So I’m looking for two middle-aged Jewish women at an antique fair …

Let me clarify. I’m looking for two specific middle-aged Jewish women at an antique fair. They are my mom and her cousin Judy. Being the good, loyal son that I am (and proving that you should never just say “Uh huh. Uh huh. Yeah, that sounds great,” when you’re not really paying attention on the phone), I had agreed to accompany them to Artopolis, an art fair/exhibit going on this weekend on three floors of the Merchandise Mart.

So I’m looking for them in the antiques exhibit on the eighth floor of a 25-story building so big it has its own ZIP code, 60654. (See, I do remember stuff from my tour guide days.)

Now at this point, you might be asking yourself two questions:

1) Why did he put ZIP in all capital letters?

2) Why does his search for alternative cultures involve his mom and a retired federal prosecutor who talked about how she’s not sure if she should spend her birthday in Paris or not?

The answer to the first question is that ZIP is an acronym for “zone improvement plan.” The answer to the second is that it’s all about art.

I’m not ignoring the religious and academic backgrounds behind some of the finest art the world has ever known, but there were a lot of absinthe-swilling, opium-huffing badasses behind those pretty paintings of trees. Toulouse-Lautrec’s little midget ass could have slapped you around up and down Montmartre and Hugo van der Goes, forget about it! Ars nova? More like he gets arse fo’ ya. King player of the Northern Renaissance and always ready to hook a buddy up with those fine Flemish ladies. Hugo, girl!

(Actually, I have no idea if any of that is true. I have a vague recollection from an art class I took that van der Goes suffered from depression. Wikipedia says he tried to kill himself.)

But anyway, one popular image of the art world is that Sid Vicious makes it and Frasier Crane buys it. It starts in a haze of absinthe and hookers and ends in a museum where the guards swarm you if your tone goes above “hushed.”

So how did expressions of people’s souls, intended to rock the world, end up in the Merchandise Mart near the temporary bar selling top-shelf liquor and a mighty selection of zinfandels?

I guess the answer – at least, my answer – is that art shows us that crazy, unique and new isn’t confined to people who you would move away from on the train. Take this for example:

Crazy art

Crazy as hell, right? I didn’t get a shot of the lady who made it, but she looked like a junior high social studies teacher.

My mom is an artist. Sweet lady of the type who forgets there’s a pencil tucked behind her ear. Yet she creates absolutely stunning ceramics and graphite-on-paper nudes. Some kids, their moms taught them how to cook. Mine taught me calligraphy and three-point perspective. I suck at both.

Either way, the creative and expressive isn’t confined to people who act a certain way. You can have the alternative without the alternative culture.

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