Painting Us out of a Corner
Perhaps with more symbolism than he intends, Ty Tabing, executive director of the Alliance, says that their goal is to “activate vacant spaces [in order] to bring art to Chicago.” Their tactic is, as I’ve found out, at least a step in the right direction.
We Chicagoans have seen it all, even before we have seen any of it. Tolerating the unfamiliar as poorly as the bonneted hostess of a parish’s annual garden party, Chicago has a case for being the tidiest, cleanest, primmest, and most unnatural city in America. We find that the city and the city plan are rarely distinguishable here.
Consider the so-called “Chicago Arts District,” which tells the city to enjoy its art in a tiny section of Pilsen on the second Friday of every month. Think of Artropolis, an international event that attempts to make the city an artistic cosmopolis by piling Chicagoans into the Merchandise Mart once a year. Everything has its place, and everything has its time; and as nothing makes us look twice, few things make us look once.
An initiative called Pop-Up Art Loop wants to reduce the city’s debt to the expected and the familiar. A part of the Chicago Loop Alliance, the group takes advantage of the economic crisis by appropriating abandoned spaces as impromptu art galleries. Perhaps with more symbolism than he intends, Ty Tabing, executive director of the Alliance, says that their goal is to “activate vacant spaces [in order] to bring art to Chicago.” Their tactic is, as I’ve found out, at least a step in the right direction. (The dust of their blast seems still to be settling.)
Glancing at my hand-drawn map, I managed to find the first gallery at 220 S. Wabash fairly easily. The El shook the street as I spotted it across from me, an unassuming doorway dwarfed by the ornate gold entrance of the neighboring restaurant. Adorning the gallery’s limited window space, the initiative’s eye-catching green-and-white logo shined like a beacon in the gray blur of gray pedestrians under the afternoon’s gray sky. Yet when I came to the door, I grew wary. The fold-out sign placed on the sidewalk proclaimed that the gallery was ready for visitors, and in the window “OPEN” screamed like a plea for life; but, looking in, I saw only a narrow unfinished space, walls and floors bare. I was hesitant to believe the signs.
Farther down, the green rope disappeared, and a series of chairs sat neatly in a row. [...] They were not, it seemed, made for seating.
And then Freddy, sitting behind a thin podium of that characteristic green hue, a pair of glasses on his shaved bald head, an earnest smile pulling at the corners of his eyes, waved his hand at me and said, “Come in.” I tentatively opened the door and glanced around, still disbelieving; the area looked as if it were still in preparation, that more than anything it had the potential to be a gallery. The space was more a standalone hallway than a room, six or seven times as deep as it was wide, and was divided in two by a stretch of similarly green rope. On the other side of the rope was a large wooden worktable, a number of power tools, and various planks and boards leaning against the far wall.
Farther down, the green rope disappeared, and a series of chairs sat neatly in a row. Each chair stood roughly two feet tall, was constructed of unpainted, repurposed scrap wood, and was only vaguely geometric. They were not, it seemed, made for seating.
I had entered HallMfg, a temporary workspace for the artist Andy Hall, who allots one hour to designing and constructing each of these “experimental chairs.” Freddy gave me a little tour, pointing out the timer that Hall uses and the rolls of plans that are piled in a corner. Hall performs his process on site, generally creating four or five chairs during his weekly visits. “He was here yesterday,” Freddy told me. “That day was kind of fun. It’s kind of lonely in here, and that day went by pretty fast just looking at him.”
