art

The heat was on and the clothes were practically off this weekend at Lollapalooza. It was the perfect place for tattoo-spotting.

Here's a look at some of the best ink:

If you spotted any interesting tattoos at Lollapalooza this year, tell us about them in the comments below.  If you've got pics, send them to windycitizen@gmail.com 

#1: The Led Zeppelin Wizard

Like a good wine paired with the right food, the mix of music and visual art can enhance each other’s top notes, offering an enriched aesthetic experience. Chicago art galleries and contemporary chamber ensembles have discovered that performances in galleries can be a most winning recipe.

For the dozens of Chicago chamber groups, performing in a nontraditional venue – such as one of the city’s nearly 200 art galleries – is an attractive option. Booking shows in traditional venues such as university concert halls and churches can expensive, with costs that include rent and paying for sound engineers or security guards.

“It’s incredible how much security guards are making these days,” said Robert Katkov-Trevino, artistic director of Millennium Chamber Players, who had to pay for a security guard at a performance a few years ago at Hinsdale United Methodist Church. “It’s 80 bucks an hour, so if you do a three-hour concert, you’re paying 240 bucks just to have one person sit there for this non-rowdy, ‘Pierrot Lunaire’ program.”

Katkov-Trevino said that the Millennium Chamber Players, a group of 17 core musicians who performs works ranging from Bach to Berio, draw the same size audience no matter where they perform. Performing in a gallery, therefore, is an inexpensive and logical option.

“The alternative venues are often the ones that are willing to give us space for free,” he said. “Universities aren’t going to give you their big concert hall for free.”

Developing a relationship with a gallery or other fine arts space can lead to free rent. Some galleries offer a “sweetheart deal'' in the form of a discounted rental rate to ensembles they have relationships with. The gallery owners hope the performances will draw crowds to their spaces.

“We try to avoid (renting) as much as possible,” said Christopher Preissing, executive director of the Chicago Composers Forum. “That’s part of what we’re trying to do, to collaborate in every opportunity that we can.”

The Composers Forum presents performances of its members’ music, typically played by Chicago-area contemporary groups such as dal niente, International Contemporary Ensemble, Third Coast Percussion Quartet and Fifth House Ensemble.

Along with performances in spaces such as Bridgeport’s Zhou B Art Center and Ossia Fine Arts Space, located in the Fine Arts Building, the forum has a year-old series called New Music in the Gallery. The series includes chamber performances at galleries such as Rosenthaul Fine Art in Gold Coast and Packer Schopf Gallery in the West Loop.

Performances in a gallery can be cost-effective for both parties, said Preissing.

“We can often pool our resources with the gallery, especially if we can make it coincide with the opening or the closing of the show,” Preissing said. “Then they’re advertising and we’re advertising for the same basic evening.”

“Sometimes it’s easier to go after a smaller gallery or a gallery that’s not really well-established just because there’s probably more benefit that they see in it,” he said. “But we also like to get in a big gallery where there’s already a built-in audience.”

While Katkov-Trevino doesn’t believe performing in a gallery attracts new audiences, many musicians disagree.

“There’s a really big crowd out there that goes to see contemporary art,” said violinist Austin Wulliman, who performs with dal niente and with cellist Chris Wild as the duo Wild and Wulliman. “There are so many galleries and so many young artists in the city that would be really into what we’re doing – contemporary music-wise – if they just were exposed to it more.”

The benefits also work the other way. The performances draw new people and exposure to the galleries.

“I believe that people that would be interested in a certain kind of music might be open to a certain kind of visual art,” said Aron Packer, who runs Packer Schopf Gallery.

The galleries don’t necessarily performances to raise their sales figures.

Jennifer Norback, director of Rosenthaul Fine Art, said she would be surprised if someone attending a gallery concert wound up purchasing one of the art works on display – some of which sell for more than $400,000.

“I think that (a performance) adds to the art work and the art work adds to it,” she said, “but I would never do a show like this thinking that any kind of a sale would come out of it. It’s just a nice way to bring some life into the gallery and keep things kind of fresh and exciting.”

It’s logical to combine contemporary music with contemporary art, Katkov-Trevino said, because composers keep up with trends in the art world. His composer friends know a great deal about contemporary art, he said.

“Nowadays, a modern composer is going to be more informed about contemporary visual art. If someone had asked Beethoven about his favorite painter, he probably would have said, ‘What?’ And not because he was deaf.”

Performances often attempt to make a connection between the music being played and the art on display. Sometimes collaboration springs up between the musicians and the visual artists.

The relationship between Rosenthaul Fine Art and the Composers Forum began in 2007 when Preissing learned that Rosenthaul was showing a series of works by Ellsworth Snyder, an artist and composer who was close friends with composer John Cage. Norback then invited the Composers Forum to perform works by Cage and Snyder in conjunction with the show.

“Snyder wasn’t just a visual artist, he was also a performer and a composer,” Norback said. “It was a way to show these vital aspects of who he is as an artist.”

In spring 2007, the Composers Forum brought together Chicago composer Drew Baker and his brother, artist Brett Baker, for a collaborative piece performed by dal niente at Ossia Fine Arts Space.

“We rehearsed it, and it was good,” said clarinetist Alejandro Acierto, who performs with dal niente. “But when we got into the space, it made it a little bit easier to digest because we actually knew what he was talking about. [We knew] how he wanted the sound to be created in reflection of the pieces that were on the walls.”

Every gallery has distinctive acoustics that can affect how musicians use the space.

“We think a lot about venue, and we put the right music in the right venue,” said composer Kirsten Broberg, founder and director of dal niente. “We never plan a concert without knowing what the acoustics are like.”

When dal niente performed at the Renaissance Society, an arts space at the University of Chicago, Broberg said she was inspired to compose a piece specifically for the space, one of Chicago’s most resonant rooms.

“At the end of the piece, there are these big chords with a bunch of silence between each one,” she said, “because I knew that there would be this resonance that would last five or ten seconds after the chord ended.”

Every gallery offers a different visual ambiance as well.

When his duo performed in Heaven Gallery in Wicker Park, said Wulliman, the gallery’s raw, hip space lent itself to edgier, louder music than would be appropriate for the more refined space at Rosenthaul Fine Art.

Some sketches show children riding bikes, playing soccer and beating drums. Others show images of flowers, family and home.

The crayon and pencil drawings, matted on burlap sacks, are familiar creations made by young children.

But these sketches show other things: A tanker dumping "poisdus chemicals" into a river. A child-like figure huddled in a doorway as a machete-wielding man approaches. Stick figures are shooting each other.

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Floating silver pillows gently bump into dancers. The dancers continue, seemingly undisturbed by the airborne intrusion. Meanwhile, audience members swat away the drifting metallic balloons.

This is not part of a dream, but an interactive exhibition now appearing at the Loyola University Museum of Art.

The museum has invited local dance ensembles to perform in Andy Warhol's installation "Silver Clouds."

Before the installation closes on April 27, five Chicago area ensembles will perform. The first group, The Seldoms, appeared on Tuesday night and will have another show on Saturday afternoon.

The installation, which opened last Saturday, consists of 40 helium-filled balloons made of Mylar that float around a room with weak air currents.

Originally installed in a New York gallery in 1966, "Silver Clouds" inspired choreographer Merce Cunningham to create a dance called "RainForest" in 1968.

In the work, the dancers' movements are determined by the I Ching, a method of finding order in chance events. 

"I think [Cunningham] thought it would be a very interesting set to use for a dance that involved a certain randomness or chance," said Pamela Ambrose, Loyola's director of cultural affairs. "The clouds aren't controllable, and so there is this chance element to the performance."

Ambrose said she jumped at the chance for the museum to showcase collaboration between visual art and dance, which she said has a notable history. She said the relationship between the two forms -- dance and visual art -- dates back to the 1910s and 1920s, when Serge Diaghilev, manager of Ballets Russes in Paris, enlisted a large group of artists as collaborators, including Pablo Picasso.

"I thought how terrific it would be, in the tradition of Merce Cunningham's 'RainForest,' to ask some of our more prominent dance ensembles in Chicago to come in and do the same thing, essentially to use the 'Silver Clouds' as a bridge between performance and practice," she said.

The museum is continuously projecting a film of "RainForest" on two 15-foot by 15-foot walls in the room next to "Silver Clouds."

Carrie Hanson, artistic director of The Seldoms, said the group was excited to perform in the installation because of its historic relationship with dance.

"There's something so rich about this experience," she said. "There's an aura around this installation because of Warhol."

The Seldoms' dance - like Cunningham's "RainForest" - relies upon chance.

To determine the specifics of The Seldoms' performance, Hanson asked audience members to roll a set of dice. The dice decided which of five actions the dancers take at what location in the room. There were seven chapters in the work, so each dancer performed seven actions, including sucking in helium from a balloon and then speaking.

Hanson said that because the performance relies on chance, Saturday's performance could be completely different from Tuesday evening's.

Molly Shanahan, who will perform in the installation on March 4 and March 8, said her solo dance will be in response to, rather than inspired by, the installation.

"My work really harnesses a relationship to gravity as a specific and necessary partner to all movement, whether I'm just surrendering to the flow of gravity or resisting it," she said. "And I love that the 'Silver Clouds' exhibit is about this very purposeful weightlessness."

Shanahan explained that she doesn't like to consider her work improvisation but rather "spontaneous composition," which is "composed in the moment."

"[The installation] is an additional catalyst to that spontaneous response, and specifically I was intrigued by the clouds component because of what it suggests in terms of weight and reflectivity," she said.

So what is it like to dance while surrounded by balloons?

 "Scary. I wouldn't want to pop an expensive exhibit," said Seldoms dancer Christina Gonzalez-Gillett jokingly.

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Clothing Metaphor
Because of one
missing sock, I had to
change my outfit.
--John Franklin Dandridge,
Columbia College Chicago alum.

Perhaps the Harrison CTA station was missing a sock on Wednesday morning because it too, changed its outfit. It shed its dimness for a new coat of red and green Japanese maple designs along with haiku on its walls.

The transformation is part of Columbia College Chicago's branding project for the campus and made possible through the CTA's adopt-a-station program started in 1997.

After getting approval from the transit authority to adopt the Harrison station, the college held two competitions during 2005, one for the design and one for the haiku, to solicit art for the station and to showcase the talent at the school.

"It's like a welcome home that's more creative than a simple blue UofC logo," said Micki Leventhal, director of media relations at Columbia College.

With more than 13 buildings in the South Loop, the college wanted to make the campuses more unified, says Joe Leamanczyk, project manager of campus environment at Columbia College Chicago. The college adopted Harrison station as part of its project.

Ron Huberman, CTA president, said the CTA appreciates that the students "can put a fresh face on a very old station." He said that the transit authority hoped to upgrade the 80-year-old station beginning this summer "to ensure the art work and the haiku has better packaging around it."

The winning design addresses the station in three parts - ticketing, stairs and platform - echoing the three lines in a haiku and the three stages in a yearly cycle of Japanese maple.

Designers were asked to display the haiku in a cost effective and durable way, "we wanted them to keep in mind to use materials readily available," said Leamanczyk. The final design by Christopher Caluyia, a graduate of Columbia's interior architecture program, makes use of vinyl that the school and CTA already use for branding logos.

The haiku, picked from work by students at Columbia College and Jones College Prep, were judged on their emotions, sense of movement and ability to match the station's interior design.

"We were looking for haiku that had continuity when it was split into poles [inside the station]," said Kenneth Daley, chair of the English department at Columbia College, who headed the judging committee.

While additional haiku featured on the metal poles will not appear until the project's second phase in February, riders can now read haiku, such as the one by John Franklin Dandridge, at the station's ticketing platform.

Nat Isobaker, a junior at Jones College Prep whose work is also installed at the station, says it's very exciting to be published at such a young age. "This just shows if you work at it, you can get published anywhere."

Harrison station's new outfit cost $25,000. This first phase took only two days to install. Columbia College footed the bill for the transformation and is aiming to change the designs every three years. "Maybe we will try sonnets next time," said Daley.

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The National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum could lose most of its exhibition space under a plan to sell its building to the City of Chicago.

In an effort to save itself from closure due to financial woes, the museum is negotiating to sell its building in the Prairie Avenue District to the city, which would transfer the property to the Chicago Park District for $1. The park district would assume management of the former warehouse, which has been the museum's home since 1996.

The sale would be a stop-gap until the museum can execute long-term plans to expand its repertoire to all veteran artists and move to a location with more foot traffic.

After months of talks, the parties are getting close to a deal, a museum official said Tuesday.

In its current form, the deal would only guarantee the museum space on the third floor, said Jim Holtzman, the museum's treasurer and its liaison to the city. Currently, the museum occupies all three floors of the building.

The museum has 1,500 pieces of art, only about 200 of which are on display at a time. The number of pieces on display would likely be reduced so the park district could use some of the space for its own operations.

The museum, at 1801 S. Indiana Ave., has struggled to attract visitors, in part because the neighborhood has little foot traffic. Mike Helbing, the curator and acting chairman of the museum board, estimated that the museum gets 12,000 to 14,000 visitors a year, mostly school students from around the region.

The Prairie Avenue District is also home to the historic Clarke House and the Glessner House Museum, but the area is not considered a big draw for tourists.

The tentative agreement with the park district would give the museum three more years in the current building. Holtzman said the museum will use that time to rebuild itself financially.

The museum also plans to restructure itself and select a new name to reflect its efforts to include more artwork by veterans of all wars. The museum has displayed work inspired by wars other than Vietnam since 2003.

"We would use the third floor for a combination of storage as well as for limited exhibition space until we re-craft a board and we direct ourselves in some of the areas we've been talking about," Holtzman said. "Ultimately, we'll physically move."

The museum and the city have not released details of the proposed deal. According to the museum's Web site, the city gave the property to the museum in 1995.

"[Talks between the city and the museum] are simply going slowly," Holtzman said. "This is the issue of dealing with any large public institution. We're not the first thing they're thinking about, or for that matter the last thing or even the middle thing."