots reserved for emerging galleries hosted his first Interview Marathon, native) Virgil Abloh. But the experience is and artists to see the freshest work. resulting in a twenty-four-hour equally shaped by the space where the Walk along the outer walls to see what Chicago’s independent and exploration of art through conversation. conversations are held alternative spaces like the While “Creative Chicago” will not mirror and the community that Renaissance Society, the Chicago the twenty-four-hour marathons Obrist engages the event. Artists Coalition, the Hyde Park Art hosted in the past, the four-hour block During a 2013 visit to Center and 6018|North have to offer. will surely reveal surprising insight and MoMA PS1 for an event Performances, book releases, artist candor for participants and audience related to his recently and scholar talks and site-specific members alike. published compendium installations keep the rigor high and “Do It,” a belligerent the space alive. Stories are intimately tied to the people Clifford Owens entered we encounter and the relationships we PS1’s giant performance SOUTH SIDE STORIES have to them, and as a young curator dome, interrupting For those who paid little attention to Obrist intuited this, using artist visits as a Obrist’s chat in an effort the South Side before Theaster Gates way to generate and explore exhibition to get a rise out of showed up, this pair of exhibitions ideas. When meeting with an artist at the Lawrence Weiner until a will open eyes to the long history of studio wasn’t possible, Obrist embraced group of fellow artists collectivity and creativity alive and a flexibility that allowed him to expand and collectors in well in the neighborhood since the possibilities for where conversations attendance—including before the sixties. At the University on art-making could occur. He Agnes Gund—carried of Chicago’s Smart Museum, “The discovered that he liked the informality Owens outside to the bar Time Is Now!” maps the networked that meeting outside of the studio—at a across the street. A slightly unnerved communities of South Side cultural café, on a neighborhood walk, in line at Obrist quickly moved past the disruption, production, focusing on the Black the airport, riding in a taxi—often shifting gears to carry on a conversation Arts Movement and its affiliates. At provided. For his first recorded interviews, with Lawrence Weiner. the DuSable Museum for African Obrist used audio recorders, then American History, “The Art and switched to digital as technology In her 1993 volume “Unmarked: The Influence of Dr. Margaret T. improved in the mid-1990s. His Politics of Performance,” scholar Peggy Burroughs” considers the broad“Interviews Volume 1,” published in 2003, Phelan suggests that performance is a influence of the artist, writer and is a 500-page tome that only begins to reflection of lived experience, with the educator who co-founded the scratch the surface of the scope and audience that witnesses the event DuSable and helped establish the ambition of the interview project; as looking into “life’s mirror” and inevitably South Side Community Art Center. conversations have become central to his seeing their own reflection. Through curatorial research and methodology, conversation, we witness a kind of HAIRY WHO reflection, too, one that reveals an Ever heard of ‘em? Fall brings unfiltered view of experience. Obrist’s multiple tributes to the seminal Interview Marathons allow those who artists and the larger Chicago converge within the multiple Imagist canon. The Art Institute will intersections of creativity to offer a focus on the original gang of six and first-person account of what motivates their late-sixties exhibitions, while and inspires their work and process, Elmhurst College will show figurative demystifying an often hazy and mushy works curated by original member notion. A spirited tête-à-tête seems to be Suellen Rocca. Even the Smart’s a good place to start. show, noted above, will integrate the group into its tale of the South Side’s Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-director of London’s artistic community. Northwestern’s Serpentine Galleries, will host “Creative Block Museum will open an Chicago: An Interview Marathon” at EXPO exhibition focusing on Ed Paschke’s Chicago on Navy Pier on September 29. The art and teaching, fitting for the many interviewees will include architect school where Paschke taught for Jeanne Gang, artist Cauleen Smith, decades. Later this season, the photographer Dawoud Bey and scholar Museum of Contemporary Art’s Joseph Grigley. “West by Midwest” exhibition will include works by Imagists who influenced West Coast styles. 23

DANCE Ephrat Asherie Dance in Odeon Photo: Matthew Murphy Photo: Red Clay Dance Company FALL DANCE EVENTS Intercontinental the piece itself; a dance that might be Collaboration: considered, in a way, about its own ODEON/EPHRAT ASHERIE DANCE making. “We’ve been looking at time and Dance Center of Columbia College distance,” Sanders-Ward says. “How October 11-13 long it took this collaboration to unfold, Bessie Award-winning choreographer and B-girl Ephram Asherie collaborates and the great distance we here in the with her brother, musical director Ehud Asherie, on a piece blending a wide BRINGING TOGETHER United States, who are of range of club and street dance styles, CHICAGO’S RED CLAY DANCE African decent, have to our from hip-hop to breaking to vogueing. COMPANY WITH UGANDA’S history in both knowledge and The score by Brazilian composer KEIGA DANCE COMPANY actual geography.” Ernesto Nazareth blends early twentieth-century romantic music with To probe questions about Afro-Brazilian rhythms. “Odeon” dices origins, time and distance, up the lines both between dance styles Sanders-Ward and and between dancer and musician. The Byaruhanga sought to strip show coincides with the Dance away conventional Center’s B-Series, a free, mini-festival choreographic practices and of hip-hop and street dance. look at the roots of movement RELATIONS/ISHMAEL HOUSTON- JONES, RALPH LEMON itself. “We didn’t come in with AND BEBE MILLER MCA Stage BY SHARON HOYER a vocabulary of things to teach November 2-3 the dancers; there was a lot of Three legends of black experimental dance meet: Houston-Jones, Lemon The roots of certain creative projects can improvisation. Dancers were pulling from and Miller have influenced a generation be clearly traced through time and space their experience with sports or martial of dancers and, from afar, one another, back to a moment of germination well arts and different ways the body moves collectively winning more than ten before the thing had a shape or central through life. We wanted to figure out Bessie Awards. And despite idea or name. Such is the case with what of that is still influenced by history, respective, longtime celebrated “EKILI MUNDA|What Lies Within,” a culture and ethnicity.” careers of fertile collaborations with artists across the country, “Relations”Newcity SEPTEMBER 2018 collaboration between Chicago’s Red Sanders-Ward and Byaruhanga met in a will be the first time the three meet to Clay Dance Company and Keiga Dance three-month training program in Senegal collaborate with one another. All three Company, based in Kampala, Uganda, a in 2007, at a time when each was performances will be improvised, a long-in-the-making performance which founding or had just started to lead real-time unfolding of the creative comes to fruition this fall, just in time for fledgling companies. “We saw a common germination possible when masters Red Clay Dance’s ten-year anniversary. ground of our work being informed by meet. “I’m honored to be able to celebrate at our communities and ‘artivisim’ Columbia College because I’m a (language I didn’t have at the time),” says WHAT REMAINS/WILL RAWLS AND Columbia alum; it’s where it all started,” Sanders-Ward. “We stayed in touch over CLAUDIA RANKINE says Vershawn Sanders-Ward, founder the years and, in 2010, decided to do a MCA Warehouse and artistic director of Red Clay. “Had I collaboration that looked at dance of the December 5-9 not been a student there I wouldn’t have African diaspora and contemporary Choreographer Rawls and writer had the opportunity to go to Senegal and African dance. We were awarded a Rankine team up with filmmaker John meet Jonas [Byaruhanga, founder and MacArthur grant in 2016 and were able Lucas to create an immersive director of Keiga]. I know it sounds to start in 2017.” performance in response to cheesy, but it really has come full circle, surveillance, race and cultural violence. Projection, dance and spoken bringing my choreographic ideas back to The decade-long relationship has set the text come together to transform the a space where the seeds were just foundation for a bridge Sanders-Ward MCA Warehouse into an internal, starting to grow..” hopes to strengthen in the years to come. imaginary space haunted by hidden histories and a ghostly chorus. The genesis of the project, which features four dancers from all-female Red Clay EKILI MUNDA|What Lies Within/Red Clay Dance Company is at Dance Center of and four from all-male Keiga, is Columbia College, November 8-1024 consistent with the process and theme of

BBIYCDYCELSIINGNG: Arnold, Schwinn & Co. bicycles—known Mass and Bike the Drive; local, for their durability—and Sears, Roebuck community-led groups like BlackstoneLooking at Chicago’s History and Co.—able to distribute bicycles all Bicycle Works, Active Transportationas a Center of Two-Wheeled over the country via mail order—were Alliance and West Town Bikes; and aTransportation strong influences in keeping the industry myriad of clubs and groups like Major alive. Taylor Cycling Club, Rat Patrol and Chicago Cruisers.   As one might expect, the Depression didn’t help bicycle manufacturers either. How are you developing the exhibition However, in 1933, Schwinn introduced from a curator’s perspective? What is the the balloon tire to American riders and guiding idea behind it? the highly stylized Aerocycle in 1934, establishing Schwinn bikes as not only The association between bicycles and durable but also cool, and very desirable. design is traditionally through the lens of With the growth of the suburbs and the engineering or art but there is so muchDESIGN design around an object like the bicycle besides the bicycle itself. This exhibition celebrates these links, but also brings to the fore the everyday—advertising, clothing, community, and so on—to explore more deeply design’s role in establishing the mythos of the American bicycle. The narrative develops around two organizing principles: bikes as innovation and bikes as symbols. Bikes as innovation will look at how form, function, manufacturing and sales design fromBY VASIA RIGOU Chicago and by ChicagoansBusy curating the shaped the idea of theupcoming Keep Moving:Designing Chicago’s Bicycle American bicycle. StoriesCulture exhibition scheduled toopen at the Chicago Design include how the stampingMuseum this fall, Lauren Boegentalks about the city’s important manufacturing processrole in the bicycle manufacturingindustry at the intersection implemented by Westernbetween bicycles and designwith Newcity design editor Vasia Rigou. Wheel Works allowed them toCan you give us a brief overview of the become the largest bicyclerise, fall and rebirth of bicycling inChicago? producer in the United States,Cycling was one of many fads sweeping and that of MNML’s Blacklinethe nation in the late-eighteenth andearly-nineteenth century. The first U.S. bicycle, designed specificallybicycle manufacturer appeared in 1878,based in Connecticut, but Chicago middle class in the mid-twentieth century, for riding in Chicago. Bikes asquickly became the nation’s center for the children’s bike market grew symbols, on the other hand, explores howbicycle manufacturing, producing more exponentially and Schwinn’s Chicago- design-based communication related tothan two-million bikes in 1897, more than made bicycles and Chicago voice bicycles permeated American culture,two-thirds of the bikes made in the continued to be an industry leader. In looking at concepts such as gender,United States. However, supply and 1969, Schwinn was selling nearly class, community and freedom. Thesedemand hit the bike industry hard and by twenty-five percent of the bikes bought ideas are illustrated with objects such as1900 the boom was over. Most in the United States. stereoscope images, Playboy magazine,companies disappeared, but in Chicago, Ebony articles, bicycle catalogs and In the 1970s, on top of growing advertisements.  environmental, health and civic “Keep Moving: Designing Chicago’s SEPTEMBER 2018 Newcity awareness, kids who grew up riding Bicycle Culture” will be presented in a bicycles became adults who still enjoyed new pop-up museum space. riding bicycles and American cycling continued to thrive, shifting toward BMX The exhibition will be in the Expo 72 and road cycling. Today, Chicago is building at 72 East Randolph, directly recognized as a national leader in urban across from the Chicago Cultural Center. cycling infrastructure. Cycling culture in the city continues to evolve and develop, through large, public events like Critical 25

FALL DESIGN From high-tech bike manufacturers to DINING EVENTS premium cycling apparel brands, the bicycle is no longer just a means of OPEN HOUSE CHICAGO transportation, but a lifestyle and fashion (October 13-14. Chicago Architecture accessory—a design piece to reflect Foundation website for details) one’s personal aesthetics. As urban More than 200 landmarks, theaters, cycling has become widespread and hotels, residential spaces and private cities are adapting to bikers fostering clubs open their doors for forty-eight vibrant bike cultures, how would you hours, for all and for free. This is the describe Chicago’s biking community? perfect opportunity to explore the city’s most iconic buildings and learn First, I want to make clear that I do not MA AMLAÖNRTAWNDURHSIST: their architectural and cultural consider myself a part of Chicago’s stories  with behind-the-scenes biking community. I have a bike, I ride Sausage Made glimpses during the biggest with varying frequency depending on of Chicago’s Most architecture and design public circumstances, but I don’t identify as a Despised Spirit festival in North America. Survival “Chicago cyclist.” Researching this tips: Wear comfortable shoes and exhibition made me aware of grab a sweater—Octobers in Chicago are tricky. BY DAVID HAMMOND RENEGADE CRAFT FAIRNewcity SEPTEMBER 2018 misconceptions and misunderstandings John Carruthers is a Newcity contributor (Division between Damen and around urban cycling, and cycling in and co-author of “Eat Street: The Ashland, Wicker Park, September 8-9, Chicago in general. For example, I was ManBQue Guide to Making Street Food 11am-7pm and  familiar with a few of the rebuild-recycle at Home.” Carruthers also possesses a Bridgeport Art Center, 1200 W. 35th, shops in the city, but had no idea how weird and wonderful culinary perspective. December 1-2, 11am-5pm) many there actually were and what many Recently, he let us know he was making Your annual meet-up with artists, of those organizations are doing around sausage using Jeppson’s Malört, designers, makers and entrepreneurs bike education and inclusive community Chicago’s own notoriously odious sip. I from around the country strikes twice building. I’ve learned much about the had some questions for Mr. Carruthers. before year-end: Once in the early fall relationship between bicycles and and once right in time for Christmas gentrification, and more about why Why in the name of God were you shopping. The homegrown fair turned communities impacted feel the way they inspired to use the much-maligned global craft showcase phenomenon do about how bikes and infrastructure Malört as an ingredient in wurst? I (the biggest fair in the city is every affect their neighborhoods. If I had to use understand it was a dare, but you must September in Wicker Park), gives you only a few words to describe the have seen something in the liqueur that the perfect excuse to shop small and community in general (again, as an others did not.  support your community without it outsider): Scrappy, quietly persistent and having to be financially overwhelming. proud. Not coincidentally, these are also It started, like all bad ideas, on Twitter. words I’d use to describe Chicago and My favorite neighborhood dive, Nisei SOFA CHICAGO Chicagoans. Lounge, was asked by an earnest fan (Navy Pier, November 1-4: Thursday: whether they had ever tried to put Malört 5pm-9pm VIP preview, Friday- At the Chicago Design Museum,72 East in a sausage. Nisei shot that question Saturday: 11am-7pm, Sunday: Randolph, October 19, 2018-February 15, 2019 over to me, and sometimes all it takes is 12pm-6pm) for someone like that to believe in you. I More than eighty galleries and wasn’t not going to do it after that. I’ve dealers gather at Navy Pier for the worked on a few different sausages for design event of the year, the my cookbooks and absolutely fell in love Sculpture Objects Functional Art and with the balance you can build within an Design (SOFA) Fair that turns encased meat. Malört is difficult to play twenty-five this year. Bringing with, as a lot of cocktail slingers around together fine art, decorative art and town have found, but it’s not impossible. design across media ranging from 3D objects, glass and ceramics, to wood, fiber, jewelry and metal, to painting, photography and others is what you make it: A sophisticated weekend pastime, an opportunity to network in the design world or a shopping spree.26

FALL ADVENTURES IN FOOD APPRECIATIONGet past the hilarious reaction shots, and dare and turn it into something The coming months will see multipleyou get hints of pine, grapefruit, citrus people dig. ventures from food writers and journalistsrind. Sure, picking them up is like who are trying to develop new ways forstanding outside in a hurricane and Doug Sohn was one of the first tasters Chicagoans and visitors to our city totrying to lip-read what someone across of your MalörtWurst. What’d he have appreciate our distinctive chow.the street is saying, but they’re there. Fat to say?and salt naturally give you another path MICHAEL GEBERT, editor andaround bitterness, and freshly ground So before we even got into the publisher of Fooditor, who waswhole spices can stand up to a lot. It’s my combinations of different toppings and recognized in last year’s Big Heatfavorite kind of project: difficult, but not condiments, he said “This sausage, from issue, has started a series of Southimpossible. a technical standpoint, is made perfectly. Side tours that build on his longtime It’s just really nice.” I mean, I can’t passion for places like MiddleDo you think Malört, as a beverage, imagine a better outcome. I felt less Eastern and Lithuanian restaurantsdeserves to be maligned? sense of accomplishment graduating that can get ignored because of the college. He was also a big fan of the North Side focus of many ChicagoI don’t. I think everyone who hates it Berbere seasoning and encouraged me food writers. Gebert’s first Southsuspects that we Malört drinkers are just to just sauce the heck out of the thing so Side Food-I Tour in August was atrying to be ironic hipsters, but it’s quite the spice comes through alongside the sell-out, so he added another andthe opposite. It’s a grown-folks drink for tangy sport peppers and sweet hopes for more.  Get ticketspeople who don’t need cinnamon candy caramelized onions, which I ended up here: events.eventzilla.net/e/or birthday cake in their bracing shot of doing at the pop-up. That was a great tip. fooditors-south-side-hooch. It declares itself, sure, but it’s like fooditour-2138956472a loud uncle you come to love. At your pop-up where you unloaded twenty-five pounds of the stuff, did STEVE DOLINSKY, thirteen-timeWhat flavors or sensations did Malört hungry customers buy the sausage? James Beard Award winner, Hungrybring to this sausage? What were you charging? Hound, longtime internationally recognized Chicago foodMy biggest worry was that it wouldn’t They did! We charged $7 per, and we commentator, and Newcity Big Heatshow up. My second biggest was that it were out with an hour left. You always honoree, is running his own tourswould overpower everything else. Finding wonder if your dumb dish or weird idea is around one of Chicago’s signaturethe middle ground between those going to even register with people, and classics: pizza. His tour follows onextremes was just the best. Put alongside when we hit the very end of that sausage the heels of Dolinsky’s encyclopedicsome of these strong earthy spices at the supply, I was shocked. One guy “Pizza Town USA: 101 Reasons Whyend of a charred, fatty sausage, the purchased the last three sausages, but Chicago Is America’s Greatest PizzaMalört brings a clean bitterness that not at the same time. He came by, heard Town.” Tours are conducted byresonates with the citrus and spices and my spiel, and thought it was worth a try. qualified “dough-cents” who willrefreshes the palate in a way that He then asked to buy the second while lead you through the tasting ofreminded me of a hoppy beer. eating the first. Then he walked away, Chicago’s most beloved slices at came back, and said “I think I’d better locations all over town. TicketsHas using Malört to make your wurst take that last one.” I didn’t even get here: www.stevedolinsky.com/started you thinking about other offbeat his name. pizza-city-usa-tours-open-business.ingredients to use in your sausagemaking? Carruthers is negotiating for a pop-up this MOLLY EACH works with friends and SEPTEMBER 2018 Newcity fall featuring his sausage made of Malört. food writers Rachel Gillman RischallAnything and everything. I feel like if This is the kind of thing that Chicago foodists and Liz Grossman to stage quarterlyMalört can be balanced into something love: a way of turning a Chicago original into “Between Bites” readings.  Describedfun and tasty, anything can. A friend of a food that reaches a larger audience, from as a “philanthropic food-inspiredmine from Kendall College collaborated moms with strollers as well to old men in forum,” Between Bites invites chefs,with me a few years ago on a kind of dive bars who back up their Old Styles with food journalists and others to readBlut-Zungenwurst made of pastrami- a shot of the local, despised amaro. Elliot food-related stories at differentbrined pig tongues and beef blood. It’s Bambrough, host of WGN’s “Chicago’s Best,” restaurants throughout the city.fun to take something that seems like a says of the sausage, “I really couldn’t stop Readings have been given by fucking eating.” Chicago chefs like Tony Mantuano, John Manion and Kevin Hickey. “After marking our five-year anniversary 27 with a milestone event in September,” Each tells us, “‘Between Bites’ plans to host a local event this winter with an eye on an out-of-town reading next year.”

““SMDHACHFHHMIOEAINRIRICLTCYIR”S”AHAOHSOSGNACRFCOYLDOSHO:TAAOUTSSORHOLNBY FILMNewcity SEPTEMBER 2018 BY RAY PRIDE places kind of freaked me out, to be Chicago was my film school. Or at the honest. I landed in Chicago with the very least, my “finish your shit” school. It Director Amy Scott’s nonfiction feature intention of working for this music- was a completely necessary time to debut, “Hal,” is an intense portrait of the marketing firm with a friend of mine who germinate ideas, be immature, find work and life and life of work of a was also bartending at the Rainbo Club. myself in all the corny ways one does in gone-too-soon filmmaker whose We really just got stoned and called their twenties before they do anything of concerns with humanity and justice record stores all day. I found an substance. I stayed for ten years. More resonate to this day. In the 1970s alone, apartment on Division and Damen, got a than the jobs it was the people I met that the Mormon-born boy from small-town job at Jinx co ee shop across the street enabled this sense of finishing that stuck Utah-editor-turned-auteur made seven and could walk to said Rainbo Club in with me. Everyone I knew was making a lasting pictures: “The Landlord,” “Harold less than two minutes. It was glorious. I film or playing in a band or doing some and Maude,”“The Last Detail,” met a lot of people there that changed political action work but usually all of the “Shampoo,” “Bound For Glory,” “Coming the course of my life. I got involved with a above and it was incredibly inspiring. I Home” and “Being There.” “Hal” is an lot of film folks—worked a lot with Danny gleaned from my time there that if you impressive, quietly emphatic piece of Alpert at the Kindling Group, worked with can locate the thing or idea you are work, which we talk about below, as well Bill Siegel [“The Weather Underground,” passionate about, nothing on earth as how a formative decade in the “The Trials of Muhammad Ali”], edited should prevent you from pursuing it, so Chicago film community set Scott on her Usama Alshaibi’s Iraq War doc, deejayed long as you pursue it to the finish line. way. (Disclosure: Scott and I collaborated a lot of political and film nights with on trailers for the twelfth Chicago Naomi Walker and worked with IFP and While your film’s subject has been gone Underground Film Festival in 2005, and Chicago Underground. My last job was at for thirty years, you get good stu from interviewed documentarian Albert the Chicago History Museum, working as his contemporaries, as well as directors Maysles for Newcity.) Studs Terkel’s digital archivist, sifting he influenced, like Lisa Cholodenko and through his hundreds of hours of Alexander Payne. Why was it important to you to land in interviews. That was the most Chicago, and what did you discover here meaningful job I’ve had to this day. Robert Towne came over after the 2016 in the early 2000s? election and we had the darkest conversation on my back deck right I wanted to leave Oklahoma right out of before his interview about global politics. college, but wasn’t too jazzed about He smoked a Cuban cigar and asked us making a life in New York or L.A. Both to join him. That was a real moment.28

The title card with his simple line signature is lovely. It was so beautiful when I saw it, there FALL FILM EVENTS was no other title it could’ve been. Yes, when I saw how he drew his name, there THE CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL was an understated elegance to it. CHILDREN’S FILM FESTIVAL Simple grace. November 1-9 Observing its thirty-fifth anniversary You found a form to reflect the way the in 2018, CICFF has been one of the absent subject thought of the world, and key festivals to put Chicago on the there are recurring visual and thematic world festival map. Under the Facets motifs that elevate the movie. There’s so Multimedia banner, it is today the much about water, including in those oldest and largest festival of films for extended clips from his movies. kids in North America and the first Academy Award-qualifying children’s Hal was obsessed with water. So many of film festival in the world (with a track his films featured people taking o into record of thirty-three nominations the water! If you walk the beaches in and eight Oscar wins). Under Malibu Colony you’ll totally understand programming director Ann Vikstrom, why. Strange vibes. the festival continues to make Chicago a global destination for films There are a lot more filmmaking for children, inspiring a surge in manifestos inside the film, drawn from festivals dedicated to films for Hal, than I expected. Your film itself children across the world. invokes and advocates the urgency of Hal’s ambition and ethos. Those angry THE CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL letters: “IS THAT WHAT THE FUCK WE FILM FESTIVAL MAKE A FILM FOR, FOR THE MIDDLE October 10-21 OF THE ROAD, WHAT THE HELL IS The longest-running international THAT!” competitive film festival in North America turns fifty-four years old, Judd Apatow tells you about the studios, Okay, so that middle-of-the-road line was marking the first edition since its SEPTEMBER 2018 Newcity“First they say they’re not going to fuck haunting me. Lisa Janssen, another founding in 1964 with Michael Kutza with you, then they fuck with you until Chicago ex-pat, is our producer-archivist not under the title of artistic director. you lose your mind.” and she was very frank with me early on (Kutza will step down by the end of about one of the versions of the film. It 2018 after reigning longer than any I love that line. Apatow really gave us the was so middle-of-the-road. It had no other film festival artistic director, goods. Those guys learned how to voice, and she told me, gently, to delete taking on the title of Emeritus CEO.) navigate the sharky waters. They learned the project and start over. I was aghast, The annual event has taken on a the language. They knew those Hal only because it was at least six months of distinctly new flavor under the stories and it must’ve scared them too, work. But she was right. I wasn’t taking guidance of its next generation, knowing it could all be gone in an any chances, I wasn’t digging deep, I was including artistic director Mimi instant. David O. Russell had so many trying to get every goddamned film that Plauché, managing director Vivian great lines that we couldn’t use, like, you he ever made in the movie and spend Teng and programmer Anthony must always be looking over your equal time on it and it was so dull. I kept Kaufman. shoulder. You must treat every film like it hearing him say that and it was freeing to is your last. me, to not think about what people “THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND” expected me to make. It’s a huge Festivals; Netflix November 2 You have audiotapes of Ashby talking responsibility to make something like this, The latest (but not last) of Orson intentions, and narration from the fiery he is so beloved. And you want to please Welles’ unfinished pictures to be letters he would write. Under all of them everyone, but you can’t. So you have to completed, which he began in 1970 is his faith that work defines the art, you make the film the only way you know and shot, reshot, cut and edited until find the art through concentration. how to make it, and not up the fucking his death in 1985 after seventy middle. well-lived years, debuted at the Yes. I was really buying into and Venice Film Festival on August 31. internalizing everything Hal said—”the “Every sonofabitching time you sit down Word from early viewers starts at film will tell you what to do”—and it just and you thread up a goddamned reel ecstatic and jumps high from there. took a while. and you punch a button and you start to Rumors persist that Netflix may have look at it you get a di erent idea and theatrical showings after the film whether you pursue it or not doesn’t begins streaming, alongside “They’ll matter. The film will tell you what to do,” Love Me When I’m Dead,” Morgan Hal says in your film. Neville’s documentary on the project’s mad, maddening history, It was all there in his work, and in those edited by Chicago’s Aaron audio tapes. I just had to really hear the Wickenden. 29

Performing at man. He was always directing me, I felt. Corny and mystical, yes, but I was having FALL SERIES these dreams where we would smoke a joint and he would say “go back to the SEPTEMBER 27, 29 + 30 archives,” and I would and inevitably something would turn up. Featuring collaborations with Third Coast Percussion Ashby was an adept of exploring music Lil Buck and Jon Boogz, and songs… and pop… his is sort of a Emma Portner, and musical documentary at moments. You Devonté Hynes (Blood Orange) have SIX Cat Stevens songs! Plus, Cat Stevens. hubbardstreetdance.com/fall Season Sponsors Fall and Spring or call 312-635-3799 Series Sponsor I’m proud of that! A lot of Cat Stevens, people! Cat’s music goes straight to your Hubbard Street Dancer Adrienne Lipson. Photo by Todd Rosenberg. Music commissioned by the Charles and Joan Gross Family Foundation. gut, and it is hard to replicate that kind of emotional resonance. We had to work EXAMINE BELIEFS. those babies in. RADICALLY RETHINK THEM. The “Being There” section is so pointed. SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO Did the edit and focus of talking about it GRADUATE PROGRAMS change after that Tuesday night in November 2016? A man who finds SAIC encourages interdisciplinary, Graduate SAIC Day information only in the reflective surface collaborative, and experimental investigation. of the television. That’s always been wild In addition to our renowned Master of Fine SEPTEMBER 30 in the movie, but you pluck out some Arts program, SAIC o ers a number of Master 10:00 A.M.– 2:00 P.M. lines that sting today, like “Chauncey you of Arts, Master of Architecture, Master of SAIC MACLEAN BALLROOM had the Russian ambassador eating right Design, and Master of Science programs. 112 S. MICHIGAN AVE. out of your hand!” and “It is very useful to speak Russian today…” Hal’s greatest Melanie Teresa Bohrer (MFA 2016), Untitled (Memorial), 2016 Graduate Portfolio Day stu is fucking timeless, but here it’s scary. NOVEMBER 3 10:00 A.M.– 2:00 P.M. Are you kidding me? The entire film 280 S. COLUMBUS DR. changed course after November 9. I did recut the film after the election, mostlyNewcity SEPTEMBER 2018 RSVP Now because it meant so much to go back saic.edu/gr with more of a social lens and really examine these films for what they said SAIC GRADUATE ADMISSIONS | 312.629.6100 | saic.edu/gr | [email protected] about humanity and society.30 Chilly prophecy is always worth the real estate. Isn’t it, though? My creative partner in all of this, Brian Morrow, my producer, we would constantly send each other these timecode moments that were so mind-blowing that either we never saw before or they just weren’t stamped with the same urgency in our minds. Brian literally found that Russian line the night before the film was to be turned in to Sundance. And that “white privilege” line in “The Landlord” from Hal, it gave me chills when I first stumbled across it. I couldn’t believe it. He truly got it. Don’t even have to call Hal a visionary. He. Just. Got. It. Hal always got it. “Hal” opens in Chicago in the fall.

LIT Photo: David SampsonTJJMHLAEAHONOSECEODPSMOKPPIBCOTEOAHAIRSREHEAITAESEANTN:DDZ What is a favorite memory from this time more than a decade ago. The in Chicago? apartment where I wrote this,BY TONI NEALIE where I was allowed to foster The book spans from 2004 to 2008, my career by virtue of rent aMusic critic Jessica Hopper follows her which was the nascence of my pro-am fledging freelancer couldacclaimed “The First Collection of career as a music journalist and critic, so afford ($250), was razed andCriticism by a Living Female Rock Critic” a lot of my memories of that time have turned into a million-dollarwith a memoir tracing the literally music, city adventure and writing condo by 2010.changing landscape of Chicago music intertwined. If there is a favorite, it is theand neighborhoods in the decade after first night I really hang out with my best How is shaping a memoirWicker Park forever became known as friend Nora and we bike from where I different from putting“Guyville.” In “Night Moves,” Hopper lived in Ukrainian Village to a show at a together a collection ofrecalls her nights as a DJ, working in since-shuttered warehouse space in criticism?ramshackle punk apartments and Pilsen. Over the course of the way therehanging out in Chicago. Catch her at and then back at 2am, along Damen, our This is mostly culled fromWomen & Children First on September friendship gets born. diaristic writing, its ribs are20, the Empty Bottle Book Club on old blog entries. At the time IOctober 29 and on November 3 at the The blurb says it’s hilarious. Describe a did not know I was making aChicago Humanities Festival where she hilarious moment. memoir. How I put this together and howwill be in conversation with poet José I put my criticism collection together areOlivarez. Hilarity is in the eye of the beholder, very similar in that regard. I just wanted yadda-yadda, but the parts I laugh at still the best pieces that evoke that time and when I read and remember then largely space. have to do with other people’s wasted escapades, typical of one’s twenties. What are you looking forward to this fall? How does Chicago in 2018 differ from Really excited for “Citizen Illegal” from what is described as a “transformative José Olivarez and Eve Ewing’s book on time”—has it changed much? Chicago’s school closings, “Ghosts In The Schoolyard.” The book’s opening pages are a map of the area where the book takes place, in a SEPTEMBER 2018 Newcity rapidly gentrifying area of Chicago, and the key denotes all the places mentioned that no longer exist. It’s about a third of them, and this book’s tales occur a little 31

Photo: David Sampson blessed to have her work FALL LITERARY gracing the cover. I find the EVENTS WITH cover art compelling, vibrant CHICAGO WRITERS and beautiful. I feel that it really captures the spirit of the book, “THE FOURTEENTH OF SEPTEMBER” as she created the piece after BY RITA DRAGONETTE having read it. I think she really Anti-Vietnam War activism is the “got” the book. backdrop for Rita Dragonette’s debut novel “The Fourteenth of September.” Other than the cover, I really Nineteen-year-old Judy jeopardizes hope people love the poems her college scholarship and her Army within the book. career when she has a crisis of conscience about the war. Set in a Chicago neighborhood Poetry seems to be ascendant. Dragonette appears on October 14 at dominated by gang life, Jacob Saenz’s Why do you think that is? the Second Sunday Book Club debut poetry collection “Throwing The meeting and has a book signing and Crown” explores boyhood, masculinity, I think poetry has always been a bit reading on October 24 at Women and race, gang life, family and love. It was outside of the mainstream when it comes Children First Bookstore. selected by Pulitzer Prize-winner to the literary arts. Poets aren’t as   Gregory Pardlo for the APR/Honickman celebrated in the mainstream culture as “GHOSTS IN THE SCHOOLYARD” First Book award from the American much as fiction writers and essayists/ BY EVE L. EWING Poetry Review. A CantoMundo fellow, non-fiction writers. I think part of it has to Writer, poet and professor Eve L. Saenz has been the recipient of a Letras do with misconceptions of what poetry is Ewing’s latest work, “Ghosts in the Latinas residency and a Ruth Lilly Poetry and can be. People think (or used to Schoolyard” looks at the closure of fellowship. He serves as an associate think) it’s dense or inaccessible or too fifty Chicago public schools in 2013. editor for RHINO and works at Columbia abstract, but I think that’s changing with Weaving together the stories of College Chicago, where he earned his younger poets. Louder Than a Bomb students, parents and community MFA, in the library. His book release poetry festival is a good example of members protesting the closures, party is September 29 at Women and poetry breaking those misconceptions. Ewing examines systematic racism, Children First. The poets involved in that festival have bad faith and distrust embedded in me excited about the future of poetry and the city’s school system. The book its effect on the culture. launch is at the Chicago Teachers Union on October 18, and sheNewcity SEPTEMBER 2018 How does it Does Chicago have anything special appears at the Chicago Humanities feel to have going for it as a poetry city? Festival on October 28. your first book coming out? Chicago has so much going for it as a “SHELL GAME” poetry city! Just a few examples: Young BY SARA PARETSKY I feel very Chicago Authors, which produces the In the latest Sara Paretsky thriller, it fortunate and Louder Than a Bomb fest; the Poetry gets personal for V.I Warshawski. Her honored to Foundation, which publishes Poetry oldest friend’s nephew is framed for have a book magazine, the oldest monthly devoted to the murder of a man found dead in a coming out, verse in the English-speaking world; forest near Chicago and her own especially with home to Gwendolyn Brooks, who just niece has vanished without a trace. it winning the had a statue erected in her honor; the Thriller fans can catch Sara Paretsky APR/ Uptown Poetry Slam at the Green Mill. I on October 15 at the American Honickman could go on and on. Writers Museum. First Book prize. I had What are some things you are excited “MONUMENT” been entering about in Chicago for fall—literary and BY NATASHA TRETHEWEY that contest, along with others, for otherwise? Pulitzer Prize winner, two-time U.S. several years and never placed as a Poet Laureate, 2017 Heinz award finalist or runner-up. I had begun to lose Here I will shamelessly plug my book recipient and currently board of hope in the contest route so when I release party which I’m very excited for. trustees professor of English at received the call that I won, I was I’ll be reading with Fred Sasaki and Krista Northwestern University, Natasha overwhelmed with joy and gratitude. I still Franklin. I’m also excited for the release Trethewey publishes her first am. of books by fellow poets Britteney Black retrospective collection. “Monument” Rose Kapri, José Guadalupe Olivarez, draws on Trethewey’s four acclaimed What do you love about your book and David Welch and Emily Jungmin Yoon. poetry collections, highlighting what do you want others to love about it? relationships between Trethewey’s What are challenges that you see ahead? oeuvre as well as debuting new One thing I love about the book is the poems. She appears at the Chicago cover art, which was created by Krista Writing the next poem, the next book. Humanities Festival on November 10. Franklin. I have long been a fan and admirer of Krista’s work and feel so32

AJHOAAFIINLNAABNLADEBZOFWATARKEEWSELL:MUSIC maker; it’s been as a social conscience. Until we lose them, that is. A politically Her liquid, octaves-spanning soprano— and artistically active Baez has been easy BY ROBERT RODI one of the most instantly recognizable to overlook because we know her so SEPTEMBER 2018 Newcity voices in American pop music—could well; her voice is part of our cultural DNA. For nearly sixty years, Joan Baez has held have been used to sell anything, from 45 But her retirement has suddenly made fast to folk music’s original directive of rpm singles to sports cars. What she’s that voice a finite resource, giving her giving voice to the disenfranchised. sold instead is a dream of social justice. latest and presumably final album, Where her rivals for the sixties folk- “Whistle Down the Wind,” a downright madonna title (Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell) This fall she arrives in Chicago on her valedictory aspect. became iconic as slight young women farewell tour. She’s seventy-seven, and behind massive guitars, alone on has been in the public eye since 1959, so That seems to have been by design, as darkened stages, Baez, in the popular it’s hard to begrudge her an exit from the the songs—which presumably form the imagination, is never alone. She’s always stage; but on hearing the news, your first bulk of her farewell concerts—appear to a radiant presence in a throng of thought might be, “Why now? Why, when have been composed especially for her, people—on the steps of the Capitol in the world she’s worked so hard to bring reflecting her legend and longevity. In1963, at Woodstock in 1969. America has into being is farther than ever from “Another World” (written by Anonhi), never had a popular-music-maker more reality?” there’s a previously unheard weariness in tirelessly, profoundly activist, with the her singing; she almost mutters the lyric, possible exception of Woody Guthrie, But that may be the whole point: in “I need another world / This one’s nearly whose career was not as lengthy. Over undertaking a final tour, Baez has made gone / Still have too many dreams / the decades, Baez has enjoyed a handful perhaps the only imaginable move that Never seen the light.” It’s the lament of of chart-toppers (“Diamonds & Rust,” could draw our unified attention. Voices an old warrior having to lay down her“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”), that have been speaking for fifty-odd sword before the battle is won. In “Last but her life’s work hasn’t been as a hit years are too often drowned out by the Leaf” (by Tom Waits and Kathleen newer ones. We’re an icon-rich society; Brennan) she’s more defiant, singing, “I’m we take those of long-standing for the last leaf on the tree / The autumn granted. took the rest / But they won’t take me … There’s nothing in the world / That I ain’t 33

seen / I greet all the new ones that are BY KEVIN GREENE coming in green.” The album’s most moving cut is Zoe Mulford’s “The Already an accomplished actor, Wardell President Sang Amazing Grace,” an almost-journalistic account of the 2015 STAGE Julius Clark has added “director” to his Charleston church shooting and its aftermath, set to a simple piano resume, making his debut in this new role arrangement. It’s the only cut on which Baez does not play guitar. “No words in January with Stage Left’s production could say what must be said / For all the living and the dead,” she sings about of “Insurrection: Holding History” by Barack Obama’s address at the memorial for the victims, “So on that day and in Robert O’Hara. He stayed busy that place / The President sang ‘Amazing Grace.’” For the final repetition, she alters throughout the prolonged Chicago winter the lyric: “My President sang ‘Amazing Grace.’” And if that doesn’t get you where directing Redtwist’s “Surely Goodness you live, you’re no friend of mine. and Mercy” and joining Marti Lyons as The tawny-tressed young firebrand is now a snowy-haired matron; her voice, associate director on Court while retaining its purity, has deepened and darkened, from sparkling silver to Theatre’s “Guess Who’s Coming to burnished gold, and there’s just a hint of gravel in its lower register. But in all other Dinner.” This fall he—along with respects, Joan Baez has been an associate director and Newcity Players astonishingly consistent presence in 50 alum Sydney Charles—will direct Red American life for as long as many of us can remember; her music has been a BOTH SIDES OF Tape Theatre’s production of Young Jean bulwark against corruption and violence, Lee’s “The Shipment,” her 2009 play and a beacon of hope and about media representations of African encouragement. This is your last chance THE TABLE: Americans. We talked about Clark’s to see her, and to honor her for it. I’d take artistic milestones, how his experience as it, if I were you. an actor shapes his process as a director WARDELL and the role of theater in addressing October 5, 8pm at The Chicago Theatre, injustice. 175 North State, $45-$125. JULIUS CLARK I saw a review of a show you were in where a critic referred to you as a “newcomer,” which you yourself pointed ON ACTING, out was amusingly inaccurate. Let’s set the record straight: When did you get your start in theater and what are  the DIRECTING AND milestones you’ve hit between then and ART AS SOCIAL now? I began acting when I was four years old. JUSTICE Throughout my childhood and into college I was part of an inner-city dance and theater program called Sparkle DanceCompany in Fairfield, Alabama. We traveled and performed all over the country from Disney World to New York FALL MUSIC EVENTS THE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH ANDY SHAUF Thalia Hall, November 17-18 Constellation, November 29 Considering that the music industry has It’s probably doing the Canadian-born been in free fall for decades, it’s Shauf a disservice to call him a latter-day surprising more artists haven’t come up Harry Nilsson, but goddammit; listen to PHISH with replacements for the old model of him. His neutral, everyman voice sounds Allstate Arena, October 26-28 recording and touring, rinse, repeat. uncannily similar, and is capable of the Phish gets no respect, and Phish fans Kristian Matsson, the charismatic same sudden, emotive twists, sometimes (“phans,” in the vernacular) get even less. Swedish singer-songwriter professionally in mid-syllable; also, his tunes have the Yet together they’ve created a standalone known as The Tallest Man On Earth, has kind of brilliant, bouncy bleakness that juggernaut comparable only to the done just that, with a multi-pronged were Nilsson’s signature. Shauf’s latestNewcity SEPTEMBER 2018 Grateful Dead and their eternally loyal project called “When The Bird Sees The album, “The Party”—a razor-sharp Deadheads: a fully self-contained Solid Ground.” It comprises five original collection of ten songs, each portraying a subculture that’s also an encompassing songs, recorded and released over the single guest at the title soiree—features community. The band’s discography is the course of several months, each echoes of Randy Newman and “Smile”- kind of sprawling mess only devoted accompanied by a video and supported by era Brian Wilson as well. His live show scholars can sort out, but the result is a a cross-country tour. This makes the tour should help us figure out who he really is, catalog of songs so vast, the four-man an essential part of the creative process, beyond his obvious influences… and apart ensemble can perform an entire not its aftermath. How well does it work? from those vividly depicted partygoers. nationwide tour without ever repeating a We’ll all find out together—Matsson set list. At this point, a Phish concert is as included. much about anthropology as musicology; but before you dismiss them, try not to34 miss them.

lively atmosphere in rehearsals. It helps the process and it rarely feels like work. This fall you’re directing “The Shipment” FALL STAGE EVENTS by Young Jean Lee, one of the most exciting and—I hesitate to even use this THE SHIPMENT word for its loaded connotations— (Red Tape Theatre) controversial playwrights writing. When September 7-October 13 did you become interested in directing Playwright Young Jean Lee uses her this play and why? razor-sharp and unsettling humor to upend the tropes and surface Photo: Joshua Albanese I read the play back in 2010 and had stereotypes of African Americans heard about it when it was touring. I have that permeate our media, City. When I think about milestones, I always loved Young Jean Lee’s writing entertainment industry, and the think about productions or performances and thought this piece was so bizarre dominant culture (aka white- that I am exceptionally proud of or peers and cool with what it was addressing, perceived) narrative. Audiences are and mentors I have gained since I began what it was asking of the audience, and confronted with cliches, distortions working. My Victory Gardens debut in how it would be perceived. I love plays and brilliant sleights of hand that 2011, “The Gospel According to that shock the spirit and shake the force us to go beyond the lampoonJames,” was my first Equity theater show nervous system. No one will be and shift the lens through which we and I got to work with the living legend comfortable and no one is safe. perceive race in order to confront ourAndré De Shields. The fiftieth anniversary own bias. Directed by Wardell Julius of March on Washington coincided with You’re part of an ever-growing number of Clark, with associate director Sydney our opening night of “A Raisin in the Sun” Chicago theater artists who are visibly Charles, all performances are free. at TimeLine Theatre in 2013, a show that active in social justice. Where do you see extended twice and ran one-hundred the intersections between art and IN THE CANYON performances. Last summer I got to play activism? (Jackalope Theatre) Othello at Theater at Monmouth, an October 23-November 25 experience which changed me as an Dominique Morisseau [who wrote] Presenting a new American saga by actor, artist and storyteller both “Sunset Baby” [writes], “What we do with Calamity West spanning from 2007 to professionally and personally. Meeting our art is our revolution.” I feel that we as 2067. In an exploration on the present Robert O’Hara in college, becoming artists have a strong responsibility to be attack on abortion, this world friends with him, and making my the voice of the people, relentlessly premiere imagines a broken society directorial debut with “Insurrection: calling out and addressing social justice rapidly declining into a future world Holding History” is a huge one for me. issues in our society. My passion and set in the rocks and walls of a canyon, Directing my first reading in New York dedication to the work I create is fueled where a story of resistance is birthed. City this past spring of Osiris Khepera’s by the world around me and the many Directed by Elly Green.“Shola’s Game” at the National Black injustices that I see. There are many waysTheater was also pretty cool! to be a revolutionist and making thought- RIGHTLYND provoking art is a powerful way. I choose (Victory Gardens Theater)You’ve recently started doing more to use my platform on social media to call November 16-December 23 directing. What appeals to you about this attention to things others might not know Rightlynd is Chicago’s 51st Ward. The relatively new role? How does your or see. Awareness is a big thing. As we El doesn’t run here anymore and it is acting background inform your directing? know, white supremacy is embedded into full of abandoned storefronts, the very DNA of the American fabric and crumbling apartment buildings, and there is simply not a place or its fair share of crime. A powerful real environment that does not need work in estate conglomerate is planning a that regard. I like to think of my work as a massive redevelopment project that call to action, to be more aware, more would gentrify the neighborhood and compassionate, and more loving. change Rightlynd forever. Only one woman stands in the way: AldermanI am someone who enjoys working on What’s coming up next? More directing? Nina Esposito. In award-winning SEPTEMBER 2018 Newcityboth sides of the table. As a director, I get A return to acting? Perhaps some local playwright Ike Holter’sto share my vision of a piece and playwriting or composing, just for fun? ambitious new work, one womancollaborate with others to make that tries to use her street smarts and rawcome alive. Being in the rehearsal room Yes it is a return to acting. I will be back determination to save the Chicagois really one of my greatest joys. The onstage this fall at American Blues neighborhood she loves. But will theunderstanding I have of being a single Theater [in “Flyin’ West”], getting to play political machine turn her into thepiece of the puzzle as an actor greatly with some of my good friends, in a play very person she is trying to destroy?informs how I shape the piece [as a that I have loved forever. After that, in the Lisa Portes directs the first play indirector]. I have had experiences both winter and spring, I am directing two Holter’s ongoing seven-play saga setgood and bad as an actor that have Chicago premieres: “Dutch Masters” by in this fictional Windy Citytaught me ways to communicate with Greg Keller at Jackalope Theatre, neighborhood; the story cycle thatactors but also keep the energy of the and “The Watsons Go To Birmingham” includes “Exit Strategy,” “Sender,”rehearsal room conducive to the best adapted by Cheryl L. West at Chicago “Prowess” and “The Wolf at the Endpossible work. I try to maintain a very fun, Children’s Theatre. of the Block” as well as the upcoming productions of “Red Rex” at Steep Theatre and “Lottery Day” at the Goodman. 35

36 Newcity SEPTEMBER 2018

RASHAYLA ARTIST OF THE MOMENT MARIE BROWNW hat does it mean to You are constantly traveling these days. to Dubai was enlightening in that sense because be a working artist in What takes you on the road so often? I wasn’t even thinking about the Middle East or 2018? What are the the Arabic-speaking world in general as a place It’s been a while since I’ve had a long stint out- where I might be, mainly because I identify asmoral and ethical imperatives side of the United States. I feel really good to queer. I just thought that it would never be some- finally start doing that more because I am in an thing that I could be accepted for there, and myfacing the so-called creative class interesting place right now, personally and pro- work deals with those things. As I was traveling fessionally. I have a clear understanding that I started to realize that there probably is a wayamidst today’s chaos and uncer- Chicago is a city that I could consider a home that I can translate what I am interested in into base, but I need to leave and do things interna- different cultural contexts where I may or maytainty? Should artists cultivate tionally and figure out what kind of residencies not perceive myself as belonging there. I think and fellowships I can get to take my work to the it’s important to me to do that right now becausecommunity at home or spread next level. This time, I’m going to Rabat for a I just don’t want to be in America. America sucks fellowship to learn Arabic. I’ve been there for right now for obvious reasons, as a black Amer-their messages around the world? four weeks before and I am returning for two ican and a queer-identifying person. more weeks with funding.Newcity connected with artist I want to connect especially with cultures that Why Arabic? I know you have also been to I feel would be perceived as not relevant to meRashayla Marie Brown to discuss Dubai recently—what about the language as a queer, black American. The Middle East or the culture interests you? and North Africa have always had that mysteryher journey through photogra- for me in that sense and I want to break through I am always interested in learning languages, that. I feel that my work doesn’t only deal withphy, performance, film and writ- and I have been exposed to learning at least a race and it doesn’t only deal with sexuality. It little bit of French and Spanish. I have incorpo- deals with a kind of despair of what happens ining. With Chicago as her home rated a significant amount of Spanish at least historical omissions and what happens to peo- in my installations and sometimes in the titles ple as individuals when they’re dealing withbase, she is globetrotting more of works. And because I work also as a writer these large, looming social conditions. in addition to being a person who makes visu-than ever, building new ways of al objects but also performs at times, words and I don’t want to be pigeonholed to only talking language and different systems of communica- about Black Lives Matter. These things are allspeaking her distinct perspective tion are becoming more and more a primary interrelated—my oppression or my experience focus of my work. I thought that I should focus of America is going to be connected to a histo-to an ever-expanding audience. more fully on being able to have a good under- ry of imperialism and colonization that affects standing of different languages so that I can people all over the world. I am trying to connectby Elliot J. Reichert incorporate them into my artwork. But I also that interest and break down some of the wallsphoto by Nathan Keay have this decolonial agenda that’s becoming that maybe even I created in my practice. For more of the subject of my work, and I feel in instance, I think using certain cultural referenc- order to do that you need to make work that can es that are specific to my community and are SEPTEMBER 2018 Newcity speak to more than just people who speak En- important to me, but not at the expense of mak- glish or even people who speak a European ing an argument that is grander. language. All the languages that I’ve studied were European languages until now. In your performance work, you appear extremely confident, but it sounds like you I’ve been interested in thinking about which lan- are pushing yourself into new areas of guages travel well in the art world in terms of discomfort. In the United States right now, how people are developing institutions and what do you feel that there is a limit right now kind of concerns those institutions have. My trip to how your work is understood? 37

Newcity SEPTEMBER 2018 I want to be very careful about how I charac- am pretty sure I will be taking most of the spring modes of creating intimacy that doesn’t feel terize that because I don’t want to make it seem to finish this film, which I have been working on forced or contrived, or maybe even spectacular like I am no longer concerned with race—I am about my family for the past four years or so. And in a performance. not one of those post-black people who just in the next year, I will be presenting a major per- doesn’t want to be black anymore. But it does formance in New York with the support of a But the writing is not diverging in any feel like the opportunities for black American Franklin Furnace grant, a film version of my on- structural way from the rest of your artists are very limited and only certain subject going performance project “Rage to Master.” A practice? matter is being promoted at certain levels. As book version has been funded by DCASE. It’s a a person who is trying to figure out a lot of lot of looking at where things have been and If it ever diverges, it’s because I write about where I am, it feels important to me to find other pushing them into new spaces, or finally wrap- other artists’ work. I’ve published a couple of ways to relate to people outside of my particu- ping up those extended projects that I have been essays in the past on Howardena Pindell, lar experience of oppression. embarking on that are mostly film and perfor- Rashid Johnson, different folks, and I will prob- mance related. ably continue to be asked to do that because Ultimately, the art world wants me to perform institutions like my unique artist lens in looking a certain kind of identity for them as a black And I have a few things coming up that will be at other artists. Maybe it will diverge a little bit American artist who is queer and uses images published, like the first in my series of small es- because it’s not so focused on my particular of the body. I am very frustrated with that and says called “Staircase Thoughts” for the “On experience but it’s more on finding a way to talk I am very sick of that. I think that seeing how Civil Disobedience” series with the Green Lan- about somebody else’s work in a way that it other people contend with how their bodies are tern Press. I am thinking about how my work hasn’t been talked about before. There’s some being commodified or their cultures are being in performance and in film, with its narrative of that and there’s also these personal essays disrespected or how they are being systemat- arcs and narrative qualities, can be translated that tell a lot of my life story. Those are in line ically oppressed—it opens up this conversation into a print form that is more portable and ac- with the rest of my work because they still give for me in a way that I don’t feel is happening for cessible to a wider range of people, especially bits of my story mixed in with some sort of larg- me personally in the United States. Even the as I increase my language skills. er cultural or social issue. And then, lastly, I major cultural institutions who are supposed to make a lot of installations with small pieces of be supporting people from my community usu- How does writing shape the narrative text in them already, so it’s just a matter of con- ally talk about the same kind of rescuing of for- around your work and develop that longer necting that to another space outside of the gotten histories—fetishizing an archive that ex- arc, especially as you look back on the past temporary installation. cludes them in the first place—or there’s this five years? overt attempt to engage in what is essentially I do write poems and songs sometimes that I just activism and certain kinds of infrastructure Writing is always embedded in my practice be- don’t really share. I do have a lot of things that design which may or may not actually be art. cause there is a lot of writing embedded in per- I write that I don’t share because those are just It’s trying to resolve a social ill and it may have forming, at least for me, and making films. It’s things that make me feel good, it’s not about an aesthetic component to it. not about closing chapters, it’s about making the narrative. I appreciate Adrian Piper’s own what’s clear to me in my brain clear to other art historical writing about her work, but I ques- Or, it’s just literally a fantasy, like how do I make people. I have made a lot of work that refers to tion whether or not an artist should do that be- myself as extravagant and fantastical and beau- popular culture, to a certain kind of specific cause it overdetermines interpretation at times. tiful as possible to deal with it all, or how do I black, female interiority. And then I made a lot I am not interested in that. I don’t want to fore- make the people in my community appear that of work that deals with these broad, sweeping close those options. I like it when people bring way? So I am going to adorn them, use a lot of historical omissions and also the effects of col- stuff to me that I didn’t think about. sparkly things, colors, whatever. Those are the onization on the idea of identity. It’s about main- three spaces I am expected to occupy and I taining a certain specificity of my position and You have spent some time within art and don’t find myself completely outside of them—I then expanding that to talk about the idea of educational institutions. How do you see engage in them sometimes—but I am trying to attachment to identity. I think to overly identify your relationship to institutions and their find another language, another set of referenc- with your suffering is not a position that you are role in your work? es, another way to connect with people. And I going to liberate yourself from your problems, I felt that more and more language and actual think it makes it worse. I will always be connected to institutions be- communication is part of that. cause institutions are made of people. I want I am really interested in how people can go to have a dialogue with people across identities Knowing all that, where is your studio about addressing their specific suffering and institutions have an interesting way of put- practice right now? through a broader lens. So I am using myself ting you in contact with people that you would as an example—I have my particular brand of never meet otherwise. But I also have a very More than anything else, I am trying to integrate suffering, and how do I expand that to under- contentious relationship with institutions be- and make sense of all of the moves that I have stand that this is all part of a grander, larger in- cause I realize that I can very easily be toke- made in the past five years and taking stock of terconnected scheme that takes things inter- nized or put in a particular place within a struc- where I’ve been. Depending on who you ask, a nationally? It’s not just about American ture of bureaucracy that keeps me from being lot of people know me for one medium or over- slavery—American slavery had to exist from a effective. So, I will always have a complicated emphasize their familiarity with one particular European perspective first and it originated out relationship with institutions and as long as the aspect of my practice. It’s important for me, in of a certain location in Africa. These things are people who run them are okay with that am- order to control the narrative around my work important to me, to actually go to these places bivalence than we can get a lot of work done. or at least steer it toward what I am actually in- and talk to the people, mine the history and If they want me to be a champion without crit- terested in talking about, to revisit and look at then find a way for what I have been saying all icality, then that’s not for me. But because in- how these projects are interwoven. these years from my specific perspective to stitutions are made of people, you can always connect. And I think that I have been doing a find people inside of them that are unsatisfied That to me is where my mind is at—how do I much better job of that in my writing more than with the status quo and want to change things. break out of Chicago into a more international anything else because it can directly address And that’s where I come in, and create a space art conversation? I am working on a film in At- the viewer in an intimate object people can hold for them to actually do that, where I can take lanta called “Reality Is Not Good Enough,” so I in their hand. I’m thinking a lot about different more risks than they can.38

SEPTEMBER 2018 Newcity 39

CHICAGO’S ART- ISTS’ ARTISTS C hicago has long been a destination for artists seeking to hone their practice and take their work to greater heights. Hence, it’s no coincidence that this art season opens with a retrospective of the original Hairy Who at the Art Institute of Chicago, while the Smart Museum’s major exhibition celebrates a broader spectrum of contemporaneous South Side artists—AfriCOBRA, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and the Wall of Respect collaborators. And yet, the Chicago of the late 1960s and early seventies looked little like it does today. While space might still be cheap relative to other metropolises, waves of gentrification and development have drastically transformed Chicago’s urban landscape, pushing affordable living to the further-flung edges of the city. Teaching and other work opportunities for artists are scarce and underpaid, while collectors remain conservative in taste and thus limited in their local investments. Fortunately, as our art historical legacies prove, Chicago has always been a place for artists to thrive amongst communal support, undertaking creative experimentation with a collective drive whether or not institutions are paying or paying attention. If the histories of Chicago’s artistic movements can teach us anything, it is that Chicago is a home for artists who take risks and make their own ways. This year’s Art 50—our pick of Chicago’s artists’ artists— is dedicated to them all, past, present, and future. (Elliot Reichert)Newcity SEPTEMBER 2018 Art 50 was written by Kerry Cardoza, Lindsay Hutchens, Ciera McKissick, Lee Ann Norman, Jameson Paige, Elliot Reichert and B. David Zarley. All photos by Nathan Keay with photo assistance from Joe Crawford. Shot on location at the Zhou B Art Center.40

RICHARD HUNT — 51 Black,” which he installed at St. John’s Episcopal a brief, glorious moment, the world was present- SEPTEMBER 2018 Newcity Church; it was one of the most notable mentions ed with an image of what the walls of the muse-DAWOUD BEY at the FRONT International triennial this summer. um of the West could have looked like. Unpar- alleled at portraiture, Marshall is a builder firstThrough iconic black-and-white portraits of 2 and foremost, a creator of new spaces and newblack America, Dawoud Bey has come a long wings in the museum’s canon, and his successway from his groundbreaking “Harlem USA” KERRY JAMES MARSHALL can be drawn on as an important reserve ofphoto series to his MacArthur Genius grant and strength in trying political times.to his most recent celebrated work currently at It was impossible to move through “Mastry,” histhe National Gallery of Art in D.C., “The Birming- massive 2016 retrospective at the Museum of 3ham Project,” honoring the victims of the 1963 Contemporary Art, and not be struck by thechurch bombing at the 16th Street Baptist sheer beauty and import of what was on display: GLADYS NILSSONChurch. His work has always explored identity Kerry James Marshall, one of the finest reclaim-and racism against African Americans. Bey has ants of the Western canon, had played the vile Gladys Nilsson’s career has followed her hus-been working in Cleveland documenting the game hung upon him and others of color and band Jim Nutt’s and her distinct recognition islandscapes of slave history, like the Under- had won. Black subjects were the exclusive long overdue. Both had the same coming up asground Railroad in “Night Coming Tenderly, focus of a major cosmopolitan museum and for BFA graduates from SAIC, were exhibitors in the 41

MATTHEW GOULISH & LIN HIXSON — 24 IÑIGO MANGLANO-OVALLE — 16Newcity SEPTEMBER 2018 original Hairy Who exhibitions at the Hyde Park real estate bust to acquire and renovate prop- Hunt went on to produce his own massive works, Art Center, began teaching future generations erties in the South Side neighborhood of Great- acquiring a disused power plant substation in in 1968, and received honorary doctorate de- er Grand Crossing, Gates rose to prominence the mid-1970s to facilitate his ambitious public grees from SAIC in 2016. Nilsson’s figures that as the director of the University of Chicago’s commissions. His cloudlike “Swing Low” hangs are often hybridized with plants and other ani- sprawling Arts + Public Life program as well as from the ceiling of the new National Museum of mals bring non-human colors and patterns onto the founder and current executive director of the African American History and Culture, while humanoid figures and take on particular reso- nonprofit Rebuild Foundation, which includes “Spiral Odyssey” rises up from the ground of Ro- nance with the art world’s present fixation on public and semi-private cultural spaces, most mare Bearden Park in Charlotte, North Carolina. the Anthropocene. Two exhibitions in Chicago notably the Stony Island Arts Bank, purchased After a successful fundraising campaign under- open this September, featuring work by Nilsson from the city for a symbolic dollar with the help taken by the great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells in context with her beginnings: “The Time Is of his friend, Mayor Rahm Emanuel. This year, to erect a monument in her honor, Hunt was Now! Art Worlds of Chicago’s South Side, 1960- he received an honorary doctorate from the Uni- tapped for the project, slated to coincide with 1980” at the University of Chicago’s Smart Mu- versity of the Arts London and opened a solo the renaming of Congress Parkway after the Af- seum of Art, and “Hairy Who? 1966-1969” at the show at the Kunstmuseum Basel of work derived rican-American activist. Hunt has dedicated his Art Institute of Chicago. from his recent acquisition of the Johnson Pub- life to cultural service, serving by presidential lishing Company archives. appointment on the board of the National En- 4 dowment for the Arts and on the Smithsonian 5 Board of Directors. THEASTER GATES RICHARD HUNT 6 In a world where the distinctions between artist and curator, collector, activist or celebrity are With over a hundred public sculptures cast JIM NUTT increasingly indistinct, Theaster Gates continues across the United States, Richard Hunt ranks to surprise and confound with his myriad modes among the world’s most prolific living sculptors. If according to Newcity’s inaugural Art 50 from of making and doing. A ceramicist-turned-urban Inspired at a young age by the larger-than-life 2012 “Jim Nutt is the grandfather of us all,” then planner who took advantage of the early 2000s welded abstractions of Picasso and David Smith, it’s fitting that Nutt and fellow Hairy Who mem-42

bers Gladys Nilsson and Karl Wirsum AMANDA WILLIAMS — 18 RIC WILSON — 45be slated to have work of theirs fromthe Museum of Contemporary Art Chi-cago’s permanent collection in the up-coming exhibition “West by Midwest.”Described on the MCA website as fol-lowing “crisscrossing lines of kinship”to reveal “social, artistic and intellectu-al networks of artists and their sharedexperiences of making work and mak-ing a life,” Nutt’s influence as an artistand educator will receive the attentionof scholarship previously reserved forthe works of art themselves.7KARL WIRSUMKarl Wirsum’s place in Chicago’s arthistory set by his participation in theHyde Park Art Center’s Hairy Who ex-hibitions in the late 1960s is still felt fiftyyears later, as upcoming exhibitions atthe University of Chicago’s Smart Mu-seum and the Art Institute of Chicagopull from the same early works. Like fel-low members of the Hairy Who includ-ed in this year’s Art 50, Gladys Nilssonand Jim Nutt, Wirsum’s work is oftenconsidered in relation to artists who fol-lowed in his footsteps, having beengiven permission to marry high and lowby Wirsum’s irreverent, amusingly ab-ject and decidedly human figures.8 ty years. The Suburban, the project space she erly engages with the museum’s signature Mies SEPTEMBER 2018 Newcity founded with her husband Brad Killam in 1999 van der Rohe windows.MICHAEL RAKOWITZ in Oak Park, moved with her, and the two also run The Poor Farm, an ambitious not-for-profit 10The paper plate was the key, its ar- project space in rural Wisconsin. Grabner curat-gent-lacquered lips, menacing black ed this summer’s “FRONT International: An WILLIAM POPE.Lcoil, aesthetically identical to the china American City,” a new art triennial based at var-of Saddam Hussein, rendered in simple ious locations in Cleveland. Before all this, she It’s not his newest work—Pope.L seems to bepaper and given away at the artist’s first is very much a working artist. This year she was constantly creating, and the buzzing neon hov-retrospective, hosted by Chicago’s part of a group show at Manhattan’s James ering like the host above Manhattan’s High LineMCA. This bathetic wringing from a Cohan Gallery that focused on artists working and his first major solo showing in France haveBaathist captures Rakowitz’s uncanny with grids. Her work was also on view in an El- made 2018 another prolific year—but it is impos-ability to muster the horrific and tragic mhurst Art Museum exhibition that decoupled sible to think of Pope.L now and not return toand hopeful, to manifest the inscrutable domestic objects from their original function. “Trinket,” the 2015 installation wherein an im-and painful from the everyday and pro- One work, site-specific gingham curtains, clev- mense, torn, custom-made fifty-one star Amer-saic. After this, he rendered the ancient ican flag flies forever in fan-driven winds. In aLamassu statue on London’s epicFourth Plinth, returning the looted gloryto the heart of empire. In relating theAmerican invasion of Iraq to Hollywood’s “StarWars,” recreating priceless lost artifacts with foodwrappers sourced from the people who lootedthem, inverting the power dynamics of war in afood truck where Iraqi refugees cook and Amer-ican veterans serve, Rakowitz conjures ghosts:spirits who can speak with us here and now.9MICHELLE GRABNERDespite returning to Wisconsin in 2015, MichelleGrabner remains a vital part of Chicago’s artworld. Grabner continues to teach at the Schoolof the Art Institute, as she has for the past twen- 43

DAN PETERMAN — 19Newcity SEPTEMBER 2018 time when the American flag has become a ref- 12 to make meaning from a variety of sources. The erendum on the entire nation—to see it writhe chair and professor of painting in the Department like the living thing it is encapsulates a moment, NICK CAVE of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago will be to see his demand for reparations burn in the on sabbatical in the 2018-19 academic year, but night sky over a tyrant’s shining city—is to en- Nick Cave has collaborated with architect will be deeply immersed in her practice through capsulate righteousness and hope. Jeanne Gang and the Chicago Architecture Bi- a year-long residency in Berlin, as well as pre- ennial on “Hear Hear,” worked with Bob Faust paring for upcoming exhibitions at The Contem- 11 on a brilliant woven mural and danced through porary, Austin, and the Central Museum, Utrecht. the historic Park Avenue Armory in New York JUDY LEDGERWOOD City in just the past year. Known for his polychro- 14 matic soundsuits, he evolved with “Until,” a Judy Ledgerwood has long been known for her 22,000-square-foot kaleidoscopic installation, HEBRU BRANTLEY bright and playful paintings that blend floral mo- his largest piece to date, exploring racism tifs with sloppy grids in a richly exuberant cele- through hanging metallic ornaments, chande- Heavily influenced by the messages of commu- bration of the color and tactility of paint. One is liers, blackface lawn jockeys, pony beads and nity pride, uplift and accessibility embedded in tempted to relate her joyful strokes to Chicago other objects. The piece will travel from MASS the AfriCOBRA movement, Hebru Brantley com- precursors in the Imagists, but Ledgerwood’s MoCA to Sydney’s Carriageworks this fall. Cave bines the aesthetics of graffiti and the great palette and mark-making are closer to AfriCO- successfully creates a world of grandeur that twentieth-century muralists to explore themes BRA’s Gerald Williams than the Hairy Who’s Jim immerses the senses. of nostalgia, power, hope and the human psyche. Nutt. Her 2016 exhibition “Pussy Poppin’ Power” Through colorful, accessible references to pop at New York’s Tracy Williams Gallery put femi- 13 culture and politics, Brantley creates work that nist interpretations at the fore of her critical re- questions traditional views of heroism. Brantley ception, but this year’s “Far From the Tree” ex- JESSICA STOCKHOLDER maintains a robust practice, opening “Then hibition that inaugurated Rhona Hoffman There Were Two,” an exhibition at Galerie De Gallery’s new West Town space took the vaginal Jessica Stockholder creates work that defies cat- Bains in Geneva in September, and in November discourse to new heights. A professor of art the- egories, challenging distinctions among painting, the artist will host the Hebru Brand Studios x ory and practice at Northwestern University, sculpture and the art environment. In pieces that BAIT booth at the Complex Con before heading Ledgerwood grounds an otherwise conceptu- extend beyond the white cube and into public to a pop-up Brand Studios event during Art al-heavy faculty in the studio tradition. spaces, incorporating surrounding architecture Basel Miami Beach in December. in their composition, Stockholder asks viewers44

15 INDUSTRY OF THE ORDINARY — 20CHRIS WAREKnown more these days for his NewYorker covers than Chicago-specificwork, Chris Ware nonetheless hasbrought images of his Second City to theworld through his timely and insightfulcomics for over three decades. Last year,Ware released his memoir-cum-graphicnovel “Monograph,” a massive yet typi-cally self-effacing treatment of his lifeand career to date. This year promisesthe collected strips featuring RustyBrown, a recurring character Ware hasdrawn for seventeen years. These culmi-nating projects notwithstanding, the art-ist seems poised for many more years ofgraphic storytelling.16 18 and Blackstone. Called “Experimental Station,” SEPTEMBER 2018 Newcity Peterman’s complex includes the BlackstoneIÑIGO MANGLANO-OVALLE AMANDA WILLIAMS Bicycle Works, a youth-supported community bike shop; the 61st Street Farmers Market,Born in Madrid and based in Chicago From Venice to the pages of T magazine to the communal spaces and a gallery. In his studiosince the late 1980s, Iñigo Mangla- forthcoming Obama library, Amanda Williams practice, Peterman transforms everyday andno-Ovalle has consistently produced is rightfully everywhere—what better for the disused materials—plastic, wood, aluminum—work that raises essential political and so- artist who brought Englewood to the MCA? Just into sculptural and functional objects. Last year,cial concerns in the seductive and sleek as she used the colors of commerce and he participated in documenta 14 with a copperlanguage of minimalism and in high-end consumption, the shades of cigarettes and and iron ingot-casting project shown in Kasseldesign. A professor of art theory and snack foods, to highlight the slow erasure of and Athens. His “Accessories to an Eventpractice at Northwestern University, his Chicago’s neighborhoods, she harnessed the (plaza),” acquired by the MCA Chicago in 1998,2007 “Phantom Truck” imagined the mo- power of gold, and more importantly, space— is back on display outside the museum’s newlybile biological warfare labs described by creating a room we can never enter, created by renovated restaurant Marisol—innocuous grey-former Secretary of State Colin Powell to people for whom the museum was not made— green armatures made of recycled plastics thatjustify the American invasion of Iraq, to force observers to engage with the institution invite the unsuspecting pedestrian to experi-while his 2014 “Well” project for SITE and the city on the level of urban systems. Her ence the art of sitting.Santa Fe installed a useable water pump architect’s eye and imagination work on levelsthat taps into the Santa Fe aquifer. This beyond Chicago and even art—Williams’ true 20summer, Manglano-Ovalle unveiled “Un- medium is society.titled Film (Red)” at the Elmhurst Art Museum’s INDUSTRY OF THE ORDINARYnewly restored Mies van der Rohe-designed 19McCormick House, covering every inch of Mies’ One of Chicago’s most well-known performancemassive windows with red film, radically altering DAN PETERMAN collaboratives to art world insiders, Industry ofthe experience of the structure. the Ordinary generously stages many of their Decades before Theaster Gates moved to re- thoughtful artworks in public space for all Chi-17 build Chicago’s South Side, Dan Peterman was cagoans to see. Their projects offer a more am- working at the intersection of infrastructure and biguous approach to the weight of AmericanLaTOYA RUBY FRAZIER ecology in the same neighborhood, operating politics, yet nonetheless manage to deeply an experimental studio and workshop inside a pierce viewers who encounter them. The duo,Since she took her first shot, as a teenager, of former recycling center at the corner of 61sther mother, LaToya Ruby Frazier has remainedcommitted to capturing the lives of working-class black people struggling to thrive in dignitydespite the disinvestment and environmentaltoxicity ravaging Braddock, Pennsylvania, theonce-booming steel town where Frazier grewup. Her photographs, remixing the aestheticsof Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans with thesocial visual commentary of Gordon Parks,reveal the injustices as well as the humanityinherent in the human condition. As associateprofessor of photography at the School of theArt Institute of Chicago, Frazier maintains arobust practice spanning performance, videoand multimedia, with upcoming exhibitions ather gallery, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in NewYork City, as well as promoting the recentpaperback edition of her first publication “TheNotion of Family.” 45

CANDIDA ALVAREZ — 42 DAN DEVENING — 48 ANNE WILSON — 21 consisting of Adam Brooks and Mathew Wilson, work. Her 2010 retrospective at the Knoxville series. This summer, Tasset returned to the body, have been working together since the early Museum of Art included a participant-driven casting a pavillion-sized rendering of his wife 1990s and continue their prolific and influential communal weaving project, producing a nearly Judy Ledgerwood’s hand for Cleveland’s inau- output in and beyond Chicago. In addition to a eighty-feet-long tapestry by the conclusion of gural FRONT triennial. A retired professor at the robust practice, both are longtime professors, the show. In 2015, Wilson won a prestigious University of Illinois Chicago, Tasset is in good with Brooks teaching at Columbia College and United States Artists fellowship, and last year company among the faculty there, as well on the Wilson teaching at SAIC. Outside the university saw her fourth solo show in a decade at Rhona roster at Kavi Gupta Gallery. circuit, they collaboratively run a well-respected Hoffman Gallery. annual summer residency program to support 23 artists working in performance, installation and 22 other non-traditional media. FAHEEM MAJEED TONY TASSET Faheem Majeed is a master of taking discardedNewcity SEPTEMBER 2018 21 One has to wonder if the city’s public art com- relics and bringing new life into them. His solo missioners would have tapped Tony Tasset for exhibition “Unite” at Cleve Carney Art Gallery ANNE WILSON his enormous, three-story eyeball sculpture in included a wall comprised of wood and Kool- 2010 could they have known he would produce Aid-colored glass. The piece “ETINU” mimicked Anne Wilson’s work in fiber and material studies “Hot Dog Man” the next year, the personification a billboard with a religious spin, appearing like is not your grandmother’s macrame. A professor of a Chicago-style dog strutting madly down the a stained glass window to question powerful of the discipline at the School of the Art Institute streets where his kin are devoured in droves, def- institutions like churches and museums. His of Chicago, Wilson has pioneered new ways of ecating mustard while flailing weiner-flanges work includes community engagement, as he making fiber artworks for decades, in turn and his own testicle-equipped weiner before fuses art and public activation, like his most changing the way we see the significance of him. Tasset delights in the absurd, an effect he prominent work as one of four directors of The thread. Her 2002 “Topologies” project, initiated produces with scale and fabricated precision, Floating Museum, a collaborative art project that for that year’s Whitney Biennial, introduced con- whether it’s a twelve-foot deer sculpture or the creates temporary, site-responsive museum cepts of social, geological and technologial net- colorful pairs of his ambiguous “Arrow Sculpture” spaces that float around the city. work theories into her already formally ambitious46

FAHEEM MAJEED — 23 BRENDAN FERNANDES — 3124 Ph.D. who has taught English at Stanford and have been twice featured at the Whitney Bien- nial—most recently in 2014—and MoMA andLIN HIXSON AND art history at the University of Michigan, all be- London’s Tate own work by him, among other fore making Chicago and the School of the Art institutions. At SAIC, he teaches on disability theory as well as what he has dubbed the “ex-MATTHEW GOULISH Institute his home. His installations of notes, hibition prosthetics” that communicate ideas drawings and doodles scribbled on napkins, in the gallery. His archival collaboration with curator Hans Ulrich Obrist is among many en-Lin Hixson and Matthew Goulish collaborate in Post-its, wrappers and sundry other ephemera during works.both life and art, presenting time-based works are the living archive of a life lived nearly entire-across the United States and abroad since 2008 ly in deafness, a process he began exhibitingas their performance group “Every house has a more than twenty years ago. His installationsdoor.” Before forming “Every House,”Hixson and Goulish premiered withtheir cohort the ninth and final workas part of “Goat Island,” a perfor- JOSEPH GRIGELY — 25mance group that for twenty years“slowly, carefully, perhaps somewhatimperceptibly, chang[ed] the world—one word-gesture-breath, one per-formance, at a time.” In the last year,they performed on resonances be-tween 1917 and 2017 in concert withthe Art Institute of Chicago’s exhibi-tion “Revoliutsiia! Demonstratsiia!Soviet Art Put to the Test,” and inNovember they will present a newwork, “Scarecrow,” at Steppenwolf.Rumor has it that a “Goat Island” rev-olution, revival or retrospective is in SEPTEMBER 2018 Newcitystore for 2019.25JOSEPH GRIGELYJoseph Grigley’s research on the re-lationship between written languageand speech is not the dusty musingsone would expect from an Oxford 47

EDRA SOTO — 26Newcity SEPTEMBER 2018 26 ing an NEA fellowship, a Richard H. Driehaus 29 Foundation award and a Louis Comfort Tiffany EDRA SOTO Foundation Award. Last year, Fish’s solo exhibi- BARBARA KASTEN tion at David Nolan Gallery showed works from Life has not slowed down for our 2016 Art 50 a 1998 exhibition at a Wicker Park storefront in After more than forty years, Barbara Kasten con- cover star Edra Soto. Last year Soto staged her which Fish fixated on reproducing the hexago- tinues to push the photographic medium “Open 24 Hours” project, which uses discarded nal tile patterns of the building’s century-old through an engagement with perception, pro- liquor bottles found near her East Garfield Park door apron, a manual tribute to the decorative cess and color in both two and three dimensions home in community-engaged projects, at Head- inexactitude of a bygone era. In 2017, she had out of her studio at Mana Contemporary Chica- lands Center for the Arts in California, The Ski solo exhibitions in Seattle, Chicago and New go. A bedrock in photographic experimentation Club in Milwaukee and the MCA Chicago. Joha- York. Next year, the DePaul Art Museum is slat- and the history of both art and architecture, Kas- lla Projects will bring the work to two unlikely ed to exhibit a decade of her recent work. ten exhibited worldwide in the last year, includ- public sites this fall: the Fashion Outlets of Chi- ing for “Artist/City” as the summer resident of cago and at the Chicago Athletic Association. In 28 Illinois Institute of Technology’s S. R. Crown Hall, addition to teaching at SAIC and co-running the where she produced a new photographic series outdoor project space The Franklin, Soto has CLAIRE PENTECOST with the iconic Ludwig Mies van der Rohe build- several upcoming group shows, most notably ing as its primary subject. Kasten’s work can be “Cross Currents: Intercambio Cultural.” The show With the art world’s current fixation on the An- seen at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chi- is the result of a cultural exchange program be- thropocene, Pentecost’s long career of envi- cago’s exhibition “Picture Fiction: Kenneth Jo- tween Cuban and Chicago artists of Latinx de- ronmentally engaged artmaking takes on new sephson and Contemporary Photography” scent, and will be on view at Centro de Desar- resonance in the accelerating climate crisis. through the end of the year. rollo de las Artes Visuales in Havana before From her proposed soil-based currency for traveling to Chicago’s Smart Museum. documenta 13 to her involvement in the Haus 30 der Kulturen der Welt and the Max Planck In- 27 stitute’s Anthropocene Curriculum, Pentecost RASHAYLA MARIE BROWN has made a career of merging her advocacy JULIA FISH and her art in the spirit of Chicago’s reputation With Chicago as her homebase, Rashayla Marie for artist-driven activism. In 2017, along with Brown has become more of a “vagabunda”—to As a painter and draughtswoman, Julia Fish mar- Rashayla Marie Brown, she received the pres- quote her frequent Instagram updates, as well ries the precision of hard-edged painting with tigious Artadia Award and exhibited a new in- as the title of her 2014 Chicago Artists Coalition the softness of a more contemplative and tender stallation, “A Library of Tears” at EXPO Chicago. solo show—than ever before, snagging residen- approach to form. Her estranged, but nonethe- A teacher and mentor as well, Pentecost is pro- cies in Vermont, Lithuania, London and Michi- less familiar forms evoke the architecture of the fessor of photography at the School of the Art gan, to name a few present and future locales. domestic setting. Fish has developed her prac- Institute of Chicago. To fund all that, she’s also racked up awards from tice for decades, earning many awards, includ- the Franklin Furnace, Chicago’s Department of48

Cultural Affairs and Special Events, DIANNA FRID — 33Artadia, 3Arts and even the StateDepartment. That last was for herongoing commitment to languagelearning, an essential aspect of hercommunication-based practicethat combines writing, performing,filming and directing. In 2016, hersolo show at Aspect/Ratio Projectsasked “Can the Spectator Speak?”This year, she’s taking time to reflecton the last five years of her work,with a film project, performance inNew York City, with published writ-ings on the way.31 des beaux-arts de Montréal and solo exhibitions she was not among the Hairy Who proper, Ros-BRENDAN FERNANDES at Wesleyan University and the MCA Chicago. si’s work nonetheless showed the characteristic,For Brendan Fernandes, movement colorful irreverence that blossomed in Chicagois a metaphor for language. His per-formances and installations reveal 32 then. Rossi got her due with a retrospective or-the everyday human choreography,taking viewers and participants on BARBARA ROSSI ganized by the New Museum in 2015, which,a journey where identity is dynam- happily, traveled to Chicago’s DePaul Art Muse-ic. The resulting work is akin to acollective blueprint for how we all Barbara Rossi’s O.G. status dates back to her um, an unlikely but welcome collaboration. Ear-might regain our agency and free-dom. Since 2015, Fernandes has worked at a debut with the Imagists in a series of shows cu- lier this year, Corbett vs. Dempsey wowed au-breakneck pace and shows no signs of slowingdown. This August, he staged a performance on rated by Don Baum at the Hyde Park Art Center diences with Rossi’s hauntingly beautifulNew York City’s High Line, and opens DePaulArt Museum’s fall exhibition season with a solo in the late sixties and early seventies. Although black-and-white still lifes of wave-worn drift-show in September. Recently announced as vis-iting faculty at the Banff Centre, Fernandes alsohas upcoming projects with the Noguchi Muse-um, residencies at his alma mater York Univer-sity, a virtual reality commission at the Musée wood, poetically titled “Slippers”—a uniquely powerful project in the oth- BARBARA KASTEN — 29 erwise boisterous Imagist canon. 33 DIANNA FRID If the fiber arts have recently SEPTEMBER 2018 Newcity emerged as a formidable medium— Cecilia Vicuña’s presence in docu- menta 14 and her subsequent Neu- bauer Collegium exhibition this year come to mind—then Dianna Frid’s work is owed a debt due to the depth of the practice. She earned an Artadia award in 2014 for her work in text and textile, and the next year showed with Vicuña at the Poetry Foundation gallery. The 2016 pairing of her work with peer Richard Rezac at the DePaul Art Museum proved both the elasticity of Frid’s expan- sive practice and the innovative cu- ratorial approach of that institution. Nearly a decade of Frid’s most re- cent work received a stellar treat- ment at the University Galleries of Illinois State University. In 2017. Chi- cago’s young Goldfinch Gallery paired her this year with Monika 49

MARIA GASPAR — 34 and rotting terrariums filled with aging fruit, a different type of beautiful repulsion exploring age and kinship—the sculptures were paired with sentimental landscape paintings by her mother, Mary Dunning. A long- time professor at Northwestern University’s Art, Theory and Practice department, Dunning has been included in major group exhibitions like the Whit- ney Biennial and Venice Bien- nale, and has had solo shows at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., the Museum of Contempo- rary Art in Chicago, the Malmö Konstmuseum in Sweden, the Berkeley Art Museum and the CCA Wattis Institute. Müller in a show that will travel to Switzerland. veillanced, militarized and oppressive moment 36 Frid is associate professor at the University of in time.” RICHARD REZAC Illinois Chicago. A master of form and composi- tion, Richard Rezac’s sculptural 35 installations confound distinc- tions between architecture, 34 JEANNE DUNNING decorative arts, design and con- temporary sculpture proper. And yet, his body MARIA GASPAR An expert image-maker, Jeanne Dunning is of work evinces a consistent exploration of the possibilities and limits of the medium, as shown Maria Gaspar believes art has the “potential for known for her photographic forays into the ab- by his 2018 Renaissance Society exhibition, which selected floor, wall and even ceil- inducing liberatory acts,” which explains the ject, bodily and grotesque. Her work tests the ing-hung works from the past twenty years of his practice. Also this year, his large, outdoor impetus behind both her individual and collec- limits of ambiguity, seducing viewers as much sculpture “Glen Elder,” a colorful, trussed scaf- fold, stood in the garden of the Arts Club of tive art practice. The Chicago native recently as she pushes them away. A recent exhibition Chicago through the summer. The DePaul Art Museum paired him in 2016 with Dianna Frid in received an Imagining Justice Arts grant from at Randy Alexander Gallery presented molding a thoughtful show of contrasts and coincidenc- the Art for Justice Fund to develop a performance piece with detainees at Cook County Department of Cor- JAN TICHY — 37 rections, a site of collaboration for the past six years. Gaspar has up- coming exhibitions in Houston, Texas; Kalamazoo, Michigan; and at the at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she is an assistant professor. A piece from her ongoing “Disappearance Suit” series is on view at the Museum of Contempo- rary Art’s “A Body Measured Against the Earth.” The suit is handmade from dry grasses sourced from Sau- salito, California, where Gaspar re-Newcity SEPTEMBER 2018 cently completed a residency. “The suit allows me to appear and disap- pear into the landscape as a kind of shapeshifter, negotiating the politics of the body with the politics of the landscape,” Gaspar says. As with much of her work, Gaspar is inter- ested in investigating what it means for a person of color to inhabit an environment “in an especially sur-50