In the house
INTIMATE SETTINGS MAKE COLLECTING ALL THE MORE PERSONAL
Chicago long has had apartment galleries, where dealers publicly showed art in the places where they lived. The difference now is that such galleries are run by artists, in neighborhoods where art may have been produced but seldom was exhibited. The change came 30 years ago this summer with the Randolph Street Gallery in the Market District. It offered “an alternative to alternative spaces,” and that still applies to some of our best apartment galleries, open one to three afternoons a week:
* 65 GRAND, 1378 W. Grand Ave., 312-719-4325. In 2005 Bill Gross used his kitchen to give a send-off exhibition to a friend moving to Oregon. Months later he mounted a second show and again liked doing it. The result: a gallery named for the bus line it’s on that exhibits (now in two rooms) difficult work, with an emphasis on painting and sculpture. It began with solo exhibitions chosen by Gross. Today there also are group shows curated by others. Some artists are emerging; some are in their 40s and 50s. Gross takes them on only if they’re engaged with art for the long run.
* Old Gold, 2022 N. Humboldt Blvd., 773-653-9956. Two years ago Caleb Lyons and Kathryn Scanlan opened their gallery in a basement knotty-pine bar dating from the 1940s. It continued for the most part — there also was an outdoor screening of animated films last July — with shows about every two months of the kind of installation work Lyons featured at an earlier venture, artLedge. The last show, of site-specific painting and drawing, closes April 26. In summer, the gallery will reopen on the site of a button factory at 3102 W. Palmer Blvd. where the couple presently work (but will not live).
* Roots & Culture Contemporary Arts Center, 1034 N. Milwaukee Ave., 773-235-8874. Eric May did not want a showroom. The painter and head chef at Ox-Bow summer school had worked at the Beacon Street Gallery, learning about not-for-profit spaces. So in fall 2007, after mounting exhibitions of painting and sculpture that alternated with shows curated by others, his storefront-with-loft-apartment became a non-profit institution, presenting eight exhibitions a year with evenings of contemporary experimental films in between. It is dedicated to emerging artists, primarily in the Chicago area.
— Alan Artner
– – –
Fresh framework
A FIRST FORAY INTO ART-BUYING NEEDN’T BE COSTLY OR INTIMIDATING
You’re moving on up — and while you haven’t quite gotten to that deluxe apartment in the sky, you did recently score a slightly roomier one-bedroom. Don’t those freshly painted walls deserve better than your tattered “Annie Hall” movie poster? (On behalf of your walls: Yes. They certainly do.)
Now, the $100 question: How do you satisfy your increasingly mature (but not boring) taste in art without breaking the proverbial bank? And without subjecting yourself to Art World Attitude?
Happily, you live in a city where affordable, accessible art is not an oxymoron. Where people such as Sarah Chazin and Kirby Kerr do the hard work for you — seeking out new artists and giving them a place to show and sell their wares.
Chazin owns Sacred Art (4619 N. Lincoln Ave.), a warm, unpretentious gallery lined with works in every imaginable medium (median price $75), and Kerr is gallery director at Rotofugi Designer Toy Store & Gallery (1953-55 W. Chicago Ave.), where pop art rules — and pieces sell for anywhere between $60 and $1,500.
“We want people to feel comfortable coming here to look at art,” says Kerr, “and the things we sell are generally pretty well-priced. You can come away with a really nice piece for as little as $100.”
Chazin, who recently relocated Sacred Art from Roscoe Village to Lincoln Square (a re-opening party is scheduled for April 23rd), encourages a similarly democratic vibe at her eclectic shop.
More Top Picks Best 4k Monitors For Home Offices
“There are lots of starving artists out there,” she says. “I never understood why starving regular people couldn’t afford to buy their art.”
— Jessica Reaves
– – –
Linked in
SHOPPING ONLINE ALLOWS YOU TO EDUCATE YOUR EYE, COMPARE AND INVEST SMARTLY
Art collecting is not for the rich alone, as Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, a now-retired librarian and postal clerk respectively, proved when they built one of the most important contemporary art collections in history. They bought with his salary, lived on hers and stuck to affordable works they could fit into their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment. And after they donated most of their 2,000-piece collection to the National Gallery of Art in 1992, they started all over, sticking to the same game plan (“Herb and Dorothy,” a film documentary by Megumi Sasaki, debuts this June and film festival screenings have begun across the country).
Not everyone has the Vogels’ acumen, mettle and access to seminal art (after all, they do live in Manhattan). Gallery and studio visits can be intimidating, confusing and time-consuming. And if fiscal appreciation is a goal, collectors also need to educate themselves about a host of variables that range from an artist’s vision, experience and sales history to a work’s provenance, quality and condition.
Fortunately, the Internet makes this pursuit easier and more expedient than ever before. You can peruse artwork and educate yourself at your leisure. Here are some Web sites to get you started:
1. Research: Do your homework and learn every aspect of the art market at artinfo.com, artnet.com and buy-original-art.com. All feature breaking news, exhibition schedules, biographical data and researched articles on everything from trends to buying tips.
2. Buy: Get your feet wet at iconoclastusa.com, a project-based studio in the U.S. that collaborates with well-known artists to produce editions, exhibitions and publications. For prints and multiples by leading British artists, try countereditions.com. Find an intriguing mix of established and emerging artists at outer-borough.com. And snag works by name artists and donate to a good cause at acria.org, where profits go to the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America.
3. Experiment: Take a chance on emerging artists who are pursuing, or have recently earned, fine-arts degrees at ugallery.com. Work from all over the country is judged by a panel of experts that only accepts about 25 percent of what it sees. Prices range from under $100 to $6,000, and offerings are exceptionally well-organized, by medium, genre, price, size, color and artist.
— Lisa Skolnik