West Loop Gate, East Side of Street
Ok, but you have to realize that by this time a rather large amount of wine had been consumed. That understood, let's continue our art tour.

The show I'd been looking forward to, Leslie Baum at Bodybuilder and Sportsman was pretty good, though too crowded of course to really look at anything for too long -- and hot, hoo boy. Leslie is tall, and very skinny, with very black hair, almost a graphic design herself, all of a piece with her paintings -- landscapes made up of elements of landscape layered, rearranged, and colored to suit, maybe what I like about them. She admits to liking rocks. My favorite piece had piles of them painted hard-edged pastelly pink and gray designer colors, with a row of soft-shaped dark green and black rocks below. She also showed obsessive little notebook drawings, piles of logs that look like cigarettes, or shapes that are landscape-esque but pink.

Wendy Cooper Gallery has moved into the old Flatfile space, and had an odd show up about burning or fires or something I didn't quite get. But on one wall was an assortment of finely detailed drawings, mostly of deer in domestic settings (kitchen, curled up on bed in bedroom, etc.), by Keiler Sensenbrenner, really really good. She's from Evanston and we chatted a bit about garden gnomes and giraffes (I told you about the wine, right)? One drawing I loved was of a furry dog with birds nesting in his brown coat, with wallpaper designs or maybe tattoos overlaying it. Dog snarling a little, or maybe trying to smile, but a good drawing, just a touch absurd.

Three Walls was showing something very dark brown and black, like the room was raku-fired, but I didn't get it.

Finally, some laminated archival inkjet work by Cody Hudson at Bucket Rider. Young, cartoony stuff. Guy into skateboards, line drawings with text, all very cheaply priced, colorful, too hip for me, I think. Was more interested in the woman who had decided to buy one of these works, and glancing at the pricelist, saw that most had been sold. Felt old, so decided to leave.

Managed one more, at G.R. N'Namdi, who was showing a retrospective of expressive paintings of Herb Gentry who passed away last year. It was the time of evening that I start making suggestions, so I did, wondering whether they were ever going to show living people from Chicago, and proceeded to mention a few names. This is why I ought not drink, and I apologize if I didn't make any sense.

Never made it to the former Vedanta, which was merely a name change, according to Meloche, since Gupta was tired of people thinking he showed religious art.

That's it for now. Fun time, but honestly, nothing made me go nuts.

Will try to get over to River North sometime this week.

- posted by Cynthia @ 7:22 PM | | | Link |